AT LOS ANGELES
 
 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler, 
 First ^Discount Wolverhampton, G. C.S.I.
 
 The Life of Henty Hartley 
 
 ^Fowler, First Viscount 
 Wolverhampton, G. C.S.I. 
 
 "By His Daughter Edith Henrietta Fowler 
 
 """C 
 (Hon. dflrs. 'Robert Hamilton) 
 
 " Remember all 
 
 He spoke among you, and the man who spoke ; 
 Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, 
 Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power; 
 Whose life was work, whose language rife 
 With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 
 Who never spoke against a foe ; 
 Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke 
 All great self-seekers trampling on the right." 
 
 TENNYSON 
 
 LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO. 
 PATERNOSTER ROW :: :: 1912

 
 STACK A8HEX 
 
 IDA 
 5G5 
 VJ85FS 1 
 
 UJ 
 
 to- 
 
 TO 
 
 MY LITTLE SONS, 
 
 GAVIN ROBERT FOWLER HAMILTON 
 
 AND 
 
 HENRY FOWLER HEW HAMILTON, 
 
 fl DEDICATE THIS RECORD OF THEIR 
 GRANDFATHER'S LIFE, 
 IN THE HOPE THAT THEY MAY GROW UP TO 
 
 T"^ 
 
 O FIND IN IT NOT ONLY AN HONOURABLE 
 
 UJ 
 
 HERITAGE BUT A NOBLE EXAMPLE. 
 
 e 
 
 |
 
 PREFACE 
 
 BEFORE leaving my book in the hands of the public, there are 
 one or two points which I should like to make clear. 
 
 First, I have tried in this biography to let my father's voice 
 be heard again ; to let him tell, as far as possible, the story of 
 his own life, and to keep my part of the work subservient to 
 the living power of his words. For there are many, I feel sure, 
 who will like to hear and to keep the expression of his judgments, 
 his counsels and his aims. 
 
 Secondly, I have not attempted here to write a political 
 history. That has been done already, and will again be done by 
 the historian's pen. I have only touched on events which were 
 a background to my father's personality, and, therefore, the sense 
 of proportion is sacrificed to that of perspective. 
 
 And thirdly, No one of all my critics is so sensible of the many 
 faults and failings of this book as is its author. No one knows 
 better than I do how differently the artist would have painted 
 Henry Fowler's portrait in literary colours that could not fade, 
 or the sculptor hewn out a statue of his statesmanship which 
 would have stood throughout history. But all I have to give 
 the public is a collection of amateur snapshots, which, though 
 of no value in themselves, yet show the man as he was at home, 
 and in all the simple, natural attitudes of mind which the historian 
 could not see, and, even if he did, would never deign to portray. 
 Because I was my father's daughter I can beckon my readers 
 into a real intimacy with him, and I do so, asking them to forgive, 
 for the sake of the worthiness of the subject of this book, the 
 unworthiness of its writer. 
 
 I should like to take this opportunity of thanking all those 
 who have so kindly helped me by their contributions and the 
 loan of letters ; and to express my special thanks to my husband, 
 who, by reading through and sorting out the immense masses 
 of material, has relieved me of the heaviest half of the work. 
 
 EDITH HENRIETTA HAMILTON.
 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. IN THE DAYS OF His YOUTH i 
 
 II. LOVE AND MARRIAGE 20 
 
 III. MUNICIPAL LIFE 41 
 
 IV. MAYORALTY 54 
 
 V. IN WOLVERHAMPTON .... * 65 
 
 VI. PROFESSIONAL LIFE 79 
 
 VII. GENERAL ELECTION, 1880 .... 105 
 
 VIII. FIRST SESSION IN PARLIAMENT . . . 122 
 IX. PARLIAMENT OF 1880 1885 . . . .131 
 
 X. PARLIAMENT OF 1880 1885 (continued) . . 145 
 XI. UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME 
 
 DEPARTMENT ...... 174 
 
 XII. SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY .... 189 
 
 XIII. HOME RULE 205 
 
 XIV. IN OPPOSITION 231 
 
 XV. PARISH COUNCILS BILL 253 
 
 XVI. SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA . . . 284 
 
 XVII. COTTON DUTIES 318 
 
 XVIII. CHITRAL 337 
 
 XIX. AT THE INDIA OFFICE 353 
 
 XX. OUT OF OFFICE 383 
 
 XXI. OUT OF OFFICE (continued) .... 425 
 
 XXII. IMPERIALISM 460 
 
 XXIII. THE FLOW OF THE TIDE ..... 485
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XXIV. His LAST GOVERNMENT 498 
 
 XXV. As A METHODIST 525 
 
 XXVI. IN METHODISM 552 
 
 XXVII. " WHAT DOES FOWLER SAY ? " . . . 571 
 
 XXVIII. DOMESTIC LIFE 597 
 
 XXIX. OF ELLEN, HIS WIFE 620 
 
 XXX. HOLIDAY-MAKING 630 
 
 XXXI. IMPRESSIONS 651 
 
 XXXII. THE LAST YEAR 669 
 
 XXXIII. LAST DAYS . . 682
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SIR HENRY FOWLER, G.C.S.I., from a painting 
 
 by Arthur Cope, R.A. . . Photogravure Frontispiece 
 THE REV. JOSEPH FOWLER .... Facing page 8 
 HENRY H. FOWLER. Aged 27. (Photogravure) 40 
 THE RIGHT HON. HENRY FOWLER, from a paint- 
 ing by Arthur Cope, R.A. (Photogravure) 248 
 FOWLER'S FINE SINGLE-HANDED RUN. (Car- 
 toon from " Punch") 281 
 
 THE GREAT MOGUL. (Cartoon from " Punch") 311 
 FACSIMILE OF AN ORIGINAL LETTER FROM 
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA ...... 368 
 
 SIR HENRY FOWLER, G.C.S.I 372 
 
 THE FOWLA. (Cartoon from "Punch ") . . ,, 454 
 
 VISCOUNT WOLVERHAMPTON .... 524 
 
 VISCOUNTESS WOLVERHAMPTON . 620 
 LORD WOLVERHAMPTON AND HIS GRANDSON, 
 
 GAVIN HAMILTON 680
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 
 HENRY HARTLEY FOWLER, 
 
 VISCOUNT WOLVERHAMPTON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 18301851 
 
 IN THE DAYS OF HIS YOUTH 
 
 " Machinery just meant 
 To give the soul its bent, 
 Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." 
 
 R. BROWNING. 
 
 r TT s HERE was an atmosphere about the early days of Methodism 
 -L which was peculiarly its own ; a rarity down among the 
 every-day lives of simple, commonplace people which breathed 
 of the mountain heights where John Wesley himself had kindled 
 the inspiration and revival which were connected with his name. 
 His friendship had been a living reality in many homes, and his 
 disciples were fired by the power of his personality, as well as by 
 the principles which he had let loose, to stir up the stagnant pools 
 of so much of the religious life of that day. And as the personal 
 touch in everything brings with it a certain quality of influence 
 which is lacking from the force of abstract opinions, the men 
 and ministers who owed their adherence to a living leader were of 
 a somewhat different fibre from those who since have been loyal 
 to his memory. 
 
 The Rev. Joseph Fowler was essentially one of the former type. 
 His father had been one of Wesley's intimate friends, and, like 
 him, a Churchman. The Vicar of Bradford, where he lived, and 
 which was then a small unimposing town, was also a Methodist, 
 and another of Wesley's friends, so that Joseph Fowler was brought 
 up in the very heart of the new revival, and not only imbibed, 
 
 i
 
 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 but handed on in his turn to his son the spirit of that unspoiled 
 Churchmanship which found in Methodism an expansion rather 
 than a substitute. The influence of Mr. Crosse, the vicar, was 
 very great in the home of his parishioners, and all that influence 
 was used on behalf of the new society of Methodism. He exchanged 
 pulpits to use a modern phrase with Wesley and Fletcher, and 
 required that his curates should be also Methodists. Small wonder 
 was it, then, that Joseph Fowler should have been inspired by this 
 new awakening of spiritual life, which spread through the whole 
 town of Bradford like some consuming fire, and that he should 
 have thrown in his lot with the new ministry, which promised 
 to be so great a power for good throughout the whole country. 
 
 New methods always make a strong appeal to the young, and 
 the earnest young men of that day caught up with enthusiasm 
 the new revivalism ; but Joseph Fowler still clung to the tradi- 
 tions of the Church, and throughout his whole ministry was ever 
 loyal to the liturgy, for which he had a deep reverence and love. 
 The swing from conventionalism to experimentalism carried with 
 it. his inner spiritual life, but he still retained the outward forms 
 which make up so much of the dignity of the old church service, 
 and to the day of his death he conducted his own morning services 
 in exactly the same liturgical form. 
 
 Joseph Fowler was a man of exceptional powers ; a refined 
 and polished scholar ; a great interpreter of Scripture ; a most 
 able and interesting preacher, possessing a personality of great 
 dignity, though of a somewhat stern and puritanical type. He 
 was soon acknowledged as a head and shoulders above the vast 
 majority of those who had been called to the new ministry, and 
 he became one of the few leaders who carried on the revival 
 started by John Wesley into a fixed and permanent power in the 
 land. He was sent to fill the largest chapels, and to fortify the 
 strongholds of the new faith ; and his intense seriousness and 
 grave dignity leavened the almost riotous unconventionality of 
 this outspoken, experimental faith. 
 
 " I first saw Mr. Fowler," wrote Dr. Benjamin Gregory, to 
 whose early recollections of these far-away days I am greatly 
 indebted for much of the portraiture of my grandfather, " in 1832,
 
 In the Days of his Youth 3 
 
 when he brought his eldest son Robert to Woodhouse Grove 
 School. I was much struck with his appearance as he stood 
 and took a long, silent, broad, observant view of the hundred 
 boys and five masters. His tall figure was perfectly erect. He 
 seemed rather spare, but vigorous and wiry. His square, forensic 
 brow, with massive eyebrows, somewhat overshadowed his keen, 
 searching eyes. He impressed me as grave, strict to the very 
 verge of sternness and austerity. And, in intimate acquaintance 
 in the after-years, I found the impression to be true, although 
 these qualities were wonderfully softened, sweetened, and subdued 
 by other characteristics. No doubt the basis of his character 
 was seriousness and an indomitable serviceability. On no man's 
 countenance and habits did I ever see more deeply stamped the 
 strong, effective motto : ' Life is real, life is earnest.' He evidently 
 felt : ' We are placed in this world to do and dare.' His hypo- 
 thesis of human nature was a working hypothesis. ' I must 
 work ' was his supreme conviction. I know he carried this con- 
 viction to an incurable excess, till work became to him an absolute 
 necessity, and a holiday a weariness." 
 
 Such a description as this might with almost equal truth have 
 been written half a century later of his younger son, Henry Hartley 
 Fowler. And the latter owed much of his character and many 
 of his powers to a father, who was less distinguished only because 
 he had laid his talents on that altar of self-sacrifice, which claims 
 all the worldly prospects and ambitions of any minister of religion. 
 
 Joseph Fowler was supremely interested in politics, and held 
 the same Liberal opinions which he bequeathed to his son. 
 Indeed, it was this Liberalism which prevented his becoming in 
 after years President of the Conference, the majority of votes 
 being on the Conservative side, though, had his life been spared, 
 he would by the power of his personality have triumphed eventu- 
 ally over those prejudices and been awarded his proper place. 
 The late Mr. W. T. Stead thus wrote of him : " The Rev. Joseph 
 Fowler occupied a very distinguished position in the Connexion. 
 In those days Wesleyan Methodism was a hot-bed of Toryism, 
 and what appears even to the Conservative Wesleyan of to-day 
 of a very extreme and prosperous type. When Henry Fowler 
 
 I*
 
 4 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 was a boy, it was quite an established article of faith in many 
 Methodist circles that there was something ungodly in political 
 life. In the midst of such a Conservative and reactionary genera- 
 tion the Rev. Joseph Fowler shone forth as a pillar of light. He 
 was a man of high education, broad views and unimpeachable 
 orthodoxy ; and such a general favourite that, after being 
 Secretary to the Conference, he would, in spite of his Liberalism, 
 most surely have been elected President, but for his unfortunate 
 and premature death. It was from his father that Henry Fowler 
 inherited that stalwart Liberalism that has always distinguished 
 him ever since he first took part in political life." 
 
 " I can never forget the wickedness of Toryism," was a saying 
 of Dr. Arnold's which my grandfather frequently quoted, and I 
 have heard my father also quote it again and again. 
 
 As a business man and administrator there were few in his 
 world who could compare with Joseph Fowler ; and it is remark- 
 able to note in the recollections of those who knew him countless 
 characteristics with which those of the next generation were 
 familiar in his son. 
 
 " His temperament was not sanguine." 
 
 " Mr. Fowler's seeming snappishness was, for the most part, 
 a strong and kind man's playfulness." 
 
 " His mannerism was abruptness, though it resulted mainly, 
 doubtless, from his constitutional quickness, alertness, wide- 
 awakeness and promptitude. It must be confessed that he found 
 verbosity, or expansive and obtrusive egotism, or wanton waste 
 of time and words, most difficult to bear." 
 
 " He had an instinctive antipathy to everything which looked 
 like uppishness or self-conceitedness in the young. On the other 
 hand, he rejoiced over genuine excellence of any kind, ' as one 
 that findeth great spoil.' ' 
 
 My grandfather had a keen appreciation of a good sermon or 
 great speech, and possessed the power of being able to listen, 
 which is not too common a one among preachers and speakers. 
 A characteristic again most marked in his son. In a letter of 
 his which has been preserved and printed by Dr. Benjamin 
 Gregory, from whose book, " Side Lights on the Conflicts uf
 
 In the Days of his Youth 5 
 
 Methodism," the above quotations have been taken, he wrote : 
 " I quite agree with you that Methodism should have nothing to 
 do with politics " ; and there was nothing my father detested 
 more than a political sermon, or the introduction into the pulpit 
 of any of the controversial subjects of the day. Nor had he any 
 real sympathy with political Nonconformity, and often deplored 
 the increasing tide thereof. 
 
 " I have heard politics all the week," he often used to say, 
 " and on Sunday I want to hear something quite different. 
 Besides, I know quite as much about politics as any preacher 
 can tell me, if not a little more. What I want on Sunday is the 
 Gospel and an exposition of the Scriptures." The feeling was 
 also evidently an inherited one. 
 
 Mr. William Bunting, the grandfather of the late Sir Percy 
 Bunting, editor of the Contemporary Review, wrote : "I had the 
 happiness of a long intimacy with the Rev. Joseph Fowler, who 
 was one of the most eminent, able and generally beloved Ministers 
 of the British Wesleyan Connexion, and a prince of Christian 
 pastors." And it was in the pastor, as well as in the preacher, 
 that his great influence lay. He proved the power of pastoral 
 visiting, and established a church life, which was founded upon 
 the religion in the home. Once, when visiting a poor Yorkshire 
 woman, whose husband was blind, my grandfather expressed 
 the hope that she read the Bible regularly to him. She replied : 
 " Aye, that I do, sir, and many's the bit that I put in for his 
 good." 
 
 The home of such a man as Joseph Fowler was necessarily 
 strongly coloured by his personality. The typical early Methodist 
 home possessed a charm which it is difficult exactly to portray. 
 The spirit of utter unworldliness was its atmosphere, so there was 
 no room for the pretence which vulgarizes, and the anxiety which 
 cramps, so much middle- class life. Such a home is described in 
 Concerning Isabel Carnaby, and such were the principles in which 
 young Methodists were trained. " They were early taught by 
 their father that the only two things of importance in this life were 
 salvation and education ; likewise, that the verb To be is of infinite 
 moment, the verb To do of great weight, and the verb To havt
 
 6 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 of no significance at all. Therefore, whatever faults and failings 
 they might suffer from in after-life, there was no possibility of the 
 little Seatons becoming vulgar." Those were homes of perfect 
 simplicity and naturalness, and were felt to be just meeting- 
 places for strangers and sojourners as all our fathers were. There 
 was no need or inclination to beautify them up to the level 
 of luxuries, for those stern Puritan householders looked ever to 
 the " many mansions " where they felt their true homes to be. 
 On the other hand, there were no squalid economies to tarnish 
 refinement, for the Methodist minister has always been better 
 treated as regards his home than the clergy of the endowed 
 Church. The Wesleyan is, indeed, only a wayfarer in one circuit 
 after another, but he is freed from the cruel cares of increasing 
 dilapidations which lie so heavily upon the beneficed clergy. 
 The prayer of Agur was often on the lips of those old-fashioned 
 men, and is published in many of their printed family devotions : 
 " Give me neither poverty nor riches " ; and, as far as they were 
 concerned, it was an answered prayer. They had enough they 
 did not want any more. They were themselves they did not 
 wish to pretend to be anyone else. They had a daily account to 
 render to Him, from Whom no secrets are hid, and so they had 
 no taste or temptation to be insincere. My father expressed a 
 great appreciation of all the truths about Methodism in his 
 daughter's novel, Concerning Isabel Carnaby : " The Methodists 
 of the past generation lived always with their lamps lit and 
 their loins girded, as those that wait for their Lord ; and they 
 sought so diligently for the True that they had no leisure to look 
 for the Beautiful, for it had not yet been revealed to them that 
 the True and the Beautiful are one. They were so fearful of 
 confounding the substance with the shadow, that they did not 
 altogether realize that the shadow is, after all, but the reflection 
 of the substance, and, therefore, a revelation of the same ; but 
 they gazed so steadfastly into Heaven, that they were in danger 
 of forgetting how God made the Earth as well as the Heavens, 
 and saw that it was good. To their ears there was no message 
 in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire ; but they heard clearly 
 the still, small Voice, and they did whatsoever it commanded
 
 In the Days of his Youth 7 
 
 them. We need not pity them over-much that some of the beauty 
 and poetry of life was hid from their eyes. They that seek first 
 the Kingdom of God and His righteousness know no abiding lack ; 
 for all these things shall be added unto them." 
 
 Therefore, such a home as Joseph Fowler's was free from any 
 taint of what was common or unclean ; but far more than that, 
 it was a home of which he was in reality the head. He set the 
 tone far above an ordinary pitch in intellectualism as well as 
 spirituality. 
 
 Reading was to him, as to his children after him, almost as 
 great a necessity as eating. A certain sum of money was appor- 
 tioned each year to the purchase of the best new books, without 
 which mental culture would have been at a standstill. And the 
 love of a library was handed on, even in an increased degree, to 
 his son Henry. The modern idea, practised in so many deeds 
 rather than preached in so many words, that it is enough in a 
 household for the woman to be religious, and the children, when 
 young, to be like her, was unknown in early Methodism. " Him- 
 self believed and his whole house " was rather their attitude ; 
 and all the flow of life, whether of mind or soul, emanated 
 from the scholarly and saintly man who was the father of Henry 
 Fowler. 
 
 Into such a home as this my father was born on May i6th, 1830. 
 His mother was Elizabeth Macneil Laing, step-daughter of Mr. 
 Hartley, of Sunderland, and half-sister of James Hartley, M.P. 
 for Sunderland, and John Hartley, an iron-master of South 
 Staffordshire. She was of Scottish descent on one side, as her 
 names imply, and, on the other, of Manx origin. Her mother was 
 a Blackburn, descended from an Archbishop of York of that name, 
 and I have often heard my father say, with a smile : "In spite of 
 my Nonconformity, I am descended from an archbishop, though I 
 am afraid he wasn't a very good one." He used also to say that 
 though he himself was a regular Saxon, he thought a little Celtic 
 blood had come through the Manx-woman to his children, and 
 was intensely amused when one of them remarked : "I hardly like 
 to say that my grandmother was a Manx-woman, because it sounds 
 as if she hadn't a tail."
 
 8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Elizabeth Fowler seems to have been a perfect helpmeet to her 
 husband, supplying, in her cheerful disposition and sunshiny 
 temperament, a counterpart to his sombre, stern and reserved 
 character. She was blessed especially with the rare attribute of 
 common-sense, and this her son inherited from her : contrary 
 to proverbial tradition, it was his father whom he mainly re- 
 sembled, though his mother gave him her singularly sweet and 
 kindly smile. His devotion to his mother and care for her, during 
 a long and dependent widowhood, are a true testing line for the 
 depths of tenderness and family affection underlying an austerity 
 and reserve, which in my father were often misunderstood. 
 
 In the year 1830 Joseph Fowler was in the Sunderland circuit, 
 and his second son, Henry Hartley, was baptized at Bishop's 
 Wearmouth on the 8th of November of the same year. My 
 grandfather had two children by a former marriage : Robert, 
 who, having been trained as a doctor, was called to the Wesleyan 
 Ministry in Canada, and Mary, who married a Mr. Witty of Hull. 
 
 My father's earliest recollection was going to see Lord Macaulay 
 chaired in Leeds after his return to Parliament in December, 
 1832 ; and though only two and a half years old at the time, he 
 distinctly remembered all his life the orange ribbons, and the 
 resolve that when he was a man the same thing should be done 
 to him. He told his parents on returning home : " When I am 
 a man I should like to be a real Macaulay." This early resolve 
 might have been an unconscious prophecy of the far-away future, 
 when, like Macaulay, he, too, defended a Government Bill for 
 India in a speech of great power, and carried it triumphantly 
 through the House of Commons. 
 
 When in Leeds, he made a point of attending all the funerals 
 in the adjoining graveyard, with a little volume of Baxter's 
 Saints' Rest tucked under his arm. It was in Leeds that Dr. 
 Gregory refers to him as " the little master of the Brunswick 
 preacher's house. He was a fluent, self-possessed little gentleman, 
 of four years old, who fixed a scrutinizing, measure-taking gaze 
 upon his interlocutor, following up an answer by a counter- 
 question, altogether unembarrassed by the fear of man or boy. 
 With him it was always ' question-time,' and his precocious
 
 THE REV. JOSEPH FOWLER 
 
 ( h'roni mi oil jtiuiitiinj)
 
 In the Days of his Youth 9 
 
 parleying gave promise of debating power which has not been 
 unfulfilled." In very childish days, on coming in from his day- 
 school, little Henry would shrewdly ask: "Is my father in?" 
 If the answer was in the affirmative, the child was quite quiet ; 
 but if his father were out, and something had vexed him at school, 
 he would sit on the bottom step of the staircase and cry his grief 
 away. He knew that his father would not put up with a crying 
 boy. Mr. Fowler's mother lived with them in those days, and 
 once she showed her watch to her youthful grandson, and told 
 him it should be his when she went to Heaven. A few days after- 
 wards he considerately asked her if she wouldn't like to be going 
 to Heaven soon. 
 
 The difference between the ways of parents in those and these 
 days is shown by the story his mother told of how, when her little 
 girl had scarlet fever, Henry was not forbidden to go in the bed- 
 room ; but he never would himself, for fear of infection, go further 
 into her room than to the end of the chest of drawers, from which 
 he could help himself to the grapes. This caution his father 
 considered most cowardly, and laughed at him for it ; but Henry, 
 neither then nor at any other date in his life, was ever laughed out 
 of his attribute of caution. 
 
 He was five years old when his father moved to Bristol, and 
 there he attended a day school, walking to and fro by himself 
 and assimilating a deep interest in the Bristol shipping trade and 
 merchant princes, which seemed to him an embodied fairy-tale of 
 adventure and wonder. 
 
 From Bristol the family moved to Newcastle-on-Tyne, and from 
 there Henry was sent as a boarder to Woodhouse Grove, a school 
 for the sons of Methodist ministers in Yorkshire. 
 
 The following letter was written home when he was ten years 
 of age : 
 
 " MY DEAR MAMMA, 
 
 "It is with great pleasure that I write a slip-letter 
 to you. I have had a letter from sister to say she will be at 
 Leeds at Christmas. Please to send me a cake by the coach, 
 other boys have them from a greater distance than Newcastle.
 
 io The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The direction is Master H. H. Fowler, Woodhouse Grove, 
 Rawdon near Leeds. To be left at the ' Haunch of Venison,' 
 Leeds, from where the carrier will bring it. If you can't do 
 that, please write to me soon and send me some money and 
 postage-stamps. Please to let me have more newspapers. 
 I like the school middling, but I am glad I have only to stay 
 two years, and then to go to Sheffield. Please to tell my 
 father that it is customary for the parents at the vacation to 
 write and say when we are to come home. I would not go 
 home before the examination, but I can very well come home 
 the last day for I shall be examined the first. So on the 
 2nd day, if you please, I can leave the Grove at two in the 
 afternoon, get to Leeds before five ; tea at Mr. Simpson's, 
 and go by the 8.6 o'clock. Here sleep comfortably all night 
 and be in Newcastle next morning. I should prefer this far 
 better than the tedious journey on the Times or Telegraph. 
 My friend is H. Grear, the son of the Headmaster ; he is 
 a nice and good boy. He is in the same class as I am. We 
 both meet in the Rev. S. Allen's 2nd Class. I have had a 
 letter from Emily, but not from Edwin or Hartley. If you 
 have received this letter in your next put a mark at the 
 beginning and send me what I desired. Remember at 
 home always after dinner I want something, but I can 
 never get anything here, so you will please to send me 
 something. Please write by return of post. Give my love to 
 all Newcastle and Sunderland friends, and 
 " Believe me to be 
 
 " Your affectionate son, 
 
 " HENRY HARTLEY FOWLER." 
 
 His letters from school show what he was very fond of pointing 
 out to the next generation of boys namely, that he had only one 
 holiday in the year at midsummer, and returned to school for a 
 whole year's term until the following June. 
 
 He travelled to and from school in the mail coach from New- 
 castle. The diet at school in those days was very poor only 
 three meals a day, two of which consisted entirely of bread and
 
 In the Days of his Youth 1 1 
 
 milk and water. There was no cricket or football, or any 
 organized game, only, to use his own characteristic language, 
 " feeble, ineffective, miserable fives." The school hours began 
 at six a.m., and again to quote from him, " in the deepest, darkest, 
 bitterest winter," they began work at seven a.m. There were no 
 half-holidays, and only a trifling relaxation on Saturday afternoons. 
 
 When he was eleven years old he wrote the following : 
 
 " W. H. Grove, Dec. 8th, 1841. 
 " MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER, 
 
 " I received your short note on Monday. It is not 
 the general rule to write on the first of the month ; but we 
 should have written sooner had it not been the examination. 
 I did but middling with Mr. Galland. Mr. West said I was 
 wonderfully improved in my Catechism, and as for Mr. Swale, 
 I got a good mark for every sum. So you will see upon the 
 whole I did tolerably. I have proceeded from Sallust and 
 Greek Testament to the XII Orations of Cicero, and the 
 Anabasis of Xenophon. Perhaps you are not aware that 
 after I received your letter saying you thought I was in- 
 adequate to speak I instantly gave it up, thinking you more 
 proper to judge for me. As Christmas is now approaching 
 I shall be looking out for a parcel (larger than usual because 
 of Christmas). If you could, I should like you to enclose in 
 my parcel Butler's Atlas and Johnson's Dictionary ; besides 
 the cake and other sweetmeats, I should like a stick or two of 
 Spanish. I see from my Minutes to my great joy that you 
 are in the Bradford Deputation. I hope you will come, as 
 Mr. Morley would allow me to come to Bradford to see you 
 if you wrote for me. If you remember in the vacation you 
 promised i/- to the boy who studied out of school hours. 
 Master Woolsey (first boy in the school) is always studying out 
 of school, so I think he is entitled to the i/-. Tell Mary 
 Miss Morley is engaged to Mr. Smetham. On the 5th Nov. 
 we had a piece of parkin and a large bonfire. On Mrs. Morley's 
 birthday we were treated with GOOSE for dinner and for
 
 12 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 supper buns and TEA. I wish Grandmamma would write. 
 I have a favour to ask you : many boys' fathers have granted 
 them it. Will you promise if I get first boy in the school and 
 get invited to stay an extra year to give me when I leave i 
 and a new watch ? It would stimulate me greatly. I think 
 now I feel a greater delight in my studies than ever, for before 
 I used to think them a burden, but now I see of what use they 
 will be to me and I delight in them. Together with Woolsey's 
 shilling in your next I should like a new plan, my old one 
 being worn out, also my stock of postage-stamps is ex- 
 hausted. Wishing you a happy, happy Christmas and a 
 merry New Year, I must now conclude by requesting you 
 to give my love to my sisters and all my Newcastle and Sunder- 
 land friends, and accept the same from 
 " Your ever affec. Son, 
 
 " HENRY HARTLEY FOWLER. 
 " P.S. Write as soon as possible." 
 
 On the same sheet of paper crossed is written the following 
 elder- brotherly letter to his little sister, five years his junior : 
 
 " DEAR LOUEY, 
 
 " As I have some spare time I thought it would please 
 you greatly to hear from me. Can you write yet ? Oh, how 
 pleased should I be to receive a letter from you ! I am sure 
 it is quite time, next month you will be seven years old, and 
 I was only seven when I left Mr. Hewlett's, and when we got 
 to Hull, I used to write very often to my Grandmamma, so 
 you see it is time for you to write letters. When did you go 
 to Sunderland last, are you going to Aunt Kirk's this Christ- 
 mas ? Now be a good girl and ever remember your dear, 
 dear Brother, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 This letter was sealed with a little paper wafer, inscribed with 
 the singularly inappropriate text, " Woe unto them who drink 
 wine in bowls." The only other schoolboy letter is an undated
 
 In the Days of his Youth 13 
 
 scrap addressed to his father just before he left Newcastle, Henry 
 being then about twelve years old : 
 
 " I expect to leave the Grove next vacation having fulfilled 
 my promised time two years. Who have they invited to New- 
 castle ? And now as to our Missionary Meeting, there are 
 thirteen of us boys going to be speakers. We have not yet 
 fixed upon our chairman, but we are thinking of Mr. Galland 
 or T. Smith, Esq., of Morley House. Please write directly 
 and send me some newspapers. If I had to send you two or 
 three lines about our Missionary Meeting could you get 
 them put under the head of ' Clerical and Religious News ' 
 in the C our ant ? 
 
 " Believe me to be 
 
 " Your affec. Son, 
 
 " HENRY HARTLEY FOWLER." 
 
 It had been arranged that from Newcastle Joseph Fowler should 
 go to Birmingham, and he was hoping from there to send his son 
 Henry to King Edward's School, where he would have been a 
 schoolfellow of Dr. Lightfoot Bishop of Durham, and Dr. Benson 
 Archbishop of Canterbury ; but the Conference changed the 
 appointment at the last moment and sent him to Great Queen 
 Street, London, instead. I have often heard my father deplore 
 this change, which so altered his educational career, as his ambi- 
 tion was to win one of the scholarships from King Edward's School 
 to Oxford, and, after that, to go to the Bar. All through his life 
 a haze of regret hung over those disappointed hopes. The " might- 
 have-been " loomed so alluring in his imagination that he never 
 quite got over its loss. He always longed to have been at Oxford, 
 and felt keenly the drawback that the school of St. Saviour's, 
 Southwark, to which he was then sent in London, had no available 
 scholarships to the Universities, and his father could not afford to 
 send him 'without one. 
 
 On his way to and from this school he used to pass a shop 
 where judges' robes were displayed in the window. He often 
 stopped to gaze at them, and even then looked forward to being
 
 14 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 a judge himself, after a distinguished career at the Bar. For the 
 Bar was his ambition and his goal. He was brought up to the idea 
 of it, trained in the desire for it, and inspired by the anticipation 
 of it. The fact of his father's early death, just as his son reached 
 manhood, made it impossible for this ambition to be fulfilled. 
 
 The Headmaster of St. Saviour's was the Rev. Lambert Sharpe ; 
 and two of his schoolfellows there were William Atherton, after- 
 wards Sir William Atherton, Attorney- General, and Dr. Walker, 
 the late High Master of St. Paul's School. 
 
 A small diary of his, begun in October, 1842, on his arrival 
 in London, contains very few entries except the names of the 
 preachers he heard each Sunday, and one momentous announce- 
 ment on February 2oth : " House of Commons went to, late, had 
 holiday " ; and also an entry of some election, when " Pattison 
 got in by 165 majority." 
 
 When a day boy at St. Saviour's, he was allowed fourpence a 
 day for his lunch, and his expenditure of the same was most 
 characteristic of his future development : he spent twopence on 
 his meal, a penny to read the Times, and a penny he gave as a tip 
 to the waiter. He was always excessively generous in the 
 matter of tipping, and used to uphold the custom of giving, 
 especially to railway servants, of whose obligingness and civility 
 he was naturally able to speak in the highest terms. 
 
 The Fowlers' life in that London circuit was marked by the 
 making of many interesting friends and the enjoyment of much 
 congenial society. Dr. Rigg thus describes how, when a candidate 
 for the Wesleyan Ministry, he visited my grandfather's home in 
 1845: 
 
 " It was a full house and exceedingly lively. The room into 
 which I was introduced on that Saturday evening was well filled 
 by a vivacious family, while Mrs. Fowler went in and out as 
 domestic calls prompted. Mr. Fowler was not present for some 
 time after my entrance. The conversation, meantime, was more 
 than brisk ; its liveliness was marked. The chief speaker was 
 the present Sir Henry Fowler, but all bore a ready and willing part 
 in it except we two visitors, who listened and admired, occasion- 
 ally answering a question if directly spoken to. Argument
 
 In the Days of his Youth 15 
 
 abounded and epigram was not wanting. It was not merely at the 
 St. Saviour's School that Henry Fowler gained his education for 
 life's practice. After the entrance of the head of the family the 
 character of the conversational stimulus to the mind was very 
 soon raised to a higher pitch. Mr. Fowler immediately and sharply 
 took part in the conversation. He began by way of question. 
 The tone of his questioning sounded peremptory it was very 
 sharp : his replies in return to the answers elicited were exceedingly 
 incisive. It was not long before he shot an interrogation across 
 at myself. It sounded as if he might have been angry with me, 
 though I could not imagine how that could be. However, not 
 being conscious of anything to give offence, I gave a distinct 
 answer. The reply to this was a second question, still very sharp, 
 followed by another reply rather fuller and more distinct. So we 
 went on for a little while. Meantime his questions began to be 
 put in a gentler and still a gentler tone. He began to make 
 instructive remarks and to smile and look pleasant. He spoke 
 more or less in agreement with what he had elicited in a manner 
 so caustic, as it seemed to me. It now began to be clear that his 
 initial onset was, in fact, mere mannerism, and absolutely free 
 from any irritation or animus. It was a way he had of banishing 
 idle commonplace and initiating a lively conversation, especially 
 if strangers were present to be instructed. It affected his tone 
 and manner in the initiation of a discussion in which he was in- 
 terested. He used it unconsciously in dealing with his friends and 
 his family. 
 
 " On the Sunday I saw and heard little of Mr. Fowler. He 
 had his necessary Sunday appointments, and for his visitors it 
 was a quiet Sunday of preaching or joining in worship, and of 
 Christian conversation. But on Monday morning he took us 
 candidates as his own special charge on the way to City Road 
 morning chapel for the examination ; and having little question- 
 ing to do, he conversed in the way of explanation, suggestion and 
 kindly counsel in the pleasantest and also the frankest and most 
 confidential manner. He treated us wholly as friends without a 
 touch of conscious superiority, except as to experience and know- 
 ledge in certain directions. A more sympathetic and congenial
 
 1 6 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 elderly companion, a more friendly and unassuming counsellor for 
 candidates hoping to become Christian ministers, we could not 
 have had. 
 
 " As a preacher, Mr. Fowler's sermons were distinguished by strong 
 sense, clear evangelical teaching, and spiritual influence and unction. 
 He was famous as a superintendent, wise and reasonable, firm, but 
 not overbearing. 
 
 " It may be believed that Mr. Fowler's son Henry owed some- 
 thing of his remarkable argumentative readiness and force as a 
 speaker in his Parliamentary career to the sharp practice in dis- 
 cussion, to the lively interchange of question and answer, which 
 was practised familiarly in the home-circle with the sanction of 
 the parental influence and example. No doubt, also, the son felt 
 in the moulding of his own character the influence of that equitable 
 and considerate Liberalism, neither timid, nor factious, nor per- 
 sonally ungenerous, which was the basis of his father's public life. 
 Possibly, also, his gifted daughter, the well-known epigrammatic 
 novelist Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler may have owed something 
 through heredity to such lively causeries as those of which I was 
 witness in Harper Street, between her father and his father, 
 particularly in respect of the almost incessant flash of epigram and 
 sword-play so characteristic of her stories." 
 
 Those who knew my father best will recognize in the above 
 description his own sharp, decisive manner to strangers, which 
 was wont to melt away into a kindliness of interest which at first 
 it so entirely concealed. 
 
 My father used to tell how he and the Right Hon. W. H. Smith 
 attended Great Queen Street Chapel together, and how the latter 
 sat with his mother in the front of the gallery. The congregation 
 little thought then that those boys were marked for such interest- 
 ing, distinguished careers on different benches of the House of 
 Commons in days to come, and that they would occupy such high 
 positions in the two conflicting Governments. 
 
 The life of the Right Hon. W. H. Smith brings out the same 
 simplicity of character, the same unself -seeking statesmanship, 
 the same integrity of principles and loyalty to the right, which were 
 also to be found in the life of my father ; and it makes one wonder
 
 In the Days of his Youth 17 
 
 whether perhaps the old-fashioned teaching, the strictly-kept 
 Sundays, and the simple religion of their youth helped to lay the 
 foundation of those noble characteristics. 
 
 Another young friend of those days was Dr. C. Radcliffe, the 
 eminent physician and co-labourer with Huxley, and Dr. Green, 
 the artist. The Rev. Dr. Abbott, Head Master of the City of London 
 School, also worshipped then at Great Queen Street Chapel. 
 
 There was in those days a great intimacy between the Inces 
 and the Fowlers, the former being the parents of Dr. Ince, the 
 distinguished Canon of Christchurch and Regius Professor of 
 Divinity at Oxford. In a letter written by Canon Ince to my 
 father, in 1895, he says : 
 
 " I recall the time near fifty years ago when in your boy- 
 hood you were a visitor at the house of my father and mother 
 in Southampton Street, Strand, who were very intimate 
 friends of your father, the Rev. Joseph Fowler, at that time 
 Superintendent Wesleyan Minister of Great Queen Street 
 Circuit. I have still a distinct remembrance of an occasion 
 when you went home early from our house to hear what were 
 the modifications introduced into the Bill for the Education 
 of Factory Children by Sir James Graham, there having arisen 
 a very great outcry against the Bill as unfair to us Dis- 
 senters. This, on reference to the Annual Register, I find, 
 must have been in May, 1843, a few months before I came 
 up to Oxford. This was always looked upon in our family 
 as a prophecy of the interest you would take in politics." 
 
 Henry Fowler was at that day just thirteen years old, and the 
 interest he then felt in politics never seems to have diminished, but 
 to have spread and increased with maturing years. The sayings 
 and shibboleths of his early home-life hung about him to the end, 
 and his great devotion to the Methodist Church sprang from the 
 roots of home, and was ever hallowed by those early memories. 
 
 " Be just before you are generous " was one oft-quoted sentence 
 of his father's. His love of London was an inherited one ; also 
 his interest in law. Dr. Gregory writes of Joseph Fowler : "If 
 
 2
 
 1 8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 he felt jaded or run down or worried, he would say to me : ' Let's 
 go to Lincoln's Inn to hear the pleadings in such-and-such a case 
 before Lord Lyndhurst, and what he has to say about them ; or 
 to Westminster Hall. There's sure to be some interesting case 
 on.' And he enjoyed, as a vast treat, a visit to the House of 
 Commons and to listen to its debates. The great passion for, and 
 pleasure in work, common to both Joseph Fowler and his son, 
 grew luxuriantly in the atmosphere of their home. That life was 
 meant for enjoyment, or profit, or anything but work, never 
 seems to have entered either of their heads. No soldier was ever 
 drilled into smartness more perfectly than Henry Fowler was 
 drilled from his earliest boyhood into the service of work. 
 
 " I never met with the Rev. Joseph Fowler's match for the neat 
 and quick despatch of business the getting so much clean and 
 thorough work accomplished in so short a time. I never knew a 
 late meeting when he was in the chair. Mr. Fowler was very 
 intolerant of late hours in meetings or services. When in Hull, 
 his official residence as superintendent minister joined hard to the 
 synagogue, and if, on his return on a Sunday evening from preach- 
 ing at another chapel, he found a colleague holding a prayer- 
 meeting and prolonging it unduly, he would slip quietly in by the 
 communicating door near the pulpit, and at the first pause his 
 voice would be heard pronouncing the Benediction. 
 
 " In Mr. Fowler's distinguished younger son," continued Dr. 
 Gregory, " his father's strong, fine qualities distinctly reappear. 
 Their mental structure and their moral habitude were not at all 
 dissimilar. He was a great fighter, as his son proved himself to be 
 in later years, and was commonly called the ' statesman of the 
 Connexion.' ' 
 
 Their minds were both cast in a legal mould, and they were both 
 quick to see and weigh correctly all the points of any situation. 
 They were both cautious in the consideration of any standpoint, 
 and not only fulfilied the old injunction to " look before you leap," 
 but they looked much further afield, and reckoned the contin- 
 gencies of the future with an almost overstrained foresight. 
 Though caution is good in itself, I think my father carried it to an 
 almost crippling extreme, and often shrank from a venture when
 
 In the Days of his Youth 19 
 
 it would have been wiser to have taken it. Another marked 
 characteristic which Dr. Gregory, in viewing from his own personal 
 knowledge the Methodist Minister and the Minister of State, also 
 points out is their instinct for compromise, their power of giving 
 up the less to win the large. There was nothing of the fanatic 
 about either of them. " All or nothing " was never a shibboleth 
 in their mouths. They both preached and practised the common- 
 sense doctrine, that half a loaf is better than no bread ; and were 
 content to try to cut the half as large as possible. This quality 
 was perhaps the more remarkable in Joseph Fowler than in his son ; 
 for the former, we must remember, was one of the pioneers of a 
 new form of the faith, and was, therefore, more prone to fana- 
 ticism. The statesman soon learns, if he does not know it by 
 instinct, that compromise is the condition of all progress, and 
 that eagerness to gain must be tempered by readiness to concede ; 
 for there is no world more than that of politics in which the old 
 adage proves true that " to grasp all is to lose all."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 18521857 
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 " The marriage of true minds." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " The happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and 
 receiving from the other what the other only can give." RUSKIN. 
 
 WHEN Henry Fowler, as a boy, used to stay in Wolver- 
 hampton with his uncle, John Hartley, who had married 
 Emma, second daughter of George Benjamin Thorneycroft, a great 
 South Staffordshire ironmaster, he met there her younger sister 
 Ellen ; and at that early age he made up his mind that he would 
 one day be Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton and would 
 marry Ellen Thorneycroft. From those ambitions nothing ever 
 moved him, and with the patient perseverance which rarely fails 
 to achieve success, he set out towards the accomplishment of those 
 purposes, and was content to wait till he was nearly thirty years 
 of age before he fulfilled the one, and until he was fifty years old 
 before he represented the borough of Wolverhampton. Perhaps 
 one of the secrets of his success was that he always knew his 
 own mind, and nothing could change his designs. Many people 
 would get what they want in life if they only wanted it long 
 enough ; and Henry Fowler not only stuck to what he wanted 
 throughout his whole career, but he practically never wanted 
 anything else ; therefore, the power of concentration was added 
 to that of persistence. 
 
 In 1851, not long before the Rev. Joseph Fowler's death, a letter 
 was received, either by him or his wife, from this same Ellen 
 Thorneycroft, about certain plans that were being made for her
 
 Love and Marriage 21 
 
 family to come to London to visit the great Exhibition ; and 
 after reading the letter, he turned to his son and said : " That is 
 the sort of girl I should like you to marry." It may be a doubtful 
 question as to whether the letters we write or the letters we receive 
 are the more indicative of our characters ; but it is certain that 
 in the last century there was much more personality in correspond- 
 ence than there is to-day, when telegrams and telephones reduce 
 most communications to twelve words or three minutes. And in 
 this girl's letter there must have been some strong colour of per- 
 sonality for such a man as Joseph Fowler to have judged her, and 
 so truly, thereby. He had met her before, but the letter seems to 
 have stamped the impression she had made upon him into a 
 tangible wish that his son should be fortunate enough to win the 
 love of such a woman. The wish may have been but casually 
 expressed, but it was unconsciously weighted with a prophecy 
 which time and happy experience fulfilled ; and nothing which 
 he could have wished his son would have been so truly for his 
 welfare and happiness as that perfect union of heart and life which 
 was subsequently found in this marriage. 
 
 The course of Henry Fowler's love-affair, however, did not by 
 any means run smooth. Indeed, throughout his whole life nothing 
 came to him easily. A great many good things did come, but 
 each was waited and worked for to the uttermost farthing of 
 its price and value. He was a successful but not a lucky man, 
 and wages rather than winnings were the attainments of his 
 life. 
 
 The woman on whom he had set his love had been brought up 
 in a very different type of home and surroundings from his own. 
 Her father, long before his children were grown up, had amassed 
 a large fortune ; and on his death, in the same year as Joseph 
 Fowler's, he left enough, as it was counted in those days, to make 
 all his children rich. Ellen, the only unmarried one, was much 
 sought after for worldly as well as personal considerations, and 
 was expected by her family to make a good match. She had 
 always breathed the atmosphere of wealth, and it never struck 
 her that she could not have whatever she wanted that was pur- 
 chasable. It was then the days of proposals, and many were the
 
 22 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 suitors who tried their luck and brought her the prospects of 
 increased wealth and other worldly advantages. 
 
 Imagine, then, the consternation of her large family circle 
 when Ellen showed her preference for the poor son of a Wesleyan 
 minister, who had no possessions but his brains, and no heritage 
 but his culture and character. And the strange thing was that 
 the girl was full of ambition and yet she chose this man not 
 thereby choking her ambition, but judging by a wiser insight and 
 a prouder gauge the lengths to which his powers might lead 
 her far, far beyond the mere amassing of money, or the first rank 
 of the social amphitheatre of a provincial town. A girl friend of 
 hers at that time the sister of the late Mr. Frank James, sometime 
 M.P. for Walsall seems also to have been gifted with prophetic 
 insight, for her remark after meeting Henry Fowler was never 
 forgotten by my mother : " Ellen, that man will go far, and he 
 will take you with him." It is strange that the same words, 
 " that man will go far," were spoken of Henry Fowler between 
 twenty and thirty years later on the threshold of his Parliamentary 
 career. Nevertheless, the time of his wooing was difficult, and 
 darkened by many misunderstandings caused by the perpetual 
 pressure that was brought to bear on her by her own people to 
 loosen the tie between the two lovers. And though she was not 
 really influenced in any vital respect, yet the atmosphere of mis- 
 representation, a subtler danger than that of opposition, could 
 not but breed those trifling torments which render an engagement 
 time so much more trying to the man than to the woman, and 
 especially to a man in such a position as Henry Fowler was in his 
 courting days. His temperament, it must be remembered, was 
 sombre and proudly reserved. No spirit of light-heartedness ever 
 broke through the dead earnestness of all his purposes, no cheerful 
 optimism ever brightened a natural outlook of gloom. Moreover, 
 he was profoundly ignorant then, as, indeed, he was fifty years 
 later, of a woman's ways. His wife, as a wife, he perfectly under- 
 stood, and appreciated, and adored ; but his wife as a woman he 
 could never have fully comprehended, for there was no feminine 
 light within him, as there is in many men, to show up the intri- 
 cacies and inconsistencies of a woman's nature, beyond the
 
 Love and Marriage 23 
 
 boundaries of even her actions and speech. His love-letters show 
 how utterly lost he was in the perplexities of her caprice, and how 
 gravely and almost grimly he dealt with situations that really 
 needed a far lighter hand. But in the young man, as in the old, 
 his touch was never light. It was strong, and firm, and sure, and 
 heavy. A splendid hand for a woman to clasp and cling to, and 
 be guided by through life's long journey ; and no couple ever 
 walked more perfectly hand in hand than did my father and 
 mother during all their married experience ; but he was in- 
 capable of flirting for one moment even with the woman he loved, 
 and was utterly unconscious of the flirting instinct which lurks 
 in the woman's side of every love-affair. 
 
 She was also in a trying position, between the perpetual pull 
 of family and friends, on the one hand, and a secret understanding 
 with a proud and somewhat difficult lover, on the other. The 
 inevitable misunderstandings were rife which are bound to arise 
 when two natures begin to try to fit into each other, and especially 
 when it happens, as it so often does, that a woman's home-life 
 and her heart-life are -entirely out of tune. The obstacles and 
 difficulties chafe her, and she is apt to vent her petulance on the 
 one person who will feel it, and to punish him for a fault of which 
 he is absolutely innocent. The few years which stretched between 
 this couple's love and their open engagement tell their own story 
 in the following letter : 
 
 " MY DEAR ELLEN, 
 
 " I must write you one more letter, not by way of 
 attempting either to involve you in a correspondence, or to 
 induce you to alter your decision as to a meeting on the 
 contrary, I do not wish you to take any notice of this letter 
 except in the single instance I will mention directly but 1 
 cannot rest until I have said what, if I were as proud as I am 
 afraid you think I am, I should be very unwilling to say, and 
 what I would say is this : The other day I made a great many 
 unfair and very unkind remarks to you, and I should have 
 little reason to complain if from what I then said you had 
 argued that I thought both unjustly and unkindly of you.
 
 24 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 I do not, never did, think so. I have been, and still am, 
 very sorry for my apparent unkindness, and I ask you to 
 forgive me for it. This is not a mere form ; I feel what I 
 say, and I shall continue to be harassed and angry with 
 myself until I know that you have forgiven me. And as I 
 do not wish you to be exposed to any annoyance by even 
 an indirect communication with me, I shall be quite satisfied 
 if you will, when we next meet, tell me that you have forgiven 
 me by simply using the word ' yes.' I have thought over a 
 great deal of what you said and what you implied. I do 
 appreciate and I am grateful for the line of conduct you are 
 pursuing. And now I want you to banish from your mind 
 any thought that I am murmuring at the decision to which 
 you have come. It does pain me to think that I am the 
 cause of unhappiness to you (and you said, and it has sunk 
 deeply into my mind, that you ' had been unhappy for the 
 last six months about ' me) ; with all my pride I would far 
 sooner submit to anything than think I am in any way the 
 source of anxiety or vexation to you. I know all this looks 
 very inconsistent, and so it is, and I can't help it. It is 
 because I love you that I wish above all things to be thrown 
 into your company ; to see you ; to talk with you ; to strike 
 the chords to which your heart responds ; to tell you what I 
 am thinking and what I am reading ; to know what you are 
 thinking and what you are reading ; to develop an identity 
 of feeling, not only in every-day subjects, but in e very-day 
 thought, and in that which is higher and better than all ; 
 it is because I regard you as I do, that I desire all this. And 
 unless I strangely deceive myself, it is an evidence (no, not 
 an evidence, a result) of that affection, and not the mani- 
 festation of a little pride, to feel and express the greatest 
 unwillingness to be excluded from what I prize so highly. 
 But when you say and you have a perfect right to say it 
 ' you love me and you must submit,' when you accompany 
 that with the assurance of a reciprocated affection and an 
 unconditional promise for the future, I feel that I should be 
 a selfish fellow if I hesitated to submit. I again repeat what
 
 Love and Marriage 25 
 
 I have already said in effect, and I say it with the most perfect 
 sincerity, that I will do or suffer anything which will either 
 add to your happiness or exempt you from any annoyance. 
 And now, my dear Ellen, believe me, take me at my word, and 
 do not allow yourself for one moment to suppose that at the 
 bottom of my heart I consider you have in any way treated 
 me otherwise than with a kindness and a consideration far 
 beyond my merit. And, therefore, never think or use one 
 word which you used in your last letter ' obligation.' I confer 
 an obligation on you ! There is no such thing as an obliga- 
 tion in affection. I am only doing my duty, and though I 
 confess I have hitherto done it in a shabby, selfish way 
 though I have written and acted most inconsistently though 
 I have professed a readiness to please you, and then evinced a 
 very unworthy reluctance to carry out my professions, I 
 can only say my affection for you has been the cause of my 
 inconsistency, and that I will try my best to discipline that 
 affection into a kinder and more considerate course of conduct 
 for the future. I have been greatly annoyed, both for your 
 sake and my own, that our interview in Birmingham should 
 have oozed out ; but it has occurred to me that after all it 
 may still be a secret, and that you are mistaken. I mean by 
 this that the remark which was made to you might have 
 referred to our meeting in Birmingham three years ago, when 
 
 I accompanied you and Miss P . If J. H. knew anything 
 
 of our meeting there in January, I think he would have said 
 something to me about it, and he has never made the slightest 
 allusion to it. Some day, when you have an opportunity, 
 tell me what you think, for if we really were observed, I 
 should very much like to ferret out by whom. I want you 
 
 to remove if you can from Miss P 's mind the impression 
 
 that I ever said anything regarding her to any third party 
 which I would not have said in her presence. Between our- 
 selves, I will frankly confess that up to a recent period I always 
 
 regarded Miss P (not because she was your friend, but 
 
 independently of that altogether) as A I ; but when she was 
 represented to me by those who had known her longer and
 
 26 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 more intimately than myself, in a very unfavourable light 
 (and those are the mildest terms I can use), and when I was 
 led to conclude that she was the barrier between you and 
 myself, why, of course, I felt it ; but though I did feel it, I 
 never forgot that she was your friend, and it would be a 
 strange contradiction of my ideas of what is due to you if I 
 deliberately and intentionally spoke disrespectfully of your 
 
 friend. Don't let Miss P suppose that I ever took the 
 
 trouble to ask you to set me right with her (for I am a wee bit 
 proud, you know, on this point), but if you can set me right, 
 pray do so ; if you can't, I must live that piece of injustice 
 down. Why certain parties should have appeared to attempt 
 to create distrust between you and me is a mystery. I cannot 
 and do not believe it to be an intentional attempt. The 
 result, however, as far as I am concerned, has been (not 
 without a struggle, for it would be an affectation to deny 
 that it has been a very severe one) that I feel a more implicit 
 confidence, a stronger belief, in you than ever I felt before ; 
 and in entrusting to you, as I am doing, my all, I do so with 
 the most perfect, undoubted assurance that I am ' safe with 
 you ! ' I don't think you will be sorry to hear that I am not 
 indebted, directly or indirectly, to the influence regarding 
 which you are so susceptible for my first three clients. And 
 now, my own dear Ellen, good-bye. I would repeat again 
 and again, if it would answer any purpose, my sincerest desire 
 that you would not allow my selfishness (that is hardly the 
 word say, my thoughtless affection) to distress you. I have 
 a ' motive,' and an all-powerful one, to do my utmost to 
 succeed, and when I think myself worthy in some degree of 
 you, I will, and not till then, ask for the game of chess. I 
 never forget where you have promised to remember me, 
 and united there, I cannot but anticipate in due time at 
 the proper time a happy issue. 
 " I am, my dear Ellen, 
 
 " Yours very affectionately, 
 
 "H. H. FOWLER."
 
 Love and Marriage 27 
 
 The following letter, dated March lyth, 1856, was written 
 immediately on his engagement becoming a fact : 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " The heart-sickness of hope deferred is only sur- 
 passed, but it is gloriously surpassed, by the heart- joyfulness 
 of hope fulfilled. I can't tell what I felt when I read your 
 letter. I can only ask you to acknowledge with me the Hand 
 Which has hitherto, as I confidently believe, directed all the 
 steps of our intercourse, and has now brought us to the present 
 happy, happy state. I am at a loss to express my feelings 
 towards your mother conscious as I am of my own un- 
 worthiness, I do appreciate, and very sensitively, too, her 
 confidence and her kindness ; and my resolution, not boast- 
 fully nor thoughtlessly made, is that nothing shall ever be 
 wanting on my part to deserve that confidence and to repay that 
 kindness. I attach more importance to her sanction than 
 perhaps I have seemed to do ; and had it been withheld, the 
 happiness of possessing your affection would have been 
 dimmed by a disheartening cloud. I will try and be what I 
 can't express. I don't regret the past I mean its, for the 
 time, depressing circumstances. The last few months have 
 not only expanded and deepened my affection for you, but 
 they have so elevated you in my esteem in the highest sense 
 of the word, so beautifully disclosed points and phases of 
 character which touch that deepest-seated of all mental 
 chords, a man's respect, that the retrospect of what seemed 
 a toilsome journey is among the dearest treasures of my 
 heart. D.V., I start for the North to-morrow forenoon. 
 I expect to be engaged in Sunderland on Wednesday ; but 
 if my business is done (as I fully expect it will be), and trains 
 will bring me, I will be with you to tea on Thursday afternoon, 
 or as soon after as I can ; if I am disappointed, you will 
 know it results from absolute necessity. I hope to see my 
 mother, and would prefer telling her personally ; you may 
 rely both upon her and my sister's sympathy in attending to 
 my wishes for keeping the matter quiet. And now ' life is
 
 28 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 earnest ' must be a reality to me. I look to you for the tone, 
 the nerve which you can, and which you will impart. Don't 
 think I expect a cloudless day no, but with you I will try 
 and live through the day, whatever the unerring Wisdom of 
 Him Who rules it may will that it shall be grateful if it be 
 sunny, and trusting and assured, if it be otherwise, that there 
 is a bright light in the cloud. 
 
 " I am, my own dear Ellen, 
 
 " Your ever affectionate, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 It is evident that this great inrush of joy in their engagement 
 was not left long undisturbed. The smouldering opposition of 
 her family, instead of being wisely allowed to become stifled by 
 the fact of her decision, broke forth into flame which scorched a 
 good deal of happiness, even though it failed really to consume 
 it. Only two months later, on May 6th, 1856, the year before his 
 marriage, he wrote to her the following letter : 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " On the principle of doing to you as I would be 
 done by, I occupy a few minutes in my old room at Lincoln's 
 Inn while waiting for my friend Smith to go up with me to 
 the Royal Academy, in writing to you just to say I am here 
 and better. I hope to hear you are coming to-morrow. 
 I am very anxious to have a chat with you, not only because 
 I look for the ' comfort ' which you desire me to ' anticipate,' 
 but because I shall get rid of part of my troubles by telling 
 you of their cause. I mean not only the business vexation 
 and family vexation with which you are acquainted, but the 
 uneasy (that is the only word which I can think of, and it 
 rather means too much) feeling with regard to you, which 
 the knowledge of the misrepresentations made to you, accom- 
 panied by your apparent (I only say apparent) indisposition 
 at times to spend any time in my company, has occasioned. 
 Now don't be vexed with me. I admit I am unreasonable,
 
 Love and Marriage 29 
 
 but you must make allowance ; and all these little things, 
 though they may, when looked at separately, appear less than 
 trivial, yet when united in one aggregate, and viewed in the 
 light of a painful depression of spirits, have a very oppressive 
 result. I have no trouble, I am thankful to say, which I cannot 
 regard as abbreviated, if not dissipated, by your companion- 
 ship. Now when you reprove me, as you ought to do, for the 
 disease, always remember the remedy is with you. I must, 
 and will, turn over a new leaf ; next week is one of these 
 anniversaries when one always does. This year the associa- 
 tions and motives and anticipations of that occasion will 
 be of a higher and more influential character than ever before 
 known. 
 
 " I must stop. I am going to dine with Mr. Kirk at seven. 
 I breakfast to-morrow with Mr. and Mrs. Hartley, who are 
 in town. I heard the ' Wolverhampton Ironmasters ' taken 
 off by G. Albert Smith last night. Thanks for your very, 
 very kind note of Sunday, and with my best love, 
 Believe me, my dearest Ellen, 
 
 " Your ever affectionate, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 There is a true touch of human nature in his evident appre- 
 ciation of the taking-off of the Wolverhampton ironmasters, and 
 a still truer touch of grace in the fact that he makes no further 
 comments to the daughter of one of them. 
 
 The quick perception of a joke is always counted to a man for 
 righteousness ; but there is sometimes a subtler and more refined 
 form of righteousness in the non-perception of a joke or at any 
 rate in the non-betrayal of such perception. To assume stupidity 
 when we have it not is in certain circumstances the quintessence of 
 fine art, and incidentally of Christian charity. 
 
 When a man lays down, as Henry Fowler did in his previous 
 letter, the axiom that now that he is engaged, "life is real, life 
 is earnest," and all which he preached from that text, he will 
 find that, on the contrary, the woman is just alive to the fact 
 that life is unreal and far from earnest, and that she has entered
 
 30 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 perhaps the most irresponsible stage of her whole life. She often 
 displays an unreasonableness and caprice which are quite foreign 
 to her nature. She has, as it were, her last fling before putting on 
 the blessed yoke of wifehood ; and it is her delight to tease and 
 torment the lover whom, as a husband, it will be her life's mission 
 to shield from every irritation. But of such lovers' lore Henry 
 Fowler was profoundly ignorant ; and in some of his letters it is 
 shown how deep was the despondency into which quite under- 
 standable conditions and caprice on the part of a high-spirited 
 girl drove a nature such as his. 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " I have been arguing with myself how I ought to 
 deal with the painful feelings which have recently grieved 
 me, and which since Saturday have distressed me. The 
 assurance of your affection, and the confident belief that you 
 will, as you have said you can, sympathize with every feeling 
 of my heart, have strongly urged me to say what my own 
 common-sense has said I must say if my love for you is 
 genuine. If there is one fact of which I am satisfied more 
 than another it is that you would not grieve me ; conscious 
 of that, I ought, when I feel grieved, at once to tell you. I 
 cannot conceive that you regard our engagement in any other 
 light than as a living reality, the happiness of which is equalled, 
 and intensified, too, by its solemnity. It is not an amusing 
 episode uninfluencing and uninfluenced by the stern realities 
 of life. You and I are meant to be, we ought to be, happier, 
 wiser, better, holier, for our betrothal ; if we misapprehend 
 or neglect the precious, never-to-be-repeated opportunities of 
 that relationship, we shall commit a sad mistake. How are 
 these opportunities to be secured ? how are their results to 
 be attained ? Not by intention, or instinct ; in this, as in 
 the highest results, means must be employed. The perfect 
 development and, consequently, the gradual assimilation of 
 mutual character, the unrestricted confidence, and, there- 
 fore, the uninterrupted communion of each other's spirits, 
 the mutual nerving to the grand objects of life ; the reciprocal
 
 Love and Marriage 31 
 
 support and sympathy in the Christian life ; the oneness of 
 feeling, principle and action which love both creates and 
 hallows these are the results which are partially and may 
 be fully ours. The first buddings are bright and full of 
 promise ; it rests with you whether they shall be nipped by 
 adverse influences, or whether they shall ripen into natural 
 and lovely beauty. Do you, can you, seriously think that 
 an engagement will be perfected in any one of these aspects 
 by the footing on which you have placed or rather restrained 
 our intercourse ? I have strangely misunderstood the nature 
 of the most ordinary friendship if it could be treated success- 
 fully under such a homoeopathic regime. Why can't we enjoy 
 each other's society in the domestic circle ? We can ; I do. 
 But will each other's society in the presence of others answer 
 for the deep, the true intimacy of soul which ought to subsist 
 between us ? Conceive of a correspondence carried on in the 
 presence of others ! ! ! If we are to live (in all the fulness of 
 that glorious word) together if that life is to be a reality of 
 duty and not a hollow, conventional sham, the together must 
 commence now. I am not unmindful of the intimation you 
 have frequently made that the just requirements of others 
 necessarily and properly interfere with what the dictates of 
 your own heart would accord to me. You are perfectly right 
 in this self-denial ; but while you decide that the claims 
 of others shall not be sacrificed to our engagement, you are 
 bound, also, to decide that our engagement shall not be 
 sacrificed to those claims. I don't wish to be selfish, but 
 when you have given me your heart, it is not selfish to wish 
 to possess and enjoy it. Not to do so would be selfishness 
 indeed. I will not amplify you see the channel of my 
 thoughts. Do not for one moment suppose that I am doubt- 
 ing your affection for me. Writing this letter is one of the 
 most tangible proofs I could give you of my unimpaired 
 reliance and of my continued and increasing love for you. 
 The regulation of our intercourse rests with you, but for 
 my sake, for your own sake, for our sake, do not allow any 
 specious conventionalism to deprive that intercourse of its
 
 32 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 real value, or to direct it from its true and noble purpose. 
 Exclude that serpent from our Eden. 
 " I am, my dearest love, 
 
 " Your most affectionate, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 One can imagine the different effects which such a letter as this 
 would have upon his lady-love. Even allowing for the more solid 
 dimensions in the Victorian era of all the departments of life, 
 there is here an almost legal phraseology, and far too forcible 
 stating of facts, which might easily have quenched the lighter 
 spirit in which a girl instinctively regards her lover, and choked 
 her varying moods with a pressure that was only suited for the 
 graver impress of character. But whether she shied or not at the 
 time, the fact remains that this letter has been kept by her tied 
 up in a faded little bundle for over half a century. 
 
 On the i6th of July, 1856, Mrs. Joseph Fowler wrote to her 
 prospective daughter-in-law in acknowledgment of the engage- 
 ment : 
 
 " MY VERY DEAR MlSS ELLEN, 
 
 " With much pleasure I received your kind letter, 
 and must acknowledge something of condemnation in not 
 having ere this given expression in words to the heartfelt 
 satisfaction I experience in my son's able choice. Towards 
 yourself, my dear Miss Ellen, I feel the most sincere and 
 affectionate esteem, and look forward with pleasing anticipa- 
 tion to the period when I shah 1 be entitled to number you 
 as one of my own family circle. My convictions on those 
 important points are that when a union is based on sincere 
 affection, and on sound religious principles, we have every 
 reason to expect the Almighty's Blessing and a sure amount 
 of the happiness of this chequered scene. Will you excuse me 
 in saying in reference to my Henry that he has ever been 
 to his late dear and honoured father and myself a most affec- 
 tionate and sympathizing son. I therefore conclude on 
 such grounds we may reasonably expect that such a son
 
 Love and Marriage 33 
 
 will prove a loving and tender husband, and most sincerely 
 do I believe that such will be your experience. 
 " Believe me, my dear Miss Ellen, 
 
 " Yours very affectionately, 
 
 " E. FOWLER." 
 
 The tie between these two was never loosened by that spirit of 
 jealousy which many of even the best mothers are unable to 
 banish from their heart of hearts, when they find that old prophecy 
 fulfilled in their best-beloved son that a man shall leave his 
 father and mother and cleave unto his wife. Whether her nature 
 was too sweet and sunshiny to be clouded by anything so ugly as 
 jealousy, or whether Elizabeth Fowler had, by the grace of God, 
 so purified her character from such blemishes, she achieved the 
 rare result of never once allowing the breath of the " in-Iaw " 
 to dim the bright surface of her intercourse with her son's wife. 
 
 On the i6th of May, 1856, his twenty-sixth birthday, and the 
 first one after their engagement, my father wrote as follows : 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " With untold and untellable pleasure I welcomed 
 your congratulations this morning. The ' wishes ' and the 
 heart from which these wishes sprung I value most, and your 
 beautiful birthday gift will derive its greatest and abiding 
 worth as recalling those wishes and that heart. I do indeed 
 re-echo your prayer that we may together enjoy many happy 
 returns of to-day, and that this and every other starting-point 
 in the journey of our lives may disclose a brighter landscape 
 behind a more brilliant and alluring prospect in advance. 
 My feeling to-day is intense dissatisfaction with myself 
 unspeakable gratitude to Him Who has brought me hitherto. 
 Every thought suggests matter for grateful joy, while the 
 facts, alas ! tell of thoughtlessness and folly. Many are the 
 human blessings of which to-day finds me the possessor 
 the one for which I am the most deeply thankful to the Donor 
 of all my blessings the one which, I believe, more vividly 
 and distinctly to be His direct and immediate gift is your 
 
 3
 
 34 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 affection. My earnest prayer is that the gratitude I feel may 
 be shewn for it, not only with my lips but in my life. As the 
 past recedes, its unpleasantnesses will vanish from the view ; 
 or, if they are dimly visible, they will serve as the background 
 from which all that is happy in that past (and there is much 
 of that) will stani out in bold yet subdued relief. Those you 
 love have thought unkindly of me. I have thought and 
 spoken unkindly of them. I am equally blameable ; I only 
 hope that a more intimate acquaintance will show the justice 
 as well as the desirability of forgetting all these past mis- 
 apprehensions. Yes, Ellen, let to-day be a fresh starting- 
 point, not of desires and resolves, but of acts of daily life. 
 ' The shadows of earth ' fall on every path let us disregard 
 them and look only at the bright sun above, and though 
 sacrifices may have to be made, difficulties encountered, and, 
 what is hardest of all, self and inclination conquered, that 
 sun, though clouds may at times intercept it, will shine ' more 
 and more,' until our course is not only like but is in ' the 
 perfect day.' From books I have praised you have learned 
 many of my thoughts ; from the book which I have kept back 
 from your set from Mudie's, and which I will bring to-morrow, 
 you may learn the character the man I like, and that I 
 should wish to be like. The subject, as well as its treatment, 
 renders the ' Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars ' a perfect 
 biographical gem ; and when you have read it, I will show 
 you the feature of his character I so much admire in which 
 I am so deficient and for which I so ardently long. I am 
 very sorry to hear that you are poorly again (you should 
 have sent me word that I might have called) ; I do hope 
 you will take care of yourself and soon recover. Let me 
 entreat you (yes, literally entreat) to abandon this London 
 journey. You are not, and you have not been, well, and to 
 expose yourself to the fatigue and excitement of a week in 
 London appears to me to be the height of folly. Do give 
 your own health the benefit of your power of self-denial. 
 Now don't put this away as all nonsense. I am very anxious 
 about it, and I shall be greatly grieved if you persist in running
 
 Love and Marriage 35 
 
 so great, so unnecessary a risk. One word even before I see 
 you as to your disinclination to justify the remark that you 
 thought only for me ; very, very different will your conduct 
 to me have to appear before even the most childish petulance 
 could conceive of such a remark. Bear with me, my love, while 
 I say that to avoid this you are going to the very opposite 
 extreme, and that you are really punishing me without any 
 real justification at all. I must say what I think, and I do 
 not think that in this respect you are acting with your accus- 
 tomed common sense. It has, indeed, been a long week but 
 I must stay my pen ; otherwise, if I were to give way to 
 my inclination to talk to you on paper I should fill sheets. 
 I am, my very dear Ellen, pre-eminently and specially 
 your own, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 On her birthday, February 23rd, 1857, he wrote : 
 
 " MY VERY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " I congratulate you on to-day. I pray that we may 
 both be spared to witness together many, many happy returns 
 of your birthday, and that each occasion may be associated 
 with more grateful recollections, dearer aspirations and 
 brighter anticipations. I wish to give you a Bible and I 
 would accompany the gift with the request that you will 
 make it the Bible of your daily use, and so recall not only 
 our love, but all that stamps that love, with its fairest features, 
 and most enduring character. 
 
 " HENRY HARTLEY FOWLER." 
 
 The engaged couples of to-day would smile at such an old- 
 fashioned letter and at such an unfashionable gift. But old 
 fashions are not necessarily bad ones, and it remains to be seen 
 whether the new ones build up on such sure foundations married 
 hopes and life.
 
 36 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 A few months previously he had sent her a copy of the Christian 
 Year with this note : 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " With the prayer and the hope that we may pass 
 many ' Christian years ' together, I ask you to link a remem- 
 brance of that ' together ' to the beautiful and holy thoughts 
 of the modern Church's greatest, sweetest poet. 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 But still the clouds returned after the rain, and there were no 
 stretches of peaceful enjoyment even of their engagement ; possibly 
 because the weary waiting-time had tried their patience, and the 
 long drawn-out battle of resistance to public opinion had tried 
 their strength. To woo, and wait and win, is a finer programme 
 on paper than in practice, and there is a jaded aroma about the 
 following letter which tells its own tale : 
 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Your note of yesterday was like yourself, ever kind 
 and ever considerate ; and though you have not rightly 
 divined the cause of my insipidity, yet as you have asked me 
 whether you have disappointed me, I must in candour say 
 you have. My earnest seeking indicates the lofty place my 
 ideal must have occupied ; but the real is so much beyond, 
 so much above, all that my imagination had essayed to 
 picture, that were I fully to express my feelings, you would 
 at once and for ever banish that naughty thought which you 
 say has sometimes flitted across your mind. I like to cherish 
 the thought that you cannot (you should not, if you could) 
 know the strength and power of my affection for you until 
 you are constantly exposed to its influence. My brightest 
 anticipation of the future is to make you happy and it is 
 a selfish anticipation, too, for nothing else could so largely 
 contribute to my own happiness. Therefore, do not for one 
 moment dream of my entertaining the shadow of a dissatisfied 
 thought no, not even in details. You have been very kind,
 
 Love and Marriage 37 
 
 and if I at times appear unreasonable in objecting to some of 
 your (what shall I call it ?) devoteeism to that cruel goddess, 
 ' What will they say,' you must recollect what I have endured 
 at the hands of ' they say,' and how ardently I long for her 
 Nemesis. I am depressed I admit ; a to be expected stagna- 
 tion professionally has readily combined with causes with 
 which you are familiar to compose a draught which I am 
 hourly drinking. I know without any false modesty that 
 I am very, very faulty, that you will have much to subdue 
 and much to bear with ; but the revelation of the light in 
 which I have been portrayed a light as false as it was unjust 
 has stunned me. I don't justify, nor do I condemn, the eccen- 
 tricities of thought and expression in which among one's 
 friends, or those who seemed friends, I have allowed my 
 wayward self to indulge ; but to discover that paradox has 
 been represented as opinion, hyperbole as sober estimate, and 
 irony as accurately expressed conviction, is to discover what 
 might justify me in asking the very question you have put 
 to me. Is my love the thing you have believed it to be ? 
 Are you not disappointed in me ? Thoughts like these do 
 weigh upon me I cannot help it ; I know I ought to rise 
 above their influence. I know, too, that my happiness ought 
 to be regulated by far higher motives and principles ; but 
 oh, these buts ! my residence in Wolverhampton has not, 
 I fear, been distinguished by much progress in the Christian 
 life. I am afraid that I am imputing to the atmosphere what 
 I ought to impute to myself ; else I should almost be disposed 
 to say that the atmosphere of London life, with all its tempta- 
 tions, is less dangerous than the lifeless, decorous, do- 
 nothingism, believe-nothingism and good-for-nothingism into 
 which I fear I am gliding. I will add no more. I have 
 partially retailed to you what I am regretting. I do cling to 
 and cherish your love. I value it the more for the storms it 
 has outridden. I know now that it is no exotic which must be 
 carefully shielded from the showers and sunshine of life, 
 and forced into fruition by artificial, sickly heat ; and instead 
 of fretting at any imaginary shortcoming of yours, my only
 
 38 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 fret on that score is on account of my own inability to return 
 it as I feel, as I wish. No allusion to the fact, present or 
 future, was made either by J. H. or myself last night ; he 
 rode his own pony. I therefore hope that the mistress of 
 the brown pony will not find him any the worse for my 
 unskilful, though thoroughly enjoyed equestrianism. Now, 
 don't harass yourself about me ; do sympathize with me. 
 I value that, and 
 
 Believe me, my dearest Ellen, 
 
 " Your ever affectionate, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 As the date of his marriage drew near, when there was more 
 need for practical work and less for psychic experiments, there 
 was a distinct change in his mental health. Utilitarianism ap- 
 pealed to him by nature more than idealism ; he dedicated his life 
 in politics to the service of the second best, and so it is readily to be 
 understood how his tone changed when there was something 
 tangible to be done, instead of something intangible to be endured ; 
 and, if he had been a woman, to be enjoyed throughout the inactive 
 days of a long engagement. On the 2yth July, 1857, within three 
 months of their marriage, his letter breathes a perfectly different 
 atmosphere. One feels he is no longer cramped by strained condi- 
 tions, but that he has taken the reins into his own hands, and is 
 more natural, much simpler, less morbid in his thoughts and 
 expression. 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELLEN, 
 
 " I duly received your kind letter of Saturday and 
 was very grateful to you for it. I was glad to hear you 
 thought your cough less troublesome, and I do hope you 
 and it will, before you return home, dissolve partnership. I 
 thoroughly sympathize in all your views as to the unsuitable- 
 ness and the unpleasantness of trifling with what we both 
 regard as so serious ; with the hints you have given I shall 
 be quite prepared. I think it will be a pleasure to come 
 down, even if it is for so short a time ; and I, therefore, at
 
 Love and Marriage 39 
 
 present, and D.V., propose to leave here on Wednesday 
 morning by the nine-thirty train, which arrives at Leeds at 
 two-twenty. I have been working away at Summerfield 
 the gas-fittings are done, the rooms measured for the carpets 
 the rugs I have postponed until you return that you may 
 decide upon the sizes. I am glad that your tone is ' happy/ 
 that the future even in its details looks ' propitious.' The 
 power (to me unexpected) of investing your home with some 
 of the advantages of taste and comfort I highly prize ; and 
 though it is but detail, and in a sense subordinate, yet it does 
 tinge with a pleasant tone our future prospects. But most 
 of all I do anticipate, I do pray for, the commencement and 
 the establishment of a home which shall, in the Arnold sense 
 of the word, respond to and exhibit a daily Christian influence. 
 An influence which can, which ought to, seek its sphere not 
 only, or perhaps so much, in special efforts, on occasions 
 peculiarly and distinctly religious, but in the routine of life, 
 in business, in domestic and social pleasures, as also in domestic 
 and social disappointments. And, Ellen dear, the difficulty 
 will be to carry this out in little, apparently unimportant 
 things. Perhaps nay, I am sure we shall fail in being all, 
 in doing all, we could wish, we do wish. But the effort will 
 be a noble discipline, which will reward itself and make us 
 happier, better, dearer to each other. I could enlarge a 
 great deal on this subject, but I reserve it. I miss you very 
 much, and shall be very glad to see you, and with kindest love, 
 believe me to be, my own dear Ellen, 
 
 '\Yours ever affectionately, 
 
 " HENRY." 
 
 There is only one other letter of his written before his marriage 
 to be found, and that is a purely practical one, dealing with the 
 necessary number of forks and spoons, and their prices, and the 
 size of a suitable sideboard. He adds : "I did not tell you that 
 I had received an invitation to lecture at the Athenaeum this session. 
 I have replied that my social arrangements will preclude my 
 acceptance. I have also had an invite to join Mr. Campbell and
 
 40 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 a few others, who are about to commence a ' Working Man's 
 College.' And now, my own dear love, you will in my few lines 
 to Miss P. read my theory (may it be our practice) of wedded life. 
 I cannot retrace the past, the wonderful and yet wise manner in 
 which our present has reached its auspicious and propitious state, 
 without feelings of the deepest gratitude. Our future ought to 
 be worthy." 
 
 This book is but a puny effort to show how worthy that future 
 proved itself to be. 
 
 On the 6th October, 1857, at St. Mark's Church, Wolverhampton, 
 Henry Hartley Fowler and Ellen Thorneycroft were made man 
 and wife ; and from that day the sunshine of domestic happiness 
 began to ripen and mature a character, which from his earliest 
 youth had been subject to a Spartan strictness, and which, owing 
 to disappointments, difficulties and injustices, might have hardened 
 into a depressed and morbid mould. To touch upon the perfect- 
 ness of their married union with truth, and yet good taste, seems 
 almost impossible for any biographer, much more one for whom it 
 is so noble a heritage and so sweet and sacred a memory.
 
 S
 
 CHAPTER III 
 18581862 
 
 MUNICIPAL LIFE 
 
 " The noblest motive is the public good." VIRGIL. 
 
 " Thou hast been faithful in a few things, I will make thee ruler over 
 many things." S. MATTHEW. 
 
 " There are some, whom a thirst 
 Ardent, unquenchable, fires, 
 Not with the crowd to be spent, 
 Not without aim to go round 
 In an eddy of purposeless dust, 
 Effort unmeaning and vain." 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 FROM the date of the fulfilment of his one great ambition 
 in his marriage, my father seems to have steadily set his 
 face towards the accomplishment of the other that of repre- 
 senting Wolverhampton in Parliament ; and it was with a view 
 to this end that he entered into the municipal life within his reach, 
 therein to learn the rudiments of that fuller public life which 
 loomed before him. His work was always of his best, but his 
 municipal work showed distinctly the added strength of being, 
 as it were, a foundation-stone of the greater work which he intended 
 to build upon it. It was not merely in the sequence of events that 
 this happened, but it was the design of a set purpose on his part 
 from which he never departed during the twenty years which lay 
 between its beginning and its end in Parliamentary representation. 
 The first public speech of Henry Fowler's in Wolverhampton, of 
 which a record remains, was made at the Wolverhampton Working 
 Men's College, which he was largely instrumental in founding, under
 
 42 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the presidency of Lord Wrottesley. He struck there the key-note 
 of his attitude towards, and interest in, the working men of the 
 country, to whom he was ever such a wise and loyal friend. The 
 working classes have had many great friends, they have some 
 remarkable ones still ; but in Henry Fowler they had not only 
 a great, but a truly good friend good to them and good for them, 
 a distinction which is sometimes lost sight of in the excitement 
 and enthusiasm of political and popular ardour. 
 
 The Working Men's College he regarded as an institution for 
 social education. He was keenly alive to the great social qualities 
 and practices of the poor. " I believe," he said at the first annual 
 meeting, on October 8th, 1858, " that no body of men and women 
 in this country understand so fully, or exemplify so beautifully, 
 that one idea of society which is summed up in the words, ' Re- 
 joice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.' 
 They do feel for, they do sympathize with, they do help each other, 
 and it is because their social sympathies are so strong that their 
 social influence is so powerful." He pointed out how dangerous 
 is the influence of ignorance, and how the remedy for ignorance 
 is to be found in such institutions as the College not to make men 
 scholars, for that would be a doubtful good, even if it were a 
 possible one, but to teach them from the lore of scholars to think 
 more widely, more deeply and therefore more truly, and thereby 
 fit themselves to be worthy citizens of their country as well as 
 competent workmen of their craft. " Regard the influence of 
 this education in respect to the relation of the working man and 
 his master. Depend upon it that it will be the dawn of a better 
 day for masters as well as workmen when workmen understand 
 the why and wherefore of their work, the principles of that 
 mechanism which they are applying, and the laws of nature whose 
 forces they are controlling and adapting. It is the true interest 
 of both master and workman that both should understand and 
 appreciate the distinctions between capital and labour, that their 
 interests are mutual and inseparable, and the worse than suicidal 
 folly of attempting to injure either through the instrumentality of 
 the other." As all great thoughts and true teaching live with im- 
 mortal youth, for time can never stale nor fashions falsify them,
 
 Municipal Life 43 
 
 such words as these, uttered over fifty years ago, speak straight 
 to the modern striker with a real reproof, a wholesome admonition. 
 The conclusion of his speech on the above occasion shows how 
 his thoughts ever turned towards that home of legislature wherein 
 he longed to dwell, and for which subsequently his love was strong 
 almost as the love of home. " The gorgeous palace of Westminster 
 is, to my mind, no unfit type of the nation for whose legislature it 
 has been reared. Neither secular nor ecclesiastical in its archi- 
 tecture, it happily blends the best features of both, combining the 
 most hallowing and inspiring memories of antiquity with the latest 
 developments of practical science. Massive in its lightest decora- 
 tions and exquisitely beautiful in its most colossal parts, it is a 
 wondrous symbol of the English character and of the English 
 nature." 
 
 In October, 1858, Henry Fowler was elected Town Councillor 
 of St. Matthew's Ward in Wolverhampton, and his first municipal 
 speech was made at the mayoral banquet in the fallowing Novem- 
 ber, when his uncle, John Hartley, was the new Mayor. It must 
 be remembered in dealing with my father's life, that he was 
 essentially a man of speeches, not of letters, nor of literature, nor of 
 any exposition of his thoughts and feelings other than by spoken 
 words. And therefore it is to his speeches that we must turn to 
 find the true reflection of the man. He was a most interesting 
 conversationalist, and astonished people by the wide range of 
 thought and information which his talk portrayed. The importance 
 of talking well was ever upheld in his household, and the crime of 
 dulness most severely criticized. When as quite little children 
 we went down to dessert before going to bed, we always were 
 expected to tell him something we had learned that day which we 
 never knew before ; and I can remember my childish satisfaction 
 at the mirth it excited when I produced the remarkable piece of 
 information that " in India children could be widows at four ! " 
 As we grew older, when he returned tired from London for a 
 week-end at home, he would sit down to dinner with the request, 
 "Amuse me"; which we were always expected to do; and I can 
 remember, when driving up with him to Wolverhampton, if we 
 were silent for a few minutes he would say reproachfully : " You
 
 44 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 are not very brilliant this morning." The necessity for bright, 
 
 interesting conversation was so impressed upon us, that we were 
 
 simply astonished when reviewers found something remarkable in 
 
 the conversations of my sister's first novel Concerning Isabel 
 
 Carnaby, and expressed their doubt as to its trueness to life. It 
 
 was so exactly the talk that we had heard at home that we were 
 
 immensely surprised at these criticisms. My father was not 
 
 himself a witty man, but he thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed 
 
 wit in others. It has been thought and said that he lacked a 
 
 sense of humour, but that was not really so, as regards the sense 
 
 of appreciation of humour. He was not an originator of humour, 
 
 he was much too seriously-minded a man to be a quick discoverer 
 
 of humour ; nevertheless, when the humour of a situation was 
 
 pointed out to him he could understand, and appreciate, and enjoy 
 
 it to the fullest extent. And his sense of humour was not only 
 
 born in him, but it increased as he grew older, and was very much 
 
 fostered in his home-life. He possessed the unusual attribute, 
 
 especially in a man, of thoroughly enjoying a joke at his own 
 
 expense, and when levelled at him by one of his own children 
 
 his satisfaction was complete. 
 
 On a platform a power leaped to his lips which proved the 
 orator born, not made, and he could always unconsciously com- 
 mand the best language in which to convey his wisdom, his inspira- 
 tion and his common sense to the convictions of his audience. 
 
 He began his municipal career with the best possible stimulus, 
 in that he felt and found in it the principle of that representative 
 and administrative government which his soul loved. His first 
 words to his fellow-Councillors were to remind them that they had 
 been placed in a responsible position, and to express the assurance 
 that they would merit the honour by discharging the responsibility. 
 " I use the word ' honour ' advisedly," he continued, with that 
 impressive warmth which in his speeches always brought a 
 responsive glow from his hearers, " because I wish to enter my 
 protest, feeble though it may be, against the fashion, I had almost 
 said the cant, which regards municipal honours and municipal 
 offices with a feeling somewhat akin to contempt. It would be 
 idle to ignore the existence of such a feeling, and it is our duty
 
 Municipal Life 45 
 
 to join issue with it, to show its intrinsic absurdity, and its evil 
 and mischievous tendencies." He pointed out that it was then 
 barely twenty-three years since the Municipal Reform Bill re- 
 created the whole municipal system, and it was barely ten since 
 the legislature, by the Public Health Acts, entrusted the most 
 important and beneficial of local powers to Corporations ; and hs 
 would ask any candid, unprejudiced man to look at the corporate 
 towns in their most material aspects their lighting, paving, high- 
 ways, water, police, and whole internal arrangements and then 
 say whether there existed on the face of this earth a system which 
 had accomplished such results for such a large number of towns 
 in such a small space of time as Corporations had accomplished in 
 this country. This true appreciation of the powers and privi- 
 leges of Corporations in town-life no doubt prompted him, many 
 years later, in his successful effort to bring similar ones within the 
 reach of urban and rural districts, and to give the people, whether 
 they were town workmen and citizens, or whether they were farm- 
 labourers and country craftsmen, the right of ruling their own com- 
 munity for the common good. He would not say that Corpora- 
 tions, Town Councils, or even Parliaments, had not their failings ; 
 and never a man found so few in the latter as did Henry Fowler 
 during his Parliamentary life ! No one of them had always done 
 right ; neither did he say that municipal constituencies or Parlia- 
 mentary constituencies always acted with propriety ; both some- 
 times made mistakes ; but he was not going to sacrifice either 
 institution, whether Parliamentary or Municipal to each of 
 which the country owed so much for a few incidental defects. 
 
 We live now in an age when rhetoric and sentiment are out of 
 fashion ; but in days past much enthusiasm and enterprise were 
 kindled by eloquence and emotion, and the dull drudgery of daily 
 work was often lifted on to a higher, and therefore more effective, 
 plane by the expressed idealism which is now so completely out 
 of date. The whole municipal life of Wolverhampton was stirred 
 by the powerful presence of its new member. My father was 
 never a figurehead. Whatever was being done, he not only did 
 it himself, in heart if not in action, but he thought out how much 
 better it might be done, and tried to accomplish that end, and
 
 46 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 this he carried out in even the merest details of life. He never 
 saw anything done, however trifling, without seeing a possible 
 improvement in the method. As he drove to and from Wolver- 
 hampton, he would be continually saying how much better it 
 would have been if the coachman had not overtaken this cart, or 
 crossed the tram-lines before meeting that ; and once I remember 
 his declaring how differently he should have acted from what the 
 footman had done in some matter. And when one of us said : 
 " But if Frederick had been as clever as you, he would have been 
 a Secretary of State and not a footman," his genial smile dispelled 
 his disapproval ; but he still hankered after a more perfect 
 performance of the simple duty in question. 
 
 Directly he entered the Town Council he began to act, and the 
 first scheme which occupied his attention was that of the proper 
 drainage of the town. A special committee had been for months 
 considering the sewerage question, and, of course, there was the 
 usual opposition to any good, however great, which costs ready 
 money ; but Henry Fowler was not one to sit down to such 
 public and moral lethargy of opinion and action. He spoke out, 
 and with the usual result, that his words caught fire and their 
 flame was a consuming one. 
 
 " We cannot believe that there is in this Corporation a man 
 ignorant enough to oppose a scheme of general sewerage on the 
 ground of its needlessness. Were the opponents of this greatest 
 of sanitary improvements to rest their opposition here, their 
 opposition would be as futile as it would be absurd. They are too 
 wise for that. The necessity of the sewerage will be admitted 
 it dare not be denied ; the desirability will be granted, the intention 
 at some future time to carry out the works will be solemnly 
 declared ; and then will come the ' but.' And the usual clap-trap 
 platitudes about ' the present not being the time,' and the usual 
 clap-trap falsehoods about the heavy taxation of the ratepayers 
 will be urged in the most candid and friendly spirit. Of course 
 the sewerage works will be expensive. It is better it is cheaper 
 to spend the money in the prevention of disease than in the cure ; 
 it is cheaper to prevent crime than to punish it ; it is cheaper 
 (bear witness our increased income-tax) to prevent invasion than
 
 Municipal Life 47 
 
 to conquer and destroy the invader. What is the cost to Wolver- 
 hampton, not in desolated homes, in widowed wives, or orphaned 
 children (our financial economists do not, they cannot, include 
 these in their miserable calculations), but in pounds, shillings and 
 pence of one visit of cholera ? What is the cost to the town of 
 the chronic typhus, and of other preventable, but fatal, maladies, 
 which have raised the mortality of Wolverhampton so high ? 
 The sewerage is a public necessity ; it is the disgrace of the Town 
 Council that the necessity has existed so long ; it will be their 
 crime if it exists any longer." 
 
 As would be expected, the petty opposition to so great a public 
 good as the proposed sewerage scheme finally fizzled out in the 
 face of such powerful championship as this. The work was begun 
 and completed, and to the end of his life my father felt a pardon- 
 able pride in this his first victory for the people's good. 
 
 His idea at that time of public life, however, was not restricted 
 to the Town Council. Though that was the main artery through 
 which his efforts flowed, he continued his interest in the Working 
 Men's College, and also was a distinct power in the Young Men's 
 Christian Institute in Wolverhampton. In his speeches to both 
 of them we find a wider range of thought and feeling than in 
 the Council Chamber ; and, as a young man speaking to young 
 men, we see the impress of many of the standards of conduct and 
 thought which ruled his later life. On the second annual meeting 
 of the College, under the presidency of Lord Dartmouth, he set 
 forth his views on " Success in Life," and there was no subject 
 which appealed more strongly to his interest. He quoted the well- 
 known line: " 'Tis not in mortals to command success" ; and 
 immediately after, according to his almost universal custom, he 
 qualified that statement until it became almost threadbare of 
 meaning. He urged that the line refers to the exceptions rather 
 than the rule, and that success to those who deserve it follows as 
 naturally, as inevitably, as the law of cause and effect, and that, 
 independently of rank, station and circumstances in life. He 
 had been born and bred in this theory, and his history is surely a 
 powerful illustration of it. Perhaps his gauge of success was a 
 wider one than the ordinary one. He believed that a working
 
 48 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 man, who was born and died as a working man, could yet make 
 of his life a distinct success. " Working men," he said, " have 
 succeeded, ought to succeed, and will succeed, in as great a degree 
 and with as true results as any other of the classes of men com- 
 posing our social system." They could not all win a world-wide 
 celebrity, he further pointed out, but " the simple story of a happy 
 man's life will be a true success." 
 
 " Your own intellect instructed, your own moral character 
 rightly developed, the domestic graces and the social virtues, which 
 can present as bright a bloom and diffuse as sweet a fragrance 
 in the cottage as in the palace, planted, and reared, and nurtured 
 in your homes, will constitute a success in life which will create and 
 ensure the truest happiness." 
 
 And again in an address at the Young Men's Christian Institute 
 we find a still more characteristic expression of himself, in which 
 we see the reflection of the man, even as I knew him so many 
 years later. My father was not a man of physical courage he 
 lacked all spirit of dash and daring : of moral courage he not 
 only possessed a measure, but it wholly possessed him. It could 
 hardly be called in his case a virtue, because it was a characteristic. 
 It was never the slightest effort to him to proclaim loyalty to the 
 religious principles in which his life was built. It was no tempta- 
 tion to him ever to be ashamed of the creeds of his fathers, the 
 Church of his fathers, the God of his fathers. And though 
 of course the majority of his speeches deal chiefly with secular 
 subjects, here and there an occasion arose which gave him an 
 opportunity of simply and fearlessly stating the deep religious 
 convictions of his soul. As it is usually more of an effort to a 
 young man than to an older one to reveal religious depths, the 
 full, clear note of this address is more remarkable, because he was 
 at the time under thirty years of age ; and though we have seen 
 from his early letters how strongly he himself was influenced by 
 such convictions, it is a very different thing to write a love-letter 
 in that strain, and to address a meeting of chiefly young men 
 from a secular platform. "It is a very clever manoeuvre," he 
 declared, " to affix the word ' cant ' to the recognition of Chris- 
 tianity as influencing the realities of daily life, and a supreme
 
 Municipal Life 49 
 
 absurdity, as well as the irresistible power of a nickname, has 
 rarely been so signally exemplified. Christianity should not only 
 influence our legislation, and literature, commerce, and education, 
 but if its principles were systematically excluded from any one of 
 these departments of human effort the most disastrous results 
 would follow. I firmly believe that England owes all her national 
 glory to her Christianity. The ' peace and happiness, the truth 
 and justice,' which render our island the admiration of the civilized 
 world, are based upon its religion and piety ; and if it ever abandons 
 these, England will pass to the same tomb whither nations as 
 illustrious and apparently as immortal have preceded it." 
 
 It is worthy of note how steeped in the language of the Prayer- 
 book was Henry Fowler's mind. We find him dropping into the 
 old familiar phrases again and again. This proves how deeply 
 love of the liturgy was ingrained in his nature, and that he had 
 inherited that love from his father, who was born a Churchman, 
 and carried his early traditions out into the new Society which 
 John Wesley had founded in the bosom of the Church ; but which, 
 unhappily, drifted away from its founder's design into a branch of 
 Nonconformity. It was in the above address that he uttered the 
 following extremely characteristic words about books and news- 
 papers. His love for them was life-long ; his library was the 
 sanctum sanctorum of his home, and he read literally scores of 
 newspapers each week. Some of these in later years he reviled, 
 and was apt to quote concerning their daily inaccuracy ; none 
 the less, he read them. Perhaps his first love for them still 
 lingered from those early days when he felt for them as this speech 
 describes, or perhaps in after years, in spite of all their faults, he 
 loved them still. " I am proud of the newspaper literature of 
 England. The vast stores of intellectual wealth which the daily 
 and weekly press scatter abroad through the land is one of the most 
 wondrous marvels of this marvellous age. You may hear someone 
 say : ' I don't care about politics ; we had better mind our business 
 and let politics alone.' Don't care about politics ! Pause before 
 you repeat so foolish and dangerous and absurd an opinion ; you 
 ought to care about politics ; and if you don't care about politics, 
 you deserve to live under one of those paternal governments who 
 
 4
 
 50 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 will take care that you don't care about them. Politics are but 
 another name for our social rights and social duties ; if you retain 
 the one you discharge the other ; but you must clearly understand 
 the value of both. The newspaper not only familiarizes you with 
 political events, but it tells of every stride of science and every 
 development of philanthropy, and if you exclude me from my 
 newspaper you exclude me from one of the most interesting and 
 most instructive modes of communion with my fellow-men which 
 it is possible for me to enjoy." 
 
 And of books he afterwards spoke, beginning with a quotation 
 which I have heard him repeat times without number: "Reading 
 makes a full man." ' You must remember that it is only 
 systematic study of works really standard books and not mere 
 periodical playthings that will fill our minds with what is worth 
 having or retaining. Various minds have various tastes, and 
 what is interesting to one is dull and dry to another. Select 
 a favourite study, work it well, stick to it, master it, and whether 
 it is the biography of individuals, or of nations whether it 
 is the laws or forces or beauties of Nature whether it is the archi- 
 tecture of the glorious globe itself, or the edifices which the genius 
 of man has reared upon it whether it is the mechanism of the 
 body or the mind whether it is the works of man, or the revela- 
 tion of God choose your subject, and, whatever it be, never 
 rest till you have made it your own ; for, depend upon it, it is 
 better to have a thorough knowledge of one of these things than 
 a superficial smattering of many." These precepts he practised as 
 well as preached, only it was the thorough knowledge of many 
 that was his aim. History of peoples, rather than Courts, theo- 
 logy of every denomination, and, above all, politics in every shape 
 and form, he studied and mastered and made his own. He was 
 an omnivorous reader of all kinds of literature, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of poetry ; every evening of his life that was spent at 
 home was spent in reading, and he never passed a week without 
 buying at least one new book. He used to say : " This is my one 
 extravagance." In fact he had no personal form of expenditure 
 such as hunting or shooting, not expensive gardens and many 
 greenhouses, though he always slightly hankered after those
 
 Municipal Life 51 
 
 latter luxuries, not a home farm from which he could enjoy dairy 
 and other produce ; nothing but the passion for books. On 
 a journey he would always buy at least a dozen newspapers 
 of both parties, and when once someone commented on such a 
 very large allowance he said : " They are my tobacco. You 
 would probably smoke quite their value on such a journey as 
 this." He was never a smoker, and was most economical in all 
 personal matters. 
 
 His first gift to Wolverhampton in 1859 was a drinking fountain, 
 erected in the worst part of the town ; and with typical fore- 
 sight he made terms with the Town Council for an adequate 
 supply of water for it, which, in view of the defective supply at 
 that time, was by no means an unwise precaution. At a mayoral 
 banquet that same year he expressed his views on the appointment 
 of magistrates, and as the years revolve it is strange how the same 
 subjects are discussed, and the same questions raised, by succeed- 
 ing generations. These pages contain many an opinion of his 
 which have a place in the discussions of to-day, as pointedly as 
 when they were uttered many years ago. " The appointment of 
 magistrates should be dictated by no political influence, by no party 
 prejudice, and by no private interest, but on the recommenda- 
 tion of those best qualified to give such a recommendation. Sound 
 common sense, unblemished personal character, a suitable social 
 status, and a matured and well-digested experience, are the best 
 qualifications for an English magistrate." 
 
 In 1860 Henry Fowler was made an Alderman of the borough, 
 and the following year he waged another war on behalf of the 
 people of Wolverhampton, to obtain an adequate water supply 
 for that town. A new Water Works Company had been formed 
 to remedy the non-success of an old effete one, but Henry Fowler 
 disputed their right to refuse to keep a constant supply of water 
 at pressure, for use in case of fire, both night and day without 
 extra charge, and this they declined to do. And when they pro- 
 tested that more payment was required for this constant supply, 
 as the position of the town which is set on a hill required perpetual 
 pumping, an expensive process, to obtain a sufficient supply, the 
 people's champion contended that it had already been paid for, 
 
 4*
 
 52 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 as the company had been given the monopoly of supplying the 
 town with water with a right to break up the streets, and other 
 privileges, and " it was the spirit of English legislation that where 
 the law gave large powers to companies or individuals it taxed 
 them to a certain extent for the benefit of the public." A 
 Parliamentary Committee was then appointed by the Town 
 Council, of which Henry Fowler was elected chairman, to fight 
 a Bill for extended powers which the new company was intro- 
 ducing into Parliament. This Bill was brought before a Select 
 Committee of the House of Lords, who decided that the town of 
 Wolverhampton was not properly supplied with water, but, on 
 account of some legal technicality in their original Bill, the Council's 
 contention could not be upheld. To sit down meekly under the 
 decisions of the Upper House has not been a distinctive attitude 
 of the Liberal Party, and Henry Fowler then entered the lists in 
 a wider warfare than that of a local and municipal matter. He 
 fired his fellow- townsmen with a fighting zeal, and he would not 
 let them bow to the powers that be, even though they must have 
 seemed great powers to a young, untried man, yet none the less 
 was he undaunted by them. His convictions of right and justice 
 and fair play were outraged by their decision, and with the unself- 
 conscious assurance of a young David he went out to meet this 
 armour-clad Goliath with no weapon but the smooth stones of his 
 natural power of speech. He urged first in the Council Chamber : 
 " That the town was in this anomalous position : they had laid 
 their case before a Committee of the House of Lords, where every 
 claim they had made they had justified, and every grievance of 
 which they had complained had been admitted, adjudicated upon, 
 and decided, and yet they had been told by the legislature that 
 they could not provide them with a remedy. He had always 
 been taught that there was no wrong without a remedy ; that 
 if wrong was brought before the legislature it was their duty to 
 provide remedial measuies, and the question for the Council now was 
 whether they would apply to another branch of the legislature to 
 ask them to do what the Upper House had refused to do." 
 
 The challenge to fight thrown down by the Town Council led 
 the Water Works to listen to reason to agree with the enemy
 
 Municipal Life 53 
 
 whiles they were in the way with him and as the result of 
 negotiations carried on between that company and the Town 
 Council Committee, which was practically the voice of Henry 
 Fowler, the Water Works were bought by the Corporation in 
 1867. During the last decade of his life my father thus referred 
 to that transaction : " Although the purchase was denounced as 
 an act of supreme folly, ignorance and extravagance, which must 
 result in disaster and disgrace, there was no one now who would 
 not say that the step which was then taken was wise and successful 
 in the interests of the community. In the years 1871 to 1873 
 there was an aggregate loss of 2,100, but in 1878 the Council 
 was able to make a very Jarge reduction in the water rate, and 
 at the same time to do, as it has done ever since, add largely to 
 its resources. It gave the people the advantage of an unlimited 
 supply of pure water, and the income was now over 32,000 a 
 year. The purchase of the Water Works had been a complete 
 success in the interests of the town." 
 
 Henry Fowler was never afraid of the initial cost of anything 
 which he knew would prove of lasting value afterwards, and he 
 could discriminate with a wonderfully accurate judgment between 
 a legitimate expenditure" and extravagance. The former he 
 never stinted, he strongly deprecated being penny wise and 
 pound foolish, and he realized to the full the practical truth 
 which lies behind the shrewd, homely, Staffordshire saying that 
 you cannot get anything for nothing, and only very little for 
 sixpence.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 18621863 
 
 MAYORALTY 
 
 " When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice." Proverbs of 
 Solomon. 
 
 " His years but young, but his experience old ; 
 His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 IN November, 1862, Henry Fowler was elected Mayor of Wolver- 
 hampton, an honour in those days for one who had had the 
 short career of only seven years in the town, and whose age was 
 far below the usual one at which men had been thought fit to be 
 elected to such a position. His late father-in-law, Mr. George 
 Benjamin Thorney croft, had been the first Mayor of the borough, 
 and his uncle, Mr. John Hartley, had preceded him in that office 
 by only a very few years, but it was not to family influence that 
 he owed his success. He was a highly-educated man, he was an 
 increasingly successful one in his profession, but it was something 
 more than this which marked him from his youth upwards for high 
 administrative office. He was wise as well as gifted, he was 
 strong as well as eloquent, he had good judgment, and sound 
 common sense ; but welding all these qualities into one was the 
 power of his personality. It is as difficult to locate that power as 
 it is to fix the boundaries of charm one can only bear witness 
 to its existence by its results. The celebrated saying of Caesar's, 
 " Veni, vidi, vici," was the epitome of that power. Wherever 
 Henry Fowler came he filled a place ; whatever he saw around 
 him he looked at with eyes that really saw, and a spirit which 
 insisted on understanding, and from that vantage ground he 
 
 54
 
 worked and won. It was so in this earliest experience in the 
 Town Council. The moment he entered it he filled it with new 
 life ; he was not just one of a number, he was one who led, and 
 served, and so ruled, numbers. He grasped the meaning of 
 municipal life and saw its possibilities, and then he set out to 
 practise them. He was a fighter in those days far more than in 
 his maturer, perhaps wiser, years, when he believed more in the 
 might of arbitration, and lacked the necessary one-sidedness of a 
 purely political partisan. There were at that time some great 
 wrongs in the town to be redressed. The Sewerage Scheme, the 
 Water Works Scheme, both owed their success to his leadership. 
 And though he led from the platform by the enthusiasm which 
 his eloquence never failed to call forth, he was no less powerful 
 in the Council Chamber and Committee room, where the actual 
 working-out of a scheme required far more wisdom and knowledge 
 and tact than are ever needed by the mere orator. 
 
 His established character for effective work is proved by a 
 cutting from a leading newspaper of that date. There was great 
 distress in Lancashire, and it alluded to a chaos of formless thought 
 in relation to the duty of relieving that distress, which it was 
 needful some ruling spirit should reduce to order : " Aware of 
 this, and equally aware that 1863 would find Mr. Henry Hartley 
 Fowler Mayor of Wolverhampton, we waited patiently the advent 
 of that gentleman to the position of chief Magistrate of the town, 
 in the full assurance that the Mayoralty would be but a few hours 
 old ere he convened a town's meeting on the subject, and, pointing 
 with a sure and certain index the path of duty, nobly led the 
 way. We are not mistaken. As quickly as the press could stamp 
 the Mayoral signature in printer's ink, a notice convening a meet- 
 ing for Friday next was issued, and the Mayor on all occasions 
 so thoroughly works out for those he calls to his aid the machinery 
 for the labour he conceives, that the meeting will easily discover 
 what it has to do and the best means for doing it." 
 
 In response to his election as Mayor, he said : 
 
 " Municipal institutions have formed one of the most enduring 
 foundations upon which the mighty fabric of English liberty has 
 been reared. They embody the soundest of all constitutional
 
 56 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 maxims that taxation and representation are inseparable. They 
 illustrate that true principle of self-government which is the 
 characteristic of a free people, and they rear the strongest bulwark 
 against that ever-encroaching system of centralization which is a 
 sure harbinger of an irresponsible despotism." And at his first 
 meeting after his election the one above referred to for the 
 distress in Lancashire having deplored the inclination to hold 
 back from extending relief because the landed and other interests 
 had not sufficiently led the way, he wound up with these charac- 
 teristic words : 
 
 " Let us do our duty in the spirit of the good Samaritan without 
 stopping to inquire whether priest or Levite has passed by on the 
 other side whether men, whose official position in life would lead 
 us to expect it of them, have done their duty ; let us simply, in 
 the presence of this suffering, starving, bleeding humanity, do 
 our duty, and we shall reflect upon it with satisfaction to the 
 last hour of our lives." 
 
 During his Mayoralty he promoted the interests of the Wolver- 
 hampton Orphanage, the Grammar School, and every educational 
 institute. He spoke for the first time on February 4th, 1863, as 
 far as records show, on the subject of education, which was to 
 him always of such interest and importance. And his keynote 
 there, as in every other branch of thought, was that of Christian 
 duty. " Education to be of any value must have Christianity 
 for its basis. I should have very little sympathy with this in- 
 stitution," he was speaking at the Wolverhampton Orphanage, 
 " as a benevolent means of feeding, clothing and humanely train- 
 ing a large number of children, if the training imparted were 
 dissociated from that sound Christian education, which you know 
 to be at the bottom, not only of all morality, but of all real good 
 in this world as well as of all happy prospects in the next. . . . 
 Children thus educated will, in every sense of the word, do their 
 duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call them." 
 Again, at the distribution of prizes won by students at the Uni- 
 versity local examination, he forcibly deplored the fact that, while 
 the elementary schools were showing great progress, the secondary 
 ones were at a standstill. " The education of the children of the
 
 Mayoralty 57 
 
 class which depended entirely on manual labour had become a 
 science which had attracted to its consideration and development 
 the energy and ability of some of the foremost thinkers of our 
 country, while at the same time the education of the sons of the 
 class who depend entirely on mental labour, or a harmonious com- 
 bination of mental and manual labour, was left to the mercenary 
 speculation of those whose incapacity and whose failure in other 
 departments of life, were their sole qualifications for embarking 
 in a pursuit where, unfortunately, incompetency was no bar to 
 pecuniary success." This was a true picture of middle-class 
 education fifty years ago, and, with the eye of a prophet, he looked 
 on beyond the wrong to the ultimate redressing of that wrong. 
 In thus lifting it up to the scorn of men he started the wheels of 
 that vast machinery of public opinion, which is all-powerful in 
 dealing with the questions of the day. It is the politician who 
 practically works that machine, but it is the prophet who first 
 sets it in motion. And this was Henry Fowler's mission in those 
 early days before he put on the harness of the practical politician. 
 He lived to see many of his ideals fulfilled some of them even 
 out-stepped but the need of Secondary schools he saw satisfied ; 
 and it is worthy of note that his son-in-law, Mr. Alfred Felkin, 
 was appointed one of His Majesty's Inspectors of Secondary 
 Schools in 1906. " It is a happy feature of our age and country," 
 he declared, " that the whole question of education is invested 
 with growing importance, and while we gratefully regard the 
 progress made in recent years we should make a great mistake if 
 we rested on our oars and regarded the problem of education as 
 solved. If the Greek idea of education was the cultivation of 
 the beautiful, and the Roman the acquisition of the useful, we have 
 yet, I think, to learn how in our English education thoroughly to 
 blend the two, without sacrificing any of the distinctive excel- 
 lencies of either. While the practical experience of the merchant, 
 the manufacturer, the professional man and the tradesman, was 
 dissatisfied with any education, however it might be graced by 
 classical beauty, which left the pupil ignorant of the history of 
 his own country, and unacquainted with the language and litera- 
 ture of the living nations of Europe a stranger to those great
 
 58 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 laws of the physical, mechanical and moral sciences which lay the 
 basis of all moral and physical progress while this dissatisfaction 
 is felt, the day is corning, and coming rapidly, I trust, when those 
 who sway the destiny of the education of the middle-class will 
 vigorously and promptly affirm and endorse that dissatisfaction and 
 themselves apply the remedy. . . . The man who aspires to be 
 an educated man must be always learning, and no matter how 
 gifted we may be, how rare our attainments, or how unflagging 
 our industry, the life-long lesson must still be ' how little we 
 know.' ' He believed that the boys of that day were receiving 
 a much better education than their fathers received, but he 
 doubted whether the girls were receiving anything so good as 
 their mothers had. There was an excess of what was useless and 
 ornamental, and what they wanted was a robustness and accuracy 
 and judgment, which, combined with the acquisition of the 
 ordinary branches of knowledge, would be an incalculable ad- 
 vantage. Their seminaries needed to be stripped of mawkish 
 sentimentality and the teaching therein reduced to a science as 
 it was in the normal and national schools. 
 
 It was during the year of Henry Fowler's mayoralty that 
 the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII., both came 
 of age and was married. On the latter occasion the Mayor 
 gave a great banquet in Wolverhampton, and during his speech 
 he made the following allusions to the Houses of Parliament. 
 "The House of Lords," he said, "was the embodiment of the 
 purest and noblest aristocracy in the world. He was a very 
 short-sighted politician who depreciated the advantages which 
 a nation derived from the possession of an independent body 
 of nobles, who, by ancestral traditions, as well as by vast 
 possessions, were the hereditary champions of both liberty and 
 order. The English House of Lords, comprising as it did the 
 descendants of those stout old Barons who laid the foundations of 
 English freedom and power, and enriched as it was from time to 
 time by those noblemen of nature who, by their eminent abilities 
 and distinguished success, honoured themselves and added lustre 
 to the nation, contained England's noblest sons, and made a 
 house of peerless peers that deserved and received the homage of
 
 Mayoralty 59 
 
 the British nation." This eulogy in these days sounds a little out 
 of date on the lips of a Liberal statesman ; but it was because he 
 was a true statesman at heart that he discerned the worth of a 
 power which was not under the heel of the constituencies, and 
 which possessed a judgment independent of the confused and 
 confusing currents of election campaigns. He described the 
 House of Commons, and perhaps here, too, his description is a 
 little out of date, " as the most venerable, powerful, and in the 
 highest and truest sense of the word, the most gentlemanly of 
 legislative assemblies. He believed in it, and knew that the de- 
 velopment of the House of Commons and the growth of England's 
 greatness had been contemporaneous; and so long as there were 
 free thought, free speech, free men in the country, so long would 
 the British House of Commons the noblest temple freedom had 
 erected find respectful and devoted admirers." He also made 
 this an occasion for expressing some of those feelings of devoted 
 loyalty to the Throne of England which was ever a very powerful 
 factor in his public life. " There are occasions when we more 
 especially express our ardent attachment to that system of govern- 
 ment under which it is our happiness to live, and our grateful 
 appreciation of the admirable manner in which the Queen has 
 embodied we might almost say perfectly developed the ideas of 
 a constitutional monarchy ; and as we contemplate the desolating 
 despotisms of the sword, and the sanguinary tyranny of the mob, 
 which at the present time are ravaging some of the fairest portions 
 of the earth, we rally more closely round the Crown of England 
 as the purest symbol and the safest guard of individual freedom 
 and of national honour. To-night we do not think so much of Her 
 Majesty as the monarch of a mighty nation ; we think of her as the 
 mother of an eldest son, who has to-day embarked on the voyage 
 of domestic life. We shall never forget history will never forget 
 how unselfishly the Queen discharged all the duties of a constitu- 
 tional sovereign ; but to-night we more especially remember how 
 she has associated the correct performance of all the duties of her 
 exalted station with the simplest and sublimest duties of woman- 
 hood. As a daughter, a wife, a mother alas ! that we should have 
 to add as a widow the Queen has linked together all those home
 
 60 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 connections which sanctify all the relationships of life in every 
 sphere. And therefore the rejoicings of this day will not be the 
 rejoicings merely of a loyal etiquette, but the genuine sympathies 
 and feelings of a nation that knows how to appreciate the domestic 
 virtues, which dignify and beautify both the cottage and the 
 palace. We have good reason to hope and believe that the sun- 
 shine of this day will pierce the dark clouds of that great sorrow 
 which has cast so sad a shadow over the Queen's life ; and though 
 her happy home can never be again complete, and though her one 
 great loss can never be supplied, yet in the increasing happiness of 
 her children, their domestic enjoyments, in their public usefulness, 
 in their constant endeavour to imitate their father's bright ex- 
 ample, we trust and believe that the Queen will find an abiding 
 consolation and a continuing comfort." Of the Prince of Wales 
 he said : "I cannot help feeling a glow of justifiable pride on 
 account of the perfect harmony which subsists between the most 
 venerable antiquities of our constitution and the most intelligent 
 opinions and requirements of the present day. Within the last 
 half century the iron hoof of the invader and irrepressible explo- 
 sions of intestine misery have reconstructed the map of Europe 
 and obliterated the most ancient and illustrious titles ; but this 
 day the Heir-apparent of the British throne has been welcomed 
 to the privileges of that exalted station by the title which for six 
 hundred years has been associated with that proud position, and 
 amid the national affection which more resembled the triumph of 
 some popular idol than the independent loyalty of the greatest 
 and freest nation on earth." 
 
 On proposing the health of the Mayor, Lord Dartmouth said : 
 " The burgesses of Wolverhampton did well to put at their head 
 that gentleman in the civic chair ; and they might well be proud 
 of being represented by so worthy a man and by so eloquent an 
 orator. They might depend upon it that the true secret of their 
 real progress lay in their having among them a man like Mr. Henry 
 Hartley Fowler." 
 
 The whole year of his mayoralty was simply packed with public 
 engagements, each one of which my father seems to have used 
 as an opportunity for the high-toned oratory and wise teaching
 
 Mayoralty 61 
 
 which always characterized his speeches. However small the 
 occasion might be, he made it great by the introduction and 
 inspiration of his great personality. Though his platform might 
 be of the humblest, his influence was of the highest, and he seems 
 to have perpetually poured forth such a torrent of eloquence during 
 that year, that it was remembered as absolutely unique in 
 the history of the town's life. All these early speeches of his 
 give us a mirror in which to see the reflection of his mind while 
 it was being prepared and matured for the larger work he was 
 eventually to undertake, and we find in them the germ of all his 
 future statesmanship. His broad-mindedness was always remark- 
 able, and in a speech made by him as Mayor, when laying the 
 foundation-stone of a Baptist chapel, he showed its secret : "I 
 think that bigotry is the narrowest narrowness of a narrow mind, 
 and I venture to say that no man with either head or heart has 
 ever attempted to expose the miserable prejudices of his sectarian 
 exclusiveness to the sunlight of another world. They might carry 
 their party emblems to the grave's mouth, but they were obliged 
 to leave them there to form another element in that corruption 
 which was emphatically of the earth earthy." And in a subse- 
 quent speech he said : "I may have occasion to extol the virtues 
 of Methodism as the religion of my choice, but I do not do so in 
 any prejudice or bigotry, for bigotry is a thing which from my 
 heart I abhor." When presiding at a meeting in Willenhall in the 
 same year, which marked the conclusion of an effort for the en- 
 larging of an old and the building of a new Wesleyan chapel, 
 in which he had been largely instrumental, one of the prominent 
 townsmen, Mr. James Tildesley, in thanking him for his services, 
 humorously as it seemed at the time, prophetically as after events 
 proved it to be, remarked that " they would more amply repay 
 him when Willenhall was made a municipal borough by electing 
 him as their representative in Parliament." Willenhall was in later 
 years the principal outlying town of the borough of East Wolver- 
 hampton, which my father represented for so many years. 
 
 In his official position that year he touched another branch of 
 the country's service, on which he was for the most part silent, 
 but this owing to the civil character of the offices he held rather
 
 62 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 than any lack of sympathy with the military spirit. And there- 
 fore his opinions expressed on the occasion of a dinner given to 
 the local volunteers are of special interest as one of the few records 
 we have of his thoughts and feelings with regard to military 
 matters ; and they are words which seem weighted with a new 
 interest, on account of the strong stirring of opinions which is 
 being felt throughout the country to-day regarding the great 
 necessity for a far wider volunteer service. 
 
 " It was a maxim of the Duke of Wellington's," he quoted then, 
 as I have heard him say hundreds of times since, " that whoever 
 wanted anything well done must do it himself ; and the whole 
 commercial, political and municipal life of England is one long- 
 continued commentary on the wisdom of that maxim. The volun- 
 teer movement is simply the result of the application of that 
 maxim to, what I may call one of the prime duties, or rather 
 prime instincts, of a nation its own self-defence. The very 
 moment that the English nation grasped the idea that some foreign 
 foe might even entertain the possibility of invading the shores of 
 our native land, it was felt that our means of self-defence must 
 be not only such as would ensure the utter ruin of any mad invader 
 but that they must also be such as, in the eyes of the world, would 
 render any attempt a hopeless absurdity. Therefore, while we 
 are taxing to the uttermost every appliance which military science 
 and military strategy could employ, we feel that something more 
 is needed, something more impregnable than our targets, some- 
 thing more enduring than granite fortifications. When some 
 future Macaulay tells the story of the last ten years of English 
 history, there are few pictures which he will paint with more 
 brilliant colours than that which will describe how, as at the 
 bidding of some enchanter's wand, one hundred and fifty thousand 
 volunteers devoted their talents, their time, their . energy and 
 their money to the task of rendering themselves capable of defend- 
 ing their native land. We wonder the world wonders at the 
 enormous treasure which the Government of our country levies 
 for the public service ; but, to my mind, that apparently exhaustless 
 wealth is by no means the richest offering poured into the National 
 Exchequer. There is a voluntary taxation a taxation of time,
 
 Mayoralty 63 
 
 of science, of energy which pervades the whole municipal, judicial, 
 political, and, I may now say, military life of England, through 
 which the whole machinery of the State is linked together, and by 
 which it works so harmoniously for national glory and freedom. 
 We are all volunteers, we are but part of a grand army of men, 
 who, loving their country, believing in its institutions, aiming at 
 its ever-increasing happiness, are all doing our part to promote 
 the common weal." 
 
 It was at one of the small meetings of his mayoralty and none 
 were too small for his interest and advocacy that he spoke to a 
 limited number of working men on the great question of co-operation. 
 However small the audience, however few the reporters, Henry 
 Fowler still gave his best ; and as the best can never wear out, his 
 words are fresh and full of life to-day. To be great in anything, 
 to have the power of being great, means that it is, and always will 
 be, impossible to give less than one's best. It is not the occasion, 
 nor the office, nor the object, that can claim it, but simply because 
 the great have nothing else to give. And in the study of my 
 father's life, as well as in the remembrance of his practices, I see 
 how the greatness of his giving lay in the fact that he himself was 
 great ; and so, whether he was speaking to a small gathering 
 of working men in the days of his youth, or to the House of 
 Commons as a Secretary of State, he poured forth all the riches of 
 his mind and spent himself to the utmost for the public good. 
 
 " I believe in co-operation and in the principles of co-operation," 
 he said in 1863. " The principle of co-operation is one which is 
 not yet thoroughly understood ; but I believe in that principle 
 we have the true solution of the relative rights of capital and 
 labour, which will develop in this country an amount of security 
 to the capitalist and an amount of prosperity to working men 
 never seen before. I contend," he continued, coming down into 
 close touch with his audience with that practical common sense 
 which always underlay all his eloquence, " that the working man 
 who has a wife and family has no right to do as he likes with his 
 money. Having given such pledges to society, it is his bounden 
 duty to make provision for them ; and if a man's only capital is 
 his labour he is not justified in spending all his wages, but it is
 
 64 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 his duty to save some portion of them, and put his savings out 
 to interest to provide for the future of those who are dependent 
 upon his exertions. The principle of co-operation is an element of 
 social and moral progress, and I am of opinion that the day is 
 coming when the nation will in every sense of the word be united 
 when the jealousies and differences which now divide the different 
 classes of society will cease and the happiness of one will be the 
 happiness of all, and the progress of one will be the progress of 
 all." 
 
 The year of Henry Fowler's mayoralty was a momentous one 
 in the history of Wolverhampton, but we are looking at it rather 
 as a momentous one in the life of the man himself. It was the 
 first public office he held, who was to be essentially a public man ; 
 and he held it, as he did all his future offices, with both hands, 
 and a whole-heartedness which could not fail but to command 
 success. In fact, his whole public life seems mirrored in that 
 typical year of service when he was but thirty-three years of age. 
 Its true importance he gauged not by its value in the world's 
 annals, where the Mayor of a local municipality is hardly written 
 with a capital letter, but by the ideal of the work which it might 
 accomplish and the forces which it ought to represent. Every 
 detail pertaining to its possibilities he mastered and made use of, 
 and threw into its projects untiring energy and persistence. The 
 best test of the quality of his work in that position, and of the 
 quality of the worker, is that out of it no tangible good could 
 accrue to himself, no compensation could be received as a reward. 
 It was the humbleness of that office compared to those others 
 which he was one day called to fill, which proves that his best 
 service was ever given to his country, as truly in the Council 
 chamber as in the Cabinet, and with the same self-forgetfulness 
 in a consuming passion for the perfection of the work itself which 
 characterized him so signally as a public man.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 18631873 
 
 IN WOLVERHAMPTON 
 
 " To serve the present age, 
 
 My calling to fulfil ; 
 O may it all my powers engage 
 To do my Master's will." 
 
 CHARLES WESLEY. 
 
 ' Honour and shame from no condition rise. 
 Act well your part ; there all the honour lies." 
 
 POPE. 
 
 IT has already been hinted at that my father's professional 
 life opened with a disappointment so deep that I do not 
 believe it was ever quite effaced. His aspirations and desires 
 had been fixed from boyhood on going to the Bar ; and when, 
 owing to my grandfather's breakdown in health and comparatively 
 early death, the means were not forthcoming which were required 
 for the preliminaries of that profession, it was a bitter blow indeed ; 
 though, with characteristic unselfishness where the question of 
 providing for those dependent on him was concerned, and with 
 a dignified reticence about matters which lay so near his heart, 
 Henry Fowler took up the lower branch of the profession with an 
 earnestness of purpose and devotion to work which completely 
 hid the wreckage of his hopes. 
 
 He was admitted a solicitor in 1852, and remained in London 
 for two or three years. In 1855 he came to Wolverhampton and 
 started his professional career, shortly afterwards becoming a 
 partner of his wife's brother-in-law, Mr. Charles Corser. 
 
 It was in 1851 that Joseph Fowler died in the City Road Circuit 
 in the same house in which John Wesley had died sixty years 
 
 65 5
 
 66 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 before ; and from that hour his son Henry seems to have taken 
 upon his shoulders the burden, though as such he never regarded 
 it, of the support of his mother and sister. There was never any 
 grudging or of necessity about his open-handed giving, and his 
 love for his own people rendered such giving a real delight. Once 
 in after years his mother's old confidential servant remarked : "If 
 the doctor ordered my mistress to eat sovereigns, Mr. Fowler 
 would come directly and bring a bag full." 
 
 I remember, when she was quite an old lady, my grandmother's 
 telling us that she had the best son in the whole world ; and 
 though that is a statement which many happy mothers have 
 the right to make, and the joy to believe, there was an outside 
 affirmation of its truth in her case which is sometimes lacking in 
 others. 
 
 When my parents were first married they went to Summerfield 
 a house which old Mr. Thorneycroft had built in his garden for 
 his first son-in-law, and which was in turn occupied by the three 
 others. Ten years later my father built Woodthorne, three miles 
 out in the country, which was his home until his death. He also 
 built a house for his mother and sister next to Chapel House, 
 the old home of the Thorneycrofts ; and the two widow ladies, 
 Mrs. Fowler and Mrs. Thorneycroft, lived side by side for many 
 years, whom, as a child, my brother designated as his " cap- 
 grandmamma " and his " bonnet-grandmamma " my father's 
 mother being wont to come and stay with us for weeks together 
 in the house at Woodthorne, while my mother's mother used 
 always to drive to see us, and therefore seemed in our youthful 
 minds to be connected inseparably with a huge velvet bonnet. 
 
 For many years, during which Henry Fowler spent the days in 
 business in Wolverhampton, he always lunched with his mother, and 
 used to keep a strict eye upon her expenditure, not as is generally 
 the case, with a view to economy, but with a view to her enjoy- 
 ing the luxuries which he loved to provide and which her frugal 
 Scottish soul shrank from accepting. One great bone of con- 
 tention was a carriage from the livery stables which her son wanted 
 her to make continual use of, especially by taking country drives, 
 and this she felt to be a most unnecessary extravagance. At
 
 In Wolverhampton 67 
 
 length he characteristically settled the matter by saying that he 
 should pay for the carriage for so many afternoons each week, 
 whether she used it or not, and so at last she was induced to 
 indulge in the luxury. 
 
 From the year of his mayoralty until he went into Parliament 
 seventeen years later, Henry Fowler devoted himself to his pro- 
 fession and to the general interests of the town, which he had 
 determined in his own mind to represent. But he never really 
 cared for his professional life, though he worked at it as a necessity, 
 and because, to whatever plough he put his hand, he never looked 
 back. Had he been a barrister this would have been different, 
 and he would have felt his profession as congenial as the goal 
 to which it might have led ; but, as it was, he separated his 
 cherished public life from that of the law, and lived the two side 
 by side. As a matter of fact there were not sufficient prizes in 
 his profession to attract and hold frm. He felt that he had big 
 wares and he wanted a large market. 
 
 His first actual political speech was made in 1861, in support of 
 the candidature of Mr. Weguelin, when the late Member for Wolver- 
 hampton, Sir Richard Bethell, had been appointed Lord Chan- 
 cellor. This early record gives many of the opinions on which 
 his political life was subsequently built up. The advocacy of 
 party government, and the necessity for loyal followers of their 
 party rather than individual crankiness and a fanatical con- 
 scientiousness about every isolated question which the party as 
 a whole alone could deal with. He often said in after years that 
 the weakness of the Liberal party was the amount of individual 
 opinion which would not conform to leadership, and the strength 
 of the Conservative party was the loyalty of its members, who 
 always voted as a block whatever their private opinions might 
 be. He had heard a reference made to " Liberal Conservatives " 
 " he no more believed in a Liberal Conservative than he did in 
 a white negro." But there came a time, at the beginning of the 
 next century, when apparently the impossible had happened, 
 when the Ethiopian had changed his skin, and Henry Fowler 
 himself was an example of a " Conservative Liberal." 
 
 The main text, however, of his early, and most other speeches, 
 
 5*
 
 68 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 was the necessity for reform. He was a born reformer, and could 
 never enjoy anything as it was if he could see, which he always 
 could, any possibility of improvement. The reform of the fran- 
 chise and the necessity for the ballot, he considered then the basis 
 of all political progress, and though he was condemning the Tory 
 extravagance of that date, his Imperialism, which was always an 
 integral part of his Liberalism, whatever it might be of other 
 people's, showed itself clearly from the first in such words as 
 these : " We are determined, come weal or come woe, that this 
 country shall occupy the present proud position that it holds 
 among the nations of the earth." 
 
 On retiring from the mayoralty he announced his intention of 
 moving to procure the grant of a Court of Quarter Sessions for 
 the Borough of Wolverhampton, which would also involve pro- 
 vision for a Recorder, Clerk of the Peace, a Coroner, prison 
 accommodation, house of correction and a building suitable for 
 the holding of the Courts. At the end of two months from the 
 date of the petition, and six from when it was first mooted, the 
 matter had received the consideration of the authorities at the 
 Home Office, and the consent of the Crown an event which, it 
 was said at the time, was almost unparalleled, showing that his 
 petition had received immediate attention at the Home Office, 
 the reason for which was made clear by the words of Mr. Weguelin, 
 the Member for the borough : "To my excellent friend, Mr. 
 Fowler, my thanks are specially due, for he it was who drew up 
 the report which was submitted to the Home Office, and which 
 I have authority for saying was so complete in all its details 
 that it left the Parliamentary Representatives of the borough 
 little to do in urging a speedy compliance with the desire of the 
 town." 
 
 In 1864, when his brother-in-law, the late Colonel Thorney- 
 croft, was High Sheriff of Staffordshire, a prophetic custom seems 
 to have been inaugurated at all public functions that Henry Fowler 
 should propose the toast of the House of Commons. And on 
 that first occasion he did so with the enthusiasm which always 
 lit up his love for that venerable House. 
 
 " The late Emperor Nicholas said he could understand a
 
 In Wolverhampton 69 
 
 despotism, and he could understand a democracy, but the thing 
 called a constitutional Government was beyond his powers of 
 comprehension. But we understand and appreciate it, and as a 
 nation we are indebted to the House of Commons for the practical, 
 successful working-out of constitutional government in such a 
 manner as proved that no other form of Government has ever 
 existed, nor does at the present moment exist, which so indis- 
 solubly links together the strictest obedience to law and the purest 
 administration of justice with the most perfect and complete 
 development of civil and religious freedom. Among the civilized 
 nations of the earth, you will find many brilliant courts, many 
 gallant soldiers, many brave sailors ; you will find many princely 
 aristocracies ; but you will find that there is but one House of 
 Commons, unique in the brilliant associations of its history ; 
 unique in the statesmanship, talent and the patriotism of its long 
 roll of illustrious Members ; unique in the lofty independence 
 of its personal character ; unique in the purity, ability and success 
 which have ever characterized the endless details of its varied 
 functions. The House of Commons stands alone, at once the 
 oldest, the noblest and the best of all representative assemblies, 
 which are the symbols and the gauge of a nation's freedom and a 
 nation's progress." 
 
 On Cobden's death in 1865, Henry Fowler paid him a last 
 tribute framed by the motion of the Town Council, but worded 
 by the living sympathy with true statecraft which never ceased to 
 beat within his breast. " Profoundly as I reverence the character 
 of the statesman, still I do not think his claims to the admiration 
 and gratitude of his fellow-countrymen rest merely on grounds of 
 party politics, but I venture to say that the verdict of the Senate, 
 the verdict of the Press, the verdict of all England at large, has 
 already settled at once and for ever the question that the claims 
 of Richard Cobden to the respect and admiration of his fellow- 
 subjects rest on higher grounds than any of those which are 
 involved in mere party fights. I believe that so long as all 
 classes and all interests in this country enjoy, as they now enjoy, 
 the rich results which Mr. Cobden's victory has achieved for them, 
 so long will Englishmen of all ranks and shades of political opinion
 
 70 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 admire the distinguished purity and the disinterested patriotism 
 and unflagging self-denying labour which placed that son of a 
 Sussex yeoman among the foremost statesmen of Europe." He 
 also referred to the interesting fact that shortly before his death 
 Richard Cobden had written his autograph in a book which was 
 to be sold for raising funds for the restoration of the Collegiate 
 Church of Wolverhampton, and had added this short, charac- 
 teristic note : " Free trade, the international law of the 
 Almighty." 
 
 When President Lincoln was assassinated that same year, 
 Henry Fowler's words left no uncertain note as to his attitude 
 on the great question of the Slave Trade. He was chosen to pre- 
 side at the meeting called for the expression of sympathy on 
 account of his avowed partisanship of the Northern side. 
 " Although I have the deepest and sincerest respect for those 
 who hold contrary sentiments on this subject to myself, I do 
 not shrink from avowing the unalloyed gratification with which 
 I hailed the downfall, the utter destruction, of that monstrous 
 attempt to rear an Empire for the conservation, the perpetua- 
 tion, and the extension of human slavery. . . . The statesmen of 
 the South fondly hoped that in this country Mammon reigned 
 supreme, and that for cotton, we were prepared to barter away 
 principles and policies which constitute our national glory. Them- 
 selves trained in and tainted by the atmosphere of slavery, 
 they were unable to appreciate, and could not understand, that 
 inherent love of freedom which, thank God, is the essential element 
 of our national character. The working men of Lancashire, how- 
 ever, taught them a different lesson. I may be allowed to say 
 by way of parenthesis that that lesson preaches to English states- 
 men as well as to Southern slave-holders ; and when we hear, 
 as we sometimes do, of the ignorance, prejudice and the incapacity 
 of working men, I hope we shall in future also hear of the political 
 knowledge, the magnanimous self-denial, the heroic sufferings of 
 the Lancashire operatives in the dark and dreary winter of the 
 cotton famine. . . . 
 
 " Now in the present quarrel Englishmen have said some hard 
 things of the Americans, the Americans have said some hard
 
 In Wolverhampton 71 
 
 things of us, but, notwithstanding, there is at the bottom a deep 
 feeling of union between the two, and every one who has the cause 
 of freedom and progress at heart must wish to see these two great 
 nations, whose existence and prosperity are the best guarantee 
 for the cause of freedom, remain united, marching side by side 
 in the van of civilization." Of Lincoln himself he pointed out 
 how, " without a diplomatic training, he had fought his way up 
 to a position almost unparalleled in the history of the world, and 
 when he was gone not even his bitterest enemy could point his 
 finger to one act that he did, after being placed in that position, 
 which indicated a wish to prostitute the power placed in his hands 
 for the gratification of personal vindictiveness or the promotion of 
 his personal gain." 
 
 The next public enterprise that Henry Fowler undertook was 
 the building of a Town Hall worthy of the increased municipal 
 rights which had recently been attained, also through his instru- 
 mentality. " Some people," he said, " think nothing of the for- 
 malities of justice, but though I am a Radical in many things, 
 I am not a Radical in that, for I think that the formalities con- 
 nected with the administration of justice are of great importance, 
 and that justice solemnly administered in a suitable place, and 
 in a suitable manner, is more likely to repress crime than a slovenly 
 and indifferent mode of procedure." " Utility and ugliness are 
 not inseparable." And so he gradually swept away the opposition 
 to the scheme, serving as chairman of the committee which under- 
 took it ; and in 1869 tne foundation-stone of the present handsome 
 and useful building was laid. Into its great hall the white marble 
 statue of George Benjamin Thorneycroft, which was the work of 
 his distant kinsman John Thornycroft the sculptor, was subse- 
 quently moved from the cemetery, and so the first Mayor of 
 Wolverhampton, under the town's banners, stands fitly there ; 
 while in the Council Chamber, many years later, was hung a full- 
 length portrait of his son-in-law, Henry Fowler, the statesman, 
 speaking in the House of Commons from the Front Bench, by 
 Arthur Cope, the present R. A. 
 
 During the High Shrievalty of his uncle, Mr. John Hartley, 
 he paid this tribute to the Judges at the Stafford Assizes :
 
 72 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " One sentiment in which we must all agree, and of which we 
 are all proud, is the feeling with which we regard the independence, 
 the impartiality, and the utility of the English Bench. . . . 
 Money can do a great deal in this country, it can buy a good 
 many things, but, thank God, there is one thing it cannot buy, 
 and that is the services of an English Judge." He always pos- 
 sessed and expressed the greatest admiration for the Bench, and 
 there lay in that feeling a lost ambition which he ever mourned. 
 He was one of the men who are naturally apt to think that the other 
 side of the road is the best one for pedestrians, and so he doubtless 
 exaggerated the aspirations which disappointment had destroyed, 
 and never put his perspective quite right again. His sense of 
 proportion was admirable, but he always lacked a sense of per- 
 spective, just as he lacked all the attributes which Art bestows 
 upon her sons. Music he positively disliked, and was absolutely 
 without ear for tune or harmony, yet it is strange what an ear 
 for rhythm he had in speaking, and how an unconscious harmony 
 enfolded his words. Pictures he could only look at, but never 
 see. Poetry he rarely read ; and though he loved nearly all 
 printed matter, it was the story of a novel, not its setting, which 
 appealed to him. In later days, when Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler 
 his elder daughter began to write her novels, my father's 
 advice was superbly useless, though he always had plenty of it to 
 dispense. He was, of course, possessed by the parental fallacy 
 that his children never grew up, and that therefore his corrective 
 powers were essential for the success of any of her novels, though 
 the exercise of those powers, if it had not reduced her to laughter, 
 would have reduced her to tears. I remember a very nice 
 instance of this in his revision of the MS. of The Farringdons. 
 Elisabeth is pointing out Mrs. Paul Seaton the former Isabel 
 Carnaby " She looks brilliant and a little hard," was Cecil Far- 
 quhar's comment. 
 
 ' I don't think she is really hard, for she adores her husband, 
 and devotes all her time and all her talents to helping him politic- 
 ally. He is a Postmaster-General, you know, and is bound to get 
 still higher office some day.' 
 ' Have they any children ? '
 
 In Wolverhampton 73 
 
 ' No. Only politics.' " 
 
 My father underlined the " No." " I shouldn't say that," 
 he explained gravely, " it is too conclusive. I should say ' Not 
 yet.' ' And I don't think he ever quite understood why we 
 laughed so much. " I never like a closed door," was one of his 
 maxims, and he could not see why it could not be left ajar even 
 in fiction. 
 
 His almost exhausting exhaustiveness rendered his statements 
 and reports clear and convincing, but Art deals with impressions 
 and suggestions, and he was ignorant of all her ways. I remember 
 arguing in connection with a somewhat fictitious biography that 
 the impressions it gave of the family were really truer than a bald 
 statement of facts would have been, because it gave the spirit of 
 the atmosphere of which that family was an embodiment, and 
 therefore handed down to posterity a truer record of them than 
 any number of printed diaries could have done. But he would 
 return to his grand old principle " Never tamper with the 
 truth," and he could not understand why to paint a forest is 
 not to draw and colour accurately so many dozen separate 
 trees. 
 
 As the years rolled by, Henry Fowler began to take a more 
 conspicuous part in the political life of the borough and neigh- 
 bourhood. His general work for the good of the town was un- 
 tiring. In addition to the building of the Town Hall, he took 
 part, as a governor of the General Hospital, in the enlargement 
 of its buildings. As a governor of the Grammar School he shared 
 in its re-modelling and re-building, to fit it for the requirements 
 of modern education. As a governor of the Orphanage, he helped 
 in its extension, and showed unflagging interest in all these institu- 
 tions. He was never absent from any public meeting of im- 
 portance of whatever type and kind. The British and Foreign 
 Bible Society, the Wesleyan Improvement Society, the Sunday 
 School Teachers' Conference, the Agricultural Society, Home 
 Missionary Meetings, and countless others, all benefited by his 
 wisdom and eloquence, but not till about 1866 did he begin to 
 identify himself more particularly with political life, and to take 
 his stand under the policy of the Government Reform Bill for the
 
 74 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 extension of the franchise. He spoke at a great meeting for the 
 support of this, and in it alluded for the first time to his future 
 chief, Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 " You have faith also in Earl Russell's illustrious colleague 
 a man whose unrivalled statesmanship, and whose unrivalled 
 talents, have placed him on an eminence where he is unceasingly 
 exposed to the bitter attacks of his opponents and the treacher- 
 ous jealousy of his allies. Those who hate working men also hate 
 Mr. Gladstone. There is no man who has done so much for the 
 working classes as he has done. ... If you want to see the argu- 
 ments in favour of Mr. Gladstone's policy, go home there you 
 will find them, for there is hardly a meal you have where you do 
 not partake of the benefits of that policy. There is one thing in 
 particular for which you are indebted to Mr. Gladstone, and which 
 has brought upon him more relentless hostility than anything he 
 has done before, but which I regard as one of the most beneficial 
 things which has occurred in recent years : I allude to the penny 
 papers." 
 
 From this date my father's activities included every political 
 question of the day. Though a Radical of those days, he yet held 
 very strong opinions as to the evil of any one class of the com- 
 munity's swamping the others, and he said to a mass meeting of 
 working men : "I believe a Parliament elected mainly by the 
 landed interest would be a great evil ; I believe a Parliament 
 elected mainly by the capital interest would be a great calamity ; 
 and I do not shrink from saying, in the presence of this meeting, 
 that a Parliament elected mainly by working men would also be 
 a great calamity." He stated publicly that he was not in favour 
 of manhood suffrage, and he quoted John Bright as being also 
 against it. " What they wanted was an extension of political 
 power for the intelligent, industrious, honest, sober artisans ; but 
 men not intelligent, industrious, honest, and sober were not 
 entitled to have it." 
 
 On the 3Oth November, 1866, Queen Victoria came to Wolver- 
 hampton to unveil the statue of the Prince Consort by John Thorny- 
 croft, which had been erected in the market-place. As it was Her 
 Majesty's first public appearance after the great sorrow through
 
 In Wolverhampton 75 
 
 which she had passed in the loss of her husband, peculiar interest 
 was attached to this function throughout the whole country. 
 Among the many officials who were presented to the Queen on 
 this occasion was Henry Fowler, as seconder of the address, and 
 he paid an eloquent tribute to the memory of the Prince Consort 
 in his speech at the luncheon banquet : "I venture to assert that 
 there is no branch of statesmanship, no department of Government 
 no development of science no emblem of art no inward movement 
 for the material or moral welfare of the people as a whole, which 
 cannot claim the teachings and the example of the great and 
 good Prince Consort as a part of their inheritance. But without 
 detracting from that assertion as a whole, I presume to think that 
 the interests (and I use that word in its highest sense) which are 
 predominant in the district of which Wolverhampton is the capital, 
 are pre-eminently linked with the life and labours of that illustrious 
 Prince. Drawing no invidious distinctions of class they specially 
 represent the middle and the working classes. No man ever 
 more accurately gauged the triumphs which the union of these 
 classes has achieved. No man had a keener insight into the diffi- 
 culties and dangers to which these two classes, both separately 
 and unitedly, are exposed, and no man ever had a nobler faith 
 in the beneficial results which the enlightened combination of 
 educated capital and educated labour are destined to accomplish. 
 Therefore, in this district and in this town, it is our duty and our 
 delight to honour one who, promoting science by his judicious 
 patronage, and art by his enlightened precepts, incited all men to 
 all works of Christian duty by the force of his bright example. 
 The pomp and pageantry of to-day will soon be a thing of the past. 
 The brilliant circumstances which have characterized the inaugura- 
 tion will be toned, even in the most enthusiastic minds, by the 
 mellowing influence of time ; but while Englishmen, to quote the 
 Prince Consort's own words, are ' devoted to the noble work of 
 fostering the arts of peace and endeavouring to give a wider scope 
 to the blessings of freedom and civilization,' the memory of ' the 
 silent father of our kings to be ' will have a monument more 
 beautiful and more enduring than sculptor ever chiselled or artist 
 ever drew."
 
 76 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 In 1 870 Henry Fowler became a candidate for the School Board, 
 and was not only elected, but was appointed chairman. Mr. 
 Kettle (afterwards Sir Rupert Kettle, a County Court Judge) 
 said that he felt the Chairman of the first Education Board in 
 Wolverhampton should be a man in the foremost ranks of society 
 a man of personal honour, of business habits, and of the strictest 
 impartiality. In studying the Act of Parliament, he found many 
 technical difficulties and much that was not understood by the 
 public: he, therefore, felt that the legal knowledge which Mr. 
 Fowler possessed, in addition to his other qualifications, would 
 enable him to deal with those technicalities and legal difficulties 
 as they arose, and so much doubt and difficulty and public dis- 
 cussion would be avoided. 
 
 My father immediately began a course of strenuous work for 
 the School Board, and was always an enthusiastic advocate of 
 Board and Council schools ; and we have a record of his views as 
 regards justice to the denominational side which will always 
 apply to that much- vexed question. " We are bound to do 
 justice to the denominationalism of the country. What has that 
 system done ? It has done the whole work of day-school educa- 
 tion. The Churches of England have done for modern school 
 education what the Church in the Middle Ages did for hospitals 
 and the like ; they did work devolving on others, and which, 
 but for them, would have been left undone altogether. Therefore 
 in dealing with this question we must do the Churches of England 
 full justice, and remember that it is not the deists, nor the secu- 
 larists, nor the atheists, nor the political economists who have 
 done anything for the education of the people up to the present 
 time ; and we are bound to remember that men who have done 
 nothing are not entitled to come forward and dictate how educa- 
 tion should be carried on ; we are bound to remember that it was 
 the people who believed in the Bible and the Saviour who have 
 done all that has been done up to the present time, and that if 
 they had not done it, there would have been at the present moment 
 millions of people who had grown up uneducated." 
 
 It is not always easy for the most intelligent public thoroughly 
 to understand an Act of Parliament ; but it would take, shall we
 
 In Wolverhampton 77 
 
 say, a very up-to-date Act of Parliament to be beyond the com- 
 prehension of Henry Fowler. The language of them was as his 
 native tongue, and he could interpret their practical meaning into 
 a simple clearness which any one could grasp. The School Board 
 of Wolverhampton therefore never worked in the dark, and at 
 the last meeting of it over which he presided in 1873, a request 
 was made that a copy of their report should be sent into one of 
 the largest towns in England where a School Board was being 
 formed. 
 
 Immediately afterwards Henry Fowler suffered his first and 
 only defeat in public life. To the amazement of every one, this 
 most popular and efficient chairman was not returned in the School 
 Board election. His defeat was due -as he was never tired of 
 pointing out to over-confident workers in subsequent Parliamentary 
 elections- not to the strength of his opponents, but to the over- 
 confidence of his friends ; and because many of his warmest 
 supporters, feeling sure of his success, gave their votes to the 
 weaker candidate of the same party ; but, of course, it gave rise 
 to misunderstanding and surprise outside those who knew the 
 circumstances. For instance, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr. Fraser, 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 " Bishop's Court, Manchester, 
 
 " November 26th, 1873. 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I cannot resist writing a line to express the regret 
 with which I see that some malignant influence or other I 
 know not whether it is personal or partisan has driven you 
 from your place on the Wolverhampton School Board, where 
 (so far as my knowledge goes) you have done such signal 
 service in a great cause. I regret it not so much on personal 
 grounds for you can well afford to be relieved of a heavy 
 burden as on public. I regret to see a large constituency 
 refuse, I presume on some secondary motive, to grant a man, 
 whose capacity in working a great experiment has been 
 tested, the opportunity of still using the experience he has 
 gained in the public service. These caprices of the popular
 
 78 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 mind are, more than anything else, what fill me with appre- 
 hension for the future of England. Forgive me for intruding 
 upon you with this expression of my feelings. I could not 
 help giving it. With kind remembrances, I remain, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. MANCHESTER." 
 
 He never stood for the School Board again; and that Wolver- 
 hampton took the lesson to heart is proved by the steady majorities 
 which were his at all Wolverhampton's future Parliamentary 
 elections. This seems to have been a breaking-point with purely 
 local life. His energies were finally directed into the channel of 
 politics. He had striven to keep party politics out of the civic 
 chamber to identify himself with all the public life of the town 
 outside the political arena ; but at this period he evidently felt 
 that his apprenticeship was served, and that the time had come 
 to concentrate himself on the representation of the town he had 
 so strenuously served.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PROFESSIONAL LIFE 
 
 " The law, 
 Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Human longings are perversely obstinate, and to the man whose mouth 
 is watering for a peach it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow." 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 " Seest thou a man diligent in his business ? 
 He shall stand before kings." 
 
 Proverbs of Solomon. 
 
 IT has been stated elsewhere indeed, the fact runs through 
 the warp and woof of my father's life that his profession 
 was not that branch of the Law which was most congenial to him. 
 Amongst all his papers there is literally no material relating to his 
 profession, and it was a subject which he never spoke of in his 
 ordinary everyday life. He had a quarrel with fate that he could 
 not go to the Bar, and this blighted his enthusiasm for the other 
 branch of the profession. To undertake any work whatsoever, 
 congenial or otherwise, was in Henry Fowler's case to master it 
 and to do it well ; but there is a marked lack of that enthusiasm 
 in this work, which was so apparent in all other departments, and 
 a perpetual expansion, beyond the confines of a solicitor's office, 
 into wider matters of business which claimed his powers and held 
 his interest. As daily routine was so unfailing a factor in his 
 scheme of life, and old associations so tenacious a bond, his offices 
 in Darlington Street, Wolverhampton, became verily an annexe 
 of his home, and in them he spent the main part of every day that 
 he was not in London. His room there held far wider business 
 
 79
 
 8o The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 claims than the offices declared, and was peopled by all local 
 interests bound up in his town, his constituency, and a vast number 
 of friends and acquaintances, who sought his counsel and were 
 guided by his wisdom outside the limited area of a mere lawyer's 
 advice. 
 
 On leaving London, at twenty-five years of age, to begin his 
 professional life in Wolverhampton, he received the following 
 letter : 
 
 " LAW STUDENTS' DEBATING SOCIETY." 
 
 " 13, Gray's Inn Square, 
 
 June 30th, 1855. 
 " DEAR SIR, 
 
 " It affords me much pleasure to communicate the 
 following resolution unanimously passed at the Meeting of 
 the Society on Tuesday last. 
 
 " 'That the most cordial thanks of the Society be given 
 to Mr. Fowler for his long and most able services as one 
 of the Committee, and this meeting desires to express its 
 great regret at the loss to the Society of Mr. Fowler's 
 services.' 
 
 " I trust you will not consider it presumptuous when I state 
 that there is not a member of the Society, whether old or 
 young, but will regret your leaving us ; and I am sure in your 
 future sphere, we all wish you the success in life that your 
 honesty and ability deserve, and we doubt not but that you 
 will become as brilliant an ornament in your profession as 
 you always have been in the Society. Permit me to subscribe 
 myself, 
 
 " My dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 CHARLES MOSSOP, 
 
 " Secretary. 
 " Henry Hartley Fowler, Esq." 
 
 His first partner in Wolverhampton was his wife's brother-in- 
 law Mr. Charles Corser, one of the old-fashioned type of lawyer
 
 Professional Life 81 
 
 which has vanished away a member of an old county family, a 
 friend of all the other county families, and almost a kinsman of all 
 their concerns. His second partner was Mr. F. T. Langley, and 
 his third Mr. C. N. Wright. To both of the latter I am indebted 
 for some details of his professional life. 
 
 " My intimate association with Lord Wolverhampton," writes 
 Mr. Langley, " began in the year 1874, when I became Managing 
 Clerk to his then firm of Corser and Fowler, and one of my earliest 
 recollections is a good indication of the universally kind and fair 
 manner in which he always treated me during an association which 
 lasted till the year 1908 thirty-four years. I asked for a salary 
 somewhat larger than his firm was disposed to pay, when I came 
 to them, just out of my articles, and I ultimately agreed to go at 
 the smaller salary that they felt justified in offering. When I had 
 been some two months in their employ, Mr. Fowler (as he was 
 then) sent for me, and said that they had come to the conclusion 
 that I was worth the salary that I had asked, and that I should 
 have it as from the commencement of my engagement. There 
 was, of course, no obligation upon him to make any alteration in 
 the bargain which we had made. 
 
 " It was in 1879 that our first partnership was entered into, 
 and we continued in partnership upon the most cordial terms, 
 which were never broken by any disagreement or unpleasantness 
 of any kind, till 1908, when on being raised to the peerage, and 
 becoming Lord President of the Council, the partnership, which 
 had been only a nominal one for many years, came finally to an 
 end. Our arrangements were made for periods of seven years at 
 a time, and, from the nature of his other duties, he necessarily, as 
 time went on, became less and less concerned in the actual business 
 of the firm, with the result that, when a fresh term's partnership 
 had to be arranged, I always asked for a little more than I had had 
 before, a request which he invariably granted without any attempt 
 to beat me down or to haggle as to terms ; and when some ten 
 years before he ultimately retired, we were discussing a renewal, he 
 voluntarily said to me that he thought that the business was now 
 more mine than this ; and that, therefore, he proposed that in 
 the new partnership deed the provision, which had always found 
 
 6
 
 82 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 a place in our arrangements, that an out-going or a deceased 
 partner should receive a sum of money for goodwill, ought in 
 fairness as far as he was concerned to be omitted, and it was 
 omitted accordingly. 
 
 " These two instances have always seemed to me to show his 
 absolute fairness, and his power of looking at matters from another 
 person's point of view." 
 
 In July, 1908, he wrote to Mr. Langley : 
 
 " Duchy of Lancaster Office, 
 
 " July I3th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR LANGLEY, 
 
 " Thanks for your letter of the I2th. I have 
 accepted the Law Society's invitation for the ist of October, 
 and I think I should not alter my professional position until 
 after that date hi fact, at the end of the Long Vacation. 
 But the details of dates and notices can stand over until we 
 both return. 
 
 " I most cordially reciprocate your kind allusions to our 
 long and harmonious partnership. I have greatly valued 
 your uniform personal and professional attachment to myself, 
 and the courtesy, consideration and good feeling which you 
 have so generously displayed towards me ; and I hope we 
 may both be spared for many years to be under the same roof 
 and enjoy unbroken friendship. 
 
 " Sir Robert Perks, at a recent public dinner, referred 
 to his twenty-five years of partnership with me as having 
 been never broken by any difference, and I feel grateful that 
 my two old partners can truthfully unite in the same memory. 
 " With my kindest regards to Mrs. Langley, 
 " I am, Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " WOLVERHAMPTON." 
 
 The routine of office work is so uneventful that it leaves no 
 records worthy of repetition, except these evidences from those 
 with whom he worked of my father's upright and kindly dealings
 
 Professional Life 83 
 
 with all with whom circumstances brought him into contact, 
 especially those who were bound to him by any tie. And from the 
 few notes I have been able to collect of this department of his 
 life, it is clearly shown how the simple and lowly-mindedness of 
 the great were ever shown in his attitude towards those who were 
 connected with the humbler aspects of his career. Though he was 
 the first solicitor who attained Cabinet rank, though his whole 
 profession was illumined by his distinctions, yet he was always 
 the same in his Wolverhampton office ; and never asserted, or even 
 remembered, the lustre his name bestowed not only upon the firm 
 with which he was connected, but upon the whole profession. 
 Indeed to his mind the " Henry Fowler " which was painted on 
 the doors and deed-boxes of his first offices was the same name 
 as that of the illustrious statesman ; it was the name of the man, 
 and as a man he was always the same. 
 
 " I cannot forbear," writes Major Hay, a close friend and con- 
 nection, " touching this personal note. I look upon him as the 
 truest and most reliable friend I ever had ; and I have often said 
 of him that he is one of the very few men I have known who was 
 not spoiled by prosperity." 
 
 Certainly his life appeared wholly prosperous to the onlooker, 
 but the reader of its inner workings will see how many disappoint- 
 ments there were to leaven the lump. So all lives differ in their 
 outside and their inside aspects. I have heard him say that he 
 had never known a man in political life in whose mouth at one 
 time or other there was not the bitter taste of disappointment. 
 Onlookers see the most of many games, but not that of politics. 
 
 During the time that Mr. Langley was articled to his firm, the 
 Midland Bank, as it was then, was in what was supposed to be 
 a very critical condition ; and an important meeting was held at 
 Derby, which Henry Fowler attended, taking with him the young 
 clerk to render any assistance that might be wanted. Mr. Langley 
 says that he can remember nothing of the details, but these main 
 facts remain. The meeting was a very stormy one, and it was 
 popularly supposed at the time that it would end in a resolution 
 to wind up the Bank, or, at any rate, in a strong censure's being 
 passed upon the directors. " Towards the end of the meeting 
 
 6*
 
 84 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Mr. Fowler addressed the shareholders, put the position before 
 them, and explained to them so clearly the unwisdom of taking 
 any steps that would injure and perhaps destroy the future of 
 the Bank, that he completely turned the meeting round, and no 
 adverse steps of any kind were taken. I remember people saying 
 at the time," Mr. Langley adds, " that he had saved the Bank." 
 
 As an instance of his generous trust in those in whom he had 
 confidence, among whom his partners in business were assuredly 
 included, during the preliminaries of his first Parliamentary elec- 
 tion in 1880, Mr. Arthur Wright, whom he had asked to be his 
 election agent, died suddenly, and he at once asked Mr. Langley to 
 take his place. He knew that his partner, though not an active 
 politician, was not of his way of thinking, and many of his sup- 
 porters strongly objected to his choosing someone as his agent who 
 had the reputation of belonging to the other side, and it was sug- 
 gested to him that it was a very dangerous proceeding to take. 
 He, however, never swerved from his decision, his answer to those 
 who objected being that as he knew Mr. Langley, so he trusted 
 him, and was quite satisfied with the choice he had made. It 
 was during this election campaign that his agent was struck more 
 particularly by my father's attitude of extreme caution. " At 
 his first election," he tells me, " Mr. Fowler was in some dread 
 of the possibility of accusations of bribery being made against 
 him, and he required me to be with him all day long although 
 I thought perhaps there was other work that should be done 
 so that, if any accusation was brought against him, he would have 
 evidence at hand to refute it. This cautious attitude of his was, 
 to my mind, responsible for the fact that during the whole of his 
 career in all its branches, never did he get into any ambiguous 
 position, nor was any suggestion ever made against his absolute 
 integrity. What I am alluding to in this is the great readiness 
 with which nowadays imputations are made against prominent 
 men which are often totally untrue, a fate which Lord Wolver- 
 hampton, as I have said, was successful in always avoiding." 
 
 It has been noted more than once how my father continually 
 quoted trite proverbial sayings, but I should be inclined to say 
 that he practised their wisdom more even than preached it. To
 
 Professional Life 85 
 
 be forearmed because he had been forewarned, and that by his 
 own caution, was an integral part of his habit of mind. To be in 
 time with the proverbial stitch saved him many a future nine. To 
 look before he leaped into any situation if his deliberate entry 
 therein could possibly be described as a leap ! was an instinct as 
 well as a planned course of action. All such were the texts upon 
 which his life was the sermon. But of his caution, I would say 
 that it grew so immense that having dominated for so long, and 
 in some measure so unduly, all his active life, there came a time 
 when it at last outgrew its strength ; and though saving him 
 from possible ills, it robbed him of certain good. 
 
 Mr. Langley's recollections also include my father's great dislike 
 to, and even almost a hatred of, the introduction into politics of 
 any personalities. " I well remember," he says, " a striking 
 instance of this ; on one occasion Mr. Fowler was going to speak 
 in a contested election. As was generally the case when he was in 
 Wolverhampton and at his office, we were having a friendly gossip 
 about current events. He told me about his forthcoming visit, 
 and said that he was rather suspicious that he might be asked to 
 join in some personalities which were being somewhat largely 
 indulged in at that particular election ; and I well remember how 
 he emphatically said : ' I will have nothing to do with these dirty 
 personalities. I will attack the man's principles as much as they 
 like, but I will never be a party to attacking any man personally ! ' 
 
 The young partner in the firm, Mr. C. N. Wright, sends also a 
 few descriptive notes of my father's everyday office life : " It 
 was during the last twenty years or so of Lord Wolverhampton' s 
 life that I knew him at his office in Wolverhampton. Until he 
 was raised to the peerage, he was a member of the firm, and took 
 out a certificate to enable him to practise as a solicitor, but it was 
 very seldom that he himself undertook any legal business. He 
 used to say that he was out of touch with the everyday work of 
 a solicitor, and he would leave the control of matters with his 
 partners ; but his interest in what was going on was keen and 
 unfailing, and his advice was constantly asked by them and always 
 readily given. 
 
 " When he was not in London he attended every day. His office
 
 86 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 was a bright sunny room on the first floor, and except in summer- 
 time he liked a good fire, and usually preferred to make it up him- 
 self from time to time. An offer to put coal on was nine times 
 out of ten pleasantly, but firmly, declined. Every morning, soon 
 after ten, he came in and found his letters and six or eight morning 
 papers waiting for him, and these he looked through first thing. 
 It did not take long, for he was a wonderfully quick reader, and 
 before eleven he would put the papers on one side, reserving some- 
 times any special ones which he wished to study more closely, 
 until later in the day. His correspondence was undertaken next, 
 and he would dictate his letters to a shorthand clerk, preferring 
 to use his private notepaper and usually sending down any letters 
 on business notepaper for another partner to sign. After this 
 was done callers would begin to arrive, and there were many who 
 esteemed a chat with him as one of their most valued privileges. 
 Local affairs, political organization, church matters, charitable 
 schemes and personal and family business, all came under discus- 
 sion ; and although he did not always appear to the public gaze, 
 he had a greater share in these matters than many knew of, and 
 his counsel was constantly sought and always given. 
 
 "Then he would want to know about important matters of legal 
 business which were being transacted in the office, and would dis- 
 cuss them with his partners and give them the benefit of his 
 experience. It was, to a young man, an education in itself, to see 
 how quickly he would get to the bottom of an intricate matter, 
 waving aside all details and side issues until the kernel had been 
 found and the position taken up by each party defined. Then the 
 line along which a settlement could be arrived at would be indi- 
 cated, and the line likely to be taken by the other side pointed 
 out, and here his knowledge both of men and affairs would be 
 especially displayed. Sitting in his chair at his desk, or standing 
 with his back to the fire, Sir Henry could see further through a 
 brick wall than most people who are actually engaged in 
 business. 
 
 "A light lunch, which, until very late in life, was taken in his 
 room, and perhaps a short walk if the day was fine, and then the 
 afternoon would be given up to writing, to personal business, or
 
 Professional Life 87 
 
 to the preparation of speeches, and soon after four o'clock his 
 carriage would come to take him home. 
 
 " A few days before he died I heard that his carriage was at 
 the door and went out to speak to him. In reply to my inquiries 
 he told me that he was much better, and hoped soon to be back 
 at the office. He seemed delighted to hear that his room was 
 prepared for him every day as usual, and said how pleased he 
 should be when he could return to it." 
 
 It is not easy to gather up a comprehensive impression of such 
 a man as Henry Fowler was, before he had stamped his name on 
 his day and generation, before he had grown to his full stature 
 a head and shoulders above the average man. Yet it is, according 
 to Mr. Augustine Birrell, " always the early parts of life that are 
 the most valuable both to read and to preserve "for the future 
 use of the historian. After a man becomes a Cabinet Minister 
 and a prominent figure in political society his life becomes very 
 much like that of any other similarly-situated individual." So 
 the Cabinet Minister himself feels ; but there are others than the 
 historian in the public to cater for. I am reminded of a little 
 strange lady, I forget from where either a remote constituency 
 or an American State who called at our London house in the 
 year 1895, and having closely scrutinized our drawing-room, she 
 proffered this remarkable request : " And now, my dear Miss 
 Fowler, please tell me something of the habits of Cabinet 
 Ministers." It was indeed difficult to surmount the obvious 
 temptation of describing my father as if he had been a camel 
 or a kangaroo, and not to thrill her with fictitious, dramatic 
 details. She was not an historian. 
 
 In the early days of his Wolverhampton life, before his " habits " 
 became worthy of interest to one section of the community, but 
 when they were in Mr. Birrell's opinion most worthy of note, my 
 parents found life-long and most interesting friends in the 
 quartette of sisters, the Misses Macdonald, who were subsequently 
 known to the world as Lady Burne- Jones, Lady Poynter, Mrs. 
 Kipling and Mrs. Alfred Baldwin. The last of whom sends me 
 the following early recollections : 
 
 " When I first knew Lord Wolverhampton he was a young
 
 88 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 man of little more than thirty years of age. Not many now 
 remember him as Mr. Henry Fowler, when he and his wife were 
 living in Wolverhampton in the early years of their happy marriage, 
 and before his political life had begun. 
 
 " After so great a lapse of time my memory of him naturally 
 cannot be a continuous one, but consists of isolated, vivid im- 
 pressions fresh as though received yesterday. And it is the same 
 with my recollections of Lady Wolverhampton, for whom I had 
 the warmest affection and admiration. She, too, in a different 
 way had as marked a personality as her husband and equally 
 impressed my mind. 
 
 " The friendship between our families began when my father, 
 the Rev. George Browne Macdonald, was Minister of the Wesleyan 
 Chapel, then attended by Mr. and Mrs. Fowler. At that time our 
 home life was completely overshadowed by the long illness of our 
 father, and almost all the sunshine that came to my sisters and 
 myself in those sad days, we owed to the affectionate kindness of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Fowler. We were lively girls in our teens, full of 
 interest in life and affairs, in books and politics, and the delightful 
 evenings at Summerfield where we discussed all things in heaven 
 and earth, and not without happy laughter, sent us home to 
 refresh our parents with a recital of our exhilarating conversations 
 with our host and hostess. 
 
 " I can recall Mr. Fowler's appearance at this time very clearly, 
 his powerful and interesting face with deep-set, grey eyes, and firm 
 and well-formed mouth and chin. His habitual expression was 
 grave almost to melancholy. At times he looked as though he 
 was weary of life or even bored by it. But all came right the 
 moment he smiled. I remember in the enthusiasm of my youth 
 mentally comparing the transformation wrought by his smile, to 
 the effect of a sudden flood of sunshine illuminating a rugged cliff. 
 
 "In those days I considered him a man of moods, and when he 
 was silent or preoccupied I regretted a lost opportunity of stimulat- 
 ing and enlightening talk. No one could be more charming in 
 conversation, and he knew how to make use of a pleasant vein of 
 raillery, and was endowed with a keen sense of humour. He had 
 a beautiful voice, clear and penetrating, with great variety of
 
 Professional Life 89 
 
 modulation and expression, and persuasive charm. The power 
 of such a.' voice is invaluable in a public speaker. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler held his own opinions with tenacity, but he accorded 
 to others the same liberty. His was, I think, a distinctly argu- 
 mentative mind, and he heartily enjoyed a good-humoured mental 
 conflict. He pleased us very much by his willingness to discuss 
 a subject with us young girls, as though we were grown-up women, 
 he never quenched us because of our youth. He could hold three 
 of us at bay at once, in our spirited encounters. I remember 
 lively discussions round the table in which Mr. and Mrs. Fowler, 
 my sisters and I took active parts, the chorus of laughter, and 
 in the midst of all Mrs. Fowler's voice from behind the tea-urn 
 saying in the most good-tempered tone : ' Henry, I entirely 
 disagree with you ! ' 
 
 " Mr. Fowler was in those days the leading spirit in connexion 
 with the Wolverhampton Library, where we young people spent 
 many a happy hour browsing among its store of books new or old. 
 We were always glad when we happened to meet him there, and 
 to have a book talk with him, however short. I remember vividly 
 an afternoon when I was alone in one of the bays of the library 
 vaguely seeking for something interesting or amusing to read. 
 Presently I found myself wandering among the robust novelists 
 of the eighteenth century, whose works I only knew by name. 
 I was reaching down one old leather-bound volume after another, 
 when Mr. Fowler's approach was heralded by the sound of his 
 unmistakable voice in conversation with the librarian. A minute 
 later and he had come to where I was busy with my quest. After 
 a friendly greeting he asked me what book I was looking at, and 
 I showed it to him at once. He glanced at the title, and then 
 told me in the kindest and frankest manner that it was not a 
 book suitable for me ; indeed entirely unsuitable, and that I had 
 much better leave it unread. It was not a book for a young girl. 
 All this was said so pleasantly, and yet with a certain earnest- 
 ness that made it quite acceptable. I believed him, thanked him, 
 and replaced the volume, where so far as I was concerned it 
 resumed its dusty slumber on the shelf. 
 
 " My memories of Lady Wolverhampton are all happy ones.
 
 90 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 She was absolutely unchanging in her affection. Time made no 
 difference in the steady warmth of her kindness. After long 
 absence she always met one again exactly at the point where we 
 had parted. I cannot remember ever having heard her say any- 
 thing that could give pain, and she was wonderfully discreet 
 in all she said without giving one an uncomfortable sense of 
 restraint in conversation. United with her warm heart and bright 
 intelligence she had a true power of sympathy and in an unusual 
 degree. While she wept with those that wept she possessed 
 also perhaps tjie rarer gift of rejoicing with those that rejoiced. 
 From my girlhood to the end of her life no joy and no sorrow 
 came to me without the expression of her loving sympathy. 
 
 "When I heard of Lady Wolverhampton's death, though I have 
 seldom seen her of late years, I realized that something precious 
 had gone out of my life." 
 
 Another young friend of my parents, who was dearly loved 
 almost as a daughter, was their niece, Mary Eleanor Corser, whose 
 husband, Major Hay, holds memories, too, of these far-away 
 days, and has impressions founded upon an intimacy with my 
 parents, which began away back in the sixties. 
 
 " The general impression which your father left upon my mind," 
 writes Major Hay, " is that of a gracious influence working through 
 a strong personality. He was a man of indomitable moral courage, 
 but I had always considered him somewhat timid physically till 
 I was travelling in Scotland with him and your mother ; we were 
 driving and there was an accident to the horses which might 
 have been very serious, and I much admired his perfect coolness 
 and self-possession." 
 
 What hidden treasures lie in every man's nature ! Henry 
 Fowler's moral courage many could comment upon, but this is 
 the only illustration of there being any physical courage buried 
 in his breast. The key to this secret chamber, as to all the regions 
 of his character, was a claim a crisis. He could always rise to an 
 occasion, but without the occasion he sat still. He was never one 
 of the men who had a creative work to do; who would rise, not 
 because any occasion called, but because they had wings and 
 must fly, careless as the birds of motive or direction. Henry
 
 Professional Life 91 
 
 Fowler never flew he stood up when there was something to 
 do, and he did it. 
 
 '' I always considered," continues Major Hay, " that his hatred 
 of cruelty was very pronounced and perhaps it carried him 
 further than I could follow." This allusion is to my father as a 
 magistrate, Major Hay having been the Chief Constable of Wolver- 
 hampton at that time. And the stern soldier's idea of discipline 
 could not see cruelty in a penal strictness which Henry Fowler 
 on the Bench never would enforce. Indeed he so disliked the 
 imposition of any punishment that he rarely sat on the Bench, 
 and " the severity of all sentences " was a theme on which "he 
 used to wax eloquent in denunciation. The only gleam of silver- 
 lining to the cloud of his disappointment at not going to the Bar 
 was the fact that, as a Judge, he might have had to condemn, 
 though it was the Chancery Bar that his soul thirsted for, and to 
 adjudicate there would have been meat and drink to him. 
 
 " During the few years immediately preceding his election 
 to Parliament he took little part in the proceedings of the Watch 
 Committee of Wolverhampton, and he never became an active 
 Magistrate as far as the Police Courts were concerned ; his in- 
 fluence, which was great, seems to me to have been exerted 
 indirectly, and probably was all the more efficacious for that 
 limitation. 
 
 " I have heard him speak many times, and contrasting him with 
 other effective speakers I always considered that your father spoke 
 primarily to the heart. There was a note running through his 
 speeches which tended towards raising subjects higher than imme- 
 diate self-interest. He certainly had wonderful tact and self- 
 restraint. He was a thorough believer in Party government, and 
 seemed to feel that personal predilections must sometimes be kept 
 in subjection unless essential principles were involved. 
 
 " Many years ago, before my path in life was clearly marked, 
 we discussed the Law as a profession, and I well remember the 
 enthusiasm with which he would speak of the system of English 
 Law. His admiration would be specially kindled when considering 
 our Courts of Law as the safeguards of liberty, and he would urge 
 that in them there was no wrong without its remedy.
 
 92 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " I remember discussing with him the difficulty of choosing a 
 political party or principle. He recapitulated the many evils and 
 oppressions which had been fought against in the past, and was 
 of opinion that no such clear dividing-line existed between the 
 parties as he considered there had formerly been. He thought 
 that the redress of moral wrongs was no longer the heritage of 
 one party. This was certainly anterior to 1886. 
 
 " He once, when I asked him if some compromise on the Home 
 Rule Bill was not possible, drily remarked : ' Tories never com- 
 promise, they only surrender.' " 
 
 In 1876 Henry Fowler joined Mr. (now Sir) Robert Perks in 
 the establishing of a London firm, in addition to his Wolver- 
 hampton one, and there began his life-long friendship and 
 intimacy with his new partner. 
 
 " The third time I saw Mr. Fowler," writes Sir Robert Perks 
 (they had met previously twice at the house of Mr. Perks' 
 father), " was in Wolverhampton in 1876. We met to arrange 
 our law partnership, which lasted for twenty-five years. Concern- 
 ing that happy and successful alliance, perhaps it is enough to 
 say that it was one long period of unbroken friendship. We often 
 differed in our judgment, but we were close friends all the time, 
 and throughout that long stretch of years we never had one un- 
 pleasant word. No letters of complaint or recrimination were 
 ever written. When business losses came, as they did more than 
 once, not a word of blame was ever uttered. We built up a large 
 law business and our house stood because it was not divided. 
 
 " The disposition to compromise, to which I have referred 
 elsewhere, was quite apparent when Mr. Fowler and I went to 
 choose our offices in London for I may say that our law busi- 
 ness was only in London. I had no professional connection with 
 the Wolverhampton business. Two offices were offered to us. 
 One was in a main thoroughfare, the other was in a side street, 
 but half the rent. I wanted the main street ! Fowler thought 
 we should start in a more modest way. We compromised. We 
 took the main street one, but arranged to sub-let part of our office 
 to a Trade Association to which I undertook to act as secre- 
 tary an office which, needless to say, I soon had to vacate. Some
 
 Professional Life 93 
 
 of the rules we made for the management of our London business 
 were rather curious. We decided that we would never touch 
 any criminal work : we would have nothing to do with Building 
 Societies : we would take no County Court cases : we would avoid 
 Divorce and Matrimonial disputes : and last of all we would do 
 no work for women ; though I am not sure that my partner 
 approved of this last condition. The policy of specializing upon 
 railway and Parliamentary practice which we pursued proved 
 a wise one, for within four years of starting business we became 
 the lawyers for the Metropolitan Railway and found our hands 
 full of work in the Parliamentary Committee Rooms." 
 
 Henry Fowler's profession was so dominated by his desire for, 
 and devotion to, public life that it sinks into the shade as we 
 look at his career as a whole. Even when his profession was 
 apparently his main object in earlier years, he was gradually but 
 surely becoming more and more immersed in public life. The 
 public life of Methodism, the public life of Wolverhampton, the 
 public life of politics, all drew him outside the interests of his 
 office and claimed his growing powers. And from the time he went 
 into Parliament in 1880 he practically lost all interest in the 
 office work in Wolverhampton, and took little if any part in 
 the conduct of business. There were, of course, certain matters 
 about which his partners consulted him, and certain things which 
 perhaps in a sense he did ; but after he became a Member of 
 Parliament he never carried through any local business, and 
 more and more, with great rapidity, he ceased to know what was 
 going on or to be interested in it. 
 
 Possibly his interest was transferred more rapidly than other- 
 wise it would have been because he happened to feel that he could 
 trust his partner. 
 
 Of course he had the confidence of a great many commercial 
 men in a very large way of business, and over and over again 
 people have said how very much they valued the wise advice that 
 he had given them on various matters. The fact that he was a 
 sound lawyer and a good business man, combined with his great 
 abilities, made his assistance very valuable to business men, both 
 from the legal point of view and also from the general business
 
 94 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 point of view. But he never was, nor wished to be, nor could 
 have been, at home in a family-lawyer type of business. 
 
 He liked his professional life in London much the better of the 
 two. The wide acreage of business gave him scope, and the kind 
 of work he did there was more congenial to him. In later years 
 the whole financial department was left in his hands, while his more 
 ambitious and less cautious partner galloped over a broader area 
 of business than could be attached to any such firm. And as 
 time went on, the London office became a kind of meeting-ground 
 and starting-point from which both its original partners stepped 
 out day by day into their fuller life outside. Directorships in the 
 Publishing House of Cassells, the Star Insurance and other 
 Companies, the Chairmanship of the Kent Water Works, and 
 subsequently that of the National Telephone Company, gave 
 Henry Fowler business interests beyond his profession, and pro- 
 vided a compensating balance against the purely voluntary 
 public work with which his life was packed. 
 
 For many years my father was a member of the Council of the 
 Incorporated Law Society ; and in the year 1 894, when he became 
 Secretary of State for India, the following resolution of congratu- 
 lation was passed by that Society : " Resolved unanimously, 
 That the sincere congratulations of the Council on behalf of the 
 Incorporated Law Society and of the Profession be tendered to 
 the Right Honourable Henry Hartley Fowler, M.P., on his ap- 
 pointment to the high office of Secretary of State for India, which 
 they believe is now held for the first time by a practising solicitor. 
 
 " The Council derive much gratification from the fact that a 
 Member of the Council of this Society should by the exertion of 
 his own energy and undoubted ability have attained a position of 
 such eminence, and thus have acquired not only well-deserved 
 honour for himself, but also for the Profession of which Mr. Fowler 
 is a member. 
 
 " The Council earnestly hope that notwithstanding the arduous 
 duties which the office he holds entail upon him, Mr. Fowler may 
 still be able to give to this Society the benefit of his advice and 
 assistance in matters affecting the interests of the Profession." 
 
 The Council also presented him with his portrait painted by Mr.
 
 Professional Life 95 
 
 Arthur Cope, R.A., which, after being exhibited in the Royal 
 Academy, was hung in the Great Central Hall of the Incor- 
 porated Law Society. 
 
 In 1901 his profession conferred upon him the highest honour 
 which they held in their hands in appointing him President of 
 the Incorporated Law Society, and during his presidency he deli- 
 vered at their annual meeting at Oxford, on October 8th, 1901, 
 the following address : 
 
 " As this is the first Annual Provincial Meeting of the Incor- 
 porated Law Society since the close of the nineteenth century, I 
 think that I am justified in taking a wider range of legal history 
 and legal affairs than the administration and legislation of a single 
 year. 
 
 " The nineteenth century, remarkable as it has been for its 
 discoveries in science, for its advance in civilization, and for the 
 enormous improvement in the physical, social and moral condi- 
 tion of the people of the United Kingdom, is no less remarkable 
 for its legislative history. During the century upwards of ten 
 thousand, five hundred Acts of Parliament were passed ; and 
 although many of them were only of a temporary character, yet 
 the bulk of the laws by which we are now governed were enacted 
 between 1800 and 1900. Of the sixteen octavo volumes which in 
 the last edition of the Revised Statutes represent our legislation 
 from 1 200 to 1886, two volumes contain the existing laws enacted 
 prior to 1800, and the remaining fourteen volumes contain the 
 laws made between 1800 and 1886. 
 
 " I do not propose to survey or even enumerate this vast mass 
 of legislation. I will only recall to your recollection the fact 
 that this legislation comprises : 
 
 " Firstly, the great changes in the laws affecting real property, 
 which embodied the reports of the Real Property Commission 
 between 1829 and 1833 ; the laws affecting wills, settlements, 
 land belonging to persons under disabilities, copyholds, leaseholds, 
 commons, tithes, landlords and tenants, mortgages, titles, convey- 
 ances in a word, the gradual abolition of the incidence of 
 feudalism, which during many centuries had controlled the tenure, 
 the title, the transfer, and the user of land.
 
 96 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " Secondly, the development of our commercial law, and of 
 the laws affecting contracts, negotiable instruments, ships, and 
 the dealings with personal property of all descri tions, bank- 
 ruptcy, insolvency, and the relations of debtor and creditor. 
 
 " Thirdly, the Poor Law Act of 1834 an( i the subsequent statutes 
 relating thereto, the great changes in local government effected 
 by the reconstruction and reform of municipal corporations, and 
 the two Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, which established 
 county, district and parish councils. 
 
 " Fourthly, the constitution and control of the police, the laws 
 affecting public health, education, the workers in factories and 
 mines, the protection of women and children, employers' liability 
 and workmen's compensation for accidents. 
 
 " Fifthly, the incorporation and control of railway companies, 
 the trading of joint stock companies with limited liability and 
 their powers and obligations. 
 
 " Sixthly, the laws affecting religious disabilities, infants, 
 lunatics, married women, marriage and divorce. 
 
 " Seventhly, the laws affecting the supervision and administra- 
 tion of the departments controlled by the Board of Trade, the 
 creation and duties of the Local Government Board and of the 
 Board of Agriculture. 
 
 " Eighthly, the changes in the administration of justice effected 
 by the Procedure and Judicature Acts in the redress of civil 
 wrongs, the enforcement of contracts and obligations, and the 
 protection of rights both of person and property ; and 
 
 " Lastly, the great constitutional changes effected with reference 
 to our electoral system, in the extension of the franchise, the pro- 
 visions for secret voting, the prevention of bribery and intimida- 
 tion, and the complete democratizing, in a word, of our Parlia- 
 mentary representation. 
 
 " These changes record an aggregate of legislative achievements 
 within the limit of a century, unparalleled, as I believe, in either 
 ancient or modern jurisprudence. 
 
 " And while the first forty years of the nineteenth century may 
 claim some share in that story of legislative progress, the chief 
 distinction attaches to, and will in future history be regarded as
 
 Professional Life 97 
 
 the especial glory of that illustrious reign which reduced our 
 constitutional monarchy to a science, and associated with the 
 efficient and pure administration of the law the greatest extent of 
 individual freedom, and secured the effective influence of popular 
 opinion in enacting and amending the legislation which national 
 and personal interests required. 
 
 " I must, however, in addressing a legal audience, single out 
 for special consideration some of those changes which have affected 
 the administration and practice of the law. Wise laws, if they 
 are to be obeyed, must be wisely enforced, and the administra- 
 tion of justice largely affects the belief in and loyalty to justice 
 Itself. 
 
 qp: "It is in th^s review that we remember the labours of the great 
 lawyers whose memories will always be associated with the law 
 reforms of the nineteenth century : Romilly, Mackintosh, 
 Brougham, Campbell, Denman, Sugden, Selborne and Cairns. 
 They fought the battles, they achieved the victories, which rescued 
 our administration of justice from the abuses, the delays, the 
 evasions, and the cruelties by which it was fettered, disfigured, 
 and disgraced. 
 
 " Our criminal law in the year 1800 was savage in its barbarity. 
 In that year there were more than two hundred crimes punishable 
 with death. Sir Samuel Romilly stated ' that there was no 
 other country in the world where so many and so large a variety 
 of offences were punishable by loss of life.' The crime of stealing 
 from the person above the value of one shilling, of stealing in a 
 shop to the value of five shillings, of stealing in a dwelling-house 
 to the value of forty shillings, of stealing anything from a bleaching 
 ground, of pretending to be a Greenwich pensioner, and other 
 trifling offences, were capital crimes. During the century that 
 awful category of offences which incurred the penalty of death has 
 been reduced from two hundred to four viz., high treason, murder, 
 piracy with violence, and setting fire to the king's ships, dockyards, 
 arsenals, naval and military stores. 
 
 " When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 ner convict 
 subjects were about fifty-three thousand. The convicts in prison 
 in the United Kingdom on December 31, 1899, were three thousand 
 
 7
 
 98 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 seven hundred and ten, of whom only two hundred and seventy 
 were imprisoned for terms of twenty years and upwards. The 
 population of the United Kingdom in 1837 was under twenty- 
 seven millions, and in 1899 about forty millions. The Prisoners' 
 Counsel Act, 1836, gave the prisoner the right to be properly 
 defended by counsel. Up to 1897 about twenty-six acts were 
 passed enabling accused persons in certain cases to give evidence ; 
 but it was not until the ninety-eighth year of the century that all 
 accused persons were enabled to give evidence in their own behalf. 
 
 " Our Courts of Equity and Common Law present changes and 
 improvements as marked and as gratifying as those I have referred 
 to in our criminal law. While the principles of equity which were 
 administered by Lord Eldon and Sir William Grant (who in 1800 
 were the only two judges in Chancery) have not been very 
 materially changed during the century, the modes by which these 
 principles were applied to enforce undoubted rights and to redress 
 intolerable wrongs were a disgrace to the law and to the courts 
 which allowed them. A Chancery suit was regarded as a social 
 civil war a terrible calamity to be avoided like plague or pestilence. 
 
 " It was not uncommon for years to intervene between the 
 setting-down of the cause for trial and the final judgment. Peti- 
 tions filed in 1810 were not disposed of in 1825. In the year 1811 
 there were thirty-six causes ready for hearing before Lord Eldon, 
 that had been set down for hearing in and before the year 1808 ; 
 and at the same date there were appeals waiting to be heard by 
 the House of Lords that had been set down for upwards of ten 
 years. 
 
 " Lord St. Leonards' Act of 1852 effected substantial reforms in 
 Chancery procedure, and prepared the way for the still greater 
 reforms which have been carried out under the Judicature Acts. 
 
 " The great reform in the administration of civil justice, a reform 
 which was resisted for half a century, was the creation of County 
 Courts. In the year 1833 a Royal Commission recommended the 
 establishment of a general system of local courts for the recovery 
 of small debts ; but it was not until 1846 that the present system 
 of County Courts a most inappropriate and misleading title was 
 established. There are now upwards of five hundred of these
 
 Professional Life 99 
 
 courts grouped into fifty-four circuits and served by fifty-four 
 judges. 
 
 " A serious question that arises in connection with the county 
 court system is imprisonment for debt. The number of persons 
 committed by County Court judges in the year 1899 was 7,864 ; 
 in 1898, 7,803 ; and in 1897, 7,727. The attention of Parliament 
 has been frequently called, and will, I have no doubt, be called 
 again to this widely-extended system of imprisonment for debt. 
 Its modification, not to say its abolition, might no doubt, to some 
 extent, affect the credit of the people, who would not be trusted 
 if there was no power for imprisoning them for the non-payment 
 of their debts. There are those who think that the reduction of 
 the credit system would be a boon instead of an injury to the 
 working man ; but it is an anomaly that the penalties of those 
 who do not pay small debts should so strikingly contrast with 
 the treatment of the insolvents of a greater magnitude, who not 
 only evade the payment of their debts, but also the consequences 
 which have been devised for preventing the wholesale defrauding. 
 
 " County Courts have stood the test of half a century. Origin- 
 ally regarded as a debt-collecting agency, they have, by the exten- 
 sion of jurisdiction which Parliament has conferred upon them, 
 emphatically become tribunals for bringing within the reach of 
 the masses and to their very doors justice year by year. As 
 vacancies have occurred on the County Court Bench, men of high 
 standing, long experience, eminent and judicial ability have been 
 appointed to be County Court judges. 
 
 " In 1800 there was no special legal education for barrister or 
 solicitor, and no examinations prior to their being admitted to the 
 practice of their profession. Now no one can be called to the Bar 
 or admitted as a solicitor without passing severe and testing 
 examinations in both law and practice. There is still room for 
 improvement in the legal education of law students of both branches 
 of the profession. 
 
 " While we congratulate ourselves upon what has been done 
 in the past, we must not shut our eyes to the necessity of what 
 must be done in the future in order to complete the reform of 
 the administration of justice in this country. The ideal of a 
 
 7*
 
 ioo The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 perfect administration of justice is that the tribunal should be 
 impartial and competent, that its procedure and decision should 
 be speedy and final, and that this should be secured at the smallest 
 possible expense to the suitor. 
 
 " The Judicature Acts have conferred great benefits on the 
 suitor by improved procedure. I fear they have not accompanied 
 that boon with any reduction in the costs of litigation. On the 
 contrary, the cost of obtaining justice in the High Court is greater. 
 While the suitor has a right to be exempted from all costs which 
 are not absolutely necessary, the public have a right to demand 
 that the large sums which are provided out of public taxation for 
 the administration of justice should be carefully guarded, and 
 that the judicial ability and experience which the nation happily 
 possesses (and for which the nation pays a larger sum than is 
 expended on any other judiciary) should not be wasted or mis- 
 applied. I have already given to you the statistics of Nisi Prius 
 trials in the provinces, and of the lamentable waste of time and 
 that means waste of money which they involve. I am satisfied 
 that the overwhelming majority of the profession have come to 
 the conclusion that, in the interests of efficiency as well as of 
 economy, the circuit system should be completely and thoroughly 
 reformed. In the days when the facilities of communication were 
 limited, when there were few newspapers, and when the inhabitants 
 of a locality rarely left their own immediate neighbourhood, and 
 so constituted in themselves isolated communities, it might have 
 been necessary for the effective administration of justice that 
 twice in the year the representatives of the sovereign should be 
 received in the chief towns of every county, and there bring home 
 to the masses of the people the unity, the dignity, and power 
 of that judicial system of which the sovereign is the head. But 
 those days have passed away ; what was appropriate and necessary 
 in 1800 is an absurd anachronism in 1901. Do not let me be mis- 
 understood. I am not in favour of centralizing the administration 
 of justice in the metropolis. I see great advantages to the suitors 
 and to the public in requiring that in the principal centres of 
 population, and in suitable localities throughout the length and 
 breadth of the land, both civil and criminal justice should be
 
 Professional Life 101 
 
 periodically administered by judges of the highest standing ; and, 
 holding that opinion, I am not an advocate for the sweeping away 
 of the circuit system. That system can be preserved and strength- 
 ened and made more effective by a selection of suitable places 
 where assizes should be periodically held, and by requiring, as 
 far as practicable, the trial of local causes in the localities where 
 the parties reside and where the dispute arises. Judicial time is 
 far too valuable and too costly to be expended in trying petty 
 larcenies and trumpery actions. A large number of the prisoners 
 tried at the Assizes ought to be tried at Quarter Sessions, and all 
 criminal justice administered at Quarter Sessions held for counties 
 should have the advantage, which many counties already possess 
 and which is compulsory in all boroughs, of the presiding judge 
 being a trained lawyer. 
 
 " All are agreed that the long imprisonments which too often 
 intervene between the committal for trial and the actual trial 
 should be abbreviated. That can only be thoroughly secured by 
 the more frequent sittings of the courts before whom those trials 
 are held and by a wise grouping of counties, apportioning to each 
 county in its turn the holding of the Assize. Much valuable judi- 
 cial time would be saved by the simplification of the ceremony 
 known as the ' opening of the Commission.' 
 
 " I venture to suggest that an essential part of any effective 
 reform of our criminal procedure is the establishment of a Court 
 of Criminal Appeal. The astounding and indefensible variety in 
 the sentences which different criminal judges inflict for the same 
 offences is a public scandal ; and although the interference of the 
 Home Secretary modifies the severity which has been, and still 
 is, a characteristic of our criminal justice, I think a surer and safer 
 remedy would be the existence of a Court of Appeal, which would 
 very soon practically establish the limits of punishment within 
 which the judicial discretion would be beneficially exercised. No 
 judge is entitled to allow any private or religious opinions of his 
 own with respect to particular offences to influence the punishment 
 which he awards on those who are guilty of such crimes. 
 
 " But the judges of the High Court not only try criminals ; 
 they also try causes, and too frequently causes of the most trivial
 
 IO2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 description. Public opinion, whether professional or commercial, 
 demands an extension of the jurisdiction of the County Courts. 
 A Nasmyth hammer will crack a nut as thoroughly as it will weld 
 molten steel ; but the great manufacturers of armour plates do 
 not utilize their steam-hammers for the cracking of nuts. That 
 expensive amusement is the monopoly of statesmen and Parlia- 
 ments. We want the separation in County Courts of what is 
 merely debt-collecting from genuine litigation. The debts, although 
 perhaps small in amounts, are of great importance to the parties 
 involved. 
 
 " One word before I close with reference to the making of our 
 laws. It has been for many years my privilege to take a share 
 in legislation, and while, as a Member of Parliament, I resent 
 (and that is not too strong a word to use) the sneers with which 
 some Judges -(both of superior and inferior Courts) criticize the 
 drafting of Acts of Parliament, I am ready to admit that our 
 present system is capable of improvement. Bills drawn by the 
 eminent lawyers who are the permanent, impartial, and able ser- 
 vants of the Government for the time being are often marred 
 and muddled by badly-drawn amendments adopted in a hurry 
 by the Committees to whom such Bills are referred. I sometimes 
 think that all Bills should, after they have passed the gauntlet of 
 Parliamentary discussion, be referred back to the Official Parlia- 
 mentary Counsel for their report as to the wording of such Bills 
 after they have passed through Committee, and that an opportunity 
 should be afforded of amending any errors of language, any con- 
 fusion of meaning, or any conflict with existing law, to which 
 the attention of Parliament would thus be drawn. 
 
 " We have made some progress in consolidation ; that progress 
 should be accelerated, and, as far as possible, the statutes affect- 
 ing various branches of our legislation should be consolidated into 
 one Act. Codification is a more difficult, but a not less necessary, 
 reform in any ideal system of law. The experiments already 
 made, such as the codification of the law affecting partnerships, 
 bills of exchange, the sale of goods, are an encouragement to a 
 more extensive following of the examples of the codes of antiquity, 
 and of that greatest triumph of Napoleon, the Code which will
 
 Professional Life 103 
 
 secure the immortality of his name when the story of his victories 
 and his dynasty are the faded records of a forgotten past. That 
 great lawyer and great judge, Lord Bowen, has well said : 
 
 " ' There is, and can be, no such thing as finality about 
 the administration of the law. It changes ; it must change ; 
 it ought to change with the broadening wants and requirements 
 of a growing country and with a gradual illumination of the 
 public conscience.' 
 
 " Our duty as members of that great profession which, through 
 evil report and good report, has rendered no small service to the 
 administration of justice and the protection of those individual 
 rights and individual liberties which are the elements, the founda- 
 tions, of civil society, of law and order, of individual and national 
 freedom our duty is to do our utmost to preserve the traditions 
 which we have inherited ; to remember the trust which has been 
 entrusted to our care, to discharge that trust with unflinching 
 integrity and unflagging industry ; to play our part in attacking 
 injustice and wrong, in bettering the laws by which our country 
 is governed, and in promoting the speedy and effective administra- 
 tion of impartial justice. 
 
 " I ask you to-day, especially the younger members of this 
 Society, to draw your inspiration for the law reforms of the 
 twentieth century from the legal history of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 " Seventy years have passed since Lord Brougham, in the 
 speech to which I have already referred, aroused the attention 
 of the House of Commons while he detailed the defects, the 
 abuses, the wrongs, the cruelties of the law and its administration. 
 He closed that superb oration with a picture I might say a 
 prophecy of the splendid future which he anticipated would be 
 the glory of some distant age and some future monarch. 
 
 " ' It was ' (said Lord Brougham) ' the boast of Augustus 
 that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. How 
 much nobler will be the sovereign's boast when he shall have 
 to say that he found law dear and left it cheap ; found it 
 a sealed book, left it a living letter ; found it the patrimony 
 of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor ; found it a
 
 104 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of 
 
 honesty and the shield of innocence ! ' 
 
 " The virtual realization of that noble ideal is not the least 
 among the many memorable triumphs of the reign of Queen 
 Victoria." 
 
 At the end of his year of office it was further resolved 
 unanimously : " That the Council desire to place on record 
 their high appreciation of the admirable manner in which the 
 Right Hon. Sir Henry Fowler, G.C.S.I., M.P., has discharged the 
 duties of President, and their recognition of the great advantage 
 to the whole profession, and especially to the Society, of the office 
 of President having been filled by one in such a distinguished 
 public position, and so generally esteemed and respected." 
 
 So, as in ah 1 the departments of life with which he was con- 
 nected, he brought distinction and honour to the profession to which 
 he belonged, counting it ever more important what he could do for 
 it, than what it could do for him.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 GENERAL ELECTION, l88o 
 
 "How now, my masters ! have you chose this man ? 
 He has our voices, sir. 
 We pray the gods he may deserve your loves." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Who if he rise to station of command 
 
 Rises by open means ; and there will stand 
 On honourable terms, or else retire." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 THE eve of the General Election of 1880 was filled with 
 stirring activity in the greatly-increased borough of 
 Wolverhampton. The number of its electors had risen to twenty- 
 four thousand, and an association was formed called the Liberal 
 Four Hundred, of which Henry Fowler was elected President. 
 That system of organization was fiercely attacked by the local 
 Conservatives, and it was a great joy to the new President that, 
 when a Tory deputation waited upon Lord Beaconsfield and 
 Lord Salisbury they were advised by their great leaders to work 
 in a similar manner. " Lord Beaconsfield," said Henry Fowler, 
 " was a great party leader, and a great tactician, and he knew, as a 
 great party leader and a great tactician, that if the party was to 
 win it must be organized. They must have officers, they must 
 have a party policy, and they must have men at the head to direct 
 them, because there was a great difference between a well-organized 
 constituency and a disorganized rabble." He also urged that 
 it was far better for a candidate to be chosen by the whole consti- 
 tuency than by a few leading members of the party, or for him to 
 come forward by his own personal introduction, and that was the 
 
 105
 
 io6 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 way in which he himself was chosen as a candidate for the borough 
 of Wolverhampton the following year. He had made an im- 
 pressive speech at Bingley Hall, Birmingham, at a huge meeting 
 held by Mr. Gladstone in 1 878, and had attracted public atten- 
 tion to himself there the whole Press of the country having 
 expressed the hope that he would soon be heard as a speaker in 
 the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone, in a letter to my father 
 many years later, referred to this speech and the effect it produced 
 upon him. My father had been asked to stand for several other 
 constituencies, but his mind was set upon representing Wolver- 
 hampton, and not even an earlier chance of getting into Parlia- 
 ment turned him from his purpose. The year before the General 
 Election, a statue was erected in Wolverhampton to the Right Hon. 
 Charles Pelham Villiers, on the completion of his fifty years' 
 representation of that borough, and the speech which Henry 
 Fowler made on the unveiling of the statue was as truly a prophecy 
 of the town's future political history as it was a review of its past. 
 The eulogy he pronounced upon the veteran representative was 
 a foreshadowing of that which he himself, a quarter of a century 
 later, also deserved, and the relationship between a constituency 
 and its Member, which he declared to be the perfect one, was that 
 which he himself maintained for so long. " It would be a poor 
 compliment to Mr. Villiers, or to any Member of Parliament, to 
 say that he is not a party man. I don't believe in those inde- 
 pendent members who are not to be depended upon. True to 
 his party, true to his leaders, true to his policy, he had yet com- 
 bined with party allegiance such a faithful, such an impartial 
 discharge of all those duties and they are not the least of the 
 duties of a Member of Parliament which lie outside the arena of 
 party strife that he had won, retained, and justified that public 
 confidence, that unanimous respect, which the proceedings of to- 
 day are intended to express and perpetuate. Wolverhampton is 
 proud of such a man, and I venture to say that Mr. Villiers is, 
 and ought to be, proud of such a constituency. At the second 
 contest which took place in this borough, Wolverhampton sent 
 Mr. Villiers, an inexperienced, untried, and then comparatively- 
 speaking unknown politician, to take the seat for the first time
 
 General Election, 1880 107 
 
 in the House of Commons. During the long succession of elections 
 I think eleven that choice had never been regretted and never 
 recalled. In the heat of the conflict, in the hour of the most 
 brilliant triumph of his Parliamentary life, Wolverhampton 
 renewed and repeated her confidence in the indomitable champion 
 of Free Trade, who never sheathed the sword until the victory 
 was final and complete ; and when at length the talents, the ex- 
 perience, the cultured common sense, the political sagacity, the 
 broad and enlightened statesmanship, which had for so many 
 years been devoted to the public good were required in the higher 
 services of the State, the borough gladly continued to the Minister 
 of the Crown the same admiration and support which it had so 
 freely accorded to the unofficial Member of Parliament. As 
 Englishmen, we are all justly proud of the House of Commons 
 as the oldest, and the noblest, and the best of those representa- 
 tive assemblies which are the symbols and the bulwarks of national 
 freedom and national progress ; the House of Commons, which 
 reflects not merely the public opinions, but the tone, the senti- 
 ments, the patriotism of those by whom it is elected. Consti- 
 tuencies that are to be bought are sure to be sold. . . . Mr. Villiers 
 can look Wolverhampton in the face, and Wolverhampton can 
 look Mr. Villiers in the face, with a consciousness that no stain 
 of corruption has ever dimmed the purity of the tie by which 
 they are bound together. A free Member and a free choice, they 
 point a bright and enduring example to those vast constituencies 
 by which the destinies of this Empire are so materially controlled, 
 and in future days, when that statue, standing in the centre of 
 this great hive of industry, shall tell the story of honourable, 
 brilliant, faithful, successful statesmanship, it will tell with tones 
 equally distinguished, equally forceful, the story of an enlightened, 
 trusting, patriotic constituency." 
 
 In these words he stated his ideals, and the story of his own 
 Parliamentary life tells how he was true to, and practically 
 realized, these ideals. It requires a good man to fulfil an ideal, 
 but it requires a great one to make others do so. Yet Henry 
 Fowler so taught, and trained, and trusted his constituency that it 
 never fell from these noble aspirations. It learned to look for
 
 io8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 great national service from its representative, rather than to 
 expect him to be a hack for opening bazaars, or presiding at 
 tea- meetings, or subscribing to football clubs. He scorned, and 
 taught Wolverhampton to scorn, the Member who buys his popu- 
 larity by ceaseless chattering to his constituents on every possible 
 subject, and by feeding them with sugar plums, or amusing them 
 with crackers. " I will do your work at Westminster," he would 
 say, " and you know that a good workman sticks to his work, else 
 he would never get it done ; and once a year I will summon the 
 electors together and give an account of my stewardship, and 
 receive from them the withdrawal or the renewal of my trust." 
 And this was his practice throughout his whole Parliamentary life. 
 
 I doubt if he opened half a dozen bazaars in five-and-twenty 
 years. He was never at the beck and call of those who wanted 
 to know his opinions on this or that. " If you keep calling a 
 man from his work to ask how he is getting on with it, you will 
 find he doesn't get on very fast." Nor had he any patience with 
 what he called " spoiling " a constituency in any way. But 
 on those great annual occasions when he rendered his account, 
 his electors learned all that he had done, and why he had done 
 it, and year after year they gave him a renewal of their confidence, 
 and they gained from him, not only a fuller knowledge of practical 
 politics, but an understanding of true statesmanship, which lifted 
 them above their local interests into that higher patriotism which 
 should be the crown of all political life. 
 
 Throughout the whole of his election campaign, Henry Fowler 
 dealt with practical, rather than theoretical, politics. He stated 
 his views strongly and straightly on the questions which would 
 involve a speedy vote, but into the arena of the discussion of 
 problems, which might never be presented to the populace, or, at 
 any rate, not for a considerable period, he would not be drawn. 
 An instance of this is given in a speech in which he refers to 
 the disestablishment of the Church, which was being used by his 
 opponents as a party cry. " I am not in theory in favour 
 of Establishment. I hold the converse of Lord Eldon, who said 
 that the Church was established not to make it political, but to 
 make the State religious. I think history has gone the other
 
 General Election, 1880 109 
 
 way, and if the question was now before the country whether 
 you should establish a Church on the lines of the present Establish- 
 ment, I, for one, should certainly say ' No.' But the question 
 of Disestablishment is not before the constituencies at the present 
 time ; it is not a question of practical politics at the present day. 
 If it were I do not want to hide myself behind that my answer 
 is : You cannot deal with an institution which has grown with our 
 growth and strengthened with our strength for many centuries 
 by an abstract question as to whether the thing is desirable or 
 not. You ask me am I in favour of the Disestablishment of 
 the English Church ? I ask you how do you propose to do 
 it ? I can conceive a mode of disestablishment by which a power- 
 ful Church would be endowed with an enormous sum of money 
 uncontrolled by the State, that would be a standing menace to 
 the civil and religious liberties of the people ; and I say I would 
 be opposed to such disestablishment. I can conceive of a mode 
 of disestablishment which would deprive the Church of England 
 of property to which she is as justly entitled as any other 
 denominational Church is entitled to its private property, and, 
 as an honest man, I would not consent to disestablishment on 
 such a principle. The question is one which depends entirely upon 
 the mode in which it is brought forward, the mode in which it is 
 proposed to be carried out, before I could express an opinion one 
 way or the other, and I certainly would take no mandate from 
 you to vote either one way or the other. I do not mean to be 
 pledged, and I do not ask you to be pledged by me, but I say this 
 that if any responsible Government, or any responsible Member 
 of the Opposition, brings forward a measure dealing with so vast 
 a question as the Disestablishment of the Church of England, 
 and does not propose, as it ought to be proposed, that the consti- 
 tuencies should have an opportunity of distinctly pronouncing 
 upon that measure when brought before them, I pledge myself 
 to you that I would have no voice to speak for Wolverhampton 
 on such an occasion, but that before I ventured to embody my 
 opinion, whatever it might be, in action, I should resign my seat 
 and come back to you and tell you candidly what I intended to 
 do."
 
 no The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Other times, other manners. The modern constituency is 
 not allowed to judge of all measures carefully, comprehensively, 
 one by one. Great questions and grave issues are now all jumbled 
 together in the party bag, and to be in favour of one implies a 
 compulsion to vote for all. My father was a great advocate 
 of the principles of party government, but such a speech as the 
 above shows how he also understood the importance of laying 
 upon the constituencies the responsibility to which, by the nature 
 of the constitution, they are rightfully entitled in the settlement 
 of any great measure affecting the life and interest of the nation. 
 He realized the sometimes forgotten truth that the Government 
 is not only to rule, and to guide, but also to serve the people, 
 and that therefore a rushed or crowded policy is not only a slight 
 on the constituencies, but a dishonour to the ideal of representa- 
 tive government. The question of the Disestablishment of the 
 Church of England is still, as when he spoke, outside the ring 
 of practical politics, but have there not been other questions of 
 grave importance, sorted out of a medley of measures, which 
 the people had never studied or decided upon, when it would have 
 been well if modern Members of Parliament had followed that good 
 old-fashioned lead, and resigned their seats sooner than be false 
 to, or ignorant of, the responsible opinions of the people whom 
 they were bound in honour to fairly represent ? The constituencies 
 in these days are asked a dozen questions, and are only allowed 
 one answer of " Yes " or " No." Not so did Henry Fowler treat 
 the borough of Wolverhampton. Not so did the Governments of 
 those days force the pace. Life moves faster now in every way, 
 but in public opinion there is a speed limit still. 
 
 An account of the election day of 1880 is given very simply 
 and characteristically by my mother in a letter to a cousin the 
 wife of an Irish landowner in Queen's County, dated April 8th, 
 1880. 
 
 " You will have seen by the papers that although there was a 
 hard fight here, Henry won by a very large majority, 5,732. 
 He had 12,000 promises and actually polled 11,606, which is con- 
 sidered exceptionally good. The poll was publicly declared at 
 ii p.m. in the open square in front of the Town Hall. The
 
 General Election, 1880 HI 
 
 receptions and orations which greeted Henry from the assembled 
 thousands have been quite overwhelming. His most trying ordeal 
 was a torchlight procession of 20,000 people of two miles' length, 
 cheering like the sound of the sea. He did by entreaty save 
 himself from the horses being taken out of the carriage and his 
 being drawn by the populace. He made thirty speeches during 
 the election campaign, avoiding and deprecating all personalities. 
 The worst said of him was that his manner was haughty, and 
 he bought all his things in London (which we don't). I was so 
 thankful it all passed off quietly, it would greatly have dis- 
 tressed me had anyone been hurt. Mr. Hickman, his opponent, 
 told him that he had vanquished his foes by his courtesy even 
 more than by his power. It is pleasant to feel now the battle 
 is over there are no scars left behind. It was one of the longest 
 days I can remember. I could not see Henry from 9 a.m. till 
 12 p.m. I went up to the town to hear, at 8 p.m., that his prospects 
 were excellent, but did not hear the final result until n p.m. 
 When we got home after midnight, children, friends and servants 
 all waited in the hall and gave Henry the heartiest cheers. It 
 was a most exciting day, for there had been so much talk of a 
 Conservative reaction, I did not venture to assume the result. 
 Louisa was here ; she was so diverted, I was glad to have her for 
 her own sake, as well as mine." (Alluding to the death of my 
 grandmother, barely two months before.) " Nellie and I went with 
 Henry to the meeting for the county candidates. It was Henry's 
 first appearance after the election, and his reception was really 
 beyond description. Although by this time one has learnt to 
 see the things of earth more in their true and real proportion, I 
 do feel it a great pleasure that Henry has been chosen to represent 
 my native place in Parliament, and that never having forced 
 one step to this event, we have the comfort of believing he is in 
 his Providential path." 
 
 My father's sister Louisa, to whom this letter refers, was the 
 widow of the Rev. William Tyack, a Wesleyan minister, and the 
 stepmother of seven children. The three daughters were her 
 devoted nurses through a long illness. After my sister and I were 
 married, they spent a great deal of time with our parents, and
 
 ii2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 rendered to them a similarly devoted service. My aunt was a 
 most ardent Methodist, and she possessed to perfection that Non- 
 conformist sense of humour which is rarely to be found within 
 the Established^Church. She avowed that she could detect one 
 drop of Methodist blood, even as far back as the third generation, 
 and her ready wit and racy tongue made her ever, even during 
 years of suffering, one of the most exhilarating and delightful of 
 companions. She maintained the quaint familiarity with the 
 Divine, which was a distinguishing feature of the early Methodists, 
 and her lack of conventional reverence was a sign of her absolute 
 daily touch with religion in everything secular, her sense of humour 
 included. 
 
 On the election day of 1880 I remember she practised the old- 
 world custom of trial by text (opening her Bible at random and 
 placing her finger on a page). The text on which she alighted that 
 morning was the singularly appropriate one : " He delivered my 
 soul in peace from the battle that was against me, for there were 
 many with me." And she firmly believed this was an omen of 
 her brother's success that day. 
 
 The General Election of 1880 was, as many will remember, 
 fought chiefly on the foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's 
 Government, which had been in power for five years. When 
 Mr. Disraeli took office in 1874 it was on the avowed declara- 
 tion that " the country required a little more energy in regard to 
 its foreign policy and a little less energy in regard to its home 
 policy ; " and to this maxim and all that it involved, Henry Fowler 
 proclaimed his direct opposition. " Even if that policy had been 
 carried out with success, "he vehemently declared, " I should still 
 disown and dispute it. You see in that declaration the principle 
 which divides the two great parties in this country, and the 
 question you will have to decide at this election is this : Do you 
 prefer to engage in foreign politics, or do you prefer to engage 
 in home politics ? My conscience is quite clear on that point. I 
 think we have advanced a great deal too much abroad and too 
 little at home. A ' spirited foreign policy,' which is the conven- 
 tional phrase adopted by the present Government, means war ; 
 it means territorial aggrandisement, Imperial development, with
 
 General Election, 1880 113 
 
 a depressed trade and increased taxation. A spirited foreign policy 
 is a luxury, and, like all other luxuries, you have got to pay for it. 
 I hold that the greatest interest of I was going to say a commer- 
 cial nation but of any nation, is peace. I hold war, unless it is 
 an absolute, unavoidable necessity, to be a gigantic crime." 
 
 The policy of the Government with regard to the Eastern 
 question at that period he described and denounced thus : "In 
 1875 there broke out in South-eastern Europe one of the most 
 righteous insurrections against unrighteous rule that the history 
 of Europe records. The insurrection was put down more or less. 
 The relations of Europe were disturbed, and in the winter of 1875, 
 the united Powers of Europe addressed a memorandum to the 
 Turkish Sultan, protesting against the conduct of the Govern- 
 ment in the past, and indicating what reforms were necessary in 
 order to preserve his empire and restore peace to Europe. That 
 recommendation was treated with characteristic scorn. Nothing 
 was done. The great Powers France, Russia, Germany, Austria, 
 Italy were desirous of addressing a memorandum to Turkey, 
 indicating that coercive measures would be adopted, if necessary, 
 to prevent the spread of the evil. England refused to sign that. 
 The project fell through, and another insurrection broke out, which 
 was put down amid circumstances of unparalleled cruelty. Again 
 a Conference of the great Powers was summoned in the winter of 
 1876, and England's voice was again uncertain again in sympathy 
 with the Turk. Again negotiations broke down and a war broke 
 out. ... I find fault with the Treaty of Berlin on two grounds 
 first that it did not resist the aggrandisement of Russia, and 
 secondly that it has provided no possible means for reforming 
 Turkey. ... If England had lifted up her voice on behalf of 
 oppressed nationalities and of persecuted Christian subjects ; 
 if we had got rid of all that terrible mistake of upholding the dark 
 despotism of the Turkish Empire ; if we had established in South- 
 eastern Europe a State like Belgium, whose independence and 
 freedom would have been guaranteed by all the great Powers of 
 Europe, then you would have recommended a secure barrier 
 against Russian aggression, and you would have set up an example 
 of constitutional government in that portion of Europe, the value 
 
 8
 
 H4 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 of which would have been inestimable and widely spread. I simply 
 find fault with the settlement which the Government has achieved 
 by the Treaty of Berlin, as having failed to resist Russia, and as 
 having failed in reforming Turkey. We have also had," he went 
 on to say, " a campaign which has involved the usual amount of 
 suffering and death in North-West India. Our Premier told us 
 that we must have a scientific frontier. Someone has said that 
 the earliest example we read of the desire of having a scientific 
 frontier was Ahab with reference to Naboth's vineyard. At all 
 events we desired a frontier and we have taken it. We have 
 undertaken responsibilities with reference to the hill tribes which 
 will involve India in a very considerable and unnecessary expendi- 
 ture, and we eventually won over the Amir to our views by that 
 most potent of all weapons of Eastern warfare gold, and he has 
 retired from the contest with a pension of sixty thousand pounds 
 a year." And then he referred to what he spoke of as " another 
 and a sadder scene a chapter in our history which I think 
 already most Englishmen read with shame, and which I think 
 when calmer moments shall arrive, when all political partisanship 
 will have passed away, will be regarded with universal disappro- 
 bation ; I mean the unfortunate business in South Africa. . . . 
 I am not prepared to go now into all the details of that question, 
 but I will simply lay down one maxim with reference to it, which 
 appears to me to be a sound one, and which certainly will guide 
 me in my Parliamentary life that whatever is morally wrong can 
 never be politically right. Unless I am utterly and hopelessly 
 ignorant of the great principles of morality it appears to me that 
 our proceedings in South Africa have been from the first morally 
 wrong. . . . The Zulu chief had not attacked us, he had not shed 
 one drop of English blood ; he had not taken one ounce of English 
 goods, and we proceeded to invade his territory. A great Christian 
 and enlightened nation went on this mission of extending the 
 Gospel among the South African tribes with these weapons of 
 warfare and slaughter." 
 
 Though Henry Fowler never descended to the claptrap of 
 blaming Governments for adverse circumstances over which they 
 had no control for depressed trade and decreased demand and
 
 General Election, 1880 115 
 
 therefore decreased supply ; for bad harvests and bad weather ; 
 yet he put his finger on those points which the policy of Govern- 
 ments can directly deal with, and he brought home to his 
 electors the dangers of that " spirited foreign policy " which he so 
 strongly denounced. But his political aspirations were for some- 
 thing more than staying evil, they were for promoting good. To 
 criticize and cavil at anything is at best a poor performance, and 
 one with which Henry Fowler was never satisfied. He had a 
 mind full of resource, full of counter-acting policy, and practical 
 plans for carrying it out. He deplored the foreign policy of Mr. 
 Disraeli, and he brought before the people the home policy by 
 which Mr. Gladstone had endeared himself so truly to the hearts 
 of the great working and middle classes of this country. He re- 
 called that golden season of peace and prosperity when Mr. Glad- 
 stone's finance brought the income tax down to threepence in the 
 pound, and yet there was enough and to spare for the national 
 expenditure ; when there was peace throughout the world, yet 
 our army and navy were adequately maintained out of the year's 
 income. The disestablishment of the Church in Ireland had been 
 fairly carried out a great measure with regard to Irish land, an 
 Elementary Education Act and the Ballot Act had all been passed ; 
 purchase in the Army abolished, and the Universities thrown open 
 to Dissenters, by the last Liberal Government, and he looked for- 
 ward to still greater achievements by the next. He advocated an 
 extended home policy. " The happiness and progress of our 
 home population is of vastly more importance to us than any 
 foreign policy, than any extended empire. You may call it a 
 parochial policy call it what you like ; I am myself a partisan of 
 such a policy." 
 
 He expressed himself in favour of the enfranchisement of the 
 agricultural labourer, and a supporter of local option, the 
 Burials Bill, a reform of the Bankruptcy Laws, and a modifica- 
 tion of the laws relating to the tenure, transfer and descent of 
 land. 
 
 The principal Conservative in Wolverhampton at that time, and 
 Chairman of the Conservative Association, was the late Lieut. - 
 Colonel Thorneycroft, of Tettenhall Towers, the brother of JHenry 
 
 *
 
 n6 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Fowler's wife. He had repeatedly been asked to stand for Parlia- 
 ment, and Lord Beaconsfield asked him, as a personal favour, to 
 do so for the county ; once he was actually nominated as a candi- 
 date during his absence from home ; but he always resolutely 
 declined to stand for Parliament, though he gave great support to 
 the Conservative party in the town and county. But when Henry 
 Fowler was selected as the Liberal candidate, his brother-in-law 
 withdrew from any active opposition, and announced his intention 
 of taking no part in the conflict. When Mr. Hickman was subse- 
 quently adopted as the Conservative candidate, my father wrote 
 the following letter to Colonel Thorneycroft : 
 
 " MY DEAR TOM, 
 
 " I greatly appreciate your kindness in having 
 abstained from the public encouragement of an opposition to 
 my candidature for the borough, and I heartily thank you 
 for it. But now that, irrespective of your influence, and 
 probably without your approval, a contest has been decided 
 upon, the time has arrived when I must ask you to take your 
 true position as one of the leaders of the Conservative party. 
 I accede to your political^opinions the same respect I claim for 
 my own, and I could not, and I would not, ask you to sacrifice 
 your conscientious convictions out of any personal regard to 
 myself. Our friendship, which has been unbroken for nearly 
 a quarter of a century, will not be in any way interfered with 
 by your loyal discharge of your public duty, and I say what 
 I mean when I ask you in justice to myself as well as in justice 
 to yourself, to exercise your legitimate influence in favour of 
 the political party with which, both by birth and convictions, 
 you have been so long and so honourably associated. 
 " I am, my dear Tom, yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 His relations with his opponent, afterwards Sir Alfred Hickman, 
 Bart., were such as favoured the foundations of a life-long friend- 
 ship. There was no taint of personalities on either side, no debasing
 
 General Election, 1880 117 
 
 of the fair political fight by the introduction of petty and unworthy 
 squabbles. The keynote which my father struck at the beginning 
 of the campaign was, that the question before the electorate was 
 not a question of men, but of measures. " We are part of the 
 great constituency of this great Kingdom, called upon, at a 
 national crisis of unparalleled importance, to pronounce the 
 verdict which involves either weal or woe to ourselves and to 
 our children, and I ask you as men as Englishmen to rise to 
 the dignity of the occasion, and whether you be Liberals or Tories, 
 uphold your opinions like men stand manfully for them be fair 
 to your opponents, and go openly and quietly to the poll there to 
 record your verdict." An atmosphere suffused by such a spirit 
 as this was bound to keep clear and clean. The unwise and 
 cheap advocacy or antagonism of local supporters fell like leaves 
 shrivelled at the touch of frost. My father was sometimes a hard 
 fighter, but he was always a fair one ; and during the many years 
 that he and Sir Alfred Hickman stood side by side in the repre- 
 sentation of different portions of the borough, a division of which 
 followed this first election, they always stood as friends. The 
 service and interests of Wolverhampton were dear to them both ; 
 they had a common love for, and loyalty to, the town they both 
 at one time represented, and it was a real regret to my father when, 
 in the reactionary flood of 1906, Sir Alfred was swept out of his 
 seat and out of active political life. The fires of these many 
 conflicts had burned low, but the friendship which sprang out of 
 them burned bright with advancing years ; and when Sir Alfred 
 Hickman died in the spring of 1910, my father mourned, not only 
 a great benefactor of the town, but also a true personal friend. 
 
 He received the following letter from James Fraser, Bishop of 
 Manchester, on his return to Parliament : 
 
 " April 6th, 1880. 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I must write you a hasty line I have been intend- 
 ing to do so for some days, to congratulate you on your 
 triumphant success at Wolverhampton. Yours was one of 
 the most signal among the many evidences that the country
 
 n8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 is awakening from its delirious dream, and has had enough 
 of Lord Beaconsfield's Imperial policy. I do hope that a 
 truer period of peace and honour is in store for us, and that 
 you will have the satisfaction of contributing to its inau- 
 guration. With every good wish, 
 
 " Believe me to be, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " J. MANCHESTER." 
 
 In the midst, however, of congratulations and the glow of success, 
 my father mourned very truly the loss of his greatest political 
 friend in Wolverhampton the late Mr. Arthur Wright, who had 
 proposed him as a Parliamentary candidate to the Liberal Four 
 Hundred, and had always taken the greatest interest in his 
 political prospects. He died very suddenly just before the actual 
 contest, and after the election his widow received the following 
 letter : 
 
 " Woodthorne, Wolverhampton. 
 
 " Easter Monday, 1880. 
 " DEAR MRS. WRIGHT, 
 
 " My sister would explain to you that the report of 
 Mr. Graham's remarks conveyed an inaccurate impression. 
 
 " I need hardly tell you how keenly I feel the loss of your 
 dear husband at this crisis no one can or does supply his 
 place. I frequently think of him and what he would have 
 said and done had he been with us, but somehow or other I 
 feel that he knows all that is going on, and that even now 
 (I say it reverently) I have his sympathy. 
 
 " My loss is of course a trifle in the sight of yours, but I 
 could not help dropping you a line to say that my saddest 
 thought in connexion with this contest is that he is not by 
 my side. 
 
 " The only meeting at which I have broken down was when 
 I went to address his workmen. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 General Election, 1880 119 
 
 It was one of my father's strongest characteristics that he never 
 forgot a kindness done, and his gratitude would haunt a whole 
 family when one of them had deserved it at his hands. This was 
 specially noticeable in the deep interest he always took in the 
 family of Mr. Arthur Wright, whose widow sends me the following 
 reminiscences : 
 
 "To me he was the best friend I ever had. My husband died 
 in October, 1879, after three days' illness. Your father waited 
 till a later train for his letters knowing that he was ill. Hearing 
 nothing, he went to London, only to receive a telegram saying 
 that Arthur had passed away, and he immediately returned home. 
 On Wednesday morning he came to Earlswood to see once more 
 his friend. He would not let me be told till afterwards when he 
 came in to see me. It was then I knew what manner of man he 
 was the great, large, human heart mourning the loss of his friend. 
 It comforted me as nothing else could have done, and I remember 
 now some of his words, and always shall remember them. A few 
 days after your mother called with her strong, wise words of sym- 
 pathy. Before she left she said : ' My husband wishes me to tell 
 you that if at any time he can do anything for you (not profes- 
 sionally) he will always be glad to do it.' That promise was kept 
 during thirty years, and he never let me feel that my affairs were 
 a burden, even during his more strenuous years. ' You will always 
 find me here at eleven o'clock on such and such days, I can 
 always see you if only for a short time.' When I went, there was 
 the smile of welcome, the poke to the fire, the pushing back of 
 the papers. ' Well, and what did you want to see me about this 
 morning ? ' I stated the case as well as I could and he listened 
 and understood. Then came two or three straight questions, 
 which seemed to go to the root of the matter, and I answered 
 simply, truthfully, in few words ; then came those words of far- 
 seeing wisdom and counsel which made all things plain, or which 
 at any rate made my duty plain, and I came away feeling that 
 life was possible and God was good. In 1888 I asked him whether 
 he would allow me to article my youngest son to him and he at 
 once said that he would be glad to have him for his father's sake, 
 and added : ' I think you will be wise to send him to us, for if
 
 i2o The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 he has ability he is sure of earning a living when he has passed 
 his final. I never cost anyone a penny from the day I was 
 qualified.' The pride in his tone and the energy with which he 
 spoke showed me how much that had meant to him in those early 
 years. 
 
 " Another proof of the interest he took in our whole family was 
 his wish to interview a young nephew of mine who was about to 
 join the Constabulary in South Africa. I took him to see Sir 
 Henry, who looked at him and asked a few questions, and then 
 said : ' Have you a good map of the country, and a history ? ' 
 On Ned's replying in the negative, ' Well, get one, and study 
 it. Don't appear ignorant of simple matters concerning the 
 country to the first person you meet there. I should advise you 
 to be a teetotaller ; drink ruins more young men abroad than 
 anything else. Seek out those belonging to your Church and join 
 them if possible. If at any time you are in difficulty, consult one 
 of the officers in charge of you you may not think they know 
 any more than you do, but they do and follow his advice.' 
 The boy was touched by the interest Sir Henry showed in him, 
 and loyally followed his counsel to his own credit and our comfort. 
 Again when my daughter had the offer of buying a house for the 
 formation of her increasing school we repaired to him for advice. 
 He heard all she had to say, asked questions, and then said : ' If 
 you do not advance, you will go back. I think you would be 
 justified in buying the property, but I should like to see over it 
 myself. Perhaps your brother will take me over it on my way 
 home to- day.' When my son had a long illness sixteen years 
 ago, I received the kindest letter from Sir Henry saying that he 
 knew there were many expenses when surgeons and nurses were 
 about and would I accept the enclosed cheque. And I did not 
 hesitate to accept it any more than I should have done from my 
 father. 
 
 " I know also that when a young man, who had been articled 
 to the firm, died, Sir Henry, unsolicited, returned half the fee 
 that had been paid. All his service and kindnesses were rendered 
 with such simplicity and goodwill and there was such an absence 
 of ostentation and parade in his life, and such a faithful love of
 
 General Election, 1880 121 
 
 home and friends, that his character seemed to grow in strength 
 and beauty as the years passed. My own health having failed 
 in 1905, I saw little of Lord Wolverhampton during his later 
 years but there are some things one cannot lose one of them 
 is the incentive of such a great example, and the other the sweet 
 remembrance of so generous a friendship. I might add that my 
 first remembrance of Mr. Fowler was meeting him walking one 
 day in Wolverhampton in the year 1864. I knew him slightly, 
 and as he raised his hat and smiled I was so startled at the change 
 wrought in his face by that smile that I turned round to be quite 
 sure that I had made no mistake in his identity. I got to know 
 and love that wonderful lighting-up of his whole features, like 
 the sunshine clearing the clouds from a landscape on an April 
 day. Strange to say it is my last memory also of him, for the 
 last time I was at Woodthorne to tea, in the year 1910, he was 
 telling me how awkward the loss of his two secretaries had been 
 to him, and of the unlooked-for early departure of the one to 
 
 South Africa. ' Lord said to me that he should not have let 
 
 him go until he had cleared up his work for me, and if he lost the 
 appointment that was nothing to do with me.' Then broke 
 out that illuminating smile as he added : ' I replied that I could 
 not now go back on the principles by which my life had been 
 guided, and the Old Book said : As ye would that men should do 
 to you do ye also unto them.' '
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 18801881 
 
 FIRST SESSION IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 " The gentleman is learn'd and a most rare speaker." SHAKESPEAKE. 
 " Rich in saving common sense." TENNYSON. 
 
 FROM the day of Henry Fowler's entering Parliament it 
 was clear that his foot was upon the first rung of a ladder 
 which would reach high. Progress was the text of his teaching 
 his personal practice was the embodiment of that principle. He 
 never stood still, and he never went back. It is surprising to 
 see how absolutely consistent were his teaching and his practice 
 throughout the whole of his life; how he never went back even 
 upon his words ; how the opinions of his early days stood the 
 changes and chances of the years and were still the same. Many 
 a statesman's life will tell the story of different views, of diverse 
 attitudes, and even directly contrary policies. But not so Henry 
 Fowler's. He began life as a Liberal and a Methodist. He ended 
 it as both. The same note rings through all his speeches the 
 same direction drew all his footsteps. Continuity of purpose, 
 consistency of preaching and practice, stamp every page of his 
 life's history, and it is impossible to find a single contradiction 
 therein. I never knew a man who was always so exactly like himself, 
 and whose attitude on every question could be more accurately 
 foretold. His absolute stability was indeed a sure strength. 
 
 My father made his maiden speech in the House of Commons 
 on an Irish Bill for compensating an evicted tenant on certain 
 conditions if the landlord turned him out of his holding, and the 
 
 122
 
 First Session in Parliament 123 
 
 Press was unanimous in their praise both of the matter and manner 
 of this speech. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler's maiden speech," wrote the Daily Telegraph, 
 " was, from the Parliamentary point of view, one of the best of 
 the present session. He promises to become a useful, as he is 
 already an accomplished, debater, and the Liberal chiefs will 
 probably not lose sight of their new ally." A still greater success 
 was achieved by the new debater in his defence of the Govern- 
 ment's reform of the Game Laws, in which they tried to regulate 
 the question of ground game as between landlord and tenant, 
 and to allow the occupier as well as the owner the right of 
 destruction. The opposition to the Bill was based on its inter- 
 ference with freedom of contract, and the fetich seems to have 
 frightened even its supporters into a more or less listless defence ; 
 but Henry Fowler, with his usual prompt grasp of a whole situa- 
 tion, sprang up and stripped this bogey of its influence. " Men 
 who ought to know better, and do know better, have charged the 
 present Government with interfering with freedom of contract, 
 as if such interference were not in entire harmony with all legisla- 
 tion for the last fifty years. . . . An Englishman cannot do what 
 he likes with his own. His freedom in regard to contract is con- 
 trolled both by common law and courts of equity, when the con- 
 tract is opposed to public policy or where the contracting parties 
 do not stand on perfectly equal terms." He backed up his state- 
 ments with practical instances, but the kernel of his speech, which 
 was so characteristic of the man himself, as well as so typical of 
 his style of speaking, lay in that terse clear statement that a man 
 cannot do what he likes with his own. His money, his talents, 
 his service, his powers, were all stamped with the mark of duty 
 a higher claim than that of his own inclinations or profit. He ought 
 to and with Henry Fowler the word " ought " was one with the 
 word " must " do with his own that which is required by God 
 and by his fellows, and so leave behind him not so much the record 
 of how well he had done for himself in life, but rather the history 
 of how much better his world, be it a small or a large one, has 
 been for the fact of his having lived in it. And though now the 
 Hares and Rabbits Bill, as it was called, is of little note, and
 
 124 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 worthy of still less notice, the weapons which its champion wielded 
 in its defence are significant because they were the weapons of a 
 sense of justice and a law of righteousness with which he fought 
 every battle of his life. 
 
 The great mark, however, which Henry Fowler made upon 
 the Session of 1880 was in connection with the Burials Bill, when 
 he delivered one of his most noted speeches. The subject was 
 one which had a special interest for him as a Nonconformist, but 
 it was on a wider than any personal ground that he strove to 
 secure what in his belief was a righteous judgment. He believed 
 that to remove a cause of injustice and friction which was bound 
 to arise in every country parish where there was no burial-ground 
 except the churchyard, would be as great a boon to the clergy- 
 man as to the dissenter, and afterwards he was told by many 
 country clergymen how thankful they were to be relieved from 
 the painful duty of bringing discord and added distress round the 
 death-bed, and from introducing a spirit of controversy into the 
 uncongenial atmosphere of a house of mourning. With his quick 
 insight into the very pith of the question he strikingly illustrated 
 his arguments by the potent suggestion that no one would dare 
 to declare that such men and women as Joseph John Gurney and 
 Elizabeth Fry should in their burial be classed with notorious 
 criminals, and denied a resting-place in consecrated ground. 
 
 There have been very few men who could venture to quote the 
 Bible in the House of Commons perhaps because there can be 
 no less emotional or sentimental body than that of such modern, 
 everyday Englishmen of all types, as compose the British 
 Parliament perhaps because there is in all thinking men a sense 
 of fitness which would shrink from any incongruity between the 
 words of the lips and the actions of the life or perhaps because 
 of the national reserved character, which can ill bear the rending 
 of any of the veils of conventionalism which hide so securely 
 men's souls from their fellows, unless it be by a specially sure 
 and practised hand. But, be that as it may, Henry Fowler was 
 one of the few who, like John Bright, could dare to quote Scrip- 
 ture, and be sure that it would not jar. "I can understand," 
 he said, in his speech on the Burials Bill, in which to quote a
 
 First Session in Parliament 125 
 
 London paper of that date, " Mr. Fowler earned his title to a front 
 place in the list of coming men " " I can understand that some 
 representative of one of our great houses, whose family history 
 has run side by side with our national history, would regard it as 
 an extreme dishonour to be excluded from the last resting-place 
 of his illustrious forefathers. And to the Nonconformist of the 
 middle class, the words father, mother, husband, parent, child, 
 are as dear as they are to the proudest peer that ever sat at 
 Westminster. And though they may lack the ancestral associa- 
 tions they cherish in its truest intensity that feeling of kinship 
 and friendship and affection which to-day, as three thousand 
 years ago, finds the truest expression in the passionate utterance 
 of the Jewish widow : ' Where thou art buried there will I be 
 buried also.' ' 
 
 On the passing of the Burials Bill Henry Fowler received 
 the following letter from his friend, James Fraser, Bishop of 
 Manchester : 
 
 " Manchester, September 5th. 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " Now that the Burials Bill has passed its last 
 ordeal I must thank you for the part you took in its dis- 
 cussion. I admired your temper while thinking that Dissent 
 had been rather severely and unfairly characterized by some 
 over-vehement Churchmen in the debate. But you did not 
 return evil for evil, but moved and carried a clause, which I 
 regard as a great improvement on the old Clause 14, with 
 its schedule C, while it certainly will give quite as effective 
 a relief to the clergy. I could not go up to town without 
 inconvenience to vote upon the Bill in its last stage, but I 
 paired with the Bishop of Ripon in favour of the Commons 
 Amendments. May the Bill, when it becomes law, be a means 
 of healing some of the sores which irritate and separate 
 Christian men who ought to be~engaged in one common cause 
 "With kind regards, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " J. MANCHESTER."
 
 126 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 It was in the Session of 1880 that the controversy, known under 
 the name of Bradlaugh, began. The history of that controversy 
 has been written at length in Morley's Life of Gladstone, and it 
 is only my father's attitude with regard to it which is of importance 
 here. " There are two points," he said, " which would distinctly 
 rule my conduct in reference to the Bradlaugh difficulty. The 
 first was, I had, and could have, no possible sympathy with the 
 views which Mr. Bradlaugh is reported to hold views, the existence 
 of which I deplore, but views which I don't think are either to be 
 confuted or refuted by the unnecessary and unseemly denuncia- 
 tion of those who hold them. And the next point was that I could 
 not be a party to the imposition of any religious test in the exercise 
 of any civil right. I regard the religious passport to a civil office 
 or honour as an injury and dishonour done to the cause of 
 religion itself. Under the existing law every Member of the House 
 of Commons is required, before he takes his seat, to take the oath 
 of allegiance to the reigning Sovereign, but there is a provision 
 permitting Quakers, Separatists, and others who have conscien- 
 tious objections to taking an oath, to affirm. Mr. Bradlaugh 
 claimed to affirm under two Statutes which enabled persons, 
 upon whom conscientious oaths are not binding, to give testimony 
 in Courts of Justice." The matter having been referred to a 
 select committee, it was decided that Mr. Bradlaugh could not 
 be allowed to affirm, and the next day he put a letter in the news- 
 paper, stating that he intended to claim to take the oath at the 
 House, and gave notice that the taking of that oath would be a 
 meaningless form, and would have no effect upon his conscience 
 " I am of opinion," continued Henry Fowler, in giving an account 
 of his action to his constituents, " that the taking of an oath 
 is, in the nature of the thing, evoking the Supreme Being, and if a 
 man does not believe in the Supreme Being, it seemed to me he 
 could not take the oath. And I, as a Christian man, holding the 
 views I did, would not have been, and never would be, a party 
 to a person's doing on the floor of the House of Commons, what 
 I should call a profane act ; and I, therefore being perfectly 
 clear in my own mind that legally Mr. Bradlaugh could not take 
 the oath voted against the oath's being administered to him."
 
 First Session in Parliament 127 
 
 When a further select committee which was appointed, recom- 
 mended that he should be allowed to affirm, thus reversing the 
 decision of the former committee, my father's contention was 
 that it had already been decided by committee that Mr. Brad- 
 laugh could not affirm, and that the House should not decide by 
 special resolution a purely legal question which belonged to courts 
 of law. And as he did not feel justified in voting against Mr. 
 Bradlaugh's making affirmation he declined to vote at all, as he 
 also declined later, on the occasion when Mr. Bradlaugh was 
 committed to the Clock Tower, because he would not be a party to 
 sending a man to prison for doing what the most eminent lawyers 
 agreed he had a right to do. All along he took the common- 
 sense point of view that the House should leave it to any individual 
 Member to claim to affirm, or to take the oath as he pleased, 
 leaving him to run the risk of his own act, and not to legislate 
 for particular cases. It is interesting to note that on these very 
 lines a final settlement of this difficult case was at last effected. 
 
 The Irish question was already looming above the political 
 horizon, and every session between 1880 and 1885 the skies were 
 darkening, which at last broke in the great Home Rule storm of 
 1886, when the grand old Liberal Party, as a united one, lost 
 its life. And though in those early days of the Government's 
 existence, the cloud was no bigger than a man's hand, the political 
 prophets, of whom Henry Fowler was one, saw its significance and 
 heard the warning sound of abundance of rain. 
 
 " When Sir Robert Peel took office nearly forty years ago at 
 the head of the largest Parliamentary majority which the century 
 had seen, he said : ' Ireland is my difficulty.' Thirty years ago 
 Mr. Bright said : ' At this moment in Ireland the rich are 
 menaced with ruin and the poor are menaced with starvation.' 
 And now in 1880 Ireland is still the difficulty of every states- 
 man and every English Cabinet, and at this moment the rich are 
 menaced with ruin, and the poor, I believe, are menaced with 
 starvation." In describing and dealing with the Irish Law ques- 
 tion, in defence of Mr. W. E. Forster's Irish Disturbance Compensa- 
 tion Bill, Henry Fowler showed that sudden wonderful grasp 
 of a situation from its inner side, which was so characteristic of
 
 128 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 his understanding of Indian affairs fifteen years later, when he 
 became Secretary of State for India and which also has been 
 commented on in other matters which claimed his attention. 
 When made Chairman of the Kent Waterworks Company by 
 Messrs. Penn, many years afterwards, one of them remarked that 
 what struck him as so remarkable about their new chairman was 
 the fact, that though he had only just entered the concern, he 
 knew more about its inner working than those who had themselves 
 grown up in it. He never possessed the dramatic or the sym- 
 pathetic power of putting himself in another person's place. He 
 could never have said or thought anything which was not con- 
 sistent with Henry Fowler. For instance, he could not understand 
 how the novelist could make his characters say and do things con- 
 trary to the mind of the author. Again and again he would strive 
 to correct, by simply stating: "I should never have said that," 
 and would not see how futile that argument was in reference to all 
 characters except that of a middle-aged statesman. The strange 
 truth that in writing fiction characters grow, and develop, and even 
 act, quite independently of the author's intention, was absolutely 
 incomprehensible to him no words could have conveyed it to his 
 mind. But he did possess the wonderful faculty of putting him- 
 self in another person's environment, though not in their identity. 
 It was always Henry Fowler; but he could put himself, with the 
 quick flash of some inside power, which we can realize but never 
 understand, into such diverse environments as that of the Irish- 
 man born and bred on the land ; of the business man trained and 
 taught by practical experience ; of the Indian representative of 
 a mystical heathen religion and an alien far-away race ; and, per- 
 haps more wonderful still, of the Anglo-Indian with all his cliquish 
 prejudices, and local standards, and Conservative inclinations. 
 Into every interest which he touched he could transport himself, 
 and give judgment, though always Henry Fowler's judgment, 
 there. He had no personal experience of Irish life from either the 
 landlord's or the tenant's point of view, but his son-in-law who, 
 as one of the Scottish clan of Hamilton which have held the North 
 of Ireland since the Ulster Settlement of 1603, had been born and 
 brought up in County Down, and, as a landlord's son, had an
 
 First Session in Parliament 129 
 
 intimate knowledge of Irish land questions, of the significance 
 of tenant right in Ulster, and the disastrous effects to the tenant 
 of the lack of that right outside Ulster could not find a better, 
 clearer understanding of that complicated question than that 
 enunciated by my father to his constituents at the close of the 
 session of 1880. 
 
 The hours of Parliament in those days were far longer and more 
 strenuous than Members now, under the aegis of the twelve o'clock 
 rule, realize. It was a common occurrence for the House to sit 
 from four p.m. to two and three a.m. and during his first session 
 in Parliament, as in all later ones, my father was generally one of 
 the first to arrive and one of the last to leave. It was a great idea 
 of his that ordinary people slept too much just as it was that 
 they ate too much and he certainly justified his principles by 
 taking a five or six hours' night, and only two meals a day. The 
 wisdom of this was often disputed in his domestic circle, but the 
 record of a long and exceptionally healthy life, whether on account 
 of this abstemiousness or in spite of it, silences one's adverse 
 criticism of his methods. 
 
 The Government programme for its first session was a full and 
 varied one, comprising as it did, not only the larger questions of 
 foreign policy, particularly those dealing with affairs in 
 Afghanistan and South Africa, but also such home measures as 
 the Elementary Education Act, the Employers' Liability Bill, 
 legislation affecting farmers, and sailors, the Irish Compensation 
 Act and the Burials Bill, and in all these Henry Fowler showed 
 the keenest interest. Two sentiments of his expressed during this 
 period stand out as indicators of his future political tactics the 
 one in connection with the Burials Bill when he said : " Upon a 
 question which gravely affects the interests of the Church of 
 England it is impossible to legislate except upon the principle of 
 fair compromise " ; and the other : " We want a system of local 
 self-government." The setting of these statements was soon 
 melted down by the development of events, but the spirit of them 
 remained with him always. One of his most cherished principles 
 was that of fair compromise ; his favourite method, that of self- 
 government. 
 
 9
 
 130 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The Parliament of 1880 always stood out in my father's mind as 
 the best he had ever known. At the close of its first session he 
 said : " That when he had been brought face to face, and side by 
 side, with the men who sat on both sides of the House, he had been 
 struck with the great intellectual power, the great determination 
 to uphold the true interests of the country in all its departments, 
 and the feeling which was brought to bear upon all questions, not 
 simply from a party point of view, but with the determination to 
 do what was best for the country at large. He had been struck 
 with what he might call the judicial fairness and impartiality 
 shown by the House of Commons as a whole on every question 
 that was brought before it." He often in later years referred in 
 glowing terms to his first Parliament, and he never ceased to regret 
 the breaking-up of that great original Liberal party, that was its 
 strength, whatever the issue of benefit might have been. Perhaps 
 the halo of a first love surrounded it in his mind and memory, 
 before the freshness of enthusiasm had faded, or the wonder of its 
 novelty staled. But though there hangs round the first of any- 
 thing a special charm, his enthusiasm for the House of Commons 
 knew no abatement, even when matured by long years of fami- 
 liarity and experience. He never left his first love in spirit ; and 
 even on that day when he took his seat in " another place," great 
 though he felt the honour, glad though he was at the distinction 
 as a crown to his labours, yet he alone knew with what a tender 
 and yearning regret he realized that his House of Commons life 
 was over, and the familiar green benches would know him no 
 more.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PARLIAMENT OF l88o 1885 
 
 " No man is born into this world, whose work 
 Is not born with him ; there is always work 
 And tools to work withal, for those who will." 
 
 LOWELL. 
 
 THE whole Parliament from 1880 to 1885 was a momentous 
 stage in Henry Fowler's history. His life as a private 
 member was lived ; and he was first offered office in 1884. He 
 established a sure footing in the Liberal party, he brought all 
 his powers to bear upon the questions with which Parliament was 
 concerned, and in one or two cases he saw fit to differ from the 
 Government and voted against its measures. There were some 
 who said that he was offered office only because he was too dan- 
 gerous and powerful a personality to be left outside the fortress of 
 the party, but there are always some who see what is cheap and 
 think themselves clever in cavilling at it. He was, I believe, offered 
 office because it was evident that he was a valuable and true 
 statesman, and that a Government, which was already illumined 
 by such great lights as its Premier, Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamber- 
 lain, John Bright, and many others, yet would be enriched by the 
 presence of the young, untried, private member for young he 
 was in Parliamentary life who in time to come so fully justified 
 the political confidence which had been thus early reposed in 
 him. 
 
 But though on the one hand Mr. Gladstone could not be blind 
 to Henry Fowler's ability and powers, though he could not but 
 appreciate his services, and acknowledge certain of his claims 
 
 131 9*
 
 132 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and though on the other hand my father fully realized the great- 
 ness of his first leader, and paid to the full all honour to him to whom 
 honour was due, yet he was never one of Mr. Gladstone's favourites ; 
 he never felt that the veteran statesman in his heart of hearts gave 
 him full measure running over, but only a bare acknowledgment of 
 indisputable claims. This lack of sympathy had its roots, my 
 father believed, in the condemning fact to Mr. Gladstone that he 
 was not a Churchman ; and not only that he was not a member 
 of the Church of England, but that he was a leading member of a 
 Nonconforming Church. The negative position might have been 
 forgiven him, as it was in the case of others whom Mr. Gladstone 
 drew into his inner circle, but the positive one of being an enthu- 
 siastic and active Wesleyan put him, as it were, outside the personal 
 sympathies of a man whose intensity of convictions built up, as 
 it is always wont to do, a wall of reserve between him and those 
 who actively differ from him on religious questions. On the plat- 
 form of Liberalism, where the Nonconformist conscience is a 
 powerful asset, they met and agreed, but a man's personal prefer- 
 ences not unfrequently lie hidden beneath his political policy ; 
 and Mr. Gladstone, in spite of all the bitterness which was hurled 
 at him by the Church of England, was, at heart, one of her most 
 orthodox and devoted sons. My father always felt the underlying 
 something which separated him from the real sympathy of his 
 chief, was the latter's consciousness that he was a Wesleyan. 
 
 It is just a side-light on Henry Fowler's character that early in 
 the session of 1882 he moved an Address for the preservation of 
 the offices of Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Lord 
 Chief Baron of the Exchequer against the Government, who wished 
 to abolish them by Order in Council, as they were empowered to 
 do by the Judicature Act of 1873. The legal dignity, the historic 
 significance, and even the picturesque value, of these ancient 
 titles appealed to Henry Fowler as might not have been expected 
 in one of the ordinary Radical type. He was a Radical so far as 
 he was a born reformer, but he was a statesman above and beyond 
 his party, and he could differentiate between the worth of that 
 which is historically noble, and the weakness of that which is 
 practically worn out. He saw that some things are the better
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 13 3 
 
 and stronger for having matured in the history of nations, and 
 he repudiated the arrogance which dares to cut down the old 
 trees of tradition to make room for a multiplicity of allotments in 
 which only cabbages can be grown. Where reform can improve 
 let it be fearlessly undertaken, but let that which is good stand 
 in the security of merit. It was no typical Radical spirit which 
 said : " The retention of these two great offices would preserve 
 that historic continuity which every advanced reformer must value, 
 and which every Conservative reformer would gratefully cherish. 
 It might be said that this was sentiment, but sentiment played no 
 little part in the national life. It was not always wise to disregard 
 sentiment, especially in the administration of justice. For six 
 centuries the four chief judges of England had borne the titles of 
 Lord High Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice of England, the Lord 
 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and the Lord Chief Baron of 
 the Exchequer, and those were worthy to rank side by side with 
 the peerage of the territorial aristocracy. For twenty generations 
 they stood forward showing that the highest honour to which a 
 citizen can attain was the administration of justice ; and as they 
 recollected the long roll of men risen from the ranks to fill these 
 high offices, the country learned this lesson, that no prejudice, no 
 favour, could bar the path by which men climbed from the 
 humblest ranks to the highest dignity of the State." 
 
 In secular affairs my father was somewhat of a ritualist. He loved 
 the ancient customs which Parliament has handed down from one 
 generation to another, and to abolish any of them would have 
 seemed to him a desecration. The " Who goes home," the closing 
 of the door in the face of Black Rod, indeed every detail of the 
 ritual of Parliament, I have heard him often describe with a 
 delighted spirit of appreciation. As in the old days in Wolver- 
 hampton he strove for the building and establishing of certain 
 offices which should retain the dignity of justice, and the effective 
 administration of the law, so he always clung to the outward 
 forms of such sentiment as ennobled the ruling of England. And 
 perhaps it was not altogether in matters secular that he was in 
 some measure a ritualist. He possessed in common with most 
 of his fellow-countrymen a dread of pretentiousness, and it is
 
 134 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 that feeling, as well as the national one of reserve, that will always 
 prevent the universal adoption of ornate ritual in religious matters. 
 The Englishman by nature hates anything showy. Bestow upon 
 him the honour of an Order, and he will shrink from wearing its 
 ribbon whenever he can justifiably appear without it. So is he 
 ever reserved as regards his deeper feelings, and in religion pre- 
 eminently as one of them. Sharing in these national characteristics 
 to the full, my father yet loved orderliness and a certain old- 
 fashioned ritual in his Nonconforming, religious life. The chapel, 
 which he was largely instrumental in building in Wolverhampton, 
 and which he regularly attended when at home, was the first in the 
 neighbourhood which had a full liturgical service ; and the Rev. 
 I. E. Page, one of the Wesleyan ministers who was at Trinity 
 Chapel, writes thus of this particular trait. " Lord Wolverhampton 
 is remembered as a loyal Methodist of advanced ideas, but in 
 relation to the Church of England, belonging to the school of his 
 father and his compeers. Ever loyal to his own Church he would 
 have disowned the name ' Dissenter,' probably for two reasons 
 that he had grown up from the ground, so to speak, in Wesleyan 
 Methodism, while on the other hand he had no objection to an 
 Established Church. Besides this he was possessed of what has 
 been called a liturgical mind, always attaching great importance 
 to orderliness in public worship, and particularly in the adminis- 
 tration of the Sacraments. He was impatient of the least deviation 
 from the authorized form of service. Indeed he wrote a pamphlet 
 to show from the legal standpoint, that any sanctioned alteration in 
 the Communion Office might jeopardize the security of the Trust 
 property of the Connexion. He was proud of the order of worship 
 at Trinity Chapel, and on one occasion told the writer how, when 
 dining with the then Bishop of Gloucester, he had interested him 
 with a description of the service in which the full Anglican Liturgy, 
 with a few verbal alterations, was in use." After his death one 
 of the leading articles on him, I believe in the Guardian, stated that 
 " he was by the accident of birth a Nonconformist and a Liberal, 
 but by nature he was a High Churchman and a Conservative " 
 and perhaps as the words " Liberal Nonconformist " are under- 
 stood nowadays there may be a great deal of truth in such a
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 135 
 
 statement. Indeed it was an ancestral spirit which bound him 
 so closely to Methodism. He had been born in it, and bred in it, 
 and therefore he loved it as a certain type of man always loves that 
 which he has inherited ; but doctrinally he was undoubtedly a 
 High Churchman. He believed in the Real Presence and the 
 efficacy of the Sacrament in conveying a spiritual grace to the 
 recipient above and beyond its being a mere commemorative Feast. 
 The only point in which he seemed to disagree with the Church of 
 England was in his disbelief in the necessity of Apostolic succession. 
 He read his Bible from a daily service book, he loved the beauty 
 and comprehensiveness of the collects, and he had no dealings with 
 the fanatic's idea of sudden freaks of inspiration. He was im- 
 patient for the most part of extempore prayers in the order of 
 service, and he always conducted his own family worship from a 
 book of collects and other set prayers. "When a man has prayed 
 the Litany he has covered all needs," he would say, and he liked the 
 Litany read every Sunday. He and his son-in-law, the Rev. Robert 
 Hamilton, were the closest of friends during the last few years of 
 his life ; and though the latter was a High Churchman, and the 
 son of an Irish landlord, the two would smile at their agreement 
 on almost every question of Church and State which they discussed. 
 
 The term Liberal and even Radical in Henry Fowler's day meant 
 something different from what they do to-day, and the old-fashioned 
 Liberalism was in some respects more Conservative than the demo- 
 cratic Toryism of modern politicians. But where Conservatism 
 applies to the upholding of ancient dignity, without an injury 
 to present needs, there Henry Fowler was a Conservative indeed. 
 Such questions as the payment of Members, for instance, filled 
 him with disdain, since he knew that the best a man has he neither 
 buys nor sells ; and Parliamentary life to Henry Fowler, demanded 
 his best, and the demand met with a supply, though four hundred 
 pounds a year would not have covered it. Though keenly practical 
 and utilitarian, a man of business methods and clear head, he 
 held and retained those high ideals of public service which were 
 the pride and glory of Queen Victoria's great reign. 
 
 During this Parliament Henry Fowler met for the first time 
 his future friend and political comrade, John Morley. They
 
 136 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 were dining with Mr. Chamberlain, and John Morley's attention 
 was arrested by the able conversation and remarkable grasp of 
 every subject upon which Henry Fowler touched. He inquired 
 who the stranger was, and was told that he was the newly-elected 
 Member for Wolverhampton. " That man will go far," was John 
 Morley's comment. 
 
 In 1881, on the death of Lord Beaconsfield, my father enun- 
 ciated some of his beliefs in political leadership and expressed his 
 power of appreciation of what was fine wherever he found it. He 
 never wore the blinkers of political partisanship, and so he saw 
 further, and possibly fared worse for doing so, than the ordinary, 
 enthusiastic party man. " It is one of the best features of English 
 public life," he said, " that distinguished genius, and eminent public 
 services, and spotless private character, allied to those other two 
 great qualifications, are not the property or pride of any one 
 political party, but are the common property of us all as English- 
 men and I am sure that the Liberals have, together with the 
 Conservative party, mourned the loss as sincerely of that eminently 
 distinguished man who now for nearly half a century has occupied 
 such a foremost position in the politics of England and the politics 
 of Europe. We cannot note the passing away of this great man 
 without noting the passing away of an era. For the last three- 
 quarters of a century, certainly since the death of Pitt and Fox, 
 no two men have so completely impersonated the two great political 
 opinions which divide the bulk of the people of this country into 
 two great political parties, as have Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. 
 Gladstone, and I see no probability of any successor to either of 
 them in that respect. Political principles will remain of course, 
 and political views, but I think it will be a long time before either 
 the Liberal or Conservative party will find any man, in either party, 
 who so completely impersonates the political belief of each party, 
 and with such marvellous ability and astonishing power as these 
 two eminent men have done certainly during the last twenty-five 
 years." 
 
 The session of 1881 was one of the most arduous sessions which 
 the annals of Parliament record. There were legacies of trouble 
 left by the late Government in Afghanistan, in the Transvaal,
 
 Parliament of 18801885 
 
 in Turkey and in Ireland, but the session was pre-eminently an 
 Irish one, and was notable for the passing of Mr. Gladstone's Irish 
 Land Bill, which gave to the tenants of Ireland the celebrated 
 " three F's " -fair rent, fixed rent and free sale. The Irish diffi- 
 culty was no new one, and Henry Fowler marked this with his 
 usual fairness in a speech he made in Liverpool in June, 1881 : 
 " I have no sympathy with the nonsensical folly which attributes 
 the present state of Ireland to the policy of the present Govern- 
 ment, or to the policy of the late Government, or to the policy of 
 any recent Government. We are dealing with a deep-rooted, 
 deep-seated, disease of many generations' standing. The recent 
 legislation of this country towards Ireland has been fair and just, 
 liberal and progressive : it is our ancestors who are to blame. We 
 may repeal their cruel laws, but we cannot avoid the consequences 
 of them. We the English people, in our government of Ireland, 
 violated each law of political economy. We tried to trample down 
 every principle of freedom, of justice ; we sacrificed the masses of 
 the people with all their rights and all their interests in order to 
 aggrandize an alien class, who, while they claimed all the rights of 
 property, were supremely indifferent to every one of its duties. 
 . . . Now I believe that the Irish land agitation was right in its 
 inception, and if the Land League had followed within right and 
 constitutional limits I think it would have secured the confidence 
 and support of the great mass of the English people. Desperate 
 men say desperate things, and advocate desperate remedies, but 
 statesmen must stand unmoved amongst such clamour. I think 
 that the match which was applied to the powder was the unfortu- 
 nate and unwise action of the House of Lords in throwing out the 
 Compensation for Disturbance Bill last year." And then he went 
 on to point out that as long as the Duke of Wellington lived, his 
 wise and statesmanlike counsel prevented the Peers, as on the 
 memorable night of the repeal of the Corn Laws, from acting 
 against the House of Commons and the people behind it. And that 
 wise counsel would have been repeated by Lord Derby, and Lord 
 Beaconsfield, he felt sure, on equally momentous occasions ; 
 but the unwisdom of some of the House of Lords' dealings against 
 the House of Commons prompted Henry Fowler even so long ago
 
 138 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to declare : " The same nation as in 1832 found out that its repre- 
 sentative Chamber was a farce and a sham, and knew how to 
 reform the House of Commons, the same nation, if they find 
 that the House of Lords is out of harmony with constitutional 
 progress and development of free institutions will know how to 
 reform the House of Peers." 
 
 But while the Irish battle was raging, and the whole forces of 
 Parliament were, under Mr. Gladstone's leadership, concentrated 
 upon it, there were other questions in which my father took a 
 great interest. That of national expenditure was one which 
 always appealed specially to him, and he spoke several times 
 against its, to his mind, unnecessary increase. " I should be 
 the last man to deprecate expenditure on education, if it were 
 well applied ; but it behoves the guardians of the public purse in 
 this, as in other matters, to see that they get their money's worth. 
 There is such a thing as extravagant educational expenditure ; 
 and it may be accepted as an axiom that a system by which the 
 Imperial Exchequer provides funds for local authorities to spend, 
 is always extravagant." 
 
 He also hoped that Parliament would before long devote itself 
 not only to the readjustment, but to the reduction of national 
 expenditure to the relief of the taxpayers. " If the Liberal party 
 did not reduce the national expenditure they would not be honest. 
 They stood upon the platform of reducing that expenditure : 
 they charged the Tories with spending too much, and if they went 
 quietly on spending as much as the Tories, they were not an honest 
 party, and he for one would be clear of that business. Any effort 
 to reduce the expenditure was met by an enormous force of per- 
 manent officials which was almost irresistible." And when Mr. 
 Gladstone ejaculated the meaning remark that he only wished 
 he had the power of regulating the national expenditure implying 
 that there were modes of expenditure which were even beyond 
 the power of the Government or the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 to control Henry Fowler added that " though it might not be in 
 the power of the Government, it was in the power of the consti- 
 tuencies to do so, and when they made up their minds it would 
 be done." But he also never veered from his convictions that
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 139 
 
 there is a rightful expenditure when extravagance may be the 
 truest economy. " I am sure," he declared, " no Englishman will 
 grudge any expenditure necessary to keep our Navy, which is our 
 first and last line of defence, supreme among the Navies of the 
 world." And, in connection with the financial provision of the 
 Land Bill, " we should not haggle about a few millions in order 
 to give peace, contentment and prosperity to the people of Ireland, 
 who have suffered so long and so severely by the unjust legisla- 
 tion of England, for which we Liberals as well as Conservatives 
 are responsible, and which we are bound to redress." He never 
 advocated a cheese-paring policy, and though his views were strong 
 as to the necessity for strict economy in administration, for the 
 careful consideration of any increase of expenditure before it was 
 carried out, yet he never grudged the use of money for a public 
 good which the country could well afford. He always spoke 
 strongly against the idea of any contributory basis for the granting 
 of Old Age Pensions, however it might reduce the call upon the 
 Exchequer ; and was in favour of a wise expenditure in carrying 
 out legislation to improve the social conditions of the people. 
 He was a great advocate for the reform of the Poor Laws, following 
 the report of the Royal Commission, and I have heard him express 
 the opinion that when the Liberal Government came into power 
 again in 1906 it would have been his policy for it first to have 
 dealt with the Reform of the Poor Laws, then to the granting 
 of Old Age Pensions, and to have let the Education Bill wait for 
 awhile. 
 
 The whole of my father's opinions and life were so uniformly 
 consistent that it is always safe to deduce a conclusion from the 
 greater to the less, or from the less to the greater. In private 
 life he often said : " Be just before you are generous " his public 
 policy came under the same heading. He would be generous to 
 the needs of the masses, but he would not forget the justice that 
 is due to the tax-payer, even if he happens to be a rich man. His 
 own personal expenditure was economical in detail and very care- 
 fully overlooked. His ledgers accounted for the pence of all 
 his life but in many matters he was lavishly generous, and he was 
 a great believer in paying for one's own generosity. He was a large
 
 146 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 giver to charitable objects, but what he gave, he himself went 
 without. To leave money to charities is no true charity, was his 
 creed. Real charity is to give it in one's lifetime, and not to throw 
 the burden on those that come after you, of a compulsory giving 
 of which you wish to claim the credit, without feeling the loss. 
 And he carried this out by giving largely in his lifetime but by 
 leaving no charitable legacies at his death. He never approved 
 of a policy, and he would not believe in it now, of emptying the 
 tax-payer's pockets, and then filling his hands with a parcel of 
 benefits as a gift from the Government. Teach people how to 
 spend, and teach them also how to give. I have heard him put 
 questions of national expenditure before a mass meeting, and make 
 every man of them feel that he was getting his money's worth in 
 the benefits to his country which his taxes went to secure. His 
 own belief that money is a trust to be used as is best, not as is 
 most popular or most pleasant, was his belief of public money, 
 and he handled both public and private exchequers with the same 
 uplifting touch. He did not believe in the miserliness or the 
 meanness of Englishmen but he believed profoundly in their 
 common sense, and that they must not only know on what their 
 money is being expended nationally, but they must control and 
 approve of the same. If they did that, he never believed there 
 would be a lack of funds anywhere, and wherever such lack existed 
 he blamed the methods, but not the public. He, as a Wesleyan, 
 had been taught how to give, and he always said that the willing- 
 ness of Nonconformist almsgiving lay, partly in their having 
 learned how to give from their youth upwards, and partly because 
 they controlled the expenditure of the money that is subscribed. 
 Where parishes of the Church of England failed to raise necessary 
 funds, his theory was that in the first place they had inherited 
 so much from the generosity of their ancestors in endowments, 
 that they were not alive to their own responsibilities in maintaining 
 those who ministered to them in holy things ; and in the second 
 place, that the laity would never pay for a parson whom they 
 had no power to choose, or to get rid of. But give the laity the 
 power of the purse, and they would never fail to fill it. It would be 
 impossible for a man to have a greater faith in his fellows than
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 141 
 
 had Henry Fowler ; and it was in the great middle class, rather 
 than the upper or the lower, that he had the greatest faith of all. 
 He was proud of belonging to the middle class, which he always 
 declared was the backbone of the British nation. He realized the 
 creative and compelling power of responsibility, and it is the 
 middle class which bears the responsibility of a nation. The upper 
 class is irresponsible because it has nothing to gain; the lower 
 class is irresponsible because it has nothing to lose. The extremes 
 meet ; too much and too little are both outside the border-line of 
 everything to gain or to lose which is the guerdon of the middle 
 classes. And therefore it was in the middle classes that Henry 
 Fowler would have vested powers parallel to their responsibilities, 
 and to them that he looked for the welfare and prosperity of the 
 nation. 
 
 At the opening of the Wolverhampton Park on June 8th, 1881, 
 my father uttered these characteristic words : " Some people have 
 expressed regret that this park has not been given to the town. 
 I do not share in that regret. I prefer, as a Wolverhampton man, 
 and I think it is a more honourable and straightforward course, 
 that we should buy what we want and pay for it. And the 
 people of Wolverhampton have bought this park. They are 
 under no social, no political, obligation to any man for having 
 given them this park. It is their own to-day to do with as they 
 like, and I am sure they will preserve it, and maintain it, and 
 develop it." He never liked himself to be beholden to any man; 
 and to pay his way was a principle of life from which he never 
 deviated. Even ordinary bills he deprecated and was always an 
 advocate for ready money. He would often quote a rule of his 
 father's never to wear a suit of clothes until it was paid for. 
 
 The great Irish session of 1881 was stamped by obstruction from 
 beginning to end, and this impediment in public business was a 
 matter of deep concern to the statesmanlike soul of Henry 
 Fowler. He considered that the House of Commons was too 
 delicate and magnificent a piece of machinery to be treated as 
 an idle toy, to be spoiled by any mischievous or silly child 
 that plays with it. Before Her Majesty's Government could 
 carry out any of the pledges on the faith of which they took
 
 142 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 office, before the House of Commons could be restored to that 
 legislative freedom and power which are essential to the right 
 discharge of its duties, and before the constituencies could have 
 that effective control which they ought to have over the legisla- 
 tion and policy of this country, the forms of the House of Commons 
 must be altered so as to harmonize with the strict requirements of 
 the age, so as to enable the business of the country to be done as 
 it ought to be done by sensible men, in a sensible way, with sensible 
 results. It was not only the obstruction of the Irish party, 
 but also that of the Conservative, which he deprecated. He had 
 seen as deliberate, persistent, obstruction from the Conservative 
 benches as ever he saw from the Home Rule party. Lord 
 Randolph Churchill was no child in that business, he could 
 testify. He spoke jocosely to him one night and said : " I am 
 learning something from you. I am watching and learning." 
 Lord Randolph asked, " What ? " and he replied, " I am learning 
 how to obstruct. I suppose the time will come when your people 
 will be in power and when you will occupy a very important 
 position in the new ministry. I am learning a lesson." 
 
 Another question which he touched upon in the interstice of 
 that Parliamentary year was the old, and now new one, of Free 
 Trade and Protection ; and this in connexion with a policy raised 
 by the Fair Traders a small body of unofficial Conservatives, led 
 by the Member for Preston. He said : " When a man tells me 
 that Free Trade has failed, I say that every fact of moral, social, 
 physical, commercial progress in the country is an unanswerable 
 argument against him ; " and one cannot help noting how the 
 present policy of Tariff Reform is, after all, only an old Conservative 
 friend dressed up in modern habiliments, which Free Traders have 
 been fighting ever since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 ; and 
 it was especially interesting to my father to be identified in 
 Wolverhampton with a constituency, the Member for which Mr. 
 Villiers was the first man who ever proposed the repeal of the 
 Corn Laws in the reformed Parliament. It also may be interest- 
 ing to Free Traders to-day to read how a statesman over thirty 
 years ago put the question before his constituents. He said : 
 " Where are you going to begin where are you going to put on
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 143 
 
 those retaliatory duties ? Now you must put them on one of 
 three things : foreign manufactures, foreign raw material, or 
 foreign food. 411,000,000 represents what we bought last 
 year. Of that, 360,000,000 was paid for food and raw material. 
 There is not much margin to deal with the manufactured articles. 
 But who would pay the tax upon these manufactured articles ? 
 We should. Most of these manufactured articles are things which 
 are not made in England and cannot be made in England. They 
 are things which we buy for our own advantage, and if a tax were 
 put upon them, we the English consumer would have to pay 
 that tax. I do not think that would be any argument for the 
 foreigner to abandon a protectionist policy. It would be to say 
 that we prefer to pay seven and sixpence for what we might have 
 bought for five shillings. Then will you put a tax on raw 
 material ? Is there any sane man who would propose that raw 
 material, which is the staple of this country, should be taxed ? 
 I don't think that there is a single politician in this country who 
 would so purpose to destroy the trade and manufactures of this 
 country. What then is left ? The only feasible policy, the only 
 practical policy, the policy which the Conservatives are avowing, 
 is to tax the foreign food. Fifty years ago protection meant the 
 Corn Laws, and to-day Fair Trade, which we have stripped of its 
 flimsy disguise, means restoring the Corn Laws. They make no 
 secret of it, and they propound the wonderful doctrine that it is 
 better to have a dear loaf and high wages, than a cheap loaf and 
 low wages. But what are the facts ? What does the history 
 of this country prove to demonstration? That dear food is in- 
 variably followed by low wages. If you raise the price of food, 
 you diminish the productiveness both of capital and labour, and 
 profits go down and wages go down, and the reason of it is as 
 evident as the fact itself. It is not the ladies of London, it is 
 the farmers' wives and daughters, and the workmen's wives and 
 daughters, and the servant girls of England that keep the looms of 
 Lancashire going so far as home trade is concerned. If you 
 decrease the spending margin of a working man's income, if he is 
 getting twenty-five shillings per week, and his bread costs him five 
 shillings (and he must have bread), and if you make the bread
 
 144 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 cost him ten shillings, you have diminished the spending margin, 
 you have diminished his power to go and buy other things ; and 
 the inevitable result is a decrease of profits and a decrease of 
 wages. . . . 
 
 " The tax which Protection levies never has found, and never 
 will find, its way into the public exchequer. It finds its way 
 into the pockets of the privileged classes. I say no more dangerous, 
 no more revolutionary proposal, has been made by responsible 
 legislators and statesmen than the proposal to confiscate the 
 industry and the property of working men in order to swell the 
 profits of the wealthiest, privileged classes in the world." 
 
 As far back as the year 1881, Henry Fowler seems to have 
 turned his attention to the question of local government for the 
 country as it then existed for the towns, and this was the germ 
 of his Parish Councils Bill, which was passed in 1894. He pointed 
 out in one of his local speeches in 1881, that if it was right for the 
 inhabitants of a town to have the management of their own 
 affairs, the election of their own representatives, the raising and 
 spending of their own taxes, it was right that other citizens who 
 live in country districts should have the same privileges. And 
 of this idea he never loosened his hold. 
 
 The political history of 1881 contained but one question 
 that of Ireland, and but one name that of Mr. Gladstone; 
 but that can be read elsewhere. This is not meant to be a 
 political history, but the simple life story of a man who happened 
 to be a politician, and, therefore, whatever reflected or developed 
 or expressed his personality looms larger than perhaps its right- 
 ful proportions. And the Irish policy was never one of these 
 which lay closest to his heart, or moved him to his most enthu- 
 siastic efforts. Without disregarding the claims of Ireland, with- 
 out wavering in a desire for justice and peace in Ireland, in 
 Henry Fowler's heart of hearts he always considered her a rock 
 of difficulty and danger, and he never forgave her for being the 
 rock on which the great Liberal party split and was wrecked; 
 for he mourned that split and wreckage to the day of his death as 
 the saddest destruction of the greatest party which ever met and 
 ruled in Westminster.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 PARLIAMENT OF i88o 1885 (continued) 
 
 " Let princesgand states choose such ministers as are more sensible of duty 
 than of rising ; and such as love business rather upon conscience than upon 
 bravery. ' ' BACON . 
 
 THE Session of 1881 was described by Henry Fowler as " ex- 
 clusively devoted to the passing of one measure, perhaps 
 in its conception and execution, I believe in its ultimate beneficial 
 results when time has been allowed to work its way one of the 
 most wonderful and one of the wisest, as well as one of the best 
 measures, that was ever passed by the English House of Commons. 
 But, nevertheless," he pointed out, " that measure was not 
 inscribed upon our banner when we fought the electoral campaign, 
 and the measures to which we then pledged our adherence and 
 are anxious to see carried into effect, are waiting." He bitterly 
 blamed the obstruction which not only clogged the Irish measure, 
 but completely prevented the bringing forward of those other 
 measures to which he felt the party was pledged ; he realized that 
 such obstruction must be controlled so that it should no longer 
 hamper, even paralyse, the powers of the House of Commons. 
 " The whole legislative machinery," he declared, " is brought to 
 a standstill because there is placed in the power of a minority, and 
 the power of a very few men, the means and the instruments of 
 stopping all legislation whatever. I am not prepared to see the 
 House of Commons shorn of its past freedom and power. I do not 
 fear this cry of which we hear so much about gagging the House 
 of Commons. If there is any party in the country who is jealous 
 of the rights of minorities that party is the Liberal party. The 
 
 145 10
 
 146 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 history of our party for the last three-quarters of a century has 
 been a history of struggles and battles in the interests of minorities. 
 Our fathers fought all the battles with which the Liberal party are 
 associated and they never condescended to abuse the forms of 
 the House of Commons, they never condescended to thwart the 
 legitimate policy of what was then the legitimate majority. The 
 weapons they used were arguments, not obstruction : they con- 
 vinced public opinion. That is the way to win a fight in this 
 country." And later, for the practical remedying of this evil, he 
 pointed out : " Minorities have a moral power which is weakened, 
 if not defeated, by all unfair attempts to subvert or arrest the 
 legitimate action of the majority, which, for the time being, con- 
 stitutionally represents the opinion of the country. There is, 
 however, another interest which claims to be heard on this ques- 
 tion I mean the public interest. This House exists to work as 
 well as to talk, to govern as well as to criticize, to legislate as well as 
 to debate, to protect and extend rights and liberties and privileges 
 of which it is the supreme guardian, and which will be seriously 
 endangered if the House of Commons is lowered in public estima- 
 tion, or incapacitated for the discharge of its vast and varied duties. 
 On these grounds, therefore, I support the limit of the length of 
 debate." The question then was, as to how the length of debate 
 was to be limited, and Henry Fowler was very strong in his 
 opinions on this matter. " I could not assent to a proposal which 
 would place in the hands of any majority, whether a bare majority, 
 or two-thirds majority, or nine-tenths majority, the power of 
 summarily deciding without check or control when a debate 
 should close. The determination of a question after the question 
 has been fully discussed, is the function and the right of a majority ; 
 to decide that such a question shall be determined without con- 
 sideration is not the function of any majority." He then proposed 
 as being the strongest guarantee for the privileges of minorities 
 and the safest me Je of expediting public business, that the Speaker 
 should, acting judicially, exercise a two-fold judicial function. 
 First he must form the opinion that it is the evident sense of 
 the House that the debate should close, and then he may, if in his 
 opinion it is right to do so, inform the House of the opinion at which
 
 Parliament of 18801885 147 
 
 he has arrived. And this Henry Fowler felt would be the 
 true protection of a minority, holding as he did that the Speaker, 
 whether selected on party grounds or not, would never be disposed 
 to employ the privileges and responsibilities of his high office for 
 party purposes. This seems like an exposition of the Rules of 
 Procedure, which later were adopted by the Government, but, 
 as a matter of fact, these words were spoken and these opinions 
 formed by my father before any such rules had been formulated. 
 In the Session of 1882 Henry Fowler was entrusted with the 
 piloting of the Conveyancing Act through the House of Commons. 
 Lord Cairns first wrote to him on that matter at the beginning 
 of the year : 
 
 " Lindisfarne, 
 
 " Bournemouth, 
 
 " January 3Oth, 1882. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I should be very glad if we could pass a Supplemen- 
 tary Act this year with the provisions in the Conveyancing 
 Bill which had to be omitted under pressure last Session. 
 Would you be disposed to introduce the Bill in the House of 
 Commons, and to take steps in the opening of Parliament to 
 obtain such precedence for it as is possible before the Order 
 Book gets clogged. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " CAIRNS." 
 
 And again in March he wrote : 
 
 "5, Cromwell Houses, 
 
 " 2ist March, 1882. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 " The Conveyancing Bill, 1882, will be read in the 
 House of Lords 3rd time on Tuesday, and will then go to 
 the House of Commons. I hope you will kindly consent to 
 take charge of it this year in the same efficient manner in 
 which you did its predecessor in 1881, and will get it into its 
 
 10*
 
 148 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 position so as to be printed and circulated before Easter. 
 I am sure that the sooner after Easter it can be got to a 
 2nd reading the better chance it will have of passing. I will 
 send you the Bill and a memorandum which has been circu- 
 lated with it in the House of Lords. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " CAIRNS." 
 
 After the passing of the Act he received the following letter from 
 Lord Cairns : 
 
 " 5, Cromwell Houses, 
 
 " 2nd August, 1882. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " In case I should not have the pleasure of seeing 
 you before leaving town I wish to offer you my best thanks 
 for the trouble you have taken, and the excellent judgment 
 you have shown, in conducting the Conveyancing Bill through 
 the House of Commons. The reforms effected by the Act of 
 last year, to the passing of which you rendered the same kind 
 assistance, and by this measure will, I feel sure, be of the 
 greatest public utility, and do more in the way of simplifying 
 our law than many more ambitious statutes. I quite agree 
 with you as to the Commons' Amendments, and both as to 
 this and the Settled Land Bill, I have accepted them en bloc, 
 although I would have been glad to have made some verbal 
 alterations. The Settled Land Bill will, I feel sure, cause 
 an immense amount of most beneficial dealing with landed 
 property. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " CAIRNS." 
 
 The late Lord Chancellor had introduced some two or three 
 years previously a measure for reforming the tenure, transfer and 
 inheritance of land, which was not passed at the time, but in 
 1882 the Conveyancing Act carried still further that attempt made 
 by Lord Cairns to facilitate the sale and purchase of land.
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 149 
 
 During this Session my father was appointed to serve on two 
 Select Committees, and so was becoming more and more associated 
 with Parliamentary life, and more and more absorbed in it. He 
 took an active part in the passing of the Married Women's Property 
 Act, but the piece de resistance of all legislation at this time was 
 Ireland, and Irish policy filled up the practical programme of 
 every month. Other measures could only be sandwiched in, but 
 all public attention and Parliamentary efforts were concentrated 
 on the great Irish problems and unrest. " The outlook at the 
 beginning of 1882," he so tells the story, " was dark and dangerous. 
 The Land Act had not had much time to exert its influence or to 
 indicate its probable effects. Evictions were proceeding with a 
 severity, and on a scale, calculated to provoke the most deter- 
 mined and hostile resistance ; the leaders of the Irish party were 
 incarcerated at the will of the Executive without any oppor- 
 tunity of defence, without any right of trial. It would be idle to 
 disguise the fact that the working of the Coercion Act of 1881 
 was received with unconcealed dissatisfaction by a large section of 
 the Liberal party. The Land Act could not have a fair trial until 
 the question of arrears was settled, and the Government inti- 
 mated that they were prepared to legislate in that direction. 
 When that announcement was made, there was a general feeling 
 that it was impossible to continue the imprisonment of Mr. Parnell 
 and his colleagues, and in a few days the Government decided to 
 release all the Members of Parliament who were confined at Kil- 
 mainham. Coupled with that announcement was that of the 
 resignation of Mr. Forster, the Chief Secretary, and Lord Cowper, 
 the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who were unable to agree with 
 their colleagues in this new departure of their policy. . . . 
 
 " On the Tuesday Mr. Forster resigned, on the Thursday Lord 
 Frederick Cavendish accepted the post, and on the Sunday the 
 whole civilized world was startled by the announcement that the 
 new Chief Secretary had been cruelly murdered under circum- 
 stances of deplorable ferocity, in broad daylight in Phoenix Park, 
 and within two hundred yards of spectators, who thought that 
 they were looking on an ordinary street brawl. I shall never 
 forget the House of Commons on the Monday evening, nor the
 
 150 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 circumstances under which Mr. Gladstone, bowed down with 
 sorrow, moved the House to pay its last formal tribute of respect 
 to one of its most genial, most accomplished, most popular and 
 most promising Members. This terrible tragedy compelled the 
 Government to recast their legislative intentions. Two measures, 
 the Crimes Prevention Bill and the Arrears Bill were promptly 
 introduced, on the passing of both of which they staked the 
 existence of the Government." 
 
 It was at this time that the occupation of Egypt became 
 an active question, and Henry Fowler made the following defence 
 of Mr. Gladstone's policy a policy which cost the Prime Minister 
 the loss of a valued colleague in Mr. Bright. " Was the 
 Government justified in the military intervention in Egypt ? 
 Holding as I do the opinion that war unless it is an absolute 
 necessity is an awful crime I should always speak with the 
 greatest respect for those who, carrying that principle to its 
 utmost limits, object to war under any circumstances and for 
 any end. Their policy will prevail some day. The time will 
 come when the nations will beat their swords into plough-shares 
 and their spears into pruning-hooks but the time has not yet 
 come, and if our interests are attacked by military force, they 
 must be defended by military force. The possession of our 
 empire an empire which has been an unspeakable boon to all 
 the races subject to its sway an empire which has promoted 
 peace and happiness, truth and justice, to an extent that no other 
 empire which this world has ever seen has done that empire 
 imposes upon us duties and responsibilities from which we should 
 be free if our territory was limited to our sea-girt isle. But Her 
 Majesty reigns over two hundred and fifty millions of British 
 subjects in India, Ceylon and British Burmah, and the highway 
 to that vast empire lies through Egypt not only the highway 
 to that vast empire, but the principal highway to our enormous 
 colonies of Australia and New Zealand. Four-fifths of the shipping 
 and commerce which pass through the Suez Canal are British, and 
 these figures but dimly represent the gigantic commercial interests 
 which are involved. A series of treaties and international obliga- 
 tions have invested us in Egypt with special rights which impose
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 151 
 
 upon us the duty, not only of protecting our own interests, but of 
 exerting our power and our influence for the benefit of the Egyptian 
 people. As a consequence of this there has been an enormous 
 influx of English capital and labour into Egypt. These facts 
 impose upon us necessities, rights, and duties, which we can 
 neither ignore nor disregard, and in the event of any successful 
 defiance of English power by the Mohammedan population of 
 Egypt, a rising would probably have taken place in our Asiatic 
 possessions, the consequences of which would have dwindled into 
 utter insignificance even the sad loss of life and property which 
 has followed upon our campaign in Egypt." 
 
 The following Session of 1883 was distinguished chiefly in Henry 
 Fowler's eyes by the passing of the Corrupt Practices Bill. He told 
 his constituents that " the last General Election was ascertained 
 to have cost between two and three millions of money. Startled 
 by this fact and also by the disgraceful disclosures which had been 
 made before the Election Commissioners, public feeling was aroused, 
 public feeling demanded, that whatever else Parliament did, or 
 left undone, it should make a thorough, a bona-fide, and an honest 
 attempt to remove this scandal. Now some of us have heard 
 cynical politicians say ' Why should not a man derive some per- 
 sonal advantage from the possession of the franchise ? why should 
 not a man sell his vote ? ' Always answer that question by 
 another, ' Why should not a juryman sell his verdict ? ' Our 
 constitution has placed in the hands of the people a very large 
 share in the administration of the law, and I can conceive no 
 greater crime against justice than the betrayal of that solemn 
 trust. The constitution has placed in the hands of the people 
 no small share in the enactment of the law, in the direction of 
 public policy, and in the control of the Executive, and no greater 
 crime against constitutional government, against free institutions, 
 against law, and against liberty, can be committed than the betrayal 
 of that equally solemn trust. Every Englishman whose name is 
 on the electoral roll is bound by a pledge, binding his conscience as 
 solemnly as if he were sworn, that he will ' well and truly try,' and 
 according to the best of his judgment ' a true deliverance make ' 
 upon the momentous issues which his verdict will decide, and the
 
 152 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 sale of that birthright for any mess of pottage is a personal dis- 
 honour and a national danger." 
 
 My father also took some part in the Bankruptcy Act, serving 
 on the Grand Committee under Mr. Chamberlain. He spoke in 
 favour of sixpenny telegrams, and the Agricultural Holdings Act. 
 He also foresaw in the treatment by the House of Lords of this 
 latter Act that a time would come when the two great Houses of 
 Parliament would stand in conflict, and when, as in all hand-to- 
 hand fights, much would be lost which wise compromise and self- 
 imposed reform could have eventually preserved. " Twice within 
 the last fifty years the legislature has reformed, in obedience to 
 the will of the nation, the House of Commons, and we are now 
 on the eve of a third Reform Bill which I believe will not yield 
 to its predecessors in the magnitude of the changes which it will 
 effect. The time is coming when men will ask why should not the 
 House of Lords be reformed so as to retain and I am anxious to 
 retain the Second Chamber in harmony with the will of the 
 nation, devoting the talents, the opportunities, and the power 
 which they undoubtedly possess, not for the protection of a class 
 but for the benefit of a nation ? " 
 
 During the session no great advance was marked in Henry 
 Fowler's career by any special incident, but he was slowly and 
 surely marching on to the beginning of his official life. ... In 
 August of 1883 he received the following letter from the Lord 
 Lieutenant of Staffordshire : 
 
 " House of Lords, 
 
 "August nth, 1883. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " Would it be at all in accordance with your wishes 
 to be appointed a Deputy-Lieutenant for Staffordshire ? 
 if so I shall be happy to make the necessary recommendation 
 for the appointment. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " WROTTESLEY."
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 153 
 
 He accepted the same, but in rather a half-hearted way. A 
 scarlet coat was never the garb for Henry Fowler, and I remember 
 his saying with rather an amused smile at the cocked hat : " It 
 makes me look like a General." He felt the incongruity of him- 
 self in any military trappings, for never was there a truer civilian 
 in every fibre of his thought and being than my father ; and later 
 on, though he loved the blue civilian uniform which he wore 
 as a Minister of the Crown, he was still hampered by the sword, 
 which was always in his way and a perplexity to him to manipu- 
 late. For physically he was rather a clumsy man, and he had 
 very little use for his hands. He could not use his hands, for 
 instance, in any game -he could not throw a ball, or hold a bat, 
 or wield a golf-club. He tried the latter, but his awkwardness 
 was colossal. To button his collar was a feat which appeared 
 at the time to tax all his physical powers, and to tie a tie was abso- 
 lutely beyond them. He had no mechanical talent whatever, 
 nor any deftness of touch. His physical movements were all 
 the exact opposite of his mental ones, in which his quickness 
 and alertness and capacity were amazing. He always said that 
 even the act of writing was a pain to him, because it involved a 
 physical movement. He walked as a necessity, but I never saw 
 him run a step in my life. Every one of his powers seemed moulded 
 in the form of work, as even intellectual games he never grasped, 
 nor cared to try to play. He has taken a hand at whist at home, 
 but in that he did not learn even to recognize the cards by 
 sight, but would deliberately count the pips to ascertain the 
 card smiling meanwhile, with us, at his own utter ineptitude. 
 It was in many ways a pity that he did not know how to play, 
 for when he needed recreation he did not know where to find 
 it beyond his book-shelves; the whole system sometimes needs 
 other recreation than a change of work, but Henry Fowler could 
 never find it. I well remember' the oppressiveness in our home 
 on Bank Holidays. He never knew what to do except to rearrange 
 his books ; a proceeding which absorbed all the divers energies 
 which the house was capable of producing, to assist him, and 
 ended in a chaos on the floor of unappropriated volumes and 
 a change in their wonted situations, which baffled us all for
 
 154 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 many weeks in finding books we wanted in the library. Even 
 the ordinary Saturday half-holiday was a laborious experi- 
 ence and quite the heaviest in hand of all the days of the 
 week. 
 
 In a letter written to him by Mr. John Morley in the year 1898, 
 when my father was enjoying a holiday at Skibo Castle, the 
 beautiful Highland home of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, there stands 
 this sentence : " You are the most industrious of public men, and 
 though I am sure you like work much better than play, yet play 
 is necessary. I hope you like Skibo as well as I did. The air on 
 the Dornoch Links and the prospect pleased me as much as any- 
 thing that I have found in this island." 
 
 My father attended the Leeds Conference in October, 1883, 
 and took a prominent part in it. That Conference was on Parlia- 
 mentary reform, and also had a material influence on the course 
 which the Government subsequently took in the extension of the 
 franchise and the redistribution of seats. And in January, 1884, 
 he presided at the Conference on Parliamentary reform of the 
 Western Counties delegates at Plymouth. In speaking, Henry 
 Fowler had a knack of forcing a question into some terse and 
 easily-remembered sentence or illustration from which text, so 
 to speak, he embarked on his discourse. The need for Parlia- 
 mentary reform, including extension of the franchise and redis- 
 tribution of seats, he explained to the people of Plymouth first 
 in three brief statements : " There are in the United Kingdom 
 six and a half millions of householders of whom about three 
 millions only have the right of voting in the election for Members 
 of Parliament, and one third of the electorate return two-thirds 
 of the House of Commons, and two-thirds of the electorate return 
 one -third of the House of Commons. We hold that the majority 
 of the electors shall return the majority of Members to Parlia- 
 ment." His idea was, that if you put the matter into a 
 nutshell, the man in the street would take it home in his 
 pocket, while he would only listen to, and then forget, a more 
 elaborate and detailed description. He wrote at this time the 
 following letter to Mr. John Morley after the latter 's speech at 
 Newcastle :
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 155 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " 26th December, 1883. 
 
 "DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I read your Newcastle speech with admiration 
 and approbation but (oh, these buts !) while admitting 
 your premises on one topic, I could not see my way to adopt 
 your conclusion. The point is the freehold vote. You have 
 in speech or writing propounded the opinion that the Govern- 
 ment will as a rule prefer the line of the least resistance. 
 I feel sure, that if we are to carry a good Reform Bill we shall 
 (to some extent) have to be influenced by this axiom. Be- 
 ginning de novo one man, one vote, is the principle alike of pure 
 Liberalism and wise statesmanship. But we have the free- 
 holder the bona-fide freeholder, upon whom alone the Con- 
 stitution conferred the vote, and the faggot freeholder begotten 
 by the Anti-Corn Law League and developed by an inevitable 
 evolution into the favourite franchise of property and Jingoism. 
 There can be no doubt but that the Forty- shilling Freeholder is 
 a popular English tradition that any attempt to slay it would 
 arouse a good cry (in which ignorance would play the part of 
 interest), and that under the flag of an ancient and yet 
 democratic electoral right there would be, as Lord John found 
 to his advantage in 1859, a compact gathering of all the 
 foes of real reform. Why should we risk this ? There must be 
 very few cases where the bona-fide freehold is divorced from 
 the residence upon which the new Bill would confer the 
 vote. Non-resident freeholders will not pay their own ex- 
 penses to vote. The Corrupt Practices Act has virtually 
 disfranchised this class. Eldest sons and the small minority 
 of freeholders who are not householders are not a class which 
 we need fear, and in our principles are a class which though 
 small is yet a step towards a fairer trial of the lodger 
 experiment. 
 
 " Faggot voters are indefensible. You, of course, ask me 
 what do I suggest as involving ' the least resistance,' and as 
 avoiding the greatest injustice.
 
 156 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " i. Do not disturb any existing voter strike no freeholder, 
 forty-shilling or faggot, off the register. 
 
 " 2. Confine all new freehold qualifications to owners 
 resident in the county (or division) in which they reside. 
 If we can arrive at any reasonable solution of the freeholder, 
 we shall limit the Bill to a very brief measure ! and if the 
 Government are firm and united, and are really ready at a 
 crisis, as this is, to assert the pre-eminence of national legisla- 
 tion over private members' crotchets, we may at least pass 
 one of the other two measures which Dilke announced. 
 Pardon this incoherent scrawl from which you will be able 
 to make out why I am not as yet prepared to go in for a 
 simple residential franchise. 
 
 !< Thank you very much for asking me to offer myself 
 as your guest at dinner when next I am in London. I am 
 hoping to come up in the 2nd week in January and if you 
 are in town during that week, perhaps I may have the oppor- 
 tunity of expounding my theories and discussing the present 
 position of affairs and of the party, all the aspects of which 
 are not quite satisfactory to me. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In December, 1883, between the two conferences, Mr. Chamber- 
 lain came to speak in Wolverhampton and stayed with us at 
 Woodthorne. And at that meeting the then President of the 
 Board of Trade paid the following tribute to my father : "In my 
 friend Mr. Fowler you have given Mr. Villiers a worthy colleague. 
 There is no Member in the House of Commons in the present 
 Parliament who has made so distinctive a reputation, who has so 
 completely gained the ear of the House of Commons. Mr. Fowler 
 is known as an able, vigorous, clear debater, as an eloquent 
 speaker, and he has won the esteem and consideration which I 
 am bound to say the House of Commons always gives to distinct 
 ability and all the more when, as in his case, that ability is 
 placed at the service of honest purpose and conscientious 
 motive. . . .
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 157 
 
 " I know no position which a man may fill with greater satis- 
 faction and pride than that of representing those amongst whom 
 he has passed his life, who know every action and all his public 
 work, and who show their appreciation of it by the confidence 
 which they repose in him. Mr. Fowler has made his mark in the 
 House of Commons, he has illustrated the representation of Wol- 
 verhampton, and I think he has done as much honour to his con- 
 stituency as his constituency has done to him. . . . And I have 
 to recognize the great assistance which on many occasions, and 
 never more so than in connexion with the Grand Committee on 
 the Bankruptcy Bill, I have received from him." 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain here touched a note which always sounded 
 loud in my father's thoughts. I mean the pride and pleasure 
 he had in representing his own townsfolk. It is true he was not 
 a native of Wolverhampton, but all his manhood's life had been 
 lived there, and all his public work had been done there. Mr. 
 Chamberlain had himself ascended the same ladder from the plat- 
 form of municipal life and with the experience of municipal 
 apprenticeship, so he understood the full meaning of what the 
 representation of a man's own town might be. Wolverhamp- 
 ton was never to Henry Fowler, as Birmingham was never to Mr. 
 Chamberlain, only the step to political promotion. It was rather 
 the soil in which his political powers were rooted and from which 
 they sprang. No wooden platform from which to start, but a 
 piece of living land to be enriched and beautified by its own pro- 
 duct in the success of its representative, and to be dear to that 
 representative as an integral part of his success. To represent 
 one town, as both these statesmen have done, for over a quarter 
 of a century, and that their own town, is an ideal experience of 
 Parliamentary life which few realize, but in which both the place 
 and the politician are equally blessed. 
 
 At this period Henry Fowler first expressed certain opinions 
 concerning the rule of Ireland, from which he never departed. 
 " If we are to have and I desire to have a United Kingdom of 
 Great Britain and Ireland there must be equal laws, equal rights, 
 equal privileges, one nation under one Sovereign. And until 
 we are prepared to grant that in the fullest manner, without
 
 158 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 reservation or hesitation to the people of Ireland, I bid good-bye 
 to any and every scheme of legislation, whether it be coercive or 
 beneficial, we can contemplate for the pacification of Ireland." 
 " We have tried everything else and now let us try governing 
 Ireland by the Irish people. Let us see if that will not secure to 
 them what I think they are entitled to. If the Irish people felt 
 that they were treated on precisely the same terms as the people 
 of England and Scotland, and that they could make their voice 
 heard equally in Parliament, I think that is more likely to secure 
 their confidence than any system that could be adopted." This 
 latter allusion was to the proposal to exclude from the extended 
 franchise a large bulk of the Irish people. 
 
 In view of his future position with regard to India we may 
 note here a few words of his concerning the Indian Empire. " He 
 thought that the Liberal party quite understood Indian policy, 
 that they valued the Colonial possessions of this country fully 
 as much as did the Conservatives, and had done as much to retain 
 them. He did venture the opinion that the best way to deal with 
 our Indian possessions was to give the people as much self- 
 government as possible and remove all disqualifications of race 
 and religion. They wanted the people of India to understand 
 and believe that under the Imperial rule of the Queen of Great 
 Britain, and under the shadow of the English throne, they had 
 a greater amount of liberty and privileges than they could enjoy 
 under any other form of government." And he also gave the 
 following description of his own Radicalism. At this time he was 
 accused of being too violent a Radical ; twenty years later he was 
 accused of being far too Conservative for the Radical party ; and 
 yet he himself had never changed. His views, his policy, his ideals 
 were all exactly the same, but the tide of Radicalism has flowed 
 so far that the rock which at one time stood out as ahead of 
 the tide, by and bye was engulfed by its progressive waters. It 
 is safer, perhaps, for politicians to stand in a boat rather than on a 
 rock in these days the boats are crowded and the rocks are bare 
 but Henry Fowler never moved from his standing ground on the old 
 Liberalism of the Victorian Era, and there are still many English- 
 men left who wish that that rock had never been submerged.
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 159 
 
 " I am a Radical I would pull up by the roots that is what 
 a Radical means everything that is bad, and everything that is 
 unjust and unfair, everything that mars the progress of our common 
 country, everything that does injustice to any class or to any man. 
 And I am a true Conservative I would conserve all that is 
 righteous and just and true. The policy of the party to which 
 I belong has been the true Conservative policy. If at this moment 
 the institutions of this country repose on a firmer basis than the 
 institutions of any country on the face of the earth if at this 
 moment life and law and property are safer in Great Britain than 
 they are in any other spot in the Continent of Europe if at this 
 moment there is more individual freedom and a greater chance for 
 individual industry and if the throne of this nation stands surer 
 than any throne on the face of the earth, all these things are 
 owing to the Radical policy, which during fifty years has steadily 
 upheld the rights of the people against the privileges of the few, 
 and has endeavoured to secure the greatest happiness to the 
 greatest number. . . . One of the articles of my political faith 
 which I cannot rehearse too frequently is the Government of the 
 people, through the people, by the people, for the people." 
 
 About this time a correspondence began between my father and 
 his friend and confidant, Mr. John Morley (now Lord Morley), 
 which continued, more or less, to the end of his life. They met 
 so often, that the letters are of necessity not consecutive as a poli 
 tical correspondence, but are rather comments on current events, 
 and a supplement to conversations of which there is no record. 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " 5th April, 1884. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Many thanks for your characteristically kind note. 
 The only redeeming reminiscence of Thursday night is that 
 you not only made an admirable and powerful speech, but 
 the first (and the best) speech which has been made on our 
 side, grappling with some of the difficulties (and there are 
 difficulties) of the measure. So far as I am concerned it
 
 160 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 was, of course, a great disappointment ; I had carefully pre- 
 pared ! ! 1 an argument, or something which wore the guise 
 of an argument, and then to have to put it in the waste-paper 
 basket ! However, when I recalled that I had been nearly 
 thirteen hours in the House that I had a sleepless night 
 that I was physically out of sorts, and that for the last quarter 
 of an hour of Plunket's speech I had assumed (as Goschen 
 kindly arranged with me) that I was to move the adjourn- 
 ment and had therefore unstrung my mind from the debate ; 
 I am devoutly thankful that I was able to pull myself together, 
 and that I did not utterly and finally break down. 
 
 " How is it that a Government which has hereditary tradi- 
 tions (to put it as mildly as possible) with ' below the gang- 
 way ' should exhibit such an indifference, if not antagonism, 
 to their successors in that inheritance ? 
 
 " I see from one of the correspondent's accounts of Cham- 
 berlain's speech at the dinner of the National Liberal Club 
 that he censured independent action which might break up 
 the party ; so far so good. But if the rigid discipline which 
 he advocated is to be maintained, he must recall the lesson 
 which the history of all great leaders civil and military must 
 have taught him, that unhesitating, enthusiastic allegiance 
 to those who command is the result of sympathy with and 
 consideration for those who obey. H.M.'s Government may 
 learn some truth from the fable of the Lion and the Mouse. 
 The ' to-morrow morning ' of the fierce tornado of Gladstone's 
 eloquence with its uprooted forest of Northcotian policy, 
 presents a scene of destruction not of settled, intelligible, 
 reliable policy. The storm was superb while it lasted the 
 party and the country want a calm. 
 
 " Forgive me for this long talk. I am staying over Wed- 
 nesday to dine with Chamberlain on that evening. If you 
 are disengaged on Tuesday and have nothing better to do 
 the House won't be sitting, or at all events only for an Irish 
 squabble will you dine with me at the Reform ? 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 Parliament of 18801885 161 
 
 In August he wrote : 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Thanks for your kind criticism of my speech. It 
 was extempore and delivered under circumstances of physical 
 weariness and mental anxiety. Seeing the prospect of a good 
 ending, I pulled up suddenly, omitting several topics on which 
 I had wished to speak. You are right, I was (and advisedly) 
 ' reserved ' about the House of Lords. In addition to my 
 own mental incertitude I found that my friends here were also 
 uncertain. The leader, or rather one of the local leaders, 
 of the party wrote a letter which was read ' deprecating aboli- 
 tion, but advocating the introduction of the elective principle.' 
 A strong section are of course for ' ending,' but I am clear 
 that in this constituency ' mending ' is the policy most 
 popular. 
 
 " Your views as to the necessity of action in our section of 
 the party are sound, subject (if I may say so) to modifica- 
 tion as to time. In our married life whenever we have to 
 decide any question of choice or preference from articles of 
 furniture upwards, my wife has a good rule which I always 
 approve ' First,' she says, ' let us settle what we won't 
 have.' Now apply this to our problem. The country won't 
 have (I am clear as to this) the unconditional abolition of 
 the House of Lords. A Second Chamber meets with the 
 approval both of practical and theoretical politicians the 
 impending democratizing of the House of Commons its 
 recent demoralization its quick response to party objects 
 and party triumphs its ready acquiescence in the ' one 
 man ' rule these, combined with other and perhaps sounder 
 reasons, drawn alike from experience and probability, compel 
 thoughtful men to see that some day, in some crisis, it may be 
 of supreme importance to have the delay as well as the re- 
 vision of a Second Chamber. And then Englishmen always 
 do (I hope they always will) recognize the influence of tradi- 
 tion, association, history. And the House of Lords has a 
 history the last fifty years, notwithstanding and it has 
 
 ii
 
 1 62 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 capabilities. The machinery for power is constructed, the 
 motive and the object are all that reformers need supply. 
 Mind / am not saying this, I am photographing argument 
 prejudices if you like, which I feel sure vast sections and 
 powerful sections of English society will adopt and fight 
 for. 
 
 " No ! Lawson and Co. are wrong. The people will not 
 now efface the House of Lords. 
 
 " If I am right in this prediction then we are confronted by 
 the consequences of sitting on the other horn of your (already) 
 classical dilemma ' Mending,' however you achieve it, means 
 adding to the powers of the House of Lords, and to this 
 Chamberlain, you, and most of us, are opposed. What is 
 wanted ideally is that the majority of the House of 
 Lords should be in harmony with the majority of the House 
 of Commons if the will of the latter majority could be 
 effectively supported by a majority in another place, the diffi- 
 culty to-day would be obviated, but this support could only 
 be obtained at the risk, I think the certainty, of giving the 
 Second Chamber a revising and consultative influence which 
 might in the future develop into a power ' behind,' second 
 only to that of the Cabinet. Are we prepared for that ? 
 I doubt the practicability of Blight's scheme. If you want 
 to prevent any increase in the legislative power and adminis- 
 trative control of the Upper House, is not the wisest plan to 
 leave it as it is ? You will say the Radical party cannot 
 consent to that and if they will point out the alternative, 
 I agree. The upshot of my wandering scrawl is after all 
 ' mending.' That must be a plank in our platform. I am 
 declining all meetings at present, but before Parliament 
 meets I shall have to make one or two deliverances. We 
 (I mean the real, advanced Liberals) are advancing rapidly 
 and surely ; our danger is going too fast. Contrast the present 
 Government, its personnel, its policy, and its acts, with any 
 previous Liberal Administration e.g., Melbourne ( ? ?), Russell, 
 Palmerston (???), Aberdeen, Gladstone, and the enormous 
 strides we have made are brought out into sight. It won't
 
 Parliament of 188O 1885 163 
 
 do to upset all this to put the clock back ten degrees to 
 throw one-half of our party into the arms of the foes in 
 order to convince posterity that Labouchere and Storey and 
 others are not the successors of Fox and Burke of Cobden 
 and Gladstone ! Forgive this disjointed scrawl. 
 " Glad to say my wife is getting better. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 About a week later he wrote : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 ' 3rd September, 1884 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " What a cormorant you are of alliterative alterna- 
 tives ! ' Improved or removed.' Surely ' Mending or end- 
 ing ' was enough to make a reputation and here you are 
 taking the very bread out of the mouths of your humble 
 followers, like myself, and we shall be driven to compelling 
 or expelling, coercing or effacing, levelling up or levelling 
 down, etc., etc. Never mind, the Review treads very skilfully 
 over the thin ice, but its' conclusions are right, and I think its 
 predictions are correct. Midlothian ! complete success the 
 only weak point I can spot is the theory of ' What as to 
 Egypt ' that was not the theory of Dilke. But what I want 
 to know is your theory of the What next after October. He 
 won't dissolve ; if they reject the Bill, what are we to do, or 
 rather say ? A third sending up appears to be useless and 
 derogatory to the House of Commons. Will the Queen 
 create the Peers ? I doubt it without a dissolution. With 
 the House of Lords defying the House of Commons, and 
 the echoes of those two great speeches ringing in the ears of 
 the nation, what a chance we should have in a November 
 election ! 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 ii*
 
 164 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Again he wrote : 
 
 " Chamber of Commerce, 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " 3oth September, 1884. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Both my daughters want me to ask you for your 
 photograph for their respective repositories of these works of 
 art. It is a greedy demand, but as a sort of compromise 
 (something like Lord Cowper's) I send my own as the House 
 of Lords concession for your surrender ! We had a good 
 meeting at Wrexham. I came out strong about the unpatriotic 
 attitude of the Tory Leader. The enclosed cutting shows tha t 
 I touched the right chord. Of course I devoted the greater 
 part of my speech to the Franchise and the House of Lords. 
 I am sitting here in this Commercial Parliament and I have 
 to do my share in that horrid function a public dinner this 
 evening. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 " Grand Hotel, 
 " Eastbourne, 
 
 "nth October, 1884. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " My girls are greatly obliged to you for the two 
 admirable photos which reached us here to-day. 
 
 " At last we have got away to our holiday, but (oh, those 
 awful buts !) when my wife called at Charterhouse she found 
 they were on the point of sending for her as our boy had let 
 the nail of his toe grow inwards, and it was necessary to cut 
 it out. They thought that the operation had better be 
 done under our own eye, so we brought him here, and last 
 Sunday the little fellow endured the agony. He has got on 
 wonderfully well, the foot is healing very rapidly, and he will, 
 all being well, be able to return next week. But this was hardly 
 a pleasant commencement of a holiday.
 
 Parliament of 18801885 165 
 
 "The place is lovely, the hotel capital, and I wish the 
 fates would drive you here to have a walk over these glorious 
 downs and talk over all the complications of this week. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Giving 'hints' to the junior Member for Newcastle 
 as to a popular address is the aptest, completest and happiest 
 illustration of the old proverb ' Carrying coal to Newcastle ' 
 that the most fertile mind could suggest. 
 
 " But I will do what you so blindly ask for. If I had to 
 make a defence of the compromise and at Leeds I should, 
 as my notes, sketch out the following : 
 
 " i. What did we at Leeds twelve months ago, ask for, 
 resolve to get some day, hope to get out of this Parlia- 
 ment ? 
 
 " (a) Franchise. 
 
 " (6) Redistribution. 
 
 " Divided in time inseparable in substance both essen- 
 tially necessary. 
 
 "2. What did we expect ? 
 
 " A protracted, bitter fight for the Franchise. 
 
 " A more bitter fight ending (as you said) in a Dissolu- 
 tion, before we could get Redistribution. But if every foe 
 was defeated, we in our most sanguine dreams hoped for : 
 
 " 1884. Franchise. 
 
 " 1885. Redistribution. 
 
 "3. What followed our proposals ? 
 
 " The strong opposition of the Tory party in all its sections 
 to our scheme. 
 
 " The cold support of our Whig allies. 
 
 " The fatherly counsels, and reproofs, and cautions, of some 
 of our Leaders. 
 
 " The neutrality of a section of even the Liberal Press.
 
 1 66 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " 4. What have we got ? Franchise safe. Accepted, 
 irreversible, both Houses, to all we suggested. Redistribution 
 accepted on our principles of population, by Leaders on both 
 sides, by public opinion. All danger of combination threatened 
 by Members averted, details only waiting to be settled, and 
 the strong probability at least that 1885 will see our programme 
 adopted. 
 
 "5. What have the Government done ? 
 
 " They (at all events Gladstone, and we cannot deal with 
 any other Leader) contended Franchise first only because 
 Redistribution might otherwise be endangered, that Redis- 
 tribution was kept back to prevent its being used to defeat 
 Franchise, that subject to no danger on that score, Parliament 
 was entitled to deal with Redistribution contemporaneously, 
 that, if the House of Lords could pass Franchise, Redistribu- 
 tion should be at once brought in. If this plan was resisted 
 and Franchise imperilled, then, and only then, constitutional 
 changes must be discussed. That was the Premier's position 
 and now what has he agreed to ? 
 
 " Franchise Bill to be passed by House of Lords, and when 
 House of Lords has accepted the principle of Redistribution 
 the Opposition say, before we agree to this we must know 
 what sort of a Redis. Bill you intend to introduce. If we 
 (Opposition) regard this Bill as hopelessly bad then we will 
 not agree and we will fight it out. Both parties are as they 
 were. If we (Opposition) do not regard the Bill in this light, 
 then we accept your offer and peace is made. 
 
 " Knowledge of the outline of the Redistribution Bill is 
 the condition precedent to the treaty. 
 
 " The treaty, if agreed to, will require the absolute passing 
 of a Franchise Bill, and the conditional passing of the Redis- 
 tribution Bill, conditional, I mean, as depending on contin- 
 gencies, which Government cannot control and from which 
 the Franchise Bill is safe. 
 
 " 6. What was the alternative Creation of Peers ? 
 
 " Dissolution to the existing constituencies ? 
 
 " Delay of all reform for years ?
 
 Parliament of 18801885 167 
 
 " Tory Ministry ? 
 
 " 7. The passing by this Parliament of a complete scheme 
 of Franchise and Redistribution,- a reform of priceless value 
 for which true Liberals will postpone all other issues, 
 especially* issues on which this Parliament was not elected. 
 
 " 8. Liberals^should have the same confidence in Gladstone, 
 Chamberlain, Dilke, Trevelyan, as Tories have in Salisbury, 
 Northcote and Churchill. 
 
 " 9. I should copy, and quote, and adopt, the admirable 
 Newcastle sarcasm of schoolboys and savages, and protest 
 against the degradation of a great party's expressing and 
 professing noble aims in the buffoonery of thoughtless wits, 
 or the hatred of irreconcilables whose motives and whose 
 principles are as much opposed to true Liberalism as they are 
 to true Conservatism. 
 
 " There, my dear fellow, is a long text ; you can preach the 
 sermon. Send me (here) a Leeds paper with account of 
 your meeting. 
 
 " I note your news as to C. Why don't they put him 
 into Otway's place, but perhaps (and rightly so) he would 
 think that a shabby evasion. If he goes out it is, I assume, 
 to openly defend and maintain his principles. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " H. H. FOWLER." 
 
 In 1884 Henry Fowler was appointed one of the two permanent 
 members of the committee selected by the Treasury to devise 
 means whereby certain expenditure could be reduced. And at this 
 time his name began to be connected with almost every vacancy 
 in the ranks of the Government, and he became first widely known 
 to the public, principally through his powerful speaking at the 
 Leeds Conference. It was evident that his days below the gang- 
 way were numbered. His amendment on the Franchise Bill 
 was the only one accepted by the Government and incorporated 
 in the Bill. It was also expected that Mr. Morley would be offered 
 office, and the following letters indicated how the wheel was being 
 watched for its next turn :
 
 1 68 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " Woodthorne. 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " 19.11.1884. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Caine's is a very good appointment both personally 
 and representatively. He is an admirable and able man of 
 business, a good financier, a good speaker, a good Radical, 
 and has fairly earned the promotion by his great services to 
 the party. Candidly he is a better man for the post than Duff 
 or H. H. F. 
 
 " I don't like the commentary on Monday's Text which last 
 night's debate in the House of Lords supplies. My con- 
 tention was passing the Franchise Bill condition precedent 
 to any and everything. Now agreement, or shall we call 
 it approval, of the House of Lords of the Redistribution BiD 
 is the condition precedent. 
 
 " Was not this the contention of Lord Salisbury in July ? 
 I don't like this private settlement of the Redistribution 
 Bill between the Front Benches. 
 
 " If Chamberlain and Dilke won't agree to some ' vital ' 
 point of the Tories, where are we ? 
 
 " If they do agree, and we below the gangway and the Irish 
 dissent from their action, are we not powerless ? 
 
 " Some say that the details of the Redistribution are 
 unimportant, and at first sight I agreed with them, 
 but you will not be able to reopen this subject for 
 years. The House of Lords (enormously strengthened by 
 this conflict, as I think) will veto that, even if the 
 House of Commons desired it, and the House of Commons 
 representing existing arrangements, never desires Re- 
 distribution. 
 
 " Is it not of the last importance to us as a party to fight 
 any Tory manipulation of the seats ? 
 
 " I purpose coming up to-morrow and hope to hear you 
 speak to-morrow night. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " H. H. FOWLER "
 
 Parliament of 18801885 169 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 27th November, 1884. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Thanks for your note. I am daily hoping that 
 they will have the sense to offer you Shaw-Lefevre's place 
 and I am guessing that the place is being kept for you, until 
 all chance of the compromise failing is at an end, so that 
 when it is announced it will be too late for the Tories to put 
 any construction on it and just in time to reassure the Left. 
 I see the Times alluded to the probability of Courtney's 
 resigning, but I suppose that until the Bill is actually intro- 
 duced he is not entitled to say that he disapproves of it. I 
 am glad Caine got in. It looks this morning as if there were 
 difficulties in the negotiations the Minority in Ireland is 
 a problem. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In November, 1884, Sir Thomas Brassey (now Earl Brassey), 
 was appointed Secretary to the Admiralty in the place of Mr. 
 Campbell-Bannerman, and the position of Civil Lord of the 
 Admiralty, vacated by Sir Thomas, was offered to my father 
 in the following letter : 
 
 " 10, Downing Street, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " November 5th, 1884. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 " After a long service in the interesting Office of 
 Civil Lord of the Admiralty Sir Thomas Brassey is about 
 to become Secretary to that Department. I shall consider 
 it a public advantage if we may be permitted to enlist your 
 marked abilities and powers of speech in the service of the 
 Crown ; and I hope you will allow me to submit your name 
 to Her Majesty as the new Civil Lord in that great Depart- 
 ment. I think you would find the Office one giving ample 
 scope, especially at the present time, for energetic and useful
 
 170 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 exertion. I need hardly say that for the present this pro- 
 posal should be regarded as secret and I remain, my dear 
 sir, 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 To which my father made the following somewhat remarkable 
 reply, but one that showed that his ambition of office was not so 
 much a personal one as for the rendering of effectual service to his 
 country : 
 
 " Reform Club, 
 
 " Pall Mall, S. W. 
 
 " November 6th, 1884. 
 
 ":MY DEAR SlR, 
 
 " I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 
 5th inst. and to assure you that I fully appreciate the honour 
 which you have conferred upon me by that communication. 
 However highly I may regard both politically and personally 
 the privilege of joining the present Administration, I am bound, 
 both in duty to myself and in loyalty to you, to consider my 
 qualifications for the Office you name, and my ability to dis- 
 charge its duties to the satisfaction of the public. 
 
 " I am entirely ignorant of every branch and detail of 
 Naval administration. I might say that I have to learn 
 the alphabet of that department of the Public Service. 
 
 " My training and my experience have run in a very different 
 current. 
 
 " Coupled with the clear conviction of my own incapacity 
 I am aware, as every Member of Parliament is aware, that 
 at this particular juncture it is absolutely essential that no 
 charge of incompetency should be brought against any 
 official responsible even in the most subordinate degree for 
 Naval affairs. 
 
 "To be placed in a post for which I am consciously unfit 
 would be painful to myself and disadvantageous to the 
 Government.
 
 Parliament of 1880 1885 171 
 
 " Under these circumstances, and after the most careful 
 deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that it is my 
 duty to decline the proposal which you have done me the 
 honour of making. 
 
 " Will you allow me to add that I attach a value which I 
 cannot express to the distinction of being selected for any 
 responsible post in the service of the Crown, by a Prime 
 Minister for whom I entertain the most enthusiastic admira- 
 tion and the profoundest respect, and that the decision which 
 I feel compelled to make is consistent with my complete confi- 
 dence in and independent support of your Government. 
 
 " I am, my dear Sir, 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In spite of the above letter, acceptance of the post was further 
 pressed upon him by the First Lord of the Admiralty, but he 
 adhered to his conscientious scruples about undertaking the work 
 for which he felt himself unfitted. He wrote as follows to the 
 First Lord : 
 
 " Reform Club, 
 " Pall Mall, 
 
 " 12 November, 1884. 
 " DEAR LORD NORTHBROOK, 
 
 " After the most careful reconsideration I feel bound 
 to adhere to the views which I expressed in my letter to Mr. 
 Gladstone, and which, I explained to you yesterday, have been 
 strengthened by reasons which had not occurred to me when 
 I wrote to Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Dear Lord Northbrook, 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 Remarkable letters surely to read nowadays for the reason 
 of refusal. To know nothing about a Department, to have had
 
 172 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 no special training for its administration, would seem a most 
 inadequate, and almost absurd reason, for declining any advan- 
 tageous post to-day. Modern politicians would smile at such 
 an old-fashioned idea. And so we are all apt to smile at what is 
 old-fashioned just because it is incongruous, and humour lies in 
 incongruity ; but nevertheless there was something fine, as well 
 as uncommon, in such a humility, as well as in the desire to 
 seek the good of the public service before the fulfilment of any 
 personal ambition. 
 
 That year of 1884 finishes with another letter to his friend, 
 asking him to come to Wolverhampton : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 24th December, 1884. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " When a merchant allows to be protested his pro- 
 missory note he falls within the grip of Chamberlain's Act 
 his creditors are called together his assets are distributed 
 and he is not allowed to trade again until he obtains 
 his certificate. Apply this politically, e.g., Lymington's 
 assets would pay 20s. in thei, on any number of public engage- 
 ments. Arthur Arnold's would be a sound estate paying a 
 very large dividend but in the case of the Junior Member 
 for Newcastle-on-Tyne, having regard to the fact that his 
 liabilities are limited (only two promises before the meeting 
 of Parliament), I think from my knowledge of his assets that 
 he can pay 2os in the i, and if he allowed his notes to be 
 dishonoured I think it would be a case of unjustifiable and 
 culpable insolvency which ought to be reported to the Board 
 of Trade. Joking apart, I do want you to come. I do not 
 want you to come while you are at all seedy, or while you 
 are enjoying your literary ease, and so I propose as late a 
 date as possible. I find that Tuesday, the 3rd February, 
 will suit our Working Men (it is a working men's meeting 
 and as it was the working men who elected me and who 
 will keep me in, if I am kept in, I am anxious to do them 
 all honour) ; or if you prefer it, Thursday 5th. Kindly
 
 Parliament of 18801885 173 
 
 drop me a line by return as we have to engage the Hall as 
 soon as we can. The Meeting will be you and me. I shall 
 take the Chair, and, say forty or forty-five minutes' talk 
 will meet the case so I am not imposing a heavy burden, 
 and we will do all we can to take care of you at Woodthorne. 
 I am strongly in favour of the Second Ballot ; the sooner 
 it is ventilated the better. Do you take it up make it your 
 own and get the credit of it. Why not start it by a letter to 
 the Times ? Lord Derby ! but this jingo trash about German 
 annexation is monstrous. What right have we to veto the 
 development of Teutonic or Celtic or any other civilization. 
 
 " Surely the world gains if the cannibals of Guinea are 
 civilized. And in my opinion the peace of Europe is safer 
 if the great territorial powers undertake responsibilities and 
 consequently develop weak points in all the parts of the 
 world. 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 18841885 
 
 UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT 
 
 " My country claims me all, claims every passion ; 
 Her liberty henceforth be all my thought." 
 
 MARTYN. 
 
 JUST a month after my father declined the post of Civil Lord 
 of the Admiralty he was offered the Under-Secretaryship of 
 the Home Department, a post for which he felt himself 
 trained and suited, and which he therefore gladly accepted. He 
 received the following letter from the Prime Minister : 
 
 " Hawarden Castle, 
 " Chester, 
 
 " December 8th, 1884. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I am very glad to find our proposal that you 
 should become Sir W. Harcourt's Under-Secretary of State 
 has been agreeable to you. You will be at liberty to speak 
 of this arrangement as soon as I hear from Her Majesty, 
 and the earliest intimation of the event will be given 
 you. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Most faithfully yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 The Secretary of State for the Home Department also wrote to 
 him : 
 
 174
 
 Under-Secretary for the Home Department 175 
 
 " Home Office, 
 
 " December I2th, 1884. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " The final official approval of your appointment 
 only reached me at 9 p.m. last night. I telegraphed to you 
 this morning that our secret need no longer be observed. 
 I don't know how the announcement got into the papers, 
 everything does somehow. It does not signify in this case. 
 I shall be in town till Wednesday next and shall be ready 
 to introduce and induct you into the mysteries of the Office 
 when you can conveniently come up. I look forward with 
 much pleasure and confidence to your valuable aid in what 
 is at best a laborious and difficult task. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 Sir William Harcourt was my father's first Chief, and from 
 the beginning he felt for him more than a usual affection and 
 loyalty. The bond between them was always a close one, a per- 
 sonal as well as a political bond, and their reams of correspondence 
 show how much they were subsequently in each other's counsels 
 and confidence. Indeed it was to Sir William Harcourt, rather 
 than to Mr. Gladstone, that my father gave his first, fresh, 
 personal allegiance, and the devotion which a subordinate in a 
 Department may feel for his direct Chief. This feeling soon 
 spread, and afterwards matured into a friendship which not 
 only included loyalty to, but also approval of, the then Home 
 Secretary practically throughout his career. 
 
 The position of Under-Secretary to the Home Department was 
 not one in which men came to stay. It was rather one of 
 the recognized stepping-stones in the Government, and since 
 the Administration of 1880 was formed had been occupied 
 by Mr. Arthur Peel, who became Speaker, Lord Rosebery, 
 who was shortly afterwards appointed first Commissioner of 
 Works, and Mr. Hibbert, promoted to be Secretary to the 
 Treasury, in which office he was succeeded by Henry Fowler in 
 1886.
 
 176 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 On becoming Under-Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
 ment it was necessary for my father to break his connection with 
 the Town Council of Wolverhampton, of which he had been a 
 member for twenty-six years, but which was controlled in a measure 
 by the Department of State to which he had been appointed. He 
 wrote to the Mayor as follows : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " 5th January, 1885. 
 " DEAR MR. MAYOR, 
 
 "It is with unaffected regret that I have to request 
 you to inform the Town Council that my recent appointment 
 as UEder-Secretary of State for the Home Department neces- 
 sitates the resignation of the Office of Alderman. Wolver- 
 hampton has been incorporated thirty-six years, and for 
 twenty-six years of that period it has been my privilege and 
 my pleasure to be a member of the Town Council. My inti- 
 mate association with the municipal life of Wolverhampton 
 has strengthened my confidence in our system of self-govern- 
 ment, and has increased my appreciation of the character 
 and conduct of the citizens by whom our local administration 
 has been, and is being, conducted. Let me ask you to convey 
 to my colleagues the assurance that I shall continue to sym- 
 pathize with them in all their endeavours to promote the good 
 government of the borough, and that I shall always be ready 
 to render them any assistance in my power in the discharge 
 of their honourable and responsible duties. 
 " I am, dear Mr. Mayor, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 At a dinner given shortly afterwards by the members of the 
 Liberal Club in Wolverhampton in celebration of the Jubilee 
 of Mr. Villiers in its representation, Henry Fowler spoke for the 
 first time as a Member of the Government. He expressed his
 
 Under-Secretary for the Home Department 177 
 
 satisfaction that he had been able to follow the constituency's 
 precedent to have for their Member a Front Bench man, and he 
 expressed afterwards and often afterwards, at home his further 
 satisfaction that the opponents to his candidature on the ground 
 that Wolverhampton wanted a Front Bench rather than a 
 local representative, had had an unappetizing meal off their own 
 words. He also at that dinner referred to the breaking-up 
 and dividing of the great borough of Wolverhampton into three 
 constituencies. 
 
 " I deplore," he said, " the mutilation of the borough of Wolver- 
 hampton. I must not say I object to it, because I suppose 
 Members of the Government must support everything that the 
 Government may do. But, so far as it is within the limits of 
 orthodoxy, I say I do not like the breaking-up of the great borough 
 of Wolverhampton. And such an event as has been celebrated 
 to-day this fifty years' connection between Wolverhampton and 
 Mr. Villiers honourable to Mr. Villiers, more honourable to 
 Wolverhampton ; far more honourable to the people who have sent 
 him than to the man sent I am sorry this representation of the 
 borough is to be one of the things of the past. But whatever may 
 happen, I shall myself regard it, so long as I have any connection 
 with Wolverhampton, still as a whole." Here again the note is 
 struck, which sounded so loud even throughout all his reform- 
 ing passion and policy, of regret at the destruction of any of those 
 great monuments of power or tradition which come to us out of the 
 treasures of the past. A possible present good may clamour for, 
 and even compel, such destruction, but it would always be with the 
 greatest reluctance and regret that Henry Fowler would consent 
 to it ; and so cautious was he about sacrificing a positive good for 
 a theoretical improvement, that he would never have been 
 instrumental in originating such a policy. The elements of the 
 optimist and the speculator were absolutely lacking in his cha- 
 racter. He must see a practical good put down on paper " in 
 black and white " was the test he used to quote ; but never in the 
 colouring of enthusiastic imagination and idealization, even though 
 those colours might be absolutely true to what would happen. 
 This quality had, as all other qualities have, its defects. It often 
 
 12
 
 178 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 held him back from attempts which he could easily and worthily 
 have achieved, but it also tempered his Radicalism with a sobriety 
 and security which are admirable leavens in such a lump. More- 
 over, he had a very real sense of the danger of even friendly divi- 
 sions. " Unity is strength," was one of his favourite maxims, 
 and he would have sacrificed much to keeping intact the unity of 
 anything which was strong and powerful, and of value. The 
 shadow of that great destruction and division of the Liberal Party 
 which came with the Home Rule Bill of 1886, perhaps fell across 
 his picture of the destruction of one of its great borough consti- 
 tuencies. To neither did he openly object, but both he deeply 
 deplored. 
 
 At the close of this speech he touched on a vein of thought which 
 was always singularly abhorrent to him : "It was the young men 
 of 1 835 who have fought and won the victory ; and future victories 
 will depend upon the young men of to-day, if they do not drink in 
 that most contemptible of all contemptible snobbery the belief 
 that it is more respectable and more gentlemanly to belong to 
 the Conservative party. I think when a young man has descended 
 to that level, has degraded himself down to that point, he should 
 take off his hat and vanish into insignificance in the presence of 
 any respectable working man ; he has forfeited all the value of 
 his education, and he has himself abdicated the position of in- 
 telligence and propriety which his father earned for him. I would 
 not say I have no patience with, but I have no respect for, these 
 juvenile apostates. I do respect an honest convert, I even respect 
 a conscientious pervert ; but the man who leaves his political or 
 religious faith because he deems it to be more gentlemanly to 
 belong to somebody else's, whatever other demands he ma}' 
 make upon his fellows, cannot claim their respect or their con- 
 fidence." 
 
 In the days when Henry Fowler made this speech that sort of 
 snobbery was far more rampant than it is to-day. There will 
 probably never come an age before the Millennium when snobbery 
 of some sort is not rampant, but it wears different guises in different 
 generations. I think my father had met with a good deal of this 
 particular kind, seeing that he had changed neither his political
 
 Under-Secret ary for the Home Department 179 
 
 nor religious views, in the midst of a circle which thought and acted 
 otherwise. But to him, personally, as a man made of big qualities, 
 as a man descended from godly and gentle forbears, for it is 
 only in the radius of real religion that snobbery can find no stand- 
 ing-room the popular failing was more ugly than wrong, but so 
 ugly that he hated even to look upon it. He had little patience 
 with folly of any kind ; fools he never suffered gladly, and pre- 
 tenders of any sort he would away with. He keenly enjoyed the 
 story of the man who regretted his wife's death which happened 
 " just when she was getting into society " ; for in the last quarter 
 of the nineteenth century there were social smallnesses which 
 people to-day would only laugh at. Conventionalism is being 
 swept away, and much that is good is going with it ; neverthe- 
 less, it was a cramping and a petrifying power which hindered 
 growth and froze originality. In Henry Fowler's day it was the 
 fashion to be a Churchman and a Tory to-day it is the fashion to 
 belong to any religion that is newer than the established creeds, 
 and consequently an improvement upon Christianity. It doesn't 
 much matter what it is, provided that it is new and un- 
 orthodox. Politically the fashions of to-day are past finding out, 
 there are few old Tories, and no old Liberals, and a sort of setting- 
 to-corners has taken place which involves joining hands on many 
 questions with those who belong to the other side. My father 
 had a conventional character but not a conventional mind. He 
 belonged to the days of mahogany and rep, and other such well- 
 wearing materials, but his mind had been bred and moulded in 
 one of the early Methodist homes, from which conventionality had 
 been banished when the new faith came in, and he never had any 
 dealings with the language and limitations of conventionalism, 
 even though his thoughts and feelings were of that conventional 
 type which was characteristic of the great Victorian Era. 
 
 But though he shrank from the division of the borough of 
 Wolverhampton, it was perhaps with some of that maternal 
 solicitude which, in the presence of King Solomon, shrank from 
 the mutilation of a much-loved child, and it was not because he 
 disapproved of the Government's great work in the redistribution 
 scheme. At Liverpool he said of it : " The Franchise Bill had 
 
 12*
 
 180 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 swept away one of the obstacles to popular progress, and the 
 Redistribution Bill would very shortly sweep away another. 
 Now the Liberal principle that numbers and not interests, that men 
 and not money-bags, that the people and not classes, are to con- 
 trol the distribution of political power and regulate Parliamentary 
 representation I say, that principle has been accepted in a degree, 
 and to an extent, which the reformers of the last generation only 
 regarded as the possibility even of a very distant future. I know, 
 and acknowledge, and rejoice in the acknowledgment, that an elec- 
 toral reform which cast into the shade the electoral reforms of 
 1832 and 1867 has been accomplished by the mutual action of 
 the Leaders of the two great political parties ; and that changes 
 which, if they had been proposed by one party and resisted by 
 the other, could only have been adopted after a long and bitter 
 national struggle, have been carried into law with mutual consent 
 and with mutual concession. ... A democratic Government 
 may be foolish, but it can never be irresponsible ; it cannot in its 
 folly trample on the conscience or the feelings of a great people. To 
 my mind it will be peaceful, but it won't be cowardly ; it won't 
 bully but it won't submit to bullying ; it may not be diplomatic, 
 but it will be honest ; it will say what it means, and mean what 
 it says ; and although it will not wantonly lavish English treasure 
 or sacrifice English lives, it will never allow the interests or the 
 honour, or the subjects of this Empire to be sacrificed at the bidding 
 or for the aggrandisement of any foreign foe." Such was Henry 
 Fowler's idea of a democratic Government in the days in which 
 he thus spoke of it. And to such an idea of Liberal Government, 
 and only to such, he held his allegiance, and in it he confided his 
 trust. The idealist can be made of different fibre from the dreamer. 
 Henry Fowler could see visions though he never dreamed dreams ; 
 and, as the most practical and utilitarian of men, he yet held ideals 
 of his party and its principles, and its policy, which were as real 
 to him as ideals always are to those who truly believe in them. 
 In all his exposition of his Government's actions he had some high 
 motive and big thought to portray, which were ever present in his 
 own interpretation of such actions, as most probably they were 
 in all the other Ministers with whom he was connected ; and it
 
 Under-Secretary for the Home Department 181 
 
 was this power of seeing into the heart of things, and as a matter 
 of fact it is generally in the heart of things that we find their 
 best, which made him so fair and understanding an opponent, so 
 wise a counsellor, so true a friend. As a fair opponent a whole 
 party recognized him, as a wise counsellor his country valued him, 
 but of him as a true friend only a few can bear their testimony. 
 One of the brightest bits of colouring in his portraiture was his 
 loyalty to his friends. " What is the good of a friend who won't 
 stick up for you when you are in the wrong ? All the world will 
 do so when you are in the right." And he also not only adopted, 
 but appraised the sentiment of the adage, that " one man may 
 steal a horse and another not look over the gate." The man 
 who was Henry Fowler's friend could steal a whole stable ful 
 unrebuked. I never heard him speak one disloyal or even dis- 
 appointed word of a friend. He had a perfect manufactory of 
 excuses for the same, should they in any way fail him ; and his 
 powers of forgiveness, should injuries be proved, were of that 
 rare type which can literally forgive and forget the latter being 
 generally the crucial difficulty. 
 
 As far back as this year of 1885 he foreshadowed his views on 
 the desirability of a multiplication of small holdings when he 
 pointed out : " That one quarter of England and Wales is owned 
 by 710 men ; 744 men own one half of Ireland and 70 men own 
 one half of Scotland. I say there is not such a state of things in 
 any other civilized country on the face of the earth. In France, 
 in Switzerland, in Germany, in Austria, in Holland, in Belgium, 
 in Italy, small estates are multiplied. In England small 
 estates are vanishing away. In Prussia alone there are 800,000 
 agricultural labourers who are owners of the soil, and in France 
 you will find millions of men all holding less than ten acres. I 
 am not unfamiliar with the cry that anyone proposing any change 
 in this respect is at once charged with interfering with the rights 
 of property ; he is at once a communist, a socialist, and very 
 shortly will be called a nihilist. I do not believe we are going to 
 break the Eighth Commandment ; would it be any breach of it 
 any violent interference with the rights of property supposing we 
 abolish that iniquitous law by which all one's land goes to one
 
 1 82 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 child ? Would it be a breach of the Eighth Commandment if you 
 swept away the cumbrous machinery of entail ? Would it be a 
 breach of the Eighth Commandment to make land as merchantable 
 as cotton or corn, or to secure to the farmer that his outlay shall 
 be as certain a property as the land on which he labours ? Would 
 it be a breach of the Eighth Commandment to say that land 
 should pay a fair share of the rates from which it is now 
 exempt ? . . . 
 
 " Whatever ugly names you may attach to the new order of 
 things, depend upon it that the day has gone by for the preserva- 
 tion of a vested right to do wrong. We could not if we would, and 
 we would not if we could, arrest legislation, which I believe will 
 invest English citizenship with a loftier character than ever 
 attached to the citizenship of Rome. The industry and the 
 co-operation of the masses of the people have created a marvellous 
 wealth, which puts into obscurity the magnificence of the princes of 
 times past ; but the conditions under which that wealth has been 
 created have caused an enormous amount of human suffering and 
 of human want. It is our duty to mitigate that suffering and that 
 want. No legislation can abolish poverty, but legislation can do 
 much to mitigate the suffering which exists. I do not believe in 
 the perpetuity of ignorance and intemperance, of cruelty and of 
 crime. I do not believe that our nation has grasped the first 
 principles of political economy, to say nothing of moral justice, 
 if the life of the majority of its citizens is one prolonged and bitter 
 struggle from the cradle to the grave, divorced from every associa- 
 tion that can refine or elevate humanity. I believe that by wise 
 and strong legislation, health may be preserved, education may be 
 extended, physical suffering may be prevented, recreation may be 
 secured, and life made a virtue, a noble and a happy thing. The 
 true test of national greatness is not in your ships, or your colonies, 
 or commerce. It is not in your ascendency in the Councils of 
 Europe or in the world-wide limits of your Empire. It is in the 
 prosperity, in the happiness, in the physical well-being of the 
 masses of the people committed to your charge." And again he 
 spoke of law reform at the Fowler Reform Club in Wolverhampton : 
 " Property in land rested upon the same foundation, and was
 
 Under-Secretary for the Home Department 183 
 
 entitled to the same protection, and ought to be subjected to the 
 same obligation, as every other description of property. By law 
 and by custom we had attached to land artificial privileges, exemp- 
 tions and disabilities opposed to the public interest. The law had 
 discouraged the multiplication of the proprietors of land, and 
 treated limited ownership on the largest scale as the perfection of 
 modernized feudalism. Taxation had been graduated so as to 
 exempt property in land from the same burdens which all other 
 property bore. It was neither communism, nor confiscation, nor 
 unsound finance, to ask that land should be treated on the same 
 footing, be subject to the same taxation, and enjoy the same 
 freedom of sale, as every other description of property." 
 
 On February 4th, 1885, Henry Fowler made the following 
 reference to the War in the Soudan : " Whatever might be their 
 opinions as to the past or to the future policy of the Government, 
 with regard to the Soudan, he thought Englishmen of all parties 
 and of all ranks would unite in admiration of that splendid feat of 
 arms which those brave men accomplished in a march of two 
 hundred miles across the desert, of meeting a foe ten times their 
 number, fighting two battles and proving that they were what 
 Englishmen had always been ; that was a defeat which deserved 
 the admiration of the whole country." But as regards the policy 
 of that war he added : "As Liberals they were not prepared to 
 weaken our present vast territory ; they were fully sensible of the 
 responsibilities which it involved ; but at the same time the one- 
 third of the globe over which Queen Victoria reigned was sufficient 
 for the greediest ambition. The British Government had the 
 care of three hundred millions of the human race, and that was 
 sufficient to tax the uttermost resources of English statesmanship. 
 Africa was five thousand miles long and five thousand miles wide, 
 and yet, no sooner did a great Continental Power show itself desirous 
 of colonizing a few hundred miles of it, than there was a great out- 
 cry that our Colonial Empire was in danger. England was desirous 
 to see other nations engaged in the work of colonization and 
 civilization ; and, if they did so, it was not likely to prejudice British 
 territory in any way. He for one was not in favour of weakening 
 our present territory, but he thought they were but doing their
 
 184 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 duty by confining it to its present limits, and respecting the rights 
 of others. Five years ago the country had pronounced its verdict, 
 that as it would not have annexation in Afghanistan, or Zululand, 
 so it would not have annexation in North Africa. As the Liberal 
 party they would uphold the principle that the best interests to 
 look after were the interests of peace. Private individuals had at 
 times to make sacrifices to avoid quarrels and litigation, and nations 
 ought to make sacrifices to avoid war." 
 
 On February 6th, 1885, he wrote the following somewhat gloomy 
 letter to Mr. Morley : 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " No adequate report of my speech, which was a 
 poor one, has appeared. If to-morrow's paper has anything 
 worth reading I will send it. The taxation difficulty is great. 
 Of course you know Mill's views. My inclination is (as I 
 told Chamberlain) to follow out Mill's theory of non-payment 
 up to a certain figure. Mill puts it at 50 our law at 120 
 I should not be sorry to see it at 400. That would give 
 the real relief to the section of the Middle Class most deserving 
 of relief and on whom the tax presses with unfair severity. 
 What we want is a complete and statesmanlike revision of 
 our whole Imperial and Local Taxation. The present theory 
 is that the Working classes pay two-fifths and the Welsh ditto 
 classes three-fiiths of Imperial Taxation. Your speech at 
 Glasgow will have the weightiest effect. If I was not a 
 Member of the Government, and could therefore speak dis- 
 interestedly, I should entreat you to throw your enormous 
 influence against any party (Tory party, Peace party, 
 Labouchere party, Bondholders' party, Goschen party, John 
 Morley party), action, or reproach, at so grave a crisis. The 
 Queen's Government, as such, is entitled in a moment of 
 supreme difficulty to the support of the nation ; and whether 
 you are right, or Lord Edmond, matters very little just now. 
 ' I told you so ' is what the Tories will say. Let them say 
 it in due course, but not now in the face of such a disaster. 
 I am very down about politics, and about the Liberal party.
 
 Under-Secretary for the Home Department 185 
 
 Here we are disintegrated, and I can see we are losing ground 
 rapidly. The folly of splitting up our Borough is apparent. 
 The Tories talk of winning two seats. If so, you can see who 
 goes to the wall. 
 
 " Wishing you a good time at Glasgow, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 There is no record of any expression of his opinion concern- 
 ing the Fall of Khartoum, and the death of General Gordon, the 
 news of which reached England on February 5th. Such silence 
 may be significant of a latent disagreement with the policy of 
 the Government at that time ; but as he was not in the Cabinet, 
 his voice could not with propriety have been raised on any such 
 question, and as he was in no way responsible for the policy, his 
 obvious course was a non-critical one, whatever might have been 
 his private opinions. Politically he practised what he often 
 advocated personally : "If you have nothing pleasant to say, be 
 silent." And silent on this occasion he markedly was. 
 
 But from that date the days of the Government were numbered. 
 Their swinging majority had dwindled down to the bare one of 
 fourteen on the vote of censure, and every subsequent question 
 seemed to widen the differences which existed even within the 
 Cabinet itself, but with this we have nothing to do, seeing that at 
 this time Henry Fowler was only an outside subordinate of this 
 moribund Administration. On June loth the Government was 
 defeated by a combination of the Irish with the Opposition, and 
 also by the addition of many Liberals who had differed essentially 
 from recent policy. Though England is not a sentimental nation, 
 it has a great underlying stratum of sentiment, and this, whether 
 rightly or wrongly, had been stirred up by the tragedy of the 
 massacre of one of England's truest heroes, which she felt might 
 have been prevented had other policies prevailed. The enthusiast 
 whom one section of the world calls a hero and the other a fanatic 
 the truth often lying in the amalgamation of the two, is rather 
 a doubtful asset in political life ; he may even prove to be a 
 liability ; for the hero can only see the best, and the politician
 
 186 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 can only deal with the second-best, and there is no meeting-ground 
 for the policies of these two. But the great third party of public 
 opinion, is subordinate even to that of public sentiment, and when 
 the latter is let loose, no King Canute is powerful enough to stay 
 its tide. 
 
 It was on the Budget, however, that the Government was 
 actually defeated, and it was with facts rather than theories that 
 Henry Fowler characteristically concerned himself. 
 
 " There was a good deal of confusion, misconception and mis- 
 representation as to why Mr. Gladstone's Government the 
 Government which had so large a majority, and which no doubt 
 represented a majority of the old constituencies was brought to 
 so sudden a close. It was not Russia, it was not Egypt, it was not 
 Bechuanaland, it was not foreign policy, it was not twopence on 
 a bottle of brandy, it was not a halfpenny on twelve pints of beer, 
 it was not the intolerable condition of the taxation of this country, 
 that compelled the House of Commons to turn the Government 
 out ; but he would tell them what it was. It was because the 
 Government invaded the sanctuary of the landed interests, it was 
 because they proposed that real property should pay its share of 
 the taxation of the country, that Mr. Gladstone, like Mr. Pitt 
 a hundred years ago, was defeated by a landlord Parliament, in 
 making precisely the same proposals, under precisely the same 
 circumstances." And again further : "It was a combination 
 with Irish members for Irish purposes, although the issue was 
 nominally a Budget one, which terminated the Gladstone 
 Ministry." But once in later years in considering some question 
 which involved a relief expedition I heard him say : " The Liberal 
 party can afford no more Gordons." 
 
 Lord Salisbury formed a Government, and went to the country 
 in the autumn dissolution of 1885, in which the Liberals retained 
 sufficient seats to form a majority with the Irish, but not enough 
 to be independent of the Irish party. This was the first election 
 of the divided borough of Wolverhampton. A good deal of local 
 pressure had been brought upon my father to contest West 
 Wolverhampton, as the most uncertain portion of the constituency, 
 but he was firm in his decision, after Mr. Villiers had chosen the
 
 Under-Secretary for the Home Department 187 
 
 South, to contest East Wolverhampton, on the ground that it 
 practically represented the original Parliamentary borough of 
 Wolverhampton the Western Division having sprung up only 
 in recent years by the extension of villadom, and having with it 
 no political associations. And these were ever dear to the heart 
 of Henry Fowler. As Mr. Villiers chose the South because in it, 
 at Bilston, he made his first speech as a Parliamentary candidate, 
 so did the Junior Member cling to that heart of the old borough 
 which comprised Willenhall, the town which so many years ago 
 had expressed a desire, and a resolve, to have him as its Parlia- 
 mentary representative. His opponent at the election of 1885 
 was Mr. Walker Bird, whom he defeated by a majority of 1,287 
 on a poll of 6,583. 
 On Mr. Morley's return for Newcastle my father wrote : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " soth November," 1885. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " No one outside your own family is more delighted 
 at your victory than I am. Accept my truest sympathy. 
 I saw in the papers the dirty tricks that your colleague was 
 alleged to be playing, and I feared the result, and I am 
 proportionally relieved at the result. What a catastrophe 
 all round ! ! I won't utter the folly of ' I told you so,' but 
 do wish that the counsels of more moderate advisers had been 
 listened to. ' L'audace, encore I'audace, el toujours I'audace,' 
 you remember what you said followed. Last chapter of 
 3 vol. of Greville (new series) describes the elections of 1852 
 and the condition of the Liberal party in words literally 
 accurate if applied to 1885. I am thoroughly depressed 
 cannot pull myself right. Party here quarrelling and split 
 up ! Again and again wishing you many successful ' returns ' 
 and anticipating even in the dim and distant future your 
 accession to your rightful and right honourable inheritance, 
 " I am, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 1 88 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 It was a difficult campaign for the late Government's allies to 
 conduct. There was no popular cry, but there was a good deal 
 of unpopular criticism. There was some thin ice to be skated 
 over, and the Liberal programme was stale even if it was con- 
 vincing. Ireland pressed heavily, as was its wont, on the hearts 
 and consciences and spirits of politicians, and the Irish party, re- 
 turned to Parliament 85 Parnellites strong waited for the 
 opportunity to reduce either party to subservience to its demands, 
 seeing that it held the majority at Westminster in its hands. 
 
 The Liberal majority over the Tories was 82, but the Irish 
 practically held the situation in their hands, as the side to which 
 their 85 was added was bound to prevail. The parties returned 
 to Westminster were uncertain as to which way the Irish vote 
 would go, and therefore Lord Salisbury remained in power for 
 the next couple of months, until the Chief Secretary for Ireland 
 Mr. Smith proposed a Coercion Bill, when the Irish seized the 
 first opportunity of showing their disapproval of that measure, 
 by voting against the Government on Mr. Ceilings' amendment 
 regarding the omission from the Queen's Speech of measures for 
 benefiting the rural labourer. 
 
 Sufficient time had not elapsed to efface the differences between 
 leaders of diverse Liberal opinions, and so the return to West- 
 minster of the Liberal party was sombre and half-sullen, waiting 
 in the spirit of disunion for the actual opportunity, which swiftly 
 and but too surely came.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 1886 
 
 SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY 
 " Dissolutions of ancient amities ; divisions in state." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 LORD SALISBURY'S Government was defeated on January 
 27th, 1886, by a majority of 79, composed of Liberals 
 and Nationalists ; and on Monday, February ist, Mr. Gladstone 
 again kissed hands as Prime Minister. On February 3rd he wrote 
 to my father : 
 
 "21, Carlton House Terrace, 
 
 " February 3, 1886. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have now to propose to you that you should 
 become one of the vigilant guardians of the public purse, as 
 Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I hope it will be agree- 
 able to you to accept this important office. It will be under 
 your old chief, as Sir W. Harcourt will be Chancellor of the 
 
 Exchequer. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 To which my father replied : 
 
 " Reform Club, 
 
 " Pall Mall, S. W. 
 
 " 3rd February, 1886. 
 " DEAR MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 " I have to thank you for the honour you have done 
 me in proposing that I should undertake the duties of Financial 
 Secretary to the Treasury. 
 
 189
 
 190 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " I accept the office with a due sense of the importance of 
 the trust you have reposed in me, and with the determination 
 to do my utmost to discharge its responsibilities to the satis- 
 faction of yourself and the public. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 The post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury was supposed 
 to be the last step before entering the Cabinet. True there are 
 some men who never ascended by any steps at all, but went up 
 by a lift into Cabinet rank ; not so Henry Fowler. He walked 
 every step of his way through life. Sometimes, when the way was 
 hard, and the progress slow, he looked with a silent longing at 
 the luck of other men, but luck never came his way. As Financial 
 Secretary his duties involved the general conduct of Government 
 business in the House, besides the transaction of all affairs nego- 
 tiated between the Treasury and public bodies throughout the 
 country ; the post also involved a continuance of the tie between 
 him and Sir William Harcourt, which was one my father greatly 
 valued. But to embark in any office just at this period was with 
 no long or safe voyage ahead. All the dry bones of Irish wrongs 
 and needs in times past seemed to have had suddenly breathed 
 into them the breath of life, and arose as a host to press the Govern- 
 ment into some practical response to their appeal. Some think 
 rightly, some think wrongly, the veteran Prime Minister turned no 
 deaf ear to that imperative demand. He saw the dangers, possibly 
 he even saw the destruction, of his party ahead, but he was never 
 the man to flinch from consequences. He deliberately drove the 
 ship on to the rocks, and the Liberal party was cast into the sea 
 some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship, came to 
 land, but, alas ! there were many that were lost. 
 
 My father's attitude on the Home Rule question, and in that 
 great controversy, has been the subject of much subsequent doubt 
 and discussion, but his own words tell us clearly what his con- 
 victions really were, and explain his conduct throughout. He was 
 a Home Ruler, before ever the subject assumed such critical pro-
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 191 
 
 portions, and he never departed from his convictions, even though 
 many thought it would have been greatly to his advantage to have 
 done so. But there was a certain apparent half-heartedness 
 in his enthusiasm for Home Rule, which those who felt the pulse of 
 politics were quick to realize, and which has been the cause of 
 many doubts expressed since concerning his attitude. He believed 
 in the principle of Home Rule, but he also believed in the possi- 
 bility of buying some things too dear. He thought that the 
 question, with its momentous issues, was rushed ; and beyond 
 everything he regretted the break-up of the Liberal party as its 
 price. And in after years, when he saw the sacrifice which that 
 price involved, and knew that it had bought nothing, then he may 
 have expressed in public, what I have heard him often express 
 in private, that the payment of that price was a huge and de- 
 plorable mistake. 
 
 A prominent Liberal Member speaking in the session of 1886, 
 said : " There were only three men on the Treasury Bench who 
 were Home Rulers before the last election, and the Financial 
 Secretary to the Treasury was one of the three." 
 
 And speaking at Wolverhampton before the election on 
 November nth, 1885, Henry Fowler told his constituents : " That 
 his judgment was, that subject to maintaining, as he should always 
 maintain at all risks, the integrity of the British Empire, Ireland 
 ought to have conceded to her as much Home Rule as the Legisla- 
 ture possibly could concede." And on May ist, 1886, in alluding to 
 Mr. Chamberlain's resignation, he said : " He should always speak 
 in terms of the greatest respect of that statesman, although he 
 had seen it his duty to leave the Government because he did not 
 approve of some important details of the Irish scheme. Whether 
 they differed from, or agreed with, this statesman, he had deserved 
 well of the advanced Liberal party, and would, he believed, con- 
 tinue to do so ; and he was proud to call the Member to whom he 
 referred his friend." And then he went on to say, in recalling 
 the history of the past few weeks : " Mr. Gladstone had in very 
 flattering terms to himself offered to submit his name to Her 
 Majesty as Secretary to the Treasury. He had to ask himself, 
 before accepting that office, whether he was prepared to support
 
 192 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Mr. Gladstone in what he believed to be his Irish policy, and 
 whether he was acting consistently with what he had professed to 
 his constituents. Mr. Gladstone asked him for no pledge whatever, 
 but every man who was about to join the Administration clearly 
 understood that he was going to join an Administration which 
 contemplated dealing with the Irish question. It had been said 
 of a great many members of the Government that they abandoned 
 the pledges they had given to their constituents ; and that, he 
 would not say for the sake of office, but for party considerations 
 under the guidance of their Leader they were prepared to alter 
 their views. He could speak for himself; and so far as Wolver- 
 hampton was concerned, to that statement he gave a distinct 
 denial. His own view on this Irish question had been forming 
 for years ; he had expressed that view to them before they elected 
 him, and as it was better that they should be strictly accurate 
 in these things, he would read an extract from a speech he made 
 at the General Election in which he expressed his views on Ireland. 
 ' As far as I can form an opinion, the views Mr. Parnell is pro- 
 pounding are the views of a vast majority of the people of Ireland, 
 and I ask, are we to carry on a permanent conflict, not with the 
 Irish representatives, but with the Irish people ? I have come 
 to the conclusion that we cannot do it, and that the permanently 
 forcing Ireland, with large masses of military policemen, and a 
 large army of soldiers, and by the suspension of the constitutional 
 rights of the people, and by the present centralization of Dublin 
 Castle, will not be tolerated. What is to be done is not a matter 
 to be decided upon in a moment, but no change can be for the 
 worse. Without pledging myself to details, I would say, that, 
 subject to the maintenance of the unity of the Empire, the supre- 
 macy of the Crown, and the final authority of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, Ireland ought to have conceded to her as much Home Rule 
 as the Legislature could concede to her. I believe Irishmen to be 
 capable of managing their own affairs, and, as constitutional 
 Englishmen believe in the government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people, I hold that the principle that is good for 
 England will be good for Ireland. I long for the day, no matter 
 under what Government, when the whole question of the internal
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 193 
 
 government of Ireland will be grappled with in a broad, statesman- 
 like manner, and with a firm determination, not only to do full 
 justice to the people of Ireland, but to recognize to the full what 
 some people might call sentiment, and what I should call national 
 feeling.' Well, he thought he stood before them with clean hands. 
 He had neither receded nor advanced from the point he stood 
 on that night, and the opinions he then expressed; therefore his 
 acceptance of Office was in strict harmony with the pledges he 
 had given to his constituents. So much for his position ; but they 
 had to ask themselves as Englishmen, how was it that in 1886 these 
 proposals should have been submitted to the country which had 
 caused alarm to wise, thoughtful and prudent men, and why was 
 it when they had got to this point that there was a necessity for a 
 radical change in the government of Ireland ? His first answer 
 was, that we had been trying to govern Ireland for eighty-six years 
 in our own way, and had failed. During those eighty-six years, 
 fifty-two times had Parliament been called upon to suspend the 
 constitutional rights of the people of Ireland, and during seventy- 
 three of those eighty-six years only thirteen on the other side 
 the Irish people had not lived under the same laws as the 
 English, and had not been entitled to the same constitutional 
 rights, but had been subject to repressive and coercive legislation, 
 more or less stringent, according to the times in which the measures 
 were passed. We had tried remedial and coercive measures, under 
 different political parties, and different modes of administration 
 the result had been in every case total, absolute failure. The next 
 point was, what was the state of Ireland to-day ? Last year they 
 had extended the franchise to the householders in Ireland, and 
 the result was that five-sixths of their Members eighty-six out 
 of one hundred and three had been returned in order to claim the 
 right of the management of their own affairs in their own way. If 
 they did not believe in constitutional government this argument 
 had no force ; but he did believe in it, and he believed the expres- 
 sion of the wish and desire of the people, through their repre- 
 sentatives, was the constitutional mode. A man was deliberately 
 blinding his own eyes if he believed that the majority of the people 
 ofylreland were not in favour of a change in the direction to which 
 
 13
 
 194 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 he had alluded. But there was another question which affected 
 them as well as the people of Ireland. Out of one hundred Members 
 elected by householders, eighty-six were followers of Mr. Parnell. 
 He would ask, had England got Home Rule ? We had a dead- 
 lock. Our representatives could not do what the electorate of 
 this country had said was absolutely essential to the prosperity 
 of England, and why ? Because the Irish difficulty stopped the 
 way. They had eighty-six Members, moving with the regularity 
 of machinery at the will of one man, and if they were acting on 
 the avowed purpose of preventing us from doing our work, did 
 the electorate think we should get the reforms that were wanted ? 
 In looking at this question he took f'rst the failure of our past 
 system ; secondly, the expression a* the opinion of the Irish 
 people ; thirdly, the deadlock to which our own Parliamentary 
 institution was brought." 
 
 The description of the bringing forward of Mr. Gladstone's Bill 
 is thus given in my father's own words : " He should never forget, 
 and he supposed no one who was there at the time would ever 
 forget, the scene in the House of Commons on the evening of 
 April 8th. He thought that that was an event in the history of 
 our country which men might stop to look at, even if they did not 
 approve of the scheme which was then developed. That great 
 man, nearly seventy-seven years of age, with the civilized world 
 waiting to hear the words that dropped from his lips in that august 
 assembly, crowded as the House of Commons had never been 
 crowded before. There in the galleries were the representatives 
 of the Sovereign and the Royal Family, the nobility, the foreign 
 Ambassadors, the great Cardinal, who so wonderfully and ably 
 represented in this country the Roman Catholic Church, the most 
 distinguished men of the literary world, the great leaders of public 
 opinion in the Press, and a fair amount of the rank and file of 
 English educated opinion all listening with the most profound 
 absorption to that wonderful man, who for three hours and twenty- 
 five minutes exercised such a marvellous power over that assembly, 
 that he did not believe one single man moved from his seat during 
 the time that powerful and masterly speech was being delivered. 
 Whether the policy propounded that night was wise or unwise, he
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 195 
 
 thought they would agree that it was a grand attempt by one 
 of England's greatest statesmen to deal with one of England's 
 greatest difficulties." 
 
 For himself, he judged that this Bill did satisfy the three con- 
 ditions to which he had pledged himself when he stood as a candi- 
 date for Wolverhampton the supremacy of the Crown, the unity 
 of the Empire, and the final authority of the British Parliament. 
 
 " The central idea of the Bill," he went on, " the foundation upon 
 which the whole superstructure was built, was the granting of a 
 legislature to Ireland for the management of her own affairs. That 
 legislature was to consist of two bodies, two persons, two authorities. 
 First the Queen supreme ; second the legislature. And Her Majesty 
 would have the same prerogatives with respect to the summoning, 
 the proroguing and the dissolving of this body, as of the English 
 Parliament. Therefore they had the Queen the head of the 
 Executive Government, they had the veto of the Queen upon all 
 the actions of the Parliament, and last of all they had this very 
 important clause, which provided that it shall not be lawful for 
 the Irish legislative body to adopt or pass any vote upon any 
 resolution, address, or bill, for the receiving or appropriation of 
 any part of the revenue, or any tax, except in pursuance of a 
 recommendation by Her Majesty, expressed through the Lord 
 Lieutenant. If the Bill were passed, the Queen would be as much 
 the Queen of Ireland as she was before." 
 
 Concerning the unity of the Empire : 
 
 " They felt that though they were prepared to concede much 
 to Ireland, they were not prepared to concede anything which 
 would impair the unity of the Empire, and in reference to this, 
 Mr. Gladstone had stated in effect, that if there were any conflict 
 between the concession and the unity of the Empire, then the unity 
 must prevail. At the present moment the integrity of the Empire 
 was preserved by all imperial questions being controlled by the 
 Imperial Parliament, which controlled alike the military, naval, 
 civil, colonial, and commercial policy. There were many separate 
 subjects which the Irish could not touch, and a great deal depended 
 upon them, and a right understanding of this part of the question ; 
 because, if the Bill was going to empower Ireland to deal with all 
 
 13*
 
 196 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 matters at present dealt with by the English Parliament, he for one 
 would vote against it. He would tell them what these subjects 
 were, and leave them to judge whether there was anything beyond 
 mere domestic questions left in the hands of the Irish body. 
 
 " They could not make laws relating to the status or dignity of 
 the Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or Regency. That 
 preserved the unity of the Crown. 
 
 " The making of peace or war. There was the Imperial grasp 
 upon the great questions of peace and war. 
 
 " The Army, Navy, Militia, and Volunteers or the defence of 
 the realm. In other words the absolute control of every soldier, 
 sailor or volunteer is left in the hands of the Imperial Parliament. 
 When people talked to him about separation he asked where was 
 the force to come from to effect separation ? When they had the 
 power of the Army of a country he thought they had the control 
 of the country itself, and that key unlocked most doors. 
 
 " Treaties or other relations with foreign States or between 
 the various parts of Her Majesty's dominions. Thus there is no 
 foreign or colonial question which could be taken out of the 
 hands of the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 " Dignities or titles of honour. Reserving the power of this to 
 the Sovereign alone and thus preventing corruption. 
 
 " Prizes or booty of war. 
 
 " Offences against the Law of Nations, or offences committed 
 in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between 
 Her Majesty and any foreign State ; or offences committed on the 
 High Seas. 
 
 " Treason, alienage or nationalization. The Irish could not 
 alter the law of treason. The essence of treason was a direct 
 attempt at separation it was bringing war against the Crown. 
 This body in Ireland would have no power to deal with it, and if 
 any body of men in Ireland were foolish enough to raise the standard 
 of separation, they would be amenable to the English law, and 
 would be dealt with accordingly. 
 
 " Any commercial matters. 
 
 " The postal and telegraph service, except the transmission of 
 letters and telegrams in Ireland
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 197 
 
 " Beacons, lighthouses, and sea-marks. 
 
 " The coinage, the value of foreign money, legal tender of 
 weights and measures. There was no disturbance of the unity of 
 the Empire on that important point. 
 
 " Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use 
 or profit of any make or invention. 
 
 " Therefore, the English and the Irish would still have their 
 inventions as carefully protected as if this Irish law had never 
 been brought forward. 
 
 " The establishment or endowment of religion. Some people 
 said that if the Bill passed they would have a Roman Catholic 
 Church established in Ireland but they would not. 
 
 ' ' The free exercise of religion. The result of this would be religious 
 freedom. The Irish legislature could not make any laws imposing 
 any disabilities, or conferring any privileges, on account of a man's 
 religious belief. They had not got to that in this country yet. 
 
 " Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or main- 
 tain any place of denominational education or any denominational 
 institution or charity. This being a distinct enactment for the 
 protection of the Protestant minority in Ireland. 
 
 " Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend the 
 school receiving public money, without attending the religious 
 instruction of that school. That prevented either the Roman 
 Catholic or Protestant child from being compelled to have religious 
 instruction to which its parents objected. 
 
 " The power to levy duties or to interfere with free trade or 
 to grant bounties of any kind. 
 
 " He thought that those were pretty sweeping reservations, all 
 tending to the preservation of the unity of the Empire, but the 
 Bill went a little further. The English not only had the power 
 to do certain things but the Irish body had to pay something for 
 what they got. They would have to contribute to national, 
 military, naval and other expenditure incurred for Ireland. The 
 Royal Irish Constabulary, which was practically a military force 
 of fifteen thousand trained soldier-policemen, would be subject, 
 not to the control of the Irish Parliament, but, as heretofore, the 
 Lord Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty.
 
 198 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " With all these subjects excluded it seemed difficult to discern 
 what was left for the Irish Parliament to deal with. 
 
 " It would have the power to make laws for the peace, order 
 and good government of Ireland just as any municipality made 
 laws for the peace, order and good government of the people 
 committed to its charge." 
 
 As regards the final authority of the Imperial Parliament he 
 further explained : 
 
 " The Imperial Parliament which made the legislative body for 
 Ireland, could also unmake it. And if Parliament saw that the 
 Act was working badly, or not producing the results hoped for ; 
 if it embarrassed us, or threatened danger, the power which 
 created could also destroy. Moreover, all matters in which it was 
 not competent for the Irish legislative body to make or repeal 
 laws, shall remain within the exclusive authority of the Imperial 
 Parliament. He thought that precaution had been taken that 
 the Irish legislature should be confined entirely to internal legisla- 
 tion for the people of Ireland." With regard to the dangers of 
 the Bill " and there were dangers," he acknowledged, " external 
 and internal there was a class of people who said that if you do 
 this now it will only be an instalment. The people will not be 
 satisfied with this but will want something else. That was a kind 
 of argument he could never see the force of ; to say that a man 
 must not do right to-day, because some day someone else will ask 
 him to do wrong. Let them deal with that matter when they 
 were asked to do wrong. If they assumed that Ireland would 
 demand separation, he would ask how was it to come about ? How 
 could the Irish set up or pay for an army of their own ? Ireland 
 was a poor country and where was it to get the money for such a 
 purpose ? And this was always supposing that we were going to 
 sit still and see it done. We were Ireland's nearest and most 
 powerful neighbour, and its best customer. Would Ireland destroy 
 itself, ruin its own trade, and imperil its best interests for the 
 purpose of setting up a separate kingdom ? If ever they did, 
 the people of England would say ' You shall not. We have dealt 
 rightly with you put you upon a level with ourselves, and with 
 our Colonies, secured you freedom, prosperity, independence and
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 199 
 
 self-government ; if you rise up against us and attempt to destroy 
 us then we will arm ourselves in self-defence. If you appeal to 
 the arbitrament of force we will appeal to it, too, but not till 
 then ! ' 
 
 " We were told that there would be foreign complications, that 
 it would be a source of weakness in dealing with foreign Powers, 
 but could anything be weaker than that at present, when there 
 was a chronic antagonism to us among the Irish in America and 
 our Colonies, who were dissatisfied with our rule in Ireland ? 
 Would it weaken us in the eyes of our Colonies and America if we 
 were strong enough to do right ? 
 
 " There was an internal danger, and a source of difficulty in 
 Ireland owing to the division of that Isle into two great faiths 
 Protestant and Roman Catholic. England would take care that 
 neither was trodden under foot by the other. Two wrongs would 
 never make one right, and although we had in the past, in our 
 treatment of the Roman Catholics, acted unrighteously, he trusted 
 that those days of ignorance, bigotry and oppression had gone by. 
 He had no sympathy with the man who tried to raise a religious 
 controversy on this question. We were bound to protect the 
 minority, and in granting this system of self-government we 
 should guard their rights. The Bill proposed certain safeguards 
 for the protection of the minority, and if they did not meet with 
 the approval of the people in Parliament, then let them be made 
 stronger and better than they were. 
 
 " The question of the exclusion of the Irish Members was one 
 of great difficulty, and he hoped the means might be found by 
 which a fair and just representation of the Irish people might be 
 retained in the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 " Why were they anxious to give to Ireland different institu- 
 tions to what they gave to Scotland and Wales ? Because we had 
 never treated Ireland and Scotland the same in the past, and it 
 was too late to begin now. There were the differences of race, 
 of religion, and of education ; and the geographical division of the 
 Channel constituted abiding differences between the two countries, 
 which justified the Irish in demanding, as they had demanded for 
 the last century, a distinct political life, which he thought would
 
 2oo The Life of ^HenrylHartley Fowler 
 
 be to their advantage a distinct political life which the people 
 of Scotland had never asked for, and did not want, and which, if 
 five-sixths of the people of Scotland were determined to have, 
 they would have had in a much shorter space of time than eighty- 
 six years. 
 
 " What was the alternative ? They could govern Ireland by 
 military force they could exclude the Irish Members from Parlia- 
 ment altogether, and that was an absolute necessity if they were 
 to govern Ireland by military force ; they might introduce such 
 a scheme for the purchase of Irish land which would throw the 
 present scheme into utter insignificance. But did they think that 
 this was a policy which the people of this country would allow 
 to be carried out ? He did not. He did not believe the English 
 people would sit still and have another Poland close to their doors. 
 Were we to rule in the nineteenth century, with our boasted 
 constitutional government, and parliamentary life, and civil and 
 religious liberty, were we to govern one of the kingdoms of Her 
 Majesty by bullets and bayonets expel her representatives from 
 the Imperial Parliament, and put Ireland under the hoof of military 
 despotism ? English people would not tolerate it for a moment. 
 They would not crush a nation's life out by the sword. He be- 
 lieved this Bill would confer great advantages on the people of 
 Ireland, and on the people of Great Britain. He believed it 
 would cement the two great countries, and render their real 
 union far more lasting, far more binding, far more sacred, than 
 anything that could be enforced by military rule or coercive law. 
 He believed it would restore to our own Parliament more freedom 
 to be able to do the work that English people wanted to be done ; 
 to the Liberal party it would give more freedom in their work of 
 progress, and it was his hope and anticipation that he should be 
 able better to represent his constituents when this difficulty was 
 done away with." 
 
 As Financial Secretary to the Treasury my father was then the 
 Minister responsible for all Public Works in Ireland, and that fact 
 to him was a practical argument in favour of local administration, 
 seeing that he felt himself utterly unacquainted with the details 
 of Irish life, and out of touch with her local concerns.
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 201 
 
 The die was cast, and great issues hung round the historic 
 division on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill. The split 
 was threatened, and it was a split to the roots. During that 
 momentous meeting of the malcontents, who were to decide 
 whether they would merely abstain from voting and stay the 
 schism, or whether they would vote against the Bill and destroy 
 the Government, which was being held on May 3ist, Henry Fowler 
 was speaking in the House itself, to which Lord Morley in his 
 Life of Gladstone thus alludes : " One of the best speakers in 
 the House, though not at that time in the Cabinet, was making 
 an admirably warm and convinced defence alike of the policy and 
 of the Bill while these proceedings were going on. But Mr. Fowler 
 was listened to by men of preoccupied minds." 
 
 The policy of the Government was, as we have seen from the 
 above long explanation, in accordance with my father's own 
 convictions, though he was ever too cautious a man to venture 
 great risks. But means and methods were not for him to discuss. 
 As outside the Cabinet he had no part or lot in those disastrous 
 decisions. What he had to do, and all he had to do, amid that 
 maelstrom of conflicting opinions and confounding deeds, was to 
 settle with his own political conscience what was the line of his 
 convictions and then to be loyal to the same. He had, as we have 
 seen, approved of the principle of Home Rule he had taken fresh 
 pledges before his constituency to support that principle, and in 
 the deeper study of his character and detailed record of his life, 
 the reader will see how certain it was that he would be a Home 
 Ruler, as expressing that spirit of self-government which was so 
 marked an article of his political creed. His joining the Govern- 
 ment was the declaration that he was a Home Ruler, and when 
 a Home Rule campaign was compelled, after the defeat of the 
 Government, no man's voice rang clearer or more convincingly in 
 favour of the broken Bill than did Henry Fowler's. But a sense 
 of loss and sadness in that mortal division of the Liberal party 
 oppressed him throughout it ah 1 . He was young in Ministerial 
 life he looked forward to a great stake in Liberalism ; and as 
 perhaps a wreck is a worse catastrophe to the man who has set sail 
 on his first voyage, than to the veterans who have travelled the
 
 2O2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 whole course over, so my father mourned this wreckage with the 
 full bitterness of a heart and hopes that were young. He was quite 
 human enough to feel the personal loss, too, which it wrought in 
 his career ; for the days of even partial healing were slow : and 
 the Liberal party was only in office again for three years during 
 the next twenty years which were the practical span of Henry 
 Fowler's active Parliamentary life. He did much with those 
 three years ; he was too great a statesman and too fair a man, to 
 let his disappointment dim his efforts or quench his zeal ; but the 
 shadows of the might-have-been clouded the whole of his subse- 
 quent career, and Ireland and her policy had cost him too much 
 had cost, in his belief, the whole Liberal party too much for him 
 ever quite to forgive her, or the Bill, which had wrought such 
 irrevocable loss. 
 
 Had he been false to his convictions, had he been disloyal to his 
 Chief, Henry Fowler might have reaped a far fuller harvest from 
 the many fat years than from the few lean ones ; but to be either 
 would have been out of drawing with his whole character. Pressure 
 was brought to bear upon him, but such pressure was futile with a 
 man of his make. The essential principle of*Home Rule was one 
 of his principles, and therefore he was bound to uphold it, even 
 though he believed that the time was not ripe, and the pace was 
 too forced, for the staking the whole fortunes of a great party on 
 the passing of this one measure by the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 The story of that disastrous division on the morning of June 8th 
 has been told elsewhere. The last appeal was made by the veteran 
 Prime Minister to the party which he had led for so long, and 
 it was refused. Ninety-three Liberals voted against the Bill, 
 among whom were several of his colleagues, and the leaders of a 
 mighty following in the country. The adverse majority was 
 thirty, and the Bill was lost. But not only the Bill. There was 
 lost on that memorable occasion the great strength of unity in the 
 Liberal party ; there was lost the historic confidence which had 
 cemented a party to its leader ; there was lost many a time-tried 
 friendship, and many a political and personal bond. The marks 
 of that havoc still sear the remnants of the old Liberalism ; and 
 though new parties are born, new leaders risen, nothing will ever
 
 Secretary to the Treasury 203 
 
 restore that which was lost when Mr. Gladstone led his party, 
 after so many glorious victories, to its last great defeat. 
 
 On the eve of the General Election, after the Government was 
 beaten, and before its resignation, Mr. Gladstone wrote to my 
 father : 
 
 " Edinburgh, 
 
 " 20th June, 1886. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am happy to propose to you, with the sanction 
 of the Queen, that you should be sworn of the Privy Council. 
 " This honour is tendered to you after a period of service 
 in the offices you have held, that is unusually short, in 
 acknowledgment of the great abilities that you have displayed 
 in the service of the Queen and of the State. 
 
 " I remain, 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 To which the following reply was sent : 
 
 " Treasury Chambers, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " 21 June, 1886. 
 " DEAR MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 " I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 of the 20th instant, informing me that Her Majesty had been 
 pleased to direct that I should be sworn of the Privy Council. 
 " I have always regarded this honour as one of the highest 
 rewards which any public servant could receive, and I grate- 
 fully accept it in the hope that I may prove myself not unworthy 
 of this great distinction. The fact that this honour has been 
 conferred on your advice, and for the reasons which you so 
 kindly intimate, invests it with a special pleasure which I can 
 never forget. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 204 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The two following letters of congratulation he treasured all 
 his life 1 
 
 " 20, Devonshire Place, 
 
 " June 2ist, 1886. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " We are quite overjoyed at the news you have 
 sent us. We are filled with gladness and pride at this 
 crowning honour. May God bless this to your good as well 
 as happiness. 
 
 " Yours lovingly, 
 
 " ELLEN FOWLER. 
 " ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER. 
 " EDITH HENRIETTA FOWLER. 
 " HENRY ERNEST FOWLER." 
 
 " 95, Elm Park Gardens, 
 
 "24.6.86. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am suddenly called off to Newcastle, so must 
 write to you the warm and hearty congratulations that I 
 meant to have offered you face to face. I was delighted to 
 see the announcement. It is as pleasant to me as an honour 
 to myself. You richly deserve it, and that is the best of all. 
 I wish you all success. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " J. MORLEY." 
 
 Of all the good things that he worked for and won I do not think 
 any gave my father so much pleasure as his Privy Councillorship. 
 He often quoted the words that it was the ' blue ribbon ' of political 
 life, and it possessed in his case the double value of being quickly 
 given. For all his other honours his periods of service were so 
 long and so arduous, and in such cases the greatness of joy is 
 somewhat staled. To strive beyond one's strength, to look forward 
 till eyes and anticipations are strained, rob a reward of most of its 
 charm, even though its worth remains untouched.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 18861887 
 
 HOME RULE 
 
 '' Cheerful, with friends, we set forth 
 Then on the height comes the storm. 
 Thunder crashes from rock 
 To rock, the cataracts reply ; 
 Lightnings dazzle our eyes : 
 
 Alas, 
 
 Havoc is made in our train ! 
 Friends, who set forth at our side, 
 Falter, are lost in the storm. 
 We, we only are left ! 
 With frowning foreheads, with lips 
 Sternly compressed, we strain on, 
 On and at nightfall at last 
 Come to the end of our way, 
 To the lonely inn 'mid the rocks ; 
 Where the gaunt and taciturn host 
 Holds his lantern to scan 
 Our storm-beat figures, and asks, 
 Whom in our party we bring ? 
 Whom we have left in the snow ? " 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 r I "MIE General Election of July, 1886, was, of course, fought 
 JL entirely on the Home Rule question, and it was the principle 
 rather than its details which Henry Fowler tried to press on his 
 constituency. He frankly owned that there were points in the 
 Bill to which he took exception, but he urged that it would be 
 absolutely impossible, unless a Ministry were omniscient or in- 
 spired, to have brought in a Bill which would not have been assail- 
 able at some point or other. But that if only the principle were 
 
 205
 
 2o6 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 conceded, then it might require not only a second, but even a 
 third or a fourth scheme, to deal with the practical details. The 
 main difficulty, which he confessed, was that of the retention of 
 the Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament, and though he 
 expressed himself as distinctly in favour of that retention, yet he 
 also thought that no adequate solution of that great difficulty 
 had been suggested in the Bill ; and that it would require " the 
 deepest thought, the most careful consideration, the greatest 
 discussion, the most complete thrashing-out " before any satis- 
 factory judgment could be obtained. " It would be," he declared, 
 " a calamity nay, an impossibility to exclude the Irish repre- 
 sentatives from the Imperial Parliament, but how it should be 
 carried out was a question which would require the assistance of 
 their wisest and best statesmen to decide when they had the point 
 before them." With reference to the fiscal part of the scheme 
 propounded he was a strong advocate of fiscal unity, though he 
 frankly said that the fiscal arrangements were capable of very 
 great improvements. 
 
 So he plainly put it before the people that the Bill itself was 
 no verbally-inspired document which could be regarded as a 
 sacred whole. It was merely a human, and therefore a faulty, 
 scheme but it was the first scheme which had been put down in 
 black and white showing how Irish autonomy could be carried 
 out ; and if the constituencies were convinced of the desirability 
 of the same self-government in nationalities as in municipalities, 
 then what they had to do was merely to pronounce on the principle, 
 and leave the details to those statesmen to whom they entrusted 
 the working of all their political machinery. And not only in this 
 case, but in all political questions, he was of the opinion that 
 the part of the general public lay in pronouncing on the broad 
 lines and leaving the technique to experts. He would smile at 
 the very confident opinions so surely expressed, of men who know 
 nothing of Parliamentary technique. " You are ill, and your 
 friends see that you are ill, but to whom do you go for the remedy ? 
 To your friends or to the doctor ? It requires a close and full 
 training to write a prescription and not only in medicine but in 
 politics is the trained expert needed." And as life is built up
 
 Home Rule 207 
 
 upon trust ; as we first trust our parents and then our teachers 
 as we trust our interests and our business and our health to our 
 fellows, so we can surely trust them with our policy. Such trust is 
 the foundation of our constitution as well as the basis of our 
 characters. To this trust Henry Fowler ever appealed. He was 
 himself so worthy of it, and he believed so implicitly in its un- 
 failing power. " He was not," he said, " one of those who attached 
 such overwhelming importance to unanimity of opinions on all 
 matters of detail affecting the action, and the administration, and 
 legislation of the Liberal party. He thought one of the distin- 
 guishing characteristics, one of the chief excellencies, of the 
 Liberal party ought to be, and, he believed, was, that there was a 
 free play of individual opinion, and that they were not all bound 
 rigidly to accept any formula from which they must not depart, 
 without losing their place in the estimation of their fellow- Liberals 
 and appearing to disturb the unity of the party." 
 
 The principle of Home Rule he tried to impress upon them wag 
 not a new one in Liberal or even English politics. " We had sym- 
 pathized with all the struggling nationalities of Europe. We 
 had held out the right hand to Italy when Italy was struggling, 
 and we were very fond of telling the great Powers that the only 
 way to restore order was by giving the people free institutions, 
 and we had carried out the policy ourselves. A few years ago there 
 was not a more disloyal and more discontented portion of the 
 British Empire than Canada. There were two provinces, different 
 in race, different in religion, different in soil, different in language. 
 But a great statesman said, the way to cure this evil was to give 
 the Canadian people, who had recently broken out into rebellion, 
 the right to govern themselves. The same arguments were used ; 
 the same argument about breaking up the Empire, the same argu- 
 ment about the Roman Catholic majority and the Protestant 
 minority the same argument about the difference of races, the 
 same oratorical disquisitions about the disruption of the Empire ! 
 But we have done it Canada had Home Rule given to her, and 
 she was now the most loyal and contented portion of the British 
 Empire. Canada did not get Home Rule because she was loyal, 
 but she was loyal and contented because she had Home Rule.
 
 208 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The Liberals would not be party to any scheme which was not 
 safe for England, and no scheme would be worth the paper on 
 which it was written, unless the Irish people were prepared to 
 accept it as a full and lasting settlement. The Union, which 
 was made eighty-six years ago, united the Parliaments and divided 
 the nations ; they wanted to divide the Parliaments and unite the 
 nations, and they believed that union, the shaking-hands between 
 the two great democracies, between the two peoples, would unite 
 and knit together the hearts of Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 the Greater Britain and the Greater Ireland which were beyond 
 the seas would unite them in a common attachment, in common 
 loyalty to our illustrious Queen and in common citizenship to our 
 great Empire." 
 
 - But England was not ready for Home Rule. The great 
 Unionist party, comprising the Tories and the Dissentient Liberals, 
 obtained a majority of no in the House of Commons. In 
 Wolverhampton Henry Fowler was returned by a majority of 
 1,123, his opponent being Mr. J. Underbill, Q.C. only 164 less 
 than at his election earlier in the year. The Conservatives polled 
 within 20 of their last number, but of course there were con- 
 siderable abstentions. " English people cannot make up their 
 minds in a hurry," said Henry Fowler. Possibly in modern 
 days he might have modified that statement. 
 
 It is notable that the new Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 lost no time in securing Henry Fowler's services, which were 
 ever, in Office and in Opposition, at the command of his 
 country. 
 
 " Treasury Chambers, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " August sist, 1886. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " The Government have decided to appoint a Royal 
 Commission to examine into and report upon the state 
 management and cost of the Public Departments of the State. 
 I would be glad to know if you would authorize the First Lord 
 of the Treasury to submit your name to Her Majesty as one
 
 Home Rule 209 
 
 of the Royal Commissioners. The Government are extremely 
 desirous that the Commission should be assisted and 
 strengthened by your great knowledge and experience of 
 the public service, gained both from an official and a parlia- 
 mentary point of view. 
 
 " Believe me to be, 
 
 " Very faithfully yours, 
 
 " RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL." 
 
 The Home Rule war did not end with the General Election. 
 An organized campaign began, in which Henry Fowler took no 
 small part. Within the remaining few months of the year 1886, 
 he spoke at large meetings at Leicester, Leeds, Nottingham, 
 Sheffield, Louth, and in London ; and before the anniversary of 
 the July election he had also spoken at Bristol, Accrington, Dundee, 
 Perth, Nottingham again, and other minor places. 
 
 The disruption of the Liberal party was a fact, but it was hoped, 
 not a final one. Henry Fowler was one of the men who always 
 hoped for reunion, and his fair comprehension of opposing opinions, 
 the non-bitterness of his tongue and temper, rendered him one of 
 the few, who could, had it been possible, have effected a recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 But it was to the ex-Cabinet Ministers that these delicate nego- 
 tiations were entrusted. Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, 
 Lord Herschell, Mr. Morley and Sir George Trevelyan met in the 
 Round Table Conference, and at first the hope of peace waxed 
 strong. The first fires of fierce recrimination had burned low. 
 During the past few weeks Henry Fowler was one of the most 
 eloquent advocates of reconciliation and reunion. During this 
 critical time he kept up a flowing confidential correspondence with 
 Mr. Morley on the state of affairs. In October he wrote : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 22nd October, 1886. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I very much approved of Rosebery's speech. I 
 think he hit the safe medium holding out the olive branch 
 
 14
 
 2io The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and not hoisting the white flag. The only point I disagreed 
 with him on was as to time. I do not think that is, as the 
 lawyers say, of the essence of the contract. Delay is in our 
 favour and in favour of reunion. Reunion is in the air. 
 We are not the irreconcilables. Men of common sense know 
 that knocking under is not the road to settlement. States- 
 men discover solutions which disputants may honourably 
 accept. I am not sure but that the English Land question 
 may not prove the rock on which Lord Randolph will wreck 
 the ship. The Times to-day discerns that the Highbury pro- 
 gramme will not cement the union of the Unionists. I adhere 
 to sitting still that is our strength, not abuse or recrimina- 
 tion. Admit, as Rosebery does, our defeat ask for the 
 alternative acceptable and winning policy reserve our attitude 
 as well as our comments disdain the onus probandi, scribendi, 
 loquendi and our time of criticism, of counsel, of co-operation 
 and of victory will come. There is a piece of optimism 
 from a very gloomy pessimist. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 A week later : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 28th October, 1886. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " In discussing (as I have no doubt you will) in 
 the council at Hawarden the currents which are at present 
 influencing the party I think you must not assume that the 
 rigid attitude of Rendel and Arnold (whom you rightly termed 
 ' representative men ') predominates. Arnold abandoned the 
 non possumus before he left your house ! I am satisfied 
 that there is another current, not of surrender but of desire 
 to maintain your principle unimpaired, modifying its details. 
 This is not either pro Hartington or pro Chamberlain, but is 
 the result of the position of our own men in their own 
 boroughs and counties, affected by, and influenced by their
 
 Home Rule 211 
 
 old friends and supporters. They naturally and wisely wish 
 to conciliate important sections of the local party who, agree- 
 ing to Irish Autonomy, disliked some of the provisions by 
 which Mr. G. proposed to effectuate it. A stiff unyielding 
 policy ' the Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill, 
 won't do, and I think would risk another secession. I am 
 not now arguing for, or against, these views, but every conversa- 
 tion I have had since the election with politicians in and out 
 of the House, convinces me of the strength and force of the 
 supporters of reconciliation based upon modification of our 
 essentials. All I wish to say now is, don't ignore this feeling. 
 See Sam Smith's speech at Hawarden the other night and 
 Smith was a guest at the castle ! 
 
 " May I make another suggestion, or rather comment, on 
 the suggestion that the Unionists may oppose all Liberal 
 action which might defeat the Government ? Don't let us 
 assume this don't let us make the descensus Averni facilis. 
 Let us assume that all Liberals (whatever their views on 
 Irish affairs), will resist any retrogressive legislation any 
 sham settlement of pending questions any and every anti- 
 Liberal proposals. And if the Unionists commit the blunder 
 of fighting Liberal principles, because Tories are fighting 
 them, let them have all the difficulty of announcing their 
 own apostasy let the shock come without any preparation 
 or breaking of the ice and the blow, however it may strike, 
 will have a recoil of a more fatal character. Forgive 
 my boring you with this scrawl, but it is the meditation 
 on our pleasant party, and you can take it for what it is 
 worth. Harcourt and you going to Hawarden will give to 
 your utterances at Leeds a responsibility which cannot be 
 minimised. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 At this point a sudden and unexpected crisis was wrought by 
 the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill, Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, and leader of the Conservative party in the House of 
 
 14*
 
 212 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Commons. So big a blow left so large a gap, that an easy way 
 was left open for the Liberal seceders to come home, even though 
 by doing so they would have to cross to the other side of the 
 street. But neither Lord Hartington nor Mr. Chamberlain joined 
 the Government. The former refused Lord Salisbury's offer of the 
 Premiership, and Mr. Chamberlain was at that time negotiating 
 for what seemed then a possible reconciliation with his own 
 party. Mr. Goschen joined the Ministry and filled Lord 
 Randolph's empty place. 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 23rd December, 1886. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " And so the first eruption of Vesuvius has dis- 
 charged itself the secret must have been well kept, as there 
 has not been a Cabinet for some days. I gather from the 
 tone of the article, and also from the difficulty of retracing a 
 step so publicly taken, that his lordship means going. What 
 then ? Hartington ? No he cannot, as it seems to me, 
 serve under Salisbury, and he cannot take anyone with him 
 except the Duke and Heneage ; James and Trevelyan could 
 not join the Tories. Goschen ? Yes, if he is wise, and the 
 Tories are wise the Exchequer and the lead of the House 
 of Commons are worth his purchase, and now or never is his 
 time. He has parted company with the Liberal party far 
 more completely than Burke did with Fox, and he might 
 reconstruct a moderate Conservative party, a sort of diluted 
 Peelism with a bitter flavour of political economists. Ran- 
 dolph studies precedents Disraeli was defeated (ist time) 
 in December. Palmerston was dismissed at Christmas and 
 he in three months dismissed Lord John. Absit omen may 
 the Tories say. 
 
 " I am in the desert here, and if you know anything and can 
 find time to send me a line I shall welcome it as an oasis. 
 I must, in wishing you the compliments of the season, con- 
 gratulate you on the brilliant success of this year. Twelve 
 months ago you were below the gangway, now you are one of
 
 Home Rule 213 
 
 the foremost, most popular, most trusted leaders of the 
 Party, after having discharged with signal ability and success 
 the duties of the most difficult post in the Cabinet. I doubt 
 whether our political history has any parallel for so swift, 
 so sure, so well-deserved a rise. The future of the Liberal 
 party will (if your life is spared), be coloured, influenced, 
 controlled by you. And in that light, as well as in the brighter 
 light of personal feeling, I wish you and yours all the good 
 wishes and good hopes of Christmastide. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 To which Mr. Morley replied : 
 
 " I am really touched by your generous words about 
 myself, my dear Fowler. I won't weigh them, but will only 
 say how much I hope that you and I have much close and 
 unbroken co-operation before us. That is one of the com- 
 pensations of public life." 
 
 A few days later my father wrote again : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " ayth December, 1886. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I agree with you as to the importance of J. C.'s 
 speech, and it is because I regard it as of supreme importance 
 in the present crisis of the party that I (on the Bank Holiday) 
 bore you with my views of the situation. 
 
 " i. Take the present status. We cannot in this Parlia- 
 ment carry our Irish policy or any section of it. In case 
 of a dissolution we must win sixty seats to obtain a bare 
 majority of the House of Commons. A vital constitutional 
 change cannot, ought not to be carried by a bare majority of 
 the House of Commons. The House of Lords would decline
 
 214 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to surrender its own convictions without a summons emanat- 
 ing from the vast majority of the electors. The conflict 
 must therefore go on until (as I believe would be the case) 
 the electorate by a resistless force carried Irish Self- 
 Government the ultimate victory being ex, necessitate rei 
 modified by concessions on detail to secure its peaceful 
 working. 
 " 2. Take Chamberlain's proposals. 
 
 " (a). Land Settlement. This Spencer and you are 
 pledged to the hilt to regard as an essential preliminary to 
 Home Rule. 
 
 " (b). Complete local democratic Government re-arrang- 
 ing and popularising all the internal administration of Ire- 
 land; and all this irresistibly tending to and strengthening 
 Home Rule, while laying a practical foundation on which 
 to rear it to the satisfaction of the British Elector. 
 
 " (c). Then he and his friends are willing to consider 
 whether they cannot go further. Note not we are to 
 consider whether enough has been done. And side by 
 side with this, the reunion and vigorous action of the Liberal 
 party in departments affecting England, Wales and 
 Scotland. 
 
 " As practical politicians we are bound to consider (apart 
 from past vexations) his proposal. It is a basis. I have 
 reason to know that he desires peace, and that, if he is met, 
 he will respond. I feel sure that the rank and file of our 
 own section will as a rule (of course there will be excep- 
 tions) look favourably both on his programme and on his 
 proposals, and a non possumus will be a blunder of the gravest 
 character. 
 
 " Of course you will say, how about Mr. Parnell ? Will 
 he consent to any delay. Yes if he is wise ; and if he is 
 unwise how can he prevent delay ? He cannot overturn 
 the Tory Government, and he cannot control the English 
 Electorate. He knows as well as we do that the agrarian 
 difficulty is the key to the whole situation, and with the help 
 of the Chamberlain section that may be grappled with. He
 
 Home Rule 215 
 
 also knows that extended Local Government is the safest 
 ladder by which to reach the tableland of complete autonomy. 
 But if he is unyielding, we are not bound to commit suicide 
 because he takes an erroneous view of a most complicated 
 political problem. Our policy, our duty, is to do the best we 
 can ; and without compromising our convictions or our resolu- 
 tions, to moderate our pace to the stern necessities of the case. 
 Some one should see Chamberlain, and the most suitable man, 
 as it appears to me, is Herschell. 
 
 " If Salisbury had the pluck, he would face Lord Randolph's 
 loss with the remark that ' this is one Tory the less ' ; fill up 
 his Cabinet from his own party (Ridley is far superior to 
 half the Cabinet), take his stand on Tory principles and dare 
 the disunited Liberal party to do their worst. But I suspect 
 behind all this there is a war policy. Churchill scented it, 
 and wisely washed his hands before it was too late, and here 
 I fear Hartington and the Whigs their sympathies are with 
 the services and with that miserable accursed will-o'-the- 
 wisp a spirited foreign policy. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 29th December, 1886. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I have to-night to speak at a banquet given by 
 our Club in honour of Mr. G.'s birthday. In this district 
 where the greatest interest is taken in J. C. and in everything 
 he says, and where his opponents in the Press and in the 
 party have regarded his speech in the most hopeful view, 
 I must allude to the ' olive branch.' I shall not discuss nor 
 comment upon his proposals I shall treat his action as 
 (and I believe it to be so) dictated by a desire for reunion, 
 and shall intimate my hope that his overtures will receive 
 friendly consideration. I have just received a long letter 
 from Jesse Collings he says he has written in a similar
 
 216 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 strain to Harcourt, who, I doubt not, will show you the letter ; 
 I cannot send you mine to-day as I want to read it very 
 carefully before I reply. He is for peace, but I discern a 
 difference between him and Chamberlain. Collinses, as I 
 understand him, is for suspending Irish legislation this is out 
 of the question. Chamberlain, as I understand him, is at once 
 for Land, Local Government, 'Home Rule short of legislation 
 and the reconsideration of Legislative Body. Of course the 
 real power is with J. C. and with him Gladstone and you 
 must deal. I am satisfied that he wishes a reconciliation -as 
 to terms, that is another question. In the meantime I don't 
 think Hartington will join the Government. But is it outside 
 practical politics that Hartington should concur in J. C.'s 
 proposals, and be ready to work on those lines ? I agree with 
 you as to the dissolution we should gain. Unionists would 
 lose Tories might gain, but the balance would, I think, be in 
 Parnell's hands. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 At this time many turned to Henry Fowler in their hopes 
 for a reconciliation. These pages show that it was not his 
 fault that such was not effected. Many were the letters he 
 received about it, such as the following letter from Mr. Jesse 
 Ceilings : 
 
 " Edgbaston, 
 
 " Birmingham, 
 
 " December 2yth, 1886. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Before the last dissolution of Parliament, I wrote 
 you a memo, of my view of the situation, and the probable 
 results to the Liberal party of an appeal to the country on the 
 Irish scheme of the Government. The fears I then uttered, 
 unfortunately for the peace and unity of the party, came true. 
 As we are probably near another appeal to the country, I
 
 Home Rule 217 
 
 should like to say a few words again on the state of affairs, 
 as I think the present moment is the one in which it is to 
 be decided if the breach is to be healed or made permanent. 
 I have written to Harcourt on the same lines as I am writing 
 to you and have told him that I am writing to you on the 
 subject. I take it for granted that no real Liberal likes the 
 present state of affairs excepting always Labouchere, and 
 other mountebank politicians and doctrinaire Radicals. The 
 resignation of Churchill changes the position completely. It 
 forces an opportunity on us in which according to how it 
 is used the Liberal party will be reunited or be confirmed 
 in its disunion. I take it for granted that Lord Hartington 
 will not think of joining a Tory Government. In this case 
 Lord Salisbury's true policy will be to force a dissolution. 
 If the Liberals have to fight a General Election on the Home 
 Rule platform I have no doubt they will be badly defeated. It 
 is immaterial whether or no the Unionists will suffer more 
 than the other section ; the fact will be seen that Lord Salis- 
 bury will come back with a majority large enough to keep him 
 in power for years and the Liberals unfortunately as I think 
 for the country will be in the shade for a like period. I know 
 this view will be disputed, but I am nevertheless certain it 
 is correct. In saying this I give due importance to the Home 
 Rule meetings, and other manifestations, which have been 
 taking place throughout the country. The meetings of the 
 Federation are all that could be desired from a Home Rule 
 point of view, but the Federation is an instrument not under- 
 stood by those who at present direct it. When we were inside 
 it we always directed its action and framed its resolutions, 
 with a view to secure the concurrence of the large classes of 
 Liberals (the non-demonstrative, stay-at-home, non-thinking, 
 arm-chair, timid, etc., etc.) without whose support and votes, 
 in spite of appearances, success was impossible. These classes 
 are not only numerous but all-important, on account of the 
 influence they use, and the votes they command in their 
 several localities and surroundings. The Federation ignores 
 these classes, treats them with contempt, and would even
 
 2i 8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 rule them out of the Liberal party altogether. Besides these 
 a large number a much larger number than is supposed 
 among Radicals and the working classes are opposed to the 
 Irish scheme of the late Government. Altogether I conclude 
 that Home Rule as a platform would receive far less support 
 now than it did at the last election. I have as large a cor- 
 respondence as most men on this subject with friends and 
 foes, from all parts of the country, and it all confirms these 
 conclusions. In England, as far I know, all ideas of special 
 reforms have had to grow into the proportions necessary 
 to make a distinct scheme for such reforms successful. The 
 Home Rule scheme was put suddenly before the country. 
 It has, I believe, seen its greatest success for the time, and 
 whether it be right or wrong it must now be subject to the 
 usual discussion and growth before it can be placed as a plat- 
 form before the country with any chance of success. The 
 question remains what is to be done ? Mr. Chamberlain 
 L has what is called ' held out the olive branch.' Is there 
 anything to come of it ? Are the leaders of the Liberal party 
 going to make any response ? Are they going to let the 
 thing drift under the direction of Labouchere and Co., or are 
 they going to give it a guiding hand ? It seems to me that, 
 what is wanted is to recognize the logic of facts, to admit that 
 for the present at least, the country has declared against Home 
 Rule ; and to agree to set that question aside and unite on a 
 platform composed of the other great Liberal questions on 
 which all are agreed. If one or two prominent men say you 
 and Harcourt, were to adopt this view, I am sure it would 
 be received with gladness by thousands of good Liberals 
 supporters of the late Government who are above all things 
 sick of the present state of affairs, and are only waiting for a 
 sign of this kind to be given. This is evident from the fact 
 that Chamberlain's advances have been received favourably 
 in quarters where it was hardly to be expected. If fairly 
 and earnestly presented to Mr. Gladstone, I hardly see how he 
 could refuse for the sake of reuniting the Liberal party. At 
 any rate now is the time perhaps the only time for trying
 
 Home Rule 219 
 
 what can be done. It seems madness to complete the dis- 
 ruption of a party, with so many strong points of policy in 
 common, for the sake of one point on which agreement for 
 the time seems not to be possible ; and which if selected as a 
 platform at a General Election, must certainly bring defeat. 
 If the course indicated could be followed, I believe that in 
 a General Election the Liberals would win, or have the best 
 chance of winning and returning to power. So long as 
 Churchill kept his post, we were bound to believe that the 
 present Government would bring in a good County Govern- 
 ment Bill and other fair measures. His retirement gives us 
 a cry of reform in county government three acres and a 
 cow, etc., etc. This would carry the counties if we could all 
 unite earnestly in the work. Besides this there are other 
 questions, English, Irish and Scotch, to be added to the plat- 
 form, all making for success, and in the healthy struggle for 
 which the unfriendly feeling which now exists among Liberals 
 would disappear. The choice then seems to be Home Rule 
 as the Liberal policy and certain defeat, or a Liberal platform 
 (minus Home Rule for the present), and success with a 
 restoration of the party to power. I want to see immediately 
 a good County Government Bill, without which reform any 
 great amelioration of the lot of the rural labourer is impossible. 
 This reform is due to the English, Irish and Scotch people 
 without further delay. It would give me great pleasure to 
 go through the counties as in 1885 f r the old platform, the 
 old Government and the old Leader, and so end this negation 
 of political life. Liberals could at the same time hold their 
 individual opinions about Home Rule, declaring it to be not 
 on the platform for the time being, and hoping also that with 
 time and discussion, an agreement on even this might be 
 brought about. 
 
 " It seems to me that a great responsibility is thrown on 
 yourself and one or two others, who in this struggle have 
 preserved a moderate tone, and have refrained from dogmatic 
 talk and personal bitterness. 
 
 " There is a great occasion for moving which I believe
 
 22O The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 will not occur again, but which can now be turned to good 
 account. 
 
 " Excuse this long letter, but I felt bound to write you. 
 At present Labouchere and Co. hold the field and encourage 
 one another in making more marked a division which they 
 do not seem to care about or regret. Peace cannot be made 
 without peacemakers. If Chamberlain has held out the 
 olive branch, it is necessary that some one should make 
 a response or suggest a response with a view to further 
 healing. 
 
 " I have only now to wish you and yours all good 
 wishes of the season and a happy and prosperous new 
 year. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 " JESSE COLLINGS." 
 
 And the following day Mr. Chamberlain wrote : 
 
 " Highbury, 
 
 " Moor Green, 
 " Birmingham, 
 
 " December 26th, 1886. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Thanks. Through this bad business I have 
 specially noted your fairness and consideration towards former 
 associates and friends. Would that others had been like- 
 minded ! 
 
 " I have now done my part and can do no more. I fancy 
 that if any advantage is to be taken of the situation it must 
 be by the wise and temperate men of the party those who 
 have done nothing to embitter the controversy using their 
 influence with the leaders of both sections, and almost com- 
 pelling an agreement. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN."
 
 Home Rule 221 
 
 "95, Elm Park Gardens, 
 
 " December 3oth, '86. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Of course in these difficult times men must take 
 their own course. But Mr. G. will not, I think, follow the 
 lead of your speech. A few words from him will appear on 
 Jan. 3rd, but they will not carry things far. It seems to 
 me as I said, unwise to rush into raptures at an ' olive branch ' 
 which did not make an iota of substantial advance until we 
 know what Chamberlain really means. 
 " A happy new year to you all. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " JOHN MORLEY." 
 
 In public Henry Fowler had the same tune to play as in these 
 private letters. There is always a fascination in looking behind 
 the scenes in peering into a man's private opinions, to see how 
 they tally with his public utterances. Some suspect a wide gulf 
 between the two ; some suspect they can only be connected by a 
 roundabout, wandering, winding way ; and some, who have no 
 suspicions, and therefore are generally nearer the truth than their 
 more knowing friends, see a simple straight road, and the way- 
 farers, though fools, do not err therein. My father never said in 
 public what he did not believe in private, and he never confidentially 
 advocated any cause which he was not prepared to follow out in 
 the face of the world. 
 
 Conciliation was the object of his letters, and his speeches, at 
 this storm-tossed period of political life, and all that he could he 
 did, by written and by spoken word, to help it on. Posterity can 
 form its own verdict as to the wisdom of his counsels, but of their 
 sincerity there is no question. 
 
 At Leicester he said : 
 
 " Ireland wanted an Irish legislature for the management of 
 what Parliament should decide to be exclusively Irish affairs. 
 That was Mr. Gladstone's and the Liberal party's way of putting 
 it. The Unionists' was that the time has come to reform alto- 
 gether the absurd anachronism known as Dublin Castle, to sweep
 
 222 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 away altogether the alien boards and foreign officers, and to sub- 
 stitute for them a genuine Irish administration for purely Irish 
 business. He would ask the cleverest man in the room to define 
 the difference between the two. For his part he was ready to 
 accept Mr. Chamberlain's solution of the problem ' a genuine 
 Irish administration for purely Irish business.' And from the 
 beginning to the end, the late Government never propounded, 
 and never dreamt of, anything else but that. He did not see 
 why the men on both sides, being practically agreed on the 
 solution of the matter, could not apply that solution with safety. 
 The party that followed Mr. Gladstone in his measure had been 
 misunderstood, and had been defeated because they were mis- 
 understood. 
 
 " The true aim of the Liberal party was not to be squabbling as 
 to who should be in Office and who should be in Opposition. If 
 their party was worth maintaining and uniting, and no one was 
 more favourable to reunion than himself, it was in order that it 
 might go on firmly and successfully to win still greater triumphs, 
 and that they might produce the greatest happiness to the greatest 
 number." 
 
 At Leeds he said : "He took a more hopeful view of the reunion 
 of the Liberal party than did some of his friends. What was their 
 position ? Was there a sharp dividing line, clear and clean, run- 
 ning through the Liberal party, diving it into two hostile and 
 irreconcilable sections ? The Tories said there was, and they 
 were reaping the spoils of such a state of things, and wishing that 
 the present conditions of affairs should become permanent. He 
 did not want to minimize the difficulties of their position. He 
 would take what was the very worst feature of it ; the Tory party 
 had been placed in power, and was being kept in power, by the votes 
 of a large number of Liberal electors, who had been led, and were 
 being led, by some of the best and ablest statesmen of the Liberal 
 party. They said that it was the only way by which they could 
 defeat a policy which menaced the integrity of the Empire, and 
 impaired the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. He repeated 
 that the Liberal party were not advocates of such a policy. They 
 did not want to repeal the Union, and they did not want to impair
 
 Home Rule 223 
 
 the magnificent instrument of political freedom the Great English 
 Parliament. 
 
 " Liberal statesmanship was very much at fault if it could not 
 develop a full, perfect system complete in itself, complete in 
 its operation for the self-government of Ireland by Irishmen, 
 without menacing or even risking the unity of the Empire. It was 
 unjust to attribute to people principles which they repudiated, and 
 results which they did not contemplate to which they were 
 radically opposed. But, on the other hand, it was unjust to censure 
 men who, before the public in stations of great dignity, and who, 
 in private life within their own locality, had been working for years 
 on behalf of the Liberal party who had contributed no small 
 amount of energy to her conflicts, and who had been responsible 
 for a great deal of the success of Liberalism, when they did not 
 see their way to agree with the remainder of the party on this 
 question. He wanted the voice to go forward from that meeting 
 that the time for this mutual recrimination had passed. The 
 only permanent dividing line in politics, and certainly inside a 
 party, was that of principle. Details could be discussed and 
 settled by concession and common sense. The principle of the 
 Liberal party was Irish self-government. If there are any 
 Liberals who are anxious to place the government of Ireland in 
 the hands of the Irish people, who are willing to apply to Ireland 
 those great principles of self-government which it has been the 
 pride of the Liberal party to uphold in every part of the Empire ; 
 and in taking this new departure who are anxious that nothing 
 should be done to weaken the union between the two countries or 
 impair the authority of Parliament, to such Liberals he would say, 
 ' We share your anxieties, we appreciate your views, we are ready 
 to safeguard the nation, we are ready to preserve the authority of 
 the Imperial Parliament and to retain the integrity of the Empire. 
 If our difference is one of detail let us as practical men test our 
 respective plans, and see which are best to promote the result at 
 which we are both aiming.' ' 
 
 Again at Nottingham he showed that " Lord Hartington re- 
 garded Home Rule as involving an Irish legislative body and an 
 Irish Executive. He approved of a local self-government in
 
 224 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Ireland on precisely similar lines to the local self-government 
 already enjoyed by England and Scotland. The telegram of 
 Mr. Chamberlain, the very able, eloquent, impressive and generous 
 speech of Sir George Trevelyan, maintained a resistance to Home 
 Rule which they had hitherto urged so far as they thought 
 it endangered the unity of the Empire, impaired the authority of 
 Parliament and weakened the protection to be given to the Irish 
 minority. But neither Sir George Trevelyan nor Mr. Chamberlain 
 -.rested from their previous declarations in favour of the wisest 
 reforms in legislation and administration in Ireland, both of them 
 intimated a willingness, at all events, to consider whether a united 
 counsel might not be satisfactorily brought to the solution of the 
 Irish question. 
 
 " I can never speak of Lord Hartington except in terms of pro- 
 found admiration and respect. Lord Hartington has been in the 
 past a distinguished, loyal, Liberal leader. He has led the party 
 at times of great difficulty, with unfailing judgment, wisdom and 
 courage ; who says exactly what he means, and means what he says, 
 and when he has once put his foot down in advance he never 
 retraces his steps. __ The fault I find with him is this he is so slow 
 in putting a step forward ! Lord Hartington says that he will 
 apply similar local institutions to those enjoyed, or to be enjoyed, 
 in England and Scotland to Ireland. Is he prepared to give to the 
 municipalities the same powers and similar authority as given in 
 this country ? Then I say, that though I understand refusing 
 everything, I cannot understand so enormous a power of self- 
 government which Lord Hartington proposes, and then to stop 
 short of completing the system. It would be safer for all those 
 interests which we are told would be imperilled, to pass the late 
 Government's scheme. 
 
 " If I take Mr. Chamberlain's own words ' We are agreed on 
 Irish autonomy,' there were two principles in the Bill which he 
 regarded as vital. First the principle of autonomy, to which he 
 said, ' I am able to give a hearty assent.' In the House of 
 Commons I heard him say, ' I accept the principle of an Irish 
 legislative body for the Irish ' ; at Hackney he said, ' What was 
 really wanted was a genuine administration for purely Irish
 
 Home Rule 225 
 
 affairs.' As practical men I cannot see where the vital difference 
 between us is. If we are agreed upon automony, if we are 
 agreed that there should be an Irish legislative body, one 
 difference may be as to the extent of the powers of that body, and 
 as to the extent and manner in which it may possibly endanger 
 the supremacy of Parliament ; but we are as anxious to maintain 
 the supremacy of Parliament as Mr. Chamberlain is. We may 
 have expressed our opinions in this Bill with feebleness, but we 
 mean this the Irish people shall manage their own affairs. We 
 mean that the united British Empire shall not be imperilled in the 
 slightest possible degree. We mean that the Imperial Parliament 
 shall remain without rival, absolute, supreme and final ; our 
 authority in the British Empire we will never allow to be tampered 
 with. I think if that telegram of Mr. Chamberlain and speech of 
 Sir George Trevelyan are read in a true light, it comes to this 
 that those two statesmen see that the present state of things 
 cannot continue. They think the solution is not an easy one, 
 and it is not. They think that solution is to be worked out with 
 caution care and success demand combined action ; I don't care 
 for the words in which the proposal is framed, I care not what 
 construction may be placed upon it, but I say, if there is one section 
 of the Liberal party whose only difference from the other section 
 is the mode by which a great reform can be carried out, there is 
 nothing undignified, unwise or derogatory in either of these two 
 parties offering to the other to talk the question over, and to see 
 if they cannot agree unitedly on some mode or solution which, 
 while securing the principle, and the resolute desire of both, will 
 remove the objections and the opposition which have been urged 
 against the minor details." 
 
 At Sheffield he alluded to Lord Hartington again as a man " of 
 whom I shall never speak except in terms of profoundest respect. 
 However much we may differ from him with reference to his 
 present attitude, no true Liberal will ever forget the enormous ser- 
 vices which Lord Hartington has rendered to the Liberal party. 
 We can say of him, and I think you in Sheffield will understand the 
 simile better than I do that he has been true as steel. There has 
 been no personal pique, no jealousy; everything is straightforward 
 
 15
 
 226 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and honourable. He has differed from us, he differed from the 
 first. He has never flinched from the attitude he has taken up. 
 We know we have a fair and honourable-minded opponent, we 
 believe we shall convince him yet before the battle is over, and we 
 believe the time will come when he will succeed with the universal 
 applause of the whole party to that inheritance which we have so 
 long predicted to be his, the leadership of the united Liberal 
 party." 
 
 Lord Hartington was the future Prime Minister to whom Henry 
 Fowler looked. A party such as he would have founded, and held, 
 and led, would have been the kind of Liberal party which was my 
 father's ideal. It would have been a statesman's party rather 
 than a politician's, and it would have welded in one the interests 
 of the masses with the claims of the classes. A great Imperial 
 party dwelt in Henry Fowler's idealism ; he saw the day go by 
 when Lord Hartington might have formed it, and did not. He saw 
 another later day go by when Lord Rosebery might have led it, 
 and did not. The loss of that party was, my father believed, an 
 incalculable and irrevocable loss to the nation, for which nothing 
 could ever atone ; and it was his conviction to the end, that such 
 a party alone, marching with sure and measured tread along with 
 the advance of events, could have saved England from the strife 
 and unrest which to-day hinder all succeeding parties with a 
 disorder and dissatisfaction which clog her constitution and 
 confound her rights. 
 
 Speaking at Wolverhampton on this great, consuming question 
 of the day Henry Fowler tried to take the sting out of some of the 
 bitterness which was flying about and poisoning the blood of 
 parties. 
 
 " He must say that he deplored and repudiated the criticism of 
 Mr. Labouchere on Mr. Chamberlain. Perhaps that criticism was 
 not intended to be taken seriously because the comparison of one 
 of the foremost Liberal statesmen of the day to the Pope, to 
 Marshal Bazaine, to the Devil, and finally, as an anti-climax to 
 the ex-mayor of Hull, must excite their ridicule rather than their 
 indignation. But to those who conscientiously believed in Liberal 
 principles, and who regarded the unity of the Liberal party as the
 
 Home Rule 227 
 
 only instrument by which these principles could effectively guide 
 and control our legislation and administration, whether in Great 
 Britain or Ireland, every honest attempt to terminate the unhappy 
 discord must be welcome. He was not going to discuss Mr. Cham- 
 berlain's programme or proposals, all he would say there, was, that 
 they demanded and deserved the most attentive and friendly 
 consideration on the part of Mr. Gladstone and his late colleagues. 
 He quite agreed with Mr. Labouchere that there were two policies 
 coercion or conciliation. He presumed that they were entitled 
 to assume that the Liberal party as a whole was opposed to coer- 
 cion ; he assumed, and hoped they were entitled to assume, 
 that the Liberal party as a whole were in favour of conciliation. 
 But they might differ they did differ as to the methods, the 
 stages, the details, the machinery of conciliation. Those differ- 
 ences were worthy of united counsel, and of united consideration, 
 in the hope that they might lead to united action. He read Mr. 
 Chamberlain's speech as meaning that, and in that light regarded 
 it, and welcomed it, as an honest and honourable attempt to reunite 
 and strengthen the Liberal party. He thought that the time had 
 arrived when they should endeavour, each one of them, to be 
 moderate and just to those who differed from them, to regard the 
 union of their party, the reunion of their party as a thing worth 
 making concessions for, worth making sacrifices for, and while they 
 held firm to the great principle to which they had committed 
 themselves, they ought to be ready, whenever simple detail was only 
 at issue, to meet the views of those with whom it had been their 
 pleasure to act in the past, and with whom they hoped to act in 
 the future ; to meet their views with respect to details, and endea- 
 vour to work out their principle upon lines which would command 
 general confidence and support, although they might perhaps be 
 longer in preparing the journey than they should like to be. 
 Wolverhampton had not been backward hitherto in striking the 
 keynote on many questions. Wolverhampton pronounced itself 
 very early in favour of Home Rule, and it would be worthy of the 
 best traditions of Wolverhampton to strike the keynote of Liberal 
 reunion." 
 
 That others in the party followed my father in the via media 
 
 i5*
 
 228 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and were also anxious for reconciliation is shown by a letter from 
 the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell written at the end of that fateful 
 year : 
 
 " 1 8, Wilton Street, 
 
 " December 3ist, 1886. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " All best wishes to you and Mrs. Fowler and your 
 circle for 1887. Very many thanks for your kind note. Ever 
 since I have had the advantage of your acquaintance it has 
 been my happiness to find myself in close agreement with 
 your views upon almost every political subject. In the 
 article, I had written a paragraph (which the Editor had 
 struck out for want of space) , on the Leaders of the party, and 
 I used these words : ' It cannot be doubted that in the next 
 Liberal Cabinet Mr. Henry Fowler will illustrate that religious 
 side of Radicalism which is so potent in the country, and 
 should never be unrepresented in high places.' These words 
 express a feeling which lies at the very root of my politics. 
 
 " Meanwhile the line which you and I take is not a popular 
 one with our party. Fire-eating is all the vogue, and men 
 who try for union and peace are called Trimmers. I have 
 never concealed my opinion that Mr. G.'s Bills were unwork- 
 able ; nor will I ever be a consenting party to any scheme 
 which should make life, property, and religious freedom in 
 Ireland insecure. But, saving these points, I am ready to 
 go any length towards satisfying the national sentiment. 
 
 I am delighted that you have told the truth about . 
 
 His conduct is wantonly mischievous ; and what his hearers 
 do not perceive is, that he is trying to keep the Liberal 
 party divided, in order to prevent Mr. G. from returning to 
 power. 
 
 " Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 " G. W. E. RUSSELL." 
 
 The article to which Mr. Russell refers was written by him 
 for Murray's Magazine and was called " The Uses of Absurdity." 
 It dealt with the shattered fortunes of the Liberal party and
 
 Home Rule 229 
 
 recommended moderate and healing counsel. Mr. Gladstone's 
 Bills referred to, were, of course, the Home Rule Bill and the Irish 
 Land Bill of 1886. 
 
 That similar feelings towards reconciliation were stirring in 
 the Unionist camp is proved by such letters as the following : 
 
 " Highbury, 
 
 " Moor Green, 
 
 " Birmingham, 
 
 " January 4th, 1887. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Did you not sketch out some plan of Irish land 
 
 purchase for the late Cabinet based on Irish security resources ? 
 
 " If so, or if you have any ideas on this subject will you let 
 
 me see them in confidence, of course ? I remember talking 
 
 to you on the matter in your room at the House of Commons. 
 
 " You see we have made some progress. We must not be 
 
 sanguine, but I am more hopeful than I was a week ago. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN." 
 
 And again in reply to the answer my father must have written : 
 
 " Highbury, 
 
 " Moor Green, 
 
 " Birmingham, 
 
 " January 6th, 1887. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Many thanks for your letter. I agree entirely 
 with your principle and the arguments by which you support 
 it. The objections are very weak. 
 
 ' ' I suppose that the real ' crux ' consists in this that Mr. G. 
 hoped by a very liberal offer to Irish landlords to secure their 
 assent to the Home Rule project. 
 
 " But there is no reason that I can see in giving them the 
 chance of exchanging an Irish Security for British Consols. 
 We may perhaps impose the Irish Security in return for a
 
 230 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 diminution in the interest but that is the utmost it will be 
 prudent to do. 
 
 " Did you consider the subject of mortgages and charges ? 
 Is there not a strong equitable claim to reduce these when the 
 income of the nominal productor is being so seriously cur- 
 tailed ? 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN." 
 
 And in the same correspondence a few days later : 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Many thanks. I am afraid you are right about 
 mortgages though it would not help my scheme if all creditors 
 preferential as well as others submitted to a reduction of 
 claim. 
 
 " I have always been in favour of the municipalization of 
 the land, and my present plan provides for ultimate ownership 
 by the Local Authority, the tenant paying a fixed and indirect 
 Land Tax and being subject to conditions expressed by the 
 Local Authority. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN." 
 
 But the fires the peacemakers hoped were quenched, were after 
 all, only smouldering. The Round Table Conference came to 
 nothing. No other efforts were made by the ex-Cabinet towards 
 reconciliation. The Unionist party was formed, and Liberalism 
 received, in my father's opinion, the worst blow which had ever 
 befallen it. 
 
 It was with a real sense of personal trouble as well as political 
 dismay that he spoke of " The unhappy schism in the Liberal 
 party, which has split us into two opposing camps, which has 
 separated old and well-tried comrades and friends, which has 
 retarded I might almost say destroyed all the hopes of that 
 Liberal legislation which roused our energies and kindled our hopes 
 at the General Election of 1885."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 18861892 
 
 IN OPPOSITION 
 
 " In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
 On half the nation." 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 " The darkest day, 
 Live till to-morrow, will have passed away." 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 THE next five years were darkly clouded in the political 
 world in which my father lived. At first heavy clouds 
 of smoke hung over the ashes of the great conflagration, tarnish- 
 ing and begriming much that had been bright and fair in the 
 Liberal outlook. And even after the smoke had cleared away, 
 as mere smoke always will, the sky still hung dull and grey above 
 the Liberal prospects. 
 
 In spite, however, of a certain political gloom, a radiant sun 
 of thanksgiving rose in the year 1887 on the occasion of the Jubilee 
 of our beloved Queen Victoria. That historic occasion created 
 an atmosphere of loyalty and devotion which men of all sides 
 and parties felt, and which they were all the better for feeling. 
 It caused a lull in political partisanship, and hushed for a brief 
 interval the clamour of contending sides. The great service in 
 Westminster Abbey, at which my parents were present, was 
 characterized by that reality of worship, which alone could be the 
 fitting crown of so long and so prosperous a reign. My father 
 often referred to his impressions of that great day of Jubilee 
 such impressions as must have been made on a devout and loyal 
 
 231
 
 232 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 mind. The building of the Imperial Institute was decided upon 
 as a memorial of the Jubilee, and my father was appointed one 
 of the Committee a representative committee of many branches 
 of Art and learning. 
 
 " Marlborough House, 
 
 " 3rd November, 1886. 
 " DEAR SIR, 
 
 " I am directed by the Prince of Wales to express an 
 earnest hope that you will be so good as to afford him the 
 benefit of your services by kindly consenting to serve as a 
 member of a temporary committee which H. R. H. is forming 
 for the purpose of conferring with the Representatives of the 
 Colonies in regard to the Imperial Institute for the Colonies 
 and India. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " FRANCIS KNOLLYS." 
 
 My father always took a great interest in the Imperial Institute ; 
 and in the year 1891 was appointed a Governor on the nomina- 
 tion of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 " Marlborough House, 
 
 " May igth, 1891. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " The Prince of Wales desires me to write to you to 
 express his hope that you may feel yourself at liberty to 
 accept on his personal nomination the appointment of a 
 Governor of the Imperial Institute. I may mention that 
 the duties need be merely nominal. 
 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " FRANCIS KNOLLYS." 
 
 On the reception given to the Prince of Wales at the Imperial 
 Institute in July, 1894, an interesting experiment in telegraphy 
 was made. A telegram was sent off at u p.m. on the Friday 
 night and was acknowledged from Simla in twenty minutes. The
 
 In Opposition 233 
 
 object was to test the time of transmission before the line was 
 cleared for the Prince's message, which took one minute and 
 fifty seconds. A feat of telegraphing which has probably never 
 been excelled. 
 
 Speaking on October 2nd, 1888, Henry Fowler said : " In his 
 judgment the political situation and political outlook were dis- 
 heartening and unsatisfactory. The past Session had been a 
 hard one the hardest of his Parliamentary life. Royal Commis- 
 sion work, Committee work, had added to the public and private 
 business of the House, and burdened and taxed physical and 
 mental endurance to the utmost." So work looks when the 
 element of hope is eliminated. All the buoyancy seemed to have 
 gone out of the Liberal party, and their aspirations were deadened 
 and dulled. " They had had in the past Session Liberals denounc- 
 ing the Liberal creed they had had Liberals renouncing Liberal 
 legislation, and they had had Liberals repudiating Liberal finance. 
 On the other hand they had had Tories expressing and adopting 
 Radical principles which they had hitherto detested and denounced. 
 What did this political topsy-turvydom mean ? It did not mean 
 that all Liberals had become Tories that all Tories had become 
 Liberals ; it did not mean that their party system of Government 
 had collapsed, or that they were going to exchange the conflict 
 of party hosts for the guerilla warfare of self-opinionated sections. 
 It meant that there was one question which, like Aaron's rod, 
 swallowed up all the rest, one question that was of greater im- 
 portance than even the foremost of our ordinary political con- 
 flicts, and that was the Government of Ireland, the peace of 
 Ireland, the prosperity of Ireland, the relation of Ireland to the 
 other parts of the Empire. And it was the greatest problem of 
 this century." 
 
 The Coercion Act had been vigorously enforced to try to sup- 
 press the National League, and a thousand men had been put in 
 prison. This policy was in direct antagonism to Henry Fowler's 
 opinions. He said : " They could go on with coercion, they 
 could persevere with it, and carry it to its bitterest end, they 
 might try to stamp out the national sentiment of the people of 
 Ireland. England was strong enough to make Ireland another
 
 234 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Poland, but that course would be impossible. England had some- 
 thing stronger than her arms and battalions, something more 
 invincible than her ironclads, and that was the moral force of a 
 great, free, religious people. The Radical-Union, as it called 
 itself, had propounded a scheme for the local government of Ire- 
 land a scheme which bore the imprimatur of Mr. Chamberlain 
 a scheme with respect to which Mr. Chamberlain said, ' In this 
 direction the ultimate solution of the Irish difficulty is to be 
 found.' 
 
 " We may drag on this bitter controversy, we may delay the 
 decision until we have deprived it of every semblance, not only of 
 generosity, but of justice, but sooner or later the end is sure and 
 certain. No man, either in our ranks or in the ranks of our 
 opponents, doubts that in the end this great measure of Home 
 Rule will succeed ; our Empire will not be dismembered, our 
 Parliament will not be dethroned from its constitutional supremacy ; 
 our peace and our property will not be engulfed in one common 
 ruin ; but the stupid folly of our misgovernment of Ireland will 
 be swept away. Irishmen will have to grapple with their own 
 difficulties, they will have to solve their own problems, they will 
 have to care for their own interests, and thus, and thus only, 
 will they grow into the perfect stature of a free, a prosperous, a 
 self-governing people." 
 
 It was difficult under the cloud of Ireland to look into all those 
 other vast branches of legislation which ought to claim the atten- 
 tion of politicians. Everything outside the one great furnace 
 of conflicting opinions, seemed cold and paralysed. But by 
 and by time came in, as time always does, with a healing hand 
 and an uplifting touch. Men stood up again amid the ashes, 
 and they began to step out in other directions, and to lift up their 
 heads again towards hope. 
 
 Henry Fowler was never one to be attacked with optimism, 
 but even he at last abstracted his tired eyes from the spectacle 
 of ruin, and began to see other questions and to think about other 
 things. The question of finance always held a great attraction 
 for him, and during his few months at the Treasury he had tasted 
 blood. This interest ran a golden strand through all his
 
 In Opposition 235 
 
 speeches and most of his Parliamentary life. No pattern of 
 policy was complete in his rendering, and indeed no pattern is 
 possible, without the weU-considered question of finance. Had 
 his years of office coincided in any adequate measure with his 
 years of political life, then it might have been that his great and 
 sound financial powers had found their true outlet in the great 
 post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. In June he wrote from 
 Woodthorne : 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Many thanks for your note and its indications of a 
 certain great authority's present leanings, but he distinctly 
 pledged himself to the retention for all Imperial questions, 
 and in his letter to Haslam, quoted in Dale's article, he com- 
 mitted himself to the full number. He cannot recede from 
 that position. I am unable to discern the inconsistency of 
 giving Ireland what you call a real measure of self-government, 
 and the retention of the Irish M.P.'s, and therefore I will not 
 put the two positions into antagonism. To say that he will 
 not assent to it ' if it impairs real and effective autonomy ' 
 is importing a condition which has no application. Real and 
 effective autonomy is the basis, the only basis, of any scheme ; 
 without that the whole would be mockery, a delusion and 
 a snare ; but real and effective autonomy is consistent with, 
 nay, in my opinion, is essential to, the real and effective 
 union of Great Britain and Ireland, and if the two sections 
 of the party are ready to negotiate on this basis for the settle- 
 ment of the Irish difficulty, I am at a loss to discover the 
 wisdom of the non possumus. The Irish Members will be 
 divided on the English party lines you must deduct the 
 minority and its equivalent from the majority before you 
 estimate the numerical value e.g., 23 Irish Tories take 23 
 Irish Liberals and they are neutralised and 57 is the dis- 
 turbing figure. The crowning Imperial question is the reten- 
 tion in, or rejection from, Office of the Imperial Ministry by 
 that Ministry the veto will be exercised; is Mr. G. prepared 
 to give the Irish M.P.'s a vote in that ? If he is, when and
 
 236 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 where can he define the occasion when such a question will 
 arise ? if not then he may as well exclude them altogether. 
 Depend upon it ' the line of least resistance ' is as necessary 
 a discovery in politics as in mechanics. I regard the recent 
 letters of Mr. G. as indicating a quest in a contrary direction. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In speaking on Naval Estimates in 1889 he said that " The 
 House of Commons would be fully supported by the country in 
 taking whatever steps would be necessary to secure that Naval 
 supremacy which was essential to their national existence. It 
 would be the duty of the House to see that whatever money was 
 asked for was wisely spent, and that economy and efficiency were 
 combined. The House would neglect its duty if, having regard 
 to that enormous commerce of ours, which was to be found in 
 every sea, and to the fact that so much of our raw material came 
 from abroad, it did not see that that commerce was protected 
 whatever might happen in the hurly-burly of foreign politics, or 
 in the event of any attack which might be made upon our nation 
 With reference to the Army he would say, and perhaps it was 
 rather a paradoxical remark to make, that we had also a line of 
 defence, and our line of defence was our small army. They might 
 ask what he meant by that ? He meant this while on the one 
 hand it was our duty to see that we received and we did not 
 receive it at present a full equivalent of the enormous sum 
 which we expended on that yearly ; on the other hand, it was our 
 duty in the interests of ourselves, in the interests of peace, in the 
 interests of prosperity, to resist any and every attempt, to convert 
 this country into a great military power. We did not want to 
 copy the great territorial nations of the Continent, so far as mili- 
 tary matters were concerned. He trusted that the attention of 
 Parliament would be called to the extraordinary speech that was 
 recently made at Birmingham, when one of the principal military 
 advisers to the Secretary of State for War made the astonish- 
 ing proposition that a system of universal conscription should 
 be introduced into this country. They knew what that meant
 
 In Opposition 237 
 
 the abstracting of every man at perhaps the most critical period 
 of his manhood from trade, from commerce, from industry, from 
 contributing to the wealth and prosperity of the country and to 
 his own prosperity, and to reducing him to barrack life, to train 
 him up at his country's cost as a soldier. They might have, and 
 no doubt had, strong differences of opinion on a variety of ques- 
 tions, but he was assured that Englishmen of every shade of 
 opinion, of every class and condition, would unite in overwhelming 
 numbers in resisting to the uttermost every attempt to levy that 
 blood tax which was the curse and crime of modern Europe." 
 
 He also at this time was considering universal suffrage and 
 free education. With regard to the former his opinion was 
 " that no man ought to have more than one vote. There ought 
 to be one register of voters, on which a man should be, for the 
 Town Council, School Board, Board of Guardians, and the County 
 Council. He would have no modification, no qualification, no 
 plural vote ; he would have one register, and whoever was on that 
 register should be one of the electors entitled to exercise his 
 electoral rights whatever the election might be." 
 
 With regard to free education he said : " He was as strong an 
 advocate for it as ever. One of the first duties of the nation was 
 to educate its children. The payment of fees was an intolerable 
 burden upon a very large mass of the population. He thought 
 when Parliament was free, and it was not free, to attend to the 
 affairs of Great Britain, the question of free education would be 
 one of the first to come to the front." 
 
 On his annual review of Parliamentary work which he gave 
 to his constituents on October iQth, 1889, he thus alluded to the 
 death of John Bright. He said : "He must refer to the great 
 loss which the House of Commons and the country had sustained 
 in the death of that great statesman, who combined the keenest 
 political sagacity and the strongest sense with the most unwaver- 
 ing attachment to the moral and physical progress of the masses 
 of his countrymen, and who maintained and who defended his 
 political opinions with an eloquence unequalled alike for its bril- 
 liant rhetoric, and its close and resistless force. Two or three 
 nights before Mr. Bright left London for the last time, he had a
 
 238 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 very long conversation with him, embracing the whole range of 
 practical politics. There was one subject on which they agreed 
 to differ ; one subject, and he thought he might say one subject 
 alone, on which he was not prepared to follow John Bright's 
 opinion, and to adopt his policy. But he was very much im- 
 pressed with the strength, with the wisdom, with the progressive 
 Liberalism of that great Tribune of the people. And he thought 
 he might say without vanity to his constituents, that he would 
 ever cherish amongst his most valued memories the kind words 
 in which Mr. Bright was pleased to express his approval of his 
 Parliamentary conduct, and his Parliamentary career." 
 
 He went on to say that though the Opposition had been labelled 
 " not only undisciplined but impotent," it had won two of the 
 greatest victories of the Session. It had resisted and defeated the 
 attempt the first attempt made by any responsible Government 
 since the Repeal of the Corn Laws to re-introduce the principle 
 and doctrines of Protection into the fiscal system of this country, 
 and to limit the quantity and raise the price of a prime article 
 of the food of the people." (The defeat of the Sugar Convention.) 
 " The other victory was on the tithe question. The Govern- 
 ment proposed to make the tenant farmers personally liable in 
 the County Court for the tithes, but was compelled by the Opposi- 
 tion to withdraw that Bill. Four principles for which the Liberals 
 had contended for years, had been submitted to Parliament and 
 three of them had been accepted. The fourth was accepted by the 
 Government but defeated in the House of Lords. The first was 
 free education, the next was graduated taxation the Liberals 
 asked for equality of burdens and the Government gave it to them. 
 The Government had also admitted the principle of the aboli- 
 tion of primogeniture the Liberal party would hold them to 
 that admission." 
 
 One of the main causes of the Liberal defeat had, of course, been 
 the number of abstentions in the last election, and to this Henry 
 Fowler very characteristically alluded. He hated the principle of 
 haste almost as much as that of harm. He blamed in his heart 
 the rush of the Home Rule Bill, though he understood the motive 
 that at seventy-seven years of age urged Mr. Gladstone to action
 
 In Opposition 239 
 
 Jest it should be too late. But he had no sympathy whatever 
 with a rushed policy when leaders, who had not by any means 
 reached threescore years and ten, still tried to press and push 
 the people. He believed in educating public opinion rather than 
 storming it, and all this was a work of time, and a work worthy 
 of time. " He found no fault with men who abstained from voting 
 at the last election. He thought a man whose mind was not made 
 up clearly did right to abstain. He was not surprised that men 
 hesitated in adopting what appeared to be a new policy, and a 
 policy which was at variance, in some respects, with what the 
 party had previously professed. That was the strength of all our 
 political action in this country hitherto, and he hoped it would 
 be so in the future. They had never made a great change without 
 the bulk of the people's being convinced, and he would rather 
 not carry Home Rule for a time, unless they carried it with the 
 clear conviction and approval of a distinct majority of the people. 
 Therefore he did not complain that men should have paused for 
 consideration before deciding on the question." 
 
 He advocated time and deliberation to the fullest extent, but 
 he also laid down the axiom that a decision made after a due 
 consideration by the people, was irrevocable and final. And in 
 later years when the question of Tariff Reform broke out again 
 into life, quite apart from his own convictions on the matter, he 
 would shake his head over what he considered to be an utterly 
 unconstitutional act in trying to go back upon the accomplished 
 fact of the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the country's decision then 
 against Protection. " Our political reforms differ from the political 
 reforms on the Continent and elsewhere, because hitherto they have 
 never been attempted to be reversed. Take the policy of Free 
 Trade and a variety of other things. However strongly the men 
 who subsequently came into Office might have opposed the measures 
 of reform, they have accepted them as the judgment of the nation, 
 and have not attempted to reverse them, and so the country's 
 political progress, if not so very fast, has been sure." 
 
 Another of his political as well as personal axioms was " Do 
 one thing at a time." He was a great believer in that principle, 
 and the power of concentrated force. This also made against the
 
 240 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 crowding of haste. " There is a characteristic of British thought, 
 of British political action aye, and I might say, of British common 
 sense, that is to do one thing at a time and to do it well. We 
 find generally that if a man has too many irons in the fire a good 
 many of them grow cold. The men who succeed are the men 
 who put all their force and energy and power into one thing and 
 do it ; the parties that succeed, and the policies that succeed, and 
 the Governments that succeed, are the parties, the policies, and 
 the Governments that are from time to time concentrated on 
 one thing, which grapple with one thing, and do it. That has 
 been the history of every great movement in this country. Every 
 one of our great political achievements, every one of our great 
 Liberal achievements, has been dealt with at the time by itself. 
 The whole political force of the time has been concentrated upon 
 it, the party has put its shoulder to the wheel in canying it out." 
 
 This verily was an autumn time for the Liberal party. A sad 
 sense of decaying hopes and dying possibilities chilled the ardour 
 which even the heat of conflict fires. From time to time letters 
 from one statesman to another fluttered down, but like autumn 
 leaves they lay where they fell and no new life sprang up. Some 
 such letters my father wrote to Mr. Morley. On the i8th April 
 he wrote from Woodthorne : 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " As I did not see you in town I hope you will let 
 me gossip on one or two points and you need not trouble to 
 bother about a reply. The Eighty Club behaved very kindly 
 although they had lost a sovereign and found a farthing, 
 they concealed their annoyance, received me very cordially 
 listened to me most attentively for upwards of half an hour 
 (during which I expounded the thoughts you had suggested), 
 and passed a unanimous vote of thanks. I have written a 
 reply to Balfour's letter on my speech and I hope it will appear 
 to-morrow. 
 
 " Birmingham ! Ought we to have fought ? if we had not 
 interfered, the Dissentients and Tories would have openly 
 quarrelled, and a cynical neutrality on our side would have
 
 In Opposition 241 
 
 avoided the blow (and it is a blow) of the 3,000 majority after 
 the visit of Mr. G. Are our Birmingham experts, past and 
 present, infallible ? Our second in command (though an ex- 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer) was not in the House on the 
 Budget night, although he was in London ! This has been 
 noticed, not unnaturally. Was it tactically wise ? The 
 60 constituencies referred to in Mr. G.'s speech as having 
 turned a majority of 14 into a tie are now 66. In 1886 they 
 were 41 Tories, 25 Liberals. Tory majority 16. To-day they 
 are 32 Tories, 34 Liberals, or a Liberal majority of 2. Donegal 
 should be discussed on the re-assembly. The Irish will have 
 to make themselves disagreeable in Parliament if the Tory 
 politicians are to be moved. Reason is not their friend or 
 their foe. 
 
 " I am getting up a speech on the Sugar Bounties, which 
 ought to be fought bitterly, obstructionally, and to the end. 
 I am very busy down here, but I had some steam to blow off. 
 I have given you an idea of my grumblings. What say you 
 of Rosebery's idea of a Commission on Home Rule ? When 
 will Herschell break his silence ? Don't answer my queries 
 until I see you and 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 Two days later : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " 20th April, 1889. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " The answer to the enclosed is that the case of 
 our producers and refiners is that bounty-fed sugar increases 
 the supply and reduces the price, and the prohibition of 
 bounty-fed sugar can only, and will only, benefit, and is 
 intended to benefit, the West Indies, therefore Greenock and 
 Liverpool, by reducing the supply of sugar and increasing the 
 price. The three last sentences are delicious ' Monopoly is 
 the source of dearness ' ergo, give Germany and the West 
 
 16
 
 242 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Indies the monopoly of our markets, shut out America, France, 
 Denmark, Brazil, etc., etc. you break down the monopoly ! 
 
 " I agree as to Rosebery's scheme. I mean to your opinion. 
 You misunderstand me as to Herschell all I meant was 
 that he had not spoken in public since his return. But I still 
 think (though I don't say), that it is not only desirable but 
 essential that Mr. G. and his colleagues should agree as to 
 what they mean to submit to the electorate before the election 
 comes. The constituencies will not (at least I confidently 
 think so), give any man, or any set of men, a carte-blanche 
 on Irish questions. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 The first Sunday in 1890 my father spent at Sandringham, a 
 visit which to him was of the greatest interest as showing his royal 
 Host and Hostess in the simple setting of an English country 
 home. 
 
 His impressions of, and admiration for, the then Prince of Wales' 
 diplomatic judgment and practical common-sense were strength- 
 ened by the more intimate talk which he had with H.R.H. there. 
 And he was always enthusiastic in praise of these sound qualities 
 which characterized King Edward VII. 's kingship. 
 
 " Sandringham, 
 
 " Norfolk. 
 
 " General Sir Dighton Probyn presents his compliments to 
 Mr. Fowler and writes by direction of the Prince and Princess 
 of Wales to invite him to pay their Royal Highnesses a visit at 
 Sandringham from the 4th January to remain till Monday, 
 6th. If not inconvenient to Mr. Fowler, Sir Dighton Probyn 
 would advise him to travel down to Sandringham by the 
 3.55 p.m. ' Saturday's Special ' from St. Pancras, which is 
 due at Wolferton, the station for Sandringham, at 6.30 p.m. 
 
 " Carriages will be sent to Wolferton, to meet all guests 
 travelling by that train. 
 
 " December 25th, 1889."
 
 In Opposition 243 
 
 During the Session of 1890 Henry Fowler introduced a private 
 Member's Bill for extending the powers of local authorities, which 
 the Government supported, and which became law. In referring 
 to that Bill in Wolverhampton he said that " he was not entitled 
 to any credit for the Bill for which he was nominally responsible ; 
 it had been prepared by the able Town Clerk of Wolverhampton 
 (Mr. Horatio Brevitt), whose experience and knowledge gave his 
 suggestions great weight. He was but Mr. Brevitt's mouthpiece ; 
 and he had to thank him, as the town had to thank him, for a 
 useful enlargement of the powers which local authorities possessed 
 for procuring the public health and promoting the public safety 
 and convenience." 
 
 At this time a Bill had been passed for the granting of self- 
 government to the Colony of Western Australia the creation of 
 another Parliament with an executive Government responsible 
 to that Parliament, which was a recognition of the fact that the 
 inhabitants of Western Australia could govern themselves a great 
 deal better than they could be governed from Downing Street. 
 Henry Fowler was quick to lay his finger on this fact, and to point 
 out that " the adoption of Home Rule in another part of the Queen's 
 dominions had been discussed and sanctioned without a word's 
 being said about the disintegration of the Empire. Not one of 
 the bogies was trotted out. No menaces were flaunted in their 
 faces. The House of Commons and its leaders discussed that 
 measure upon its merits, and upon what was best for the people 
 in Western Australia. He left it to them to apply the lesson ! 
 
 In 1891 the thin line of light along the horizon, which the 
 most hopeful of the Liberal party had been looking to, sud- 
 denly seemed to broaden, as on many a clouded day, and a 
 fuller light spread up the sky. There was a fresher sound 
 even in Henry Fowler's speeches, though he was ever the 
 pessimist in political concerns ; and he rejoiced in the adoption 
 of the Liberal measure of Free Education, even though it was 
 brought forward by a Tory Government. It was not the credit 
 of such measures that my father wanted for his party, it was 
 the benefit of them he craved for the country at large, and 
 he could disinterestedly rejoice later when free education was 
 
 16*
 
 244 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 conferred upon the people. "He had fought against what he 
 called the odious and abominable tax of the school pence. He 
 had fought for free education when the Tories maintained that 
 free education was economically unsound, politically unjust and 
 financially dangerous, and should be resisted to the bitter end. 
 He did not believe there was a Tory Member in the House of 
 Commons, and there certainly was no one on the Government 
 Bench, who did not win his seat in 1885 upon a distinct, repeated, 
 solemn pledge that he was opposed to free education. But never 
 mind what the Tory motive and policy were, Liberals were going 
 to have free education. They might try to accompany it with 
 conditions ; they might try to inscribe on the statute book for 
 the first time that public money should be spent without popular 
 control they might as well try to keep back the rising tide by 
 bulwarks of sand; nine-tenths of the seven and a half millions 
 cost of elementary education would come out of the public purse 
 very little more than one-tenth was received from voluntary 
 contributors and would the British people entrust the expenditure 
 of that enormous sum of money to totally irresponsible private 
 organizations ? This difficulty would not arise in the large towns, 
 but in thousands of country parishes there was but one school, 
 and parents were compelled to send their children to that one 
 school. He said that if that one school was kept up out of public 
 funds the public had the right of seeing that that expenditure was 
 devoted, first to secure the best education that that money would 
 provide, and secondly that the conscientious convictions of no 
 class should be outraged in the teaching compulsorily enforced 
 upon their children. They would put the Free Education Measure 
 on the statute book and, as in the case of Roman Catholic Eman- 
 cipation, Repeal of the Corn Laws, Extension of the Franchise, 
 they would make the Tory party the hewers of their wood and 
 the drawers of their water." 
 
 During this Session Henry Fowler was instrumental in proposing 
 and passing the Wolverhampton Corporation Act of 1891. 
 Amongst other privileges a special clause in this Act allowed the 
 Corporation to present the Freedom of the Borough to men who 
 had done well for their town, and the first advantage which the
 
 In Opposition 245 
 
 Corporation took of that power was to confer the Freedom of the 
 Borough upon Henry Fowler. 
 
 At a meeting of the Town Council of Wolverhampton held on 
 the I2th October, 1891, it was moved and carried unanimously : 
 " That the best thanks of this Council be, and they are hereby, 
 accorded to the Right Hon. H. H. Fowler, M.P. for the Eastern 
 Division of the Parliamentary Borough of Wolverhampton, for the 
 signal service which he has rendered to the Corporation in relation 
 to the promotion and passing of the Wolverhampton Corporation 
 Act, 1891. The powerful and masterly speech of Mr. Fowler 
 upon the second reading of this measure, supplemented by his 
 untiring energy and efforts, have been principally the means of 
 securing to this town special statutory powers in relation to its 
 sewage disposal. The Council therefore desire to publicly acknow- 
 ledge their indebtedness to Mr. Fowler for his valuable aid and 
 assistance in this and other important matters affecting the 
 welfare of this Municipality." 
 
 It was further moved and carried at that meeting : 
 
 " That in recognition of his distinguished Parliamentary career, 
 and in order to commemorate in a suitable manner the eminent 
 services rendered by the Right Hon. H. H. Fowler, M.P., to this 
 Municipality, the Council are of opinion that his portrait should 
 be painted in oils, and hung in the Council Chamber, and that the 
 Honorary Freedom of the Borough should also, at an early date, 
 be conferred upon Mr. Fowler." 
 
 And on the I5th February, 1892, the Freedom of the Borough 
 of Wolverhampton was conferred upon my father. 
 
 In addressing the Council on that occasion he made one of his 
 most characteristic speeches. In thanking them for thus perpetu- 
 ating his membership of the Council he spoke of it as " a member- 
 ship which I value as extending over a long period of my life, as 
 one of my greatest honours and as one of my most agreeable 
 occupations." He pointed out that " in the service of this Cor- 
 poration I learnt lessons of the administration of public affairs, 
 the transaction of public business, and of the management of public 
 finance, which have been of inestimable value to me in various 
 positions which I have been called upon to hold." In thanking
 
 246 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the Council also for the graceful manner in which they had passed 
 the resolution, he thus alluded to his political opponents : 
 
 " We live in a time in which differences of opinion on Imperial 
 affairs have been accentuated perhaps to their utmost acerbity. 
 I have always tried to do justice to my political opponents. I have 
 always tried, perhaps imperfectly tried, but I have tried, to recognize 
 the purity, and the patriotism of their aims, and I have always 
 been ready to concede to them what I have claimed for myself. 
 But it is not the less gratifying on an occasion like this, and in the 
 history of a town like this, to find that party politics are not the 
 only object and aim of our public life. There is a many-sidedness 
 in English citizenship, of which the proceedings which have cul- 
 minated to-day are by no means a trifling illustration. We are 
 able to recognize, and I trust we ever shall recognize, public service, 
 honestly, honourably rendered in any and in every sphere, and 
 not be perpetually putting on spectacles which not only cloud our 
 own vision, but distort the appearance of our opponents. We 
 associate the Freedom of Boroughs with old Corporations. It is 
 only by recent legislation that that privilege has been passed on to 
 the more modern institutions. But I am not sure that the oldest 
 Corporations have always been the best. I am not sure that some 
 of the good wine has not been kept until now ; and although ours 
 is not an old Corporation, I venture to say that its history justified 
 its creation, and that those who have been associated with it up 
 to the present moment, and those who will be associated with it 
 from generation to generation, will always look back upon the first 
 fifty years of its history with pride and satisfaction." 
 
 He went on to enumerate the many achievements of the Cor- 
 poration. The state of the streets, the abolition of the rookeries 
 of the town, the sanitary improvements, the supply of good water 
 " a better supply of water than any town in this kingdom, except 
 Glasgow," the establishment of a Free Library (before the days of 
 Mr. Carnegie), the public park, and, thanks to the generosity of a 
 private citizen, a beautiful Art Gallery. 
 
 " When I look back at all these things, and I see a reduction 
 in our death rate, I see our education increased, I see the means 
 of the recreation and the enjoyment of the people extended and
 
 In Opposition 247 
 
 elevated, I say that this Council has a very bright record to look 
 back upon. I don't mean to say it has had no imperfections. It 
 has the essential elements of all human institutions. It has made 
 its mistakes ; but you remember what a distinguished American 
 diplomat said, ' that a man who never made a mistake never made 
 anything.' We have made our mistakes, we are but human, but 
 I can say this of the Corporation of Wolverhampton, you cannot 
 find from the first chapters of its history until to-day, a trace of 
 jobbery or a whisper of scandal." 
 
 He referred to the value of municipal institutions as the germ 
 of a great deal that is valuable in national institutions, but he did 
 not ignore the fact that there had been corruption and decay, and 
 that fifty-five years ago the Royal Commission had reported 
 that there existed a well-founded distrust of the management of 
 municipal corporations. This he said ought to teach the lesson 
 that even the best of institutions depend upon the mode in which 
 they are administered, and the character of the men to whom they 
 are entrusted, and then he launched forth into one of his favourite 
 themes, " I would trust no body of men, however high their 
 motives, however lofty their character I would entrust no body 
 of men with power who were not responsible, directly responsible, 
 to public opinion. Responsibility to public opinion is the secret 
 of their present purity and efficiency and success. Some people 
 say that Town Councils do nothing but raise the rates. It is 
 their duty to raise the rates if they are honest. They are here for 
 that purpose. They must guarantee an expenditure for the benefit 
 of all, and all must share the burden of that expenditure. A 
 common benefit involves a common burden ; and although I have 
 the opinion that the incidence of taxation, by which our local 
 revenue is to be raised, is capable of very vast improvement, yet 
 the principle remains the same, that out of the common purse of a 
 locality, bound together by those ties, knitted together by those 
 interests, which form what, from time immemorial, men of different 
 languages and different races have called the city, the municipality, 
 the State out of that common fund there should be defrayed a 
 public expenditure for the benefit of all, and for the protection of 
 all. And it is right that those who are strong should bear the
 
 248 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 infirmities of the weak. It is right that those who have realized, 
 either by their own labour, or by the labour of those who have gone 
 before them, an immunity from the burden of hard daily toil it 
 is reasonable that they should contribute out of their abundance 
 for the benefit of those and they are the majority whose hard 
 lot it is to toil for their daily bread. It is the duty of a community 
 to protect the interests of its humblest members ; to protect 
 them against their friends, against their own folly, against their 
 own vice, against their own temptations. It is our duty to provide 
 for them means of education, means of instruction, and means of 
 enjoyment, too." He showed further how contagious are muni- 
 cipal institutions and how at that time the counties of England 
 were copying them. " It may be in the future that Parliament will 
 devolve upon and delegate to local authorities in the county and 
 in the borough, larger powers of administration, and enable us 
 to carry out in our own way, and at our own doors, those improve- 
 ments which we think desirable in our local and in our municipal 
 life." And finally he thanked them again for the high honour 
 which they had conferred upon him, as well as for the proposed 
 portrait to be hung in the Town Hall. " You have to-day con- 
 ferred upon me a high honour. I value it for its own sake. I value 
 it still more for the spirit, the manner, the circumstances of its 
 bestowal. You have to-day imposed upon me a duty and a 
 responsibility. I accept them both, and I will, to the utmost 
 of my ability, here and elsewhere, endeavour to promote your 
 interests, to uphold your dignity, and to discharge all the obliga- 
 tions which belong to the citizenship of what I am proud to say 
 is no mean city." 
 
 My father's portrait was painted by Mr. Arthur Cope, R.A., 
 and was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1893. This wonderful 
 likeness was the result not only of many sittings in the artist's 
 studio, but Mr. Cope also attended several debates in the House 
 of Commons, where he caught tricks and expressions which could 
 not have been called up at will by any sitter, but were the uncon- 
 scious personal touches which were only to be found during the 
 very act of debate. On presenting the picture back to the town, 
 after receiving it as the gift of the town, my father said, " Might
 
 In Opposition 249 
 
 he be allowed to say in no spirit of exultation or boast, but as a 
 matter of straightforward truth, that he should be glad if the 
 picture, of which he had been the recipient, and which he asked 
 the Corporation to accept to be hung in the Council Chamber, 
 should indicate or rather testify hereafter in a public manner 
 to the fact of the freedom of access to the service of the 
 Crown, and tell the story that those who had served their own 
 town to the satisfaction and approval of their fellow citizens, were 
 not thereby precluded from seeking to serve their country in 
 another sphere and under other conditions." 
 
 Mr. Arthur Cope sends the following recollections of my father, 
 and of the time when he was painting three portraits of him : 
 the first hangs in the Wolverhampton Town Hall, the second 
 belongs to his own family, and the third was painted for the 
 Incorporated Law Society. " My recollections of the late Viscount 
 Wolverhampton," writes Mr. Cope, " are all pleasant ones. I 
 remember his first visit to my studio very well and when next 
 I saw him it was in the House of Commons. It happened that I 
 was painting several M.P.'s at that time and found it very useful 
 to go and listen to the debates, and study my victims as speakers 
 or listeners unknown to them. On the occasion in question, some 
 measure came up having reference to legislation to do with Friendly 
 Societies. The mover had apparently annoyed a Member of 
 the opposite side, who immediately blocked the motion. In a 
 moment party feeling was roused, and the obviously beneficial 
 measure would have been lost. Sir Henry Fowler got up, and, in a 
 quiet and most pleasant voice, calmed the storm, and appealed to 
 the good sense and feeling of both sides. It was done not only 
 just at the crucial moment, but done so well that he carried the 
 matter through at once, obviously to the satisfaction of the whole 
 House. This small incident to me is very typical of his broad- 
 mindedness and strong common sense qualities only too rare 
 and another instance at his own dinner-table, was, I think, very 
 characteristic. It was in the middle of the Boer War. A Radical 
 M.P. was somewhat vindictive about everything, and fell foul of 
 Lord Kitchener, saying he was ' The best hated man in the British 
 army.' Sir Henry at once said : ' Yes ! the best hated man in
 
 250 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the army since the Duke of Wellington.' Lord Wolverhampton 
 could always see the other side of the hedge, though he was never 
 on it. He kept to his own party when the Unionist split came. 
 Looking at a portrait of the then Lord Hartington in my studio, 
 he said : ' Well ! there's a sound Englishman, who never stooped 
 to a single party dodge, and who never makes a statement which 
 he cannot back up with good solid argument.' 
 
 " I got to know Sir Henry intimately during the time he was 
 sitting to me for the three portraits I painted of him ; and that 
 intimacy left behind a very deep and warm regard for his memory, 
 which I still cherish." 
 
 The Conservative Government had in 1892 run out its appointed 
 span of years ; a dissolution was necessary, and, with hope revived, 
 the Liberals rallied to the fight. Henry Fowler's last words before 
 the election were : " Unbroken precedent had settled the question 
 that Parliament expires by the effluxion of time at the end of its 
 sixth year. Whatever might be the date of the election the time 
 was rapidly approaching for the constituencies to decide many 
 questions of supreme importance. The Liberal party had a 
 policy for Ireland, and it had a policy for Great Britain, and they 
 were constantly told that both these policies were impossible. 
 An attempt to give good government to Ireland would, according 
 to their opponents, inevitably destroy every prospect of carrying 
 out the reforms which the people of England and Scotland desired. 
 Personally, he thought it might be more accurately said that the 
 determination to inflict bad government on Ireland, involving, as 
 it had done and would do, the devotion of the greater part of 
 Parliamentary time and energy to Irish affairs, would assuredly 
 prevent the consideration by Parliament of those reforms to which 
 the enemies of Home Rule were bitterly opposed. He believed 
 that he was within the mark when he said that more than one- 
 half of the time of the present Parliament had been devoted to 
 questions of administration and legislation for Ireland ; and year 
 by year that state of things got worse. If the constituencies 
 decided that the affairs of Ireland, great or small, were to be 
 transacted on the floor of the Imperial Parliament, or, in other 
 words, that the work which could be well done by Irishmen in
 
 In Opposition 251 
 
 Dublin, was to be badly done by Englishmen and Scotchmen in 
 Westminster, then the certain result would be that Ireland would 
 devour more and more of that time which Great Britain must 
 have, if her rights and interests were to be adequately considered. 
 
 " Six years ago the Liberal party maintained that it was in the 
 interests of Ireland and Great Britain, that Parliament should 
 delegate to an Irish Legislature and Executive the control of Irish 
 affairs. The experience and the history of the last six years, 
 with all its changes and startling incidents, with all its difficulties 
 and perplexities had only repeated and accentuated the lesson 
 of the century that the English government of Ireland was a 
 mockery, a delusion, and a snare. The same issue would be sub- 
 mitted to the people of the United Kingdom. He did not pretend 
 to say that the solution of that problem was simple or easy. He 
 did not shut his eyes to the difficulties with which it was sur- 
 rounded, nor to the fact that these difficulties might be enormously 
 aggravated by party quarrels, by personal jealousies, by sectarian 
 bigotry ; but he declined to admit that the wisdom, or the courage, 
 or the patriotism of Parliament were unable to combine to 
 strengthen our supreme Imperial rule, or that a scheme for the 
 government of Ireland could not be devised by the elected repre- 
 sentatives of the Irish people. The Liberal party had a policy 
 for Great Britain as well as for Ireland. The time had not come 
 when anyone could say, ' Rest and be thankful there is no need 
 for reform.' The need for reform was as great to-day as it ever 
 was, and every day developed new schemes. They wanted 
 legislation with reference to the condition of the labouring classes, 
 and the regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors, and for the 
 adjustment of taxation. Politics, the science of human happiness, 
 was opening up a new chapter of its history. Old things were 
 passing away. About fifty years ago Lord Beaconsfield wrote his 
 most brilliant novel, in which he dealt with the conflict between 
 capital and labour. He styled that novel Sybil, or the New 
 Generation. That new generation had come ; that new genera- 
 tion was formulating its own watchword, and was defining its 
 own policy. It might be mistaken, it might be precipitate, it 
 might be unwise, but it was in earnest, and the shibboleth of
 
 252 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 parties and the cant of persons could not stay its hand. If wrong 
 it would have to be proved to be wrong. Denunciation, declara- 
 tion, vague wild prophecy would be of no use. Men were now 
 grappling with the facts of life as they saw them before them ; 
 and perhaps with regard to politics it might be said what was once 
 said of a great divine of the English Church that he would rather 
 have one great man's doubt than many men's beliefs. In politics 
 there were many questions on which they would rather have the 
 doubts of earnest and inquiring and devoted men, than they would 
 have the stereotyped, mechanical, obsolete beliefs of the arm- 
 chair politicians who were satisfied with things as they were ; 
 who found the world, perhaps, the best of all possible worlds ; 
 who desired no change which might either disturb their repose 
 or to some extent impair their enjoyment. The advanced Radicals 
 if they were right and in some things he knew they were right 
 deserved the support of all who were waging war with ignorance, 
 with intemperance, with cruelty, with vice; of all who believed 
 the prosperity and the happiness of the masses of the people to 
 be the strength and the glory of the nation."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 18931894 
 
 PARISH COUNCILS BILL 
 
 " So find we profit 
 
 By losing of our prayers." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " How best to help the slender store, 
 How mend the dwellings of the poor ; 
 How gain in life, as life advances. 
 Valour and charity more and more." 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 IN the General Election of 1892 Henry Fowler faced his 
 constituents for the fourth time, and was returned unopposed. 
 His election address was the shortest he ever issued. It simply 
 contained a repetition of his adherence to Home Rule, and his 
 acceptance of what was known as the Newcastle programme; 
 and he only spoke twice in Wolverhampton. But up and down 
 the country as well as in the immediate neighbourhood, he spoke 
 untiringly, and as forcefully as ever, fulfilling endless engage 
 ments and throwing himself heart and soul into the ardour of 
 the fight. It is worthy of note in spite of the slow flow of the 
 Liberal tide, that in five places where he spoke, a Liberal candidate 
 was returned. Much was hoped for in the appeal to the country 
 towards rebuilding the Liberal party, but it was building upon 
 ruins, and disappointment darkened the return of the Liberal 
 Government. The atmosphere was heavy with disappointment, 
 and it concentrated itself into a special discharge on my father's 
 head in the formation of the Government. 
 
 When Mr. John Morley spoke to him before his interview with 
 
 253
 
 254 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, who then at the age of eighty-three came back 
 as Prime Minister, his words were : " You will be disappointed 
 but I have done all I could." My father asked but one question : 
 
 "Is it the Cabinet ? " "Of course, but ! " He had fairly 
 
 expected a post in the first rank, and the Presidency of the Local 
 Government Board was offered him. This was one of the hardest 
 blows he ever received, and it was one that he stood up to the 
 best. He never talked of unpleasant things, and he made no allu- 
 sion to his feeling in this matter, nor showed any personal chagrin. 
 Many a man would have turned bitter, and filled his pockets with 
 stones which would have been useful by and by for hurling at 
 his party. Many a man would have turned a critical eye and a 
 caustic tongue on a leadership which had led him along a lower 
 road than that of his expectations and his hopes. Many a man 
 would have folded up the energies which it seemed were not 
 adequately appreciated, and taken the work lightly which was so 
 far from his desires. But not so Henry Fowler. He rose to a 
 higher position in public service than that of any Secretary of State, 
 in giving of his best to an ungracious Government, and in work- 
 ing to the furthest limit of his strength in the lowest room. And 
 in his eighteen months at the Local Government Board he stamped 
 his name upon the Statue Book as the author of a Measure, which, 
 in the record of history, stands out as the greatest practical achieve- 
 ment of Mr. Gladstone's last Government. He kissed hands on 
 being admitted to his Office by the Queen at Osborne on August 
 i8th, 1892, and he attended his first Cabinet Council two days 
 later at i, Carlton Gardens. 
 
 He had, previous to the last General Election, served on a Labour 
 Commission at the suggestion of Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 " 18, Park Lane, 
 
 " March 2ist, 1891. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have undertaken at Smith's request to ascertain 
 whether we can supply him from our bench with two Members 
 for the Labour Commission. 
 " Mundella would be one, and, if it is agreeable to you to
 
 Parish Councils Bill 255 
 
 serve, I shall be most ready to propose you as the other. 
 I mean to reserve my own personal opinion as to the wisdom 
 of appointing such a Committee, but it has on the whole 
 appeared to be thought among us that we ought not to refuse 
 a share in its composition. I would also say that the accept- 
 ance would be on the understanding that our men are not 
 dissatisfied with the choice which may be made of leading 
 men. I enclose the rough draft of the motion to be made. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 And it was in connection with this Commission that my father 
 expressed his opinions on the Eight Hours question : 
 
 " The point at issue is not the desirability nor the advantage 
 of limiting the hours of labour, but the difficult question is whether 
 the legislature should interfere compulsorily. When the majority 
 of the working classes of the country, who are most interested in 
 the prosperity of the country, have arrived at the conclusion that 
 it is wise and safe and practicable by legislation to limit to some 
 extent the hours of labour, you may depend upon it that the 
 combination will be resistless. But it has not arrived the ques- 
 tion is not ripe." He never plucked a question that was not 
 ripe. His plan, old-fashioned though it may seem in these present 
 days of forcing everything long before it has had a chance to ripen 
 of itself, was to wait until the fruit was ready to drop, and then, 
 and not till then, to gather it. 
 
 The new Parliament and the new Government opened their 
 operations with a renewal of Irish policy. There was a fresh 
 Home Rule Bill, eventually passed by the House of Commons, 
 but rejected by the House of Lords which swallowed up eighty- 
 two days of legislative work in the former, consumed all the re- 
 sources of the three Members of the administration who were 
 principally concerned in it, and finally brought the great Liberal 
 Leader of the nineteenth century to the end of his political tether. 
 In May, 1893, Henry Fowler wrote the following letter which 
 clearly defines his views about the exclusion of the Irish Members, 
 this being the crucial difficulty of the Home Rule Scheme.
 
 256 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " Local Government Board, 
 
 " May I3th, 1893. 
 " DEAR MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 " I mentioned to you on Thursday evening that I 
 entertained a strong opinion with reference to the amend- 
 ment to clause 2 of the Irish Bill which had been put down 
 by Sir Henry James." (The supreme power of the Parlia- 
 ment of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 
 shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, 
 matters and things within the Queen's dominions). " I am 
 aware that the omission of the proviso, which that amend- 
 ment proposes, would not in a legal sense detract from the 
 inherent inalienable supremacy of the Imperial Parliament ; 
 but the question has reached a stage when public opinion in 
 this country will not be satisfied with a technical contention, 
 however clear and conclusive that may be to a legal mind. 
 If Parliament is asked formally to declare what the Govern- 
 ment have, in the most unequivocable language, asserted to 
 be ' unquestioned and unquestionable,' a refusal to make 
 that declaration would be regarded in a most unfavourable 
 light. Tactically I think that such a refusal would be a 
 grave mistake. Personally I have so repeatedly pledged 
 myself to the maintenance of the supremacy of the Imperial 
 Parliament, that I should be placed in a very difficult position 
 if asked to vote against the distinct assertion of that supre- 
 macy. My own electoral experiences (and I took part in 
 16 or 17 of the recent contests) are that the strongest feel- 
 ing exists in the constituencies with regard to the supre- 
 macy, and I am clear that any appearance of hesitation or 
 reluctance on this point would be attended with the most 
 disastrous results. Under these circumstances I am sure 
 that you will not be surprised that I venture to urge upon 
 you that the amendment either in its present shape, or as 
 forming a separate clause, should be accepted. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 Parish Councils Bill 257 
 
 And with that letter is the following one, though which was 
 A'ritten first it is impossible to know, this being undated. 
 
 " Minley Manor, 
 
 " Farnborough, Hants. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am writing about the James Proviso. I think 
 our ' treaty,' if there be one, has two articles, effective main- 
 tenance of the Supremacy being one, and effective autonomy 
 for Ireland in Irish matters being the other ; and I am not 
 disposed to be squeamish in construing them, although neither 
 should be unnecessarily large. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 It was in Henry Fowler's opinion essential to any successful 
 Irish Bill to retain the Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament, 
 though this was not included in the Bill of 1886. It was one of 
 those main points on which my father differed from Mr. Gladstone, 
 but which he nevertheless delegated to classification of details. 
 And very shortly afterwards it was proved so to be; for as early 
 as 1887, the exclusion of the Irish Members was abandoned by the 
 leaders. In the autumn of 1893 my father spoke his last words 
 on the Irish question in connection with the second Home Rule 
 Bill. He said that he remained in exactly the same position with 
 regard to Home Rule as he had occupied before. He showed that 
 the obstacle of the exclusion of the Irish Members had been done 
 away with and that their retention now was inevitable : it was 
 in his opinion " a question of the constitutional right of Ireland 
 as a part of the United Kingdom, and I contend that under the 
 scheme of Home Rule approved by the House of Commons it would 
 be the grossest injustice to interfere with that right. The Bill 
 reserved to the sole authority of Parliament a large number of 
 questions in which Ireland is, and will be, vitally interested. With 
 that Parliament remained the power of fixing the taxation which 
 Ireland will have to pay, and the control of the expenditure to 
 which Irish taxpayers must contribute. The veto which would 
 
 17
 
 258 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 control the legislature of Ireland was placed in the hands of the 
 Ministry, whose existence depended upon the confidence of the 
 House of Commons. On these grounds the right of Ireland to be 
 represented cannot be questioned, and above and beyond all other 
 measures, the Imperial Parliament has, and always will have, 
 the final decision on the supremest issue of peace or war. On 
 that, more than on any other, depends the happiness, prosperity 
 the very existence of a nation. The contribution which war levies 
 is not the contribution which Chancellors of the Exchequer can 
 impose, or Revenue Officers collect. We may haggle as to the 
 quota of pecuniary taxation which Ireland has paid towards our 
 long successes of military operations. We cannot calculate the 
 heroic self-sacrifice, the daring courage, and the brilliant triumphs 
 which her sons have displayed, and achieved, in building up and 
 defending that mighty England which is no less their heritage than 
 ours. Ireland has a moral, legal, constitutional, indefeasible right 
 to say that her voice, and vote, shall be heard on those terrible 
 decisions which may shed the best and bravest blood, and desolate 
 her homes with the suffering and sorrow of the widow and the 
 orphan." 
 
 He further dealt with the pecuniary objections to the scheme : 
 
 " I repeat to you, as I said in the House of Commons, that 
 though the English people might reject Home Rule on grounds of 
 policy, they would never reject it on a miserable pounds, shillings, 
 and pence objection. If England, the wealthiest country in Europe, 
 thinks Ireland, one of the poorest countries in Europe, should 
 manage her own affairs, England will deal with Ireland in a 
 generous spirit." 
 
 And when his eloquence on behalf of his party was spent, 
 when the arguments were left threadbare, and the defences worn 
 thin, then he looked out towards a wider horizon, feeling as he 
 always had felt, that the time for Home Rule was not yet ripe 
 and as no party politician but as a statesman declared : 
 
 " There are questions with which no party as a party can 
 successfully grapple. There are controversies which can only 
 be finally closed with the stamp and seal of national sanction. 
 There are crises when the hostility of sects, of classes, and even
 
 Parish Councils Bill 259 
 
 of races, is swept away by the force of a resistless and all-pervading 
 patriotism. The resources of statesmanship are not yet exhausted, 
 and I dare assert that the most gifted and experienced statesmen 
 of whom this country boasts, no matter to what party they belong, 
 will find no nobler arena for the display of all their energies, and 
 all their abilities, than the settlement of the best mode of govern- 
 ing and conciliating Ireland, and placing on a safe and sure founda- 
 tion the permanent relations between Britain and the sister Isle." 
 
 But it was not of Ireland that Henry Fowler's mind was full 
 in his initial life as a Cabinet Minister. The department which 
 had been entrusted to him embraced many subjects in which he 
 had, by long thought and study, practically specialized. The 
 very words local self-government was one of his favourite texts. 
 The Poor Laws and their possible improvement had long occupied 
 his mind. Lady Albinia Donaldson tells what a strong recollection 
 she has of my father's explaining to her the Poor Law system, and 
 thus arousing in her mind an interest which she had not before 
 felt in that question. How much he felt the inadvisability of 
 letting the aged and deserving poor mix with the other less 
 desirable class which frequents our workhouses, and how anxious 
 he was that some system should be introduced which would do 
 away with this injustice. He lived to see the inauguration of 
 Old Age Pensions, which is largely meeting that difficulty in the 
 present day. 
 
 No sooner was Henry Fowler appointed to the Local Govern- 
 ment Board than he became immersed in all its departments, 
 and took the keenest interest in every subject which it controlled. 
 Sir Walter Foster (the present Lord Ilkeston) had been appointed 
 Secretary to the Local Government Board his ability and 
 experience as a medical man being of special value in the sanitary 
 and health questions with which the Local Government Board 
 had continuously to deal ; and no sooner had they taken office 
 than the country's peace of mind was disturbed by a threatened 
 invasion of cholera, which, however, was ably grappled with and 
 soon stayed. 
 
 Once when questioned as to the work of his new office my father 
 explained : " I am the Local Government Board. I wield all 
 
 17*
 
 260 The Life of H-nry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the powers and duties of what was formerly known as the Poor 
 Law Board. I have power over all sanitary matters, the ques- 
 tions concerning contagious diseases except as regards animals 
 and epidemics. All the powers and duties concerning the 
 public health and the public improvements ; concerning, for instance 
 artisans' dwellings and the like; local government; local taxation, 
 etc., are placed in my hands. You will, therefore, understand 
 something of my responsibilities." 
 
 Sir Horace Munro, K.C.B., who was then my father's private 
 secretary, sends me the following notes of his Local Government 
 Board life, as seen from the inside of that Department, and he 
 also tells me in a personal letter : 
 
 " As you know, I came to have a very high regard and affection 
 for your father, but at first I admit I was frightened of him, and 
 of his stern, rather schoolmaster manner. That that was super- 
 ficial I came before long to realize, and nothing could have been 
 kinder to me than he was on many occasions. His breadth of 
 view in matters of politics and of religion was wholly admirable." 
 
 " On the i8th August, 1892, Mr. Fowler succeeded Mr. Ritchie 
 as President of the Local Government Board. The Department, 
 which had been originally established in 1871 by the fusion of 
 the Poor Law Board with the Local Government Act Office, and 
 the attachment to it of various powers and functions belonging to 
 the Home Office and Privy Council, was already a rapidly develop- 
 ing office, and one entitling its President to Cabinet rank. Within 
 a week of Mr. Fowler's entering upon his office, he was confronted 
 with an outbreak of cholera in England, which demanded prompt 
 action. The disease had been observed advancing westwards 
 through Europe, and on the 23rd August, a severe outbreak was 
 reported from Hamburg. On the 25th, the first case reached 
 London, and two days later other cases occurred at Grimsby and 
 Middlesbrough. The President was in constant touch with his 
 technical advisers; inspectors were despatched to the various 
 ports to advise the local authorities, and orders were promptly 
 issued to control the landing of undesirable aliens, and the water 
 on board of suspected ships. The efforts to prevent the spread 
 of infection were successful, and although twenty-nine cases of
 
 Parish Councils Bill 261 
 
 cholera occurred in a number of different ports and all of these 
 proved fatal, in no case did the disease extend beyond the person 
 actually arriving from abroad. 
 
 " Ha warden Castle, 
 
 " September 25th, 1892. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " The Queen has a notion that no ship from Ham- 
 burg should be allowed to enter any of our ports during this 
 danger from cholera. Will you kindly furnish me with the 
 proper reply. 
 
 " You have found your office not an inactive one, and by 
 the time next Session is over, I think it is likely to place you 
 more prominently in the public view than most other depart- 
 ments. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 " A subject to which Mr. Fowler devoted a great deal of personal 
 interest was the production of a Report upon the Local Taxation 
 of England and Wales. A Report of this character had been 
 prepared by Mr. Goschen when he was President of the Poor 
 Law Board in 1871, and Mr. Fowler was desirous of pursuing the 
 investigations further and bringing the subject up to date. With 
 the help of Mr. Dalton (now Sir C. N. Dalton, K.C.M.G.) and the 
 statistical staff of the Department, a valuable and elaborate 
 Report was produced in which a number of comparisons of the 
 figures of 1890-91 with those of 1868 were introduced. The 
 subject was a very congenial one to him, as financial problems in 
 any form possessed for him a great attraction. I think he would 
 always have preferred the Chancellorship of the Exchequer to any 
 other post in the Ministry. 
 
 " In the winter of 1892 he was actively engaged in constituting 
 the important Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, of which 
 Lord Aberdare was Chairman, and the Prince of Wales a member. 
 This Commission was the first public inquiry into the question 
 which had then been brought to the front by Mr. Chamberlain,
 
 262 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Mr. Charles Booth, and others, whether some provision other than 
 that made by the poor law might not be secured for the indigent 
 in their old age. Mr. Fowler lived to see this proposal receive 
 legislative shape in the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, passed by 
 the Government of which he was then a member. In the com- 
 position of the Commission Mr. Fowler was in constant communica- 
 tion with Mr. Gladstone and others. 
 
 " Hawarden Castle, 
 " Chester, 
 
 " December 2nd, 1892. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " You will already have learned that I enter warmly 
 into the idea of enlisting the Prince of Wales on the Poor Law 
 Commission. 
 
 " But as you observe, this step gives enhanced importance, 
 together with true delicacy perhaps, to the choice of a Chair- 
 man. In replying yesterday to Asquith, I mentioned the name 
 of Aberdare as one which might perhaps be considered. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 " 10, Downing Street, 
 
 " Whitehall, 
 " December i6th, 1892. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I fully accept your judgment about the Arch- 
 bishop. 
 
 " Might not Playfair be on the Commission, and if he would 
 accept it would he not be an admirable Vice-Chairman ? 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 " In the first winter during which he was President, there was 
 a revival of the ' unemployed agitation ' which had been started 
 a year or two before. Mr. Fowler issued a Circular to Local 
 Authorities urging upon them the desirability of so arranging 
 their programme of works as to secure their execution, as far as
 
 Parish Councils Bill 263 
 
 possible, during the winter time, when employment is ordinarily 
 scarce. 
 
 "His great achievement at the Local Government Board was 
 the successful conduct of the Bill (commonly known as the Parish 
 Councils Bill) which was eventually put on the Statute Book as 
 the Local Government Act, 1894. Mr. Gladstone, writing 
 to him in September, 1892, presciently said : ' You have found 
 your office not an inactive one, and by the time next Session is 
 over I think it is likely to place you more prominently in the 
 public view than most other departments.' And so it was. Mr. 
 Fowler spent a great deal of time in the early part of 1893 in the 
 preparation of the Bill, and in acquiring a mastery of all its details. 
 In this work he was fortunate to have at his side Sir Hugh Owen, 
 K.C.B., the Permanent Secretary of the Local Government Board, 
 a man who probably possessed a greater knowledge than any 
 living person of the intricacies of the difficult subject upon which he 
 was engaged. The main object of the Bill was to establish Parish 
 Councils in all rural parishes save the smallest, and to democratize 
 the Boards of Guardians and Urban and Rural District Councils 
 by widening the range of qualifications for a seat on those bodies. 
 In a sense the Bill was the logical corollary of the Local Govern- 
 ment Act, 1888, passed by the preceding Government for the 
 establishment of County Councils. The Bill was introduced by 
 Mr. Fowler on the 2ist March, 1893, but owing to the pressure of 
 other Government business the further proceedings upon it were 
 deferred till the Autumn Session. Four days were spent on the 
 Second Reading, thirty-two days on the Committee stage, and 
 two more days on the Report and Third Reading, and the Bill 
 did not get through the House of Commons till the i2th January, 
 1894. The debates were constant and protracted, and the conduct 
 of the Bill must have been most exacting upon the Minister in 
 Charge. But throughout he displayed the utmost patience and 
 was rarely, if ever, ruffled, and although the debates were not 
 altogether without heat, he was at their close warmly congratu- 
 lated from the Opposition side on the courtesy, fairness, and 
 strictly honourable conduct he had consistently displayed. The 
 Bill was debated at some length in the House of Lords, and a
 
 264 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 number of amendments were made, and it reached the House of 
 lommons again on i3th February. After four days' debate in 
 the Commons, it was back again in the Lords, and again was 
 returned to the Commons, and this process having been gone 
 ihrough a second time, the Government decided to protest no 
 further, and to allow the Bill to pass. It received the Royal 
 Assent on the 5th March, 1894. It was in connection with the 
 final debate on this Bill that Mr. Gladstone delivered his last 
 speech in the House of Commons, a speech remarkable as well 
 for its vigour and fire as for its attack upon the House of Lords. 
 It was in this debate that Lord Randolph Churchill also made 
 what, I think, was his last speech in the House. 
 
 "Mr. Fowler struck me as a man with a somewhat stern exterior 
 overlying a warm heart. He was a great advocate of neatness 
 and method in matters of official routine, and was curiously 
 particular and rather easily ruffled about insignificant details. 
 But though at times somewhat fussy in connection with small 
 matters, no one was less troubled when faced with a real diffi- 
 culty. He had an exact mind and was extremely ready in getting 
 a grasp of a subject and in expressing himself concisely upon it. 
 He was very fond of the House of Commons, proud of its traditions, 
 tenacious of its customs, and he had that unfailing instinct, which 
 only a real ' House of Commons man ' possesses, of knowing how 
 to attract, humour, and deal with that unique assembly. He 
 took great care in preparing any important speech, and would not 
 infrequently dictate the whole to a shorthand writer beforehand. 
 But in delivering his set speeches he usually had little need to 
 refer closely to his notes. His careful preparation of a speech was 
 characteristic of him, for it was in no sense due to lack of fluency, 
 as he never showed any signs in his impromptu speeches of any 
 want of orderly and effective expression. 
 
 " He was rather fond of dry proverbial expressions, some of 
 which I especially associate with him. ' Never bid the devil good 
 morning till you meet him ' ' A man who never made a mistake 
 never made anything ' ' The greatest institution in the British 
 Empire is the waste-paper basket ' are some of them. 
 
 '' He was particularly courteous to his political opponents. One
 
 Parish Councils Bill 265 
 
 of his earliest injunctions to me was that every letter from a 
 Member of Parliament, more especially from a Member of the 
 Opposition, if it could not be straightway replied to, was to be 
 formally acknowledged. He had a very strong sense of justice 
 and honesty, and of the dignity of political life. He was very 
 anxious in the patronage he had to bestow, to avoid being in- 
 fluenced by any political bias, and when it was once suggested to 
 him that he should give an appointment to a man in consequence 
 of his claim on the party, he denounced the suggestion in no 
 measured terms." 
 
 From his earliest manhood Henry Fowler had been an enthu- 
 siastic supporter of municipal institutions. In them he had 
 served the apprenticeship for the weightier matters of political 
 life, and to them he owed a training and an understanding which 
 helped to form his Parish Councils Bill, and to carry it successfully 
 through all the difficulties and opposition of both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, until it was safely stamped upon the Statute Book. To use 
 his own words in introducing the Bill in the House of Commons on 
 March 2ist, 1893 : 
 
 " It may be said is there a necessity for these proposed Parish 
 Councils ? We have had the poet's picture and we have had the 
 politician's picture of rural life in this country. After we have 
 allowed for the exaggeration and colouring with which the imagina- 
 tion of the one and the partisanship of the other have invested these 
 pictures, I think we are bound to admit that the one tells us what 
 might be, and what ought to be, but what is not, and the other 
 tells us what ought to be and what can be. The reports of my 
 own department with regard to the sanitary condition of some of 
 the rural parishes in the country disclose a state of things which 
 is a discredit to our civilization. And yet a rural authority has 
 facilities which an urban authority has not. There are a variety 
 of conditions attaching to a town involving an enormous expense 
 to deal with them. None of these conditions are present in a 
 rural district. You want the localities to be supplied with pure 
 water, you want the houses and roads properly drained. You 
 want the air uacontaminated, and the dwellings lit for human
 
 266 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 habitation. For these purposes I venture to submit there is no 
 better authority than the authority of the people who reside in 
 the localities. You cannot make these improvements by the 
 exercise of mere authority. You have made the change in the 
 great towns, not by the act of the central government, but by the 
 act of the local authorities, working on local lines and spending 
 local money. No man can point to a single instance in which our 
 municipal system has broken down. Look at our great towns, 
 what they were half a century ago, and what they are to-day. 
 What strides they have made forward ! No man can look at 
 the things going on in the towns without desiring that the same 
 benefits should be conferred on all parts of the country. I know 
 that there is an idea abroad that the rural labourer is inferior 
 to the artisan of the towns. I do not believe a word of it myself. 
 Surely if the rural labourer is capable of pronouncing an opinion 
 on Imperial questions, he is capable of pronouncing an opinion on 
 rural questions. I do not suppose that these Parish Councils 
 will not make mistakes. Town Councils have made mistakes, 
 County Councils have made mistakes, and there is another assembly 
 I know of that has made mistakes ! Parish Councils will make 
 mistakes they will be extravagant, they will possibly do foolish 
 things all that is inevitable to any system of popular government. 
 But I am ready to run the risk of my rural friends making mistakes. 
 I believe that, on the whole, they will do a great service not only 
 to the locality in which they live, but to the country of which they 
 form a part." 
 
 Having fully explained the suggested added institutions to the 
 system of local government as it already existed in towns, he 
 continued : "I should like to quote a clergyman who has had 
 great experience of rural life in this country, and is familiar with 
 all its conditions. I mean the well-known Rector of Islip, Mr. 
 Fowle. In a letter to the Times on August 2ist, 1891, he says : ' I 
 am absolutely certain that what the country labourers, and 
 indeed country people generally, desire, is the restoration of that 
 self-government of the villages of which by mere historic accidents 
 they have been deprived. For beyond doubt there is a grievance, 
 felt to be such, that seriously oppresses country life. Why, of all
 
 Parish Councils Bill 267 
 
 the people in the world, should the inhabitants of English villages 
 be deprived of municipal life ? So far as I know the like condition 
 of things exists nowhere in any civilized country. In France, 
 the Communes twice as numerous as English parishes enjoy 
 municipal privileges. In the United States, where so many of 
 the best traditions of old English life still survive, the system of 
 townships is by common consent one of the most valuable and 
 successful of their institutions.' 
 
 " We contemplate a three-fold authority first the local 
 authority, the Parish Council, in the locality where local interests 
 will be fully considered, carefully guarded, and, as I think, wisely 
 promoted. Next we have a larger area in that of the District 
 Council, which will deal not only with local sanitary adminis- 
 tration, but also with the administration of the Poor Law. Then 
 next we have the County Council, representing to some extent a 
 Central Authority, and it is in the union of these three institu- 
 tions, under the control of the supreme legislative authority, that 
 we conceive that the local government of this country can be best 
 administered. We believe that these institutions are not only 
 good for the purposes for which they are devised, but good for 
 the State. I venture to quote John Stuart Mill's opinion ' that of 
 the public education of the citizen local administrative institu- 
 tions are the chief instruments.' De Tocqueville also said ' Local 
 assemblies of citizens constitute the strength of the nations. A 
 nation may establish a system of free government, but without 
 the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of 
 liberty.' With these motives we ask the House to give fair con- 
 sideration to our proposals. We ask it to regard them not as a 
 party measure. Parties come, and parties go, they triumph and 
 are defeated, in almost regular succession. But side by side with 
 these party conflicts the education of the English people in their 
 duties and in their powers is always progressing. We want to deal 
 with this question, apart from politics, as a question in which all 
 the citizens of the State are interested. We want to establish a 
 local system under which all shall have free play and all shall 
 have fair play, and in which the advantage of all shall be the 
 desire of each. I have the hope and the belief that this new
 
 268 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 authority which we are now creating for the first time, purely local 
 in its character, will be successful that the Parish Council co- 
 operating with the District Council, and the Town Council, and the 
 County Council, and the Great Council of the realm assembled 
 in Parliament, will, by harmonious co-operation, by wise adminis- 
 tration, by constantly advancing efficiency, display to successive 
 generations of Englishmen the truest and noblest types of those 
 representative institutions which are the surest foundations and the 
 strongest bulwark of individual freedom and national prosperity." 
 The conduct of the Local Government Bill through the House 
 of Commons was a long and laborious task. For forty nights it 
 was discussed in Committee stage, and its author never failed to 
 be on the spot ; never failed in his careful consideration of every 
 point, or in his capable dealings with the many amendments which 
 hampered its advance. He had not time to dine on these busy 
 nights, but was content to have a poached egg with his tea, or 
 snatch a hurried meal at any time or any hour. 
 
 The Bill itself is now ancient history. Every elector under- 
 stands its workings, its provisions, its advantages, and it is diffi- 
 cult to realize the amount of work entailed by such a Bill. During 
 its forty-seven days in the House of Commons, and ten in the 
 House of Lords, my father spoke eight hundred and three times, 
 and dealt with fourteen hundred amendments offered to the 
 various clauses. It was considered at that time a revolutionary 
 measure, and was strongly opposed by the influences of Church 
 and property, poaching as it did in village life on the preserves 
 of the parson and the squire. But there were really no revolutionary 
 tendencies in Henry Fowler's mind, no desire to take the privilege 
 of power out of the hands which were worthy to hold and to 
 wield it. 
 
 " We do not desire," he said in the House of Commons, " to 
 exclude the clergyman or the squire from the administration of 
 local affairs. Nor do I believe that any such exclusion will take 
 place. Wherever the clergy and the squire possess the confidence 
 of their fellow inhabitants of the parish, they will be chosen in 
 preference to any other candidates. I should deplore that the 
 Parish Council should be composed of one class of society. We
 
 Parish Councils Bill 269 
 
 have no such plan as that proposed in our electoral system any- 
 where ; it does not prevail in Parliament, or in the Town Councils, 
 or in the urban Boards, and now, when we are creating a new 
 constituency, the Parish Council, I believe the common sense and 
 justice which have hitherto actuated our electoral badies, will not 
 be found wanting in the election of members for the administration 
 of parochial affairs." 
 
 He always trusted to the common sense and justice of the public, 
 and as, after a long life full of experience of affairs and of men, 
 he still trusted them, who shall say that his confidence was 
 misplaced ? 
 
 When the Bill left the House of Commons after its third reading, 
 Henry Fowler took the opportunity of saying these few character- 
 istic words : first in reference to the multiplicity of amendments 
 which had been moved by the Government. " I should be very 
 sorry to see the day when legislation was in the nature of an Imperial 
 or Ministerial edict, brought in to be accepted or rejected by the 
 House en bloc. Legislation here is by discussion and amendment. 
 It is necessary that a Bill of this description, extending over so 
 wide an area, and cutting so deep into rural and urban and 
 municipal life, should be discussed very fully by the House, and 
 that Hon. Members should have an opportunity and they have 
 availed themselves of it of suggesting various omissions and 
 improvements. If I had assumed the position of not listening to 
 their suggestions, I should have forgotten what was due, not only 
 to the House, but to myself and the country. . . . 
 
 " I have to thank hon. gentlemen on both sides of the 
 House, and of all sections of the House, for the kindness and 
 consideration which they have shown me in the conduct of the Bill, 
 and for the great assistance which I have received. So far as I 
 am aware, this Bill has beaten the Parliamentary record so far 
 as the Committee is concerned. This is the forty-first night 
 of its consideration, and if I, the Minister in charge, in the long 
 and weary hours I have had to sit here, have occasionally been 
 betrayed into any expression of impatience or irritation, if I have 
 said anything which was not justified, or have not received amend- 
 ments with the respect I ought to have paid to them, IJtrust that
 
 270 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the House will feel that it has not been from a desire in any way to 
 be inconsiderate. I can only plead the excuse of fatigue, mental 
 and physical, and I hope that the House will overlook the fault." 
 
 In the House of Lords the Archbishop of Canterbury stated 
 that " Although on its first appearance the Bill seemed to take 
 much from us, this has not so proved in the issue. The Minister 
 who moved the Bill in the other House gave a series of pledges 
 to which we believe he has adhered as far as possible." 
 
 There had been a previous correspondence between him and 
 Mr. Gladstone on this subject, as seen from the Prime Minister's 
 letters to my father : 
 
 " Hawarden Castle, 
 
 " October 4th, 1893. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Here is a letter from the Archbishop in answer to 
 one from me in which I agreed to his submitting to Sir H. 
 Jenkyns his Bill respecting vestries. I judge from to-day's 
 papers that the Bishop of Worcester takes a more favourable 
 view of the Parish Councils Bill in its bearing on the Church 
 than the Primate. I have not by me the means of judging 
 whether there is anything in the points raised by the Arch- 
 bishop, and perhaps you will kindly offer any suggestions as 
 to the answer I have to make to him in due time. I am quite 
 sure you will have every disposition to avoid unnecessary 
 strife without putting to hazard essential principles. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 " Hawarden Castle, 
 
 " October yth, 1893. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I could not expect or desire any answer beyond 
 that which you have given me and I have accordingly answered 
 the Archbishop in hopeful but general terms. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "W. E. GLADSTONE."
 
 Parish Councils Bill 271 
 
 While the Bill was under discussion in the Lords my father 
 received the following letter from Mr. Chamberlain : 
 
 " Highbury, 
 
 " February yth, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I opine that you are sincerely desirous of carrying 
 the Parish Councils Bill. I doubt if all your colleagues are 
 of the same mind. I also am very anxious that its main 
 provisions should become law although some of my friends 
 may be indifferent, or even hostile. Under these circum- 
 stances, if you like to and can without breach of confidence, 
 tell me what are, in your private opinion, the vital points, 
 I think that with good will on both sides we might get round 
 the dangerous corner. There must be concessions on both 
 sides if this is to be effected, but if you are not irreconcilable 
 and the matter is in your hands I believe I might help 
 you to a settlement. 
 
 "If you do not think so, destroy this note, which is for 
 your private information alone. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN." 
 
 To which he wrote this reply : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " February 9, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN, 
 
 " I was in London yesterday and returned here to- 
 day. I understand that some amendments which may modify 
 alterations made in Committee are to be proposed in report, 
 which is to be taken on Monday, and until that stage is passed 
 and the Bill has left the Lords, it is difficult to form an opinion 
 as to the real effect of what has been done. After the House 
 of Commons has disagreed, or otherwise dealt with the 
 Lords' amendments, and the points at issue are all ascer- 
 tained, I shall be in a better position to discuss the situation. 
 At present I should place in the foremost rank Allotments,
 
 272 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Secular Charities, London Vestries and use of School-rooms, 
 but I hear that further amendments on the Allotments and 
 Charities are to be made on Monday. I shall hope to see 
 you next week, and I will tell you what are vital. In the 
 meantime I thank you for your kind note, which I shall of 
 course regard as secret and confidential, as is this reply. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain replied next day : 
 
 " Highbury, 
 
 " February roth, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Thanks. I shall see you on Tuesday. But recol- 
 lect that everything depends on the action of the Unionists in 
 the House of Commons. If they go solid for an amendment, 
 the Lords, I expect, will stand firm. We have a meeting of 
 the Liberal Unionist party on Thursday to consider our action. 
 " I do not believe the Lords will give up their amend- 
 ments on charities and use of rooms, though they may pos- 
 sibly be further amended. But they touch the Church, 
 and churchmen are sensitive just now. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN." 
 
 The next month was occupied in the Bill's journeys between 
 the two Houses of Parliament. In January my father wrote to 
 Lord Ilkeston, who was then Sir Walter Foster : 
 
 " L. G. B. 
 
 " i5th January, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR FOSTER, 
 
 " I cannot let the passage of our Bill be completed 
 in the House of Commons without conveying to you my 
 cordial thanks for the valuable, unflinching and pleasant 
 assistance which you have so ungrudgingly rendered to me in 
 my arduous task. I know that on several points you would
 
 Parish Councils Bill 273 
 
 have preferred to see the provisions of the Bill more in 
 accordance with some of the views of some of our friends 
 behind us, but you have so fairly recognized the difficulties 
 of the Government, and the wisdom of obtaining substantial 
 and unprecedented advantages, and you have so loyally 
 discharged your duty as a member of the Government, that 
 it would be the height of ingratitude if I did not express my 
 appreciation of your conduct. The Bill, even if the Lords 
 mangle it moderately, is so startling an advance, that every 
 true Liberal must rejoice that our Government, amidst all 
 their difficulties, have been able to propose, and so far as the 
 House of Commons is concerned, pass such a measure. In 
 thanking you I must ask you to overlook any momentary 
 irritation which a Minister (tired physically and mentally) 
 cannot help expressing, and which though intended against the 
 foe or ' the candid friend ' below the gangway, sometimes 
 appears as if it was directed against his colleagues, although 
 of course, nothing is further from his mind. Wishing you 
 a good rest and with kind regards to Lady Foster (who I hope 
 is satisfied with what we have done for the Ladies), 
 
 "I am 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 On March ist, 1894, the Bill came back to the House of Com- 
 mons for the last time. The Government accepted, as they were 
 bound to accept unless they forfeited the Bill, the essential of 
 the Lords' amendments. Mr. Gladstone delivered his last speech 
 in the House of Commons on this Bill, but the purport of his 
 speech was the mutilating and destructive power of the Upper 
 House over Liberal measures, to which the House of Commons, 
 as representative of the country, had assented. It was a fighting 
 speech, the last spark of fire struck from the anvil of the political 
 forge by the veteran statesman. 
 
 On March 5th the Local Government Act received the Royal 
 Assent. 
 
 " Nothing," wrote the late Mr. W. T. Stead, " can rob Mr. 
 
 18
 
 274 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Fowler of the right to be considered a great administrative re- 
 former. He was but a year and a half at the Local Government 
 Board, but in that brief period he made his mark in every parish, 
 in every union, in every county of England. In face of unpre- 
 cedented difficulties, difficulties occasioned quite as much by the 
 over-zeal of intemperate supporters, as by the opposition of his 
 political opponents he succeeded in carrying through Parliament 
 a measure, conferring for the first time upon all rural householders, 
 without distinction of sect, sex, or station, an equal right to share 
 in the administration of their own affairs. English rural govern- 
 ment has long been a byword and a reproach for its flagrant 
 defiance of every principle of modern democracy and of scientific 
 bureaucracy. Out of the midst of this chaos of anachronism 
 and confusion Mr. Fowler set himself to evoke order and system, 
 and to replace the oligarchy of the squire and the parson by the 
 authority of the elected representatives of the whole nation. 
 That he has succeeded even his political opponents will admit. 
 The Parish Councils Act is the work of Mr. Fowler, and he has 
 as much right to have his name associated with the great reform 
 of our local government as Mr. Forster with the Education Act 
 or Sir Robert Peel with the Repeal of the Corn Laws. For good 
 or evil it marks an era in the development of self-government 
 in England. It is in some senses the crowning of the edifice of 
 democratic reconstruction. Mr. Fowler's speech in introducing the 
 Bill was an ideal presentation of a great and complex subject." 
 
 Surveying the whole of the campaign in which the Opposition 
 gave notice of 1,025 amendments and actually moved 402 ; in 
 which the Government and the Liberal party gave notice of 477 
 amendments and moved 217, in which my father spoke over 800 
 times and never once, as was his pride to recall, moved the closure, 
 and which occupied altogether 57 sittings, Mr. Stead further 
 adds : " The multiplication of amendments was hardly-disguised 
 obstruction. But Mr. Fowler never lost his temper, and continued 
 to meet obstruction and critics from first to last with the 
 urbanity and courtesy which have always distinguished him. It 
 you cannot make a revolution with rose-water neither can you 
 bounce a great administrative reform through Parliament. Mr.
 
 Parish Councils Bill 275 
 
 Fowler was patient, courteous, watchful, conciliatory. More 
 than once his wild men jeopardized the success of the measure. 
 But he stood to his guns, insisted upon meeting critics fairly, and 
 in the end he had his reward. The Act was placed upon the Statute 
 Book, and in December the whole country will be covered from 
 end to end with the Councils instituted by Fowler's Act." 
 
 On the passing of the Bill my father received the following letter 
 irom Sir William Harcourt : 
 
 " II, Downing Street, S.W. 
 
 " March 2nd, 1894. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I was not able to see you in the hurry of the close 
 of proceedings yesterday to congratulate you on the final 
 and highly successful passage of your Bill. 
 
 ;< You are the skilful sportsman who has brought your 
 game to the bag. 
 
 i( Your labour has been great and your temper under some 
 provocation has been admirable, and you will have a great 
 reward in having your name ever connected with what I am 
 convinced will prove by far the most important and beneficial 
 agrarian revolution of our time. It will take some years to 
 develop its full results, but in the end, they will be found to 
 be enormous, both in their social and political effect. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 And a little later from Lord Rosebery : 
 
 " Foreign Office, 
 
 " March 22nd, 1893. 
 ' MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I must send a line of congratulations on your con- 
 summate success of last night. No one is more pleased than I. 
 ' Your Bill will do more, I suspect, to strengthen and 
 popularize the Government than anything else yet or likely 
 to be achieved. 
 
 ' ' Yours truly, 
 
 " R."
 
 276 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 My father hoped great things from the Parish Councils Bill. 
 He said no purely constitutional change had ever excited so much 
 interest, but at the same time he foresaw that, as it had been 
 with municipal Corporations, so it would be with parish Councils. 
 It would take some time before the electors realized the full 
 significance of the powers with which they had been armed. He 
 realized, though perhaps not to the full, seeing that he had never 
 lived in a country village, the lethargy of a rural population, its 
 suspicion of benefits, its distrust of changes, its slowness of assimila- 
 tion. " Your parish councils," suggested Mr. Stead to him, " will 
 only be the old vestries over again the squire and the parson will 
 find that instead of being disestablished, their power has only 
 received consecration at the hands of the Democracy." 
 
 " Consecration perhaps," replied Henry Fowler, " but at the 
 same time they receive inspiration and incentive. If you are 
 right it will only be the county councils over again. Nothing 
 was more remarkable than the way in which the magistrates of 
 quarter sessions appeared as county councillors. But although 
 the men remained the same, a wondrous change had come, and is 
 coming, over the spirit of their dreams. The sense of responsibility 
 to their constituents is transforming the county justices. The 
 same man who is now a county councillor acts in an altogether 
 different spirit from that in which he acted when he was irresponsible 
 to any electorate. As it has been, so it will be. I bear no ill-will 
 to the squire and the parson. I should be glad enough to see 
 their authority confirmed by the vote of their fellow-villagers . 
 but the mere fact that such confirmation is necessary will be suffi- 
 cient to change their spirit, and to secure that they will act in 
 the interest and in the service of the people." 
 
 " I hope," continued my father, " that the electors will see to it 
 that the efficiency and honesty of the new governing bodies are 
 put first, and that other considerations, whether of sect or of party, 
 are subordinated to the supreme end of doing something practical 
 to improve the condition of the people. I always have attached 
 greater importance to social and administrative reforms, and to all 
 questions dealing with the condition of the people, than to the 
 purely party political issues. I look forward to the operation of
 
 Parish Councils Bill 277 
 
 the Parish Councils Bill with great hopes in this direction. It will 
 lead to a betterment of the condition of the people, making their 
 lives happier, especially among the agriculturists. I belong to 
 that school which attaches most importance to these questions 
 shorter hours of work, better wages, more leisure for recreation 
 and a larger share of the enjoyments of life generally. These 
 things are more important than mere constitutional changes, or 
 what Lord Beaconsfield called the dry bones of party." 
 During the progress of the Bill he wrote to my mother : 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " Monday, December nth, 1893. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " I know you will like to have a note from me here, 
 so in the waiting before dinner I drop you a line. Asquith 
 is my fellow guest so far as the Cabinet is concerned. I am 
 glad to get away from the House for a night. 
 
 " The shocking explosion in Paris has naturally caused 
 alarm, but our police and other officers are keenly on the 
 alert. The few anarchists who showed themselves yesterday 
 in London had to be protected by the police from the fury of 
 the people this is a good sign. 
 
 " I am afraid my Bill will not progress much to-night as there 
 is another debate on the adjournment of the House and I hear 
 a similar motion is to be made to-morrow night ; our people 
 (I am glad to say) are getting alarmed at the prospects of 
 the Bill which they have so idiotically treated. 
 " With abundance of love to Nell, Edith, Ernest and yourself. 
 
 " I am, 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 And after it was passed he wrote the following letter to the step- 
 daughter of his late sister : 
 
 " Local Government Board, 
 
 " March loth, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR LENA, 
 
 " Thank you for your kind note. It has been a con- 
 stant sorrow to me during the passage of the Local Government
 
 278 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Bill that your mother was not here to watch the progress of 
 the contest, and it is a keen drawback to the pleasure of my 
 present promotion that she does not share it. 
 
 " With kind love to all, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 On May i6th, 1894, my father's sixty-fourth birthday, an illu- 
 minated address was presented to him by the Liberal Five Hundred 
 of East Wolverhampton, to congratulate him on the passing of the 
 Parish Councils Act during his Presidency of the Local Govern- 
 ment Board. On this occasion he described his work with re- 
 kindling of the fire of enthusiasm, which had been damped down 
 by the wear and tear of the long conciliatory effort which was 
 required to engineer the Bill through the many dangers of friends 
 and foes in the House of Commons, and to save its life after the 
 heavy handling of the House of Lords. But though hidden under 
 the calm and cautious statesmanship which alone could have 
 pressed and passed the Bill, the enthusiasm for it never died 
 out of the heart of its author. For no great work is ever done 
 without enthusiasm at its root. But when the strain and stress 
 of that campaign was over, and the Act launched into the practical 
 legislation of the land, then Henry Fowler spoke again straight 
 from his heart about it. It is now so much a matter of everyday 
 life in rural England that any account of it may read as stale and 
 ancient history, and yet this book would hardly be complete if he 
 were not in it to tell out his facts and his figures, and to describe 
 in his own words the great reform which will ever be associated 
 with his name. 
 
 " This Act," he said, " effects the completion of our great system 
 of local self-government. It establishes in every rural parish in 
 England and Wales (and there are upwards of thirteen thousand 
 such parishes), a parish meeting, to be held in the evening so that 
 all the parishioners may be able to attend, where they may discuss 
 and regulate the affairs of the parish. Each parishioner can only 
 give one vote. The Act establishes a parish council which is 
 the representative body, in every parish with a population of
 
 Parish Councils Bill 279 
 
 upwards of three hundred. With less than that population they 
 manage their own affairs at a parish meeting ; with more than that, 
 at their parish councils. These parish councils are elected on the 
 principle of one man one vote, and they deal with the parish pro- 
 perties, its officers, its charities, and all matters relating, in one 
 word, to the life of the parish. They will also deal with the 
 sanitary arrangements of the parish, its educational arrangements, 
 that is so far as concerns the establishment of free libraries. The 
 most important feature is that a parish council can acquire land 
 for public purposes and especially for allotments. It has power 
 to purchase or hire land. If this cannot be done by agreement the 
 council can go to the Local Government Board, and the authorities 
 can get an order and, without any of the enormous expenditure 
 and delay of Private Acts of Parliament, which practically pro- 
 hibit the acquisition of land for this purpose, the order can be made ; 
 and one of the Board of Trade officials determines the cost of 
 purchase or of hiring. We are going to sweep away the old local 
 boards of health and rural sanitary authorities, which in my 
 judgment, have not discharged their duties to the good of their 
 parishes, and elect in their places six hundred and fifty rural muni- 
 cipalities, rural councils, who will possess just the same powers 
 as the other urban district councils, so far as is applicable to purely 
 rural districts. The chairmen of these urban district councils 
 are, during their term of office, to be magistrates, and therefore 
 you have in that way fourteen hundred elected magistrates just as 
 you have in the case of mayors, who by virtue of their office, are 
 elected to the judicial bench. Further we remove all disqualifica- 
 tions of either sex or marriage. Women can vote and women 
 can be voted for. We have reformed the Board of Guardians. 
 Ex-officio and nominated Guardians will cease to act, and 
 guardians will be elected on the system of one man one vote, and 
 by ballot. We have also reformed the vestries of London. We 
 have put them on the level of the urban or municipal councils and 
 have made changes in the mode and extent of voting, which is 
 one step to the thorough reform of London local administration, 
 but the greatest step yet taken in the reform of these authorities. 
 All this is an enormous change in the local government of this
 
 280 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 country. It is a subject the more you think about the more it 
 grows upon you, the more wide-reaching you see it is ; and it is 
 only confidence in the common sense of the English people that 
 is the confidence which I hold unfalteringly, and which a man in 
 such a position is hardly justified in doubting confidence in the 
 people and in their capacity to work local institutions, and their 
 instinct to assume self-government, that will justify so great and 
 vast an experiment as this measure is. I believe it will be a great 
 success. It has conferred upon the people of this country great 
 rights and real responsibilities, especially in rural parishes, and 
 our desire is that the right men should be elected and come to the 
 front, and do the work they have done so well in the school-board. 
 I have a strong belief that these institutions, not confined simply 
 to one branch of administration, but touching the people at all 
 parts of their daily lives, will let the people see that the work is 
 done well and by the proper men. I also believe that the work will 
 be done very economically. At all events, we have granted the 
 masses of the people of this country free institutions, and have 
 equalized the opportunities of all ; and our intention and our 
 hope is that by the instrumentality of the powers we have placed 
 in the hands of the representatives of the people, the condition of 
 the latter's daily life will be materially and greatly improved. 
 
 " There are new problems with which the Liberal party of 
 to-day and of the future will have to deal. The condition of the 
 people their moral and material condition is one of the problems 
 for the statesmanship of the future, and no Government, and no 
 party, deserves the confidence of the British Electorate, which does 
 not give a foremost place in its legislative and administrative pro- 
 gramme to those measures which will promote the comfort, the 
 health, the prosperity, the happiness, the well-being and the well- 
 doing of the masses of the people." 
 
 In speaking in Wolverhampton at the end of the year in which 
 the Parish Councils Bill became law, Henry Fowler said, "That he 
 believed the elections to those councils, which were then taking
 
 281
 
 282 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 place, would confirm his strong and well-founded faith that the 
 hereditary common sense of Englishmen and English women would 
 work that great Act for the common good of the whole com- 
 munity. They had slain Bumbledom and Vestrydom, and no one 
 shed a tear over their graves. They believed that class would 
 co-operate with class, that they would meet together on a common 
 platform for a common object. They wanted to see all classes 
 upon these new representative bodies ; they wanted all interests 
 to be there the wise man and the silly man, the patriots and the 
 faddists ; they wanted that little village parliament to be a micro- 
 cosm of the village ; and he believed that it would not only be a 
 great boon to the community, but it would be a great educating 
 machinery ; and in the end, that the happy blending of cautious 
 courage, of fair, even-handed justice, of strong patriotism and high- 
 minded morality, which after all were the proud characteristics of 
 the great bulk of the English legislation and English administra- 
 tion, would be found in all their strength and vigour in the history, 
 and actions, and procedure, and success of these new Parliaments. 
 The Local Government Act, the parish councils in seven thousand 
 parishes, the parish meetings in thirteen thousand parishes, the 
 reformed administration of London Guardians and London Vestries, 
 the bringing together the whole mass of people equally to enjoy 
 the same benefits the more favoured citizens in the great muni- 
 cipalities had enjoyed, that was a monument more enduring than 
 marble of what the present Government had achieved." 
 
 Though the Parish Councils Bill was his main work of that 
 Session, my father spent a great deal of time with Sir William Har- 
 court at the Treasury. His old chief took him into his counsels 
 with regard to national finance, and claimed for the public service 
 the exceptional financial ability which Henry Fowler possessed. 
 Mr. Stead wrote in the Review of Reviews : 
 
 " As one of the financial illuminati of the Cabinet, Mr. Fowler 
 was attached to Sir William Harcourt as one of the inner circle 
 charged with the preparation of the Budget of the Session. He 
 rendered good service to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and con- 
 firmed his title to be regarded as the next keeper of the purse of 
 John Bull."
 
 Parish Councils Bill 283 
 
 The Budget of this Session was an epoch-making one. In it 
 a new chapter of taxation was begun, and many of the old griev- 
 ances, which my father had denounced from his youth, were swept 
 away. He had long objected to the unfair distinction between 
 land and money in death and succession duties, which this Budget 
 equalized. 
 
 The necessity for that increase of revenue which the Budget 
 met Henry Fowler explained to his constituents : 
 
 " We believe it is our duty to see we believe it is the desire of 
 the people of this country that there shall be no question or 
 doubt as to the supremacy of the British naval power. We are 
 determined to get our Navy up to a point which will put its supre- 
 macy beyond all question, and though we deplore this mad rivalry 
 of armaments which is the curse of Europe at the present time, 
 which is impoverishing its resources and enfeebling its power, we 
 nevertheless will not be behind. We cannot play with the interest 
 of so vast an Empire as ours, and we are determined to do our duty 
 to the people of the country in reference to the Navy. The money 
 has to be found and must be found by taxation. 
 
 " Sir William has submitted three modes of raising that money 
 First, he has proposed a great increase in the death duties, by 
 putting real property on the same footing as personal property, 
 and graduating these duties on the principle which is based upon a 
 true rule of taxation nam Jy, the equality of sacrifice. Secondly," 
 he pointed out, " the Budget increased the tax on beer and 
 spirits ; and lastly it put a penny on the income tax ; but it 
 made certain alterations in the former system which pressed 
 so heavily on such property as land and houses, and graduated 
 the tax from a starting-point of one hundred and sixty pounds a 
 year, below which all incomes should be exempted. It would/' 
 he continued, " require about a million and a quarter to make up 
 the deductions mentioned, but those are the proposals which the 
 Government think fair to the small tax- payer of this country. My 
 own opinion is that not only the Liberal party, but the Con- 
 servative party, believe in the great reform which has placed Sir 
 William Harcourt's name amongst those of the most distinguished 
 financiers of the present day."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 1894 1 80,5 
 
 SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA 
 
 " Power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring : for good 
 thoughts (though God accept them) yet towards men are little better than 
 good dreams, except they be put in act ; and that cannot be without power 
 and place as vantage and commanding ground." BACON. 
 
 IN March, 1894, Mr. Gladstone held his last Cabinet, the story 
 of which moving scene has been told so truly and so simply 
 in his " Life." He resigned his timeworn trust and recognized 
 at last that " the night cometh when no man can work." All his 
 colleagues, whether new or old, bowed their heads under his last 
 words in the Cabinet " God bless you all," and felt a personal 
 sense of loss in his leaving. But history halts not for any man, 
 and the Queen sent for Lord Rosebery to fill the vacant place and 
 take up the work laid down. A slight reconstruction of the Cabinet 
 was necessary, and my father was appointed Secretary of State 
 for India under the new Prime Minister. He received the following 
 letter from his old chief on his appointment : 
 
 " 10, Downing Street, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " March yth, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I thank you lor your very kind letter. Fresh in 
 my memory is the recollection of having for the first time 
 heard you speak at Birmingham, when I was the guest ?of 
 
 284
 
 Secretary of State for India 285 
 
 Chamberlain, and we had among other occurrences a colossal 
 meeting in the rink. 
 
 " I remember the impression made upon my mind by your 
 speech, and by either one or two others, and was to the follow- 
 ing effect : if one of the provinces is so rich in speaking power 
 what ought not the centre to be. The centre has since made 
 good its claim to you, and with that excellent effect which 
 we have last witnessed in your general conduct of the debate 
 on the Local Government Bill. I am glad that my retire- 
 ment has made room for your receiving a distinguished 
 recognition. 
 
 " There is much I should like to say about India, but I write 
 from my bed and this spares you the infliction. The sum of 
 the matter would come to this The transfer to Parliament 
 was probably inevitable, and has been in certain respects 
 most beneficial : but it has not in my view been successful 
 all round, and I am by no means sure that all those who work 
 the Government in India (I do not mean the Viceroy), are 
 under as effective a control as formerly. 
 
 " Believe me, sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 The above was in reply to this letter which he had received from 
 my father : 
 
 " DEAR MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 " Although I cordially concurred in the tribute of 
 respect and regret which was tendered to you on behalf of all 
 your colleagues at the last meeting of the Cabinet, I must ask 
 you to allow me individually to convey to you an expression 
 of my own feelings. 
 
 " I have had the honour of occupying posts in the 2nd 
 and 3rd of your Administrations, and of being a member of 
 the Cabinet in the 4th; and in that capacity you entrusted 
 to my care the conduct through Parliament of one of the 
 most important measures of recent times. The kindness 
 and the consideration which I have uniformlv received at
 
 286 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 your hands, as well as the honour of being allowed to share 
 in your counsels, will be amongst the most treasured memories 
 of my political life. May I add the hope that you may be 
 spared for many years, and that your old colleagues may 
 enjoy to the fullest extent your confidence and approval. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 My father's promotion was deservedly popular. The invariable 
 justice of public opinion approved, and the sun shone for him 
 more brightly upon the period when he was at the India Office 
 than during any other portion of his career. The intense interest 
 of that great Department consumed and claimed liis whole intel- 
 lectual being, and the great demand called for his great supply 
 of power in response. He learned the lore of the India Office, he 
 grasped its technique, he mastered its material, and he dominated 
 its counsels, in an amazingly short time. 
 
 The letters of congratulation he received on his appointment 
 have been treasured by him as of great value, and not least those 
 which came from the other side. 
 
 From the present Lord Curzon of Kedleston : 
 
 " Carlton Club, 
 
 " March yth, 1894. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " May I be permitted to congratulate you on your 
 translation to what always seems to me (next to the Foreign 
 Office) to be the most important and interesting of the high 
 Government posts. It is also one of the offices in which, more 
 or less irrespective of party, a continuity of policy and tradi- 
 tion prevails, and in which it is frequently possible for political 
 antagonists to take each other into confidence and to act 
 in practical harmony. 
 
 " You will bring to the work, if I may venture to say so, 
 not merely the service of your great abilities, but the exercise 
 of what is, in regard to India, a probably as yet unfettered
 
 Secretary of State for India 287 
 
 judgment, and from this two-fold advantage both the Office 
 and the Government of India should be the gainers. 
 
 " I wish you for your sake (perhaps not for mine), a longer 
 tenure of offi.ce than I had. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " GEORGE CURZON." 
 
 And from another opponent : 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Will you allow me to offer you my sincere and 
 hearty congratulations upon your promotion to the high 
 dignity of a Secretary of State. 
 
 " I hope this event happening in your case may tend to 
 induce you to support the levelling up of all the Departments, 
 so that our best public men may have no temptation to forsake 
 those Departments which are now, as I venture to think, 
 improperly considered as being subordinate ! 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " WALTER H. LONG." 
 
 From an old colleague and friend, Sir Horace Davey, as he was 
 then, before being appointed a Lord of Appeal : 
 
 " 86, Brook Street, 
 
 "March loth, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I was going to write to you to congratulate you 
 on the skill and patience with which you piloted the Parish 
 Councils Bill through Parliament when Mr. Gladstone's 
 resignation was announced, and I learnt in due course that you 
 were transferred to the India Office. I congratulate you, and 
 the public service, on your being appointed a Secretary of 
 State. Your great financial knowledge and sound judgment 
 will be of the greatest advantage to India, at the present time. 
 Pray believe that although I am laid on my shelf I have the
 
 288 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 warmest interest in the success of the party and of my old 
 friends and regret that I do not see more of them. 
 
 ' Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " HORACE DAVEY." 
 
 And another : 
 
 " H.M. Office of Works, 
 
 " March 6th, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " My hearty congratulations to you on your appoint- 
 ment to the India Office. You have earned it to the full by 
 the splendid work you have done in the Local Government 
 Bill, and which will be a monument of your skill and knowledge 
 of the subject. If you had been listened to, the discussions 
 would have been curtailed by some weeks. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " G. SHAW-LEFEVRE." 
 
 From the Speaker : 
 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " Permit me to congratulate you upon the recog- 
 nition of your great services and upon your acceptance of 
 an Office of the highest interest and importance. 
 " Believe me to remain, 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " ARTHUR W. PEEL." 
 
 From_the Right^Hon. G. W. E. Russell : 
 
 " Woburn, 
 
 " Tuesday Evening. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " ' Chesney's Indian Polity ' is the very book you 
 want for a bird's-eye view of the whole subject. It was 
 stupid of me to forget it to-day. My father (aged eighty- 
 seven) has just reminded me that I told him that you were 
 the coming man of the Eighty Parliament. 
 
 " Yours in haste, 
 
 " G. W. E. RUSSELL."
 
 Secretary of State for India 289 
 
 From Sir Henry Longley : 
 
 " Charity Commission, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " March 7th, 1894. 
 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I suppose that I may now take it as certain that 
 yours will not be the hand to pilot the Local Government 
 Bill on its way into practical operation, and though I cannot 
 but regret on public grounds that this should be so, I must 
 ask to be allowed to congratulate you on the accession of 
 dignity which brings about this change. I am afraid that 
 I have been of late the embodiment of much that has given 
 you endless trouble ; but at any rate, I have had special 
 opportunities of forming an opinion that had the course of 
 the Bill been more completely in your hands and those of 
 your subordinates, a good deal that has happened might have 
 been spared. 
 
 " With many thanks for your unvarying kindness during a 
 very trying time of pressure on yourself, and with every wish 
 for success in your new post, 
 
 " Believe me, very truly yours, 
 " HENRY LONGLEY." 
 
 Not only personal friends but different public bodies showered 
 congratulations upon him. The Incorporated Law Society ex- 
 pressed in the form of a resolution their congratulations on his 
 appointment, which was the first instance of so high an office 
 being held by a solicitor. 
 
 Sir Arthur Godley (now Lord Kilbracken) was at that time 
 Permanent Under-Secretary for India, and of him my father was 
 always an enthusiastic admirer. I have often heard him quote 
 Mr. Gladstone's expressed opinion of his former private secretary 
 that " there was no post in the Civil Service in this country which 
 Arthur Godley was not fit to fill " ; and he always avowed that 
 his own mastery of Indian affairs was in a great measure due to 
 
 19
 
 290 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the initiation and instruction which he received from so able and 
 distinguished a man as Lord Kilbracken. To him I am indebted 
 for the following recollections of my father's Indian Secretary- 
 ship of State : 
 
 " In the spring of 1894, when Lord Rosebery became Prime 
 Minister, Lord Kimberley, who was then for the third time filling 
 the office of Secretary of State for India, went to the Foreign 
 Office, and was succeeded by Mr. Fowler. The new Secretary of 
 State had not had any experience, either in his public career or 
 otherwise, which could be considered as a special qualification for 
 his duties at the India Office, with two very important excep- 
 tions, namely, his knowledge of finance, and his thorough familiarity 
 with the temper and moods of the House of Commons, of which he 
 had made a special study. A day or two before he made his 
 appearance at the India Office, he asked me to come and see him 
 at the Local Government Board Office, and talked to me at 
 considerable length, asking numerous questions about the nature 
 of the duties which he was about to undertake. He expressed a 
 good deal of diffidence, which I am sure was genuine, about his 
 fitness for the work of that particular office. But I think that 
 even as he talked to me, a considerable portion of it gradually 
 disappeared ; and, by the time that he had been for a few weeks 
 in his new office, few signs of it, or none, were visible. Certainly 
 there was no good ground for it. At this distance of time (eighteen 
 years), I cannot recall many details of Mr. Fowler's administra- 
 tion, which lasted only about fifteen months, other than those 
 which are now public property. I remember him, chiefly, as an 
 unusually good business man, who worked hard, and made himself 
 thoroughly master of the questions which came before him. He 
 was generally quick in arriving at a decision, but he was at the 
 same time remarkably cautious : his habit of looking all round 
 a question, and of considering consequences, including the effect 
 upon Parliament and on public opinion of any proposed course 
 of action, was one of his most marked characteristics. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler to give him the name under which he acted as 
 Secretary of State was pre-eminently efficient as the representa- 
 tive in Parliament of the Department over which he presided.
 
 Secretary of State for India 291 
 
 Though by no means given to over-confidence in himself, he always 
 claimed to have made it his business to know the House of 
 Commons, both collectively and individually ; and he seemed 
 invariably to foresee by what looked like instinct, but was really 
 the result of long experience and careful observation, the line that 
 the House would take upon any given question, and the form in 
 which a proposal could be best presented for acceptance. He 
 seemed also to have made it his business to take the measure of 
 every Member of Parliament who was at all likely to take part 
 in the discussion of Indian affairs, or in addressing questions to 
 the Secretary of State. It was a frequent amusement to me, 
 when we were speaking of any forthcoming Parliamentary business, 
 to observe how he dealt with them, treating some, who to me were 
 comparatively unknown and insignificant, with deference and 
 respect, while others, bearing perhaps well-known names, were 
 brushed aside, with, ' Oh ! I shall know very well how to deal 
 with him/ or some such expression ; and I am bound to add that, 
 so far as my observation went, he was in those matters always 
 right. 
 
 " Like all good administrators, Mr. Fowler understood the art 
 of devolution, and did not attempt to do all the work of the Office 
 himself. He put a generous confidence in his subordinates, and 
 never failed to give them his hearty support whenever they needed 
 and deserved it. His relations with his Council were most friendly 
 and pleasant, and his thorough knowledge of the current work, 
 combined with his gifts of ready speech and practical good sense, 
 gave him his full share of influence in their debates and decisions. 
 His financial knowledge, of which I have already spoken, was 
 of the greatest advantage to himself, as Secretary of State, and 
 to the public service, during his tenure of office : but, curiously 
 enough, it was not until after he had ceased to be Secretary of State 
 that his chief work for Indian finance was undertaken and carried 
 through. No one, who was not concerned with the Government 
 of India before the adoption of a gold standard for that country, 
 can have a conception of the boon which was conferred upon the 
 Indian taxpayers, and on the Government which represented 
 them, by the reform which resulted from the labours of Mr. Fowler's 
 
 19*
 
 292 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Committee on the Indian Currency. The ground had been pre- 
 pared by Lord Herschell's Committee, which sat in 1892-3, and by 
 the closing of the Indian Mints in 1893. But it remained for the 
 large and important Committee, which sat five years later, pre- 
 sided over by Sir Henry Fowler, to complete the work of reform, 
 and to elaborate the system which has since been introduced and 
 has worked with perfect smoothness and success. Its success is, 
 in fact, so great as to exceed its own greatness ; and it is now diffi- 
 cult to recall to memory a state of things under which a fall of a 
 penny in the gold value of silver was hardly less an object of dread 
 to the Government of India than a war, a pestilence, or a famine. 
 With this great and beneficent change Sir Henry Fowler's name 
 must always be associated. 
 
 " To the most memorable incident of Mr. Fowler's career at the 
 India Office I need only allude very briefly, because it will no 
 doubt be amply described in its proper place : I mean, of course, 
 his triumphant vindication of the action of the Government in 
 the matter of the Cotton Duties. The attacking party, led by 
 Sir Henry James, and supported by the unanimous feeling of 
 Lancashire, was strong and determined : the question was one 
 in which the voting was not likely to follow the strict party lines, 
 and it was thought more than likely that Ministers might find 
 themselves in a minority. I well remember the gloomy anticipa- 
 tions which prevailed at the India Office for in this case a defeat 
 of the Government meant a defeat of Indian interests and rights 
 and I recollect that the Secretary of State, though he took the 
 matter very seriously, was confident throughout. In the result 
 he was, of course, more than justified. I can remember several 
 speeches in the House of Commons which were greater in oratory ; 
 but I cannot remember one which had such a striking practical 
 effect as that which he delivered upon this occasion. It saved 
 the Government : it produced an admirable effect in India ; and 
 it was a great personal triumph. 
 
 " I cannot conclude these recollections without saying that 
 my own relations with Mr. Fowler were particularly agreeable 
 and friendly, and that it has always been a pleasure to me to 
 remember the time during which he was my chief."
 
 Secretary of State for India 293 
 
 Immediately on his appointment Henry Fowler received the 
 following letters from the Earl of Elgin, the Viceroy, Lord Harris, 
 the Governor of Bombay, and Lord Wenlock, the Governor of 
 Madras : 
 
 " Government House, 
 " Calcutta, 
 
 " March 7th, 1894. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " The telegraph has announced that you have 
 accepted the appointment of Secretary of State for India. 
 I am afraid that I may have anticipated matters to some 
 extent in addressing to you the private telegram which I 
 found it necessary to send you yesterday, but I hope you will 
 excuse that, and allow me to renew the congratulations with 
 which it began. I hope also that you will allow me to con- 
 tinue this correspondence on the same footing as I have been 
 using with Lord Kimberley, who, before I came out, requested 
 me to write to him with perfect freedom. I have not had 
 the opportunity of the same personal intercourse with you, but 
 I hope you will allow me to use the same frankness in these 
 letters ; I have already found it to be of great importance and 
 value to anyone holding this office. 
 
 " Under these circumstances I do not propose to enter into 
 matters in general. Indeed at the present moment I may 
 say that every interest is swallowed up in matters of finance. 
 We have indeed some apprehension about the expedition 
 into the Abor country, having heard by telegram that the main 
 body have been cut off from their supplies, and that a post 
 which was in charge of the reserve of rations has been attacked 
 and destroyed. 
 
 " As regards finance, everything is in the most critical 
 position ; I doubt indeed if the position has a parallel. As 
 it stands the Import Duty Bill, if every one were free, would 
 not, I suppose, secure a single vote. When it does come in 
 every unofficial member will vote against it. The Members 
 of the Executive will of course vote for it, although they
 
 294 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 will do so under protest. In the case of the official members 
 outside the Executive, it seems to be rather uncertain as to 
 how the ruling which applies to members of the Executive 
 comes in, and, if even one deserted us, I believe it is possible 
 that it might come to the use of the casting vote of the Presi- 
 dent, and I must say that I not only dislike that idea exceed- 
 ingly, but I think that it might be a somewhat dangerous 
 precedent. Again, if the Bill by any chance is recommitted 
 and that, it has been arranged, is to be the form of amend- 
 ment that is to be proposed what is to happen ? I can only 
 hope that the decision which we are promised from home to- 
 morrow will be distinct, even if we are not able to give way. 
 I, for my own part, did not like asking for a reconsideration, 
 or for the alternative proposed in the last official telegram, 
 which, in my opinion, would prolong the controversy in 
 regard to the Cotton Duties and render the Budget arrange- 
 ments more difficult, even if eventually it was proposed to 
 impose them ; but really looking at the matter as a whole, 
 the policy of the present Bill is almost indefensible. If other 
 Imperial duties are to be imposed, why is not this one, and 
 is it not excepted from the consideration of home interests, 
 and home interests alone ? I do not think that it can be 
 argued that it is more distinctly protective, especially if you 
 insist, as you may insist, upon Excise Duties, and the opinion 
 seems prevalent that an Import Duty on Cotton Goods would 
 not really affect the volume of trade. On the other hand 
 the money is absolutely required, and I am assured that 
 there is no other source of revenue which would not be both 
 inadequate and dangerous. 
 
 " I only wish to add that I entirely appreciate the diffi- 
 culties which face you at home, but I think I should fail in 
 my duty if I did not represent to you what appears to me 
 would be the effect here of allowing them to control a 
 decision. 
 
 " I am, my dear Mr. Fowler, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " ELGIN."
 
 Secretary of State for India 295 
 
 T o which the Secretary of State replied : 
 
 " India Office, Whitehall, 
 
 " March 3oth, 1894. 
 
 " MY DEAR LORD ELGIN, 
 
 " I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 of the yth inst, and to thank you for your congratulations. 
 I am most anxious that you should continue to correspond 
 with me on the same footing that Lord Lansdowne and your- 
 self have done with Lord Kimberley, and I shall be under 
 a great obligation to you if you will, in the most unreserved 
 manner, communicate your views to me on all the questions 
 of Indian policy and administration. 
 
 " I have carefully watched the telegraphic reports of the 
 debates of your Council on finance, and I gather that Kim- 
 berley 's last telegram smoothed matters to some extent and 
 that the Budget has now virtually passed. I have no desire 
 to hamper either yourself, or your Council, with respect to 
 Import Duties. The only point to which the Government 
 and the House of Commons will, in my opinion, attach vital 
 importance, is the question of protective Duties. I am struck 
 by the feeling in India in favour of taxation. I can quite 
 understand a preference for indirect over direct taxation, but, 
 in this case, a section of public opinion seems as keenly 
 desirous to tax cotton imports as, under ordinary circum- 
 stances, they would oppose fresh taxation. This naturally 
 suggests an arriere pensee, and the possibility that the pro- 
 posed taxation may operate to the advantage of the local 
 trade. 
 
 " An increase in the price of cotton goods will follow any 
 Import Duty. Such increase will be paid by the consumer 
 in every case ; but if no Excise Duty is levied on the native 
 manufacture, the equivalent increase in price will be put 
 into the pocket of the native manufacturers, and not into 
 the Indian Exchequer. The reversal of all sound fiscal policy 
 will not be adopted by the House of Commons. But if your 
 Council are prepared to put all cotton on the same footing as
 
 296 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 far as taxation is concerned, then I think (I am, of course, 
 speaking without consultation with my colleagues) that there 
 will be little difficulty in dealing with the Import Duties. 
 The other duties to which the same principle should be applied 
 are insignificant compared with the Cotton Duties. 
 
 " I shall be glad to hear from you as to the steps to be 
 taken to encourage Railway Extension. I am of opinion that 
 a very large construction of new railways in India is a policy 
 that would do more to improve the trade and prosperity 
 of the inhabitants of India, than, perhaps, any other policy 
 which the Government could adopt. No effort will be spared 
 by me to support the vigorous and prompt carrying out of this 
 policy. 
 
 " Have you considered the question of the present amount 
 of gold hoarded in India, and whether there is any practicable 
 scheme of attracting these hoards either to Government, or 
 to reproductive interest ? 
 
 " I am, my dear Lord Elgin, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 From Bombay Lord Harris wrote : 
 
 " Bombay, 
 
 " gth March, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " At the moment of writing I have no official intima- 
 tion of your having taken over from Lord Kimberley, but as 
 you will have done so before this mail reaches England I take 
 the earliest opportunity of presenting myself there being no 
 one to do it for me to you. 
 
 " You will be so occupied with matters of Imperial moment, 
 financial, foreign, military, and administrative, that I will 
 not venture to trouble you with our humble economical affairs 
 without your leave. 
 
 " The feeling as to the exclusion of the excise of cotton 
 goods from the Tariff is very strong and growing stronger.
 
 Secretary of State for India 297 
 
 Meetings are being called in many towns, the great majority 
 of which have a very vague idea of what the object is, except 
 that they are ' agin the Government.' 
 
 " However, you will fortunately have the benefit of far 
 more reliable opinions than mine ; so I will not trouble you 
 further. Hoping that I may be honoured with your occa- 
 sional advice, as I was with that of your predecessor, 
 " Believe me, dear Mr. Fowler, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HARRIS." 
 
 My father replied : 
 
 "India Office, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " 3Oth March, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR LORD HARRIS, 
 
 " I have to acknowledge the receipt of, and to thank 
 you for your letter of the gth inst. 
 
 " I hope you will write to me unreservedly and fully on 
 all matters affecting your Government, and I can assure you 
 of my constant sympathy and support in your administration. 
 " The only question at issue of importance with regard to 
 the Cotton Duties is whether they are to be protective or 
 are to apply to all cotton whether manufactured or imported. 
 I do not think that any House of Commons will sanction 
 Protective Duties. If your manufacturers are prepared to 
 submit to an excise duty (as I see one of them in the Legisla- 
 tive Council said they were), I do not apprehend any difficulty 
 with reference to this controversy. 
 
 " I shall be glad to hear from you with reference to the 
 Railway Extension what you consider desirable, what 
 you consider practicable and whether there is any prospect 
 of attracting Native Capital to this form of investment ? 
 
 " I am, dear Lord Harris, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 298 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Lord Wenlock wrote also from Madras : 
 
 " Government House, 
 " Madras, 
 
 " March 8th, 1894. 
 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " The telegrams have announced to us the changes 
 which have just taken place in the Cabinet, by which we learn 
 that you have taken over the India Office. 
 
 " Would you please let me know what you would like me to 
 do in the matter of correspondence ? 
 
 " At present we are jogging along very quietly. We have 
 no anxiety as to famine or any similar disaster. The worst 
 we have to contemplate is the reduction we have to make in 
 our Public Works Budget which is a great misfortune 
 but I hope it will be only temporary. 
 
 " The Government of India has called upon us for three 
 lakhs, and as we had budgeted up very close to our balance 
 we have to apply the knife to certain items. I am afraid, too, 
 that India will have to do much the same, and I must say 
 I cannot conceive anything more unfortunate in the daily 
 life of this country than to have the allotment applied to 
 railways and irrigation curtailed. The fact is that India 
 cannot live with a I4d. rupee, and if the exchange continues 
 to fall, she will have to repudiate her debts or do without 
 an army. 
 
 " But I am not concerned with financial questions outside 
 the Province though I must bear witness to the general 
 feeling of dissatisfaction which prevails throughout the country 
 at the exemption of cotton from the proposed import duties. 
 I do not express any opinion of my own but people are 
 asking whether it is right to subordinate the interests of 
 290 millions of people to those of the odd few who happen 
 to live in Lancashire, and the 290 millions, as far as I can 
 judge, do not think so. 
 
 " I hope you will let me know if you wish for any special 
 information regarding matters of public importance in
 
 Secretary of State for India 299 
 
 Southern India, and I shall be most happy to do all I can 
 to supply it. 
 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " WENLOCK." 
 To which a very similar reply was sent : 
 
 " India Office, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " 30th March, 1894. 
 " MY DEAR LORD WENLOCK, 
 
 " I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter 
 of the 8th inst. I hope that you will write to me regularly 
 and unreservedly in all matters affecting your Government. 
 I deeply regret, as you do, any reduction -in your Public 
 Works Budget, but I hope that the transitional period through 
 which India is passing, owing to the fall in silver, will result 
 in a settlement which will relieve her from the disadvantage 
 of a standard so widely differing from that of her creditors and 
 her customers. 
 
 " India is not being subordinated or sacrificed to the 
 interests of Lancashire. Our opinion here is that a Pro- 
 tective duty would not be an advantage to the Indian con- 
 sumer ; any import duty would raise the price of all cotton 
 goods to the consumer ; he would have to pay, but to whom ? 
 So far as cotton was imported his payment would go to the 
 Indian Exchequer so far as the cotton was manufactured 
 in India, his payment would go to the Indian capitalist. 
 This is the gist of the controversy. Tax all cotton goods alike, 
 and I do not think Parliament will interfere. 
 
 " I shall be glad to hear from you as to the Railway Ex- 
 tension which you think necessary and as to the best mode 
 of raising the capital for such extension. 
 
 " There is a growing feeling in this country with regard 
 to Indian Railways and the paramount importance of a 
 considerable increase. 
 
 " I am, dear Lord Wenlock, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 - HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 300 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 These letters strike the keynote of what was one of the main 
 questions of my father's Indian policy the Cotton Duties, and 
 to which the next chapter in this book is devoted. 
 
 His Indian policy was divided into what we might call home 
 and foreign policy. Under the head of the former come the 
 Cotton Duties, the Railway Extension Schemes, legislation 
 affecting the Native Army, and the Currency question. The latter 
 deals with the occupation of Chitral, the demarcation of the 
 frontier in Waziristan, and all the policy which the frontier 
 question in its fullest sense implies. 
 
 It will be well to divide these two in consideration, and begin 
 with the home legislation, which my father always esteemed of 
 higher importance than any other in the life and interests of a 
 country. 
 
 From the moment he took office he seems to have been con- 
 vinced of the desirability of extending the railway system through- 
 out India, whereby to improve trade and the general conditions 
 of the country. This reform was, as are all reforms, clogged by 
 delays and difficulties, but there was no real opposition to their 
 development, though the methods of best effecting it were freely 
 argued and discussed. 
 
 " There is," wrote my father to the Viceroy, " a great and 
 growing interest here in Railway Extension in India, and I am 
 satisfied that, if, as I expect, the question is discussed in 
 Parliament during this Session, the House of Commons will insist 
 upon the Indian Government doing its utmost to facilitate 
 both the construction and working of additional lines. Any- 
 thing like an obstructive policy will not be tolerated, and I could 
 not defend it. I mention this in connection with the unaccount- 
 able delay in linking up the metre gauge railways. 
 
 " Lord Cross distinctly and finally decided many months ago 
 that this linking up was to be carried out. Nothing has hitherto 
 been done ; but I am glad to receive your telegram saying that you 
 have taken steps which I hope will ensure immediate compliance 
 with the Secretary of State." 
 
 It is noteworthy that though my father was ultra cautious 
 in the adoption of a policy, yet when he had definitely made up
 
 Secretary of State for India 301 
 
 his mind, he brooked no delay in pushing on the action, and went 
 straight ahead for the practical execution of the policy about 
 which he held no doubts after once he had decided upon it. In 
 less than two months after he became Secretary of State he wrote 
 to Lord Elgin : 
 
 " I have introduced in the House of Commons a Bill to enable 
 Indian Railway Companies to pay interest on their paid-up capital 
 during construction out of capital. I hope this may have the 
 effect of removing an obstacle in the way of the investment of 
 English or Indian capital in Indian railways. I understand that 
 the Bill may be opposed, but I do not anticipate that the oppo- 
 sition will be of a very serious nature." 
 
 The Viceroy explained to him in reply as follows : 
 
 " I am very glad to know your views as to Railway Extension. 
 I believe that a great deal can be done in this matter. The delays 
 are immense. The system seems to me greatly to blame for this. 
 It is bad enough in the case of works to be undertaken by the 
 Government, but it is almost fatal to the introduction of private 
 enterprise. I believe there are a good many lines which could 
 be, and would be undertaken by private companies, if it was 
 possible to arrange the bargains with any despatch. Schemes 
 get hopelessly tied up in the Department, and in more than one 
 case I have found out that the file had remained for months, and 
 when I got it of course the information was out of date. I mention 
 this to explain the position of what is known here as the linking 
 up case i.e., the connection of the metre gauge systems via Cawn- 
 pore. There is in the Department a rooted objection to this, and 
 an opinion that the connection ought to be by a line from Bareilly 
 to Soron." 
 
 Such purposeful delay in the Department in question as Lord 
 Elgin referred to, lit a match at once in the new Secretary of State. 
 All who have worked under my father in his different offices speak 
 with one voice of his kindness, his courtesy and his consideration. 
 With them he was always ready to take counsel, and to their 
 opinions he paid the highest respect. But towards those who were 
 working against him, instead of under him, he froze into an 
 authority which he allowed no man to touch. There was
 
 302 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 no compromise there. This is shown by his reply to Lord 
 Elgin : 
 
 " I hope to receive as soon as possible the views of your Govern- 
 ment about the linking up. The proposed Bareilly-Soron route 
 is regarded here rather in the light of the proverbial ' red herring/ 
 and I do not think it will be approved. When the Secretary of 
 State has, as in the present case, come to a definite decision, it is 
 the duty of the head of the Department concerned to carry out 
 his policy, however much it may be opposed to his own views. 
 I am afraid that the opinion averse to the linking up project, may, 
 by delay, practically defeat the policy which has been deliberately 
 adopted by the three successive Secretaries of State ; and I shall 
 be glad if you can give the head of the Department a hint that, 
 after the Government have decided upon a policy, they expect 
 that he will subordinate his personal views and loyally second 
 them in what they regard as most desirable in the interests of 
 India." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Your telegram of the 24th ultimo on the subject of linking up 
 is satisfactory in so far as it shows that your Government are at 
 last taking the matter up. I will see that there is no delay in 
 dealing with the matter here." 
 
 In referring to a Memorandum which had been left him by 
 Lord Tweeddale he characteristically said, " I have no means of 
 judging of the merits of the scheme, but I object most strongly to 
 the policy of postponement. The promoters have a right to an 
 answer one way or the other." On June 8th, 1894, he wrote : 
 " The Bill authorizing the payment by Indian Railway Companies 
 of interest out of capital during construction has now passed the 
 House of Commons." Any Departmental delay he instantly de- 
 tected and dealt with. In a letter of June I5th, 1894, we find, 
 " I have heard rumours that the Delhi-Karachi Railway business 
 is being dealt with in your Public Works Department in a manner 
 likely to postpone action ; and of course this cannot be allowed." 
 He also makes a suggestion that some member of the hierarchy of 
 the Public Works Department should be an experienced Railway 
 Manager, as such a man would be most useful as a Public Works
 
 Secretary of State for India 303 
 
 Member of Council, or Director-General of Railways. Lord Elgin 
 did all that was in his power to further the Railway Extension 
 Schemes, and to put an end to Departmental delays. He said in 
 a letter written on June gth, from Calcutta : 
 
 " I have given a considerable amount of attention to the Railway 
 Policy since I arrived here ; and my object is to try in some way 
 to put an end to these intolerable delays which I should think are 
 fatal to bona-fide private enterprise. Men with capital to invest 
 want to place it somewhere within a reasonable time ; but in these 
 Indian projects the schemes are bandied about for years before 
 anything is decided. I see no reason for this. I think you will 
 agree that if in the next few years we could construct the really 
 important lines on the list, we might well be satisfied with the 
 achievement. I believe it could be done if we set to work 
 systematically, as the large Railway Companies of England do, 
 by settling first what lines they want ; secondly, the plans on 
 which they are to be made ; thirdly, the best agency for 
 their construction, and only then negotiating for the actual 
 works." 
 
 On March 2Qth, 1895, the Secretary of State wrote to the 
 Viceroy : 
 
 " Our telegrams on the Railway Rebate question will have 
 shown you that the Government here feel that they cannot leave 
 this question any longer unsettled. I have pledged myself to 
 Parliament to proceed rapidly with railway construction in three 
 ways : 
 
 " (i). By the employment to the utmost possible extent of 
 Native Capital ; 
 
 " (2). By offering reasonable inducements to British Capitalists 
 to invest their money ; 
 
 " (3). By continuing the policy of the construction of railways 
 by the State. 
 
 " I have a very high opinion of 's ability as a financier, 
 
 but he does not appear to have grasped the principles of railway 
 management. At all events he seems to ignore the cardinal prin- 
 ciple that railway facilities create traffic ; and his idea that new 
 lines, and especially branch lines, are constructed for the purpose
 
 304 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 of dealing with existing traffic requirements is opposed to railway 
 experience of every country in the world." 
 
 And on June 28th, 1895, in his last letter to Lord Elgin before 
 the change of Government in which my father left the India Office, 
 he wrote concerning his beloved railway scheme : 
 
 " The general question of railway extension in India is, in my 
 view, one of the most important connected with the prosperity of 
 the country, and I am glad to think that the last two years have 
 seen a considerable advance." 
 
 It was not only with Lord Elgin that this question for the Rail- 
 way Extension in India was opened by the Secretary of State. 
 He wrote in much the same strain to the Governors of Madras and 
 of Bombay, pressing the point all round. To Lord Wenlock he 
 wrote very shortly after he was appointed to the India Office : 
 " I am specially interested in the development of the Indian 
 Railway system. Much remains to be done before the country 
 is properly opened up, and, so far, capital has not been attracted 
 to Indian railways to such an extent as the prospects of enter- 
 prise in this direction seem to warrant." The Governor of Madras 
 showed himself very anxious for the extension of the railways 
 in Southern India. ' You ask me about our railway extensions," 
 he wrote. " Well, the one about which I feel most deeply and 
 which I consider the most important for the whole of Southern 
 India is the link between Madras and Bezrada on the new East 
 Coast Railway. This will be the lowest of the three sections of 
 the main branch line between Madras and Calcutta a distance 
 of roughly one thousand miles. If this were constructed we should 
 be placed in direct communication with our Northern districts." 
 To which my father replied at once : 
 
 "As to Railway Extension, I am glad to have your views as to 
 the wants of Madras Presidency. I am a firm believer in the 
 extension of railways so far as it can be done with reasonable 
 prospects of success. I have not yet had before me the East 
 Coast Railway scheme, but I shall always be glad to consider 
 carefully, and with every wish to come to a favourable decision, 
 any schemes of the nature indicated by you in your letter." And 
 again some months later :
 
 Secretary of State for India 305 
 
 " I am quite alive to the importance of extending the East 
 Coast Railway, if funds can in any reasonable way be provided. 
 The matter is now under consideration here and I hope a satis- 
 factory solution of the financial side of the question may be 
 found." 
 
 Lord Harris, the Governor of Bombay, wrote concerning the same 
 subject : " As to Railway Extension I am but a humble Provincial 
 Governor with no financial responsibility as regards extension, 
 and therefore unable to effectively press my demands home. But 
 if our wishes could be met we should see some feeder lines in 
 Guzerat pushed on." He described at length various lines which 
 might with advantage be extended, and said : " Those are the lines 
 within the Presidency in which we are interested ; but without 
 the money being found by Government or private enterprise in 
 England they are not likely to be made." And he received very 
 much the same reply, in which the Secretary of State expressed his 
 interest and belief in any such scheme, and his intention to further 
 it in every possible way. Again, after Lord Sandhurst was 
 appointed to succeed Lord Harris as Governor of Bombay, he 
 said in a letter to the Secretary of State : 
 
 " I have been doing what I can to hurry on the new Railway, 
 but I learn that the land is not yet surveyed, nor is the whole 
 alignment definitely settled ; " and my father said in his reply : 
 " I am glad to hear that you are interesting yourself about railway 
 matters. In my opinion the extension of cheap and rapid com- 
 munication is a most important matter in the present state of 
 India." 
 
 Another question which was being put before the Secretary of 
 State's notice, and at the instigation of Queen Victoria, who ever 
 took so keen and considerate an interest in the welfare of her 
 Indian native subjects, was the existence of various grievances 
 connected with the Pilgrim traffic. He at once communicated 
 with the Governor of Bombay on the different points, and Lord 
 Harris pointed out in reply that there was an officer entitled the 
 " Protector of Pilgrims," whose duties were to give information 
 to Pilgrims, to guard them against ill-treatment and deceit, to 
 issue passports and settle disputes. He also emphasized the fact 
 
 20
 
 306 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 that a large number of the Pilgrims were not British subjects 
 and came down from Central Asia, and so the taxpayers of India 
 would doubtless object to Government defraying the cost of 
 superior conditions for non-British-Indian subjects, should the 
 Government be willing to do so. And he showed among the diffi- 
 culties which block most improvements, the one that the Pilgrims 
 themselves preferred the present conditions of their travelling, and 
 would fight against any reform, however much it might be for 
 their good. " The space on deck allotted appears to European 
 ideas distressingly small ; but is made so to a considerable extent 
 by the Pilgrims themselves, who will not allow their personal 
 baggage to be stowed away in the hold, and insist on piling it up 
 round them in the 'tween decks." " But it will be a pleasure," 
 Lord Harris added, " to help you to information which may lead 
 to these poor people, for whose intense devotion I have the highest 
 admiration, being helped." 
 
 The Secretary of State replied that he had submitted Lord 
 Harris's letter to the Queen, and had had some conversation with 
 her on the subject. Also he proposed to address a despatch 
 dealing with the question to the Government of India, who would 
 doubtless communicate with the Government of Bombay. In 
 July, 1894, he wrote to Lord Harris : 
 
 " In a conversation I recently had with Her Majesty she ex- 
 pressed much interest in the condition of Mohammedan Pilgrims 
 to Mecca to which I referred you in my letter of 8th June. Your 
 letter of the 26th June replies to my remarks, and I think there is 
 much in what you say as to the difficulties in the way of helping 
 them. There are, however, some points which must be dealt 
 with by your Government, and I shall be glad if you will let me 
 have your views in a private and separate letter which I can 
 transmit to the Queen, who takes the deepest interest in the whole 
 question." 
 
 Of course this inquiry stirred up a thick sediment of opposition. 
 " As regards the Pilgrims," wrote the Governor of Bombay, " there 
 are masses of correspondence about them. I'll be delighted to do 
 anything I can to help these poor people, but it is just a matter 
 of s. d. What is wanted more than anything is a proper sanitary
 
 Secretary of State for India 307 
 
 system at Camaran, for which the Turkish rather than the British 
 authorities should be worked." 
 
 The Secretary of State also wrote to the Viceroy : 
 
 " During my stay at Balmoral the question of the Pilgrim traffic 
 has been fully considered by the Queen, and I shall send you a 
 despatch stating the decision at which, with Her Majesty's approval, 
 I have arrived. The Queen feels very strongly about the treatment 
 of the Pilgrims and I share her views. Harris wrote me a long 
 letter, which the Queen has seen. His proposals are reasonable, 
 and, with the alterations I shall suggest, will, I think, obviate the 
 difficulties." Lord Elgin in his turn wrote : 
 
 " The papers in reference to the Pilgrim traffic are at this 
 moment before me. Our people are a little up in arms about it." 
 There were opposing Mohammedan and Hindu interests ; there 
 was the ever-existing objection to a higher cost even to procure 
 better and necessary conditions on the part of the Pilgrims them- 
 selves, and in most cases an inability to meet that cost. There was 
 conflicting evidence as to the accommodation, and all the usual 
 appendages of every inquiry ; but still the despatch was sent from 
 the India Office, and in it the question of increasing the cost of 
 the journey to the Pilgrims was specially dealt with. 
 
 Another question which my father dealt with was that of 
 Simultaneous Examinations for the Civil Service. The Indian 
 National Congress had agitated for it and a resolution in favour 
 of it, on the motion of Mr. Herbert Paul, had been adopted by 
 the House of Commons. But the Secretary of State sturdily re- 
 fused, in what he believed to be the interests of India, to assent 
 to the proposal, and his decision was against Simultaneous 
 Examinations in spite of a good deal of favourable local 
 opinion. 
 
 English Governors in India at that time held different opinions 
 concerning the English education of native princes, as to whether 
 it was more desirable to carry out that education in England or 
 in India. My father replied in the following diplomatic terms : 
 " I agree that it is quite possible to overdo the Anglicizing of 
 native rulers, though a knowledge of England and English ways 
 cannot but be advantageous." 
 
 20*
 
 308 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 My father was much interested in the following account of an 
 old-fashioned Indian Chief a difficult picture to fit into the 
 nineteenth century : 
 
 " Mahableshwar, 
 
 " I3.4-94. 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " The death of Mir Ali Murad Khan of Haripur re- 
 moves from the scene one of, if not the last of, the patriarchal 
 rulers of British India. We never interfered with him, as 
 long as he did not interfere with our subjects ; he hated 
 railways, and never lived in a house ; but moved his camp 
 from place to place as sport enticed him. When a miscreant 
 shot him in the back some years back the old man responded 
 by shooting his assailant between the eyes. He was indeed 
 a dead shot. The succession has been peacefully carried out 
 so far ; thanks to the presence of British bayonets. 
 
 " Yours sincerely 
 
 " HARRIS." 
 
 The question of flogging in the Indian Army was dealt with at 
 this time and involved a good deal of conflicting opinion. On 
 December 26th, 1894, the Viceroy wrote to the Secretary of State : 
 " It seems certain that there must be discussion on the flogging 
 question. That discussion has now begun. I have expressed a 
 hope that we shall not have another conflict with Parliamentary 
 opinion." On Jan. i8th, 1895, the Secretary of State replied : 
 " I hope there will be no attempt at any conflict with the House 
 of Commons over the flogging clauses. Unless your Council 
 passes a Bill dealing with this question, I fear that the clause 
 exempting the Indian Army will be struck out of the Mutiny 
 Act." 
 
 On January 23rd, 1895, the Viceroy wrote : " A Despatch has 
 been agreed to on flogging in the Native Army. You will probably 
 not be surprised to find that it argues for its retention. ... I 
 am bound to say that I do not expect you to be able to give way 
 any more than Lord Cross." On February I5th, the Secretary
 
 Secretary of State for India 309 
 
 of State wrote : "I hope we shall be able to avoid another conflict 
 between Parliament and Indian opinion in regard to the flogging 
 clauses. Your Council had better clearly understand that Parlia- 
 ment will not allow the continuance of flogging in the Indian Army 
 after it has been abolished everywhere else throughout the Empire. 
 It is idle to embark on this controversy. The Indian Army will 
 be included in the Mutiny Act, as I have already indicated, if 
 flogging is not abolished in your Army, and surely your military 
 advisers do not wish this. I await your Despatch with some 
 anxiety." 
 
 Such difficulties also arose from time to time as the one dealt 
 with in the following correspondence. In June, 1894, the Viceroy 
 wrote : "I am in some difficulty about a party of Missionaries, 
 headed by a Miss Taylor, who are anxious to go into Sikkim and 
 Thibet. In the meantime the Bengal Government have stopped 
 them at Darjeeling. The Durbar in Sikkim wish to exclude 
 them ; but as we practically control the State the matter is in 
 our hands. Everybody is agreed that the prospects of the Trade 
 Convention, lately agreed to after prolonged negotiations, will 
 very probably be damaged by any attempt of Missionaries to 
 force their way in. This was clearly stated in the official instruc- 
 tions sent from Pekin to the Chinese Agent at Yatung. But this 
 is not all. Two gentlemen, who found their way in the other day 
 from Bhutan, were arrested by the Thibetans, who wished to kill 
 them, and would certainly have maltreated them, had the Chinese 
 not interfered and had them sent back to our frontier. I do not 
 suppose we are responsible for people who insist on going into 
 dangerous places ; but I scarcely like to allow ladies to do so. 
 On the other hand, at present I am not sure that we have any 
 legal right to stop them. I am inquiring whether we could enact 
 a Frontier regulation, similar to the one we have on the North- 
 West Frontier, which would of course apply to everyone, not to 
 Missionaries only. I believe that for the present it might be 
 prudent to have powers of this kind in reference to Thibet." 
 
 And a few days later he added : " There are political considera- 
 tions outside the Trade Convention. Thibetans may cause us 
 trouble, especially in Sikkim, and, if they think we are using our
 
 310 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Trade Convention for the purpose of annoying them in other 
 ways, they may become mischievous. I confess to some pity for 
 the Missionaries themselves. I do not believe they appreciate the 
 position, and, as regards personal risk, are carried away by their 
 religious enthusiasm. For my part, I should be quite prepared 
 to take my share of responsibility in interfering for their protec- 
 tion against their will." 
 
 To which the Secretary of State replied : " As to Thibet, I would 
 be prepared to consider any proposals that you may make. I 
 think that when Sir Charles Elliot, who is not unfriendly to Mis- 
 sionaries, has found it necessary to take special precautions to 
 exclude them from Thibet, it would be unwise to over-rule him. 
 I understand that it is the very general opinion that the lives of 
 the Missionaries would not be safe in Thibet." 
 
 The enactment of the Cantonments Bill entailed a prolonged 
 controversy, as Indian and Home opinion were in conflict, but, 
 while agreeing to some minor concessions to Indian opinion, the 
 Secretary of State insisted on the passing of the Bill. With regard 
 to this the Viceroy wrote in January, 1895 : " I could not help 
 saying to my colleagues, when telling them what Her Majesty's 
 Government were prepared to do, that in this case, as in the Tariff 
 Bill, you had taken, in my opinion, a very strong course, and had 
 not hesitated to face serious Parliamentary difficulties." 
 
 While Henry Fowler was Secretary of State for India a Royal 
 Commission, under Lord Brassey, was appointed thoroughly to 
 investigate the Opium question. The cultivation of opium under 
 Government authority, its distribution to the people of India, and 
 its export to the people of China, appeared to a large and con- 
 scientious section of the English people as little less than a gigantic 
 crime. The Commission included special representatives of the 
 non-opium party. It went out to India, examined hundreds of 
 witnesses, and finally reported in favour of the existing system. 
 The evidence embodied in the report was overwhelming, and the 
 recommendation of the Commission in favour of allowing the 
 existing system to continue was signed by all the Commissioners 
 except one. The report was widely discussed in the House of 
 Commons, and the Secretary of State made a memorable speech
 
 Secretary of State for India 
 
 defending the Commission and its conclusions. He proved 
 to the great majority of the House that the interdict which the 
 prohibitionists wished to impose on India was impossible, even if 
 desirable, and that the evidence was overwhelming that it was no 
 more desirable than it was possible. He pointed out that opium 
 
 THE GREAT MOGUL. 
 
 [Reproduced by kind permission of the Proprietors of " Punch." 
 
 is grown in the native states, and their right to grow what they 
 pleased could not be interfered with, except under threat, and 
 possibly by actual levying of war. Even if this could be accom- 
 plished, a new frontier-line, five thousand miles in length, would 
 have to be constantly patrolled to prevent the smuggling of the 
 drug, which is so small in bulk that it can be concealed about the 
 person in a way that would baffle the energies of the most vigilant 
 of custom-house services. The loss of revenue would amount to 
 about 600,000 rupees a year, and ten thousand men would have 
 to be added at once to the Indian Army. The House was con- 
 scious of the supreme rectitude and authority with which the
 
 312 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Secretary of State spoke, and the result was that the agitation 
 vanished into thin air. On June yth, 1895, he wrote to Lord 
 Elgin : " The Opium debate ended very satisfactorily. We had 
 a majority of 176 against 59." 
 
 In June, 1895, a Royal Commission was appointed to report 
 on the financial relations between the Indian and the Home 
 Government. The appointment of this Commission was regarded 
 by some officials in India as a reflection upon the Indian Govern 
 ment. On June 12, the Secretary of State wrote to the Viceroy : 
 " With regard to the Royal Commission, I used every endeavour 
 to restrict the terms of reference, and to make it quite clear that 
 questions of policy were to be excluded. In the appointment of a 
 Royal Commission we had to see that there was a fair representation 
 of the India Office, the Treasury and the War Office, as well as of 
 the Anglo-Indian, the forward, and the independent sections of 
 the House of Commons. We also had to see that there was a 
 proper proportion of the Government and the Opposition. It 
 was not a case in which your Government could be consulted. 
 I did my best, and the general impression is that the Commission 
 is able, competent and representative. Any idea of the Govern- 
 ment of India being on its trial is groundless. I was a member 
 of the Ridley Commission who inquired into our Civil Expenditure. 
 No one suggested that the appointment of this Commission implied 
 any reflection on the Treasury or the Government. We (I mean 
 the Indian Government) contend that we pay too much to the 
 Home Government. It is surely no reflection on us that our com- 
 plaint should be investigated. We considered it best that the 
 Indian expert evidence should be provided by the witnesses. Sir 
 Henry Waterfield will give evidence, and I think it most probable 
 that you will be asked to send home one of your Financial Staff 
 to give evidence. I have no doubt that many valuable suggestions 
 will be made to the Finance Department in India for the improve- 
 ment and simplification of the financial procedure (which I do not 
 think is by any means as simple and as economical as that of 
 the Treasury). The Commission will not hold any sittings in 
 India." 
 
 By instances such as these it is seen how perpetual were the
 
 Secretary of State for India 313 
 
 demands made upon the Secretary of State's powers of administra- 
 tion, decision and conciliation. Questions of every kind and type 
 were submitted to him, and awaited his ruling. 
 
 In February, 1895, Sir Charles Crosthwaite gave up the Lieu- 
 tenant-Governorship of the North-Western Provinces, and the 
 Queen, who always took the deepest interest in her Indian Empire, 
 wrote to my father as to his successor : 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " February 20, 1895. 
 
 " Has Sir Charles Crosthwaite given up his Governor- 
 ship of the North- West Provinces definitely ? He will be a 
 great loss, and the Queen Empress would be glad to know who 
 is to succeed as Lieutenant-Governor of the N. W. Provinces. 
 She trusts a good, able and conciliatory man will bz chosen." 
 
 Sir A. P. McDonnell was considered by both the Secretary 
 of State and the Viceroy to be the most suitable man for the post, 
 and he was recommended for appointment to the Queen, who 
 wrote again : 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " March 7, 1895. 
 
 " The Queen Empress thanks Mr. Fowler for his 
 letter submitting the Viceroy's recommendation of Sir A. P. 
 McDonnell as Lieutenant-Governor of the North- West Pro- 
 vinces in the place of Sir C. Crosthwaite. She has approved 
 it in consequence of the promise given to continue Sir C. 
 Crosthwaite' s policy." 
 
 The life of one of the great Departments of the State is studded 
 with such minor legislation as the above questions deal with, 
 quite independently of its greater policy therefore the time of 
 its chief is occupied with a detailed understanding of many interests 
 which the public generally never hear of, but which require the 
 most careful thought and diplomatic decisions.
 
 314 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 What Henry Fowler did as Secretary of State for India 
 would be answered historically by two words : " Cotton Duties 
 and Chitral." But in the personal life of the man, to give a real 
 impression of his Secretaryship of State, it is worth while to 
 show how the " trivial round, the common task " of great Govern- 
 ment Offices, cover a far wider area of ruling than outsiders can 
 imagine. The government of a country is both wider and more 
 detailed in its operations than any one naturally would suppose. 
 The demands upon the heads of it are immeasurably greater 
 than anyone outside the offices can have any idea of, and a suc- 
 cessful Minister of State means infinitely more than the author 
 of a popular policy or the adjudicator in a national crisis. 
 
 In January, 1895, Lord Harris' term of the Governorship of 
 Bombay expired and the Secretary of State appointed Lord Sand- 
 hurst as his successor. In my father's last letter to Lord Harris 
 on January nth, he said : " I am sorry to think that this may 
 be the last letter which will reach you from me before you leave 
 the post which you have so ably filled for the last five years. It 
 is, however, pleasant to me to believe that during the time of our 
 official connection our relations have been uniformly cordial. I 
 must, though in this informal way, tender to you my thanks for 
 the manner in which you have discharged the responsible and 
 difficult duties of the post which you have filled to the satisfaction 
 of the Queen Empress and of the Governments which have been 
 in office during the period of your Governorship." 
 
 To which Lord Harris replied : 
 
 " Bombay, 
 
 " January 30th, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I am extremely grateful to you for the highly 
 complimentary terms in which you refer to my conduct of 
 the Governorship of Bombay ; and beg you will accept my 
 thanks. To know that I have satisfied Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment and Her Majesty the Queen Empress is an ample reward 
 for what I have done.
 
 Secretary of State for India 315 
 
 " I will take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude 
 also for the support this Government has received from the 
 Secretary of State, and especially yourself, in matters which 
 have come up to the Secretary of State for decision. Confi- 
 dence in England being ready to back up those who are 
 working for her in distant countries means very much to them ; 
 and I am very grateful for the support this Government has 
 received. 
 
 " I remain, dear Mr. Fowler, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HARRIS." 
 
 The Secretary of State wrote to the Viceroy on Lord Sand- 
 hurst's appointment : " Sandhurst's is a popular and good appoint- 
 ment, and I think he will prove to be a safe and successful 
 administrator." The prophecy was amply fulfilled, and my 
 father often, in after years, expressed his satisfaction that he 
 had been the author of an appointment which was proved to be as 
 successful at its close as it was popular at its beginning. 
 
 So much stress has been laid upon my father's desire for com- 
 promise amid conflicting opinions, and his calm moderation in 
 dealing with political opponents, that there is perhaps a tendency 
 to ignore that power of command, which he possessed, and that 
 stern authority which he wielded as a ruler when occasion required 
 its supremacy. In many of the positions in life which he occupied 
 he was an administrator, an arbiter, a peacemaker, a counsellor ; 
 but at the India Office he was a ruler, and there was no compromis- 
 ing with his commands. This is illustrated by some letters which 
 he wrote to Lord Elgin on the subject of certain adverse opinions 
 and actions on the part of the Members of the Viceroy's Council 
 with regard to the Government's decision at home. 
 
 " A member of a Council resembles in some respects a Cabinet 
 Minister, and in some respects those members of the Govern- 
 ment who are not members of the Cabinet. There is, however, one 
 essential difference which must not be overlooked. A member 
 of the Government here, whether in or out of the Cabinet, is, 
 if in the House of Commons, a Member of Parliament elected by,
 
 316 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and responsible to, his constituents. Your Executive Council 
 are appointed by the Government and have no responsibility 
 to any outside authority. An English M.P. whose duty to his 
 constituents compels him to oppose any proposal of the Govern- 
 ment of which he is a member, is bound to resign his office in such 
 a case, and this has been frequently done. A Government, whether 
 in Downing Street or Calcutta, must act as a homogeneous body, 
 not as representing certain political opinions, but as representing 
 an executive authority which cannot act, whether in administra- 
 tion or legislation, efficiently, unless they act unitedly. And this 
 would be the case if India was to use the Colonial word ' self- 
 governing ' ; but the constitution is not the constitution of Australia 
 or Canada. 
 
 " The existing law subjects the Government of India to the 
 control of the Imperial Government, and the Secretary of State, 
 who exercises that control, is responsible to Parliament. He, 
 like every other Minister of the Crown, cannot continue to hold 
 office if the House of Commons disapproves of his official conduct. 
 India is, by the Act of Parliament, governed by and in the name 
 of ' the Queen, and she governs by the advice of a responsible 
 Minister.' ' 
 
 And then alluding to some special circumstances he adds : 
 
 " The proposals of the Indian Government are made under the 
 direction of two successive Governments of the Queen. It is 
 idle for any officer under the Crown to talk of defying this accumula- 
 tion of authority. 
 
 " So long as any matter of administration or policy is undecided 
 every member of the Government of India is at liberty to express 
 his own opinion ; but when a certain line of policy has been 
 adopted under the directions of the Cabinet, it is the clear duty 
 of every member of the Government of India to consider, not what 
 that policy ought to be, but how effect may best be given to the 
 policy that has been decided upon ; and, if any member of that 
 Government is unable to do this, there is only one alternative open 
 to him." 
 
 And again a month later he wrote : 
 
 " The Cabinet have very carefully considered the whole question
 
 Secretary of State for India 317 
 
 of the Members of the Executive Council, and they are of opinion 
 that the English precedent applies, and, therefore, that Members 
 of the Executive Council, must, as Members of the Government 
 here do, vote together in support of Government Measures. If 
 they are unable to do this, then the English precedent also applies, 
 and the objecting Member resigns, before he either abstains from 
 voting for, or votes against, the measure. No English states- 
 man, no subordinate member of any English Government, would 
 hesitate as to taking this course, and therefore, the painful alterna- 
 tive of dismissal never arises. You will remember the celebrated 
 case of Mr. Huskisson, who, after having voted in favour of a 
 proposal which the Government opposed, sent in his resignation 
 to the Duke of Wellington the same night. He afterwards wished 
 to withdraw it on the ground that it was a mistake, but the Duke 
 replied in the well-known sentence ' There was no mistake ; 
 there could be no mistake ; and there should be no mistake.' 
 I should be very sorry to think that you have in your Council any 
 man who would dispute the supreme authority of the Cabinet 
 on a constitutional question, and by withholding his resignation 
 necessitate his dismissal. However, my duty is clear ; and, with 
 the cordial support of my colleagues, I shall immediately advise 
 the Queen to dismiss any Member of the Council who so far for- 
 gets what is due to his own position and to the position of the 
 Viceroy as to attempt to continue a Member of a Government 
 whose policy he is unable to support." 
 
 Thus Henry Fowler could lay down the law, and with un- 
 swerving severity he could uphold it. Without this attribute 
 he could never have proved himself the successful Secretary o 
 State for India, which all opinions, both in India and at Home, were 
 unanimous in declaring him to be ; and the fact that his life was 
 fuller of arbitration than of authority is perhaps partly owing to 
 the accident, or, as he would correct me to say, the Providence, 
 which placed him for far more years among the counsellors of the 
 country than among its commanders.
 
 CliAl- 1 liR XVI I 
 1895 
 
 COTTON DUTIES 
 
 ' To be right in great memorable moments is, perhaps, the thing wt; need 
 most desire for ourselves." GEORGK ELIOT. 
 
 '' Mind to create, as well as to attain, 
 To sway his peers by golden eloquence 
 As wind doth shift a vane." 
 
 JEAN INGELOW. 
 
 " I have done the State some service, and they know it." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 ON assuming office as Secretary of State for India in March, 
 1894, Henry Fowler took over from his predecessor, Lord 
 Kimberley, a controversy kindled by the action of the Indian 
 Government in re-imposing a five per cent, tariff on imported 
 goods. The controversy continued through the latter' s tenure 
 of office, and its final settlement was left to his successor. 
 
 In a sense the controversy was a revival of the long and em- 
 bittered contest in the eighties between the Cotton Manufac- 
 turers of Lancashire and the then nascent cotton-mill industry of 
 Bombay. At that time a five per cent, import tariff was in force 
 in India. As it extended to cotton piece goods and cotton yarns, 
 it excited the hostility of English cotton manufacturers. In 1877, 
 and again in 1879, resolutions condemning the duties as protective 
 in their character, contrary to sound commercial policy, and un- 
 just alike to the Indian consumer and the English producer, and 
 calling for their repeal, were passed by the House of Commons. 
 In 1882 the prosperous state of the Indian finances enabled the 
 Indian Government to dispense with the cotton and other import 
 duties, and thereby to end the strife with Lancashire. Owing to 
 the continued fall in the exchange value of the rupee and to rising
 
 Cotton Duties 319 
 
 expenditure the Indian Government at the close of 1893 were 
 faced with a large deficit. Additional taxation became necessary. 
 They decided to re-impose the five per cent, duties on imported 
 goods, including cotton manufactures. Lord Kimberley refused 
 his consent to the inclusion of the latter, and accordingly the Indian 
 Tariff Act of March, 1894, while taxing other imported commo- 
 dities, exempted cotton piece goods and yarns. There was strong 
 opposition in the Indian Legislative Council and in the Indian Press 
 to the exemption of cotton goods, which was interpreted as a 
 political surrender to Manchester interests. It was not allayed 
 by the Viceroy's announcement, made with Lord Kimberley's 
 assent, that, if after an interval sufficient to judge of the 
 financial position as affected by the Tariff Act, the course of 
 exchange and other circumstances, there was no improvement, 
 Her Majesty's Government would be prepared to reconsider the 
 question of extending the import duties to cotton goods. 
 
 This was the position with which the new Secretary of State 
 had to deal upon entering office. On the one hand there was the 
 certainty of a large deficit in the Indian revenue in the coming 
 financial year, and a bitter feeling in India that the cause was due 
 to the restricting action of Her Majesty's Government ; on the 
 other hand the cotton interest in Lancashire and in Parliament 
 was anxious and on the alert. 
 
 On I3th March, 1894, Sir George Chesney, member for Oxford, 
 moved an amendment to the Address, expressing regret at " the 
 determination of Her Majesty's advisers, contrary to the wishes 
 of the people of India, to restrain the Government of India from 
 taking the measures proposed by them for meeting the deficit in 
 their revenues." In replying to this my father explained that the 
 decision was not final, and undertook to give the whole question 
 the fullest consideration. A few days later (igth March, 1894), 
 in reply to a question, he intimated that if the Indian Govern- 
 ment were to propose a countervailing duty on cotton goods 
 manufactured in India, the chief objection to the imposition of 
 an import duty would in his opinion be removed. Later on in 
 the year (i6th August, 1894), in making the annual Indian Budget 
 Statement, he re-affirmed this view. He said :
 
 320 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " If the manufacturers of India are prepared to submit to a 
 countervailing duty which will destroy the element of protection, 
 I do not see why the import duty should not be imposed." 
 
 On the following day the Secretary of State wrote his account 
 of this proceeding to the Viceroy in the following letter : 
 
 ' India Office, 
 
 " I7th August, 1894. 
 " DEAR LORD ELGIN, 
 
 " We have had this week practically a three days' 
 debate in the House of Commons upon Indian matters. 
 
 " There is a very strong feeling with reference to the cotton 
 duties ; but I am satisfied that any attempt to impose those 
 duties, without a countervailing excise duty, would raise very 
 serious difficulties here ; in fact we should be embarked upon 
 the old controversy of free trade and protection. There is 
 no doubt that the effective competition between Lancashire 
 and India, as at present, is limited. If an import duty were 
 imposed the competition would become more acute, and both 
 spinning and weaving yarn and piece goods, which are now 
 imported from Lancashire, would be spun and woven in India 
 under the stimulus of what would be a protective duty. We 
 must, therefore, in considering this matter, lay it down as 
 vital that the principle of a countervailing duty must be 
 recognized. Assuming that a uniform duty is levied upon all 
 imported cotton goods and I am very doubtful myself of 
 the practicability of any discriminating duties we should 
 also have to deal so far as the excise duty w as concerned with 
 goods that are manufactured in India. It would seem that 
 such a duty levied upon the higher counts of yarn, and on the 
 better class of piece goods, would meet the exigencies of the 
 case, and really lay the tax where we wish it to be laid. I 
 think that the mode of collection of the excise duty should 
 be as simple as possible. 
 
 " I am, my dear Lord Elgin, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 Cotton Duties 321 
 
 Again in November, 1894, he wrote : 
 
 " I am of opinion that the Cabinet will not agree to the im- 
 position of the Import Duty without a countervailing Excise 
 Duty of a bona-fide character." 
 
 Referring to a suggested Excise Duty on all Indian yarns of 
 counts over twenty-fours as grappling with the protective diffi- 
 culty he continued, " I doubt, however, whether this dividing line 
 is not fixed somewhat too high, and I am at present rather inclined 
 to think that it would be safer to draw it at twenties. My second 
 difficulty has reference to the taxation of imported yarns. I am 
 doubtful whether it is clear that a 3^ per cent, duty on yarns 
 woven in India will be equivalent to a 5 per cent, duty on pure 
 goods woven here from the same count of yarns." 
 
 In the next letter : " The Cabinet has the Cotton Duties question 
 under their consideration. At present all that I can say is that 
 there must not be a shadow of doubt as to the completeness of the 
 Excise Duty to cover all cases in which competition exists or is 
 likely to exist. I think the duty on both yarns and piece goods 
 should be 5 per cent. that the Excise Duty should be 5 per cent. 
 and that the Excise Duty should cover all yarns over twenties." 
 
 A private telegram from the Viceroy replied : 
 
 " We would raise no objection to taking 5 per cent, on yarns, 
 both imported and manufactured, though we calculate it gives 
 protection to Manchester against India, inasmuch as the latter 
 has to pay duty on stores consumed. We would still strongly 
 deprecate the dividing line at twenty, as our information is that 
 there is no Manchester competition nearly so low as that, and 
 Manchester's principal declared object is to prevent India having 
 an advantage which would enable it to unfairly extend its com- 
 petition in manufacturing higher counts. The two fields of manu- 
 facture and consumption as divided at twenty-four are under 
 very diverse conditions, owing to physical quality of Indian cotton 
 and of American cotton. We think that it should be remem- 
 bered that the policy has to be defended to Indian interests as 
 well as to English, and as there appears to be no good reason to go 
 so low as twenty we are afraid it would increase the difficulty 
 both in legislation and in administration." 
 
 21
 
 322 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The Secretary of State telegraphed on 2gih November, 1894, 
 to the Viceroy : 
 
 " I am glad you accept 5 per cent, for yarn. With regard 
 to counts I fully appreciate your difficulty, but I bear in mind 
 House of Commons' resolutions and distinct pledges of Her 
 Majesty's Government that no duty having protective effect 
 shall be imposed. It is absolutely necessary therefore to keep 
 on the safe side. My information is that piece goods are now 
 exported to India containing yarns below 24 mixed with others. 
 I think 2o's safest dividing line. You might take power to 
 raise line hereafter to 24 if satisfied that there is no competi- 
 tion between these limits." 
 
 And in a letter written the same day, he reiterates what he had 
 telegraphed. " I should like to emphasize that it is absolutely 
 essential that the Excise Duty should be so fixed as to eliminate 
 any possibility of protection. The Government are absolutely 
 pledged that they will not, without the consent of Parliament, 
 assent to any protective duty. I have had more than one con- 
 versation with personal friends of my own, who are well acquainted 
 with the cotton trade ; and I am informed that piece-goods are 
 imported into India containing counts below twenty-fours. I do 
 not believe that the amount is large ; but we must proceed very 
 cautiously in view of the strong opposition which the import duty 
 is certain to arouse ; and it will be easier to raise the dividing 
 line hereafter, should experience prove that it is placed too low, 
 than to lower it in the contrary case." 
 
 On December I3th he wrote : 
 
 " I anticipate great opposition here, and I am convinced that 
 any tampering with the proposed Excise Duty will be fatal." 
 And again : "I have had several conversations with men well 
 acquainted with the Cotton trade which have left an impression 
 on my mind that goods are imported of counts lower than twenty- 
 fours. If this be the case, the Bombay manufacturer would to some 
 extent be protected by a line fixed at twenty-fours. It is, I think, 
 therefore essential that we should tentatively adopt the lower line
 
 Cotton Duties 323 
 
 in the first instance ; and if carefully prepared statistics show, 
 after the lapse of a reasonable time, that a line fixed at twenties 
 is too low, it will be easy to raise it to twenty-fours. The outcry 
 here against the Import Duty is at least as loud as that of the 
 Bombay Mill-owners is likely to be against the Excise Duties." 
 
 In the last days of December, 1894, a Bill for imposing a duty 
 on imported yarns or cotton piece goods and a countervailing 
 excise duty was passed after a heated debate by the Viceroy's 
 Legislative Council. Referring to these proceedings the Secretary 
 of State, in January, 1895, wrote to the Viceroy and fully explained 
 his position : 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " January 2nd, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR LORD ELGIN, 
 
 " I have watched with the keenest interest the pro- 
 ceedings with respect to the Cotton Duties ; and as I am 
 abused with equal virulence by the Lancashire and Tory 
 Press, and by the Indian (Native and Anglo-Indian), I cannot 
 help thinking that my sincere desire to do equal justice, and 
 to steer an even keel, has to some extent been successful. 
 I have asked my Secretary to send you an extract from a 
 Lancashire paper which assumes to represent the Textile 
 industries ; and from the violent language of that article 
 you will understand my amazement at the attacks upon me 
 on your side for sacrificing India to Lancashire ! ! If there 
 is no competition, as the Indian manufacturers assert, between 
 India and Lancashire, the Excise Duty will not be levied, and 
 India will have no ground of complaint ; if there is, then 
 the Indian consumer would have to pay an extra 5 per 
 cent, to the Bombay mill-owners, if there was no Excise, 
 instead of to the Indian Exchequer. 100 goods made 
 in Lancashire cost the consumer 105, and of this, 5 goes 
 into the Exchequer. 100 goods made in Bombay cost the 
 consumer 105, and of this 5 (if there is an Excise) goes 
 into the Exchequer, and (if there is no Excise) goes into the 
 pocket of the Bombay or Bengal mill-owners. That in a 
 
 21*
 
 324 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 nutshell is my argument. I assume that the Members of 
 the Legislative Council who voted against the Excise Bill 
 were not shareholders of, or interested in, any Indian Cotton 
 Mills. I shall have a fight when Parliament meets, and my 
 position will not be strengthened by the adverse criticism of 
 India on the Excise Bill. Your advisers should always bear 
 in mind that Lancashire wants no cotton duties at all, and 
 that the Anti-Indian party here will support anything and 
 oppose anything, if by so doing they can embarrass the 
 Government of India. The aim here will be to repeal the 
 Customs Duties ; and under these circumstances, I am 
 entitled to some support from those who are ardent advocates 
 of the duties. 
 
 " I am, my dear Lord Elgin, 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 The Viceroy replied : 
 
 " I sympathize entirely in your astonishment at the attitude 
 taken up here on the Cotton Duties. It has always seemed to me 
 quite unreasonable and unreasoning. But the more I see of it 
 the more shallow does what stands for public opinion here appear 
 to me to be. I do not think it is so directly governed by pecu- 
 niary interests, as, e.g., the article you sent me ; it is more the 
 opinion of the man in the street, or at best the man in the Club. 
 There is a great deal of talk of the interests of India ; but there 
 is no real attempt to look at Indian interests collectively, and 
 certainly none, so far as the newspapers are concerned, to give a 
 fair and steady support to the British Government as now 
 established." 
 
 The Act thus passed by the Indian Government imposed a 
 customs import duty of five per cent, on all imported cotton 
 manufactures (including piece goods, yarns and thread), and an 
 excise duty of five per cent, on yarns of the finer kinds spun in 
 Indian mills. The Secretary of State had agreed that as there 
 was practically no import of the coarser yarns or of goods made 
 of them, no protection would be given to the Indian ; it was
 
 Cotton Duties 325 
 
 considered sufficient to limit manufacturers if the countervailing 
 excise were confined to yarn of the finer kinds in which there was 
 competition between the foreign and the Indian manufacturer. 
 As the correspondence has shown, there was a difference of opinion 
 as to where the dividing line should be drawn. The Act fixed 
 it at yarn making twenty hanks or bundles to the pound, but gave 
 the General Government in Council power to raise the limit to 
 " twenty-fours." As both the Viceroy and the Secretary of State 
 had foreseen, the policy to which they had committed themselves 
 was hotly challenged alike in India and in this country. When 
 Parliament reassembled in February, 1895, the Indian Secretary 
 had to defend himself against a determined attack made upon 
 him by members interested in Lancashire. Lancashire trade was 
 experiencing a period of extreme depression. Many mills were 
 closed, there was much unemployment, and owners were making 
 very little profit. In India the mill industry was in a thriving 
 condition. Yarn in increasing quantities was going from India 
 to Japan and China, and Indian mills were spinning finer counts 
 and competing successfully with Manchester. The Indian Cotton 
 Duties were regarded in Lancashire as the last blow given to an 
 industry on the verge of ruin. As there was strong feeling in India 
 about the constraint placed upon the Indian Government by the 
 Home Government in the matter of imposing a countervailing 
 excise, so there was equally strong feeling in Lancashire that the 
 countervailing excise was not effective and gave India an ad- 
 vantage. My father was regarded as having weakly surrendered 
 to Indian mill-owners and Anglo-Indian officials. On the 2ist 
 February Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Here- 
 ford), then Member for Bury, moved the adjournment of 
 the House " for the purpose of discussing the recent imposition 
 of the duties on the importation of cotton manufactures into 
 India." 
 
 Sir Henry James spoke as the champion of the cotton trade of 
 Lancashire, which he argued was being sacrificed by the Secre- 
 tary of State to the interests of India. 
 
 In a powerful though partisan speech, the speech essentially 
 of a skilled advocate briefed for the occasion, he contended that
 
 326 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the cotton duties were the result of an unworthy agitation in 
 India against Manchester, to which the Secretary of State had 
 tamely yielded. " He has yielded to the Indian representations 
 the agitation against Manchester has succeeded. He has listened 
 to every one of the statements that could be brought before him 
 on the part of those who agitated against Manchester." 
 
 The accusation was that the duty was the result of a con- 
 spiracy led by officials, and that my father had acted only 
 for India, oblivious and heedless of Lancashire's views and 
 interests. 
 
 Sir Henry James also contended that the countervailing excise 
 duty failed to place the British manufacturer on an absolute level 
 of equality with the competing Indian manufacturers. The 
 import duties were levied on imported cotton goods of all kinds 
 and all qualities, and assessed on the full market value of the 
 goods. The countervailing duty was levied on the value of the 
 yarn and not on that of the finished article, and furthermore the 
 duty was confined to yarns of finer qualities. He asserted that 
 over a great portion of his production the Indian mill-owner was 
 protected to the full amount of import duty and that over the 
 remaining portion he was partly protected. 
 
 The duty, he said, was protective and was designed to give 
 the Indian a pull on the Lancashire manufacturer. And he 
 declared that the feeling in Lancashire was that the Secretary of 
 State " always bore in mind that he was the Indian Minister, 
 and never thought he was a British Minister, also, and a repre- 
 sentative of British Interests." He asked who were the persons 
 that Henry Fowler had taken counsel with on behalf of Lan- 
 cashire, and to whom he had applied for information as to whether 
 the course he was about to pursue would injure the Lancashire 
 trade ? Had he, indeed, considered those interests at all ? No 
 Indian Minister could possess the practical knowledge of the 
 question that was required. It was strongly resented in Lan- 
 cashire that he had not consulted practical merchants or manu- 
 facturers that their interests had been neglected, and that the 
 agitation against Manchester had proceeded, without those 
 interests ever having been heard on their own behalf. Lancashire
 
 Cotton Duties 327 
 
 believed that he had sought guidance from those who repre- 
 sented Indian interests without considering the interests of this 
 country. In short, the three main objections which he set forth 
 were, that the Government of which the Secretary of State was 
 the representative had violated the principles of Free Trade ; 
 that they had imposed a heavy burden upon Lancashire, and 
 that the Excise Duty was inadequate for the purpose of preventing 
 protection. 
 
 His long and able speech put the matter very skilfully and very 
 strongly, and he finished up with an impassioned appeal from 
 Lancashire. " There cannot be an end to this question as it 
 remains at present. There must be many loyal supporters of 
 the Government who know how deep and true is the feeling in 
 Lancashire on this question ; and they can tell the Secretary of 
 State for India that the demands they make upon him this evening 
 are not the demands of capital asking for retention of inflated 
 profits, or an attempt to secure great gains. On the contrary, 
 they will tell him that this is a universal demand from the humblest 
 men in Lancashire, engaged in the trade whose prosperity is thus 
 threatened, fearful of a time, perhaps not far remote, when the 
 busy streets of Lancashire towns may be deserted when mills 
 may be closed and looms silent, and when they will search in vain 
 for means to earn their daily bread." 
 
 When the Secretary of State rose to reply, it was clear on both 
 sides of the House the feeling was strong that on free trade prin- 
 ciples Manchester had a substantial grievance. The atmosphere 
 of the House was excited. There were twenty-four Liberal seats 
 in Lancashire and a revolt of ten of them would have turned the 
 Ministry out. It was a chance, and almost more than a chance, of 
 defeating the Government ; and Ministers were alive to their 
 danger. And then it was that my father achieved the most 
 brilliant success of his political career. He saw the risk, he faced 
 it, he took it, and he made a great appeal to the Members of the 
 House on a higher plane than that of party tactics. He fought the 
 question on its merits ; he held the House by the force of his 
 reasoning ; and he drove his arguments home with a power of 
 eloquence, and with a power of conviction behind it, which was
 
 328 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the bulwark of its strength. First he repudiated with scorn the 
 insinuations that his policy had been the result of agitators in 
 India to whose blandishments he had succumbed. 
 
 " I cannot allow," said the Secretary of State, " another moment 
 to elapse without repudiating in the strongest terms that there 
 has been any agitation, any conspiracy, on behalf of any class in 
 India in order to deal with this financial difficulty. You might 
 as well charge the Chancellor of the Exchequer with entering into 
 some combination with interested classes when he submits his 
 financial proposals. The distinguished man who is at present 
 Finance Minister in India is a man of the highest standing and of 
 the most unblemished reputation, a man who has served the 
 Crown for a long period of years, and who has received a signal 
 mark of favour from the Crown for his great public services. 
 My Right Hon. friend described him as an agitator in combination 
 with a certain class of officials who want to raise their own salaries, 
 and stated that he has submitted proposals, not to us in England, 
 but to the Legislative Council of India ; while the Viceroy whom 
 my Right Hon. friend has chiefly attacked is Lord Lansdowne, 
 who ruled India with such success for a period of five years. Are 
 we to regard men of that character and class men who have 
 by their deeds shown that they take the deepest interest in the 
 welfare of India described as entering into a combination with 
 Anglo-Indian officials, agitating against Manchester, and bringing 
 to bear certain influences on the Secretary of State in order to 
 induce him to join that conspiracy ? 
 
 " And there was one expression which my Right Hon. friend 
 used in reference to myself. He did not mean it as a compliment, 
 but I accept it as the greatest compliment. He told the House 
 that I am only an Indian Minister. Yes, that is the post I fill. 
 It is to India that I am responsible as well as to this House, and 
 when my Right Hon. friend charges me with sacrificing the 
 interests of England to the interests of India, he will need very 
 satisfactory proof. He has not given that proof in the course of 
 his speech, but I will show that the censures upon me in India are 
 quite as severe as the censures upon me in Lancashire. 
 
 " One of the leading organs of public opinion in Lancashire
 
 Cotton Duties 329 
 
 stated that ' the conspiracy of the Indian Service, the Indian 
 Cotton Trade, and Mr. Fowler had succeeded.' About the same 
 date there comes from India a statement ' that the sacrifice of 
 Indian interests is the principle underlying this measure, and it is 
 a principle to which a Radical Secretary of State has given his 
 imprimatur.' Further, I observe that it has been stated not 
 perhaps in a very influential quarter in India that I should be 
 called the Secretary of State for Lancashire, not the Secretary 
 of State for India. That emboldens me to go on with my argu- 
 ment ; for having shown the House that I am attacked from two 
 different points of the compass it is impossible for both to be true ; 
 I cannot have sacrificed Lancashire to India, and I cannot at 
 the same time have sacrificed India to Lancashire. I have 
 endeavoured in dealing, not with my own financial proposals, but 
 with the financial proposals of the Government of India to steer 
 an even keel and to do what I thought was fair justice to the 
 interests of Lancashire and the interests of India." 
 
 And he also scornfully asked in reply to one of Sir Henry 
 James' statements : " Did he think it was fair game to suggest 
 that I, an ignorant man, knowing nothing of the Cotton Trade, would 
 dare to proceed to deal with this difficult and delicate question 
 in an autocratic spirit without consulting anybody ? That is 
 not the way in which I discharge the duty of my post. I have 
 means of communicating with quite as competent advisers in 
 Lancashire as my right hon. friend has. I have information it 
 may be sound or unsound ; but at all events I have been guided 
 by that information." 
 
 He then proceeded to take up each one of Sir Henry James' 
 arguments and to thrash them out while the House listened not 
 only to the play of oratory but to the power of reason behind 
 it. The House was impressed : the House was influenced : the 
 House was convinced. 
 
 He pointed out that the duty was not protective, because the 
 countervailing Excise duty was levied on the same goods made 
 in India and because it was levied to raise revenue, not to protect 
 Indian manufacturers. He assured the House that his policy was 
 the policy supported by Lord Lansdowne, Lord Roberts and all
 
 33 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the principal Indian officials. Were they all conspirators against 
 Lancashire ? Although Parliament, when fully convinced that 
 an Indian feeling was unrighteous or silly, had a right as trustee 
 for India to disregard it, it had no right to do so when its only 
 motive was to protect some English traders from competition. 
 His policy had been supported in England by Lord Cross, formerly 
 Secretary for India, and for many years one of the Lancashire 
 members, while Cobden himself had laid down the principle that 
 such a duty was not a violation of Free Trade. The burden of 
 the duty would fall on India and not on Lancashire, it would not 
 lessen consumption because it was only levied on the more expen- 
 sive cottons. For fully an hour he narrated the history of the 
 duties and in correcting the cross-statements of Sir Henry James 
 he made out a very reasonable defence of the countervailing 
 Excise. He also made it abundantly clear that in resorting to 
 the Import duties on cotton goods the Indian Government had no 
 practical alternative course open. But he disarmed opposition 
 by undertaking to amend the countervailing Excise arrangement 
 in any respect in which it should be proved that an injustice had 
 been done to Lancashire, and by promising an inquiry. 
 
 " I say frankly and openly to the Lancashire manufacturers, 
 ' If you will prove that there is any injustice done to you, I will 
 do my best to remedy that injustice.' This is purely a question 
 for inquiry, and for inquiry alone. So that if the Lancashire 
 members can show that the Import duties and the countervailing 
 Excise duty still leaves an opening for protection the opening 
 should be closed." And he won the sympathy of the House in his 
 spirited defence of his own position as Indian Secretary. " Our 
 case," he concluded, " in one word is this the state of the finances 
 of India necessitated additional taxation ; the opinion of the 
 Indian Government and people was unanimous in favour of Customs 
 duties on imports ; the Home Government could not permanently 
 compel the people of India to exempt their largest imports from 
 these duties ; we were compelled both in the interests of India 
 and of our own manufacturing population to require that these 
 Import duties should not be protective whenever goods were im- 
 ported from abroad and were in competition with similar goods
 
 Cotton Duties 331 
 
 manufactured in India ; and we required that an equivalent 
 in Excise duties should be imposed on competing goods manu- 
 factured in India. We say in explanation of this that there is 
 not, and has not been for many years, any effective competition 
 between India and foreign countries in respect of the coarser 
 cotton goods, which, we allege, are consumed in India by the very 
 poorest class of the population ; that to tax these goods would be 
 a grievous and an oppressive direct tax on the poorest part of the 
 nation, for which there is no justification. We say that the goods 
 of a finer quality are not produced to any extent in India but 
 that Lancashire has a monopoly of them, and, I believe, will 
 continue to have it. We further say that, if it should appear 
 on clear evidence that the Government have drawn the line too 
 high, or that it will not remove any and every protective character, 
 Her Majesty's Government will, in concert with that of India, con- 
 sider the matter with a view to carry out loyally their declared 
 intention to avoid protective injustice. That is the policy of Her 
 Majesty's Government, and that is the policy which I have endea- 
 voured, feebly and imperfectly, perhaps, to pursue during the time 
 I have been in office. I believe I have tried to do my duty to 
 India as India's Secretary ; and that I have not neglected the 
 interests of the people of Lancashire. I and my colleagues are> 
 of course, responsible to thisH ouse, which is the ultimate tribunal 
 on all these questions. We know the consequences that will 
 follow if this House should censure the administrative acts of the 
 Government. We shall not shrink from accepting that responsi- 
 bility if that censure is inflicted. But I would also say respect- 
 fully and firmly that if the Government is responsible to this House, 
 the House is responsible to the country. 
 
 " My right hon. friend has said that India has no representa- 
 tive in this House. I deny the accuracy of that allegation. The 
 representatives of India in this House are not one or two 
 individuals, not even the section of members who are thought to 
 be experts on the one hand, or those men who have a profound, 
 a deep, and a special interest in Indian affairs on the other. Every 
 Member of this House, whether elected by an English, or by a 
 Scotch, or by an Irish constituency, is a Member for India. All
 
 33 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the interests of India personal, political, commercial, financial, 
 and social are committed to the individual and collective re- 
 sponsibility of the House of Commons. I ask the House to dis- 
 charge that gigantic trust, uninfluenced by any selfish or party 
 feeling, but with wisdom and justice and generosity." 
 
 Only a few speeches of the countless number delivered in Parlia- 
 ment throughout a century stand out as historic, but this speech 
 of Henry Fowler's was one of them. Only very few of the perora- 
 tions which have crowned such speeches have become classic 
 quotations in the House of Commons. " Every Member of this 
 House is a Member for India," is one of them. The effect on the 
 House of Commons of that speech and of that peroration was an 
 historic event. Opinions were swayed, convictions were driven 
 home, and most wonderful of all, votes were converted. The 
 ministerial crisis passed, and in the division Sir Henry James's 
 motion was rejected by 304 votes to 109 a majority for the 
 Government of 195. " The game is up," exclaimed a Lancashire 
 mill-owner who was listening from the gallery ; " that speech 
 saved the Government ! " 
 
 A torrent of congratulations poured upon Henry Fowler. He 
 stood on his height, and because he stood so high, he bent his head. 
 ' The best part of my Indian Cotton Duty speech was never 
 delivered," he said with a smile ; " but I saw when the tide had 
 turned and then I sat down. The art of speaking," he continued, 
 " is knowing when to sit down." 
 
 Among sheaves of letters he received the following : 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " February 23rd, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " The Queen has read with much satisfaction your 
 speech of last Thursday evening and commands me to express 
 Her congratulations on your able and successful defence of 
 the interests of the Indian Empire. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " ARTHUR BIGGE."
 
 Cotton Duties 333 
 
 From the Prime Minister : 
 
 " 38, Berkeley Square, 
 
 " March 8th, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am anxious with my first pen to congratulate 
 you on your great Parliamentary triumph achieved the day 
 I was taken ill. The Government in the House of Commons 
 have completely routed all the various oppositions in debate, 
 but Asquith and you divide the crown of parsley or laurel. 
 I wish you joy most heartily. I must add one line to this 
 note to hope that you are better. I trust to manage a short 
 Cabinet on Tuesday. But to all appearance it must meet 
 in a hospital. 
 
 " Very sincerely, 
 
 " ROSEBERY." 
 
 " ii, Downing Street, 
 
 " Whitehall, S.W. 
 
 " February 22nd, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I must write a line to you to express my very hearty 
 delight at your glorious success last night. Your speech will 
 live as a model of Parliamentary force and judgment. It has 
 had a great effect in the House and will create a still greater 
 impression in the country. Your courage and firmness in 
 fighting the battle of India against sectional interests and 
 fads has been of lasting benefit and will be recognized as 
 placing you in the very first rank of Indian Ministers and 
 give you an authority which no Secretary of State has had 
 in my political memory. 
 
 " You are in your own person an example of the incom- 
 parable advantage of the head of a great Department com- 
 manding the situation in the House of Commons. Where 
 should we have been if the case had been left in the hands 
 of an Under-Secretary.
 
 334 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " The Times leader this morning will not be pleasant read- 
 ing for H. James, Balfour, G. Hamilton, Salisbury and Co. 
 
 " There has been nothing like it since the days of 
 Sennacherib. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT. 
 
 " I have always received such kind and constant support 
 from you that I could not resist writing this note." 
 
 But, of course, the majority of his political friends tendered 
 their congratulations in person. The Press praised the speech 
 with one voice, forgetting even its party prejudices and joining 
 in the chorus of approval. The Spectator said : " Mr. Fowler's 
 speech proved the fact that he has never yet received the political 
 appreciation he deserves. Nobody would have fancied that such 
 an office as an Indian Secretaryship would have brought out his 
 qualities, but so it is. He is governing a new planet and doing 
 it well ; we only wish he could take the Viceroyalty for two 
 years and bring the permanent trouble of India, her financial 
 system, into order once for all. That work will never be done, and 
 never can be done, except by a Viceroy strong enough to over- 
 rule all the stereotyped opinions of Indian financiers, who have 
 every merit except originality. It is not either the logic or the 
 knowledge visible in his speech which excites our admiration, but 
 the nerve and independence which he displayed. He had made 
 up his mind ; he had resolved on a policy ; and, with the fate of 
 the Ministry quivering in the balance, he faced the House of 
 Commons, as he had done at least twice before, with unflinching 
 determination. The parties might vote as they pleased, but he 
 was Minister for India, and proud of the position ; and that was 
 the only policy he should pursue. With a little more of his manli- 
 ness in all departments of the State we should find the Empire 
 safe, the groups paralyzed, and the great Council holding its true 
 position as the fly-wheel in the machine." 
 
 The following extract from an article by Mr. Herbert Paul gives 
 a good impression of the speech and its result. " An old Parlia- 
 mentary hand, who has sat for a quarter of a century in the House
 
 Cotton Duties 335 
 
 of Commons, told me that he had never in all his experience seen 
 such a collapse as the failure of Sir Henry James' attack on the 
 Government for imposing the Cotton Duties. The belief that 
 Ministers would be defeated was general and was shared by both 
 sides. A summons of unusual urgency was issued to the Con- 
 servative Party who attended in unusual numbers ; that they 
 came to give votes, and not solely to hear speeches no rational 
 being can doubt. If the Opposition had held together, and the 
 Liberals from Lancashire had joined them, a simple sum in arith- 
 metic will easily prove that the Government must have been 
 beaten. The Opposition did not hold together, and with three 
 or four exceptions, the Lancashire Liberals voted against the 
 motion of Sir Henry James the result was a majority for the 
 Government of 195. If any one had predicted such an event 
 the previous day, he would have been set down as little better 
 than a lunatic and he might have obtained, among sporting 
 politicians, almost any odds against it. What was it that effected 
 this extraordinary change ? I say without hesitation that it was 
 the speech made by the Secretary of State for India. Although 
 I have the highest personal admiration for Mr. Fowler, my political 
 prejudices are not likely to be in his favour. As is well known, he 
 absolutely refused to carry out the Resolution of the House of 
 Commons, which I had the honour to move, in favour of examining 
 the natives of India at home. But I am bound to say that, setting 
 Mr. Gladstone aside, I never heard an abler or a more convincing 
 speech in my life than Mr. Fowler made on that occasion. It 
 ought to do great good in India. For it was delivered on behalf 
 of the Indian people ; it saved them from a cruel wrong, and it 
 vindicated before the world the justice of British rule. Mr. Fowler's 
 final appeal to the House of Commons as the repository of a sacred 
 trust, and as morally representing the politically unrepresented 
 natives of India, was worthy of Burke. When he sat down the 
 
 battle was over 
 
 " It is often said that speeches in the House of Commons never 
 change votes. That is not true. I have known many instances 
 to the contrary. But it is very rare indeed, so rare as to be almost 
 unknown, for a speech to change votes in a formal struggle between
 
 336 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 opposing parties to determine the fate of the Government of the 
 day. That feat Mr. Fowler achieved, and for achieving it, in the 
 actual circumstances of the case, he deserves the gratitude of 
 everyone who cares for the solvency of India." 
 
 On May 27th, 1895, the Secretary of State received a deputa- 
 tion of Lancashire and Scotch mill-owners, who laid before him 
 a good many points on which they alleged that the duties imposed 
 in India was unfair competition. He asked them to give him a 
 full statement of their grievances and undertook to remove any 
 that were proved. Before the Memorial was ready a change 
 of Government took place. It fell to Lord George Hamilton, 
 who succeeded my father at the India Office, to receive and deal 
 with the Memorial. 
 
 In the end a new solution of the dispute was arrived at. The 
 Import duty was reduced to three and a half per cent, and re- 
 stricted to cotton piece goods (yarns being exempted), and a 
 corresponding Excise duty was levied on all cotton piece goods 
 manufactured in Indian mills and consumed in India. This has 
 proved a satisfactory settlement inasmuch as after a lapse of 
 sixteen years it still endures. When the settlement thus effected 
 by Lord George Hamilton came under debate in Parliament the 
 late Indian Secretary's attitude was by no means unfriendly to it. 
 He allowed that, had he remained in office, he should have modified 
 his scheme, which he knew was not a perfect scheme, and though 
 he also saw some defects in the new one he hesitated to condemn 
 it, and after some discussion, following his own precepts that 
 Indian legislation is above and beyond party considerations, he 
 supported the new Tory Secretary of State, and practically accepted 
 his proposals.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 1895 
 
 CHITRAL 
 " Virtue he had, deserving to command." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest 
 Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 DURING the whole time that Henry Fowler was at the India 
 Office the question of the North- West Frontier of India was 
 under consideration, with its grave and important issues, both as 
 regards the conflicts involved by the retention of Chitral and the 
 opposing policy of its evacuation. Chitral is a district lying on the 
 North-West Frontier between Afghanistan and Kashmir, south of the 
 Hindu Kush and north of the Punjaub. Attention was first called 
 to the State of Chitral, or as it was then two States, Chitral Proper 
 and Yasin, as part of our strategical frontier in consequence of 
 the Russian absorption of Kokand, and when in 1876 an envoy 
 from Chitral formally tendered his allegiance to the Maharaja of 
 Kashmir, the Maharaja was interviewed on behalf of the British 
 Government. It was to be desired in the interests of our Indian 
 Empire that Chitral and Yasin should be under the control of 
 Kashmir, and the British Government offered to give the Maharaja 
 of Kashmir countenance, and, if necessary, material assistance. A 
 British Agent was established at Gilgit, and a treaty between 
 Kashmir and Chitral was concluded in 1878. Two years later a 
 rising of the tribes in Yasin endangered the Agent at Gilgit, but 
 the ruler of Chitral proved his loyalty to Kashmir by invading 
 Yasin, which he annexed, and the two districts became united under 
 
 337 22
 
 338 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the Chitral Chief. Gilgit, however, remained so dangerous a post 
 for the British Agent for many reasons that he was withdrawn, 
 and British rule lost touch for several years with Chitral. It was 
 not till 1889 that the great importance of the strategical position 
 of Chitral, through which run the easiest passes over the Hindu 
 Rush, was brought again before the British Government ; as the 
 passes, which gave easy access to it from the north, have their 
 southern exit through Chitral in a road which threatens the flank 
 of any force operating on the Peshawar-Kabul line. The Russian 
 Empire then touched the frontier of Afghanistan and had greatly 
 increased her military power in Asia. It was therefore incumbent 
 on the British Government to strengthen the North- West Frontier 
 of India, of which the northern passes of the Hindu Kush form a 
 critical point. An annual allowance of six thousand rupees was 
 apportioned to the Mehtar of Chitral and subsidies to neigh- 
 bouring Chiefs. The projected opening of a direct road to Chitral 
 from the Peshawar frontier was an important feature of the scheme, 
 and Dr. (now Sir George) Robertson was deputed on a mission to 
 Chitral. The Mehtar readily consented to all the British schemes 
 and promised his co-operation in road-making and different 
 fortifications. But in 1892 Aman-ul-Mulk, the Mehtar, died, and 
 from that moment the history of Chitral became one of dynastic 
 murders and civil war. The Mehtar's sons fought for the suc- 
 cession three were murdered, one was exiled, and the second son 
 possessed himself of the throne. He asked for a British officer 
 to be sent as Agent to Chitral, but in a few months his friendly 
 overtures came to an end, and he was assassinated by his uncle, 
 who possessed himself of the Mehtarship. At this time, the 
 eldest son, who had been exiled, returned to fight for the throne, 
 and the forces declared themselves on his side, and his uncle found 
 himself a refugee after a reign of only two months. The new 
 Mehtar, on acquiring the chiefship, applied for the recognition of 
 the Indian Government and asked for the residency of a British 
 Agent. It was proposed to leave Captain Younghusband an 
 escort of one hundred Sikhs at Mastuj, not Chitral, as it was sixty- 
 three miles nearer to Gilgit and the reinforcements there. As 
 this scheme involved keeping open a line of communication of
 
 Chitral 339 
 
 two hundred and twenty-five miles from Gilgit, and the main- 
 tenance of four intermediate posts, a controversy arose as to 
 whether it would not be better to hand over Chitral to the Amir 
 of Afghanistan. The Government of India advocated the reten- 
 tion of a British officer in Chitral and the strengthening of the Gilgit 
 garrison. It believed that it was essential to the interests of the 
 Government that Chitral should continue under the suzerainty of 
 Kashmir and under British influence, even though there existed a 
 grave risk in sending British officers to Chitral. Nevertheless, the 
 presence of a British officer was necessary to watch events on 
 that part of the frontier, to give the Mehtar necessary support 
 and to protect the interests of the Indian Government. 
 
 The Secretary of State, then Lord Kimberley, did not think it 
 would be a wise or justifiable policy to deprive Kashmir of her 
 acknowledged right of suzerainty over Chitral in order to hand 
 it over to an Afghan ruler. He consented to the retention of 
 Captain Younghusband, but only as a temporary measure, for 
 he felt that in the future policy towards Chitral a much wider view 
 must be taken, and the question looked at with reference to the 
 possible changes in the general aspect of affairs in that region, 
 which might in a short time be effected. The safe-guarding of 
 the line of communication should be reduced as much as possible 
 except as regards the actual safety of the British Agent. Lord 
 Elgin's Government decided, in a discussion concerning the with- 
 drawal of the British officer and his escort, that such a policy would 
 not be a wise one. 
 
 On succeeding Lord Kimberley as Secretary of State for India 
 Henry Fowler agreed to the former policy as to the retention of 
 Captain Younghusband, but he repeated that the reasons which 
 induced Lord Kimberley to declare that it would be premature 
 to decide then upon the permanent political and military arrange- 
 ments for this frontier, were still of weight. But he, too, regarded 
 the present arrangements as only temporary, though he thought it 
 impossible within a fixed period to formulate a definite policy, 
 whether of abandoning or of continuing those arrangements. 
 
 On January ist, 1895, the Mehtar of Chitral was shot by order 
 of his brother, with whom he was supposed to be on good terms, 
 
 22*
 
 34 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 but who was nevertheless engaged in forming a conspiracy against 
 him. A British officer representing the Government of India was 
 in Chitral with a small escort when the murder took place, and to 
 him the usurper sent a deputation asking to be recognized as his 
 brother's successor. The reply was that the question would be 
 referred to the Government of India, whose orders must be 
 awaited. In the meantime a detachment of soldiers was sent to 
 Chitral, and Dr. Robertson, who was Political Agent at head- 
 quarters, started for Chitral. He arrived on February ist. In 
 the interval Umra Khan, a tribal Chief, who was doubtless an 
 accomplice in the conspiracy, invaded the State of Chitral with 
 between three thousand and four thousand men. The Chitral 
 force opposing Umra Khan numbered about three thousand men, 
 and they were driven back from their first position. As further 
 successes on the part of the invaders would have been a serious 
 danger to the British Representative, Dr. Robertson was 
 authorized on February igth to give the Chitralis such material 
 and moral support as might be consistent with the safety of his 
 own party, and to call up reinforcements from the Kashmir regi- 
 ment at Gilgit if necessary. Early in March Dr. Robertson and 
 his garrison were besieged in their fort. 
 
 Although at the beginning of the year the Secretary of State 
 had said in a letter to the Viceroy : 
 
 " I am in hearty accord with you in respect of the Frontier 
 policy. We must arrest the unwise attempts of the Military 
 Forward party, and while keeping our foot firmly down where 
 necessary, discourage the costly hunger for constant annexation." 
 
 Yet on the news of the siege of Dr. Robertson's garrison he 
 wrote again : 
 
 " Events in Chitral have marched since the date of your last 
 letter. I regret much the necessity for the costly preparations 
 which have to be made at Peshawar ; but nothing must prevent 
 every possible effort being made to relieve Robertson and his 
 party," and this was in reply to a full account from Lord Elgin 
 of Dr. Robertson's position written on March I3th, 1895. 
 
 " Chitral affairs have occupied us much since last mail. Com- 
 munications with Robertson are practically cut off, and there is
 
 Chitral 341 
 
 little doubt that there is an alliance between Umra Khan and Sher 
 Afzul and their being determined to get Robertson out of Chitral. 
 To the best of our belief Robertson is safe in Chitral Fort against 
 any force that could be brought against him. We also believe 
 that there are supplies for the force now there till about the end 
 of April. ... I think the first step should be to send Umra Khan 
 an ultimatum in terms that they cannot misunderstand. We have 
 already ordered him out of Chitral and we must give him warning 
 that we do not mean to be disobeyed. . . . We none of us wish to 
 undertake this expedition. Even if we mobilize, we shall not 
 send our troops across the frontier except as the last resource. 
 But if an expedition does go we shall have to consider what the 
 alternative result of sending it will be. The first and essential 
 thing will be to ensure the opening up of the road from Peshawar 
 to Chitral." 
 
 " I may say," explained my father afterwards, " that to my 
 mind the first consideration was to rescue the men who were 
 besieged. They were there representing their Queen and Country 
 and we were bound at all cost to rescue them." 
 
 The Secretary of State telegraphed at once to the Government 
 of India, authorizing them to take any action that they might deem 
 necessary to secure the safety of the British force. As the fort of 
 Chitral was nearly two hundred miles from Peshawar, and the inter- 
 vening country was entirely occupied by independent tribes, it 
 was of the first importance, not only to avoid conflict with them, 
 but, if possible, to secure their friendly co-operation. And it 
 was to attain this object that the proclamation, around which so 
 much controversy raged, was issued in the middle of March. It 
 stated first that notice had been given to Umra Khan, that, unless 
 he retired from Chitral by April ist the Government would use 
 force to compel him to do so. Second, that the sole object of the 
 Government was to put an end to the present, and to prevent any 
 future, unlawful aggression on Chitral territory ; third, that as 
 soon as that object had been attained the force would be with- 
 drawn ; fourth, that the Government had no intention of per- 
 manently occupying any territory through which they passed, or 
 of interfering with the independence of the tribes ; and fifth, that
 
 342 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 they would scrupulously avoid any acts of hostility towards the 
 tribesmen, so long as they, on their part, refrained from attacking 
 or impeding in any way the march of the troops. On April 5th 
 the Secretary of State wrote to the Viceroy : "I am interested 
 in your account of the proceedings with reference to the Chitral 
 expedition. The relief of Robertson is a paramount obligation. 
 Our subsequent policy is a matter for consideration." 
 
 On the 22nd March the Government of India instructed Colonel 
 Kelly to move forward with such troops as were available in the 
 Gilgit command, and at the same time issued orders for the 
 despatch of the Chitral relief force to be hurried on. These two 
 forces set out for the relief of Dr. Robertson from Gilgit on 
 the east, and from Peshawar on the south. The relief force was 
 commanded by General Sir Robert Low. Colonel Kelly, after 
 unexampled difficulties in crossing the Shandur Pass under deep 
 snow, arrived within touch of the enemy on April 8th and defeated 
 them. General Low captured the Malakand Pass on April 3rd, 
 and successfully crossed the Swat river. On the i8th April Umra 
 Khan fled before their advance, and opposition ceased. In the 
 meantime Colonel Kelly reached Chitral on the 2oth April, and 
 effected the relief. The conspiring chiefs were scattered, and one 
 was taken prisoner. Umra Khan fled to Afghan territory. 
 
 " The Englishmen of to-day," declared Henry Fowler, " and the 
 Englishmen of the future will never forget the unselfish heroism 
 which distinguished Dr. Robertson and his comrades during that 
 memorable siege, nor the splendid courage which characterized 
 the advance from Peshawar and the march from Gilgit." 
 
 It was after the complete success of the military proceedings 
 that the controversy as to the conflicting policies arose. Two 
 distinct policies were in turn adopted, and the two succeeding 
 Cabinets are alone responsible. The Government of India advises 
 the Home Government on all aspects, both civil and military, of 
 such grave and difficult questions as the retention or the evacua- 
 tion of Chitral, but the decision and responsibility in such matters 
 rests entirely on the Cabinet and the Sovereign. 
 
 The policy with regard to Chitral was not, as we have seen, a 
 new policy. Two previous Indian Secretaries, Lord Cross and
 
 Chitral 343 
 
 Lord Kimberley, had considered it ; but after the relief of the fort 
 it became one of the foremost questions of Indian practical 
 politics. The Secretary of State on April igth, on the day Chitral 
 was relieved, telegraphed for the advice of the Indian Government 
 on the strategical and political importance of Chitral, and for their 
 suggestions as to the best course to be adopted in the future ; and 
 on 25th April he wrote to the Viceroy : " Directly I return to town 
 I shall have a conference with my colleagues on the whole ques- 
 tion ; but if there is one thing that I deprecate more than another 
 at this crisis it is any hurried decision. I fully appreciate all the 
 difficulties of the case, and I need hardly say that I attach great 
 importance to the views of your Government ; but there are broad 
 questions of a political, and financial, and also of a military character, 
 underlying any further extension of our responsibility on the 
 North- West Frontier : and from all that I can discern, the public 
 opinion of this country is hostile to such a policy." Lord Elgin 
 had telegraphed that the Indian Government would undoubtedly 
 deprecate withdrawal, and considered the maintenance of the 
 position in Chitral desirable. My father telegraphed in reply, 
 pending the consideration of the Cabinet : " Please avoid 
 committing Government in any way, either with regard to making 
 new roads or retention of posts now occupied, or occupation of 
 new posts." The Viceroy telegraphed that the Indian Govern- 
 ment were unanimous in asking the permission of the Secretary 
 of State to enter into negotiations with the tribes, with a view to 
 obtaining their consent to the opening up of the road from 
 Peshawar to Chitral, for, without entering into such negotiations, 
 he could not answer as to the extent of political difficulties or the 
 cost of the road. The Secretary of State had no objection to hfe 
 sounding the tribes as to the terms and conditions on which they 
 would consent to opening and maintaining that road, but Her 
 Majesty's Government would come to no decision until they had 
 received in a despatch the full arguments and opinions of the 
 Indian Government with regard to the policy they advocated. 
 That despatch reached England at the end of May. Its policy 
 was the military occupation of the Chitral Valley and the con- 
 struction of a road from Peshawar, and was known afterwards as
 
 344 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the Forward Policy. All the arguments in its favour were clearly 
 and ably set forth, and nothing that could be urged in its favour 
 was omitted. 
 
 The question was of course primarily a military one Whether 
 Chitral was of such strategical importance as to be essential as a 
 safeguard from invasion. Such distinguished officers as Sir George 
 White, Lord Roberts, and Sir Henry Brackenbury were of opinion 
 that it was. On the other hand eminent Generals, such as Lord 
 Wolseley, Sir Redvers Buller, Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir Charles Gough, 
 Sir J. Adye, Lord Chelmsford, and Sir Neville Chamberlain, were 
 of a contrary opinion. The Secretary of State conferred with 
 some of the most distinguished military authorities in the Empire, 
 and the majority of such opinions was that the gigantic natural 
 defences of the North- West Frontier could not be strengthened 
 by the military occupation of Chitral, and that the construction 
 of a military road from Peshawar to Chitral would be an advantage 
 to an invading force and a disadvantage to a defending force. 
 
 " House of Commons, 
 
 " 10 June, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Since I saw you I have received the enclosed two 
 letters from Sir Redvers Buller. The first is in reply to my 
 request for his opinion on the case as stated in your memo- 
 randum. The second refers to the Despatch from the Govern- 
 ment of India and accompanying papers. These are private 
 letters he offers me a formal minute ; but with these in our 
 hands a minute is hardly necessary. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN." 
 
 29, Bruton Street, 
 
 " June gth, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, 
 
 " I return the papers enclosed with your letter of 
 the 6th June. I have no personal knowledge of the Indian
 
 Chitral 345 
 
 Frontier and so can only offer a general opinion, but I can 
 unhesitatingly say that a study of these papers has failed 
 to prove to me that it is advisable for us either to open the 
 road to Chitral from Peshawar or to occupy the former place. 
 The arguments in favour of this course seem to me all to 
 depend upon bogeys. 
 
 " There is the Russian bogey, the anarchy bogey, the senti- 
 mental bogey, this last the most unsubstantial of the three. 
 For surely we are not ' abandoning ' a place when we with- 
 draw after invading it ; and though Lord Lytton may have 
 guaranteed the suzerainty of Chitral to Kashmir, surely he 
 only guaranteed it, at the most, as against outsiders, and the 
 suzerain must deal with the Chitralis himself. On the other 
 hand I would place this selfish view : What can we gain by 
 going to Chitral ? Surely the reply is : ' Nothing, and that 
 at great cost.' Lord Elgin says that the following appeals 
 to him strongly as a layman : If we retire from Chitral we 
 shall prejudice one main line of defence, Kabul Kandahar, 
 because a comparatively small force from the north could 
 come over the Dorah or Baroghil Passes without our having 
 an opportunity of preventing it, and could, and would, 
 then create such uneasiness on our Peshawar Frontiers as 
 would lock up there a British force out of all proportion 
 to itself. I would ask any one to look at the maps and 
 to say which would require the lock-up of the largest force. 
 Holding the line Peshawar Dir Chitral Mastuj in sufficient 
 strength at the latter place to cover the passes, or 
 merely to hold Peshawar in sufficient strength to neutralize 
 what is left of a small force that has fought its way down that 
 line ? The answer seems to me obvious. If we hold Chitral 
 to keep out Russia ; Russia can at any time force us to fight 
 her there ; and every mile we advance from our proper com- 
 munications to meet Russia must increase our disadvantages. 
 Had I to defend fndia I should certainly prefer that Russia 
 should have to come through miles of inhospitable mountain 
 passes to attack me, rather than go myself into the middle 
 of those mountains to meet her. Still less should I be
 
 346 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 inclined to make good roads, so as to assist her passage in 
 the event of a temporary success. 
 
 " I am, Yours very truly, 
 
 " REDVERS BULLER." 
 
 " War Office, 
 
 " 10 June, 1895. 
 
 " DEAR MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, 
 
 " I had unfortunately replied to your first letter 
 on the Chitral question before I received the second but, if 
 I may be allowed to be irreverent, the second is the same 
 old chestnut, and there is nothing in it that causes me to alter 
 my opinion. 
 
 " If we are going to take up the line Kandahar Kabul 
 definitely and to base ourselves upon it, I confess that I should 
 like to consider whether I would not place an outpost at 
 Chitral. But this is not the case, and we are really asked, 
 nay, pressed, to occupy the outpost before we occupy our main 
 line of defence. All the arguments used with regard to Chitral 
 as to the effect upon us of an advance of the Russians, appear 
 to me to be equally forcible if applied to Afghanistan, and even 
 more forcible if applied to Afghanistan at the moment, which 
 is predicted, when that country ceases to be under solid govern- 
 ment on the demise of the Amir. 
 
 " Suppose that we occupy Chitral and suppose that the 
 Amir dies, and suppose that the Russians seize Kabul what 
 then ? Why, surely every man we have in Chitral is locked 
 up and wasted. I cannot see the force of the other 
 argument. 
 
 " On the other hand, dealing merely with the occupation 
 of Chitral. If the tribes are hostile, it is admitted that the 
 occupation of Chitral would be too cflstly. But if the tribes 
 are friendly, why not leave them their own country to pro- 
 tect. It took us 20,000 men to get into it. Why is it not 
 to take the Russians more ? All through this last paper the
 
 Chitral 347 
 
 Government of India seems to presuppose that the Russians 
 can do without difficulty what we can do only by the expendi- 
 ture of great force. They allow that it took from us at least 
 a force of 15,000 to get to Chitral, but they assume that the 
 Russians will get there with from 3,000 to 4,000. I fail to 
 find any grounds for this assumpton. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " REDVERS BULLER." 
 
 In the meantime, while the question was under consideration, 
 the Secretary of State telegraphed, "I do not object to the 
 temporary arrangements which you consider necessary." 
 
 Here my father's connection with the Chitral question ended. 
 His successor, Lord George Hamilton, on taking office, announced 
 that the Chitral policy would be reconsidered, and it was subse- 
 quently reversed. 
 
 My father received the following letters from Lord Kimberley 
 and Lord Northbrook. 
 
 On August 1 4th Lord Northbrook wrote to him : 
 
 " Stratton, 
 
 " Micheldever Station, 
 
 " August I4th, 1895. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I cannot quite make out the effect of the orders 
 given about Chitral. They seem to be to some extent a 
 reversal of the decision which I understood you to say that you 
 had sent to India before the eventful decision, but I cannot 
 help thinking that it is a kind of compromise and may not 
 be inconsistent with eventual withdrawal. 
 
 " Perhaps you will tell me how you regard it, and if you 
 intend to raise the question in the House of Commons. 
 
 " I presume that no useful discussion can take place before 
 the papers are given, and especially the opinion and proposals 
 of the Government of India, and the opinions of Sir Donald 
 Stewart and the members of the Council of India. If you
 
 348 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 move for papers I hope they will comprise the history of 
 placing an English Resident and small garrison in Chitral, 
 which, apparently was the cause of the whole trouble. 
 
 " It would also, I think, be desirable to include in the 
 papers Lord Elgin's speech in the Legislative Council before 
 the Expedition was sent, and any proclamations issued to 
 the Tribes during the progress of the Expedition ; for every- 
 one will agree that it is of the first importance to keep faith 
 strictly with the Tribes to whom any promises have been 
 made. 
 
 " If you have formed an opinion upon the effect upon the 
 Lancashire elections of the Indian Cotton Duty question, I 
 should like to know it; for, however strong a Unionist I 
 may be, I should greatly regret that your right and courageous 
 treatment of that question, under difficulties which I fully 
 appreciate, should have seriously affected the balance of 
 parties at the recent dissolution. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " NORTHBROOK." 
 
 " Kimberley House, 
 
 " Wymondham, 
 
 " Norfolk, 
 
 " August 29th, 1895.^ 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I see in the Daily News of to-day that George 
 Hamilton quotes from a despatch of mine, written two years 
 ago, in support of his Chitral policy. 
 
 " There is nothing inconsistent in the sentence as quoted 
 in the Daily News article with my concurrence with you in 
 your Chitral policy. 
 
 " I said that it was important that we should be able to 
 
 control the external affairs of Chitral, and I am still of that 
 
 opinion. We could not safely allow Chitral, a dependency of 
 
 Kashmir, to have direct relations with Russia. 
 
 " But neither can we allow Afghanistan to have such rela-
 
 Chitral 349 
 
 tions, and we control entirely the foreign relations of the Amir 
 with both Russia and Persia. We do not, however, garrison 
 any part of his dominions nor keep a European representative 
 at Kabul. 
 
 " It would be quite sufficient to keep a native Agent at 
 Chitral, probably giving the Mehtar a small subsidy, subject 
 to his good behaviour. 
 
 " I thought it might be as well that you should know my 
 answer as regards the passage in my despatch, in case it is 
 referred to in the coming debate. 
 
 " I never contemplated keeping a detachment of troops 
 permanently at Chitral or more than an occasional visit of 
 a European officer. 
 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 " KlMBERLEY." 
 
 Of the outbreak on the North-West Frontier eighteen months later, 
 the former Secretary of State expressed his opinion in a speech which 
 is quoted a little further on ; and from his attitude against the 
 Forward Policy he never retreated. Indeed it would be difficult 
 to put one's finger upon any of his policies from which he subse- 
 quently retreated. He could advance, he could stand still, but he 
 could not retreat. The days of his Indian rule had been few, but 
 they were great days : great in the life of Henry Fowler as a 
 statesman ; great in the life of India and her peoples. He left 
 the India Office with a deep hope that he would one day go back ; 
 but when the time, so long delayed, came round, a decade had 
 carried him beyond the three-score years and ten, and robbed him 
 of that power of energy and work which he felt was alone worthy 
 of India's acceptance. He had given her his best, when he was 
 at his best, and she acknowledged it was a worthy offering. When 
 he might have accepted her at a lower price, he refused to do 
 so ; for though few know the depth of his personal regret at seeing 
 her go by, yet he put India's interests before his own, and as he 
 always had done, counted patriotism of greater worth than 
 political advantages or personal claims. 
 
 His rule over India is a short chapter, but it is a never-to-be-
 
 35 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 forgotten one in the history of that country's life during the latter 
 half of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Of course, in connection with a question of this kind there were 
 many confidential considerations, of a technical and detailed 
 character, which entered into the counsels of those who were 
 advising the Government, and helped towards its decision. As 
 regards the proposed road, many civilian experts and Indian 
 statesmen agreed that a policy of insisting upon open roads, and 
 respecting at the same time the independence of the tribes, was 
 mpossible ; and that roads could not be effectually kept open and 
 protected for any length of time by merely tribal arrangements, 
 but would have to be protected by regular troops. It therefoio 
 appeared to Her Majesty's Government that the construction 
 and defence of the road, even with the consent of the tribes, would 
 be a dangerous policy, and without their consent it would be a 
 violation of the proclamation on the faith of which several of the 
 tribes did not combine against or oppose the march through their 
 territories of the relief force to Chitral. The Home Government 
 therefore came to the conclusion that they would not be justified 
 in accepting the proposals made in the despatch of the Indian 
 Government, and they decided that no military force or European 
 Agent should be kept at Chitral ; that the road should not be made ; 
 and that the army which had effected the relief operations should 
 return to British territory as soon as possible all dates and 
 deta : ls being left to the discretion of the Indian Government, and 
 on the I3th June, 1895, the Secretary of State telegraphed to the 
 Viceroy : 
 
 " I wish to add my personal assurance of the regret with which 
 we arrived at decision not to accept your proposals. Cabinet 
 gave most anxious consideration to the whole question, and con- 
 sulted highest military authorities in the country, who, excepting 
 Lord Roberts, are generally against retention of Chitral, as are also 
 Political Committee, India Office. The decision of the Cabinet 
 was unanimous. General expression of confidence in you. Your 
 difficulties fully appreciated ; I hope you will, nevertheless, be able 
 to submit satisfactory proposals for future." And the Viceroy 
 replied the next day that, while deeply regretting, he loyally
 
 Chitral 351 
 
 accepted the decision, and a few days later he telegraphed the 
 proposals of the Indian Government for carrying out the policy. 
 On the day that that telegram was received the Liberal Ministers 
 tendered their resignation to Her Majesty. On June 28th the 
 retiring Indian Secretary wrote to the Viceroy his last letter : 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " June 28th, 1895. 
 
 " DEAR LORD ELGIN, 
 
 " The telegraph will have informed you that we have 
 resigned, and that Lord Salisbury is now engaged in forming 
 a Government to take our place. 
 
 " With regard to Chitral, I can only say that we were much 
 gratified by the loyal manner in which you accepted our 
 decision not to adopt your recommendation. We considered 
 the matter most anxiously ; but, in our unanimous opinion, 
 the policy which we adopted is that towards which the weight 
 of authority inclines. I fear the change of Government may 
 cause you some embarrassment and delay in aiming at a 
 final settlement. I, of course, cannot deal with your pro- 
 posals for the future settlement of Chitral. 
 
 " Before I conclude my farewell letter I must express my 
 appreciation of the cordial relations which have existed 
 between us since I took office, and my sincere gratitude to 
 you for the admirable manner in which you have uniformly 
 discharged the duties of your high office. 
 " I am, 
 
 " Dear Lord Elgin, 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 The Viceroy wrote to my father on his resignation :
 
 35 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " Viceregal Lodge, 
 " Simla, 
 
 " June 25th, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " The news of the sudden crisis and resignation of 
 the Government, naturally places me in a position of great 
 perplexity. I am afraid that there can be no doubt that 
 my correspondence with you, which has now lasted for more 
 than a year, and which I shall always look back upon as one 
 of the incidents of my stay in this country most satisfactory 
 to myself, will now come to an end. It is, at any rate, useless 
 for me to trouble you with a long letter. 
 
 " I do not suppose it will be possible for you to give us any 
 further instructions in regard to Chitral. The delay is, of 
 course, most inconvenient, but I see it cannot be avoided. 
 
 " I can only repeat my regret at this occurrence. I can 
 assure you that there is only one feeling here at the prospect 
 of your ceasing to be Secretary of State. 
 
 "I am, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " ELGIN."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 18941895 
 
 AT THE INDIA OFFICE 
 
 " We measure not his mind ; we cannot tell 
 
 What lieth under, over or beside 
 The test we put him to ; he doth excel 
 We know, where he is tried." 
 
 JEAN INGELOW. 
 
 THE occupation of Chitral was not the only frontier question 
 with which my father had to deal during the short time 
 that he was Secretary of State for India. 
 
 There was the Pamirs question, which involved a settlement 
 with Russia and the Amir of Afghanistan. The Agreement with 
 Russia was signed early in 1895, and the Secretary of State wrote 
 of it to the Viceroy : " The restriction on the erection of forts 
 in Wakhan is no doubt to be regretted, nor would it have been 
 agreed to if it had been possible to avoid it ; but I believe that 
 without this provision the agreement would not have been accepted 
 by the Russians, and I agree with you in thinking that it was so 
 important to get the matter settled, that it was worth while to run 
 the risk of increasing our difficulties with the Amir by conceding 
 this point. I hope it may be arranged that the evacuation by 
 the Amir of the territory which he is to give up will take place before 
 the ist of July." The Viceroy negotiated with the Amir and on 
 April nth, 1895, the Secretary of State wrote again : " Your 
 proposals to the Amir with reference to the Pamir Agreement 
 are satisfactory as to dates, and I hope he will be ready to carry 
 out his part of the agreement loyally. With regard to the 
 
 353 23
 
 354 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 demarcation, the Foreign Office are, I believe, ready to accept 
 your proposals. The Wakhan question is, no doubt, the difficulty, 
 and I fear the solution you mention is the only possible one. I 
 do not think that it will be possible to guarantee the peace of the 
 territory within the respective spheres, but both Powers will 
 probably undertake to do their best to secure it." The formalities 
 with reference to the Pamirs Commission were complete by June, 
 1895, and the Commission was not further delayed. 
 
 A more difficult question with regard to the frontier was in 
 Waziristan on account of the hostility of the tribes. An agree- 
 ment had been signed between the Amir of Afghanistan and Sir 
 H. M. Durand for the British Government on I2th November, 
 1893, by which it was provided, inter alia, that : 
 
 " i. The Eastern and Southern Frontier of His Highness' s 
 dominions, from Wakhan to the Persian border, shall follow the 
 line shown in the map attached to this agreement. 
 
 " 2. The Government of India will at no time exercise inter- 
 ference in the Territories lying beyond this line on the side of 
 Afghanistan, and His Highness the Amir will at no time exercise 
 interference in the Territories lying beyond this line on the side of 
 India. 
 
 " 3. The British Government also agrees to leave to His High- 
 ness the Birmal tract as shown in the detailed map already given 
 to His Highness, who relinquishes his claim to the rest of the 
 Waziri country and Dawar. 
 
 " 4. The frontier line will hereafter be laid down in detail and 
 demarcated wherever this may be practicable and desirable by 
 Joint British and Afghan Commissioners." 
 
 In pursuance of this agreement the Secretary of State in 
 April, 1894, authorized the Government of India to propose to 
 the Amir that the work of demarcation should be undertaken in 
 the following October. The Government of India desired at the 
 same time to settle their future relations with the Waziris. Though 
 it seemed desirable to postpone the operations until after the hot 
 weather both the Indian and the Home Governments were
 
 At the India Office 355 
 
 equally desirous that the Amir should not become suspicious 
 that the delay indicated any wish to break faith with him, which 
 of course was not the case. 
 The Viceroy wrote on April 4th, 1894 : 
 
 " Sir M. Durand arrived yesterday and I have had a long 
 conference with him about the Waziristan delineation. Durand 
 thinks that if we state a definite date in October the Amir will 
 be ready to concur in the proposal to postpone, on the ground 
 of the danger to the troops in the hot weather." 
 
 Lord Elgin further proposed to locate a reserve brigade at Spin, a 
 practically uninhabited tract on the Indian confines of Waziristan 
 partly because it lay nearest to the most turbulent section of 
 the Waziris, and partly because it was a healthy district and had 
 a fair water supply. The Secretary of State conveyed a caution 
 lest the location of the reserve brigade in Waziri territory should 
 irritate the tribesmen and cause disturbances but he consented to 
 Spin, on finding that it was not actually in Waziri territory. At 
 this time the Amir wrote in reference to the demarcation of the 
 boundary and there seemed some misunderstanding on his part, 
 though the suggestion of the proposed postponement of the work 
 had not yet reached him. And there was also some perplexity in 
 England about an invitation to the Amir to visit England, which 
 had been promised if he signed the agreement about the boundary. 
 A visit to England had been suggested to the Amir by Lord Salis- 
 bury in 1892. Of course such a visit could not take place except 
 during the London season, and already the year was too advanced 
 to arrange it in 1894 ; while to delay it to 1895 might seem to 
 the Amir rather like another unsatisfactory postponement. The 
 details of such a visit from a diplomatic point of view involve 
 many difficulties and there are many pros and cons to be weighed. 
 The Amir, however, expressed a wish unofficially that he and his 
 two sons should be invited to England. While all this was under 
 consideration the Viceroy received what he described as a highly 
 satisfactory letter from the Amir about the demarcation of 
 Waziristan. His Highness was quite content that it should 
 be done in thej[autumn, and also approved the arrangements the 
 
 23*
 
 356 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Indian Government had proposed. He seemed bent on his own 
 occupation of Birmal and concluded by saying : " But the Waziris 
 should be told this much, that Birmal and its old dependencies, 
 which constitute its limits, belong to the Amir of Afghanistan, and 
 that the remaining Waziris belong to the British Government. To 
 say this much to them would be necessary." 
 
 It was, therefore, incumbent upon the Indian Council to decide 
 how they should impart that information to the tribes. The 
 Secretary of State, having conferred with the Prime Minister and 
 Foreign Secretary, decided that the invitation could be no longer 
 delayed, and he accordingly wrote an autograph letter on June 
 1 2th, 1894, to the Amir, conveying the official invitation. The 
 Amir did not reply to that invitation until the beginning of the 
 year 1895. Truly there is no haste in the East. On June igih, 
 1894, the Viceroy wrote to the Secretary of State : " We have 
 been discussing the details of our policy in Waziristan, and I will 
 not forestall the statement which I shall have to make to you when 
 a decision has been come to. But I may say that we came to two 
 conclusions last Thursday : 
 
 " i. That through our Frontier officers we should announce to 
 the Waziris what the line of the frontier in the Durand Convention 
 is according to the map, and that we had agreed with the Amir 
 to demarcate on the ground in October ; and (2) that our Military 
 Department and the Punjaub Government should be instructed to 
 prepare detailed schemes and estimates for the demarcation pro- 
 ceedings in accordance with the plan already reported to you. 
 There remains the third and most important branch of the subject 
 what policy we are to announce to the tribes in October." 
 On 24th August, the Secretary of State wrote privately to the 
 Viceroy : "In the main I agree with you with respect to Sir 
 A. Lyall's memorandum. You will receive my Waziristan 
 Despatch by this mail. I think that the expansion of your control, 
 which Sir A. Lyall foresees, will ultimately take place, and will 
 probably involve a Political Agency with military posts and 
 increased expense ; but there is a wide difference between a gradual 
 movement in this direction and a sudden assumption of the com- 
 plete administration. Your proposal is the minimum which you
 
 At the India Office 357 
 
 think will, for the present, enable you to maintain order so far as 
 concerns the territory for which you have assumed the responsi- 
 bility, the Amir's frontier, and the trade routes. No doubt this 
 control will, in the nature of things, develop ; but I think the 
 policy you have adopted is, in the circumstances, the easiest. I 
 think also you are right in recognizing that the three sections of 
 the frontier have to be dealt with on different lines, and that our 
 policy in regard to them has to be guided by wholly different 
 considerations. 
 
 " In the southern sections military considerations are of little 
 or no importance, and I believe, there is practically no difference 
 of opinion in regard to the unwisdom of a policy which might 
 involve us, now or hereafter, in military operations either in Mekran 
 or Seistan. 
 
 " In the Gilgit or northern section, on the other hand, both 
 political and defensive considerations are important, though the 
 dangers which originally caused the occupation of Gilgit have 
 been now to a greater or less extent provided against. Yet when 
 the Russians, under the proposed agreement, come into occupa- 
 tion of Shignan they will be within twenty-four hours' march of 
 Chitral and Mastuj ; and no treaty will secure these regions from 
 political intrigue." 
 
 On the same day the Secretary of State sent the following 
 despatch to the Governor-General of India in Council, dated 
 India Office, London, 24th August, 1894. This despatch shows 
 what were the Indian Government's official proposals in dealing 
 with them : 
 
 " Despatch from the Secretary of State to the Governor- 
 General of India in Council, dated India Office, London, 
 24th August, 1894. 
 " MY LORD, 
 
 " I have given very careful consideration to the Letter 
 of your Excellency's Government in the Foreign Department, 
 dated loth July, 1894, regarding the arrangements to be 
 made for the delimitation of the Amir's boundary on the 
 Waziri frontier, and the consequent arrangements for the
 
 358 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 protection of our territory to the south of the Gomal from 
 raids, for the safety of commerce and for establishing in the 
 interests of peace a certain amount of control over the Waziri 
 tribes. 
 
 " 2. Your letter dwells on the frequency of raids and outrages, 
 especially during the first five months of the year, subsequent, 
 that is to say, to the arrangement with the Amir, by which 
 Waziristan was definitely brought within your sphere of 
 influence ; on the extreme difficulty you have had in obtain- 
 ing any reparation for these outrages, and on the unsatisfactory 
 and undignified conditions under which even this slight 
 reparation has been obtained ; on the necessity more than 
 once imposed on you already of moving troops into the 
 Gomal ; and on the absolute inability of the Waziri head- 
 men, in existing conditions, to coerce their recalcitrant tribes- 
 men. You lay stress also on your responsibility, not only 
 for protecting your own territory and the trading caravans 
 that make use of it, but also, under the recent engagement 
 with the Amir for preventing Waziri raids into His High- 
 ness's territory, you express your conviction that the policy 
 of controlling these tribes entirely from without by means of 
 tribal subsidies and levy posts without a military backing 
 has failed, and you consider that the time has now come for 
 substituting a policy of more effective protection and of closer 
 relations with the headmen of the Waziri tribes. 
 
 " 3. The present time, you point out, is specially oppor- 
 tune as the tribes are aware that the Amir has foregone all 
 claim to their allegiance, and as there will be a considerable 
 military force collected for the purpose of escorting the 
 Delimitation Commission. 
 
 " 4. Your proposals, as I understand them, are that a 
 portion of the military force collected for the protection of 
 the Delimitation Commission should be left as a permanent 
 garrison either at Spin or in some other suitable locality ; 
 that this would not involve an addition to the force already 
 on the frontier ; but merely a redistribution of it ; that as 
 a preliminary a political officer should be sent to explain
 
 At the India Office 359 
 
 the measure to the headmen of the tribes and if possible 
 obtain their consent ; that no tribute should be exacted from 
 the Waziris, who will be controlled as at present under a 
 system of tribal jirgas, but that increased allowances should 
 be given to headmen and service allowances to the tribes for 
 the employment of levies, the object being, as explained in 
 your I3th paragraph, to discharge your obligations in pro- 
 tecting your borders and posts, and the Gomal caravan route, 
 and in affording to those sections and leading men of the 
 tribes who have thrown in their lot with you by co-operating 
 in the coercion of turbulent characters and the punishment 
 of murderers and robbers, that protection which they 
 deserve, and without which they cannot maintain their 
 position. 
 
 "5.1 have likewise given very careful consideration to the 
 minute recorded by the three members of your Council who 
 dissent from the policy advocated in your letter. They are 
 of opinion that the measures proposed, while not going far 
 enough to secure effective control, will inevitably lead to 
 resistance and involve the ultimate destruction of Waziri 
 independence and the assumption of administrative control. 
 They deprecate the assumption of any responsibility towards 
 the Amir to prevent raids across his border, as a consequence 
 of the recent agreement with him, and are of opinion that the 
 existing difficulties may be met by a continuance of the past 
 policy of control from without, supplemented by strengthening 
 our defensive arrangements on the Gomal, and punishing the 
 tribes, when absolutely necessary, by means of hostile expedi- 
 tions sent into their country. And finally, they draw a 
 strong argument from the present state of the finances against 
 incurring at the present time any avoidable expenditure. 
 
 " 6. I should certainly have preferred to adopt the appa- 
 rently less costly and less extensive programme which their 
 minute advocates, if it held out any hope, in my opinion, of 
 enabling you adequately to fulfil your obligations in regard 
 to your own territory and the trade routes which go through 
 it, and to the Amir and to the well affected among the
 
 360 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 tribesmen themselves. But your letter and the correspondence 
 which it encloses convince me that this is not the case, and I 
 concur with you that recourse to punitive expeditions from 
 a distant base would in the long run prove far more expensive, 
 and that, in the existing state of our relations with Afghanistan 
 and with the tribes, it is essential that your Government should 
 be in a position to maintain, if necessary, an effective control 
 over Waziristan. 
 
 " 7. I consent, therefore, to your adopting the policy of 
 which your Excellency's Letter furnishes the outline. The 
 principle which I desire to lay down for your guidance is that 
 in the execution of this policy your proceedings should be 
 directed exclusively towards the objects stated in paragraph 
 13 of your letter and recapitulated in this despatch, and 
 should be strictly confined to such measures and operations 
 as may be necessary to their fulfilment. I need hardly add 
 that, since I sanction with reluctance any assumption of fresh 
 responsibilities, and any increase of the public expenditure, 
 I do so in this instance on the understanding that your inter- 
 ference with the tribes and your outlay of money in Waziristan 
 will be kept within the narrowest limits that are practicable. 
 As soon as the details of your scheme can be formulated I 
 shall be glad to learn from you what is to be the strength of 
 the proposed post, and the arrangements for additional levy 
 posts and to receive an estimate of the expenditure involved. 
 
 " I have, etc., 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 Arrangements were at once made by the Indian Government 
 to carry out these instructions. 
 
 " I am much relieved," wrote Lord Elgin, " that you have 
 approved our policy for Waziristan. We have given instructions 
 that the frontier officers shall continue their negotiations with the 
 tribes and obtain, if possible, the punishment of the murderers of 
 the Maliks. We have also ordered the Waziris to be informed 
 that we are going to send a force there for the purposes of the 
 delimitation." The difficulties, however, of the delimitation were
 
 At the India Office 361 
 
 great. There was a discrepancy between the maps of the British 
 Government and those supplied by the Amir to his Commissioners, 
 and the Waziristan Commissioners could not begin their work 
 until that point was cleared up. The Amir's preparations for the 
 demarcation, to say the least of it, were not hurried, and the 
 Viceroy had still further difficulties to encounter in an expressed 
 military policy that it would be best to send a large force to march 
 through Waziristan, to smash the Waziris up in six weeks and then 
 proceed quietly with the demarcation. To this, however, Lord 
 Elgin would not assent without the sanction of the Secretary of 
 State, and he wrote to him as follows : 
 
 " The position of the demarcation of the Afghan frontier is 
 certainly critical. I think the Amir from the first has been keen 
 about demarcation ; indeed he wanted it done at once, before 
 the Durand Mission left Kabul. It seems to me not unreasonable 
 to suppose that the Amir did not rightly understand the maps 
 presented to him at Kabul, as it is always a difficult thing to 
 realize the full effect of a boundary line from seeing it drawn on 
 a sketch map. We know also that misleading reports have been 
 sent to him of what has taken place on the frontier, and I cannot, 
 under these circumstances, be surprised if he manifested some 
 annoyance. We are telling the Amir plainly that we must go by 
 the Convention and the map attached to it, and his Commis- 
 sioners must do the same. In the meantime it is obviously out 
 of the question to stop our military preparations. We have issued 
 orders to inform the Waziris we are coming, not only to demarcate 
 but to arrange matters with them. As the Commander-in-Chief 
 says of his responsibility that it is necessary to mobilize to have 
 men in reserve, ready to move at a moment's notice, but not cross- 
 ing the frontier till the necessity arises, we felt we could not 
 refuse. But the force actually used is not to be increased in any 
 way." 
 
 On October 2Oth the Delimitation Commissioner, Mr. R. I. 
 Bruce, C.I.E., arrived with his escort. The Wano Maliks were 
 friendly and exhibited an eager desire for the occupation of Wano 
 and for service under Government, but on November 3rd the 
 Mulla Powindah, with a force of between twelve hundred and two
 
 362 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 thousand men, attempted to rush the British camp, with heavy 
 loss to both sides, and Mr. Bruce requested the Commander-in 
 Chief to let him have a regiment and two guns. The Viceroy stil* 
 tried to prevent further fighting and to maintain as far as he 
 could under the altered circumstances the professions of peaceful 
 intentions which the Secretary of State had laid down as the basis 
 of his policy, and in these endeavours he was greatly indebted to 
 that distinguished soldier, the late Sir George White. He also 
 authorized Mr. Bruce to issue another proclamation renewing the 
 promise of the Indian Government not to annex the country and 
 to respect local institutions. The work of demarcation continued 
 most amicably between the Amir's and the British Commissioners. 
 
 On hearing of the attack on the British camp the Secretary of 
 State wrote : "I was sorry to receive the news of the sharp 
 skirmish in Waziristan. The number of casualties is heavy, but 
 the troops seem to have behaved very well. Though I regret the 
 necessity for further punitive action I approve of the military 
 arrangements and the instructions that you have issued. I am 
 glad to note that it seems probable that further fighting will be 
 avoided." 
 
 The necessary punitive expedition under the command of Sir 
 W. Lockhart was authorized on i5th December and arranged by 
 the Commander-in-Chief. " I fear," wrote my father again, " that 
 further operations in Waziristan are imminent. It is very un- 
 fortunate that it should be so ; but it is impossible for you to recede 
 from the position you have been forced to take. I think you are 
 quite right to leave the responsibility for the advance of the 
 reserve brigade to the Commander-in-Chief. You had in my 
 opinion no option but to accept his advice, as he is responsible for 
 the military operations. 
 
 " It was necessary to make preparations to deal with the tribes- 
 men promptly, and leave no doubt as to the success of the opera- 
 tions should it prove necessary to take strong measures." 
 
 Sir W. Lockhart was instructed to keep out the idea of punish- 
 ment of the tribe as much as possible, and to make it clear that 
 what the Indian Government insisted upon was compliance with 
 their terms in reparation of the attack upon the British camp, and
 
 At the India Office 363 
 
 the punishment only of those who were responsible for it. Also, 
 he was to offer an asylum on British territory to all friendly Maliks 
 with their families and flocks, and to secure as far as possible the 
 co-operation or at any rate the neutrality of the other tribes 
 through whose country the force had to advance, and to issue a 
 proclamation to that effect. Of this policy the Secretary of State 
 entirely approved, though again he struck the warning note 
 against any but absolutely necessary military hostilities. To 
 Lord Elgin : 
 
 " I am in hearty accord with you in respect of the Frontier 
 policy. We must arrest the unwise attempt of the military for- 
 ward party, and while keeping one foot firmly down where necessary, 
 discourage the costly hunger for constant annexation." And again 
 a few days later on January nth, 1895, he said : "I am glad to 
 see from the telegrams that the operations in Waziristan are being 
 successfully carried out with comparatively little bloodshed. I 
 entirely approve the terms of the proclamation, which appears to 
 me to state the objects of the expedition clearly and to disown 
 any intention of permanent occupation of the country in unmis- 
 takable terms." This force under Sir W. Lockhart having exacted 
 reparation, withdrew in March, 1895, leaving a wing of native 
 infantry as a temporary measure at Barwand, in addition to the 
 escort of the Delimitation Commissioners. 
 
 In a letter on i5th May, 1895, the Government of India sub- 
 mitted revised proposals for the settlement of Waziristan. They 
 had come to the conclusion as the result of further experience, 
 that the proposed post in the neighbourhood of Wano would not 
 be sufficient to exert a restraining influence over the Waziris gener- 
 ally, but with a small post at Wano and a strong one in Upper 
 Dawar they should be able to dominate effectively the whole of 
 Waziristan. This letter was received on June 4th, but my father 
 relinquished office without having replied to it. In August 
 Lord George Hamilton approved the Government of India's 
 proposals. 
 
 In January, 1895, a reply was received from the Amir to the 
 invitation to visit England. He accepted it if his health allowed > 
 but, as that seemed doubtful, he definitely accepted for one of his
 
 364 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 sons. For another six weeks or two months nothing further was 
 heard, and then it was announced that the Amir himself was not 
 well enough to travel ; in his uncertain state of health it was not 
 advisable for his elder son to leave the country, so the invitation 
 to England was accepted by his second son, Nasrulla Khan, for 
 himself and a suite of seventy. As there was not time then for 
 Nasrulla to visit the Viceroy on his way to England he was invited 
 to do so on his return journey. 
 
 The R.I. M.S. Clive was detailed to bring the Shahzada and his 
 suite, and they arrived in London on 24th May. 
 
 There was an opinion in some circles in England that such an 
 invitation might have been accepted by the elder son, if the Amir 
 himself was not equal to coming ; but the Secretary of State was 
 strongly of opinion that all such criticism should be suppressed, 
 that Nasrulla should be treated as his father's representative, 
 and everything done to avoid giving offence. 
 
 The English Government took Dorchester House, Colonel 
 Holford's fine mansion in Park Lane, for the occupation of the 
 Shahzada and his suite. Colonel Talbot was in charge of the 
 party, and found it a somewhat onerous task. 
 
 On the 25th May, the Prince of Wales and other royal personages 
 called upon him, and he returned the calls, and in the evening he 
 dined at the Secretary of State's banquet at the India Office and 
 attended the birthday reception afterwards at Brook House. 
 The Queen received him unofficially at Windsor on the 27th, and 
 he attended a levee at St. James's Palace. On 2nd July he paid 
 his official visit to Her Majesty and lunched with her, my father 
 being the Minister in attendance. He paid his farewell visit on 
 2oth July, but he did not leave England till the 3rd September. 
 Nasrulla brought with him an autograph letter from the Amir 
 to my father. It was written on a kind of illuminated parchment 
 enclosed in first a sealed paper envelope, then a plain linen bag, 
 sealed, then another sealed linen bag, which was addressed, and 
 lastly in a blue and gold outer bag bound with a gold cord. 
 
 " Translation of a letter from His Highness, the Amir to the 
 Right Hon. Henry Fowler, Secretary of State, dated 26th Showal- 
 ul-Mukarran, 1312," which corresponds to the 23rd April, 1895 :
 
 At the India Office 365 
 
 " After Compliments, 
 
 " May it be known to you that as at this time the 
 light of our eyes and precious (son) Shahzada Nasrulla Khan 
 has been appointed to salaam Her Majesty the Great Queen 
 of England and to meet kind friends in those parts, and the 
 loyal and trustworthy Mr. Thomas Acquin Martin, who is an old 
 servant of ours, has been ordered and nominated to accompany 
 our said son, therefore we have written this friendly letter 
 in a few lines so that the said loyal servant may present our 
 friendly letter to you and inquire on our behalf after your 
 health and may also arrange a meeting between our son and 
 you so that my fortunate and precious son may also himself 
 derive pleasure and benefit from a happy meeting with your 
 and may also convey on the part of ourselves who are your 
 sincere friends greeting of pleasure and thoughts of sincere 
 attachment, and single-heartedness, and may himself write 
 an account of your good health after he has seen you, so that 
 he may be satisfied and easy in mind. 
 
 " For the rest, what more can be written than our hope 
 (to see you) and our loyal thoughts and wish for your pro- 
 sperity and advancement and good fortune. May you long 
 live happy and prosperous. 
 
 " (Signed) AMIR ABDUR RAHMAN, an undoubted friend 
 of the British Government." 
 
 The writing looked very much like Chinese to an utterly 
 uneducated eye. 
 
 The programme for Nasrulla' s visit was made out with the 
 greatest care and forethought. The entertainment of such foreign 
 Princes is beset with many difficulties. But my father worked 
 hard to make it a success. 
 
 On June 7th he wrote to Lord Elgin : 
 
 " My brief Whitsun holiday was cut short by my having to 
 return to London to be present at the reception which was given 
 yesterday by the Corporation of London to the Shahzada. To-day 
 I am also going with him down the river to see the docks and ship- 
 ping. The review at Aldershot on Wednesday was a great success ;
 
 366 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and, in fact, so far all the arrangements have been satis- 
 factory." 
 
 It was very interesting to hear the views of these Afghans on 
 modern England. Not only did they seem to be of such a different 
 race from ourselves, but of such a different era altogether. The 
 date of the letter, 1312, seemed so much more appropriate than 
 1895 to these people and their generation. It was like a glimpse 
 into the far-away, both as regards time and place, to see at day- 
 break in the Dorchester House garden in Park Lane, the group of 
 Eastern figures kneeling with faces towards Mecca, and chanting 
 in the plaintive monotone " There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet 
 is his prophet." One of the things which my father had to see 
 to was an exact location of the direction of Mecca as considered 
 from Park Lane ! 
 
 Of Nasrulla's conversation my father repeated little. I doubt 
 whether the Shahzada talked to him with any freedom, as he was 
 in his eyes, more of an Imperial institution than an actual man. 
 He paid great deference to his orders, but that was all. With 
 some of the members of his suite my sister and I had a good deal 
 of talk of course, through an interpreter ; and one man I specially 
 remember as expressing himself intensely shocked by the pro- 
 ceedings at a State Ball, which we had all attended the night 
 before. Naturally I was staggered by such an opinion, but ruth- 
 lessly pursued it, until I discovered it was because the ladies them- 
 selves danced, which he considered a most improper proceeding. 
 The stately figures of those state quadrilles were most humorously 
 considered as " loose." It was difficult not to laugh. It was only 
 quite the subordinates of the suite who condescended to talk to 
 my mother and the other ladies present, but to my father and 
 brother as men, the greatest deference was paid. This was when 
 the whole party came to tea with us in Princes Gate. Epithets 
 formed the scaffolding of their expression, which were rather 
 quaint though embarrassingly personal. I was surprised at being 
 called " Lady of the blue eyes," and my mother was overpowered 
 at being addressed as " Tender mother of millions." It seemed 
 to strain her domestic capacities even beyond the limit of her 
 elastic heart.
 
 At the India Office 367 
 
 My father used to think that nothing impresses a foreign poten- 
 tate more than a drive right through London ; the immense extent 
 of that ever-extending city is a simple fact, and a most powerful 
 every-day witness of the greatness of a country which possesses 
 such a capital as London. He was himself never blunted to the 
 wonder of that panorama, and he took care that the son and 
 representative of the Amir of Afghanistan should see London 
 from one end to the other. 
 
 " Nasrulla's visit has," wrote the Secretary of State to the 
 Viceroy, " so far been a success, and I think he is thoroughly 
 satisfied with his reception." Before that visit was concluded the 
 change of Government had taken place, and Lord George 
 Hamilton had the difficult duty of bringing it diplomatically 
 to a close, and embarking the young Shahzada on his return 
 journey. 
 
 During the last few months that my father was Secretary of 
 State for India he had the one serious illness of his life. It began 
 with an attack of influenza, and heart failure was threatened. As 
 this occurred during the heat of the Chitral controversy he prob- 
 ably put a greater strain upon his powers than they were strong 
 enough at that crisis to stand. All the despatches and papers 
 were submitted to him in bed, and he never laid down the reins 
 even for periods of much-needed rest. My parents never forgot 
 Sir William Harcourt's great personal kindness during this anxious 
 time. He would come most days and sit with my father, giving 
 him the benefit and tonic of his advice, and such strength as his 
 vigorous personality was able to impart. He proved himself 
 much more than a colleague he was a true counsellor and friend. 
 The worries and weakness which illness brings are doubly difficult 
 to bear when the heavy weight of such momentous and imperial 
 ruling lies upon the sick-bed, as did the Chitral decisions upon 
 my father's. He drew an overdraft upon his reserve of strength, 
 and he could not help but do so, seeing the greatness of the account 
 which he was obliged, at that crisis, to meet. To anxious watchers, 
 of whom, of course, my mother was chief, this was a terrible ordeal ; 
 and again and again have I heard her say with gratitude, what 
 strength and comfort Sir William Harcourt's presence brought
 
 368 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 nto that sick room. In March, 1895, during his illness, he received 
 the following letter : 
 
 " Buckingham Palace, 
 
 " March 5th, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " Referring to our conversation of a few evenings 
 ago I took an opportunity of mentioning Lady Sandhurst to 
 the Queen for the Crown of India, who at once remarked 
 that she thought Mrs. Fowler had not had it, but certainly 
 ought to, in a way that made me think it had accidentally 
 slipped her memory ; so this accompanying letter puts it 
 right. 
 
 " I moreover have an idea that the Queen may wish to 
 confer it personally, but as this is not much more than an 
 idea I daresay you will only take it as such. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " FLEETWOOD J. EDWARDS." 
 
 And a few days later : 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " March I2th, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. CAMPBELL, 
 
 " In reply to your letter of yesterda3*, the Queen 
 quite understands, and at the same time much regrets, that 
 through illness the Secretary of State for India is unable 
 to personally acknowledge, at present, his gratitude for the 
 bestowal by Her Majesty on Mrs. Fowler, of the Order of the 
 Crown of India. 
 
 " The Queen trusts that Mr. Fowler is progressing favour- 
 ably in health. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " ARTHUR BIGGE. 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " May i6th, 1895. 
 
 " The Queen hopes she may herself confer the Crown 
 of India on Mrs, Fowler on her return from Scotland."


 
 At the India Office 369 
 
 In reply to these my father wrote, directly he was well enough : 
 
 "15, Princes Gate, 
 
 " S.W. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler presents his humble duty to Your 
 Majesty and asks leave to tender his grateful acknowledg- 
 ment of the high honour Your Majesty has conferred upon 
 him by granting to Mrs. Fowler the Order of the Imperial 
 Crown of India. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler is deeply concerned at the necessity for the 
 military operations recently undertaken by the Government 
 of India, but he regards the duty of relieving Your Majesty's 
 representative at Chitral as of supreme importance, and he 
 trusts that the expedition which is now advancing towards 
 Chitral will rapidly and successfully accomplish its object." 
 
 To which the Queen herself replied : 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " May lyth, 1895. 
 
 " The Queen has to thank Mr. Fowler most sincerely 
 for his kind letter and the very kind way in which he has 
 attended to her wishes, and the pains he has taken to ascertain 
 the wording of the Establishment of the Order of the Indian 
 Empire. 
 
 " The Queen Empress has been much interested with the 
 account of Nasrulla Khan and would like to retain it if she 
 may." 
 
 He also wrote to my mother : 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " Whitehall, S.W. 
 
 " Tuesday. 
 " MY DARLING LOVE, 
 
 " I have just got a note from Buckingham Palace 
 from the Queen's secretary as follows : 
 
 " ' DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 ' The Queen desires me to inform you that she 
 
 24
 
 37 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 wishes to confer the Order of the Crown of India upon 
 Mrs. Fowler and Lady Sandhurst.' 
 
 " I send you my dearest congratulations and am delighted 
 that you are to be enrolled among the great ladies who have 
 this distinguished order. Love to the girls, 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 After the Indian Secretary had recovered from his illness the 
 Queen herself suggested that, though contrary to precedent for a 
 Secretary of State in the House of Commons to be absent while 
 Parliament was sitting, he should be her Minister in Attendance at 
 Balmoral for a period of change and rest to recruit his health after 
 his recent serious attack. And to this kind consideration on the 
 part of Her Majesty he probably owed his complete recovery. 
 
 Before he left Balmoral, the Queen gave him a large engraving 
 with these written words : 
 
 " The Queen sends Mr. Fowler an engraving which may interest 
 him, being the representation of herself and all her children and 
 grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they were in 1887 at the 
 time of the Jubilee, and which she hopes he will accept in recol 
 lection of his visit here this spring." 
 
 She also presented him with two beautifully bound copies of 
 her own " Journals in the Highlands," an autograph inscription 
 inside, and a signed photograph of herself. These gifts he 
 acknowledged thus : 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 1895. 
 
 " Mr. Secretary Fowler presents his humble duty 
 to Your Majesty and asks for permission to tender his most 
 grateful acknowledgment of Your Majesty's gracious gift, 
 ' The Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands,' 
 and of ' More Leaves from the Journal of Life in the High- 
 lands,' and of Your Majesty's photograph and autograph. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler will always cherish this expression of Your 
 Majesty's favour as a memento of the visit to Balmoral in
 
 At the India Office 371 
 
 which he enjoyed the high honour and the great pleasure of 
 being the Minister in Attendance on Your Majesty." 
 
 On June 25th, just after his return to London and the resigna- 
 tion of the Government, he received another autograph letter 
 from the Queen. All the letters from Her Majesty, included in 
 this book, were written throughout and directed by herself. 
 
 " Windsor Castle. 
 
 " The Queen Empress returns the corrected warrant and 
 thanks Mr. Fowler for having it so quickly rectified. What 
 photographs would he wish the Queen to send him for the 
 album for the Shahzada ? 
 
 " The Queen Empress will very deeply regret losing Mr. 
 Fowler's valuable services. 
 
 " June 25th, 1895." 
 
 On June 30th Sir Fleetwood Edwards wrote to him about the 
 proposed decoration of the Grand Commander of the Star of 
 India, an honour bestowed upon him on the conclusion of his 
 Indian Secretaryship of State, and the Order of the Crown 
 of India, which was to be conferred upon my mother. 
 
 " Windsor Castle, 
 
 " June 30th, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " I have ascertained that the Queen will give the 
 Crown of India to Mrs. Fowler on Monday next when you 
 come down to deliver up your Seals. So if you and Mrs. 
 Fowler come by the 1-15 p.m. from Paddington there will be 
 a carriage to meet you. I think you asked me to ascertain 
 the nature of the ceremony so far as Mrs. Fowler is concerned. 
 It will be a very quiet one, and Mrs. Fowler will of course be 
 in ordinary morning dress. 
 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 " F. J. EDWARDS." 
 24*
 
 372 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Accordingly my parents both went down to Windsor, and it 
 was, I believe, a unique experience for husband and wife to be 
 invested with Orders on the same day. 
 
 A considerable number of Ministers on both sides were deliver- 
 ing up and receiving the Seals of Office on that occasion, and 
 my mother said that a kind of boyish nervousness prevailed as they 
 waited to be sent one by one into the presence of the Queen. She 
 described how they all felt rather as if they were being sent for 
 into the Headmaster's study, and were quite relieved when another 
 name than their own was called. She herself was the first to be 
 summoned, and the Queen herself pinned on the Order of the 
 Crown of India, and said a few gracious words. When my father 
 went afterwards he did not know that his two ceremonies, that 
 of knighthood and of delivering up the Seals, had to be distinct, 
 and that between he ought to go out of the room for a second and 
 re-enter it, but the Queen smilingly put him right. 
 
 On the change of Government Lord Sandhurst wrote to my 
 father from Bombay : 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " It is with very great regret that I see the resigna- 
 tion of the Government, and I can assure you that in Bombay 
 all will immensely regret your retirement from the India 
 Office. While you have been there, the attitude you have 
 taken up, and the speeches you have made have commanded 
 universal respect and admiration. In India it seems the 
 only interest in English politics is who is the Secretary of 
 State ; and we ' shall be most fortunate if your suc- 
 cessor will command the same confidence that you have 
 done. 
 
 " I have to thank you for much personal kindness and I 
 am extremely sorry to lose you as my chief, 
 
 " Believe me, dear Mr. Fowler, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " SANDHURST." 
 
 This letter crossed one my father had written.
 
 SIR HENRY FOWLER. G.C.S.I.
 
 At the India Office 373 
 
 " DEAR SANDHURST, 
 
 " You will have seen by the telegrams in the news- 
 papers that we have resigned and are now only holding office 
 pending the appointment of our successors. I have to thank 
 you for several letters which pressure of business has com- 
 pelled me to leave unacknowledged ; but which I read with 
 interest. 
 
 " This is myjfarewell letter to you as Secretary of State, and 
 I cannot end it without expressing my regret for the severance 
 of an official connection, which, short though it has been, 
 has been of the most cordial kind and makes me, on leaving 
 office, recollect with perfect satisfaction that Her Majesty, 
 on my advice, appointed you to an office in which I feel sure 
 you will render great service to the Government of India, 
 and permanently enhance your political and administrative 
 reputation. 
 
 " I am, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 There was one notable piece of work of my father's in connection 
 with India, which though beginning with his Secretaryship of 
 State was not completed by him until after he had been out of 
 office for some years, and that was his work for Indian 
 finance. 
 
 As early as 13 April, 1894, Lord Harris alluded to the great 
 disadvantage to India of the fall of the rupee. " I am sorry to 
 say," he wrote to the Secretary of State, " we are losing a lot of 
 good men just now, particularly on the judicial side. The fact 
 is that a man with a wife is better off on 1,000 a year at home 
 than on Rs.2,30o out here, with the rupee at is. 2d. or under ; and 
 I fear you will find it the same all over India." And the Secretary 
 of State as a practical business man replied : "I am sorry to hear 
 what you say as to the effect of the fall in exchange in causing 
 you to lose many good men prematurely. I hope, however, that
 
 374 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 this effect will not be very far-reaching. Apart from prospect of 
 advancement I cannot but think that it would be in most cases 
 more advantageous to an officer to draw Rs.2,3OO a month, a con- 
 siderable part of which would at least be spent in India where 
 its purchasing power is probably not seriously diminished and 
 which even at is. 2d. is equal to 1,600 a year, than 1,000 a year 
 in England especially as, if he has to remit some of his pay the 
 Exchange Compensation allowance enables him to do so up to 
 1,000 a year at is. 6d. and if he has no remittance to make, 
 the allowance is still granted in addition to salary. This arrange- 
 ment appears to be as liberal as the present state of finances would 
 justify but, of course, it still leaves salaries far below what they 
 were in the palmy days when the rupee was equivalent to 2s." 
 My father never believed in over-stating a case to strengthen it. 
 In this reply he first eliminated all that could savour of exag- 
 geration and put the case on a purely business-like footing, and 
 then he turned his attention towards the actual wrong that re- 
 quired remedying. Lord Harris, from all the letters, seems to 
 have been greatly depressed by the financial state of affairs. " It 
 is taking all the life out of us," he wrote. And certainly nothing 
 tends more quicklv to diminishing spirit and light-heartedness 
 than a creeping and unpreventable diminution of means. All 
 Indian life was touched by this paralysis. " Your calculations 
 as to the respective values of a Collector's pay and a pension of 
 1,000," wrote the Governor of Bombay again, " are no doubt 
 quite correct from a hard-cash point of view ; but human nature is 
 also a factor and an important factor." 
 
 The Governor of Madras also wrote as early as March, 1894 . 
 " Public attention is being concentrated on the all-absorbing 
 financial question, and the compensation allowance is being 
 vigorously attacked." He also pointed out that the salaries 
 quoted in the Civil Service lists are at an assumed 2s. rupee, and 
 therefore in the rise of promotion the Indian Civil servants were 
 not receiving the salaries which they had looked to as their due, 
 and which the falling rupee was diminishing practically by nearly 
 one-half, and new candidates had not the same inducement 
 to join. " The Exchange Compensation," replied the Secretary
 
 At the India Office 375 
 
 of State, " was settled before I assumed my present office. 
 There is no doubt that the grievance it is intended to alleviate 
 is a very genuine one, and I think that the feeling here is that 
 the arrangement which has been made is on the whole as satis- 
 factory as could be expected. It would certainly be a very serious 
 matter if the fall in the rupee has the effect of causing the older 
 officers to retire from the service prematurely, but I am not aware 
 that up to the present there has been any material increase in 
 premature retirements, and I hope that the emoluments of the 
 higher offices in the services are still sufficient to make a continuance 
 in them preferable to retirement on pension. With regard to the 
 recruits, the recent revision of the conditions of entrance has been 
 successful so far in attracting what I believe to be a good class of 
 young men, who have taken high honours at our Universities, and 
 the Indian Civil Service still offers attractions which are superior 
 in many respects to those of other professions." 
 
 During the whole time my father was at the India Office the 
 difficulty and danger of the falling rupee overshadowed it and 
 it was as late as 1898, three years after he left office, before he was 
 able to practically help towards the settlement of this important 
 question. The following memorandum from the India Office 
 and the letter which appeared in the Times after his death in 1911 
 signed "A." gives the best possible definition of my father's 
 connection with the Indian Currency Question : 
 
 " In 1893 the Indian Mints were closed to the coinage of silver 
 for the public. This was intended to lead to the permanent 
 establishment of the exchange value of the rupee at is. 4d. and, 
 as events ultimately proved, was by far the most important step 
 towards that end. But for nearly five years after the closing 
 of the Mints the rupee failed to rise to the desired value ; and in 
 1898 the Government of India, desiring to hasten the rise, sub- 
 mitted to the Secretary of State drastic proposals for that purpose, 
 including the sale of bullion of at least 6,000,000 worth of rupees 
 and the issue of a sterling loan to make good the loss involved. 
 In April, 1898, the Secretary of State referred these proposals for 
 consideration to a large Departmental Committee with Sir H.
 
 376 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Fowler as Chairman. By the time the Committee reported (July, 
 1899), the rupee had risen to is. 4d. and the necessity, if it existed, 
 for action of the kind proposed by the Government of India had 
 passed away. But Sir H. Fowler's Committee did extremely 
 valuable service as follows : 
 
 " i. It considered with remarkable thoroughness all the alterna- 
 tive schemes for Indian currency for which responsible advocates 
 could be found, viz. : (A) the continuance of the policy, inaugurated 
 in 1893, of keeping the Mints closed to the coinage of silver for 
 the public and attempting to maintain the rupee at is. 4d. ; 
 (B) keeping the Mints closed, but reducing to is. 3d. the value at 
 which the attempt should be made to maintain the rupee ; (C) 
 re-opening the Mints to the free coinage of silver. A large majority 
 of the Committee strongly approved the first alternative ; their 
 opinion carried at the time very great weight indeed ; and it has 
 been brilliantly justified by success. 
 
 "2. The Committee recommended the formation of what is now 
 known as the Gold Standard Reserve. This Reserve, now 
 amounting to nearly 20,000,000, is one of the most important 
 safeguards for the maintenance of the exchange value of the rupee. 
 The Committee also recommended that the British sovereign and 
 half-sovereign should be made legal tender in India. This recom- 
 mendation was in due course carried out, and has been of value 
 in providing an additional element of stability in the Indian Cur- 
 rency system. The further recommendation that gold should be 
 coined in India has not been carried out. 
 
 " The qualities displayed by Sir H. Fowler as Chairman of the 
 Committee were as follows : 
 
 " i. He never pretended to be a master of all the intricacies and 
 technicalities of the subject. He confined himself to important 
 questions of principle. 
 
 " 2. Nevertheless, his strength of character and aptitude for 
 business made him a most powerful and influential chairman. 
 On matters of procedure, an important point in a large committee 
 composed of conflicting elements, his word was law. In matters 
 relating to the subject matter of the inquiry, it was listened to 
 with very great respect.
 
 At the India Office 377 
 
 "3. He made the Committee work. In little more than a year 
 they held 43 meetings, examined 49 witnesses (to whom they 
 addressed 13,122 questions) and produced a Report which, though 
 not long (as such documents go), needed very careful drafting in 
 view of the difficult and controversial nature of the questions 
 discussed." 
 
 The then Secretary of State wrote to congratulate the late 
 Indian Secretary on the publication of his report : 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " July loth, 1899. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " You must let me congratulate you upon the 
 admirable arrangement, lucidity and sequence of your report. 
 It is one of the most convincing documents I have ever read, 
 and will, I am sure, receive unqualified approval from 
 economists and experts. 
 
 ' You have done a great service not only to the Indian 
 exchequer, but to the currency system of the world. 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " GEORGE HAMILTON." 
 
 And again a few months later, with the gift of a massive silver 
 inkstand, copied from the old inkstands which were formerly 
 used at Cabinets : 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " November 2nd, 1899. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " The Council of India have asked me to forward to 
 you as a small memento, the accompanying inkstand, to note 
 the great service you have rendered to India by your chair- 
 manship of the Currency Committee of 1898-99. 
 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " GEORGE HAMILTON." 
 
 My father's work in connection with the Currency question was
 
 378 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 thus alluded to in a letter which appeared after his death in the 
 Times of March ist, 1911 : 
 
 " LORD WOLVERHAMPTON AND INDIAN CURRENCY. 
 
 To the Editor of the Times. 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " In your interesting biography of the late Lord 
 Wolverhampton you make no reference to his important 
 and valuable service as Chairman of the Indian Currency 
 Committee of 1898-9. 
 
 " The main business of the Committee was, first, to report 
 in the light of experience, on the soundness or otherwise of 
 the main lines of the currency system introduced into India 
 in 1893, when, in accordance with the recommendations of 
 Lord Herschell's Committee, the Calcutta and Bombay Mints 
 were closed to the free coinage of silver for the public, and, 
 secondly, to suggest any measures that might seem desirable 
 for the improvement or completion of the system established 
 in 1893. 
 
 " The inquiry was one of unusual difficulty. The subject 
 matter was at once highly technical and highly controversial. 
 The members were scarcely a body of experts, but had been 
 selected almost on the principle of allowing a representative 
 to each interest claiming to be substantially affected by the 
 Indian currency system. On the same principle, applica- 
 tions from persons desiring to give evidence were acceded 
 to with considerable liberality. Thus the duties of the Chair- 
 man were very onerous and delicate ; and the skill and 
 assiduous attention with which they were performed called 
 forth general admiration. 
 
 "It is scarcely necessary to add that the results of the 
 Committee's work have proved highly important to India and 
 the financial world generally. They include the final decision 
 to adhere to the policy inaugurated on the advice of the 
 Herschell Committee, the statutory recognition of the 
 sovereign as legal tender in India and the establishment of a 
 separate fund (now known as the Gold Standard Reserve)
 
 At the India Office 379 
 
 from the profits of such coinage of rupees as the Government 
 of India from time to time undertakes. 
 
 " I am, etc., 
 
 "A. 
 " February 27th, 1911." 
 
 So ended Henry Fowler's connection with the India Office. 
 He parted from it with the deepest regret ; and with equal regret 
 did India, both in her great Department at home and in her 
 wider local and public opinion, part from him. He was a true 
 friend of India and he was a strong friend of India. And of all his 
 life's many works he looked back, perhaps with greater satisfaction 
 on his work for India than on any other. And the reason for this 
 was at the very root of him. India was above and beyond the 
 party politics which were for ever hampering and hindering 
 his ideal of that true statesmanship which he would wield 
 for the service of his sovereign, his Empire, and his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 For long afterwards, echoes from India kept sounding in my 
 father's ears of the appreciation there of his Secretaryship of 
 State. He had held that office for less than eighteen months, and 
 yet he had stamped his impress upon the unmalleable surface of 
 the Government of India in a really remarkable way. 
 
 " We cannot take leave of Sir Henry Fowler," wrote a leading 
 Indian paper, " without an expression of profound respect and 
 admiration for his disinterested and courageous conduct. Anglo- 
 Indians are almost to a man Unionists in English politics. We 
 do not suppose that one European in twenty amongst us is a 
 Radical ; but we all desire above all things that in matters con- 
 nected with India, the interests of the country should not be 
 subordinated to the exigencies of English political strife. No 
 Secretary of State could have resisted party demands and class 
 manoeuvres more manfully than Sir Henry Fowler. The title of 
 G.C.S.I. which the Queen has conferred upon him is a proper 
 tribute to his success in one of the most difficult and responsible 
 posts under the Crown. It is right and fitting that he should be 
 thus honoured by his Queen, but we think there should be added
 
 380 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to the decoration which he has received from his Sovereign, a 
 public acknowledgment from India of the respect and esteem in 
 which he is held, and of our hearty appreciation of the sound prin- 
 ciples upon which he has conducted the duties of his high office. 
 Such a tribute would come with the greatest significance from a 
 body of men, who, in English party politics are opposed to him ; 
 and it would be also a sign that in India we value the work done 
 for us all the more if it is independent of party exigencies or 
 interest. It was feared when Lord Kimberley's successor was 
 appointed that India would have cause to rue the day. The ex- 
 perience and record of the new Secretary of State were such as to 
 prejudice opinion in this country, where it was feared that he 
 would apply a parochial standard to Imperial questions of vast 
 importance and far-reaching consequences. No Secretary of 
 State could have started less hopefully, and we in India failed to 
 appreciate the advantage of the application of a fresh mind to 
 Eastern problems. But even in the speech at the farewell banquet 
 to Lord Sandhurst, a distinctive note of character was sounded. 
 Sir Henry might be wrong in the optimist view he took of Indian 
 finance, but there could be no mistake in the proud ring of national 
 assertiveness. ' There had been some silly talk of abandoning 
 India,' he remarked, ' but it was hardly necessary to notice such 
 foolishness. The English people will continue to hold India with 
 all the tenacity of grip characteristic of the race.' It was not long 
 before the people of India began to realize that in this reticent, 
 untried representative they had at last got the strong statesman 
 whom they so sadly needed. If the claims of Sir Henry Fowler 
 to the gratitude of India rested only on his action in connection 
 with the cotton duties, they would be irresistible, but there has 
 not been a question of importance to India during his term of 
 office which he has failed to mark by some fresh display of unflinch- 
 ing fairness and independence of judgment. In all matters affecting 
 the national safety and credit, he has shown that patriotism is 
 better than partisanship, and the record of his Indian career may 
 well serve to recall the vigorous policy of the Whigs in the best 
 days of Palmerston, before the genesis of Home Rule and the 
 apotheosis of Radicalism."
 
 At the India Office 381 
 
 And again another Indian paper said : 
 
 " In this change of Government India loses the best Secretary 
 of State it has had during recent years, and to that extent the 
 political change will be a subject of regret to all classes in this 
 country. With an unusually long experience of political ups and 
 downs as regards India, and refreshing our recollections by a 
 reference to historical authorities, we cannot recall any Secretary 
 of State of either political party who has rendered better service 
 to India than Sir Henry Fowler during his relatively short 
 incumbency at the India Office." 
 
 And such echoes as these have never, even to the present day, 
 died completely away. Again and again have we met men from 
 India soldiers, civilians, business men, chaplains, men of all ranks 
 and opinions and they have united in the one eulogy which India 
 pronounced on my father's rule there. 
 
 That great office gave him for one brief year and a half his 
 chance of proving his power of statesmanship, and I venture to 
 think and not I alone that it was a loss to the nations that all 
 further opportunities were closed to him until a decade later, 
 when, at seventy-five years of age, the fires were burning low, and 
 the forces weakened, and he felt his strength unequal to the strain 
 of taking up again the work of a great Department. 
 
 There are those who think that by nature he was not a leader 
 of men, but they can only judge by the conditions of circumstances 
 which failed to claim his powers of leadership. Had those circum- 
 stances been otherwise, it is impossible to diagnose what his 
 response would have been. And though he might not have 
 possessed that genius for leadership, which rises but rarely along 
 the line of the centuries, and cannot be denied; yet he was a man 
 who could always respond to a great call a man who had been 
 dowered with the ten talents, and who, by his worthy use of 
 them, might have been fitted for the ruling of the ten cities 
 which are hidden in the mists of the might-have-been. 
 
 Perhaps many who read this record have not realized how brief 
 were the days of his opportunity in the years of his manhood's 
 full strength. They only know how much he did, and how tightly 
 those three short years were packed with success. It seemed hard
 
 382 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 luck on him that the next Administration stretched out into 
 double its average span, and so he lost the opportunities that life 
 could never bring him again. 
 
 But Henry Fowler gauged not anything by luck, and it seems 
 sacrilege to apply such a word to the Providential leading in 
 which he so firmly believed, and to which he so confidently clung. 
 Though the hopes with which he began his waiting faded away 
 into the certainty that the time which was passing was taking his 
 chances with it, and that the second Unionist Government meant 
 the annihilation of his official life, yet he showed no bitterness, 
 nor impatience, nor complaining at events. There came out again 
 that striking characteristic of his the response to a great call. 
 He could not wait five minutes for his carriage or his dinner with- 
 out extreme impatience ; but to wait ten long years for what 
 would at best, then, come too late, was a big enough thing for 
 Henry Fowler to do, and he did it in the quietness and confidence 
 which alone supplies such strength.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 1895 1896 
 
 OUT OF OFFICE 
 
 " A life in civic action warm, 
 
 A soul on highest mission sent, 
 A potent voice of Parliament, 
 A pillar steadfast in the storm."- 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 AS early as February, 1895, in a letter to Lord Elgin my father 
 said : " You must not be surprised at any sudden change in 
 the Government here. Our majority is small and uncertain." In 
 June the actual blow fell. As Henry Fowler himself told the story : 
 " A responsible Minister of the Crown had stated that there was 
 ample ammunition for the present year in store, but the House of 
 Commons declined to believe that statement, and by a majority 
 of seven a vote of censure was passed on that Minister, or rather 
 on his permanent advisers. It had been stated that in the resolu- 
 tion which caused the Government to resign, the House of Commons 
 was not expressing personal distrust of Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, 
 but only stating that in their judgment the information supplied 
 to him was incorrect. There was one answer to that. If it had 
 not been intended to censure Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, and, of 
 course, to censure the Government, that question could have 
 been raised on another vote altogether. On the contrary, the 
 Opposition chose to deal the final blow to the Government. 
 Although he confessed that the vital blow was not the minority of 
 seven, but the majority of seven the night before. When a 
 Government majority sank to seven it needed no expert to see 
 the end was not very far off." 
 
 383
 
 384 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The General Election of 1895 was one of those which record 
 the turn of the pendulum in a sharp and marked degree. Many 
 were the theories and statements concerning the country's change 
 of opinion, but of such changes there was no adequate explanation. 
 The tide turns it always has turned it always will turn ; and 
 there are health-giving properties in this perpetual ebb and flow 
 of political life. There is a danger when, owing to over-large 
 majorities, the tide fails to turn, and some of the water stands till it 
 stagnates, and some of the scum, which ought to have been swept 
 away, gathers and grows foul. " Everybody has a theory of the 
 cause of the Liberal defeat," said Henry Fowler. " I have one myself, 
 but I shall not tell it, because I am not sure that it is the right one. 
 But the fact remains that we have been beaten, and I am not one 
 of those who will attempt to explain it away. Mr. Bright once 
 told the politicians of a generation ago that it was not possible 
 to drive half a dozen omnibuses through Temple Bar at once. 
 We tried to do that and we have failed. The country has decided 
 against us with respect to certain questions, and the details of 
 certain measures, and to the verdict of the country we must bow. 
 I hope we shall take our defeat in good temper, manfully and 
 hopefully. The Liberal party has been beaten before so has 
 the Conservative party. The Conservative party will be beaten 
 again, and the Liberal party will, no doubt, have another triumph. 
 We must loyally accept the decision of the country, and if the new 
 Government proposes good legislation, it will be a disgrace to us 
 if we oppose such legislation simply because it is the Tories who 
 are to carry it out. Our duty will be to support any measures 
 which are likely to be a benefit to the people. Her Majesty's 
 Opposition have a duty to the Government, to the Parliament, 
 and to the country, and that duty is to uphold the principles of 
 constitutional self-government, to apply those principles to the 
 advantage of the masses of the people, to be loyal to those great 
 Parliamentary institutions which are at the bottom of all our 
 freedom, all our progress, all our success ; and to uphold the dignity, 
 the power and the efficiency of Parliament. I, as a member of the 
 Opposition, shall feel that I am representing the best judgment 
 as well as the political opinions of the masses of my constituency
 
 Out of Office 385 
 
 if I endeavour to carry out the same principles in Opposition as I 
 have done in power." 
 
 Had Mr. Bright been living to-day one imagines that his simile 
 would have contained a considerable number of taxicabs in addi- 
 tion to his humble, but fatal, six omnibuses. 
 
 The opinion which my father really held with regard to the 
 defeat is thus given in his own words : " The real defeat of the 
 Government took place upon the question of Welsh Disestablish- 
 ment, though it was popular to represent it as having been caused 
 by the supply of cordite." 
 
 The constituency of East Wolverhampton was unaffected by 
 the great political reaction outside. After a contest, in which my 
 father was opposed by the late Mr. Rupert E. C. Kettle, he was 
 returned by a majority of 1,034. This contest was conducted on 
 the same lines as all his former contests in every election in which 
 he was a candidate. To use his own words : " We shall fight this 
 battle out fairly, pleasantly, and I hope without any loss of mutual 
 respect ; and above all we shall avoid, I trust, as an evil thing, any 
 approach to personalities, or to snatch even the victory of a single 
 vote by any unfair misrepresentation of a political opponent." 
 
 This principle of charity and fair-mindedness which he 
 preached in election times, he himself practised at all times. In 
 speaking of the Conservative Government later he said : " Al- 
 though they might disagree with the policy of their opponents and 
 think their views mistaken, their administration unsound, or their 
 legislation unwise, happily they had arrived at the time when they 
 did not impute to any body of men, especially the Cabinet of the 
 Queen, dishonourable and improper motives, or charge them with 
 corrupt conduct. They had got beyond the personal element in 
 politics. He was, as they knew he had been, at all events from 
 1885 to 1892, a strong, consistent and determined opponent of 
 the Tory Government, but he never attributed to them unworthy 
 motives. He was opposed to the present Government, but he 
 believed them to be honourable men, desirous of serving their 
 Queen and country, and incapable of any dishonourable 
 conduct." 
 
 Neither did Henry Fowler fail to give honour to those to whom 
 
 25
 
 386 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 honour was due, even in the field of political rivalry. He spoke 
 in January, 1896, of Mr. Chamberlain's action with respect to the 
 invasion of the territory of a friendly power by the troops of a 
 Company holding the Charter of the Crown, as " wise, prompt and 
 successful," and that he wrote and told the Colonial Secretary so 
 himself is indicated by this reply from Mr. Chamberlain : 
 
 " 40, Prince's Gardens, 
 
 " January a isth, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Many thanks for your kind note which, let me say, 
 does not surprise me from you, who have always known how 
 to distinguish between political differences and personal 
 animosity. I am both surprised and pleased at the generous 
 appreciation of my work which has come from unexpected 
 quarters, and I regard it as a good sign, a proof of the 
 inherent patriotism which in times of crisis animates all 
 sections of English politicians. I hope now that whatever 
 may be in store for us in the future, we may be able to differ 
 as friends and not as enemies. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN." 
 
 During this election campaign Henry Fowler showed his own 
 fairness of mind even amid the heated and exaggerated sentiments 
 of the political fight. He said that " although during a portion 
 of the late Conservative Administration trade had become rapidly 
 worse, it would be unjust and untruthful to say the Conservative 
 Government was responsible for it. A Government could not 
 make a good or a bad harvest any more than it could make the sun 
 rise half an hour earlier. There was however," he went on to say, 
 " one thing which Governments could do. They could make 
 the conditions of the working people better, and that was what 
 he and his colleagues had endeavoured to do. The question that 
 had been considered was whether colliers should only work eight 
 hours from bank to bank, and he had always voted in favour
 
 Out of Office 387 
 
 of that measure, and he should do the same again. He had long 
 been of opinion that eight hours a day was quite long enough for 
 any man to work underground. The late Government had intro- 
 duced the eight hours system into all their departments of busi- 
 ness, and not only had they not reduced the wages, but they had 
 been brought up to the standard of fair wages trade union 
 wages and the increase had already reached a sum of thirty 
 thousand pounds a year. They had also appointed a considerable 
 number of working men as inspectors, also women as inspectors, 
 to which he attached enormous importance, in order to protect 
 the condition of women and children. Personally, he had taken 
 great interest in the condition of the aged poor. It was upon his 
 advice that a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into 
 the condition of these people. The Report of that Commission 
 had only recently been presented, and neither the past nor the 
 present Government had had time to fully consider what its 
 recommendations were. He thought, however, and he believed 
 that all parties agreed with him, that the time had come when 
 those who had honourably and laboriously passed a life under 
 conditions which would not allow them to save money, and were 
 in old age left practically unprovided for, had a claim on the public 
 for provision in their old age. He did not think that honest, 
 decent people over the age of, say sixty-five, should be compelled 
 to go into the workhouse, and the State ought to make provision 
 for them to enable them to have the comfort of their own homes, 
 and to that extent they should be pensioners." 
 
 And after alluding to the Bills which were passed in the House of 
 Commons, but defeated in the House of Lords, he said : " Where 
 two bodies are entrusted with the passing of laws one of them, if 
 they differ, must give way, and the one to give way is not the one 
 that represents the people. The will of the House of Commons 
 must prevail." 
 
 It was during the General Election that two of the most im- 
 portant members of the late Government lost their seats. Sir 
 William Harcourt was defeated at Derby, and Mr. John Morley at 
 Newcastle. Another seat was immediately found for Sir William 
 in the West Division of Monmouthshire, and Mr. John Morley 
 
 25*
 
 388 The Life of Henry Hartley Fov/ler 
 
 was returned for the Montrose Burghs the following year. 
 They both wrote to my father : 
 
 " Cluny Castle, 
 
 " Kingussie, N.B., 
 
 " July 2ist, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Many thanks to you for writing to me so kindly. 
 I take my defeat very coolly. It is not by any means 
 without some very abundant compensations. 
 
 " I was concerned to see that your strength was not to be 
 trifled with. Take care of yourself. You will be sorely needed 
 on that unlovely bench. 
 
 " My campaign was horribly fatiguing. This air is excellent. 
 We are only here for another day or so. After that, most 
 likely to London. 
 
 " Our host and hostess are full of friendly words about 
 you. 
 " Kindest regards to your ladies, 
 
 " Ever yours sincerely, 
 
 " J. MORLEY." 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " July 3ist, 1895. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I was just on the point of writing to you when I 
 received your welcome letter this morning. 
 
 " I agree with you that it is little use attempting a solu- 
 tion of the rout. What beat me at Derby was the ' bad 
 trade ' cry. There are 6,000 votes in the Railway Works. 
 The men had been on four days a week and the Co. put 
 them on full time the day of the dissolution. Nothing could 
 stand against that. The other works did the same. Of 
 course the Church and the publicans poured their oil on the 
 flames, but it was the desire for a change amongst the artisans 
 that did the work. 
 
 " I am all for winding-up as soon as possible. We are not
 
 Out of Office 389 
 
 now responsible and it will be our business not to put for- 
 ward any policy but to examine theirs when it is produced. 
 
 " I have a letter from J. Morley, who learns that they will 
 have a sort of Irish land ' continuation ' Bill next month, 
 which is to keep things going till February, when they begin 
 their career with a new Irish Land Act ! 
 
 " I understand the Speaker is to be elected on the I2th 
 August. I do not know whether they mean to dismiss Gully 
 or not. If they do, I do not see that we can do more than 
 enter a solemn protest. 
 
 " I hear from C. Bannerman that he proposes to go abroad 
 next week, but I have warned him that there may very likely 
 be a very large supplementary Estimate for cordite which he 
 will be bound to look after. 
 
 " J. Morley says nothing about his return to the H. of C. 
 though I have strongly pressed him. 
 
 "It is very disgusting to have left these fellows such a 
 splendid surplus as they will have. 
 
 " I estimated the increase of Revenue over last year at 
 1,500,000. It is already 2,500,000 (apparently 2,800,000). 
 The increase in stamps, which I put for the whole year at 
 1,300,000, is already 1,682,000 and, of course, will be much 
 greater. Income Tax and Excise largely in excess of Esti- 
 mate. The beer duty for the principal election week, an 
 increase of 330,000, which means 1,000,000 barrels or 
 36,000,000 gallons no doubt a gallon for every man, woman 
 and child of gratuitous beer. I shall get out the exact figures 
 when Parliament meets. 
 
 " But whatever their surplus, they will spend more. 
 " We shipwrecked mariners must collect together and 
 establish a sort of Robinson Crusoe life on our desert island. 
 
 " I intend to be in town on Saturday the loth. I hope 
 we may manage to meet then and have a little talk over 
 affairs. 
 
 " Like yourself I am slowly recovering from a great fatigue. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT."
 
 390 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Early in that year, while the Liberals were still in office, Sir 
 William Harcourt had thus written to my father on the subject of 
 the Revenue : 
 
 " Treasury Chambers, 
 
 " Whitehall, S.W. 
 
 " January 4th, 1895. 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am sorry to hear that you have been amiss as I 
 should have been very glad of your valuable advice and aid 
 at this critical estimate time. 
 
 " As far as Revenue is concerned we are doing well enough, 
 though not quite as well as the uninformed public suppose. 
 The Stamps are very good, but that is not wholly due to our 
 new taxes, which will realize just about what was expected, 
 i.e., one million ; but there is a large increase also in Suc- 
 cession and Legacy duties (which are not affected this year 
 by the new system) and also in general stamps. On the other 
 hand, Excise will fall short. We have got nothing or next 
 to nothing out of our 6d. on spirits. On that head in 
 Customs and Excise we shall fall short 600,000 of the 
 Estimate. Beer, on the other hand, has done better than 
 was expected, and we shall get a good deal more than the 
 Estimate. 
 
 " Customs have done well in all but spirits, and though 
 we shall lose 160,000 on that item we shall make it up 
 on tea and tobacco, so we may count on our Estimate and 
 something more. 
 
 " Income Tax will be this year a darker horse even than 
 usual, as the actual effect of our deductions and allowances 
 is problematical but, on the whole, Milner expects to realize 
 his Estimate, though the assessments for this year are 
 deplorably low. 
 
 " On the whole E. Hamilton (who is generally pretty 
 accurate in his forecasts) calculates a Revenue excess of 
 300,000 above Estimate, which, taking into consideration 
 the falling-off in spirits, is very good. This, added to an
 
 Out of Office 391 
 
 estimated surplus of 300,000 should give us 600,000 or 
 700,000 realized surplus. 
 
 " We unfortunately get less than usual out of the balance 
 of savings and supplementary Estimates (which are large) 
 and cannot count upon more than 100,000 from that 
 source. 
 
 " However, considering that this Budget made more changes 
 in the system of taxation and was subject to more chances 
 of error than, I think, any before it, we may consider that we 
 shall come out of it very creditably. 
 
 " But the crux is next year's Revenue and Expenditure. 
 The best calculations we can make give us an estimated 
 surplus of 2 millions. Out of this any reasonable man would 
 expect that there would be a relief of taxation. But not a 
 bit ! The projected Estimates show an increase of 2^ millions 
 (if millions on Navy and | million on Civil Service). I 
 have asked for a Cabinet, which is summoned for Thursday, 
 to consider the Estimates as a whole. I intend to lay before 
 them the financial situation and ask for a decision, which for 
 me will be vital, on the question of whether this Govern- 
 ment is to propose additional taxation with a surplus of 
 2 millions. I shall not do it I think it is what the country 
 cannot bear and ought not to be asked to bear. I 
 hope nothing will happen to keep you away from this 
 Cabinet. 
 
 " I had Spencer and C. Bannerman here to-day. The 
 War Office has no Supplementary Estimates and no proposed 
 increase for next year. 
 
 " I have offered to meet Spencer as far as my means will 
 allow. Out of my realized surplus of this year I have offered 
 him 300,000 in order to lighten next year's Estimate. I can 
 afford him 1,200,000 next year as a maximum. That means 
 that he should reduce his present claim of 770,000 by 
 250,000 for next year. 
 
 " From the impossibility of getting members of the Cabinet 
 to London I have never succeeded in getting together a 
 meeting of the Committee appointed by the Cabinet to deal
 
 39 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 with the Navy Estimates. We have now fixed next Friday 
 (the day after the Cabinet) for a meeting. I am glad to say 
 that Spencer admits that the thing may probably be done, 
 but he attaches (as I do) great importance to the assistance 
 and advice of yourself and C. Bannerman. 
 
 " If we can get off 250,000 from their Estimates and 
 100,000 off the Civil Service I think we may, by the skin of 
 our teeth, squeeze through, and even then the present 
 Administration will have the unrivalled honour of having 
 presented, in the space of 12 months, Estimates 6| millions 
 in excess of their immediate predecessors. 
 
 " I go home to-morrow for Sunday but shall be back in 
 London early next week. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 My father worked very hard during the election campaign, and 
 owing to his serious illness earlier in the year, suffered more than 
 usual from over-fatigue. The reports of his diminished strength 
 were probably greatly exaggerated in the newspapers, as this letter 
 from him, in acknowledgment of a telegram of special inquiry 
 about hinr from the Queen, indicates : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " July igth, 1895. 
 " DEAR SIR A. BIGGE, 
 
 " May I ask you to represent to Her Majesty my dutiful 
 acknowledgment of her gracious kindness expressed in your 
 telegram. The statements in the Press with regard to my 
 health are greatly exaggerated. I was unexpectedly plunged 
 into the toil and trouble of a contested Election. My medical 
 adviser limited me to three speeches in a week, I was com- 
 pelled to speak in crowded and heated meetings six times in 
 four days, the natural result was that I was worn out with 
 fatigue, and was obliged to stop. I have recruited very rapidly,
 
 Out of Office 393 
 
 and I anticipate with the autumn rest a complete restoration 
 to my former health. 
 
 " I should like to say to the Queen that, while I deplore 
 the defeat of my own party, yet from a patriotic point of view 
 I am glad that the Government will possess the element of 
 strength which a large party majority confers, and which 
 is of such vast importance not only in Home but especially 
 in Foreign Affairs. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 Sir William Harcourt wrote again in August : 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " August 6th, 1895. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Now that the question of the Speakership is settled 
 as I understand contrary to the wishes of Balfour I sup- 
 pose there will be no necessity to be in London before the 
 I2th. I don't know what the form of the election will be, and 
 whether he will be proposed from the Government side. I saw 
 the authorized paragraph said that the election would ' not 
 be opposed,' which may mean anything. I see that it is 
 stated that the Address is to be taken on the I5th ; of course 
 it will be our cue to say as little as possible about anything. 
 But I think we ought to be in our places on the I2th to do 
 honour to Gully. 
 
 " Let me know what are likely to be your movements. 
 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst. 
 " My DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " It is now settled that Mowbray will propose Gully 
 and John Ellis has been asked to second. When he takes
 
 394 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the Chair, Balfour and I shall congratulate. It is a good 
 thing that there is to be no trouble about this business at 
 starting. 
 
 " I shall now not come up to London till the morning of the 
 I2th. We shall then have an opportunity of some talk on 
 the future. 
 
 " We are well out of the confusion which I foresee impend- 
 ing. These torrents of rain will ruin the harvest, and it will 
 be the worst year ever known for the farmers. I don't envy 
 the Government the task they have undertaken of setting 
 the agriculturalists on their legs ; and in the winter they will 
 have the unemployed on their hands. They accuse us of having 
 promised more than we could perform, but they have won the 
 election by holding out expectations which they can never 
 satisfy. 
 
 " In the meanwhile the Revenue is miraculous. To-day 
 the receipts are 3,000,000 above those of the corresponding 
 period of last year (this allowing for Suez Canal and Mis- 
 cellaneous is really 2,650,000). This is 1,000,000 in the 
 first 4 months above my estimate of the excess for the whole 
 year. The stamps alone show an increase of 1,850,000. 
 I estimated an increase of 1,300,000 for the whole year. 
 
 " I estimated a decrease of 100,000 in Excise owing to 
 the reduction of 6d. on spirits. There is already an increase 
 of 268,000. 
 
 " I expect most of this will turn out to be gratuitous Election 
 liquor. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 In October the Queen herself wrote again to my father : 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " October 5th, 1895. 
 
 " The Queen wishes to thank Sir Henry Fowler very 
 sincerely for two letters.
 
 Out of Office 395 
 
 " She hopes Sir Henry Fowler is really feeling strong again. 
 We often think of his visits here, which were so pleasant and 
 agreeable. 
 
 " Prince and Princess Henry of Battenberg have sustained 
 a great loss in the sudden death of the Prince's dear Mother, 
 to whom the Princess was also very much attached, and whom 
 they had only parted from in perfect health six weeks 
 before." 
 
 In December he received the following letter from Sir William 
 Harcourt, which indicated that the educational storm was brewing, 
 though it did not actually break until a few years later : 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " December loth, 1895. 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am very glad to receive your approval of my 
 Epistola contra Londin. He is a clumsy controversialist 
 and gave me a chance which was not to be missed. However, 
 he was substantially re-echoed by Salisbury. 
 
 " Of course the real object of the Volunteers is to get out 
 of volunteering, and if they can procure some more money 
 grant, and get the standard lower, they will dispense with the 
 subscription altogether. 
 
 " Weak as we are, I think we shall be able to choke this 
 off. 
 
 " I am sure it will not do to fight the battle on the old 
 ground of secularism the sons of dogma are too many for us. 
 All we can hope for is to prevent dogma being made the 
 determining element in popular education. 
 
 " I think that, considering the fact that the requirements 
 have been so much raised since 1870, and even 1876, there is 
 a fair case for more assistance if there is sufficient money 
 which there is. 
 
 " I am all for fighting the battle as much as possible on the
 
 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 educational field and as little as possible on the religious 
 difficulty. 
 
 " What a blunderer the Bishop is to set all the school- 
 masters against him by an attack on the salaries. 
 
 " I hope to hear from you before long on agricultural 
 finance. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT. 
 
 " I enclose a letter of Ripon's, which is satisfactory, from 
 our R. C. colleague. Please return it at once." 
 
 In January, 1896, a grave danger arose in the relations between 
 England and the United States. For the greater part of the iQth 
 century there had been a protracted dispute between Great Britain 
 and Venezuela as to the boundaries between that country and 
 British Guiana. Diplomacy seemed to have exhausted all its 
 resources in trying to solve the problem where British Guiana 
 ended and Venezuela began. The Foreign Office declared that 
 up to a certain point, the British title was indisputable, but beyond 
 that line it was doubtful, and so far as the doubtful territory 
 was concerned, Great Britain was ready to leave the question 
 to arbitration. The Venezuelans denied that Great Britain's 
 title to any portion of the territory was indisputable, and contended 
 the arbitration should include all the debatable land which either 
 country claimed. The United States for some years had taken 
 a growing interest in that dispute on the ground that it affected 
 the Monroe Doctrine, to which they very rightly attached supreme 
 importance. The President of the United States declared that if 
 Great Britain's claim was unfounded, and if she maintained it 
 by force, she would be increasing her dominions in South America 
 by force ; and as the whole dispute depended on the true historic 
 boundary between Guiana and Venezuela, the question of that 
 boundary should be referred to arbitration, and if Great Britain 
 refused arbitration it would be the duty of the United States to 
 interfere on behalf of Venezuela.
 
 Out of Office 397 
 
 With regard to this dispute my father said : 
 
 " To attempt to settle a dispute between Great Britain and 
 the United States by bloodshed, by the atrocity of such a war, 
 would be a colossal crime against civilization, humanity and 
 Christianity. We might say we did not desire an inch of terri- 
 tory beyond what we rightly possessed. Yes ; but the crux of 
 the controversy was whether we had rightly possessed any part 
 of the territory which was now in dispute. A great war between 
 the two foremost nations of the world over an uninhabited fever- 
 swamp, the value of which to either nation was infinitesimal, 
 would be the hour and the power of all that opposed the cause of 
 God and goodness. Great Britain was strong enough to say openly 
 and frankly that we would do our utmost to ward off such an 
 unspeakable calamity that we were ready, without standing upon 
 diplomatic punctilio, to recognize the feelings and even the preju- 
 dices of the American nation, and to meet them half-way in settling 
 this unfortunate dispute." And in the same speech, which 
 attracted considerable attention in the country, he not only gave 
 his views with regard to arbitration, but also expressed himself 
 as to the duty of the Opposition, of which he was so prominent a 
 Member, at a time when the Government was confronted not only 
 by the grave question of a dispute with the United States but with 
 serious complications in South Africa and the Near East. 
 
 " The period which had elapsed," he continued, " since the 
 Government acceded to Office, had been one of serious anxiety 
 and enormous difficulty. They had been confronted with sudden 
 and startling developments in foreign affairs, which were calculated 
 to tax the resources of the most experienced statesmen. In crises 
 like those which had recently occurred, the responsibility of Her 
 Majesty's Opposition was only second to that of Her Majesty's 
 Government. In the face of the common danger, the Opposition 
 must support the Government of the Queen in presenting a united 
 front ; and in every hostile interference with our national rights, 
 or our national honour, subject to the pre-eminent obligations, 
 the Opposition was bound to uphold those principles which in their 
 judgment and conscience were the surest safe-guards of friendly 
 relations with other powers."
 
 398 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 After the speech Lord Rosebery wrote : 
 
 " Mentmore, 
 
 " Leighton Buzzard, 
 
 " Boxing Day, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I understand that you are constantly moving up to 
 London. If so, would it fall with your convenience to stay 
 here on Wednesday the 30th ? I should be glad for many 
 reasons, of which I can furnish two. 
 
 " I. I shall soon be out of the way of communication. 
 " 2. Kimberley will be here. 
 
 I consider myself precluded by the most obvious considera- 
 tions from saying anything of your speech, except that it is 
 devoutly to be wished that you spoke oftener. I wish that 
 you represented a group of burghs like Campbell-Bannerman ; 
 or the ' United Counties ' in which the late Lord Advocate 
 has to hold forth forty times a year. But, as that desire is 
 not likely to be realized, I confine myself to the hope that all 
 that the New Year can bring of health and happiness and 
 success may come to you and yours. 
 
 " Sincerely, 
 
 " R." 
 
 The Westminster Gazette sent down a representative to Wolver- 
 hampton to interview my father on his declaration on arbitration 
 made in that same speech. " The moment," wrote that repre- 
 sentative afterwards, " the subject was broached, Sir Henry Fowler 
 burst out : ' Don't talk of war between England and the United 
 States. To admit it even as a possibility would be to assume that 
 Christianity was an extinct force.' 
 
 " ' But things look rather ugly ? ' 
 
 " ' I don't care how ugly they look. I do not believe that they 
 will result in war. No, not even if, by some inconceivable access of 
 folly, the two Governments were determined to fight. The nations 
 would not ; of that I am certain. No one can have lived and 
 moved and gone up and down in the midst of our people, without
 
 Out of Office 399 
 
 knowing that deep down in their hearts there is an invincible 
 determination to be friends, and not foes, with their kith and kin 
 beyond the sea. We are all one family, and though we may often 
 have family tiffs, even with the most quarrelsome, throat-cutting 
 is ruled out, as an inconceivable method of settling a controversy. 
 I have an unshaken faith, too, in the sterling common sense and 
 good feeling of the American people, even of those who live as far 
 west as the Pacific slope. No, the very suggestion of war is a 
 horror. It would be the greatest crime that could be committed, 
 the most suicidal folly that ever seized possession of a great race. 
 Every blow we struck at them would hurt us as much as if it were 
 struck at ourselves. If we destroy their commerce we, at the 
 same time, destroy our own commerce, and every victory, on 
 whichever side it was won, would be a defeat. If it could be, 
 such a war would leave a festering wound which a whole century 
 could not heal. It must not, it cannot be. That I am sure is 
 the unspoken resolve of both nations.' 
 
 " ' But if there is to be no war, and if there is a difference of 
 opinion between the two nations, what then ? ' 
 
 " ' Then, of course, we must arbitrate,' said Sir Henry, ' that 
 is plain enough. What have we been contending for during recent 
 years but to substitute arbitration for war ? The Americans 
 have even been more urgent about this than ourselves. And do 
 you think the two nations which have advocated arbitration, 
 recommending it to all their neighbours on all occasions, and sub 
 mitting loyally to adverse awards, do you think that we are going 
 to fall to and murder each other about this frontier dispute in 
 South America ? ' 
 
 ' But the idea has gained ground in America that England is 
 against arbitration.' 
 
 " ' Then England would be against civilization, against Christi- 
 anity, against progress, against humanity.' 
 
 ' Then would you be in favour of the establishment of a per- 
 manent tribunal of arbitration between the English-speaking races ? ' 
 
 " ' Certainly, with all my heart.' 
 
 ' Yet by some unfortunate misunderstanding, we are represented 
 in the eyes of the Americans as being opposed to arbitration ? '
 
 400 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " ' Nonsense ! Opposed to arbitration ! What I take it is, 
 that we have always been ready to go to arbitration even with 
 Venezuela, provided that we could agree what territory was really 
 and truly in dispute between us. Of course there was the diffi- 
 culty of arriving at the preliminary agreement necessary for 
 reference to arbitration. But the principle of arbitration has 
 never been repudiated by us as between Venezuela and Great 
 Britain. The question of applying arbitration to the dispute 
 between the United States and Great Britain has never, so far 
 as I know, been formally raised.' 
 
 ' Then what would you regard as the question in dispute 
 between England and the United States ? The Monroe doctrine ? ' 
 
 " ' No,' replied Sir Henry Fowler, ' I am very heartily in sym- 
 pathy with the Monroe doctrine, reasonably interpreted. What 
 does it mean, to put it shortly ? It means this. That the 
 Western Sphere is not to be made the happy hunting-ground of 
 military expeditions. I have the greatest sympathy with the 
 American desire to put a peremptory veto once and for all upon 
 all such filibustering as the Mexican Expedition. Is it not worth 
 their while to be able to get their standing army down to twenty- 
 five thousand men ? Assuredly it is, but what they fail to see is 
 that we are almost as interested as they are in upholding the 
 Munroe doctrine. Why on earth any man in America could wish 
 to quarrel with the only nation whose interests are identical with 
 its own, and which is as anxious to restrict the area of territory 
 over which militarism casts its deadly shade, is one of those things 
 we do not understand. It is true that upon our shoulders there 
 has been thrown the very arduous and costly burden of main- 
 taining the peace of the seas, and of enforcing law and maintaining 
 peace in our great Empire ; and in view of our Imperial responsi- 
 bilities our armaments cannot be said to be larger in proportion 
 than those of the United States. I see no difficulty in coming to 
 a peaceable and friendly understanding with the United States, 
 but I see the greatest danger arising from the prolongation of the 
 present inflammatory dispute. There is a dispute about which 
 both sides agree there must be arbitration. There is a further 
 dispute as to which one side says its rights are so clear that they
 
 Out of Office 401 
 
 are not fit subjects for arbitration. But if this is denied, the 
 question can be decided without the slaughter and desolation of 
 civil war.' 
 
 " ' Do you think if we could get the great question raised, the 
 minor frontier squabble would shrink into its proper insignifi- 
 cance ? ' 
 
 " ' It is a grave question,' said Sir Henry ; ' I am not sure 
 whether we had not better settle the frontier difficulty first, and 
 then show that we have profited by the melancholy result of 
 allowing such a controversy to spring up, without having any 
 tribunal competent to decide it, by proceeding with a good grace 
 and clean hands, to establish some permanent system of arbitration, 
 which ought to be the next step.' ' 
 
 This interview was of course published, and Sir William 
 Harcourt wrote the two following letters concerning it : 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 ' January iQth, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I was very glad to see your declaration in favour 
 of arbitration with America last Saturday. I called the 
 attention of Lansdowne to it, whom I met in the train as 
 I was going down to Nuneham. He is all for peace. I have 
 been writing in the same direction at Chatsworth, where I 
 spent last week. I found the Duke in a very satisfactory 
 state of mind. I also talked to A. Balfour, who was more 
 reserved, but I thought his Manchester speech good as far as 
 it went. 
 
 " I gather that the great majority of the Cabinet are for 
 accommodation. I fancy Joe will be the difficulty. The 
 great thing is to impress on their minds : 
 " (i) The reality of the danger. 
 
 " (2) That arbitration is the only possible solution, and 
 that all other plans will fail. 
 
 " My view is that when our case is published, and the 
 American Commission has reported, it will appear that the 
 
 26
 
 402 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 whole thing is involved in so much doubt that the case for 
 arbitration will be irresistible. The worst of it is that, as I 
 learn, our case is not prepared, and may not be ready even 
 when Parliament meets. 
 
 " The fact is that the Government are only just beginning to 
 examine it, and the Salisbury despatches were written slap- 
 dash with very little real knowledge of the facts, which, I am 
 convinced, will turn out much less in our favour than is 
 supposed. 
 
 " Anyhow the Schomburk line as an irreducible minimum 
 is incapable of being supported. 
 
 " I do not know if you have seen E. Fitzmaurice's letter 
 to Lefevre, stating expressly that in 1885 he had agreed with 
 the Venezuelans, and Article in this Treaty, for arbitration 
 generally of all questions including boundary, and that this 
 was cancelled by the short Salisbury Government in 1885. 
 
 " What we did 1892-1895 in the matter I do not know, as 
 my attention was never directed to this matter. But that 
 signifies very little. The question is quite too serious for 
 party distinctions and if we have been in the wrong we must 
 admit it. 
 
 " I have taken a house, 6, Buckingham Gate, and shall 
 settle in Town at the end of this month. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " January 23rd, 1896. 
 " Confidential 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am glad to find that we are agreed (as I knew we 
 should be) on the American question, which is far the most 
 important matter now at issue. I have worked hard in 
 private with Ministers to bring about arbitration, which is 
 the only possible solution. I have said nothing in public 
 for fear of increasing their difficulties, but I am now glad
 
 Out of Office 403 
 
 to know that (what is indeed admitted in the Times) the 
 Schomburk line of irreducible minimum is abandoned, and 
 that confidential communications are in progress with a view 
 of setting up arbitration again. There is, therefore, not 
 the same need for reserve, and when you speak I think you 
 would do well to declare frankly for arbitration. It is what 
 the U. S. have asked for, and what the English people approve, 
 and what, in the end, both Governments must adopt. I under- 
 stand that our people are now stickling for a sort of status in 
 quo i.e., to exclude from arbitration any territory now 
 settled. I do not believe that the U. S. will agree to this, 
 and if we are to go to arbitration there is no use fighting 
 small points. I am for arbitration ' pur et simple, sans phrase.' 
 
 " I thought Lansdowne's speech on the American situation 
 good as far as it went, and as much as he was in a position to 
 say. 
 
 " I have a good house 6, Buckingham Gate, where I shall 
 be able to read you the Queen's Speech on the loth. 
 
 " In the beginning I think there will be plenty to say and 
 little to do. 
 
 " The Government I think may spend their millions with 
 less disadvantage on the Navy than on many of the other 
 objects which they are supposed to contemplate. I should 
 not be much disinclined to make them a present of the old 
 Sinking Fund for this single year, as twelve millions is more 
 than we could fairly demand should be devoted to debt in 
 one year. I have always regarded the Sinking Fund as main- 
 tained in periods of tranquillity as a reserve in emergencies. 
 I should myself be satisfied if we could secure the permanent 
 maintenance of the Terminable Annuities and the New 
 Sinking Fund, which amounts to about seven millions, and is 
 about as much as we are bound to do for our successors. If 
 we are too stiff we shall lose the whole. 
 
 " Hicks Beach will not be able to count on anything like 
 the income next year which he has got this year. His dis- 
 posable surplus, after he has satisfied the Services (and we 
 shall have to grant whatever they ask), will be small enough 
 
 26*
 
 404 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to resuscitate agriculture and fill the maw of the Volunteers. 
 " I am truly sorry for the Queen in her old age ; and the 
 poor Princess, a kind and motherly woman, very homelike 
 and fond of her family, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 Early the following year, 1896, my father expressed some of 
 his views on the then, as now, vexed and difficult question of 
 Capital and Labour. He held that there was an absolute identity 
 of interest between the two that the one was inseparable from 
 the other. " Manufacturers cannot carry on business except by 
 a combination of those two great factors, and nothing can be 
 more suicidal, or entail more miserable results, than strife between 
 these elements. We must apply to them the principle of mutual 
 obligation, mutual concession, mutual recognition of each other's 
 rights and liabilities. There cannot in this conflict be conquest. 
 Remember that capital can never conquer labour, and labour can 
 never conquer capital. The two together produce the product 
 of the manufacturer. The difficulty arises as to the respective 
 share of the product. There is no real severance of interest. We 
 talk about interest upon capital, and about the wages of labour, 
 but the interest of capital is the wages of capital, and the wages of 
 labour is the interest of the capital of the labourer. The labouring 
 man has no capital but his labour, and he is entitled to bring his 
 labour into the best market. The effect of a conflict between 
 capital and labour is of enormous injury to both sides, and to the 
 best interest of the country. These two fiscal powers must refer 
 their disputes to arbitration." 
 
 In reviewing the situation after the General Election, Henry 
 Fowler gave utterance to a truth which is as apt now, as it was 
 then, to be disregarded or overlooked ; but it was one which was 
 very deeply rooted in his personal opinions, and would always have 
 steered his policy had he been called to a leadership which, for a 
 combination of reasons, passed him by. 
 
 " Though he could not explain away the crushing fact that 
 the majority of the electors and of the constituencies had deter-
 
 Out of Office 405 
 
 mined that the Government of this country should be placed in 
 the hands of the Conservative party, he did not believe that the 
 Liberal party was in a permanent minority in the country. The 
 high tide, like all other high tides, would turn, and he thought there 
 was already a subsidence of the waters. While, however, he agreed 
 with Mr. George Russell, that the time for mourning in the Liberal 
 party was passed, he thought there were two lessons which the 
 election illustrated and emphasized, and which the Liberal party, 
 and perhaps the Conservative party, should not disregard. The 
 first was that in the country, as in all countries where the Govern- 
 ment rested on a popular basis, we could not legislate in advance 
 of public opinion. No matter how desirable, how wise, how 
 necessary any specific legislation might be, it must spring from 
 and rely upon the deliberate judgment of the majority before it 
 could be placed in the Statute Book. The strongest force in 
 a free country was public opinion, and the secret of the success 
 of the great reforms of the present century was, that they were 
 inspired and enforced by the invincible strength of the national 
 will. The abolition of slavery, the reform of Parliament, the repeal 
 of the Corn Laws, the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the 
 extension of the Franchise, were but among the many instances 
 of the soundness of that principle. The other lesson of the election 
 was the danger to party government, and to constitutional 
 Governments, of the system of groups. Lord Beaconsfield once 
 said, party government meant parliamentary government, and the 
 experience of other nations had proved the accuracy of that 
 assertion. The strength, the safety of party government depended 
 on the unity, force and loyalty of the parties who, from time to 
 time, composed the Government and the Opposition. In France 
 they had reduced the group system to a science, and the result 
 had been that in the twenty-five years that had elapsed since the 
 Republic was established, they had had upwards of thirty 
 Cabinets. During a long reign of sixty years, the Queen had had 
 only ten Prime Ministers. Under our party system, where each 
 party practically represented nearly half the nation, we preserved 
 the responsibility alike of the past and the future. We secured a 
 fair consideration of the varying proposals and interests of all
 
 406 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 classes, and obtained that combination of caution and courage 
 which was the essential of wide, safe and progressive legislation. 
 A party, as a whole, instinctively appreciated the practicability of 
 the proportionate prominence of the proposals which were more or 
 less strongly urged, and by the application of common sense to 
 times and to seasons, as well as by the indication of public opinion, 
 it gathered and consolidated the forces by which all great reforms 
 were carried. The story of the triumph of the Liberal party on 
 the battle-field of religious, civil and commercial freedom was the 
 record of the wisdom and success of this policy." 
 
 And again a few months later he said on the same subject : 
 " Liberal leaders may go, the Liberal party may go but Liberal 
 principles remain. They are indestructible ; they have survived 
 many a conflict, many a mutiny, many a disaster, many a defeat. 
 Nearly forty years ago Sir George Cornewall Lewis said that he 
 considered the Liberal party to be extinct. It is of historic interest 
 that at that time not the least of the difficulties of the Liberal 
 party was that it had two leaders. Those two distinguished 
 Liberal statesmen had both been Prime Ministers ; they had both, 
 by their brilliant services and surpassing abilities, proved them- 
 selves worthy of the foremost place in the great party, which 
 was very evenly divided as to their respective merits. Lord 
 John Russell had dismissed Lord Palmerston from the great 
 office of Foreign Secretary, which he had held for fourteen years. 
 Lord Palmerston describes his retort for this abrupt dismissal in 
 a single sentence, ' I have had my tit for tat with John Russell, 
 and I turned him out on Friday.' Years after that, Lord John 
 joined in the combination which defeated Lord Palmerston, and 
 compelled him to dissolve, and, later, in the fatal attack which 
 forced him to resign. If in those days there had been London 
 correspondents, or a periodical devoted to the weekly circulation 
 of truth, what authentic stories, what confidential revelations 
 would have mystified and amused and informed the public ! 
 
 " Under circumstances like these and in the midst of party dis- 
 sensions, so acute a statesman as Sir George Cornewall Lewis 
 was of opinion that the Liberal party was extinct, and the Times 
 said that the Liberal party had died of disunion and decay. In
 
 Out of Office 407 
 
 less than a year at a General Election the extinct party, the party 
 which was dead, was alive, reunited, powerful and victorious. 
 Since that date it has won some of its most brilliant victories, 
 and placed on the Statute Book some of its greatest legislation ; 
 and the Liberal party of to-day is ' perplexed, but not in despair, 
 cast down, but not destroyed.' The weapon has yet to be forged 
 which can strike a fatal blow against those principles which will 
 live and flourish as long as freedom and progress are the watch- 
 words of the English people. I know that to-day, as it was in the 
 past, as it will be in the future, we have internal difficulties. The 
 party of progress must always include those who advance slowly 
 and those who advance rapidly. The true combination of caution 
 and courage which deserves success, can only be secured by reason- 
 ing with and convincing the party as a whole. The evolution of 
 Liberalism, which has been a feature of the glory of the past 
 seventy years, has not been accomplished by forced surrender of 
 conscientious convictions and yielding to threats of desertion. 
 Your money or your life, may be a powerful argument, but this is 
 the argument of the highwayman, not of the statesman. The 
 Liberal victories of the past were won by reason, by argument, 
 by proving the wisdom, the safety, and the necessity of proposed 
 reforms. The minority and all great causes are the children of 
 minorities convinced the party, and the conviction of the party, 
 when sanctioned by the majority of the electorate, was not only 
 resistless but irreversible. The policy of the Liberals has been 
 described as a policy of destruction. Yes, w r e have destroyed a 
 great deal ; we have demolished many abuses, which I don't 
 think our opponents would wish to see restored. Our work in 
 that department is not yet done. Some crying evils have yet to 
 be destroyed ; some curses, which blight and blast our national life, 
 have yet to be swept away. But the Liberal policy is not only one 
 of destruction. Rest and be thankful, is not the motto of the 
 Liberal party. We have a great constructive work to do ; we have 
 to translate into action our belief that the primary need of the 
 nation is legislation and administration for improving, in the 
 broadest sense of the phrase, the condition of the people in all 
 its ramifications ; house and home, health and work and wages,
 
 408 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 of education, and recreation, in childhood and old age. We have 
 to realize the truth of the memorable sentence, ' The nation in 
 every country dwells in the cottage.' Unless the light of your 
 constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation 
 and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there, on 
 the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet 
 to learn the duties of Government." 
 
 In January, 1896, my father was much shocked by the death of 
 Prince Henry of Battenberg, whom he had known well during his 
 visits to Balmoral. He wrote the following letter of sympathy to 
 the Queen : 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler presents his humble duty to your Majesty, 
 with the request that he may be allowed to tender his heartfelt 
 sympathy in the great sorrow which has so sadly and suddenly 
 fallen upon your Majesty and the Princess Beatrice. 
 
 " The association with Prince Henry, which Sir Henry Fowler 
 had the honour of enjoying at Balmoral, has left on his mind a 
 lasting impression of the manly simplicity, the unaffected kindness, 
 the strong common sense, and the singularly accurate appreciation 
 of the difficulties and duties of his position, which pre-eminently 
 distinguished the lamented Prince. 
 
 " He has sacrificed his life in the service of his Queen and 
 country, and the nation, which has always shared in Your 
 Majesty's joys and sorrows, recognizes and mourns the loss it has 
 sustained. 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler joins in the prayer that Your Majesty, and 
 your widowed daughter and orphan grandchildren, may be divinely 
 sustained and comforted in this terrible bereavement." 
 
 His letter was first acknowledged by Sir Arthur Bigge (now 
 
 Lord Stamfordham) : 
 
 " Osborne, 
 
 " January 26th, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I have given the Queen your letter received this 
 morning and Her Majesty desires me to thank you sincerely 
 for your kind sympathy in this moment of deep affliction. Her 
 Majesty will write herself later on. Far from regarding it
 
 Out of Office 409 
 
 as an intrusion the Queen was gratified to hear from you. 
 Indeed it is a sad calamity. 
 
 " I am thankful to say that Her Majesty and the poor 
 Princess are in good health. Her Royal Highness is of 
 course broken with grief, but is most brave. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " ARTHUR BIGGE." 
 
 And a few months later the Queen wrote to him herself : 
 
 " Osborne, 
 
 " June 2ist, 1896. 
 
 " The Queen thanks Sir Henry Fowler most truly for his 
 very kind and feeling letter. His true appreciation of her 
 beloved son, who was a son to her, gratifies her darling and 
 deeply-afflicted child and herself very much, as does the 
 unusual sympathy of the nation. 
 
 " The Queen may say with truth that the sunshine has 
 gone out of her home, for her dear son was so bright and 
 cheerful and so helpful. 
 
 " Her dear bereaved daughter, who was such a devoted 
 happy wife, is quite wonderful in her courage and resignation 
 and submission to God's Will, but she is broken-hearted." 
 
 In 1896 the Report of the Commission on Irish Finance was 
 published and enjoyed the attention of the leaders of the Liberal 
 party. The following letters are typical of the correspondence in 
 which my father took part, as an authority on financial questions. 
 
 " Malwood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " November i6th, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have been for some time meditating a letter to 
 you on the subject which will have to occupy our very serious 
 attention. I refer to the Report of the Irish Financial Rela- 
 tions. I have been studying this unpleasant document very
 
 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 carefully. Its net result is that the taxation of Ireland is 
 i-i2th that of the U. K. and that its taxable capacity is i-2Oth, 
 and that therefore Ireland is entitled, in meal or in malt, 
 to a remission of 2.\ millions or thereabouts which we have 
 somehow or other to find. 
 
 " This is practically the unanimous Report of the Com- 
 mission, including Childers, Welby, Farrer and Bertram Currie. 
 
 " Once granted that Ireland is to be treated as a ' separate 
 entity ' for purposes of taxation, and I see no possibility of 
 resisting their conclusions. 
 
 " It is obvious that the ' separate entity ' theory is equally 
 applicable to any other poor district of the U. K., say the 
 East End of London, but I fear the position of the unity of 
 areas for taxation has been fatally given away. It was 
 abandoned by Goschen in 1890, when he granted his Com 
 mittee in 1890 (see his speeches, May 20, 1890, and April 
 I4th, 1890). It was laid down in the reference to this Com 
 mittee that Ireland was to be regarded as a separate unit 
 for the purpose of taxation, and indeed it cannot be denied 
 that this was an express covenant in the Act of Union (Art. 7) 
 (See Farrar and Welby 's report, p. 39). 
 
 " But granted that Ireland is shown to be entitled to a 
 remission of 2\ millions, how is it to be given ? No one would 
 think of giving up the Income Tax or Stamps. The great evil 
 of Irish taxation is that four-fifths of the taxation is levied 
 on commodities, tea, coffee, spirits, i.e., of the poorer classes. 
 The only thing which could be of any use would be to take 
 off the whole duty on whisky, and that I do not believe even 
 the Irish would desire, and if they did, it involves a customs 
 barrier. 
 
 " So far from Ireland contributing to the Joint Imperial 
 Fund the 2 millions we secured in our Home Rule Bill, the 
 readjusted Irish taxation would not cover the present expendi- 
 ture on Ireland by a million. So much for the Unionist 
 denunciation of our financial profligacy in 1893. 
 
 " I do not think the counter argument of excess of expendi- 
 ture can as a set-off be maintained. We pledged ourselves
 
 Out of Office 411 
 
 at the Union that Ireland should not be burdened beyond 
 her taxable capacity and it is no answer that our administra- 
 tion of Ireland is so costly that we cannot afford to treat her 
 fairly. 
 
 " I should be very glad to know how the report has im- 
 pressed you. I am heartily glad that it does not fall to me 
 either to resist or to carry out its conclusions. 
 
 " There is another matter on which I should be glad to have 
 your opinions. The Executive of the Federation are pressing 
 me to allow myself to be announced as the speaker at their 
 - Annual Meeting in March. I am not at all disposed to accept 
 the office. They are not able to say what is the programme 
 which they will propound, nor what is the relation in which the 
 Federation is to stand to the Whip's Office and the Front Bench. 
 
 " We discussed this a good deal d propos of the Maden 
 correspondence in the spring. The principle then advanced 
 was, that the Federation was wholly independent, and that 
 neither body was to influence the other. But if we on the 
 Front Bench go (as at Newcastle) to bless and endorse all the 
 Articles of the Federation Creed either we must dictate the 
 programme or accept it from them. 
 
 " From their point of view it seems to me that they should 
 go their own way and leave us to judge as to ours. 
 
 " Pray tell me what you think of this. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 To which my father replied : 
 
 " November 23rd, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR HARCOURT, 
 
 " I had most carefully considered the report of the 
 Financial Relations Commission before I received your letter 
 of the i6th. I have again considered the whole question. 
 I cannot admit the correctness of the statement at page 39 
 of the Farrer, Welby and Currie report, to which you refer. 
 The main crux of the whole question is whether Ireland is a 
 separate entity for financial purposes. Farrer, Welby and 
 Currie say that this theory ' has the greatest support in
 
 412 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 history.' It seems to me that the exact contrary is the case. 
 It cannot be denied that the Union contemplated a financial 
 amalgamation that it prevented the contingencies, upon the 
 happening of which the amalgamation was to be effected 
 that the two Exchequers were consolidated in 1817, and that 
 the policy then adopted is the policy which has regulated our 
 financial relations for the last 80 years. 
 
 " The speeches of Pitt and Castlereagh prove beyond doubt 
 that their object was the union of the two Exchequers. When 
 Pitt explained his scheme as to proportionate contribution, 
 he expressed the hope that the system of internal taxation in 
 each country might gradually be so equalized and assimilated, 
 as to make all rules as to specific proportion unnecessary ; 
 and Castlereagh, while admitting that the disproportion of 
 the debts of the two countries required that their debts 
 should be kept distinct and that their taxation should there- 
 fore be separate and proportionate, anticipated a common 
 treasury in the future, and declared that by no system what- 
 ever could the two Kingdoms be made to contribute so 
 strictly according to their respective means as by being sub- 
 ject to the same taxes equally bearing upon the great objects 
 of taxation in both countries. 
 
 " The yth article of the Union provides that when the 
 debts are in the same proportions as their contributions 
 (15 to 2) Parliament might consolidate the separate Exchequers, 
 and defray the expenditure of the United Kingdom by equal 
 taxes imposed on the same articles in each country. In 1811 
 the debts had very nearly reached the specified proportions 
 and a Committee of the House of Commons called special atten- 
 tion to the question of financial amalgamation. After a re- 
 appointment in 1812, the Committee in 1815 reported very 
 strongly in favour of amalgamation. In 1816, the House 
 passed the necessary resolutions and the Consolidation Act 
 was passed in the same Session. Whether the arrange- 
 ment was favourable to Ireland (I think it was) or not, it 
 terminated as a matter of fact, and a matter of law, the 
 theory that Great Britain and Ireland were separate entities
 
 Out of Office 413 
 
 with separate revenues. When O'Connell attacked the Union 
 he endeavoured to show that Ireland had lost, and England 
 had gained, but I do not see how this, or any other contention 
 of O'Connell, constitutes evidence that his views are historical 
 proofs in favour of the justice of his allegations. When it was 
 proposed in 1853 to extend the income-tax to Ireland, every 
 Irish Member raised the question of the relative capacity of 
 Ireland as affecting her taxation. Mr. Gladstone ridiculed 
 the contention denied the necessity for any inquiry and 
 affirmed the matter was as clear as daylight. Cobden, who 
 stoutly defended the principle that the taxes that are paid 
 in Great Britain must be paid in Ireland, told the Irish 
 Members that ' if a dissolution were to take place on the 
 question of the equalization of taxes, although Ireland would 
 be disposed to avoid taxation if possible, the thing would be 
 settled without them.' In 1863, when a motion was made 
 for a Committee to inquire into the depressed conditions of 
 Ireland and the effects of her taxation, Mr. Gladstone main- 
 tained that in Ireland's own interest, fiscal equality was the 
 end to be kept in view, and he defended the equity and 
 liberality of the system established by the consolidation of 
 the two Exchequers. In 1869 a Committee was appointed 
 to inquire into the taxation of Ireland and as to whether it 
 was in accordance with the Act of Union. That Committee, 
 which included two subsequent Chancellors of the Exchequer 
 (Northcote and Lowe), sat for two years, and while reporting 
 that the depression in Ireland had not been occasioned by 
 the pressure of taxation, they stated that if the principle of 
 graduation in favour of Ireland was accepted, it would be in 
 part at the expense of adding to the burdens of the poor 
 districts in Great Britain, and that if it was to be allowed as 
 regarded different parts of the United Kingdom, it would have 
 to be allowed as regards individual taxpayers. The question 
 was once more raised in 1875, and then Northcote maintained 
 the impossibility of separately considering different parts of 
 the United Kingdom, and Lowe asserted that the Irish argu- 
 ment rested on an obvious fallacy that taxation was not
 
 4i 4 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 paid by geographical districts but by individuals, and that 
 to establish a case it must be shown that the individual Irish- 
 man was more heavily taxed than the individual Englishman 
 in similar circumstances. 
 
 " The Home Rule controversy of course raised the separate 
 entity theory as to finance and other points. The dates 
 and facts I have alleged show the inaccuracy of the allegation, 
 that the separate entity theory has the support of history. 
 It is in direct contradiction of the terms of the Union of 
 the policy and practice of eighty years, and of the opinions 
 of financiers, including Gladstone, Lowe and Northcote. 
 
 ' You refer to Goschen's speech in 1890 as giving away 
 the position of unity of areas ; I think that if you consider 
 the circumstances of the debate, and the wording of the 
 speech, you will see that he can (as I have no doubt he will) 
 repudiate this construction that he will say that he granted 
 the Committee in order that the absurdity of the Irish posi- 
 tion might appear, and that neither he, nor the Unionist 
 party, will ever consent to such a dislocation of Imperial 
 Finance as the proposed separation (so long as there is an 
 United Kingdom) would involve. 
 
 " Anyhow, we are not bound by any financial opinions of 
 Goschen's. You have pulverized a good many, and it is 
 impossible to justify one of the gravest alterations in our 
 National Finance by the isolated opinion of any Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, which would, in this case, be undoubtedly 
 repudiated by every other member of the Unionist Cabinet. 
 
 " But apart from all this, the advocates of the separate 
 theory must face what it involves. The argument cannot 
 , be limited to income, it must extend to expenditure. 
 
 " Take the figures as you quote them, that Ireland's capa- 
 city is i-20th and that her taxation is i-i2th, what does 
 she contribute to Imperial expenditure ? I know the argu- 
 ment about excessive expenditure, but deduct any reasonable 
 diminution of that expenditure which a Nationalist Govern- 
 ment could effect, and you cannot bring Ireland's contribution 
 to the debt, to the Army and Navy, and to the Imperial
 
 Out of Office 415 
 
 expenditure to i-20th of the cost. The contention of Sexton 
 that she gains nothing by our Army and Navy is not tenable. 
 Her separate existence, except by moral and military expendi- 
 ture raised by herself which would crush her, is impossible. 
 If we did not hold Ireland, some other great Power would, and 
 what would her taxation be then ? Mr. Gladstone in 1886 
 put her share of the debt at 48,000,000, and he calculated 
 the interest at 1,466,000, and sinking fund at 360,000 ; 
 this was modified twice in 1893, but take her share of the 
 debt now as i-20th of 630,000,000, or 31,500,000, and 
 her contribution at i-2Oth of the 25,000,000 annual charge 
 for interest and sinking fund, or 1,250,000, and what would 
 that leave on existing figures for her contributions to Mili- 
 tary, Naval and Civil expenditure ? Not 850,000 ! On the 
 entity theory her share of all Imperial and debt expenditure is 
 at least 3,000,000. 
 
 " But if this principle of capacity of districts is to prevail 
 where is it to stop ? The poverty of the Highlands and of 
 many rural districts in England the slums of London and 
 our large towns will want to know why their areas are not 
 to have the benefit of this graduation. 
 
 " If relief is to be given in respect of taxes on consumable 
 articles, why is the artisan of Belfast to have his whisky 
 cheaper than the artisan of Glasgow and Newcastle ? Why 
 is the poor housekeeper of Dublin and Cork to have cheaper 
 tea than the poor housekeeper of London and Liverpool ? 
 If the relief is to be on direct taxation why are the professional, 
 commercial and land-owning classes of Ireland to be relieved 
 from the taxes paid by the same classes in Great Britain ? 
 And this relief to be given by increased taxation of the people 
 of Great Britain ! 
 
 " Is there any Chancellor of the Exchequer who dare pro- 
 pose such taxation ? Could any Government or any party 
 survive such a policy ? 
 
 " I cannot finish this extravagantly long letter without a 
 word on the personnel of the Commission. The signatories 
 to the report comprise 7 pronounced Home Rulers, I Unionist,
 
 4i 6 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 2 Irish Members (both, I believe, Unionists, but both inter- 
 ested in the reduction of Irish taxation), 2 gentlemen, Messrs. 
 Martin and Slattery, whose politics I do not know, and i 
 (only i) public man of the first rank who may be called inde- 
 pendent and judicial. Farrer, Welby and Currie's reports 
 are on the Home Rule basis, and are in defence of its principles 
 and policy. They even, in paragraph 52, carelessly describe 
 the reference in an unusual way. They speak of the separate 
 theory as ' the one upon which our instructions are founded ! ' 
 But even Welby cannot keep up to the pace of Farrer, and he 
 is obliged to record his dissent from the astounding proposal 
 that Ireland should be exempted from any contribution to 
 the National Debt, Army and Navy. Sir Thomas Sutherland 
 of course takes, and as a man of business, defends the Unionist 
 point of view. But the ablest of all the reports is that of Sir 
 D. Barbour. He, I believe, is an Irishman, but he has spent 
 his life in India. After a distinguished financial career in all 
 the branches of the Indian Service, he reached, in 1887, the 
 high position of Financial Secretary to the Government of 
 India, and in 1888 he was made the Chancellor of the Indian 
 Exchequer and therefore a Member of the Viceroy's Cabinet. 
 He held this post for five years. 
 
 " He possesses every qualification for an impartial and 
 competent examination of this whole question his judg- 
 ment is clear, and, as I venture to think, unanswerable ; and 
 to it I adhere. 
 
 " I do hope that you will not in any way give the sanction 
 of your great authority to a policy which I believe to be 
 unsound and unworkable, and to which I do not think the 
 Parliament or the people of Great Britain will consent. 
 
 " I owe you an abject apology for the enormous length of 
 this letter it does not express either all my criticisms on, and 
 objections to, the Report of the Commission, but I dare not 
 waste another minute of your time. I will try and reply to 
 the rest of your letter by next post. 
 
 ' Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 Out of Office 417 
 
 " Malwood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " March gih, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I was very grateful to you for your long and very 
 instructive letter on Irish Finance. I have been ' strictly 
 meditating that thankless muse ' not, I am sorry to say, 
 with satisfactory results. 
 
 " I need not tell you how most financial consciences would 
 desire to reach the same conclusions at which you arrive. 
 
 " The whole question is whether the Treaty of Union did 
 stipulate separate consideration of the taxation of Ireland, 
 then and thereafter, on the basis of her relative taxable 
 resources, or whether Ireland brought herself into hotchpot. 
 
 " On the best consideration I can give to the matter, as 
 revealed in this inquiry, the almost unanimous verdict of 
 the Commission that Ireland is entitled to separate considera- 
 tion cannot be gainsaid. 
 
 " I send you a Memorandum which I have drawn up 
 which please return to me if you have time to read it. 
 
 " You will see, I think, that Barbour, for whom you vouch, 
 is on the main point a ' separatist.' 
 
 " What a mess the Government have got into on the 
 Egyptian 500,000 ! " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 " Malwood, Lyndhurst, 
 
 " December gth, 1896. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Returning to the everlasting and unpleasant sub- 
 ject of Irish Financial relations I trouble you with another 
 bundle of notes. We have to encounter not only the over- 
 whelming numbers of the Commission, but, what is still 
 more serious, the admissions made by E. Hamilton, speaking 
 on behalf of the Treasury. Of course, the positions we should 
 have liked to take up and on which the status quo is alone 
 defensible are : 
 
 " (i). That consequent on the Union and upon the 
 
 27
 
 4i 8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 amalgamation of the Exchequers, an indiscriminate 
 system of taxation was finally established between the 
 two countries and cannot now be re-viewed or re-opened. 
 " (2). That a system of indiscriminate taxation 
 operates equally between the two countries. 
 
 " (3). That the finance since the Union has in fact 
 operated fairly between Great Britain and Ireland in 
 regard to taxation. 
 
 " I think that you must agree with me that the passages 
 I have extracted from E. Hamilton's answers to Sexton's 
 cross-examination give away all these positions and nega- 
 tive all the propositions above stated. Even the ' fidus 
 Achates ' finds himself compelled to condemn the financial 
 policy of Mr. G. in 1853. 
 
 " Pray return me the enclosed papers when you have 
 had time to look at them. 
 
 " They seem to me very serious. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 "57, Elm Park Gardens, 
 
 " South Kensington, S.W. 
 
 " December 30th, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am particularly glad that you come on the 5th. 
 
 " Like you, I am worrying away at the riddle which my 
 friend, the Irish Sphinx, has now set us. It abounds in traps 
 and culs de sac. Among others, will our Irish friends under- 
 take to govern their own country on such a sum as i-2oth 
 would yield, even if we let them off with one million as their 
 contribution to imperial charges of debt and defence ? 
 
 " But I shall like beyond all other things a quiet hour with 
 
 you. Fix your own time. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " JOHN MORLEY. 
 
 " Private. Mr. G. thinks that the plan of handing over 
 the whisky duty to joint local authorities ' deserves very 
 careful consideration.' "
 
 Out of Office 419 
 
 The foreign policy of Europe was at this time complicated by a 
 difference of opinion concerning the Armenian atrocities. It 
 was the instinct of the religious party in England to cry out that 
 this brutality, and bloodshed, and terrible persecution must be put 
 a stop to at all costs ; and to advocate the intervention of England 
 as the protector of the oppressed, and the champion of religious 
 freedom. So cried impulse good impulse in its motive, and its 
 meaning, and its resolve but the foreign policy of the Powers of 
 Europe cannot be guided by impulse. Let impulse have had its 
 head at that critical moment, and England would have been in- 
 volved in the far wider horrors of a great European war. The 
 Liberal party was divided in its opinions ; there were those who, 
 like Lord Rosebery and my father, knew that to steer safely the 
 Ship of State was to act only in concert with the other Powers ; 
 there were those who wanted England to rush full tilt into a 
 single-handed intervention, and run the risk of whatever might 
 follow. Owing to this division in the party and the feeling 
 expressed by one side against the policy of Lord Rosebery, he 
 resigned the leadership of the Liberal party. In September he 
 wrote to my father : 
 
 " Dalmeny Park, 
 " Edinburgh, 
 
 " September i8th, 1896. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Where are you ? I should greatly like to hold 
 communication with you. Would you come here on the 
 8th for our political function on the Qth ? 
 
 " A great responsibility rests on those who are hounding 
 on the country to a European war. But they will not 
 
 succeed. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " R." 
 And again on October 7th : 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I hope that this will reach you before to-morrow's 
 paper, which will announce to you the reasons, or some of 
 
 27*
 
 420 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 them, for my resigning the leadership of the Liberal 
 party. 
 
 " As you are coming here, I wish you to know from myself, 
 that I have taken this step, for which our conversation at 
 St. Andrews may, I hope, have prepared you. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " R." 
 
 Later in the year my father spoke on this subject. I give his 
 views in his own words : 
 
 " A question of vast importance has occupied public attention 
 during the last few months, upon which there have been the differ- 
 ences of opinion in the Liberal party, which have led to the retire- 
 ment from its leadership of Lord Rosebery. The infernal cruelties 
 of the Turkish Government in Armenia have righteously aroused 
 the indignation of all classes and all parties in this country, but 
 the saddest part of this terrible story is that it is the result of 
 British statesmanship and British public opinion. The pro- 
 Turkish and anti-Russian policy, popular at the time, which caused 
 the Crimean war, and which tore up the Treaty of San Stefano, is 
 responsible for the continuance of a Government, which has made 
 one of the fairest provinces in the East what Lord Rosebery 
 described as an organized hell. The Prime Minister the other 
 day denounced the belief in the necessary antagonism between 
 this country and Russia, as the superstition of an antiquated 
 diplomacy. The superstition may be as dead as the diplomacy, 
 but the evil that nations, as well as men, do lives after them ; 
 the policy which was founded upon that antiquated diplomacy 
 is the source of the crimes which have horrified the civilized world. 
 But in 1896 we have to deal with the facts with which we are 
 faced. We must ask ourselves what are our obligations, what 
 are our responsibilities, what can we do, and within what limit 
 must our efforts be confined ? It has been urged that we are 
 bound by treaty to protect the inhabitants of Armenia from 
 Turkish oppression, but this must be tested by the daylight of 
 evidence. I think it will be admitted that the only instrument 
 that can be quoted as authorizing the contention, that any duty
 
 Out of Office 421 
 
 of interference between Turkey and her subjects is imposed upon 
 Great Britain is the Cyprus Convention." 
 
 He then proceeded to explain that Convention, and to show that 
 the obligation which Great Britain was under was to join the Sultan 
 in defending his Asiatic dominions, if they were invaded by Russia. 
 In return, the Sultan promised to England to introduce necessary 
 reforms into the Government, and for the protection of the Christian 
 and other subjects of the Sultan in Asia. Therefore our defence 
 of Turkey was conditional upon her reform. " There is no evidence 
 of any right conferred on or any obligation undertaken by England, 
 to coerce Turkey in respect of her internal Government. I deny 
 that we were under a covenant or any treaty obligation to compel 
 Turkey by force to reform her Government in Armenia. Turkey 
 has broken her promise to us. We are free from our promise to 
 her. The defensive alliance is at an end, and not one shilling of 
 English money will be spent, not one drop of English blood will 
 ever be shed, to protect the detestable Government which for 
 centuries has cursed the unhappy creatures subject to its sway. 
 The policy of Lord Aberdeen's Government and Lord Beacons- 
 field's Government prolonged the existence of the Turkish Empire, 
 and that policy has fixed on Great Britain a moral responsibility 
 in respect of misrule in Turkey, which rests upon no other European 
 nation. We are bound to do all that we can to terminate the 
 horrors which the Sultan has inflicted, and is inflicting, upon 
 thousands of his subjects, whose only crime is the profession of the 
 Christian faith. There are two courses open to us. Joint action 
 with the other Powers separate action b}' ourselves. Any inter- 
 ference with the Sultan as a sovereign, or with Turkey as a state, 
 raises the most difficult and dangerous of all the problems of 
 European diplomacy. The Eastern question affects the interests 
 of every one of those six great Powers, and they would claim, and 
 justly claim, an effective voice in its settlement. These Powers 
 may arrive at a peaceful settlement, or it may be that a peaceful 
 settlement is impossible ; but one thing is certain, that the separate 
 interference of any one Power would provoke the resistance of 
 the others, and precipitate the carnage of a European war. It is 
 easy to deride the Concert of Europe, but the conflict of Europe
 
 422 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 would be the most awful calamity which the history of Europe, 
 or the world, has ever recorded. The controversy upon which 
 the Liberal party has differed may be stated in two sentences : 
 Lord Rosebery's opponents maintain that, failing decisive action 
 by the Powers of Europe, a united England should press upon 
 Lord Salisbury the duty of intervening by force. Lord Rosebery 
 said : ' The cardinal point of my policy is that single-handed 
 interference means a European war,' and he stated his belief, 
 founded upon information and knowledge, that there was a fixed 
 and resolute agreement on the part of nearly all the great Powers 
 to resist by force any single-handed intervention of England in 
 the affairs of the East. That statement of unparalleled gravity 
 has never been contradicted. . . . When a man, holding a blazing 
 torch from which the sparks are flying, asks me to walk with him 
 through a magazine where the gunpowder is lying everywhere 
 exposed, and assures me that there is not a particle of truth in 
 the assumption that an explosion will follow from such a pro- 
 menade, I am amazed at his delusions, but do not sacrifice my life 
 to demonstrate the danger. I for one will resolutely oppose Great 
 Britain's taking any step which will kindle a conflagration, the 
 extent, the miseries, the consequences of which, no man can calcu- 
 late. I deplore the inaction of Europe, I feel, as every Englishman 
 must feel, when he sees these gigantic crimes recklessly and un- 
 reservedly committed in the face of the great Powers, who could, 
 if they chose, terminate the awful tragedy ; but I remember the 
 words of John Bright, who, after expressing his sympathy with the 
 cruelly-oppressed peoples of Europe, said : ' It is not on a ques- 
 tion of sympathy that I dare involve this country in a war which 
 must cost an incalculable amount of treasure and of blood ; it is 
 not my duty to make this country the knight-errant of the human 
 race, and take upon herself the protection of the thousand millions 
 of human beings who have been permitted by the Creator of all 
 things to people this planet.' Lord Rosebery, believing, as he said, 
 that he was in difference with a considerable mass on the Eastern 
 question, arrived at the conclusion that he could not honourably 
 continue in his position as our leader. I unreservedly deplore that 
 decision. I believe that the majority of the party share Lord
 
 Out of Office 423 
 
 Rosebery's opinions and approve his policy ; but every man is the 
 judge of his own honour. For Lord Rosebery I entertain the 
 strongest feelings of admiration and affection ; and I think his 
 party, and his country, will never forget the statesmanlike courage 
 with which, at a supremely critical moment, he placed patriotism 
 above party popularity, and dared to proclaim the dangers of a 
 policy which, however noble were its aims and however 
 Christian its motive, was rapidly rushing to a terrible 
 catastrophe." 
 The following day Sir William Harcourt wrote : 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " December I2th, 1896. 
 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I thank you for your note. Allow me to congra- 
 tulate you on the very excellent and spirited speech which 
 I have just read and to thank you for the kind way in which 
 you spoke of your humble servant. 
 
 " The cheerful and encouraging tone of your speech will 
 give life and hope to the party. There is nothing so foolish 
 as the temper of those who think that when it is bad weather 
 it will never be fine again, and that in sunshine we shall never 
 experience showers. You and I have seen too much of life 
 not to have implicit confidence in the vicissitudes of the 
 seasons, of which yesterday and to-day we have a capital 
 example. 
 
 " E. Hamilton comes here to-day and we shall have a lively 
 Sabbath on Irish Finance, of which I will let you know the 
 outcome. 
 
 " No doubt the real object is to try to frighten the Govern- 
 ment into getting rid of the Committee but in that they 
 will not succeed. I do not believe a word of the story of our 
 Joe's complicity. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT."
 
 424 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The encouraging tone of the speech referred to was an unusual 
 burst of optimism on my father's part concerning the future of 
 the Liberal party. The scales were so low down on the one side, 
 that his nature compelled him to fill up as far as he truthfully 
 could the other : 
 
 " Our present duty in the House of Commons is to defend what 
 we have already achieved, and to resist any and every attempt to 
 neutralize or weaken past legislation in which is embodied some 
 of the articles of the Liberal Creed." And referring to Sir William 
 Harcourt, " the brilliant leader under whose consummate general- 
 ship we fought the battles of last Session, is still at our head. We 
 have the strongest confidence in his undaunted courage and in his 
 unrivalled sagacity."
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 1896 1899 
 OUT OF OFFICE (continued) 
 
 " It is a great mistake to suppose that enthusiasm can be only for extremes ; 
 an enthusiasm for moderation is one of the most English characteristics." 
 
 J. K. SPENDER. 
 
 THOUGH political matters always filled the prominent place 
 in Henry Fowler's life, his interests were not limited by the 
 walls of Westminster. The cessation of his departmental work 
 left a large gap in his energies, which he strove to fill elsewhere ; 
 and he placed his abilities at the service of several other than 
 political concerns. During this period of Opposition he did much 
 for the National Telephone Co., of which he became a Director 
 in September, 1897. In 1898 the Company's welfare was seriously 
 threatened by the action of Mr. Hanbury, who represented the 
 Postmaster-General in the House of Commons, and, writes Mr. 
 George Franklin of that Company, " it was largely owing to the 
 energetic efforts of Sir Henry Fowler that a satisfactory arrange- 
 ment was made, which removed the danger from the Company's 
 path, and enabled it to continue its useful and successful career. 
 Sir Henry Fowler was elected the Vice-President of the Company 
 in 1901, and succeeded to the important office of President, on the 
 resignation of Mr. J. S. Forbes, in the November of the same year. 
 He was at the head of affairs when the important agreement was 
 made in 1905, for the purchase by His Majesty's Postmaster-General 
 of the Company's plant, property and assets, on the 3ist December, 
 1911, when the Telephone Company's licence expired. During 
 the period of Sir Henry Fowler's connection with the Company, 
 the telephone business of the United Kingdom made marvellous 
 
 425
 
 426 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 progress, about 6,500,000 being expended in extending and 
 improving the telephone service of the country. He resigned his 
 position as a Director and President of the Company in March, 
 1906, on his accepting office, with a seat in the Cabinet, under the 
 Liberal Administration."* 
 
 He took a lively interest in the Imperial Institute, as such letters 
 as the following indicate : 
 
 " Sandringham, 
 " Norfolk, 
 
 " February I3th, 1897. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " The Prince of Wales desires me to say that he is 
 very anxious that you and Lord Herschell should meet and 
 have some conversation together respecting the Imperial 
 Institute. Would you kindly do so ? 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " FRANCIS KNOLLYS." 
 
 And two years later Lord Knollys (as he now is) wrote again : 
 
 " Marlborough House, 
 
 " July 3rd, 1899. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " Although your letter is marked ' private,' I thought 
 you would not mind my showing it confidentially to the 
 Prince of Wales. He desires me to thank you sincerely for 
 your kind words with reference to him, and to assure you 
 that he much appreciates them. It gives him much pleasure 
 to know that you give him credit for his anxiety to show 
 uniform fairness and impartiality on all matters of a religious 
 as well as of a public nature. In concluding I must thank 
 you very much myself for your most kind letter. 
 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " FRANCIS KNOLLYS." 
 
 The Conservative Government's Indian policy at this time, 
 however, filled Henry Fowler's mind with special interest, and he
 
 Out of Office 427 
 
 condemned the reversing of his Chitral policy by his successor, 
 Lord George Hamilton, on far wider than party grounds. 
 
 Lord Rosebery said in a letter : "I wish you could embody 
 in some shape or form the unfinished draft of your Chitral Despatch 
 in a speech. I know not how far advanced it was, but the very 
 skeleton of the argument should be valuable." And Sir William 
 Harcourt wrote : 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 September 5th, 1897. 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I wonder where you are just now ! I shall be very 
 glad to know your views as to this bad business of the Indian 
 Frontier. It seems to me most abundantly to justify your 
 condemnation of the Chitral occupation. 
 
 " The attempt on the part of the Government Press to make 
 out that it is due to a general Islam rising promoted from 
 Constantinople, appears on the face of it absurd. If that 
 were so, why is it not general amongst the Mohammedans in 
 India, instead of being confined to the tribes on the road to 
 Chitral, whose independence we pledged ourselves to respect; 
 and the bordering tribes south of Peshawar and the Khaiber 
 also may be regarded as in sympathy with them. 
 
 " I suppose some of us, when we speak, shall have to deal 
 with this question. I have your speech in the Debate of 
 September 3rd, 1895, but I should be glad if you could give 
 me a reference to the dates of later declarations by G. 
 Hamilton in 1896 and 1897, boasting of the complete success 
 of the operations and the good-will of the tribes. Also the 
 names of the Indian authorities whom you vouched as adverse 
 to the policy. 
 
 " I have seen important letters from Neville Chamberlain 
 and A. Colvin in the Saturday Review of August 28th. What 
 is the position or authority of Colvin ? I have understood 
 that Sir Donald Stewart and other great Indian authorities 
 were adverse to the Chitral policy.
 
 428 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " There is another important matter on which I should be 
 glad to know your views. Before I left London I had a 
 conversation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the 
 subject of the negotiations with France and the United States 
 on the Bimetallism question. I need hardly say that the 
 Government rejected absolutely any change in the English 
 monetary standard and system. The only two concessions 
 admitted as possible were : 
 
 " (i). The opening of the Indian Mints. 
 
 " (2). The holding of a certain amount of silver in the Bank 
 reserve. 
 
 " On the latter I will not trouble you, though I regard it 
 as wholly unworkable, having regard to the constant and 
 violent fluctuations in the value of silver. But I wrote to the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer a letter, giving my reasons for 
 believing that it would be most unsafe to undertake the 
 opening of the Indian Mints at the present time. Before the 
 closing of the mints silver was valued at 36^. After the closing 
 of the Mints and the repeal of the Sherman Law, it fell to 
 3od., at which figure it stood till a few months ago. Since 
 that time it has fallen to a figure below 24^. The result of 
 the closing of the Mints has been to raise the value of the 
 rupee to is. 4^., which is 4^. above its bullion value at ^od. 
 At the present price of silver the bullion value of the rupee 
 is gd. Is it possible to conceive that a Bimetallist agree- 
 ment between France and the United States to coin at 15.1 
 will raise the price of silver yd., but if it does not, what will 
 be the value of the rupee for exchange purposes ? The 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer has reserved the question till 
 October for discussion with the Indian Government. I 
 cannot conceive that with their present deficit, and impending 
 expenditure owing to the frontier war, the Government of 
 India will ever run the risk of consenting to the opening of 
 the Mints at the present price of silver without any security 
 as to the future value of the rupee. It may entail the loss 
 of many millions to the Indian Government. It is very 
 remarkable that the immense fall in silver in the last few
 
 Out of Office 429 
 
 months has not affected the exchange value of the rupee, 
 which is better than it was last year. 
 
 " I believe that the expectation of a great rise in the value 
 of silver, consequent on Bimetallism in France and the United 
 States, is chimerical. There is no reason assigned for the 
 great and sudden fall in the last few months. 
 
 " The idea of ' doing something for silver ' is a delusion. 
 It is like ' Humpty Dumpty ' ; all the King's horses and all 
 the King's men will never raise it up again. 
 
 " It seems to me most unfair to India to make them the 
 victims only to please the silverites in the United States. 
 
 " I can see that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in 
 great perplexity. He professes to believe that the Bimetallist 
 projects will in fact raise the price of silver. And he is strongly 
 pressed by his Bimetallist colleagues. But I hope the Govern- 
 ment of India may quash the plan. 
 
 " In England, at least, the fall of silver contemporarily with 
 a rise in wheat of one hundred per cent, is a facer for Chaplin 
 and Co., and knocks the bottom out of all their argumentation, 
 as I see it has already done in the United States. 
 
 " After a delicious summer we are now in the midst of bad 
 weather, and feeling the chilling effects of snow in the Gram- 
 pians, though I doubt not that Mr. Gladstone is toboganning 
 there. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT. 
 
 " I have just been looking at your Financial Return which 
 in its present form, is a most complete and invaluable con- 
 spectus of the past and present." 
 
 The forward movement of the new Indian Secretary had resulted 
 in a rising of the tribes which grew to such an extent as to neces- 
 sitate military operations on a most gigantic scale. According to 
 Lord Lansdowne, on November gih, 1897, the British force on the 
 frontier numbered seventy thousand men, more than double the 
 number that were engaged at Waterloo, and a much larger number 
 than were ever in conflict in India before. Lord George Hamilton
 
 43 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 said that, not even in the recollection of those who passed through 
 the Mutiny, had there ever been so spontaneous and unaccountable 
 an outbreak, but, said Henry Fowler, " I ask myself, and I ask you, 
 is it absolutely unaccountable ? 
 
 " The nation has been filled with the records of heroic courage 
 which have upheld the proud tradition of the British Army, and 
 displayed the unflinching loyalty of those Indian troops who rank 
 with the bravest soldiers in the service of the Queen. But the 
 strength and unanimity of this national feeling necessitates some 
 reconsideration of the policy with which this brilliant campaign 
 is involved. The Office which I held in the last Government 
 requires that I should take some share of the responsibility for 
 the action which their successors have reversed and censured. 
 
 " At the time when I was considering the retention of Chitral, 
 I was officially informed that there was a certain freemasonry 
 among the tribes in the North-West, that those who were too 
 distant from the scene of any expedition to think of joining at 
 once in hostilities against us, began to take some interest in their 
 fellow-tribesmen when they heard of any permanent occupations 
 of new tracts, and that, in their jealous desire to maintain their 
 complete independence, they had a common link of sympathy. 
 It appears to me that this warning was well-founded, and that 
 it is within the range of probability that the construction of military 
 forts and the presence of large bodies of troops in districts beyond 
 the frontier, aroused the passionate fear of annexation, which is 
 the hereditary patriotism of the tribes. It may be that a belief 
 that the Chitral road and its garrisons were the first steps towards 
 the destruction of the independence of the tribes, kindled the 
 conflagration which cannot be extinguished except at the fearful 
 sacrifice which the telegrams from India daily record. But when 
 the fire has been put out, when the victory has been achieved 
 what next ? The question not only for the people and Govern- 
 ment of India, but for the people, Parliament and Government of 
 Great Britain, is what is to be our future policy in the North- 
 West of India ? The respective merits of Governments dwindle 
 into insignificance when we are confronted with one of the gravest 
 difficulties of our Indian Empire. Anglo-Indian statesmen, both
 
 Out of Office 431 
 
 civil and military, are divided as to the wisest and safest frontier 
 policy. One section, in view of a possible invasion of India by 
 Russia, advocate what is called the forward policy. They main- 
 tain that our frontiers should be extended until they touch the 
 frontiers of Russia and Afghanistan. They consider that the 
 tribes which occupy the vast region of mountains and deserts which 
 lie between us and what may be called neighbouring Powers, 
 should be subjugated, and their country annexed ; and thus India 
 would secure the scientific frontier which would be of supreme 
 advantage in case of any attack. The other section, who have 
 been called the party of ' masterly inactivity,' maintain that every 
 step forward weakens our defence ; that our dominions are com- 
 pletely guarded by the mountain ranges of the Himalayas and 
 the Hindu-Kush ; that we should cultivate friendly relations with 
 the intervening tribes and respect their independence ; that to 
 conquer and hold their territory would require a large increase of 
 the Indian army ; that the additional expenditure would be an 
 intolerable tax on Indian resources ; that our true and safe policy 
 is to develop the trade, the agriculture, the manufactures, railways 
 and canals, and the health and education of the people of India ; 
 and that it would be an act of supreme folly to abandon all these 
 enterprises in order to spend vast sums on a military policy, the 
 necessity for which has been denied by many of the most eminent 
 Viceroys, the most experienced civilians, and most illustrious 
 soldiers, who have made and maintained our Indian Empire. 
 
 " We have now two courses open to us one is the occupation 
 and administration of the whole country through which we have 
 passed in the recent expeditions, the other is that, having shown 
 our ability to defeat all hostile attacks of the tribes, we should 
 leave the tribes alone, maintain friendly relations with them as far 
 as possible, but avoid, not only annexation, but the appearance of 
 annexation of their country. It has been well said that if France 
 had a Switzerland between her and Germany she would be safer 
 than she is now. British India has a mightier Switzerland lying 
 across her border. Why should we destroy so strong a bulwark ? 
 If, as Lord George Hamilton suggests, we are to construct roads, 
 erect forts, and hold positions in Tirah and adjoining countries, we
 
 43 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 are taking the first step which will inevitably lead to conflict, 
 to lavish sacrifice of men and money, and finally to annexation. 
 The attempt to open roads through these regions means a per- 
 manent military force ; it means interference with the native 
 inhabitants, punishment of offending tribes, that will be followed 
 by further control, by punitive and probably rescuing expeditions, 
 and in the end annexation. And at what cost, and to gain what 
 advantage to India ? We have yet to deal with the cost of the 
 present expedition. What that cost is I do not know, but if it 
 approaches the figures I have seen, the Indian revenue cannot meet 
 it ; and I go further ought not to be asked to meet it. But I 
 refer to the cost of the policy in the future. By whom is that to 
 be defrayed ? By the Indian taxpayer, or the British taxpayer ? 
 Ask the present and late Finance Ministers of India, ask the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, and I think we shall be told that India 
 cannot, and Great Britain will not, undertake that terrible burden. 
 
 " On political, on financial, on administrative grounds, as well 
 as upon the strategical grounds on which I am not competent to 
 speak, but with respect to which I know the opinions of some of 
 the greatest soldiers in Her Majesty's forces, we oppose the policy, 
 however disguised, which means the occupation and the annexa- 
 tion of the vast tracts of country held by the tribes on the 
 North-West. 
 
 " The frontier policy which we believe to-day to be the wisest, 
 the safest and the best was accurately defined by the Duke of 
 Devonshire when as Secretary of State for India he said : ' We do 
 not intend to trust to a scientific frontier. We do not intend to 
 look only to mountain passes and strongholds, and we think that 
 some attention should be paid to the fact that these mountain- 
 passes and strongholds are held by men, and are inhabited by 
 men, of whom the strongest characteristic is their deep attach- 
 ment to their independence. We will try to teach them once 
 more that we ourselves respect that independence, and that in 
 our own interests, and for the protection of our own frontier, we 
 will assist them to maintain that independence, against any 
 comer, from whatever quarter he may come.' 
 
 " I have always done my utmost to keep Indian affairs outside
 
 Out of Office 433 
 
 the range of party controversy. I have felt it to be my duty, 
 though at the cost of the most unscrupulous misrepresentation, to 
 support in legislation and in administration the Indian policy of 
 the Government, when I have considered it on the whole to be 
 right. The question now before us is an Imperial question which 
 the final authority in the Empire can alone decide. Holding, as 
 I do, the strongest convictions with respect to the occupation of 
 Chitral, the making of the military road, and the threatened occu- 
 pation of the territories beyond the frontier, I am bound to oppose 
 a policy which I believe to be fraught with danger to the safety 
 and prosperity of our Indian Empire." 
 
 The following far-sighted comment on my father's opposition 
 to the Government's policy appeared in the World : 
 
 " The country expects moderation, fairness and good sense 
 from Sir Henry Fowler, but it expects something more. It expects 
 grasp of facts, command of principle, and a statesmanlike percep- 
 tion and it usually gets them. He attacked the policy of the 
 Indian frontier expedition with great force of statement and 
 reasoning, but he avoided the unworthy imputations of bad faith 
 into which some of his colleagues have been betrayed. He is in 
 the Radical party rather than of it. If the Radical party is ever 
 again to become the Liberal party, it will be through his increasing 
 influence in its councils. A better example of the rising states- 
 manship of the middle classes cannot be found than that which Sir 
 Henry Fowler exhibits. The impression that a statesman is 
 great because he deals with great affairs, and becomes great by 
 dealing with them, will scarcely survive a scrutiny of the com- 
 ponents of Cabinets during the last century. Who drives fat 
 oxen is not necessarily himself fat. The opposite impression that 
 to be busy in parochial business parochializes the intelligence 
 and produces only a superior sort of vestryman, will just as little 
 stand the test of examination. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Henry 
 Fowler are crucial instances to the contrary. The fact is that it 
 is not the training, but the character and intellect that are trained, 
 that are the vital elements in the matter. Almost any sort of 
 discipline will serve the purpose, if the proper faculties be there, 
 the Town Council and the solicitor's office nearly as well as the 
 
 28
 
 434 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 University and the Bar. Imperially-minded statesmen have 
 issued from the former ; parish politicians and pettifoggers from 
 the latter. He who wants proof need only look around him.'' 
 
 He also received many private letters on the same subject. 
 One from Lord Rosebery : 
 
 " Dalmeny Park, 
 " Edinburgh, 
 
 " November 22nd, 1897. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I must send you a line expressive of the great 
 delight with which I have read your speech. The calm state- 
 ment, the deadly moderation of tone, the overwhelming 
 argument as to policy with which it concludes, make it a 
 State paper which it will take many thousand platform 
 speakers to impair. 
 
 " I hope it will be at once printed in a cheap form, and 
 circulated broadcast ; for it deals, quite conclusively, with a 
 subject in which the whole nation is deeply interested. 
 
 " You have done a good day's work for your party and 
 yourself ; and, more than all, for your country. You dis- 
 charge yourself much too rarely ; but truly you are a twenty- 
 one ton gun when you do. 
 
 " Yours always, 
 
 "R." 
 
 One from the then Indian Secretary, whose policy he had 
 attacked : 
 
 " Bo wood, 
 " Calne, 
 
 " Wilts, 
 
 " November 22nd, 1897. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I must write a line to congratulate you upon the 
 admirable tone and spirit of your speech on Saturday. You 
 skilfully availed yourself of the points in your favour, and 
 yet said nothing that, directly, or indirectly, would give offence 
 to Elgin.
 
 Out of Office 435 
 
 " Goschen and Lansdowne are both here, and entirely 
 concur in this view of your speech. 
 
 " I do not think there will be much difference between us, 
 as to what should be our policy of the future. 
 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " GEORGE HAMILTON." 
 
 " i, Paper Buildings, 
 
 " Temple, London, E.G. 
 
 " 22 November, 1897. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Please accept my best congratulations on your 
 magnificent speech. It is one of the most masterly statements 
 of a complicated case that I have read, and it will produce 
 a great and lasting impression upon the country. 
 
 " The confusion it has caused (even after the interval of 
 Sunday) among the enemy is evidenced by the Times article 
 this morning, in which they fall foul of me, and try to set us 
 against one another. 
 
 " I have thought it well to send them a few lines stating the 
 true facts. " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " H. H. ASQUITH." 
 
 " Oriel College, 
 " Oxford, 
 
 " December 5th, 1897. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I am extremely glad that you think what I said 
 at Coatbridge about the N. W. Frontier war can be of any 
 use ; but the whole case was so fully and admirably, and 
 indeed unanswerably, put by you, that it seemed to me almost 
 superfluous to refer to it further. 
 
 " Through Scotland and the North of England there seems 
 to be a strong though quiet set of opinion against the Govern- 
 ment, especially on the N. W. Frontier question. Not a few 
 Tories tell me they condemn the whole thing. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " JAMES BRYCE." 
 28*
 
 436 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " The Saturday Review, 
 
 " 38, Southampton Street, 
 " Strand. 
 
 " 22nd November, 1897. 
 " DEAR SIR, 
 
 " I intend to print your recent address on India 
 verbatim et literatim in the Saturday Review, as I think it has 
 been very insufficiently dealt with in many of the London 
 Daily Papers. 
 
 " May I ask you kindly to furnish me with an authentic 
 report of it. 
 
 " I have never yet printed a political address in the Saturday 
 Review, but yours is one of the most complete statements of 
 a case I have read in the English language. 
 
 " It is past being dealt with in a Leading Article or special 
 article, and sums up fairly the arguments against the disastrous 
 Forward Policy which is bringing ruin on our Indian Empire. 
 
 " I remain, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " FRANK HARRIS." 
 
 " 33. North Side, 
 
 " Clapham Common, S.W. 
 
 " November 22nd, 1897. 
 '\DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have been spending a long and happy day with 
 you. I have read, and closely analyzed, your superb speech, 
 and have written three columns of newspaper type upon it 
 for two leading Indian newspapers. Thank you again and 
 again. It takes one back to the very best Gladstonian 
 period, and is the finest fighting speech by far that we have 
 had since the great catastrophe. It is all the stronger for 
 your candid fairness and sense of justice to your opponents. 
 I always read your annual speeches with pleasure and profit, 
 and have done so every since you entered Parliament. To 
 say that you have excelled yourself is the highest compli- 
 ment I can pay you. 
 
 " What I always like about your speeches is their ' teaching '
 
 Out of Office 437 
 
 quality. You have put the Frontier question into a series 
 of clear, logical, readable, and understandable, sentences, 
 that explain the whole mystery like a school-primer, and bring 
 conviction well home. 
 
 " Ever since Chitral I have felt that this Frontier question 
 will give the Opposition their first great opportunity. You 
 are the man to drive it home in the Queen's Speech. May I 
 be there to hear you ! 
 
 " I am only afraid you have done the job too soon, and 
 that the Forward Movement will collapse before you can 
 get at it across the table of the House. You have simply 
 shaken the life out of it, like a terrier with a rat. I have read 
 carefully to-day, not only your speech, but every leading 
 article upon it I could lay my hands upon. You will no 
 doubt get them all, and will agree with me that the impression 
 made is simply tremendous. I hope you will have it at once 
 set up in readable type, and pamphlet form, with a good map 
 or two. Don't think 200 or 300 thrown away in making the 
 price such as will enable Liberal members and candidates to 
 circulate it broadcast. If I were either I should send it with 
 my compliments to every elector in my constituency. 
 
 " If it had been any other day but Saturday I should have 
 come to Wolverhampton to hear it. It is just the sort of 
 speech that will vitally affect the next general election, and 
 any by-election could be won on it and nothing else. 
 
 " I hope you are none the worse for the effort, and believe 
 
 me 
 
 " Most sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. S. CAINE." 
 
 " 57, Elm Park Gardens, 
 
 " South Kensington, S.W. 
 
 " November 25th, 1897. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I go with every word that Rosebery says about 
 
 your most masterly speech. 
 
 " Truly, 
 
 " J. MORLEY."
 
 438 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 At the beginning of the next year 1898 my father received 
 a gift of the Queen's portrait as a souvenir of the Diamond Jubilee. 
 It was from a photograph of the Queen taken in the dress worn 
 by Her Majesty on the 22nd June, 1897. He acknowledged it in 
 this letter : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " January 2Oth, 1898. 
 " DEAR SIR ARTHUR BIGGE, 
 
 " I have the honour of acknowledging the receipt of 
 the portrait of Her Majesty which she has graciously presented 
 to me as a souvenir of the Diamond Jubilee. May I ask 
 you in my name to express to Her Majesty my grateful appre- 
 ciation of her kind remembrance of me, and my assurance that 
 I and mine will always loyally cherish this portrait as a 
 memento of an era unparalleled in English history, and of a 
 Sovereign whom it was my high privilege and my great 
 happiness to serve in the administration of the Indian Empire. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In the same month he wrote to Mr. John Morley referring to 
 political and other events. Political affairs at this time were 
 looking very drear. As a New Year's message Mr. Morley wrote : 
 " The old year has gone out gloomily enough, as you say, just 
 like 1797, and in that analogy '98 will be no improvement." 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " 14 January, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Can you give me Carnegie's address on the Riviera ? 
 I was very sorry not to meet you at Armitstead's as I should 
 have liked a chat with you. Kimberley's was an admirable 
 speech. I see that Perks has made a Nonconformist deliver-
 
 Out of Office 439 
 
 ance. I have not seen him since, nor did I know that he in- 
 tended saying in public what I knew were his private views. 
 It is reported in the Manchester Guardian of yesterday and 
 indicates strong opposition to the Irish Catholic University. 
 I am not surprised to hear that Harcourt is ' down.' The 
 Derby and similar programmes mean 
 
 (a) The enormous strengthening of all the powers of 
 the House of Lords, 
 
 (b) The disruption of the Liberal party and the ulti- 
 mate division of parties into the Haves and the Have-nots, 
 and when that supreme folly is achieved I know which 
 side (in this country) will win. I see that I am speak- 
 ing the night after your Stirling demonstration. If I 
 say what I think I shall incur the displeasure of some of 
 our friends. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 There is in the above a tone of impatience which was not usual 
 in Henry Fowler's political mind, and which indicates a deep dis- 
 approval on his part of some of the internal cross currents of the 
 Liberal party. Of course, it must be remembered that this was 
 a private letter to a confidential friend, and that probably no indica- 
 tions of this impatience were apparent outside ; but in this book, 
 which is the story of a life and not the history of a party or even a 
 statesman, it is interesting to note the personal ups and downs 
 which bring the historical figure into a living and very human 
 personality. 
 
 A few days later he opened a Liberal Club at Cleckheaton and 
 spoke at a huge evening meeting. At the former he expressed his 
 views about the worth of such clubs : "He regarded the club, as 
 he understood theirs was, of the younger members of the party, 
 as of great educational value. He thought that in the rubbing 
 together of mind with mind, the discussing, as they would dis- 
 cuss and as they ought to discuss with pleasant friction and 
 agreeable difference of opinion, the many questions that would 
 arise, the young men would find out that they could not arrive
 
 44 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 at clear correct views on any question without hammering it out 
 and talking it over. He hoped the effect of the club would be to 
 introduce an element of thought in connection with politics, and 
 that not only would they hold clear views on public questions, 
 but they would be enabled to give good, sound, real reasons for 
 the views that they held, and to show that they were not mere 
 prejudices which for the time being they happened to entertain. 
 The club would also be a social advantage to the Liberal party. 
 It was an advantage to the party that they should know each other 
 socially, and meet in social enjoyment, and they would find the 
 result of this social connection and the educational process which 
 would be going on would be to deepen and increase combination 
 and co-operation. It would prepare them and the constituency 
 for the fights that would inevitably come. It would be a good 
 thing for the younger Liberals to hold clear views and to express 
 them on local politics. Local politics were the bread and butter 
 of every-day life, and required as much looking after as Imperial 
 Government, and he looked more perhaps to the future develop- 
 ment of many of the causes in which they were so deeply interested 
 through local instrumentality, and local sentiment, and local 
 action, rather than to Imperial action or periodical Parliamentary 
 elections which might only occur once in seven years." 
 
 And at the evening meeting he spoke of some of the difficulties 
 and dangers, which personally lay heavy on his spirits, but which 
 publicly he endeavoured to meet and to mitigate. 
 
 " We suffer as a party a great deal from a characteristic of the 
 present day a characteristic of our political, and public, and our 
 newspaper life a characteristic alike of the Press and the people 
 the characteristic of exaggeration. Everything appears to be 
 described and denounced and represented in the style of the evening 
 paper ; and most of the astounding facts which appear in the 
 evening papers you never hear of next morning. The wonderful 
 event, the gigantic crime, the unparalleled sensation does not 
 survive another rising of the sun. Now as a party we have suffered, 
 and are suffering a great deal, from exaggeration ; exaggeration of 
 our position, exaggeration of the past and of the present state of 
 our party. I think the true answer to all this is, what is the state
 
 Out of Office 441 
 
 of the facts ? I have an impression that the ghost of a thing is 
 always worse than the reality. I think that a party has its winters 
 as well as its summers. It is an essential element of political life 
 as well as of animal, vegetable and national life. We are now in 
 our winter, and I do not shrink from referring to our great defeat 
 in 1895. 
 
 " What was the cause of that defeat ? Whenever an army 
 is defeated there is always a large class of people who say that 
 it is the fault of the generals ; and sometimes people say that it is 
 the fault of the soldiers. I do not myself stop to apportion the 
 blame or censure with respect to that defeat. But I think who 
 ever was to blame for it, what the defeat amounted to was this 
 it was a verdict, a clear and distinct verdict of disapproval on 
 the part of the constituencies, not of the administration of the 
 Liberal Government that I think was hardly ever raised but it 
 was a disapproval of proposed legislation ; and all the sections 
 affected by that legislation have combined together with resistless 
 force, and hence the defeat of the Government, which at one and 
 the same moment was working right and left, north and south ; 
 and with its diminished forces and its exhausted resources it was 
 not able to confront that powerful combination." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Somebody has said that the first duty of an Opposition is to 
 oppose. This is a statement which is at once true and false. The 
 duty of an Opposition is to oppose what is bad it is not the duty 
 of an Opposition to oppose what is good. But above all it is not 
 the duty of a Liberal Opposition which professes to wish good 
 legislation, to oppose legislation which they believe to be good 
 and beneficial simply because it is promoted by those to whom 
 they are politically opposed. Therefore, the Opposition did not 
 oppose the Irish Land Bill. They supported it, and if they had 
 been disposed to play what was once described in the House of 
 Commons as a dirty trick, there are times when if we had put our 
 principles into our pockets and looked only for our own advantage, 
 we might have done some very considerable mischief to that legisla- 
 tion. But under the leadership of Mr. Morley the party stood 
 firm, and upon that point did what they thought was right to the
 
 44 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 people of Ireland irrespective of any political consequences at 
 
 home. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " I tell you candidly I care very little for Liberal programmes, 
 but I care a great deal for Liberal principles. There is an old- 
 fashioned prejudice in this country in favour of doing one thing 
 at a time, and doing it well. There is no doubt, no difficulty in 
 any man's mind as to what Liberal principles are. The history 
 of the last sixty years of the century has been the record of what 
 Liberal principles are, and how they have been developed, not 
 always by a Liberal Government, not infrequently by Conservative 
 Governments, as in the case of Catholic Emancipation, as in the 
 case of Free Trade, as in the case of the Extension of the Franchise ; 
 but the principles were ours. Difficulties and differences have 
 arisen, and always will arise, as to what is practicable, what is 
 most pressing, what the special needs of the times require, and 
 what represents the desire of the greatest number of the people 
 of this country. To quote Mr. Gladstone's words : ' You must 
 have regard to the ripeness or unripeness of public opinion, and 
 to the favourable or unfavourable conjunction of circumstances.' 
 And I think we have learned very little if we have not learned the 
 wisdom and the truth of this. We have not to prescribe until we 
 are called in. Our duty at present is not to forestall what the 
 country will most desire two or three years hence, or whenever the 
 time may arrive when the Liberal party is called to power. We 
 have to resist what is reactionary, we have to resist what is unjust, 
 we have to attempt to prevent the doing of what is wrong, and 
 when we have succeeded in that, the time may arrive when we shall 
 have to decide, not our measures, not our principles, not our policy, 
 but what is the best mode, the surest mode, the most practicable 
 mode, of carrying those measures into effect. You must ever bear 
 in mind in all our party conflicts, in all our party combats, in our 
 victories and in our defeats, that there is in this country one 
 gigantic, supreme force, which is greater than party, which per- 
 vades all parties, which conquers all parties, which is at once the 
 impregnable bulwark against reaction and against revolution, and 
 that force is the strong common sense of the British people. That
 
 Out of Office 443 
 
 predominant power dictates the direction of all party politics, and 
 of all party action ; that predominant power secures that the rate 
 of progress shall not be too rapid nor too slow ; it discerns the 
 larger national issues which are sometimes obscured in the smoke 
 and confusion of sectional conflicts ; it knows by its unerring 
 instincts that progress is the resistless force in political, in com- 
 mercial, in social, in national life ; it knows that stagnation is 
 decay and death ; and our appeal is, will be, must be, to that 
 final tribunal. If we are true to ourselves as patriots, if we are true 
 to the illustrious traditions of our party, if we are true to the great 
 principles which that party has always professed, on which it was 
 founded, by which it has been guided, of unceasing protest against 
 unequal privileges, unequal laws, unequal administration, if we 
 also remember that the one aim of all Governments, I care not 
 how that Government is composed, is the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number, we may confidently anticipate the ultimate issue 
 of that great conflict in which we are now engaged." 
 On the following day he wrote to Mr. Morley : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " soth January, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " The condensation of the report of my speech in the 
 London papers is so defective and so completely ignores the 
 main points of my deliverance that (valuing as I do your 
 opinion), I cannot help sending you the fuller report in the 
 local paper. I have to go into the Election here for the 
 greater part of the week, and unless Harcourt has his meet- 
 ing of ex-colleagues either on Thursday afternoon or Friday 
 forenoon, I cannot be present. The rumours here are that 
 we shall win by a small majority, but it is an uphill fight and 
 the contest is really between the whole public-house party 
 and the temperance party. 
 
 "' We had a splendid meeting at Cleckheaton. The tone 
 
 was very encouraging. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 444 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 In the February of that year Mr. Gladstone died, and with 
 him died, though not perhaps at once, much of the old Liberalism. 
 Many an important chapter was drawing to its close with the end 
 of the great and wonderful Nineteenth Century, and one of the 
 greatest was that of Mr. Gladstone's life. 
 
 " The final judgment," said my father, " on the illustrious 
 career of Mr. Gladstone rests with posterity, but his colleagues, his 
 followers, and his contemporaries, can estimate, as posterity can 
 never estimate, the loss which his death has inflicted upon 
 Parliament, upon the policy, and upon the public life of the great 
 nation of which he was pre-eminently and confessedly the greatest 
 and foremost citizen. At a critical period when a question was 
 raised as to the future leadership of the Liberal party, Mr. Morley 
 quickly closed the controversy by his memorable utterance : 
 ' There is no vacancy.' There is a vacancy now, there is a void, 
 a blank, which has not and which cannot be filled. Unstinted 
 appreciation of his rare genius, of his matchless powers, of his 
 unique personality, of his high tone of character, and of his 
 Christian statesmanship, has been the spontaneous utterance of 
 men of all parties, of all classes, of different races, and conflicting 
 creeds. The nation in the widest sense of that inclusive word 
 mourns his death as a national loss, and the nation interred him 
 with sublime simplicity in that sacred spot 
 
 " ' Where points the muse to stranger's eye 
 The graves of those who cannot die.' " 
 
 About this time he received the following letters from Sir William 
 Harcourt : 
 
 " Chatsworth, 
 
 " Chesterfield, 
 
 " January I4th, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I hear from J. Ellis that you are not disposed to 
 take the initiative yourself in bringing on the Indian Frontier 
 question on the Address, and I quite understand that you 
 would wish to reserve yourself till the Government have 
 disclosed their defence.
 
 Out of Office 445 
 
 " I think it clear we must have an Amendment in some 
 shape and that it must be placed in safe and capable hands. 
 Lawson Walton has been suggested, and I think he will be 
 the best choice. If you agree, will you send me a telegram 
 to Malwood, Lyndhurst, where I shall be to-morrow, and I 
 will write to invite him to prepare himself. Of course we 
 shall keep the form of the motion in our own hands. 
 
 " I think both Plymouth and York very satisfactory, as in 
 both places there was a strong Conservative majority to 
 encounter. 
 
 " I have taken Onslow's house again in Richmond Terrace. 
 I hope all our colleagues will come up to town a few days 
 before the meeting so that we maj' have good time to consult 
 together. 
 
 " I myself shall go to London on the last day of this 
 month. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 " Malwood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " January 27th, 1898. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have no doubt that the long-expected vacancy at 
 Wolverhampton occupies you a good deal. I hear from 
 Parliament Street that we have a fair chance of the seat, but 
 they will not know so well as you do. 
 
 " I go up to London to the house I had last year, 7, Rich- 
 mond Terrace. I hope very much that you will be able to be 
 in London some days before the opening as it is of great im- 
 portance that we should be able to consult on many subjects 
 and particularly on the shape in which the question of Indian 
 Frontier will have to be launched. Lawson Walton will have 
 to be coached well beforehand, and we must settle the form 
 of the motion, which will be by no means an easy job. You 
 will have seen by G. Hamilton's speech to-day the line they 
 mean to take.
 
 446 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " (i). That Chitral and the road are British Territory, 
 by which he intends absurdly to treat the ' sphere of 
 influence ' as the same thing, i.e., that the agreement 
 with the Amir not to interfere amounted to an incor- 
 poration of the tribe in our dominion. 
 
 " (2). That we made the road, which, I suppose, means 
 that a road was made for the relief expedition. 
 " But the question was not the making, but the occupation 
 of the road. 
 
 " From G. Hamilton's point of view what is meant by 
 ' respecting the independence of the tribes ' ? 
 
 " All these points require very careful consideration, and, 
 as I shall have briefly to deal with them in my opening speech 
 on the Address, I again pray you to come early to London. 
 
 " From what I can hear, the Government are not likely to 
 be able to stick to the rather absurd conditions they attached 
 to the Chinese loan and they will have to give up either the 
 Loan or the conditions. So long as we insist on our ' most 
 favoured nation ' rights under the Treaty of Tientsin (and I 
 do not see that either Russia or Germany have as yet done 
 anything to infringe them), I do not see of what we have to 
 complain or what is the justification of all this bellicose boom, 
 of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to be 
 ashamed. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 " Malwood, 
 
 " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " January 28th, 1898. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Our letters crossed. I am glad that Lawson 
 Walton is well posted up. I certainly concur in your view 
 as to the nature of the Resolution, but it will not be an easy 
 one to put into appropriate words. 
 
 " I wish you would draft your own idea of it and that you 
 will be able to be in London in the middle of next week, when
 
 Out of Office 447 
 
 we can excogitate it. I have written to all our friends to 
 beg them to gather together in good time as the situation 
 is one which requires a good deal of consideration. 
 
 " I am glad you are able to give a favourable diagnosis at 
 
 Wolverhampton. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "W. V. HARCOURT," 
 
 " 7, Richmond Terrace, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " February ist, 1898. 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Many thanks for your letter. 
 
 " I enclose one just received from Lawson Walton. I agree 
 with him that we must directly challenge the past policy of 
 the Government as to Chitral otherwise we should not be 
 able to hold our men. 
 
 " I will try to arrange a general meeting of our friends for 
 Friday as that day will suit you best, and will let you know. 
 
 " I am glad you gave it Stead hot. 
 
 " I am sorry your prognostications of Wolverhampton are 
 
 not so favourable. 
 
 ' Yours sincerely, 
 
 " W. V. HARCORURT." 
 Shortly afterwards my father wrote Mr. Morley : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 2nd February, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " Harcourt sent me L. Walton's note. I see no reason 
 why speeches (especially Walton's) should not deal with the 
 whole history of the Chitral policy past and present. My 
 doubt is as to the wording of the Amendment. We must 
 not forget that as an Opposition we did not challenge in 1896 
 or 1897 the policy adopted in 1895, and the reason was their 
 allegation that the tribes had consented and were maintaining 
 the road. We said (Harcourt and myself) in 1895 that we
 
 448 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 did not believe that an effectual consent could be obtained, 
 but that did not appear until 1897. My chief aim is to 
 prevent future mischief, and if we are to do anything in this 
 direction it must be by a declaration of future policy. How- 
 ever, we shall, I hope, meet to-morrow at half-past four, and 
 then we can fully discuss this most difficult question. I 
 enclose you Bunce's leader in to-day's Post on the Edgbaston 
 controversy and also a very good speech of Osier's, who 
 is now the leader of our party in Birmingham, and which I 
 think is an answer to Chamberlain. I do not agree with 
 you that (in the event of the country returning a Liberal 
 majority and everything depends on that) a Liberal Govern- 
 ment would not be formed. If the country desires a Liberal 
 Administration it is out of the power of any two (or six) men 
 to prevent that desire from being realized. And no party 
 (if it wins) will tolerate that any personal quarrel between 
 any two of its leaders shall hand the country over to Tory 
 Government and Tory policy. 
 
 " No man (not even a Peel, Beaconsfield or Gladstone) is 
 essential. And we must not exaggerate the disastrous 
 results of this disastrous squabble. 
 
 " Liberalism is not dead. If we are beaten to-day we 
 shall be beaten by 
 
 " (i). Beer and Local Veto. 
 
 " (2). Money. 
 
 " (3). Local employers' influence. 
 
 " (4). Villiers' deadly hostility to any Liberal action. 
 
 " (5). Dread of the Labour Party accentuated by the 
 strike from which many of the manufacturers have suffered. 
 
 " When you get this the result will be known. I dare not 
 prophesy. ' Yours faithfully, 
 
 " H. H. FOWLER." 
 
 It would be utterly out of place here to try even to pry into th 
 differences to which my father refers. 
 
 In July of that year he received the following letter from Lord 
 Rosebery :
 
 Out of Office 449 
 
 " Vienna, 
 
 "July'2ist, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Many thanks for your congratulations on the 
 Eclipse Stakes. But I don't like the tone of the rest of your 
 note. The condition of the Liberal party presents no ground 
 for despair quite the contrary. There are, no doubt, as 
 always in human affairs, irksome incidents, but the ball 
 would appear to be almost at the feet of the Liberal party. 
 This may be an ignorant and sanguine view, but it is that 
 
 of an unbiassed outsider ! 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " R." 
 
 During that year's Session my father spoke frequently on 
 Indian matters, as shown by the following letter from Lord Elgin 
 in July, 1898 : 
 
 " Viceregal Lodge, 
 " Simla, 
 
 " July 5 th, 1898. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY FOWLER, 
 
 " I cannot allow the debates that have reached us 
 by the last two Mails to pass without a word of acknowledg- 
 ment of the kindness of your reference to myself. As you 
 truly said, we have not always been able to agree in matters 
 of policy. No one has regretted it more than I have done. 
 But I have known throughout that I should never experience 
 at your hands anything but sympathetic and generous treat- 
 ment. That you have been able now that I am approaching 
 the end of my time in India to express your appreciation so 
 warmly is, I need hardly say, most gratifying to me. 
 
 " May I take this opportunity of saying not only on my 
 own account, but I am sure on behalf of everyone connected 
 with the Government of India, how deeply indebted we have 
 felt for the support you have given us, and for the manner 
 in which again and again you have lifted the discussion of 
 Indian affairs out of the rut of party politics into which it 
 threatened to fall. . . . Your determination not to treat 
 
 29
 
 45 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 India as a party question . . . greatly facilitates our work 
 in many other respects. 
 
 " It would be improper for me to attempt to discuss Cur- 
 rency reform, but perhaps I may just say this, that while it 
 was our duty to frame a scheme, we all felt we could not 
 expect unaided to elaborate plans that would be above 
 criticism. We shall have no jealousy, but on the contrary 
 shall receive gratefully any advice and guidance your Com- 
 mittee can give. 
 
 " I am, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " ELGIN." 
 
 My father was much interested at that time in the project of 
 his friend John Morley to write Mr. Gladstone's " Life." " A 
 worthy biographer " of so great a subject, he called him, and when 
 the book actually appeared no one read it with keener interest 
 and approval than did my father. Mr. Morley wrote to him 
 
 about it : 
 
 " 57, Elm Park Gardens, 
 
 " South Kensington, S.W. 
 
 " October 23rd, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 "It is very kind of you to take an interest in my 
 project. I believe that I have absolutely provided for every 
 one of the conditions that you enumerate, without qualifica- 
 tion. To-morrow I shall find myself on the scene of action ; 
 with the archives before me ; and rather melancholy it will 
 be to find the old lion really gone. I expect to be there 
 until the end of the week. 
 
 " We are delighted to think that you have got your 
 daughter back.* Lady Fowler and you have rather more 
 than your share of this kind of tribulation. 
 
 " Kindest regards from both of us to all of you. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " JOHN MORLEY." 
 
 * Who had been very ill with scarlet fever in a little watering-place on 
 the coast of North Devon.
 
 Out of Office 451 
 
 A few months later one of the kaleidoscopic changes of the 
 political outlook was effected by the retirement of Sir William 
 Harcourt altogether from the leadership of the Liberal party, 
 and a few weeks afterwards the expressed determination of Mr. 
 Morley to give up his active political work. Henry Fowler 
 received the following letters from them both : 
 
 " Mai wood, 
 
 " Confidential. " Lyndhurst, 
 
 " December I5th, 
 
 " DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 ' You are quite right to suppose that the Daily Mail 
 (which I never see) had no influence on my decision, which 
 was taken four months ago at the close of the Session. The 
 only question was the time of the announcement. The 
 Liberal party may be an unfortunate one, but I am resolved 
 as long as I have anything to do with it, to endeavour to 
 make it an honest one. It was time that the system of 
 organized intrigue with which it is honeycombed should be 
 crushed out and the operators forced to come out in the 
 open. 
 
 " I suppose now with a new Leader there will be a new 
 programme and a new policy. I shall be anxious to see what 
 it is. 
 
 " I have letters from Bryce, Campbell-Bannerman and 
 Kimberley, all saying that they are not surprised at my 
 decision. I was never more satisfied with anything than I 
 am of its necessity. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 "W. V. HARCOURT." 
 
 " P.S. I think E. Grey's speech excellent and very hand- 
 some towards me. I have certainly done all I could to bring 
 him forward, feeling that he is the young hope of the 
 party." 
 
 29*
 
 45 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " 57, Elm Park Gardens, 
 
 " South Kensington, S.W. 
 " December I5th, 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLEF, 
 
 " Thanks for your letters. I feel we can only agree 
 to differ about this transaction. My judgment on it is 
 unshaken. 
 
 " Whatever course I may adopt, and my mind is pretty 
 nearly fixed, I shall always look back to your connection with 
 me, with satisfaction, and hearty recognition, as having been 
 a loyal, kind, and helpful friend for fifteen years, alike below 
 the gangway and on the Front Bench. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " JOHN MORLEY. 
 " Warm regards to the ladies." 
 
 My father alluded to these changes thus : 
 
 " The great Parliamentary reputation of Sir William Harcourt, 
 the services which he has rendered to the House of Commons as 
 a party leader, as a debater, as an unflinching advocate of the 
 dignity of that House, the great services that he has rendered to 
 his country as a legislator, and as an administrator, constitute one 
 of the most valued treasures of the House of Commons. The 
 announcement without notice of his resignation of the leadership 
 of the Liberal party is a blow which, I do not conceal from my 
 own mind, it is almost impossible to overrate. I have been the 
 colleague of Sir W T illiam Harcourt in three Administrations. I 
 have been under him in two great Departments of the State, the 
 Home Office and the Treasury, and I can say with the most literal 
 truth that it would have been impossible to have had a more 
 generous, a more considerate, or a more indulgent chief. I regard 
 it as one of my most pleasing recollections of political life that I 
 had the honour of being associated with him as one of his hench- 
 men in carrying that great Act known as the Finance Act through 
 the House of Commons. Six weeks later, when the party was still 
 reeling under the blow of Sir William Harcourt's resignation, Mr. 
 John Morley declared that he had decided no longer to take an 
 active and responsible part in the formal counsels of the heads
 
 Out of Office 453 
 
 of the Liberal party. Now to know Mr. Morley is to admire him ; 
 and the more you know him the more you admire him. His 
 position, his power in the Liberal party, rest not only on his 
 brilliant abilities, his wide experience of men and of affairs, in his 
 luminous and forcible oratory, but in a personal charm which 
 enchains everyone who has the privilege of being brought within 
 its influence. I have known Mr. Morley, and I have been inti- 
 mately associated with him, since he entered Parliament. For 
 sixteen years we have sat together below the gangway, on the 
 Treasury Bench and on the front Opposition Bench. I have looked 
 up to him for political guidance, and I have regarded my friend- 
 ship with him as a political education, a political inspiration ; and 
 I cannot convey to you the regret and the pain which I feel at the 
 severance which I hope will be but of temporary duration." 
 
 As events subsequently proved, my father's hopes were realized 
 in the re-union with Mr. Morley in active political life. The break 
 was not a permanent one their byways separated, but they 
 met again on the great political highway ; and it was one of 
 Henry Fowler's great happinesses in his latter years that this old 
 comradeship was renewed, that they sat together again in a 
 Liberal Cabinet, and that his greatest friend in the House of 
 Commons was his friend and companion when he entered the 
 House of Lords. My father was not a sentimental man, but he 
 always showed real sentiment in speaking of his long and intimate 
 friendship with Lord Morley. 
 
 The changes in the Liberal party and the resignation of Sir 
 William Harcourt involved the election of another Liberal Leader 
 in the House of Commons. Henry Fowler's name was freely 
 mentioned and he was approached on the matter. Then it was 
 that his intense caution proved a clog upon his career. Not only 
 did it lead him to distrust his own powers, his physical strength, 
 his political wisdom, his general ability to undertake so onerous 
 and so momentous a task, but it also led others, of the more 
 advanced sections of the party, to distrust his quiet, moderate 
 statesmanship, and to imagine that because he lacked the enthu- 
 siasm for extremes he lacked the enthusiasm which is one of the 
 essential characteristics of a popular Liberal Leader. They did
 
 454 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 not realize that to be enthusiastic is not necessarily to be noisy 
 nor how great a strength may lie in the enthusiasm for modera- 
 tion, and how in the long run it may lead a party not only more 
 safely, but even further, along the way of sound advance, than 
 
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 the wild rushes of the extremist who sees neither perils nor pitfalls 
 in his impulsive career. 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler," wrote a leading paper, " is a thoroughly 
 safe man. Perhaps a little too safe to aspire to satisfy the popular 
 idea of a Prime Minister." 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler," wrote another, " is of all the men thought 
 of, the nearest to the old grand ideal of which Sir William Harcourt
 
 Out of Office 455 
 
 is a type, and of whose refinement Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright 
 were the impressive embodiments. He is an out and out reformer. 
 He is master of finance, second not even to the author of the 
 greatest Budget of the century. He is a tireless workman. And 
 a veritable draught-horse of administrative labour. No one has 
 ever impugned his honesty of purpose or his frankness. His 
 hands are clean. He understands the Liberal party and its wants 
 because he knows his England and what its interests call for. He 
 is the centre of the whole charter of Liberal reform. He is sound 
 on all the authorized shibboleths of his party, upon many of the 
 unauthorized as well ; and he is gifted with a fascinating capacity 
 for bringing into line men who desire to rush ahead of companion 
 reformers. Sir Henry Fowler has never on any single occasion de- 
 livered a bad, or an ill-considered, or ill-constructed speech. His ad- 
 dresses on India delivered as Secretary of State, and afterwards, will 
 rank with the finest examples of the impressionist school of oratory, 
 as they may be also included in the most glowing, upon the greatness 
 of our Indian Empire and the claims of its people at our hands." 
 
 The Spectator also wrote on this subject a few years later the 
 same opinions : 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler is one of the strongest men left to the 
 Radical party. It is in administration that they are weakest, 
 and in the difficult position of Indian Secretary he showed not 
 only a great force, but a power of seeing into the centre of a com- 
 plicated mass of details, and of realizing conditions among which 
 he has not lived, which is unusual even among statesmen. He 
 has a strong business head, coupled with imagination which busi- 
 ness men are so often, we think unjustly, accused of lacking. He 
 is, moreover, a very good debater, whose clearness of thought 
 and readiness of speech always secures the ear of the House of 
 Commons. Above all, Sir Henry Fowler has the quality now 
 so wanting in British politicians moral courage. He dare defy 
 the House of Commons, as he did while Secretary of State for 
 India on three occasions ; or his own party, as he has done about 
 the South African War ; or even, when it is indispensable, that 
 overwhelming entity of the people. He would, if the waves of 
 faction ran high, make an admirable Leader of the House, which
 
 456 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 sometimes requires to be led rather than conciliated. No one, 
 moreover, doubts that he is a sincere Liberal, that he is opposed 
 to privilege and desirous of progress, that he is jealous for the 
 ascendency of the Lower House, or that he is ardent in his wish 
 to keep down popular burdens. Nevertheless, because he believed 
 with three-fourths of the people of the country, and certainly 
 one-half of his own party, that the South African War could not 
 have been avoided, and must be carried on to success, the Radicals 
 declare that he is impossible, and if they are Irishmen, are ready 
 to vote against any resolution he brings forward simply because 
 he has brought it. Future historians will stare to find that, at a 
 moment when a great party was at its lowest ebb, and was aware 
 that much of its defeat was owing to want of leaders, its first 
 occupation was to rid itself of one of the ablest men it had because, 
 forsooth, he agreed with the majority of his countrymen in con- 
 sidering that being at war, it was indispensable, or at all events 
 most expedient, to win." 
 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, however, was appointed leader 
 in the House of Commons, and with that generous spirit which 
 in Henry Fowler was never cramped by rivalry, he said of the 
 new leader : " I must take the earliest opportunity of expressing 
 our satisfaction and our approval of the choice which the Liberal 
 Members of the House of Commons have made. We know Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman is possessed of the qualifications 
 which make a wise, sagacious, and successful political leader. We 
 know what he is in council, in administration ; we also know 
 what he is in Parliamentary experience, in Parliamentary tact, 
 in Parliamentary popularity ; and I can certainly bear testimony 
 to you that there is a feeling of loyalty to him and confidence in 
 him in the Liberal party in the House of Commons that augurs 
 very brightly for his future success." 
 
 In December, 1898, Mr. Asquith wrote : 
 
 " 20, Cavendish Square, 
 
 " igth December, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Thank you very much for your letter. I appre- 
 ciate very highly your agreement with, and your kind com
 
 Out of Office 457 
 
 mendation of what I said at Birmingham. I have rarely 
 been in a tighter situation. 
 
 " I should like very much to have a little talk with you. 
 Could we lunch together at the Athenaeum to-morrow ; or 
 if that does not suit you, could you appoint a place of meeting 
 later say between 5 . 30 and 7 ? 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " H. H. ASQUITH." 
 
 And Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman also wrote the following 
 letters to my father on the political situation : 
 
 " Belmont Castle, 
 " Meigle, N.B., 
 
 " 22nd December, 1898. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have not seen any public record of your mind 
 upon the present situation, but I know it without you telling 
 
 me. 
 
 ******* 
 
 On all the big questions there is a via media for sensible men 
 in the party, and it has only to follow that path to get 
 through. There is surely some possible foothold between 
 the extremists on either side. I believe the malcontents and 
 mischief-makers to be very few ; but the sensible men want 
 to be pulled together. With this turn-up there are not 
 many of us left. We must stick together. I am ready to 
 support anybody who might be chosen as leader, and I have 
 the most sincere and profound desire to escape from that 
 pinnacle myself. But whoever it may be that the general 
 feeling points to when the time comes, we who remain of 
 the old Cabinet will, I am quite sure, act as one man, with 
 the most cordial good feeling. I am very sure that you will 
 agree in all this. Luckily as the weeks pass on our opinions 
 will calm and settle. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " H. C.-B."
 
 458 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The next day he wrote again : 
 
 Belmont Castle, 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, " Decem ber 2 3 rd, 1898. 
 
 " What a coincidence our letters being written on 
 the same day ! But as I knew would be the case we take 
 entirely the same view of this complication. As to what 
 you suggest for the procedure to be followed, I think your 
 idea is excellent. I was in communication with Ellis about 
 it before he went abroad, and he thought that towards the 
 end of January the members of the Front Bench, of all grades, 
 should be called together in order to get them into line before 
 the party meeting. This might be done in my house on the 
 ground of my seniority. I daresay it is expedient to conciliate 
 them, but on the other hand there are one or two upsetting 
 gentlemen among them, and we must not set any precedent 
 for a general consultation of them in every question, a 
 new arrangement which would be very agreeable to one or 
 two who could be named ! I have no recollection of any 
 such meeting when Hartington was elected. Your proposal 
 covers other ground ; it might take the form of a mere con- 
 sultation or of a dinner. I think the latter has its advantages. 
 There are only nine of us all told, five peers and four com- 
 moners. We have plenty of time to look about us. As to 
 myself people generally are very good-natured to me, and I 
 am extremely gratified by the cordial and decided view you 
 express. I should enormously prefer to be less conspicuous, 
 if it was not required in the party's interest. But we shall 
 see. I think in a week or two I will run up to London and 
 see what my doctor says to it ; and when I am there, perhaps 
 we could arrange to meet and have a little talk on things. 
 I detect a little scepticism in what you say of my cold. It was, 
 I assure you, a real one and a bad one ; nothing diplomatic 
 about it ; but it is the first time in my life that I was honestly 
 glad to be advised by a doctor to go to bed and stay there. 
 With all good wishes, 
 
 ' Yours very truly, 
 
 " H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN."
 
 Out of Office 459 
 
 And again a few days later : 
 
 " Belmont Castle, 
 
 "3rd January, 1899. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have been corresponding with Tweedmouth as 
 to the suggestion that all men on the Front Bench should be 
 brought together. I saw great objections to a formal con- 
 vocation of them, which I think you fully share. But the 
 idea is now that I should ask them all to dine with me (as 
 being, alas ! the senior) some days before the opening, and 
 this seems to me to put a new face upon it. In fact this 
 appears to me to be a very desirable thing, and to avoid the 
 evils of a special meeting. There would be conversation and 
 interchange of ideas, without definite consultation : and it 
 will obviously be necessary for us to bring all these men into 
 co-operation in order to inspirit the party. 
 
 " Since I wrote you I wrote to my doctor who knows my 
 constitution and asked what he thought of the prospect if 
 it came off. He replies that he knows a priori of no reason 
 why I should not undertake the duties. This so far eases 
 the question that I think I shall not go up to town till about 
 the 23rd of this month. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " H. C.-B." 
 
 The advice that Henry Fowler gave to his party as under a new 
 leader they would turn over a fresh page in their political history, 
 was : " What we must have as a party if we are to do work in the 
 House of Commons is union, discipline, loyalty, subordination of 
 isolated opinions and isolated aims to what is the common opinion 
 and the common aim ; and working together I think we shall be 
 able even in this Parliament to give a good account of ourselves."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 1899 
 
 IMPERIALISM 
 
 " Statesman, yet friend to truth ! of soul sincere, 
 In action faithful, and in honour clear." 
 
 POPE. 
 
 " Every war that is necessary is just ; and it is humanity to take up arms 
 for the defence of a people to whom no other resource is left." MACHIAVEI.I.I. 
 
 " The arms are fair. 
 
 When the intent of bearing them is just." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 AT this time English politics were dominated by the great 
 South African War, with which as a fact of history this 
 book has nothing to do ; but it was the war in South Africa which 
 developed and brought out still further those Imperial views which 
 had always held so large a place in Henry Fowler's statesmanship. 
 
 It might have been thought that the son of Methodism, the 
 man with a puritan cast of character, the man of peace in all 
 departments of life, would have thrown in his lot with the so-called 
 " Little Englanders," and denounced the war in unmeasured terms ; 
 but it was not so. Henry Fowler was an Imperialist statesman, 
 and his views and sentiments regarding this vexed question are 
 best given in his own words. In November, 1899, he said : 
 
 " The question of peace or war admits of no middle course. 
 There can be no compromise on that question. War is either just 
 or unjust, necessary or unnecessary. I hold the opinion clearly 
 that war terrible, awful calamity that it is unless it is an 
 absolute necessity is a gigantic crime. Holding that opinion, I 
 
 460
 
 Imperialism 461 
 
 could not vote for men or money I would not spend a single 
 shilling, I would not risk a single life, in the promotion of a war 
 which I believed to be unjust. A man who enters upon war, and 
 who proclaims that he does so with a light heart, proclaims that 
 he has no heart at all, and that he wants the true spirit, or rather 
 I may say, has lost the true spirit of manhood. . . . Speaking for 
 myself only, I feel bound to say that I have arrived at a strong, 
 clear and conscientious conviction, that the war in which we are 
 at present engaged is a necessary war, and I therefore feel it to be 
 my duty to support all measures for carrying on that war vigor- 
 ously, and for bringing it to an end as speedily as possible. I 
 regard this war as a defensive war. Not only while negotiations 
 were pending, but while there was the possibility of an amicable 
 settlement, war was declared against the British Crown in an 
 Ultimatum, which I will say is unparalleled in the annals of diplo- 
 macy. Within a few hours of the delivery of that Ultimatum, the 
 President of the South African Republic, and the President of 
 the Orange Free State, invaded the territory, attacked the forces, 
 and plunged the subjects of the British Crown into all the horrors 
 of war. Our first duty, I take it, is to defend the dominions and 
 the subjects of the Queen from foreign attack. The Cape Colony 
 and the Colony of Natal are as much parts of the British territory 
 as the counties of Cornwall or Kent, and what would our feelings 
 be if those two great frontier counties were devastated by the armed 
 forces of some hostile State ; if large sections of those districts were 
 annexed in insolent proclamation by a foreign Government ; if 
 the whole of our fellow-subjects were wrecked, their property 
 confiscated, and they themselves exposed to all the cruelties and 
 all the horrors which an invading army inevitably inflicted ? I 
 venture to assert that the nation, without distinction of party, 
 or class, or creed, would unite as one man to resist, to repel, and 
 to punish the invaders. That is our duty, and that to-day is 
 the inflexible determination of the vast majority of the British 
 people. We are Englishmen first, and Liberals and Conservatives 
 after. Every other question, every other controversy, sink into 
 absolute insignificance so long as the enemies of the Queen are 
 in possession of one foot of her dominions. When British soil
 
 462 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 is free from that dishonour, when that wanton aggression for 
 which there was no justification has been driven back and defeated, 
 then we can consider the many difficulties which this war has 
 created, and we can discuss what will be the wisest and surest 
 mode of securing the absolute supremacy of the Crown, with the 
 complete civil and political equality of the British and Dutch 
 populations who live together in South Africa. In the meantime 
 we shall have to do all that we can to strengthen our forces, to 
 supply their necessities, to mitigate their sufferings, and to protect 
 the women and children whom they have left behind. We have 
 also to trust implicitly in those distinguished Generals on whom has 
 devolved the tremendous responsibility of maintaining and defend- 
 ing the honour of Great Britain and the existence of British rule 
 in South Africa." 
 
 Again he said : 
 
 " We are defending the supremacy, the paramountcy, the pre- 
 dominance I do not care what you call it as long as you retain 
 the substance of the British power in South Africa. And upon 
 that supremacy depends the civil and political freedom of South 
 Africa, the stability, the existence, of the British Empire in South 
 Africa, and the honour and integrity of the British Empire 
 throughout the world. There can be no permanent peace in 
 South Africa until the question of equality of civil rights is settled. 
 Two men riding a horse, one must ride first. That is a very simple 
 but a very true allegory ; and there can be no permanent peace 
 in South Africa till the question of the supremacy is settled. 
 Upon this question of supremacy depends also our South African 
 Empire, and if the Empire is lost, what will be the effect on our 
 Colonial Empire ? What will be the effect on our Indian Empire 
 if this nation abandons the power of protecting the right of the 
 Queen's subjects in Africa ? She, at the same time, surrenders her 
 claim to be regarded as a great Power. I do not fear that that 
 catastrophe will happen. I think that the Englishman, the 
 Scotsman, and the Irishman, supported as they have been by the 
 great self-governing Colonies in all parts of the world, will do as 
 their forefathers did a century ago, and as I believe their children 
 still will do in generations which are yet to come, maintain
 
 Imperialism 465 
 
 untarnished and undiminished that great Empire which by 
 Divine Providence has been committed to their charge." 
 In February, 1900, he repeated the same sentiments : 
 " Three months ago I stated in my opinion that the war was 
 a just and necessary war. A great deal has been said and written 
 since then on both sides of this hotly-contested question. I have 
 not been an inattentive listener or reader, but I am here to-night 
 to tell you that, reviewing my opinion in the light of those 
 controversies, and also in the sometimes rather lurid light of 
 subsequent events, I am strengthened in the conviction I then 
 expressed, and to which I still adhere. That conviction to my 
 mind rests on facts. My first fact is the unvarying hostile policy 
 pursued by the Boers since 1881, their ceaseless attempts, in some 
 cases successfully, to violate the conditions on which alone Mr. 
 Gladstone's Government granted, and the House of Commons 
 assented to, their independence. I refer also to the claims that 
 were made, and which I think in a weak moment Lord Derby 
 acceded to in 1884 ; to their constant diplomacy, with which every 
 one of the governors, commissioners, and officials have been 
 brought into contact, in order to effect, if possible, vital changes 
 in the conditions on which their independence was granted. Also, 
 to the creation of a well-developed and trained army, with the 
 most powerful artillery, and possessing enormous stores and 
 weapons with munitions, all of which were intended, and could 
 have only been intended, to be used against the British Govern- 
 ment. I know this accumulation of military resources is excused 
 by some people on the ground of the Raid. You have pictured 
 before you a vast British army sweeping down with all the panoply 
 of war, upon a few Boers huddled together in their pastoral folds. 
 ... I at once admit that it was an act of criminal folly, but what 
 did it amount to ? The entire force of raiders was under five 
 hundred men, and the force that actually confronted them was 
 fifteen hundred men all armed, and the Boers claimed compensa- 
 tion and charges in respect of assembling an army of upward of 
 fifteen hundred armed men. I would not have a word said in 
 extenuation of this folly, but to tell me that Kruger was frightened 
 by it, or that he feared, with all their arms and munitions, for the
 
 464 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 safety of the Transvaal, is to draw upon my imagination to an 
 extent to which it will not respond. The best friend that Kruger 
 has ever had was Jameson. That Raid has served the purpose, 
 and well it has been used by the Oligarchy who wished to keep 
 things as they were in the Transvaal. 
 
 " Had the British Government, as I think they ought to have 
 done, challenged the preparation of these armaments, and insisted, 
 as they had a right to insist, upon knowing for what purpose these 
 preparations were being made on their frontier, and declared 
 them to be a standing menace, I don't think that even President 
 Kruger would have had the audacity to allege those colossal 
 defences were intended to guard against a renewal of such a 
 fiasco as the Jameson Raid. 
 
 " In addition to these facts we have the universal testimony of 
 the residents in the Transvaal, and in other portions of South 
 Africa in favour of the justification of the necessity of the present 
 war. I attach special importance to the evidence of the ministers 
 of religion, who have been for a long time, and are, resident in that 
 locality. I repudiate the insinuations and the accusations that 
 ministers of religion are the champions of war. Their devotion, 
 their work, their self-sacrifice, their lives, prove to the contrary. 
 They know the virtues and the vices of both the Dutch and 
 the English. They know how the native races have been treated. 
 They know what the general trend of feeling is in all grades of 
 society. Their hopes, their machinations, their prepossessions 
 are all in favour of peace. They are not capitalists, they have no 
 axe of their own to grind. Their one object is a far higher and 
 nobler aim ; and yet I must say, without an exception, with a 
 unanimity which cannot be denied, and which has been rarely 
 equalled, ministers of every Church, of every denomination, of 
 the Church of England, of the Church of Rome, of the Churches of 
 Scotland, of the Congregational Churches, who are emphatically 
 the representatives and the heirs of the opinions of such men as 
 Livingstone and Moffat, and of the Methodists, who have had 
 missions in South Africa for nearly eighty years, and of the Bap- 
 tists and all other denominations, all unite, as one man, in condemn- 
 ing, in deploring the necessity of this war, but allege that beyond
 
 Imperialism 465 
 
 all doubt in their opinion it has been forced upon the British 
 Government by a corrupt and tyrannical oligarchy. I will not 
 only refer to the unanimity of opinion among ministers of reli- 
 gion, let us take other classes of the community manufacturers, 
 traders, residents, travellers, who have spent any time in the 
 country, and I can only say that the general statement was that 
 sooner or later this question of Dutch or British supremacy would 
 have to be settled. Coupled with this public opinion in South 
 Africa we must note the feeling of all our self-governing Colonies. 
 Citizens of Canada, men who are familiar with two races, speaking 
 two languages, professing two different religions, living together 
 in peace and happiness and enjoying prosperity under British rule ; 
 and not only of Canada, but of Australia and of New Zealand, 
 men who know and value their colonial independence, and are 
 attached to the British Empire because it is the guard and the 
 guarantee of equal justice, and of civil, religious and political 
 freedom. These independent, unprejudiced, self-governing com- 
 munities have shown their loyalty to the Empire, not by eloquent 
 words or by enthusiastic cheers, but by spontaneously sending 
 forth thousands of their sons to fight and to die for their father- 
 land. They have shown, and we shall never forget it, that if a 
 time of peril should ever come from stress or from storm to the 
 British Empire, it can summon to its defence a vast army of men 
 of every class and creed and clime, who are proud of their alle- 
 giance to the one Flag and the one Throne. My last fact was the 
 actual invasion of British territory by the two Boer States, after 
 they had refused the terms which their most ardent defenders 
 in this country said they ought to accept, and after the British 
 Government had offered in the despatch of the 22nd September 
 ' to give a complete guarantee against any attack upon the 
 independence of the South African Republic, either from within 
 any part of the British dominions or from the territory of any 
 foreign State.' I think such a guarantee, such a pledge, has rarely 
 been given to any community. What was the answer to that 
 pledge ? An Ultimatum which was alike an insult to the British 
 Government and to the nation, followed in a few hours by an 
 armedjattack upon the territories of the Queen, and by the inflic- 
 
 30
 
 466 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 tion of all the horrors of an hostile invasion upon her peaceful and 
 loyal subjects in Natal. In the face of these facts and I challenge 
 either denial or refutation I can come to no other conclusion 
 than that this declaration of war was the culmination of a long- 
 cherished design, and the furtherance of a policy which the British 
 nation, unless it commits suicide, is bound to resist to the utmost 
 degree. Now where was the responsibility for the war ? I say 
 the responsibility rests entirely on the head of President Kruger. 
 He had peace in his hands on honourable terms and with 
 independence guaranteed but ; he chose war. 
 
 ' The first condition of peace, the one on which all others depend, 
 is the establishment of the supremacy of the Queen throughout 
 South Africa. The history of the past, the sufferings and the 
 sorrows of the present war, have produced in the mind of the people 
 of Great Britain and of her Colonies an inflexible determination 
 that so far as is humanly possible, the dominions of the Queen and 
 the subjects of the Queen, shall be effectually guarded against any 
 repetition of the invasion which has desolated and is desolating 
 South Africa. On this condition, I believe the decision of the 
 Parliament and the people to be absolutely final. The second 
 condition is equal rights, civil, political and religious, for all 
 white men in South Africa. Thirdly, self-government on the 
 widest basis, with the fullest recognition of local circumstances 
 and obliterating as rapidly as possible past rivalries and con- 
 flicts. Fourthly, provisions to secure the just and humane treat- 
 ment of the native races. There was a time when some people 
 were in favour of the abandonment of the Colonies and foreign 
 possessions, but that school has had its day. The determination 
 to-day is to uphold our Colonies and to draw them nearer to us. 
 There are friends of mine who think that those who value the 
 existence of a united Empire are Jingoes, are fond of militarism 
 and are not true to the old Liberalism. They do not like the 
 word Empire. They say it suggests tyranny, bloodshed, cruelty 
 and crime. But Empire has no monopoly of these sad associa- 
 tions. I could mention Monarchies and Republics which would 
 arouse similar memories. When we think of the British Empire 
 we are not thinking of the Empire of the Caesars or of Napoleon.
 
 Imperialism 467 
 
 The word Empire suggests to us the strength, the unity, the free, 
 dom, the material, social and moral progress of a vast federation 
 of free men, cemented by the traditions of a glorious past, and by 
 the common hopes of a still more glorious future. We do not 
 forget what the British Empire has done for the world, and we 
 are not citizens of this Empire grudgingly or of necessity. We are 
 proud of our birthright. We acknowledge our responsibilities as 
 a vast inheritance which we will not dishonour or abandon. And 
 when I am told that we are not true to the older Liberalism I deny 
 the charge. I say that as Liberals we claim a share, and it has been 
 no small share, in the federation with our Colonies, in the develop- 
 ment of our Imperial policy, in the knitting together of races as 
 varied as their languages, and as diverse as their creeds. 
 
 " You ask me for my precedent and my authority for saying 
 these were the sentiments of the older school of Liberals, and I 
 will quote you one extract from a speech by our last great leader, 
 Mr. Gladstone. He said : ' I believe we are all united indeed, 
 it would be most unnatural if we were not in a fond attachment, 
 perhaps in something of a proud attachment, to the great country 
 to which we belong to this great Empire, which has committed 
 to it a trust and a function given from God, as special and re- 
 markable as ever was entrusted to any portion of the family of 
 man. When I speak of that trust and that function I feel that 
 words fail me. I cannot tell you what I think of the nobleness 
 of the inheritance that has descended upon us, of the sacredness 
 of the duty of maintaining it. I will not endeavour to make it a 
 part of controversial politics. It is a part of my being, of my flesh 
 and blood, of my heart and soul. For these ends have I laboured 
 through my youth and manhood till my hairs are grey. In that 
 faith and practice I have lived ; in that faith and practice I will 
 die.' This is my confession of faith as a Liberal Imperialist. That 
 is the Liberalism in which I believe, to which I have steadily adhered 
 as long as you have given me the power to represent you in the 
 Imperial Parliament, and from which I will never flinch or recede 
 so long as you maintain me in that proud position." 
 
 In January, 1901, when the war was gradually drawing to a close, 
 Henry Fowler spoke in high terms of praise of a phrase in the 
 
 30*
 
 468 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Address which the burghers in the Orange River Colony had issued 
 to their brethren in South Africa, with a view to promoting the 
 restoration of peace. " One sentence of the Address threw a clear 
 and significant light on one of the controversies and perplexities 
 which had prevailed for some time with regard to the origin of the 
 war : ' We have fought to get South Africa under one Flag.' 
 There was no talk there about franchise, of independence, of 
 capitalists, of the Uitlanders. They had hit the right nail on the 
 head. They had recorded the truth and were honourable men. 
 They had been fighting to get South Africa under one flag, and 
 England had been doing the same. That fight was inevitable. 
 No diplomacy could have prevented it. The contest was bound 
 to come sooner or later. Our position, however, in the matter was 
 clear. We were fighting for South Africa to be under one flag 
 and that flag was the Union Jack. Why were we fighting for it 
 to be under the flag of Great Britain ? Because it was a part of 
 Great Britain. It belonged to Great Britain by the most valid 
 titles by which a country could be acquired. We acquired it by 
 conquest, we acquired it by treaty, and we acquired it by purchase ; 
 and we had strengthened and maintained it in the manner in which 
 Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen were accustomed to spend 
 their lives in developing its commerce and capacities. English 
 capital, English blood and brains had been combined in making 
 South Africa what it was to-day. We could not let any body of 
 men snatch our Empire away. Those brave Boers said : ' We 
 have fought to get South Africa under one flag ; we have done 
 our best and we have lost.' Nobody could utter anything of a 
 sneering or derogatory character to brave men who confessed 
 when they were beaten. 
 
 " But in quoting that sentence we have to recognize, and we 
 want the Empire and the Boers to recognize it, that the people 
 and Parliament of this country have decided that this shall be 
 a fight to the finish. We have made up our minds that the British 
 Flag shall be hoisted, shall be protected, and defended. We have 
 also made up our minds that when that contest is over, all the 
 races in South Africa, be they Briton, Boer or Native, shall enjoy 
 those rights and privileges, that equity before the law, and equity
 
 Imperialism 469 
 
 in all other respects, which has been the privilege and the right 
 of all the subjects of the British Crown in every part of the world. 
 Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, we mean that those 
 great people shall be endowed amply with those institutions of 
 self-government, that freedom of management of their own affairs, 
 which has redounded to the happiness of the various British 
 Colonies, and which has not only benefited the people, but also 
 strengthened in their hour of need the whole of the British Empire. 
 We are not ashamed of what our country has done, for we know 
 that no people who have been put under British sway have had 
 cause to regret it. They have been more prosperous and better 
 citizens for being subject to the British Throne than they could 
 have been under any Throne or mode of Government. While at 
 different periods there has been war, the victories of the century 
 just passed have been the victories of peace to a far wider and 
 happier extent than the victories of war." 
 
 The great political action which formed the Liberal League at 
 the beginning of 1902 was perhaps nearer to Henry Fowler's heart 
 than any development since the great split of the party in 1886. 
 It embodied the principles of Liberalism to which he had always 
 been an avowed adherent, and it had at its head, in Lord Rose- 
 bery, a Liberal leader who fulfilled my father's personal ideal of 
 Liberal leadership, perhaps more than any other man with whom 
 he had been brought into contact, and who claimed from him a 
 personal devotion which he never bestowed upon any other. In 
 the Liberal League he hoped again for the formation of a great 
 Imperial party, and he looked forward to the restoration of some 
 of the years which the locust had eaten, under a man who was 
 brilliant, and able, and inspiring, and young. 
 
 My father was one of the three Vice-Presidents of the Liberal 
 League and signed the first manifesto of that organization issued 
 on 2nd May, 1902. No section of the Liberal party was more 
 active during the four years from 1902 to 1906, and none was 
 exposed to more severe criticism than was the Liberal League 
 during this period. 
 
 Early in December, 1901, Lord Rosebery made his famous 
 speech at Chesterfield, protesting against the policy of the Unionist
 
 47 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Government in South Africa, suggesting the lines upon which peace 
 might be attained, and indicating to the Liberal party how they 
 might regain the confidence of the country. There was at this time 
 an active group of Liberals in existence, comprising upwards of 
 three hundred of the younger members of the party, known as 
 the Imperial Liberal Council. This association formed the basis 
 of the larger or better-known " Liberal League " of which Lord 
 Rosebery became President. The three first Vice-Presidents were 
 Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and my father. They were subse- 
 quently joined by Lord Haldane. Sir Robert Perks was the 
 Treasurer. The Hon. Secretaries were Mr. I. M. Paulton, Mr. 
 Freeman Thomas (now Lord Willingdon), and later the Earl of 
 Arran. Mr. Allard, one of the most experienced of the Liberal 
 Agents, resigned his position as Secretary of the Home Counties 
 Liberal Association, and joined the Liberal League. The following 
 extracts from the League's programme illustrate its aims : 
 
 " The League seeks to prove that no party has a monopoly 
 of the larger patriotism which includes the whole Empire in its 
 scope. Signs have not been wanting that misunderstandings are 
 current on this matter both within and without the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 " The League insists upon the paramount necessity of main- 
 taining the Naval supremacy essential to the security of the 
 Empire and of the commerce upon which the life of these islands 
 depends." 
 
 " National efficiency and Imperial responsibility are inseparably 
 bound up with domestic policy. The League does not prescribe 
 any programme, for it holds that the cause of Liberalism is better 
 served by concentration on practical reforms than by the enumera- 
 tion of multitudinous proposals which there is no power to carry 
 into effect. But in its judgment the most vital problems at this 
 juncture are those which concern Education, Temperance, and 
 the Housing of the People." 
 
 
 
 " With regard to Ireland the League is opposed to such a counsel 
 of despair as the grant of an independent Irish Parliament or of 
 anything that would lead up to it." 
 
 Lord Rosebery threw himself with extraordinary vigour into
 
 Imperialism 471 
 
 the work of the League. During the four years prior to the 
 Election of 1906, he delivered important speeches to vast audiences 
 in Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Plymouth, 
 Trowbridge, Lincoln, Stourbridge, Truro, Bodmin, and frequently 
 in London he was during this period ably seconded by the four 
 Vice-Presidents. They were, of course, attacked for so doing by 
 prominent members of the Liberal party. My father's first public 
 deliverance upon the policy of the Liberal League was in a letter 
 to the Chairman of the East Wolverhampton Liberal Association 
 on 5th May, 1902 : 
 
 " May 5th, 1902. 
 
 " DEAR MR. JAMES, 
 
 " I greatly value your kind expressions of confidence 
 in and approval of my political attitude. While I recognize 
 that there are diversities of opinion in our party on some 
 questions I believe that these differences are exaggerated 
 both by our political opponents and by those (happily few 
 in number) who desire to accentuate rather than allay our 
 present difficulties. 
 
 " At the meeting in South Wolverhampton, which was 
 addressed by Mr. Asquith, I expressed my confidence in the 
 wisdom and statesmanship of Lord Rosebery, and my 
 acceptance of the principles set forth by him in his speech 
 at Chesterfield. 
 
 " The overwhelming majority of the Liberal party accepted 
 the war policy and the peace policy of that speech. The 
 ' supreme tribunal of public opinion and of common sense,' 
 to which Lord Rosebery appealed, has already decided that 
 while it is in the interest of Boer and Briton alike that the 
 war should be prosecuted as vigorously as possible to a success- 
 ful termination, it is our duty and our desire ' to bind, to heal, 
 and not to keep open the mortal wound which is being caused 
 by this war.' 
 
 " Lord Rosebery 's speeches at Liverpool and Glasgow de- 
 veloped the domestic policy which was foreshadowed at 
 Chesterfield, but it would be foolish to ignore that controversy
 
 472 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 has arisen as to his opinions on one question of vital importance. 
 I think that it was incumbent upon Lord Rosebery to ' speak 
 his mind ' on the Irish question, and I also believe that the 
 time has arrived when the Liberal party ought clearly to 
 define its attitude with respect to the Government of Ireland. 
 I therefore comply with your suggestion that I should state 
 my own views. 
 
 " It appears to me that three divergent policies are at 
 the present time advocated by prominent members of the 
 Liberal party : 
 
 " (a) The first policy is that of unshaken, loyal, uncom- 
 promising adherence to the Home Rule of 1886, and 1893, 
 as the cardinal article of the Liberal faith and the in- 
 fallible test of Liberal orthodoxy. This policy is outspoken, 
 straight-forward and clear. The ardent enthusiasm and 
 chivalrous courage of its adherents command our respect and 
 our admiration. I believe that its adoption would mean the 
 arrest of Liberal progress ,and the abandonment of Liberal 
 legislation for a generation, and I fear that it would involve 
 the disruption, if not the destruction of the Liberal party. 
 C'est magnifique, mats ce n'est pas la guerre. 
 
 " (b) An influential section of the Liberal party, while 
 asserting that the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 are 
 dead, maintain that the principles they embodied are alive ; 
 that those principles are the only solution of the Irish difficulty, 
 and the only alternative to disloyalty, coercion and the sad 
 consequences which follow. The advocates of this policy 
 declare that any attempt to adopt it must be postponed to 
 some uncertain future when a new scheme (that the matchless 
 genius of Mr. Gladstone could not devise) will be approved 
 by the electorate of Great Britain. 
 
 " I venture to think that this course of procedure is not 
 practical politics. You cannot shift a great constitutional 
 change backwards and forwards to suit party convenience. 
 If the Liberal party in its relations to Home Rule is in 1902 
 where it was in 1886 and 1892, it must follow the precedents 
 of 1886 and 1892, and put the first question in the first place.
 
 Imperialism 473 
 
 After a sixteen years' conflict you cannot convert the issue 
 on which that conflict was fought into a pious opinion to 
 be adopted or postponed at pleasure. 
 
 " (c) Another section of Liberals recognize that political 
 leaders and parties must have regard to what is possible 
 in attempting legislation of vast importance, and always 
 remember that such legislation cannot be carried without 
 the support of a preponderating public opinion. They 
 reasonably ask whether the position of 1902 with respect to 
 the Irish question is what it was in 1892, or whether anything 
 has happened since 1895 which demands a reconsideration 
 of that position ? There are facts recorded in the history 
 of the last seven years which have seriously affected and 
 will in the future affect, not only the attitude of the Liberal 
 party but also the public opinion of this country, with 
 respect to Ireland and its government. 
 
 " Mr. Gladstone's proposals were subject to the indispensable 
 condition that any Irish legislature must be a subordinate 
 one, and that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament must 
 be absolutely maintained. This condition has been repudiated 
 by the Irish party, not only in platform speeches, but officially 
 by motions made and voted for by them in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 " Mr. John Redmond in the Debate on the Address in 
 February, 1898, moved an amendment declaring that the 
 demand of the Irish people for national self-government 
 was the most urgent of all subjects of domestic policy, and 
 that that demand could only be met by the concession of an 
 independent Parliament and an Executive for all affairs 
 distinctly Irish. 
 
 " Sir William Harcourt, the then leader of the Opposition, 
 at once stated his view of Mr. Redmond's new departure 
 and said : 
 
 ' I come to his (Mr. Redmond's) fundamental condition, 
 and that is that the demand can be satisfied only by the 
 concession of an independent Parliament for all affairs dis- 
 tinctly Irish. What the hon. and learned Member asks me
 
 474 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to do is to condemn and repudiate all the principles of Home 
 Rule, on which the British party on these benches at least, 
 with the consent of the leaders of the Irish party on two 
 successive occasions 1886 and 1893 have founded a measure 
 of Home Rule, and that principle was, the supremacy of the 
 Imperial Parliament. Now, Sir, that has always been, and has 
 Always been stated to be, so, by our great leader, for whose 
 conduct and sacrifices the hon. and learned Member for Water- 
 ford, I am bound to say, has shown very little consideration. 
 
 " ' Let me point out how capital and fundamental has been 
 the question of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. 
 It was specifically reserved in the preamble of the Bill of 
 1893. Mr. Gladstone always maintained that it was in- 
 herent in the nature of the Constitution ; but when suspicion 
 and doubts were raised upon that subject he expressed his 
 readiness to make it distinct, and when my right hon. and 
 learned friend, Sir Henry James now Lord James of Hereford 
 brought forward a clause specifically stating and reserving 
 the authority of the Imperial Parliament in these words : 
 
 '"'" The supreme power and authority of the Parliament 
 of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland shall 
 remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters 
 and things within the Queen's dominions," that was accepted, 
 and accepted with the consent of the Irish Members. 
 
 "'Therefore I say that the fundamental principle in the 
 Home Rule Bill, which we, who took part in that measure, 
 and were responsible for it, always asserted, that the Members 
 of the Liberal party who supported it all those who, at any 
 time, have recommended its adoption was the principle of 
 the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. 
 
 "'What is meant by an independent Parliament? The 
 seconder of the Resolution had no doubt in his mind as to 
 what is meant by an independent Parliament of a nation which 
 is prepared to employ force to achieve its purpose. 
 
 " ' But, Sir, the principles which were declared by Mr. 
 Gladstone are the principles to which we adhere. Those are 
 the principles which are put in issue, and are contradicted
 
 Imperialism 475 
 
 by this resolution, and I can only inform the hon. and learned 
 Member for Waterford that against that resolution I, for one, 
 will vote/ 
 
 " The Irish party, including Mr. Dillon, unanimously voted 
 for this motion, together with three Members of the Liberal 
 party, namely, Messrs. Labouchere, Atherley Jones and 
 Scott. 
 
 " In February, 1899, Mr. Redmond proposed a resolution 
 to the same effect, and in his speech he denned his views of 
 an independent Irish Parliament as a ' Parliament in which 
 there should be no veto, except the veto of the Crown, which 
 should be exercised there as in England, on constitutional 
 principles and in conformity with the wishes of the Irish 
 Ministers of the Sovereign.' 
 
 " Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, as leader of the Opposi- 
 tion, opposed and with the Liberal party voted against 
 the motion. The motion was supported by the same three 
 Liberal Members with the addition of Mr. Stanhope. 
 
 " Another fact of far-reaching importance is the enact- 
 ment of the Irish Local Government Act of 1898. In the 
 debate on Mr. Redmond's motion of 1899, he censured me 
 for having said in a speech to my constituents that ' In my 
 opinion the constituencies of Great Britain would require 
 that this Act should be fully, fairly and completely tried, 
 before they would reconsider the question of any change in 
 the government of Ireland.' 
 
 " Mr. Redmond has recently described this Act as the most 
 important statute for Ireland passed in the nineteenth century. 
 He declared that the Irish Local Government Act was a 
 ' Revolution,' and he added : ' It abolished at one stroke all 
 the powers and privileges of the ascendency class in Ireland, 
 and put that power into the hands of the people. The Irish 
 people have at last attained real power.' 
 
 "While I agree with Mr. Redmond in his description of 
 the Act, I frankly admit that it is fettered with restrictions 
 which have limited the control of the Irish Local Authorities 
 in a manner in which those Authorities are not restricted in
 
 476 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 England or Scotland, and that the operation of that Act 
 will not have fair play, until the Irish Local Authorities are 
 put on the same footing, and invested with the same powers 
 in all respects, which the English and Scotch Local Authorities 
 possess. 
 
 " That measure did not settle the Irish question. There 
 still remains the question of land purchase with which Parlia- 
 ment, and Parliament alone, can, and must, deal. There must 
 be a devolution to Local Authorities of that local business 
 which weighs heavily on the overburdened House of Commons, 
 and which would be far better dealt with by Local Authorities. 
 
 " The centralized administration of Dublin Castle must be 
 reformed, and to Ireland as well as to England, Scotland and 
 Wales must be delegated extended powers of local control 
 of local affairs. 
 
 " Irrespective of these changes in the situation since 1895, 
 the question arises whether there are indications of any growth 
 of public opinion in favour of the demand for an Irish legisla- 
 ture. At the General Election of 1895, out of the 567 Members 
 representing Great Britain, 390 Members were returned as 
 opponents as against 177 supporters, showing a majority of 
 213. The election of 1900 returned 381 opponents and 186 
 supporters, showing a majority of 195. It is not for me to 
 anticipate the effect of the hostile attitude of the Irish National 
 party to Great Britain in the present war upon a future 
 election, but I believe that attitude has aroused a feeling of 
 indignation and distrust in all classes of the British people, 
 which will not soon be forgotten. 
 
 " The recognition of the facts which I have mentioned 
 brings us face to face with Lord Rosebery's Irish policy. He 
 declares that he will support ' nothing in the shape of an 
 independent Parliament sitting in Dublin or anything that 
 may lead up to it and that at the very heart of the Empire 
 we cannot afford a dualism of Parliament and Government.' 
 Subject to this he believes that upon the foundation of the 
 County Government, already created in Ireland, there may 
 be built a superstructure of Local Government in Ireland
 
 Imperialism 477 
 
 guided by Irish ideas that the present central administration 
 of Irish government must be drastically reformed and that 
 there must be a devolution, both to Ireland and to Scotland, of 
 those local affairs which are at present occupying the time of, 
 and embarrassing the Imperial Parliament, without dealing 
 efficiently with the needs of both Ireland and Scotland. 
 Lord Rosebery declares his opinion that, in whatever way the 
 Irish question may be hereafter dealt with, it must be achieved 
 by the concurrence and patriotism of both political parties. 
 
 " I adopt the policy of Lord Rosebery I believe it to be 
 the only practical policy. I believe it will conduce to the 
 interest of Ireland, that it will lead to the development of 
 its resources and the prosperity of its people, and that it will 
 abolish the evils which have been created by the blunders of 
 the miserable misgovernment of which Ireland has been 
 the victim. 
 
 " A few weeks ago a Liberal Member of Parliament stated 
 that the most pressing legislative problems were those of 
 Education, Temperance, Housing and Rating. How gravely 
 has the situation changed since that article was written ! 
 The ' Government have proposed a financial scheme which 
 rekindles the fires of the controversy which abolished the 
 Corn Laws, and they have introduced an Education Bill 
 which destroys the settlement of 1870. The primary duty 
 of the Liberal party at the present time is to defend Free 
 Trade, and to maintain the principle that the grants of public 
 money shall be effectively controlled by public authorities, 
 representing those from whom that money is levied. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 This gave my father's views at that date with respect to Home 
 Rule. During the war he had been at variance with many of 
 the Irish owing to their avowed enthusiasm in support of the 
 enemy, and on one occasion he said in exasperation to a member 
 of the Opposition : " The Irish are not content with having killed 
 Home Rule, they can't stop driving nails into the coffin." He
 
 478 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 did not, however, then reckon with the feline number of lives 
 which that question seems to possess. 
 
 On 3ist July, 1902, the Liberal League held its first annual 
 meeting, followed by a dinner at the Hotel Cecil, over which Lord 
 Rosebery presided. Upwards of one hundred and twenty 
 Members of Parliament and Liberal candidates were present. 
 Speaking at this great gathering of more than one thousand 
 Liberals, Sir Henry Fowler said : 
 
 " I am in hearty unison with every word that Lord Rosebery 
 and Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey have said with reference 
 to the position, the duty and the responsibilities of the Liberal 
 League. But my duty and my pleasure to-night is to ask you to 
 recognize your President, and to return to him the good wishes 
 which he has expressed to the Liberal League, over whose destinies 
 he presides. I am not going to say a word about Lord Rosebery's 
 illustrious past. I must say that our present position I do 
 not mean as a party, as a league, a section of the party, but as 
 a nation our present position with reference to the termination 
 of the war is, in my humble judgment, owing in no small degree 
 to the attitude which Lord Rosebery took up at the commence- 
 ment of the war. When he put patriotism above party in his 
 conduct during the war, supporting its vigorous prosecution until 
 its legitimate ends were reached, and censuring, as he" had the 
 courage to do at a critical time, the inefficiency of the prepara- 
 tions which the Government had made for the war, and the manner 
 in which they were carrying it out, he rendered the greatest service 
 to his country. But what has been well described as the charter 
 of peace for South Africa was the Chesterfield speech. That 
 speech told Europe that the British nation was at one upon certain 
 vital points, and that until these vital points were obtained the 
 war must go on. That speech told the people of Great Britain, 
 and told the people of South Africa, that once these objects were 
 attained an honourable and a liberal peace would be readily 
 accorded by Great Britain to their antagonist in that war. The 
 suggestions which were then made, the policy which was then 
 indicated, the generous proposals which were then suggested 
 to" those who had been our foes these were anticipatory of the
 
 Imperialism 479 
 
 terms upon which peace was secured, a peace which I believe will 
 result in a permanent settlement to the interest alike of the Boer 
 and the Briton. But we have to recognize also the interest that 
 Lord Rosebery has taken in home politics, the interest that he 
 has taken in the revivification and restoration of the Liberal party, 
 of its responsibilities, of its duties, and of its possibilities ; and 
 we have also to remember that his declarations of policy as to 
 education, as to temperance, as to housing of the poor, as to the 
 efficiency, or rather the inefficiency, of a great part of our public 
 service, and as to Ireland, have struck a note to which the vast 
 majority of the Liberal party have cordially responded. His 
 great speeches at Chesterfield, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, in 
 London and here to-night, demonstrate beyond argument, beyond 
 dispute, his position, his responsibilities, and his intention. I will 
 only add what I know, and what my colleagues know, the unflag- 
 ging attention, the unremitting zeal with which he has supervised 
 every detail both of the formation and the hard work of this Liberal 
 League." 
 
 There has existed an impression, fostered by the members of 
 the Opposition, as well as by the critics among Liberals them- 
 selves of the Liberal League, that those distinguished men who 
 were its Vice-Presidents, as well as a large number of its other 
 members who entered the next Government, had, by so doing, 
 turned their back a little on their President, and transferred their 
 allegiance to the new Prime Minister. That this was not so 
 that not only the Liberal Leaguers themselves, but also such men 
 as Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, were not only willing, but 
 longing, to welcome Lord Rosebery back into the forefront of 
 Liberalism in its coming triumph, is shown by the private letter 
 which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman wrote to my father shortly 
 after the delivery of the great Chesterfield speech : 
 
 " Lord Warden Hotel, 
 " Dover, 
 
 " 7th January, 1902. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " You will have seen all manner of stories in the 
 papers as to my interview with Rosebery a short time ago,
 
 480 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 in which the inventive genius of the pressmen revelled. The 
 most of them I need not say were false none of them had 
 any authority from me. 
 
 " What occurred was very simple. Passing through town 
 on my way, as I thought, abroad, I thought it highly ex- 
 pedient to find out whether the Chesterfield speech had made, 
 or rather indicated, the change in his attitude which the 
 public imagined it had, and which for one I should have 
 rejoiced at. 
 
 " I renewed to him the assurances often before given, of 
 desire to see him back in the party, and the hope that that 
 was the real drift of his ideas. He said that it was impos- 
 sible ; he had left the party five years ago ; and the one 
 question of Ireland was enough to prevent his rejoining, 
 because he is now opposed to any form of Home Rule. 
 
 " He assented to my opinion that on the question of peace 
 and settlement in South Africa there was no essential differ- 
 ence between us, but he declined to come into consultation even 
 on this, because he is not, as he said, ' in communion ' with us. 
 
 " This was to my mind a melancholy result, and it in- 
 volved a disappointment to the general feeling of the country 
 which read into his speech a desire for united action. 
 
 " We discussed the whole political situation, and there 
 was no hurry or scamping, as is alleged by the professing 
 eavesdroppers. 
 
 " I thought it right to let you know these actual facts 
 and I very much regret the drift of them. 
 
 " Yours always. 
 
 " H. C.-B." 
 To which my father replied : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " W'olverhampton, 
 
 " loth January, 1902. 
 "Mv DEAR CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, 
 
 " I have been away from home and did not return 
 until last night, or I should have replied earlier to your letter, 
 for which I am greatly obliged.
 
 Imperialism 481 
 
 " I read the newspaper stories about your interview with 
 R., but experience and common sense convinced me that they 
 were fictitious and unauthorized I might add ridiculous. 
 
 " The course you took appears to me to have been the 
 proper one, and I would still hope that there is no inseparable 
 difficulty in uniting the party on the South African question. 
 The views of Lord R. and yourself, as I understand them, do not 
 conflict on what I may call the vital points the divergencies 
 of peace and the subsequent settlement relate to details which 
 at all events are fair subjects of friendly discussion. I have 
 not seen or heard from R. since you saw him, but the main 
 obstacle is Home Rule. 
 
 " I assume that on social legislation, Education, Temper- 
 ance, Housing, Taxation, etc., there is no difference. There 
 can be no doubt that (quite irrespective of any view of R.) 
 Ireland is the gravest difficulty of the Liberal party, and that 
 it will very soon have to be faced as a practical question. 
 Looking at it in that light and without disputing the policy 
 of 1886 and 1893, there appear five facts that have taken 
 place since 1894 which have completely altered the situation, 
 and which do, and will, most powerfully affect the action of 
 public opinion. 
 
 " i. Mr. Gladstone's fundamental principle that any Irish 
 legislation must be subordinate, and that the supremacy of 
 the Imperial Parliament must be maintained (a principle 
 which Parnell accepted as part of a final settlement) has been 
 openly abandoned by the Irish party, not only in speeches, 
 but on two distinct motions made by them in the House of 
 Commons, and affirmed by them in two divisions. 
 
 " During the campaign from 1886 to 1892, in the many 
 speeches I made in favour of Home Rule, I declared 'both to 
 my constituents and to the country, that I would not support 
 any scheme of Home Rule, which in the slightest degree im- 
 paired the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and when 
 Henry James proposed to insert in the Bill of 1893 a clause 
 affirming the continued supremacy which Morley opposed, 
 I wrote to Mr G., stating that, having regard to my speeches 
 
 31
 
 i The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and my pledges to my constituents, I could not vote against 
 James's amendment (a step which of course, must have in- 
 volved my resignation), Mr. G. replied to me, expressing his 
 decision to accept the amendment. 
 
 " In connection with vital departure from the agreement 
 with the Irish party, on which the Bill of 1893 was founded 
 and fought, I should add the subsequent disclosure of Parnell's 
 absolute indifference to truth, wherever policy dictated that 
 course, and the revelations that neither he, nor personal fol- 
 lowers, nor the Irish party, have ever regarded any settlement 
 as final until they have secured absolute independence. 
 
 " 2. The rejection of Mr. G.'s scheme by the House of 
 Lords was in 1895, approved by a larger majority in the con- 
 stituencies than the rejection in 1886. I think George Russell 
 says in a review of Herbert Paul's Life of Mr. G., that not 
 a single public meeting was held in England or Scotland pro- 
 testing against the rejection of the Home Rule Bill, and 
 although the election of 1900 did not turn on Home Rule, 
 yet the 403 members who constitute the majority are, to a 
 man, opposed to Home Rule. 
 
 "3. The Irish party have in the most insulting and offensive 
 manner dissolved their political connection with the Liberal 
 party. 
 
 " 4. The Irish party, by their hostility to the people of Great 
 Britain in the war, have alienated the sympathy which the 
 past history of Ireland had created in a large section of the 
 Liberal party, and aroused a feeling of indignation and distrust 
 in all sections of the people. 
 
 "5. Until a considerable majority of the electors of Great 
 Britain are in favour of Home Rule, its enactment is a 
 practical impossibility. 
 
 " These five facts (not arguments) indicate to me, and I 
 feel sure to a majority of the 185 Liberal Members, that all 
 Liberal reforms social, financial, administrative and philan- 
 thropic, ought not to be indefinitely postponed and a Tory 
 Government permanently installed in office while our party 
 is condemned to the task of Sisyphus.
 
 Imperialism 483 
 
 " The inexorable logic of these facts leads to the inevitable 
 conclusion that Home Rule, whether it be wise or unwise, 
 is outside all practical politics. 
 
 " I was sorry to see that you had a cold hope you are 
 better. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In a speech at the National Liberal Club about this time, my 
 father said : "I won't say I am not a Jingo because nobody knows 
 what Jingo means, and there are no Jingoes. I will not say I am 
 not a Little Englander, because nobody knows what Little Eng- 
 lander means, and there are no Little Englanders. But I will use 
 language that can be understanded of the common people. I 
 am opposed to the foreign policy of Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett 
 and I am opposed to the foreign policy of Mr. Labouchere. I am 
 opposed to both these foreign policies on precisely the same ground 
 namely, the interest of peace. I believe that either the one 
 policy or the other, if ever adopted by this country which God 
 forbid will lead the country into war. An aggressive England 
 would be a menace to all the other Powers of Europe, and we 
 know what that means ; a weak, pusillanimous England would 
 be unable to maintain nay, unable to defend the very existence 
 of the Empire itself." 
 
 Just before the General Election of 1906 he also declared that 
 " he was not going to underrate the other sections and organiza- 
 tions of the party, but he believed not the least of the causes, which 
 had combined to make the party more united at the present day 
 than at any time in the last twenty years, was the action and the 
 work of the Liberal League. I am an Imperialist in the truest 
 sense of the word. I am an Imperialist because I am proud to be 
 a citizen of what I believe is the greatest Empire the world has 
 ever -seen an Empire whose reign has been the symbol of freedom, 
 of justice, of civilization and of progress." 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler," writes one of the members of that League, 
 " diligently attended the Committees of the Liberal League over 
 which Lord Rosebery almost invariably presided. At the election 
 
 3i*
 
 484 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 of 1906 about eighty members of the League offered themselves 
 as candidates. Between sixty and seventy were elected. The four 
 Vice-Presidents of the League entered the Cabinet, Lord Beau- 
 champ entered the Ministry. Mr. Hudson Kearley, now Lord 
 Devonport, became Under-Secretary of the Board of Trade. Mr. 
 Emmott was appointed Chairman of Committees. Sir J. Lawson 
 Walton became Attorney-General, and Sir William Robson, 
 Solicitor-General. Several subordinate places in the Government 
 were also given to Liberal Leaguers. Among the members of the 
 League who subsequently entered the Government were Sir Rufus 
 Isaacs, Mr. H. J. Tennant, Mr. John Fuller and Mr. Edwin 
 Montagu. 
 
 " With the great victory of the Liberal party in 1906, to which 
 they so powerfully contributed, the Liberal League attained its 
 zenith. Its position during the four years following, right up to 
 its dissolution in 1910, was one of considerable difficulty. 
 
 " The League, with Lord Rosebery as its President, its inspiring 
 genius to the last, was too loyal to Liberalism to play the part of 
 a critic ; it was too experienced in political history to become a 
 tool."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 1906 
 
 THE FLOW OF THE TIDE 
 
 " Winning should put any man into courage." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " How chances mock 
 And changes fill the cup of alteration." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 AT this time the great waterspout of Tariff Reform whirled 
 up out of the ocean of practical politics. Henry Fowler's 
 opposition to this was fixed from the first. 
 
 At the meeting of the Bristol Anchor Society, at which he was 
 guest, he said : " Mr. Balfour and his colleagues are in an atmo- 
 sphere of doubt. Mr. Chamberlain is not ; he knows his own 
 mind. His plan is a real plan. It means something, and he does 
 not pretend to hide it under any other disguise. Mr. Chamberlain 
 tells you not only what this thing is what his scheme is but how 
 he proposes to work it out, and therefore we are not in any fog. 
 We may have doubts as to his history we may have doubts as 
 to his arithmetic but he leaves you in no doubt as to the meaning 
 of what he aims at, and depend upon it he will go there ; and if he 
 cannot go by one road he will go by another. He proposes to 
 begin with a duty of two shillings a quarter on all foreign corn. 
 That means not only on wheat, but upon barley, oats, rice, and 
 every other production which was classified under the Act of 
 two years ago in the Schedule as falling within the word ' Corn/ 
 except the one article of maize, which he proposes to exclude. 
 Every other description of corn is to be taxed, and he exempts 
 from that tax the corn which comes from our own possessions 
 
 485
 
 486 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 throughout the world. He has not said so, but I presume he 
 means India ; of course he means the Colonies and the whole 
 range of the British possessions. That is a very intelligible taxa- 
 tion. It is the first step towards re-enacting the Corn Laws. I 
 find that the next proposal is five per cent, on foreign meat and 
 dairy produce, but there is no exemption there, except a possible 
 one on colonial wine and fruits. Those stand by themselves as 
 articles of food, and raise no question of raw material. Then he 
 asks for ten per cent, on the average of all manufactured goods, 
 and there are no exemptions. As I understand it, whether those 
 manufactured goods come from the Colonies or from India, they 
 are to be subject to duty. Let us try to realize, as practical men 
 of business, what this proposal means. Sir Robert Peel, in 1842, 
 at the commencement of his great fiscal reform, which, even Mr. 
 Chamberlain admitted, led to a succession of prosperous years, 
 wiped out of the duty-paying category seven hundred and forty- 
 four different articles, and Mr. Gladstone completed Sir Robert 
 Peel's great enterprise in 1860 by taking the duties off three hundred 
 and seventy-one other articles, leaving now only some five or six 
 articles subject to Customs duty, such as spirits, sugar, tobacco, 
 tea and wines. Now ask yourselves, what that will involve in 
 levying, and classifying, and in preventing smuggling ? Is all 
 this vast array of new articles which are taken on to our shores at 
 all hours of the day and night, from all parts of the world, to 
 come through the Custom House, and to be passed by the Custom 
 House before they can be free ? The extra cost will not be ten 
 per cent. A man who has to pay an advance of ten per cent, 
 will want to be paid for doing that. There will be a large number 
 of vital things required to handle this procedure, and it is a very 
 erroneous calculation to suppose that the additional cost will be 
 limited to ten per cent. That may be a small sum, but where 
 you are dealing with large matters such as tens and hundreds of 
 thousands, ten per cent, is a large sum, and that money will have 
 to be paid in cash to the Custom House before those goods are 
 distributed through the length and breadth of the land. Whether 
 it be upon the food, or upon the raw material, or upon the manu- 
 factured goods, you must remember that it is a blow at the
 
 The Flow of the Tide 487 
 
 consumer of these articles. If you put a tax on corn, say of ten 
 shillings or five shillings a quarter, or whatever it is. it will raise 
 the price all round. 
 
 " It has been shown beyond demonstration that the difference 
 between the market price of any goods and of the duty is always 
 to be paid by the consumer, and paid in respect of the whole of 
 the home production as well as upon foreign imports. I am not 
 going to trouble you with the figures to-night. I only recall to 
 you the letter in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose 
 straightforward courage and loyal adherence to the principles of 
 Free Trade demand, and receive, the grateful recognition of all his 
 fellow-countrymen, said that the country to receive the eight or 
 nine millions that would accrue from the new policy would have 
 to pay fifteen millions. This policy was a policy which would 
 make the poor poorer. You are to raise the price of food in this 
 country, you are to raise the price of manufactured articles, you 
 at the same time increase the cost to every consumer, and that falls 
 with the heaviest pressure upon the poorest of the poor. What 
 are you going to gain by that ? It is a chance and I think a very 
 uncertain chance. All that I can see that can be gained by it 
 is, the making of the rich richer. I object to the taxation of 
 bread, because it is the prime article of subsistence. Let the 
 working men remember that it will be their doing if ever taxation 
 is put upon the bread of this country. I will resist it to the utmost. 
 To tell me that cheaper tea or cheaper tobacco will ever be an 
 equivalent of dearer bread, is to mock my intelligent powers. 
 Wages may be raised, but they will be raised by the action and 
 power of Trades Unions. But what about the artisans who do 
 not belong to Trades Unions three hundred thousand railway 
 men employed in this country, the employees of the Government, 
 the small tradesmen, the clerks, the struggling professional men, 
 the ministers of all religions, the people with fixed incomes, the 
 widows and the orphans ? This legislation will raise the cost of 
 living to every member of those classes. The struggle of the 
 heaviest taxed class would be intensified beyond expression, 
 there would be only two industries created, one of which is very 
 limited at the present, and the other does not exist. You would
 
 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 have a great addition to the Custom House officials and to 
 smugglers. I am not anxious to increase either the one or the 
 other. Let me remind you of the words of Mr. Villiers on the 
 occasion of the jubilee of Free Trade : ' To you, and to those who 
 share your convictions, it remains as a sacred duty to secure that 
 the millions of electors in this country are not seduced in the 
 future from their allegiance to Free Trade, which would assuredly 
 result in a condition more disastrous to multiplied millions than 
 ever was experienced in the evil days of Protection. Of such a 
 result I have no fear, and in the words of Sir Robert Peel I say 
 that it is my consolation that never will the Corn Laws be again 
 revived in England.' Within six years of the date of that letter 
 the country is asked to re-impose the Corn Laws, to abandon Free 
 Trade, to restore Protection. I cannot, and do not, believe that 
 that attempt will succeed. I will do my utmost to avert so great 
 a disaster, so great a catastrophe." 
 
 Speaking at Glasgow on the same subject he said : " One prin- 
 ciple we mean to adhere to is that taxation, not levied for revenue 
 purposes, is taxation levied in the interests of the protected class. 
 All taxes should be paid into revenue, and no taxes should be levied 
 for any personal advantage, whether it be of selected individuals, 
 or of selected trades, or of selected interests. You have no right 
 to take a man's money from him in the shape of taxation except 
 for the public benefit. No man can be a Free Trader who does not 
 hold that cardinal doctrine ; there is no room for dissent or 
 qualification from that absolutely elementary foundation principle 
 of Free Trade. 
 
 " We are Free Traders from pure selfishness. There is no senti- 
 mental love of, or philanthropic generosity to, other nations. 
 There is no ' Little Englander ' desire to put money into the pockets 
 of our rivals. We are Free Traders because we believe it to be 
 the best for the interests of all classes, and for the interest of the 
 nation as a whole. When we are told that that was not the 
 doctrine of the original great Free Traders, and they accepted the 
 principle of Free Trade upon the faith of its adoption by other
 
 The Flow of the Tide 489 
 
 nations, that is a mis-statement, there is no foundation for it. 
 Sir Robert Peel laid down the doctrine that Free Trade and the 
 modification of the Tariff were made entirely in the interest of 
 the people of Great Britain and no one else, and Cobden also said : 
 ' If Free Trade be a good thing for us we will have it. Let other 
 nations take it if it be a good thing for them ; if it be not, let 
 them do without it.' 
 
 " Every man is a Free Trader except in his own trade, and, 
 when you can get it, Protection is a very nice thing. If you can 
 have a very comfortable addition put on to the prices at which 
 you are selling it is not human nature to object to it. But what 
 legislators have to do, and what the people who elect legislators 
 have to do, is to regard the general interests of the consumers and 
 not the producers." 
 
 Controverting the assertion that we were threatened with the 
 loss of our Colonies if we did not adopt Tariff Reform, he asked : 
 " What is the evidence of that ? What is the history of the last 
 three years ? 
 
 " If there is one thing of which this nation is proud, it is during 
 the last two or three years the voluntary, noble, generous, self- 
 sacrificing manner with which the Colonies came to the help of 
 the Mother Country. And what we were led to believe then, and 
 what we believe now, is that if ever a day of stress and storm 
 should come to the Mother Country, if ever she was to be put 
 with her back to the wall, her Colonies would come forth to help 
 her. They want no bribe. They poured out their treasure like 
 water, they shed their blood on behalf of that Empire of which 
 they are proud to be constituent members. They asked nothing 
 from us ; they are not prepared to entertain the only possible 
 proposition, not that I am advocating that for a moment, which 
 would be a Zollverein or Free Trade among all the members of the 
 Empire. No, no ; they will manage their own business their 
 own way. They will have the control of their own homes, and our 
 business is to be as friendly with them as possible, and to recog- 
 nize in every shape and form their interest. It is not doing a
 
 49 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 service to the Colonies ; it is not doing a service to the Mother 
 Country to introduce such an element of discord to say that we 
 are to put a tax upon the food of the people of this country for 
 the benefit of the Colonies, which tax the Colony is not to pay." 
 
 The year 1903 was an eventful one in Henry Fowler's home 
 life. Both his daughters were married, the elder on April i6th 
 to Mr. Alfred Felkin, and the younger on July 23rd to the Rev. 
 Robert Hamilton. In the preceding March he referred to these 
 events in a letter to Lord Morley : " The atmosphere here is a 
 joyous one, but, as you may suppose, it depresses me, though I 
 must keep up for the sake of others." 
 
 The following year he wrote : 
 
 '' Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " October 3rd, 1904. 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I duly forwarded your note to Mrs. Felkin. 
 
 ' We returned home on Friday last after a very pleasant 
 holiday spent at Skibo, Cromer and Hunstanton and hope 
 and believe that we are both better for the change. 
 
 " We were shocked yesterday to hear about Harcourt. I 
 thought him very much changed at the end of the season, 
 but did not anticipate that the end was so near. I gather 
 from the newspapers that ' The weary wheels of life stood 
 still,' and that his death was alike painless and unconscious. 
 
 " He was a great personality and he leaves no successor. 
 Of the last Cabinet there are only five of us left in the House 
 of Commons ! 
 
 " I am thankful to hear that Spencer is convalescent, and 
 I trust that there are no sequelge which may weaken his 
 strength. 
 
 " I wish you a smooth and pleasant voyage a brilliant 
 success and an early return to what your host* always 
 calls ' Britain ' but which I am stupid enough to call England. 
 
 " Have you formed any idea about the universal controversy 
 as to the date of the Dissolution ? 
 
 * Mr. Andrew Carnegie.
 
 The Flow of the Tide 491 
 
 " I fancy that Southampton will be a tight corner both 
 for A. B. and J. C. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 And two months later on Lord Morley's return from America : 
 
 .X 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " December nth, 1904. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I am delighted to see that you are back safe and 
 sound in the old country. I have, as far as abbreviated tele- 
 grams enabled me, followed you in your American trip, and, if 
 I may say so, have fully appreciated the genial wisdom and 
 the true statesmanship with which you have dealt with many 
 controversial topics. 
 
 " I am very anxious to see you, and hear from you, your 
 opinions on what you have heard and seen and said. I expect 
 to be in London next week. Would it be possible to meet, 
 say for lunch, at the Athenaeum on Wednesday the 2ist, 
 and have a talk there ? 
 
 " I enclose a report of the last speech (condensed) I have 
 made, so you will see where I am and what stage has been 
 reached during your absence. 
 
 " I suppose that the speech on the I5th will give some 
 idea of what are the present views of the Prime Minister's 
 leaders. 
 
 " With kind regards to Mrs. Morley and our congratulations 
 to her on your return, 
 
 " I am, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In 1905 the whole Liberal party was bracing itself up for the 
 plunge into a General Election which, by the force of circum- 
 stances, was bound to come soon. Tariff Reform had given a
 
 49 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 popular cry which was irresistible. All things seemed working 
 together for good at last to a party which had been out of office 
 for nearly ten years. The fortunes and the misfortunes of the 
 war had been put away upon the shelf of things forgotten. Members 
 of the Liberal party, who had been walking along opposite ways, 
 met again and were ready for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a 
 pull altogether. In January, 1905, my father wrote the following 
 letter : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 ' January 22nd, 1905. 
 
 " MY DEAR MORLEY, 
 
 " I must drop you a line to congratulate you and to 
 thank you for your superb speech on Friday. The only 
 complete report is in the Manchester Guardian, but I hope 
 that the Liberal Publication Department will lose no time 
 in reprinting fully and accurately in pamphlet form, what I 
 think is the best speech of the recess. 
 
 " The combination of the finest statesmanship with the 
 most polished, keenest swordsmanship and the clearest im- 
 pression of the constitutional, I might say national, danger 
 ought to be circulated amongst all the constituencies. 
 
 " The next act in the drama will be played in the House 
 of Commons and it rests with the Opposition (Front Bench 
 and back benches) to decide the meaning and character of 
 that vital section of the story. 
 
 " What horrible weather ! My wife and I are going to the 
 South Coast for a few days but I expect to be in London 
 before Parliament opens. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 To which he received this reply : 
 
 " Your letter," wrote Lord Morley, at the beginning of 
 1905, " is indeed a friendly act, for speaking dejects me, and
 
 The Flow of the Tide 493 
 
 such generous approval as yours is a welcome cordial. Many 
 thanks to you. I had a night with C.-B., and much talk. He 
 is in good spirits though quite alive to the embarrassments 
 that may await him one of these days." 
 
 In April, 1905, there was celebrated in Wolverhampton the 
 twenty-fifth anniversary of Henry Fowler's return to Parlia- 
 ment as Member for that borough. An enormous meeting of over 
 six thousand assembled in the Drill Hall, and the Right Hon. H. H. 
 Asquith was present, having come, to use his own words, " to 
 associate himself with them in congratulating his old friend and 
 valued colleague, and their representative, on the attainment of 
 an anniversary which was equally honourable and interesting to 
 Wolverhampton and to himself. It would not," he continued, 
 " be seemly for him to say anything of the personal debt, a debt 
 of long-standing and of ever accumulating volume, which he 
 owed Sir Henry Fowler for his counsel, his sympathy, and his 
 friendship ; nor need he enlarge in his presence and before them, 
 who knew them so well, upon the qualities which had carried Sir 
 Henry Fowler to a front place in the ranks of British statesman- 
 ship. He took with him to Westminster, not only a trained mind 
 and an eloquent tongue, but that capacity for prompt and efficient 
 discharge of public business, which was nowhere so well acquired 
 as in the stirring and strenuous life of communities like that at 
 Wolverhampton. Of the twenty-five years of which he had spoken, 
 at least twenty years had been spent by the Liberal party in 
 Opposition. Its opportunities for reconstructive work had been 
 few and slender. Nevertheless, Sir Henry Fowler had left an 
 ineffaceable mark upon administration and legislation. As the 
 author and the architect of the Parish Councils Act he had the 
 rare privilege of seeing in every county, and in almost every 
 hamlet in England, an enduring monument of his own worthy 
 and laborious task; while in the still more responsible position of 
 Secretary of State for India, apart from great administrative 
 service, his memorable speech on the Cotton Duties one of 
 the few speeches which had visibly turned the decision of the 
 House of Commons would live as a splendid exposition of the
 
 494 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 responsibilities which belong to our trusteeship over the greatest 
 of our dependencies." 
 
 After the magnificent reception which the meeting gave to 
 Henry Fowler, an illuminated address was presented to him by 
 the late Mr. Fuller, who was then the veteran of Liberalism in 
 the borough. He recalled an interesting incident of forty-seven 
 years ago when he attended a large meeting in Wolverhampton 
 to listen to a lecture by the great Sir Robert Peel on taxation. 
 He described how Sir Robert Peel stood there, a great burly figure 
 with a stick almost as big as himself in his hand with which he 
 emphasized his chief points by a heavy thud on the floor. He 
 tried to explain the difference between direct and indirect taxation. 
 At the end of the speech there arose from the body of the hall a 
 young man with a stern, set countenance on whose brow might 
 have been written " life is real, life is earnest." That young 
 man took up the main points of the lecture and in fifteen minutes 
 he had explained them more thoroughly and clearly than Sir 
 Robert had done in a speech of two hours' duration. He went 
 straight to the question ; he did not beat about the bush ; he was 
 clear and concise. Mr. Fuller said that as he listened to this 
 young man he felt that a new intellectual force had entered into 
 Wolverhampton, a force that would have to be reckoned with in 
 politics. From that day forward no Liberal meeting in Wolver- 
 hampton was complete without the presence of Mr. Fowler. When 
 1880 came and there was likely to be a vacancy, Mr. Fowler was 
 present at the meeting of the committee for choosing a candidate, 
 and he then expressed the opinion that he did not understand why 
 the people of Wolverhampton were thinking of going out of the 
 town to find a representative. In his opinion there was a man 
 in Wolverhampton competent to represent their interest in Parlia- 
 ment and that man was Henry Fowler. One of the objections 
 raised was that the people of Wolverhampton had been accustomed 
 to be represented by some eminent man by a statesman. The 
 answer was short and sharp : "If you have Mr. Fowler you will 
 have a statesman and an eminent man." 
 
 On accepting the address my father said : 
 
 " He could not convey to them the feeling of gratitude and
 
 The Flow of the Tide 495 
 
 thankfulness which he experienced in being permitted to see the 
 day when such an assembly as that representing the backbone of 
 Wolverhampton should honour him by expressing their approba 
 tion of his public career which, like other public careers, had been 
 marked must be marked by weakness, by folly, and by failure. 
 To render to him appreciation of what he had done showed that, 
 while they had overlooked much that needed overlooking, they 
 had appreciated to the full what he had attempted to do, and 
 what he had done." 
 
 He gave them a brief sketch of his efforts, his ideals, and his 
 work in the House of Commons, and he concluded thus : 
 
 " They knew his opinions well. He could only say that his 
 long experience had confirmed him more strongly than ever in 
 the views which he put forward when they chose him as their 
 representative. He could not say to them as the American candi- 
 date was reported to have said : ' These are my views. If you 
 don't like them they can be altered.' They knew that his views 
 could not be altered and they would not be altered so long as he 
 had the honour of filling the post which he now occupied. He 
 could only promise to do in the future what he had done in the 
 past. He said some time ago to them, and he could not express 
 his feeling better now, that ' I can look you in the face to-night 
 and say, although that great trust which has been entrusted to 
 me has been imperfectly performed, although its duties have been 
 inadequately discharged, yet that trust has never been betrayed. 
 I have not done all that you had a right to command, but I have 
 done my best.' No servant of the English Crown, no servant of 
 the English people could claim higher praise than this : ' He 
 tried to do his duty.' In 1880 they elected him on the faith of 
 what he professed and promised, and in 1905 he must be judged 
 by what he had done. He had spoken in their name, had voted 
 on their behalf, and by those speeches and votes he must stand 
 or fall. He thanked them for their confidence shown in him. 
 He thanked them for the beautiful address which they had pre- 
 sented to him, and he should value it as long as he might be spared 
 in this world. He should hand it down to those who followed 
 after him as one of the happiest events in his public life. He was
 
 496 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 sure they would hold it in their dearest memory as what their 
 father did for Wolverhampton, and what Wolverhampton had done 
 for him." 
 
 Many letters and telegrams came from old friends one tele- 
 gram from Lord Rosebery saying : " Allow me to congratulate 
 you on twenty-five years so well, so usefully, and so honourably 
 employed." And Lord Morley said in a letter afterwards : "I 
 congratulate you heartily on your function. Asquith described 
 your wind-up as one of the most moving and effective things 
 imaginable." 
 
 Early in December, 1905, my father received the following 
 letter from his old friend : 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " B. will resign on Monday by lunch time. I have 
 sent (by desire from highly-responsible quarters), an urgent 
 wire to C.-B. to be in London not later than Monday morning. 
 Tho King will see him that afternoon. All this is to be relied 
 on. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " J. MORLEY." 
 
 So the battle-cry was sounded again and Henry Fowler heard 
 it for the last time. A contested election was forced upon him, 
 though the hope of turning him out after the recent celebration 
 of his twenty-fifth anniversary as Member for Wolverhampton 
 must surely have been too remote to justify the effort. Unfortu- 
 nately at the beginning of the campaign my father caught a 
 heavy cold and again showed symptoms of collapse. He was 
 forbidden to leave his bed, and we all did our best to relieve him 
 of the worry which he naturally felt at being laid aside at such 
 an important time. 
 
 My sister and I swallowed a mixed potion of prejudice and 
 inclination, and dashed around the constituency, making speeches, 
 and delivering his messages, and playing up to the situation as far 
 as we could. As electoral campaigns are composed of so much 
 more excitement than logic, and as dramatic incidents command
 
 The Flow of the Tide 497 
 
 a higher price at such times than reasonable arguments or calm 
 deliberation, all went well as regards the election, and my father 
 was returned by a majority of 2,865, tne largest he had ever had 
 since the division of the borough. 
 
 Free Trade won a big majority for the Liberal Government, 
 which, after Mr. Balfour's resignation in December, had been 
 formed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, after the Liberals had 
 been in Opposition for only a few months short of ten years.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 1906 1910 
 
 HIS LAST GOVERNMENT 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea stamp. 
 The man's the gowd for a" that." 
 
 BURNS. 
 
 IN December, 1905, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman formed his 
 Government. My father felt that, owing to his advancing 
 years, he was unable to undertake any office entailing much depart- 
 mental work. In a letter to her sister-in-law in Canada my 
 mother wrote : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " December 2oth, 1905. 
 
 " MY DEAR HULDAH, 
 
 " We fully realized that the work and responsibility 
 of a Secretary of State's office, which was offered to Henry, 
 would be adding to the burden of life just when he needed to 
 be relieved, so we agreed it was wiser to give up the prize and 
 ask for a much lighter though less important post. His 
 claims were handsomely recognized by the Prime Minister, 
 who offered to recommend him to the King for a Peerage, if 
 Henry desired it ; but for the present he would prefer to 
 remain in the House of Commons. So it is all right as it is. 
 Henry has worked so hard all his life I want him to have 
 some rest. We sadly miss our daughters, but our little 
 grandson is a great joy to us. His Grandpapa delights in 
 him. 
 
 " Henry will be writing to you himself when the New Year 
 498
 
 His Last Government 499 
 
 comes. He wants a little time to attend to his own affairs 
 when free from House of Commons work. 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 " ELLEN FOWLER." 
 
 The office of Privy Seal was evidently next under consideration, 
 as the Prime Minister wrote : 
 
 " 29, Belgrave Square, 
 
 " gth December, 1905. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " There are complications about the Privy Seal. 
 There is no pay provided, and to add it to the estimates 
 would, as you say, be odd, especially as we are separating 
 the President of the Council from the President of the Board 
 of Education, and thus duplicating a salary. I therefore 
 cannot avoid the conclusion that instead of the Privy Seal, 
 which gives no precedence to a Commoner and therefore 
 has no advantage in it either of pay or position, you should 
 be Chancellor of the Duchy. I know, too, that this will be 
 agreeable in high quarters where, as I am significantly told, 
 you stand very well. I do not suppose you will have any 
 objection, and my object is to prepare an accurate list for 
 Monday's Council. I therefore send this by messenger and 
 shall be glad of an answer. 
 
 " Always yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN." 
 
 The Office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was totally 
 different from any which my father had occupied before. An 
 old-world atmosphere hung over the office and its routine, and 
 its interests, with which the new Chancellor was quite unfamiliar. 
 It is always an uneventful Department, and the period of my 
 father's incumbency there from December, 1905, until October, 
 1908, was, even for that office, a peculiarly uneventful period. 
 
 The new Chancellor was far from enthusiastic as regards the 
 accommodation the Duchy Office could provide, having been 
 accustomed to the spacious rooms of Whitehall and their lordly 
 
 32*
 
 500 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 pile of buildings. However, a room was selected of which he 
 approved, and it was at once to be freshly furnished. His private 
 secretary then Mr. H. E. Mitchell tells how when they were 
 choosing things for the furnishing, the Chancellor, growing im- 
 patient, asked him to choose the carpet, as he wished to be off, 
 which Mr. Mitchell accordingly did, saying that he thought a 
 certain carpet would do very well. The shopman solemnly drew 
 him aside, and informed him in a reverent whisper, that his firm 
 would hardly consider the selected carpet suitable for a Cabinet 
 Minister to walk upon ! 
 
 Soon after my father took up his work at the Duchy Office he 
 became chairman of the Parliamentary Procedure Committee, 
 and in the historic roll of maid-of-all-work of the Government 
 he had his time very much taken up outside his own Department, 
 the work of the latter not being of either quite the quality or 
 the quantity to absorb all his energies. The question of patron- 
 age was perhaps the most engrossing with which he had to deal. 
 
 " After ten years in the shade of Opposition," writes Mr. Mitchell, 
 " the victors of 1906 were very insistent on claiming the spoils, 
 and Lord Wolverhampton was early beset by clamour from every 
 city and town in Lancashire, with a Commission of the Peace, to 
 redress, by wholesale Radical appointments to the Bench, the 
 admitted inequality caused by ten years of Tory creations ; and 
 having neither the instinct of a Whip (possessed by his prede- 
 cessor Sir William Walrond), nor the patience to suffer Radical 
 and Labour Members gladly, his life in the Commons was harassed 
 by these perpetual demands. 
 
 " He was further driven by the County Members to depart from 
 the practice of leaving the selection of County Justices to the 
 Lord Lieutenant, and it required some ingenuity to carry through, 
 without friction, a compromise he made with Lord Derby, to 
 the effect that he would appoint all Lord Derby's nominations to 
 the County Bench and should at the same time request (and 
 practically require) the Lord Lieutenant to include in such nomina- 
 tions any names which he as Chancellor might think proper to 
 send to Lord Derby, unless either party to this arrangement could 
 convince the other of the unsuitability of any particular candidate.
 
 His Last Government 501 
 
 The position might not have proved a possible one for long, and 
 would perhaps have led to trouble, but soon afterwards Lord Derby 
 died, and the appointment of Lord Shuttleworth as Lord Lieu- 
 tenant, and the Chancellor's acceptance of the distinguished 
 honour of a Viscountcy (and his consequent escape from the 
 Commons), considerably relieved him of his difficulties in this 
 most thankless and irksome form of patronage. 
 
 "There is evidence that Lord Wolverhampton did not too 
 seriously regard the possible dangers of this form of dual 
 responsibility, which he undertook with Lord Derby, as on one 
 occasion, being pressed as to who would decide in the case of a 
 deadlock, he replied with one of his most engaging smiles (and 
 no one could smile more engagingly) : ' No doubt we should toss 
 for it.' Imagination can hardly picture the stately Earl and the 
 venerable Chancellor spinning a coin as to whether or no some par- 
 ticularly undesirable Lancastrian should adorn the County Bench." 
 
 Years in the public service had taught him many devious ways 
 of avoiding difficulties and it was a revelation in diplomacy to 
 watch him receiving furious and truculent deputations, listening 
 patiently to their demands, and then, with a genial smile and 
 some pleasant reminiscence or anecdote, closing the interview, 
 and dismissing the deputation, calmed and convinced that their 
 claims would be considered. 
 
 In his ecclesiastical patronage my father was most careful and 
 painstaking. The selection of a suitable incumbent was a matter 
 of grave importance to him, and though he was most careful always 
 to consult the Bishop of the diocese, and to insure his approval, 
 yet he felt a personal responsibility in the choice, which allowed 
 of no shifting his share of it on to other shoulders. 
 
 Not many livings happened to fall vacant while he was 
 Chancellor, but to two of them he was able, to his great personal 
 satisfaction, to appoint the sons of Wesleyan Ministers. He never 
 lost his interest in the parishes of which he had been the patron, 
 and he liked from time to time to see their local magazines and 
 to watch how their work was progressing. 
 
 When staying at Cromer he was interested to visit different 
 churches in that neighbourhood, which are in the patronage of
 
 502 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 the Duchy, and in the case of one of them, which required structural 
 repair, he arranged for the matter to be brought before the Council 
 of the Duchy, and a substantial sum was voted for the remedy. 
 
 As Chancellor he was, for the first time in his life, brought into 
 practical contact with some of the inner workings of the Church 
 of England, and he expressed himself most vehemently on the 
 need for reform there. 
 
 The present popular plan of levelling down the incomes of the 
 clergy was not so desirable, in his opinion, as a plan to level them 
 up to what he considered should be a living wage for men of 
 culture and education, with wives and families, who were not 
 fortunate enough to possess private means. 
 
 He sharply judged certain pluralities which came under his 
 observation, and could tell a tale of neatly-garbed grabbing, 
 which his keen business eye at once pierced, and which failed to 
 hoodwink his practical knowledge of men and matters. But to 
 the deserving and the appealing he was both tender-hearted and 
 generous. 
 
 " If it were in my own Church," I have heard him say, " that the 
 ministers of religion were paid as poorly, and pressed as hardly, 
 as hundreds of the clergy, I should never rest day or night till 
 the machinery was set in motion to redress that wrong. England 
 is a rich country, and a Christian country, and it is a vast 
 system of mismanagement within the Church itself, which is the 
 cause of the poverty and hardship which so many of the clergy 
 suffer, and so few deserve." The crowds of applicants for every 
 bit of patronage touched his sympathies rather than tried his 
 patience, seeing how poor were the livings which so many desired. 
 
 " I hate patronage," he often said. " You have to disappoint 
 so many, and you can only please one." 
 
 While Chancellor my father considerably extended the scope 
 of the Duchy contributions to charitable and deserving causes, 
 and so far as was possible he vivified the dry bones of departmental 
 work and tradition which the Duchy claimed as its own. But 
 that they were dry bones he always felt, and perhaps the Duchy 
 of Lancaster was the least congenial to him of all the offices which 
 he was called to hold. That he nevertheless admirably fulfilled
 
 His Last Government 503 
 
 the office of Chancellor of the Duchy, is proved by his receiving at 
 its termination the signal mark of His Majesty's approval in being 
 appointed a Member of his Duchy Council on which he served 
 for the remainder of his life. 
 
 In March, 1906, he wrote to Mrs. Robert Fowler in Canada : 
 
 " Duchy of Lancaster Office, 
 
 " March loth, 1906. 
 
 " MY DEAR HULDAH, 
 
 " The pressure of business attendant upon the forma- 
 tion of a new Government here and on the General Election 
 has delayed my writing to you earlier. I am sending you a 
 New Year's gift (though rather late) with my best wishes for 
 you and yours. 
 
 " I have accepted an office of slight work, as I did not at 
 my age feel equal to the increasing work of one of the great 
 administrative departments, and though the Cabinet work 
 is very heavy at present I hope it will soon diminish and 
 that I shall have more leisure than I have had for a long 
 time. 
 
 " We are all, thank God, pretty well, including the little 
 grandson. 
 
 " Mr. Baker, one of the members of the new Parliament, 
 tells me that he knows your family well, and he spoke in the 
 highest terms of Robert " (his half-brother). " I hope that 
 Joseph is getting on well. From all one hears of Canada 
 it seems to be a certainty that prosperity and progress are 
 the rules in your dominion. 
 
 " Your affectionate brother, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 Early in the Session of the new Parliament the Prime Minister 
 wrote to him : 
 
 " 10, Downing Street, 
 
 "4th May, 1906. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " After you went away we discussed the arrange- 
 ment of the Education debate and it was unanimously
 
 504 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 agreed to ask you to speak on Monday. Will you do it ? 
 What is wanted is a moderate, conciliatory but firm statement 
 of our case, and you are the best man to do this. More fiery 
 spirits can come later. Please consent to this. Not neces- 
 sarily to follow Wyndham, but rather to come later, and put it 
 all on a reasonable footing in your own persuasive, reasonable 
 
 way. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " H. C.-B." 
 
 My father's views on the Education question may be finally 
 summarized thus : That public control of education should follow 
 the expenditure of public money ; that the teaching profession 
 should be relieved from religious tests ; and that the Bible should 
 not be excluded from the Elementary Schools. 
 
 In a private conversation about this time, about the Education 
 Bill, he said : 
 
 " I do not believe in a secular solution. We want to train the 
 children in love of virtue and truth, and they can learn that from 
 the Bible and from nowhere else. I can conceive of no greater 
 calamity than that the young people who are to be the nation's 
 future citizens and rulers should be brought up in ignorance of 
 the knowledge of God and all the solemn requirements of the 
 Christian faith." 
 
 In the September of 1906 my father received the following letter 
 from Lord Morley, who was then Secretary of State for India : 
 
 " Flowermead, 
 
 " Wimbledon Park, 
 
 " September 3oth, 1906. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I found your letter waiting for me here yesterday, 
 on our return from Harrogate. We had a fortnight there, 
 with much advantage. 
 
 " I wish you had been able to give me a more cheery story 
 of an unbroken holiday. But as you have learnt before now, 
 the chances and changes and occasions of life are beyond 
 our reach, and we have to take things as they come.
 
 His Last Government 505 
 
 " Yes, we went to Skibo for ten days in August most 
 pleasant. . . . 
 
 "It is no small satisfaction to me that you approve my 
 language to the people at Simla, for you were an Indian expert 
 Grey, Asquith and Haldane have all written me in the same 
 sense. I have never been out of reach of pouches pretty 
 well loaded too. 
 
 " I fancy the Cabinet will be about October I5th. That 
 is what C.-B. talked of, when I stayed with him after the 
 funeral. He was in extraordinary good condition, and has 
 no notion whatever of taking his hand off the tiller. 
 
 " I cannot but be sorrowful about Chamberlain. For 
 thirteen or fourteen years we were like brothers. 
 
 " The conference of railway men will damage us gravely 
 with the middle class, for railways are the middle class in- 
 vestment ; and to pull profits down from an average of 3^ 
 to 2- per cent. as they admit to be the effect of their demand 
 will frighten people. And if anybody thinks we can 
 govern this country against the middle class, he is wrong. I 
 believe that you and I think entirely alike about these 
 things. 
 
 " Best regards to Lady Fowler, 
 " Yours, 
 
 " J. M." 
 
 Which showed that the old Indian Secretary's interest in the 
 affairs of that country had never abated. 
 
 There was one marked difference between Henry Fowler in his 
 last Government, and what he had always been before. He had 
 become a silent man. He spoke very little in Cabinets, he spoke 
 but occasionally in Parliament, he spoke very rarely in the country. 
 When he did speak there was no mistaking Henry Fowler's words 
 and views and arguments -he was the same man he had been 
 in youth and middle-age, but his weapons were wearing thin, and 
 his strength to wield them was not so untiring. One of his last 
 great utterances was on the modern question of Socialism. 
 
 " There was a feeling," he said, " of dissatisfaction among all
 
 506 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 classes, who believed that the general condition was capable of 
 improvement and that it ought to be improved. But they had 
 to be careful as to many of the remedies which enthusiastic men, 
 which generous men, were proposing for dealing with that im- 
 portant question. A school had arisen in this country and it 
 was not a school to be despised, but one which would have to be 
 dealt with by fair argument and reasoning which demanded 
 that our national industries, alike of production, of manufacture, 
 and of distribution, should be vested in and carried on by public 
 authorities, and that the existing property of individuals or pro- 
 prietors should be transferred from private to public ownership. 
 It might be said that he was talking nonsense that nobody had 
 proposed this. Had they not ? The first step was taken last 
 Session. A Bill was introduced into Parliament and read a first 
 time it was not introduced by an obscure member. Under its 
 powers a local authority might acquire, or establish, and carry on, 
 either within or without its area, a traffic business, a manufacturing 
 business, a commercial business, a banking business, an insurance 
 business, or any other business or industry whatever. But there 
 was one exception, one industry that was to be left out of that 
 wide net which was to take in everything else, and that was ' except 
 the brewers, the tavern-keepers and the hotel-keepers.' They 
 were to remain the one uncontrolled industry. He did not know 
 why their industry was to be excepted. It appeared almost 
 ludicrous. But it would be a very grave thing for this country if 
 it was ever passed into law. He did not believe it ever would be 
 or could be passed into law. Those who were responsible for 
 the carrying on of the trade, who had built it up, who had developed 
 our colossal trade throughout the world, were interested in the 
 protection of that trade, and they knew that successful industry 
 and trade were carried on by men and not by committees and 
 Town Councils. They knew that those industries had been carried 
 on by their ability, energy, personal management, personal 
 interest, and personal motive, and that was the secret of all com- 
 mercial success and of all trading success in the country. He did 
 not think it out of place if he lifted up his voice against any pro- 
 posal which indicated steps of the character he had described, for
 
 His Last Government 507 
 
 such a proposal if carried out would be fatal not only to all com- 
 mercial prosperity, but to the commercial existence of the Empire. 
 
 " Proposals must be made to ameliorate the condition of the 
 workers, those prevented by age or infirmity, or by bad trade 
 from obtaining work. Some people called this social reform, 
 others called it Socialism. Socialism had been defined as the 
 nationalization of the means of production, of sale and exchange. 
 He would have nothing to do with any such scheme. He would 
 oppose it to the utmost. Nothing could be more unwise. He would 
 oppose it in the interests of commerce, and industry, and of the 
 people themselves. The thing was impracticable, almost unthink- 
 able. He reminded them of what he once heard Mr. Gladstone 
 say. There was a conversation, not on Socialism as a whole, but 
 on the nationalization of the land. The old gentleman, in his 
 quiet and stern way, listened for a long time ; then he broke out 
 suddenly with these words : ' Do you mean to pay for it, or do 
 you not ? If you mean to pay for it, it is folly ; if you don't mean 
 to pay for it, it is robbery.' Socialism was much talked about 
 by a powerful body of well-meaning men, who had not thought 
 the question out, and who did not explain how, under such a 
 system, great concerns were to be worked, or how the commercial 
 relationships between this and foreign countries were to be main- 
 tained. While opposing Socialistic proposals, he would support 
 every legislative and administrative effort to promote the 
 prosperity and the happiness of the subjects of the Crown." 
 
 In 1908 the political cards were again reshuffled. On the death 
 of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman the King sent for Mr. Asquith 
 and some reconstruction of the Cabinet was necessary. On 
 Monday morning, April I3th, 1908, the announcement appeared 
 in the Times that " the King had been pleased to confer the 
 dignity of Viscount of the United Kingdom on the Right Hon. Sir 
 Henry Fowler, G.C.S.I. " ; and at the same time it was also con- 
 ferred on the Right Hon. John Morley, O.M. It was, I am sure, 
 a great satisfaction to my father that his name was coupled with 
 that of his old friend in this last great distinction.
 
 508 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 On April igth he received the following autograph letter from 
 King George V., then Prince of Wales : 
 
 " Marlborough House, 
 
 " April i8th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I must send you one line of sincere congratulations 
 upon the Peerage which you have had the honour of receiving 
 from the King. May you enjoy the less exacting life of the 
 House of Lords for many years to come is the heartfelt wish of 
 
 " Yours most sincerely, 
 
 " GEORGE P." 
 
 Among many letters of congratulation with which every post 
 for the next few days was crowded, the following from Sir 
 Fleetwood Edwards appeared : 
 
 " United Service Club, 
 
 " ist May, 1908. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " Let me offer you my congratulations upon your 
 elevation after so many years of right good hard work during 
 which, dating from the days of our dear old Queen, I can 
 look back to many a pleasant time with you. 
 
 " May you long be spared to enjoy your comparative rest. 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " FLEETWOOD J. EDWARDS." 
 From the Bishop of Lichfield : 
 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " Will you allow me to congratulate you on the 
 well-earned honour conferred upon you ? Your services to 
 the State and the Empire have been great ; and apart from 
 party politics all who know you will rejoice at this recog- 
 nition of those services. Personally I can write as one who 
 from my point of view, is placed in a position which should 
 know no partisanship ; and I can say that the House of Lords 
 will be the gainer by your presence as a member. 
 
 " Believe me, dear Sir Henry, 
 
 " AUGUSTUS LICHFIELD."
 
 His Last Government 509 
 
 From Lord Morley : 
 
 " Flowermead, 
 
 " Wimbledon Park, S.W. 
 " April 2oth, 1908. 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I ought to have sent you a word of friendly saluta- 
 tion a week ago, and my only excuse is that I have been 
 positively swamped with correspondence. 
 
 ' Yes as you so kindly put it this morning my decision 
 seems to meet with general approval, and I am satisfied that 
 it was right in the circumstances of the moment, alike in 
 respect of India, and of our party, Cabinet, and political 
 leaders here. 
 
 " I cordially reciprocate all that you generously write about 
 our long span of comradeship. It has been to me one of 
 the things that make Parliamentary life endurable. It is a 
 mighty pleasure to me to think that it will continue on red 
 benches what it has for all these years been upon green. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " J. MORLEY." 
 
 His old friend Lord James of Hereford wrote : 
 
 " Breamore House, 
 
 " near Salisbury, 
 
 " April I4th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Hitherto I have never desired to be a Viscount, 
 but now I do so. 
 
 " For if I were of that high degree I should seek the honour 
 of being allowed to introduce into that Chamber, which needs 
 so much amendment, one of my oldest and most regarded 
 friends. 
 
 " With best congratulations and all assurances of friendship, 
 ' Yours most truly, 
 
 " JAMES OF HEREFORD."
 
 510 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 From Lord Midleton : 
 
 " Cliveden, 
 
 " Taplow, 
 
 " April 22nd, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " You must pardon the old name till you adopt the 
 new one. 
 
 " May I tell you what genuine pleasure it is to me to know 
 that you will honour the House of Lords by finishing your 
 long and useful public career in that Assembly ? I can assure 
 you that you will be warmly welcome and that you will find 
 your matured and pointed eloquence will tell greatly there. 
 
 " The House of Lords, though I have been there less than 
 a year, I can vouch for to this extent, that a fine statement of 
 a case from your side does influence even the great mass 
 opposite, and much as I have minded being cut off for ever 
 from the House of Commons there is some little compensation 
 in the certainty that the House of Lords must play an im- 
 portant part in modifying the rapid veerings of public opinion 
 I do not believe this will be in future confined to one party. 
 
 " Again congratulations, 
 
 ' Yours very truly, 
 
 " MIDLETON." 
 
 The Bishop of Ripon ; 
 
 " The Palace, 
 " Ripon, 
 
 " April I5th, 1908 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY FOWLER, 
 
 " May I venture to send you my very sincere good 
 wishes on this new honour, so well won, which has come to 
 you ? 
 
 " Many will rejoice, and rightly rejoice ! May I assure 
 you that among the number who do so most sincerely is 
 
 " Ever yours truly, 
 
 "W. B. RIPON."
 
 His Last Government 511 
 
 Mr. Justice Manisty wrote : 
 
 " i, Howard Street, 
 
 " Strand, London, W.C. 
 
 " April isth, 1908. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY FOWLER, 
 
 " Allow me to offer you my very hearty congratula- 
 tions on the high honour the King has announced his in- 
 tention of conferring upon you. It is only meet recognition 
 of the great services you have rendered to the State to the 
 Empire for many years, and I am sincerely glad to see from 
 the papers that you will continue those services, though you 
 will sit in ' another place.' 
 
 " Believe me to be, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " H. MANISTY." 
 
 From Lord Kilbracken : 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " Whitehall, S.W. 
 
 "I5th April, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I address you for the last time by this name, style, 
 and title, in order to express my great gratification at the 
 honour which has been conferred upon you a gratification 
 which will be shared by all who had the pleasure of working 
 under you at this office. 
 
 " Quite apart from the personal question, I rejoice to think 
 that we shall now be thoroughly well represented in that 
 gilded chamber which, in spite of everything, still counts 
 for something ! 
 
 " Please accept my most hearty congratulations. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " ARTHUR GODLEY."
 
 512 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 From Lord Fitzmaurice : 
 
 " Foreign Office, 
 
 " April I4th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I remember your kindly saying to me in 1906 at 
 Buckingham Palace, that when the Government was formed, 
 you had hoped we would have sat together on the Front 
 Bench of the House of Commons. It is at least a satisfaction 
 now to think that we shall sit together on the Front Bench 
 of the House of Lords, when you will be welcomed by all your 
 old friends, and by many others besides. 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " FITZMAURICE." 
 
 From the Rt. Hon. George W. E. Russell : 
 
 " The Reform Club, 
 
 " April i_3th, 1908. 
 
 " Best congratulations, my dear friend, to you and Lady 
 Fowler. I cannot conceive anything pleasanter to look back 
 upon than 28 years spent unbrokenly in the representation of 
 your friends and neighbours. 
 
 " May the future be as happy as the past. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL." 
 
 Lord Knutsford wrote : 
 
 " The Athenaeum, 
 
 " Pall Mall, S.W. 
 
 " 13-4-1908. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I hope you will let me as an old friend congratulate 
 you, as I do very sincerely, upon your promotion to a haven 
 of rest after the strenuous life in the House of Commons. 
 And I hope you will let me add my hope that for some time 
 you will enjoy your rest. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " KNUTSFORD."
 
 His Last Government 513 
 
 From the Right Hon. Walter H. Long : 
 
 "51, Cadogan Gardens, 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " Forgive me for saying how sorry I am that you are 
 leaving our House. We shall miss you greatly, and I per- 
 sonally shall always remember with gratitude the many acts 
 of friendship you have consistently shown me. 
 
 " I hope we shall often read or hear you in the other 
 House. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " WALTER H. LONG." 
 
 From Sir Hugh Owen : 
 
 " Voel, 
 
 " South Grove, 
 " Highgate, 
 
 " May 5th, 1908. 
 " DEAR LORD WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " So many years have elapsed since I held office 
 at the Local Government Board, during the time that you were 
 President of the Board, that I must almost have passed out of 
 your recollection. 
 
 " I am very mindful of the consideration and kindness which 
 were shown me by you during that time, and shall always 
 remember the great strain of work imposed on you in 
 connection with the Local Government Bill of 1894, which 
 you so successfully carried through Parliament. 
 
 "It is to me very gratifying that the public services which 
 you have rendered during so long a period have received the 
 recognition of a Peerage, and I hope that in the House of 
 Lords you may long continue to give the State like 
 service. 
 
 " Very heartily I congratulate you. 
 
 " Believe me always, 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " HUGH OWEN." 
 33
 
 514 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Lord Blyth : 
 
 " 33, Portland Place, W. 
 
 " I4th April, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " Your accession to our somewhat thin ranks in the 
 Upper House is very welcome to me, and must be so to the 
 whole Liberal party there, and to your legions of friends 
 outside. 
 
 " May your presence in the House of Lords be a long one, 
 to help our leaders with your wise counsel and ripe ex- 
 perience. 
 
 " With kindest regards to dear Lady Fowler, whom I hope 
 very soon to address differently, 
 
 "lam, 
 
 " My dear Sir Henry, 
 
 " Yours most truly, 
 
 " BLYTH." 
 
 From Sir Walter Runciman, Bt., father of the Right Hon. 
 Walter Runciman : 
 
 " National Club, 
 
 " April I4th, 1908. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY FOWLER, 
 
 " If I may do so, without appearing presumptuous, 
 I should like to congratulate you on being made a Peer. The 
 Upper House is sadly in need of men of your wide knowledge 
 and debating power. We are as lopsided there, as the Tories 
 are in the Commons ; moreover, the self-sacrifice you have 
 shown in not seeking repose from the cares of office will be 
 appreciated by the country. 
 
 " May I take this opportunity of cordially thanking you 
 for the great kindness you have always shown to my son. 
 He appreciates it just as much as I do, which is saying a good 
 deal. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " WALTER RUNCIMAN."
 
 His Last Government 515 
 
 From Lord Stamfordham : 
 
 " Marlborough House, 
 " Pall MaU, S.W. 
 
 " April I7th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " I hope you will allow me to offer my hearty 
 congratulations upon your receiving a Peerage. May you 
 live to enjoy many years of comparative peace in the 
 Upper House after your long and stirring life in the 
 Commons. 
 
 " I hope Lady Fowler is in better health. jyj 
 
 " After the holidays I should like to have a few minutes 
 talk about the '51 Commission if you will kindly let me come 
 to see you. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 ' ARTHUR BIGGE." 
 
 The late Sir Percy Bunting, Editor of the Contemporary 
 Review : 
 
 " u, Endsleigh Gardens, 
 " London, N.W. 
 
 " April i4th, 1908. 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " Allow me to congratulate Lady Fowler and your- 
 self on your elevation. 
 
 " It is a well-earned honour. You are to be the first 
 Methodist almost the first Nonconformist Peer ; and I 
 hope you may do something to leaven the Lords with some 
 popular religion. 
 
 " Perhaps you can do something also to help the Coronation 
 settlement. It is high time it was settled, and I think the 
 delay is doing religion harm. 
 
 " Very sincerely, 
 
 " PERCY WILLIAM BUNTING." 
 
 33*
 
 516 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Rev. Dr. Scott Lidgett, Head of the Bermondsey Settlement : 
 
 " Bermondsey Settlement, 
 
 " I3th April, 1908. 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY, 
 
 " Will you allow me to offer you my heartiest con- 
 gratulations on your elevation to the Peerage. What gives 
 me the greatest pleasure is that it means your continuance in 
 Office, and that it will enable you to serve the cause of pro- 
 gress and conciliation combined in a way which, I believe, 
 will serve the Church as much as the State. 
 
 " I earnestly trust that your health may be long preserved 
 to exercise a moderating influence in the House of Lords. 
 " Believe me, dear Sir Henry, 
 " Yours very faithfully, 
 
 " J. SCOTT LIDGETT." 
 
 From Dr. Waller, late President of the Wesleyan Conference : 
 
 " DEAR SIR HENRY FOWLER, 
 
 " I have seen with the utmost pleasure that you 
 have been made a Peer. The honour conferred upon you is 
 abundantly deserved, and, whilst it will give general satisfac- 
 tion throughout the Kingdom, the Wesleyan Methodists will 
 specially rejoice. My sincere prayer is that in the House of 
 Lords you may be long spared to serve the Nation and Empire. 
 
 " I am, 
 
 ' Yours very truly, 
 
 " D. J. WALLER." 
 
 As Sir Percy Bunting mentioned a fact of which my father 
 required no reminder he was the first Wesleyan who was created 
 a Peer. And though of course it would be the height of snobbish 
 absurdity to imagine that any Church could be honoured by 
 the rank of its members, yet my father and his contemporaries 
 were old enough to remember the days when to be a Nonconformist 
 was a clog on any man's career indeed, an actual disability to
 
 His Last Government 517 
 
 him in many of the avenues of advancement ; the fact, therefore, 
 that he being a Wesleyan Methodist was created a Viscount 
 of the United Kingdom, was a notable milestone in the great pro- 
 gress of religious freedom, in which he gloried as a sign of wider 
 toleration, better understanding and a nobler catholicity through- 
 out the Christian world. 
 
 A dinner was given to my father on his elevation by some of 
 his personal friends at the Savoy Hotel, at which a hundred were 
 present. Sir George Chubb, Bart., presided, and among the 
 letters of regret he read from those who were unable to be 
 present was one from Lord Rosebery, who said : " I have a prior 
 engagement from which I cannot disengage myself, or it would 
 have given me the greatest pleasure to attend the dinner to 
 Viscount Wolverhampton and testify to my sincere regard and 
 respect for him." And Lord Justice Moulton also wrote : 
 " Apart from my great esteem and friendship for Lord Wolver- 
 hampton personally, I, like all sons of Methodist preachers, feel 
 that his brilliant career sheds a reflected glory on us all, and that 
 we have a share in his triumphs." There were other letters from 
 the Lord Chancellor, the Prime Minister, the Bishop of London, 
 Right Hon. Walter Runciman, Sir John Randies, Dr. Moulton, Dr. 
 Rigg and many others. 
 
 The Earl of Dartmouth proposed my father's toast and he re- 
 called the close friendship which had existed one hundred and fifty 
 years ago between John Wesley and the Lord Dartmouth of that 
 day, who was styled, to distinguish him, his descendant avowed, 
 from all other bearers of that name " the good Lord Dartmouth." 
 My father's grandfather being also a close friend of John Wesley, 
 it was fitting that their descendants should thus meet on such 
 an occasion, where the one was called upon to do honour to the 
 other ! 
 
 The President of the Conference, the Rev. J. S. Simon, also 
 spoke, in jointly proposing that toast. He said what a privilege 
 he felt it to represent the Wesleyan Methodist people on that 
 unique occasion, when the President of the Conference was called 
 to propose the health of a member of the Wesleyan Methodist 
 Church who had been elevated to the peerage. They honoured
 
 5i8 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Lord Wolverhampton throughout the Church, and they honoured 
 him as a son of their Church, and those who had read anything 
 of Methodist history honoured him as a son of his father. His 
 father was a reformer before the Reformation, and with a very 
 clear outlook into the future, and a very sharp discernment of the 
 dangers of the time in which he lived. He put his hands to re- 
 forms which had been carried out and perfected, very much through 
 the influence of his son. They were indebted to Lord Wolver- 
 hampton for the share he had taken in perfecting the constitution 
 of their Church, and in liberalizing its institutions. The Methodist 
 constitution was very delicate and had to be handled very care- 
 fully. A rash hand complicated everything and destroyed every- 
 thing. But when that great measure which created the Repre- 
 sentative Session of the Conference was launched, they found in 
 Lord Wolverhampton one whose moderating counsels, wise and 
 cautious, marched with very steady step in the direction of reform. 
 He understood what they called the rights of the ministers ; he 
 also understood what they called the rights of the laymen ; he 
 remembered that their constitution was a system of checks and 
 balances ; and they could never forget the splendid services Lord 
 Wolverhampton had rendered. But they felt a further debt to 
 him because he had always stood for the increase of reverence in 
 their public services, and the perfecting of the liturgical part of 
 those services. He also referred to my father's work in connec- 
 tion with the Hymn Book Committee. Sir George Chubb said that 
 Lord Wolverhampton was present that evening not so much as a 
 statesman but as their personal and near friend, and those present 
 had come from all parts of England where they represented many 
 phases of British life, in order that they might give a welcome 
 to Lord Wolverhampton, and wish him long life and many happy 
 years of usefulness in the position to which he had been raised. 
 
 In reply my father said : "It was utterly impossible for him 
 to express his emotions at the absolutely unexpected compliments 
 that had been paid him by his friends and neighbours from Stafford- 
 shire, and the town with which he had been so intimately con- 
 nected, and by Lis friends in the Methodist Church. There was 
 nothing political in that evening's proceedings. English political
 
 His Last Government 519 
 
 life was, happily, not a personal one. He had never concealed his 
 party views, as his friends would bear him out ; he had always 
 held the opinion that party was an essential feature in the freedom 
 and efficiency of their national institutions. Lord Beaconsfield 
 once said that parliamentary government meant party govern- 
 ment. If the latter were weakened the former would certainly 
 be in danger. If they did not have party government they would 
 have group government, which was a much greater danger, 
 and certainly much less moderate. Power would be put in 
 irresponsible hands ; but in party government they had a com- 
 bination of men of various talents, and various views, who 
 had agreed upon certain principles to which they attached 
 importance, and they would never free themselves from 
 the responsibility of their actions and political conduct. No 
 such feeling existed in groups run by one or two in- 
 dividuals or run by combinations of party, who under no 
 circumstances would be expected to coalesce. He very much 
 disliked to see either side claiming a monopoly of patriotism or of 
 political sagacity. They could differ as to policy, or administra- 
 tion, or legislation, without maintaining that their opponents 
 were rogues or fools. Every man was entitled to defend his 
 opinions and to do his utmost to secure their adoption as a 
 permanent influence in the State ; but the great government of 
 that Empire, the most powerful, the most influential government 
 in the world, was too gigantic a trust, too solemn and sacred 
 a trust, to be degraded to a faction fight. He was free to con- 
 fess that the only criticism to which he had been subjected 
 he hardly knew whether it was a compliment or a censure was 
 that he combined Liberal principles with Conservative instincts. 
 In discharging his duties in his borough he had done so irrespective 
 of party feelings. In October he would celebrate his golden 
 wedding with municipal government. Fifty years ago he was 
 elected a Member of the Wolverhampton Town Council, and the 
 growth of the institutions of that town, and their growing success, 
 had always kindled in him the deepest interest, and on those 
 grounds he justified the choice of his title. He must also refer 
 to that large section of the hosts of the evening to whom he
 
 520 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 belonged ecclesiastically. Lord Dartmouth had referred to his 
 ancestor, the good Lord Dartmouth, who was also immortalized 
 in a line of Cowper's as ' the peer who wore a coronet and prayed.' 
 He felt that it was the desire of his Church with its millions of 
 adherents in all parts of the globe, to live and work in harmony 
 with all other sections of the Christian Church. So long as he 
 had the health and strength to take a humble part in public life, 
 he should do his utmost to promote the just and peaceful settle- 
 ment of all questions which tended to arouse religious strife. 
 He was a man of peace. He desired peace in all those questions, 
 and he thought there were few questions, whether political or 
 ecclesiastical, which could not be settled by an application of the 
 great axiom of doing unto others as you would they should do 
 unto you." 
 
 The whole of this year was heavily clouded at home by the 
 long and dangerous illness of my mother. Happily she was suffi- 
 ciently better for a few months to rejoice in the honour paid to 
 my father on his elevation to the peerage, though she was never 
 really well again. But it was a great joy to her, and to him in her, 
 though for himself he had outgrown the prize-days of life. " I 
 am very glad," wrote Lord Morley that September, " to have a 
 friendly signal from you. Glad, too, to know that you are both 
 of you the better for Cromer, and that a new ray of sunshine lights 
 your domestic hearth " (that was an allusion to the birth of my 
 second son). Mr. Carnegie also wrote to him that month : 
 
 " Skibo Castle, 
 
 " Dornoch, 
 
 " Sutherland, 
 
 " September 30th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 " Your note is precious. So glad to hear from you. 
 I like the ' Hero Fund ' because no one suggested it. It is 
 my own chicken. 
 
 " The reception given here is most gratifying. In America 
 there were some critics at first, but it has triumphed as I knew 
 it would.
 
 His Last Government 521 
 
 " Kindest regards to dear Lady Fowler, and all your house- 
 hold in which Mrs. Carnegie warmly joins. 
 " No friends like the old friends. 
 
 " Always your friend, 
 
 " ANDREW CARNEGIE." 
 
 At a special Degree Congregation of the University of Birming- 
 ham held in the Great Hall of the University Buildings at 
 Edgbaston on the 20th October, 1909, the degree of LL.D. honoris 
 causa was conferred by the Vice-Chancellor on thirty-one gentle- 
 men and one lady, including Lord Wolverhampton, the Right 
 Hon. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the Right Hon. R. 
 B. Haldane, the Right Hon. Walter Long, Lord Rayleigh, Lord 
 Strathcona, Professor Gilbert Murray, Sir H. Butlin (President of 
 the College of Surgeons), the Chancellor of the University (Mr. 
 Chamberlain), and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. 
 
 The various recipients were presented by the Principal (Sir 
 Oliver J. Lodge), and in presenting Lord Wolverhampton the 
 Principal said : " The Lord President of the Council has held 
 various important offices under the Crown. He has been President 
 of the Local Government Board, Secretary of State for India, and 
 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ; and everywhere, for his 
 honest and ungrudging service, he has won the gratitude and 
 esteem of his countrymen. To the Midland counties he is bound 
 by one of the closest ties. His philanthropic and other public 
 work has been recognized by men of all political parties ; and 
 that he reciprocates the hearty affection in which he is held by 
 a neighbouring and friendly borough, is amply attested in the 
 name by which he has chosen that we should know him. I 
 present to you a typical English gentleman, Sir Henry Hartley 
 Fowler, Viscount Wolverhampton." 
 
 The most important part my father took in the proceedings 
 of the House of Lords was the conduct of the Old Age Pensions 
 Bill through the House in the summer of 1908. When he moved 
 the second reading of the Bill, he was supported by the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and several Unionist peers.
 
 522 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 On the resignation of Lord Tweedmouth, owing to illness, in 
 October, 1908, the Prime Minister wrote to my father : 
 
 " MY DEAR WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " I have the pleasure of proposing to you that you 
 should take poor Tweedmouth' s place as President of the 
 Council. I hope that this will be agreeable to you. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " H. H. ASQUITH." 
 
 which offer he accepted kissed hands and took the oath of office 
 as Lord President of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, 
 on the igth October, 1908. 
 
 Amongst the principal Acts of administration whilst he held 
 this office may be mentioned the appointment, in December, 1908, 
 of a Departmental Committee to consider the working of the 
 Midwives Act, 1902 ; also, the grant of a Charter to the Bedford 
 College for Women (London) in 1908, and, in the following year, 
 a Charter to the University of Bristol. 
 
 In November, 1908, my father presided at an investigation, by 
 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, into the conduct of 
 a Colonial Judge, who had been suspended from his office by the 
 authorities. 
 
 Though nominally, of course, the President of this body, in 
 practice the Lord President does not sit at the hearing of appeals 
 from India and the Colonies which form the greater part of its 
 work. It is, however, usual for him to do so in matters where the 
 Judicial Committee is considering matters specially referred to in 
 it, which are not of a strictly judicial character, and the fact that 
 the Lord President had also the advantage of a considerable legal 
 experience made him a most valuable addition to the Board on 
 this occasion. The fact, too, that a solicitor had presided over 
 a Board composed of the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Halsbury, 
 Lord Macnaghten, the late Lord Robertson and Lord Atkinson, 
 attracted no little attention both in the daily and legal press, 
 and advocates of fusion of the two branches of the profession were 
 not slow to point the moral from the interesting incident.
 
 His Last Government 523 
 
 " Lord Wolverhampton," writes his private secretary at the 
 Privy Council Office, " as one of the great Officers of State, took a 
 prominent part in the ceremony of the opening of Parliament by 
 His late Majesty, King Edward VII., on Monday, 2ist February, 
 1910 ; and it is feared that the physical strain of attending this 
 State ceremony at his advanced time of life told upon the Lord 
 President's health. From that date till his resignation, on the 
 aoth June, 1910, he was unable to take any active part in the 
 functions of his office, which included the great Council held on 
 the accession of His present Majesty. During this period, he 
 fought against chronic ill-health with the determination of a 
 man unwilling to allow that his days of political energy were 
 slowly but surely coming to a close." 
 
 At the time of the much discussed Budget of 1909, my brother- 
 in-law met my father one day walking along Whitehall. It was 
 during the debate on the Second Reading of the Budget in the 
 House of Lords, and he was coming away from the House. 
 
 " When are you going to speak ? " Mr. Felkin asked him. 
 " I should like to hear you if you will get me into the House." 
 
 " I am not going to speak," was his unexpected reply. " I do 
 not feel up to making the effort. I have just been talking to 
 Lord Crewe about it. I said that if he made a point of it I would 
 speak ; but that I shrank from the effort. He, in the kindest 
 possible way, said that, such being my feelings, he would not 
 ask me to speak." 
 
 My mother was very anxious for him to make a speech on that 
 occasion, and I should think that it was the first time in his life 
 that he failed to comply with a request of hers ; but he knew, 
 and sad indeed must have been the knowledge to him, that his 
 powers were no longer up to the demands of his will. This was the 
 first practical indication he gave that he was not as young as 
 he had been heretofore. 
 
 In the year 1909, his last in office, he only made three public 
 speeches. One on behalf of the Wesleyan Forward Scheme at 
 Hull, and another at the distribution of prizes by him on Founda- 
 tion Day at Mill Hill School. At the latter he said, he was sorry 
 not to see among the prizes one for handwriting, " for," he added,
 
 524 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " whether you are in political life, in judicial life, in mercantile 
 life, in administrative life, or whether you are in love, you must 
 realize that writing is meant to be read." The most important, 
 however, was on the occasion when he was presented with another 
 illuminated address by the Executive of the East Wolverhampton 
 Liberal Association at a great public meeting, at which his colleague 
 in the Cabinet, the Right Hon. Walter Runciman, also spoke. 
 This was to celebrate his appointment as Lord President. Sir 
 Alfred Hickman was present on the platform that evening. My 
 father, referring to Sir Alfred, said : " Among the many pleasant 
 associations which crowded his mind on that occasion was, that 
 among the guests was his first opponent, his old opponent, his 
 honourable opponent, who sustained during the many years 
 during which he was associated with him in Wolverhampton a 
 ceaseless devotion to the interests of the town, and from whom he 
 only differed once, and that was on his political opinions." 
 
 At the end of an exhaustive speech on the practical politics of 
 the day he made this simple statement of his own opinions on the 
 two great questions which loomed large in the minds of all thought- 
 ful politicians and practical statesmen : " I am," he declared, " an 
 old-fashioned Liberal an old-fashioned Liberal Free-Trader 
 I am opposed to what is called Tariff Reform, and I am equally 
 opposed more so to Socialism. You may depend upon it 
 that there is no graver danger to the interests of all classes, 
 supremely so to the interests of working men, than would be the 
 abolition of the rights of property in this country, and the trans- 
 ferring to public authorities of the control of all means of produc- 
 tion and exchange. I can see that it would be a mistake, a fatal 
 blunder, I may say almost a crime against the interests of the 
 whole community." In thanking them for the confidence reposed 
 during the long period of his public life, he added : "I am a 
 citizen of no mean city. I feel it a great honour that, in addition to 
 the title which the King has been pleased to confer upon me, I am 
 still associated with the great municipality which, for so many 
 years, has voted a portion of its Parliamentary representation to 
 me, and which municipality I have tried to serve to the best of 
 my ability."
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 AS A METHODIST 
 
 ' Perhaps one of the most noteworthy characteristics of ' the people called 
 Methodists' is the esprit de corps the spirit of claunishness, which runs 
 through the whole body. Is any sick, the rest are eager to pray ; is any merry, 
 the rest are delighted to sing psalms ; and they will not only pray and sing 
 together, which is comparatively easy, but they are ready to spend and be 
 spent for the brethren to any extent. Men may know they are Methodists 
 from the love they have one to another." 
 
 Concerning Isabel Carnaby. 
 
 SO far have we walked with Henry Fowler along the great 
 highway of his public and political career. We have 
 listened to his words and entered into his thoughts, and known 
 the man in all the changes and chances of his municipal, parlia- 
 mentary and official life. But we have not known him altogether 
 yet. What my father was in his church and what he was at home 
 have still to be told. And as the theme grows more intimate, 
 the colouring is more difficult and delicate with which to paint 
 him as he was as he still is in the hearts and memories of those 
 who are bound to him by cords of kinship, and affection, and 
 respect. A living personality he will always be to those who knew 
 him, and to a far wider circle still of those who will ever be united 
 to him in the growing brotherhood of Methodism. 
 
 To do full justice to Henry Fowler's interest in and love for 
 Methodism is almost an impossible task. It was so integral a 
 part of his whole being that one can hardly separate it into a 
 distinct subject. And yet I want as far as possible to give speci- 
 ally into the hands and hearts of those who were connected with 
 him by the Brotherhood of their Church, some actual, though 
 necessarily inadequate, record of what Wesleyan Methodism really 
 
 525
 
 526 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 meant to him, and what an influence it had upon his whole being. 
 In regarding the great interests of his life I should say that he 
 felt for politics the sentiments of a lover, but for Methodism the 
 love of a son. The former he wooed, and worked for, and won. 
 In the latter he was bora and bred, and he always turned to 
 Methodism with that homely confidence and life-long clinging which 
 we feel for our mothers, whether we be young or old. When he 
 talked of politics he showed the keenness, the eagerness, the 
 unrest, the despondency of a lover ; but when he spoke of 
 Methodism his voice melted into that tone of love which rings in 
 children's voices. Though he discussed and criticized many a point 
 within that church, yet it was always with a tenderness and a 
 personal devotion which were unknown in any of the other outside 
 relationships of his life. His daily post-bag was weighted with 
 appeals of all kinds for help ; but if the writer were a Wesleyan, 
 then the letter was put on one side for a personal reply, and usually 
 the type of reply which it sought. The most ordinary, unin- 
 teresting people, whom naturally he would never have noticed, 
 who could quote Methodism, or even a Methodist ancestry, imme- 
 diately became people of importance to him. But it was no use 
 for any suppliant to assume a garb of Methodism, even if it had 
 occurred to them to do so. He knew the shibboleths, the free- 
 masonry, of Methodism so well, that no one could have deceived 
 him. The very pronunciation of the word " Wesley " was a true 
 indicator ; and whenever he saw the Methodist masonic signs, he 
 would root out their history until he found the strain of Methodist 
 blood which claimed his interest, and included its inheritor within 
 the circle of his regard. Especially were the sons of Methodist 
 ministers dear to his heart. The brotherhood there was closest 
 of all, and in any distinctions won by them, he felt literally a 
 family pride and a brotherly share. However far they might 
 have wandered from the fold of their fathers, it did not alter 
 Henry Fowler's feeling of kinship, and he would delight in tracing 
 much of their prowess to their inherited religion, and the atmosphere 
 of a Methodist minister's home. Next to Methodism, Presby- 
 terianism appealed to him most, and the homes of the early Wes- 
 leyans were of much the same type as were the Scottish manses. In
 
 As a Methodist 527 
 
 Baptists and Independents he had comparatively little interest, 
 except of course in their great leaders Dale, Spurgeon, Parker, 
 Campbell Morgan, Maclaren, and such like. But to the rank and 
 file of these Nonconforming bodies he had never the clan feeling. 
 He hated their introduction of politics into Dissent, and beyond 
 their preaching power they had no hold upon him personally. 
 
 The fact that he was born to an inheritance of Methodism was 
 a great force in my father's religious life. He was a true con- 
 servative in his creeds, and it was primarily to the accident, or 
 rather the Providence, of his birth, that Methodism owes this 
 devoted and distinguished of her sons. His father's life and 
 character and personality strengthened the hold of the inherit- 
 ance. The great culture and scholarliness of Joseph Fowler, his 
 power in the pulpit and in the council chamber, his intense refine- 
 ment of thought and life, his strong interest in the affairs of men, 
 and his impregnable faith in the nearness of God, all left their 
 mark on the mind and character of his son in the impressionable 
 days of youth, and finally fixed them into that mould of Methodism, 
 which was thus shown to be of so noble a form and shape. 
 
 Henry Fowler's school-days had little influence upon him or his 
 Methodism. Woodhouse Grove was a Connexional school ; St. 
 Saviour's, of course, was not but he was never the type of boy 
 to be the flower of any school. He took his interests and his 
 character with him when he went to school, and he brought them 
 away practically unaltered. They were not schoolboyish, and his 
 life at school was never congenial to him. He made few friends 
 Dr. Robert Young and Dr. Walker, late High Master of St. Paul's 
 School, were two of them but the Methodism of Woodhouse 
 Grove was narrower and far less attractive than that to which he 
 had been accustomed at home, and rather repelled him than other- 
 wise. The roughness also of the life there was specially repugnant 
 to him after the cultured and refined simplicity of his home. 
 Many years afterwards at a reunion of Woodhouse Grove boys he 
 said that : " He could not refer to his school-days as the happiest 
 of his life. The life at the Grove in his day was a cruel one ; 
 in the matter of food he should call it nothing but starvation, while 
 the discipline was barbarous. If the school was carried on in
 
 528 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 those ways to-day the daily papers would demand Government 
 interference. He was glad to think that he had used his influence 
 in the past, and had used it successfully, in ameliorating the condi- 
 tions of life at the two schools for the sons of Wesleyan ministers. 
 He had been instrumental in the appointment of a commission to 
 investigate the question, and he remembered how interested Dr. 
 Vaughan, the Head Master of Harrow, had been in the peculiar 
 nature of those schools ; that the boys all came from the same kind 
 of home, of the same social sphere, and that the social jealousies 
 that sometimes embittered the life of other schools were quite 
 absent here." 
 
 Nothing ever weakened or shook his allegiance to his faith. 
 It was not until he settled in Wolverhampton in 1856, that his 
 active life in Methodism really began. Its tenets had grown with 
 his growth and strengthened with his strength. There is, however, 
 a record of his taking a public part in Methodist work in an account 
 of a meeting of ministers and ministers' children, which was held 
 at City Road Chapel, London, in 1852, when he was one of the 
 speakers who responded on behalf of the sons of the ministers, in 
 an address in which he enunciated " a principle of loving and 
 loyal yet independent adhesion to the Methodism of his fathers." 
 And this was also his first public speech. 
 
 In 1856 he spoke in Wolverhampton on the occasion of the 
 leave-taking between the congregation of Darlington Street Chapel 
 and two of their ministers. " The itinerancy of Methodism " 
 he there maintained, " was the mainspring and the glory of the 
 Connexion, in causing the diversity of mind of which every con- 
 gregation was composed, to be largely influenced. In the first 
 fifty years Methodism had accomplished that which should make 
 the members of that body more attached to it, and prouder of it 
 than they now were. During that time it had influenced their 
 legislature, toned their literature, and invigorated every section 
 of the Christian Church. It had not only influenced social life, but 
 it was found to have a great bearing upon even the existing war." 
 
 In that same year he was one of the representatives of Methodism 
 in the meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Wolver- 
 hampton. " Whatever interest might be attached to the dis-
 
 As a Methodist 529 
 
 semination of the Bible in foreign languages," he said, " he could 
 not help dwelling with admiration on the increasing multiplication 
 of the sacred volume in the English tongue. The most interesting 
 feature in the extension of the Anglo-Saxon race was the extension 
 of the Anglo-Saxon Bible. He could not help drawing a contrast 
 between the position of England at the present time, and that of a 
 nation that once exercised great sway throughout the world. 
 England was not always the England of to-day it had not always 
 devolved upon the Anglo-Saxon race to rule the destinies of the 
 world. They would remember that when the Bible was first given 
 to us there was an empire over which the sun never ceased to 
 shine an empire rich in wealth, illustrious scholars, and states- 
 men but amongst all of them there was not an Anglo-Saxon. 
 No such blood flowed in the veins of the people, and where was 
 that empire now ? If they looked at the difference between the 
 Spain of 1556 and the Spain of 1856, and contrasted the political, 
 moral and material condition of their own beloved land, they would 
 learn a lesson of great importance. The Spain of 1556 closed God's 
 Book against the people. England opened God's Book, and has 
 kept it open ever since. With regard to the complaints against 
 our present version of the Bible he considered that version the 
 proudest monument of the English language extant. Its beautiful 
 passages were wound up with the daily life of the Christian. He 
 hoped the Society would jealously watch over that version of the 
 Bible which the holiest, as well as the most learned of men, had 
 bequeathed to them." 
 
 In 1857 Henry Fowler gave to the Wolverhampton Wes- 
 leyan Improvement Society in Darlington Street Chapel " a 
 very comprehensive and brilliant lecture on the Institutes of 
 Wesleyan Methodism." This lecture was published by the society 
 locally, but the following year it was published in London for 
 the sake of a wider public throughout the Methodism of the 
 country. For though it was, of course, universally known how 
 Wesleyan Methodism had originated in the University of Oxford ; 
 how its earliest professors were subjected to the contempt and 
 ridicule of the mob ; how, notwithstanding all this, the earnestness 
 and inspiration of those preachers carried the work on until it 
 
 34
 
 53 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 became a great factor in the religious life of the country, yet very 
 few, even among Wesleyans themselves knew all about the interior 
 of their Church, its organizations and institutions. And this 
 information Henry Fowler's lecture lucidly supplied. He touched 
 on the ritual of Methodism, in which the liturgical services of the 
 Established Church, and the extempore devotions of the Presby- 
 terian and Nonconformist Churches, were combined ; and to that 
 ritual, combined with the true liturgy of Methodism, which is its 
 unrivalled hymn-book, he was ever a devoted adherent. In the 
 same year he took an active part in a movement to build new 
 day and Sunday schools in connection with Darlington Street 
 Chapel, which he considered was the duty of the people, not so much 
 as citizens, or Wesleyans, but as members of a Christian Church 
 worshipping together in one sanctuary. " Without an efficient 
 Sunday school their church organization was criminally defective." 
 He was always a great advocate for Sunday schools and in all 
 the subsequent education controversies in which he took part, 
 he argued that the religious instruction of the Sunday schools 
 ought to dominate the whole week's education, and teach as much 
 denominationalism as could ever be required. At a conference 
 of Sunday-school teachers held in Wolverhampton in 1861 he 
 first publicly expressed his opinions of Sunday-school work. 
 " Eighty years," he said, " had nearly passed away since Robert 
 Raikes sowed his handful of corn in the top of the mountain a 
 mountain sterile, barren, bleak and desolate, and already the 
 harvests waved like the cedars of Lebanon, and the harvests of 
 the past were but the seed-times of a more glorious future. No 
 tongue, however eloquent, could depict what those harvests had 
 been. They might enumerate the Sunday schools that had been 
 founded, they might reckon up the hundreds of thousands of 
 teachers, and the millions of scholars ; they might point to the 
 multitudes of holy living people and sainted dead, for whom the 
 Church was indebted to her Sunday schools, but it would never 
 be known what Sunday schools had done for this world, the Church, 
 and the Saviour, until that day when all the past machinery of 
 the earth would be laid bare and seen in its true light, and esti- 
 mated at its true value. He wished, also, to emphasize the
 
 As a Methodist 531 
 
 remark that Sunday schools were for religious instruction, and 
 for religious instruction only. The question had arisen whether 
 they might not safely connect the religious teaching of Sunday 
 schools with more branches of instruction, not distinctly religious. 
 But that question he would answer, speaking of course individu- 
 ally, in the negative. He took it that the mission of Sunday 
 schools was to deal with the souls of their scholars, and he did 
 trust that Sunday school teachers would never go down from 
 that great work, to take up some other branch of instruction which 
 for the time, and regarded in the light of expediency, might be 
 advantageous or desirable. He believed in the power of personal 
 teaching, personal knowledge and personal sympathy. He be- 
 lieved that the teacher in his class wielded an influence that could 
 be wielded nowhere else, while he doubted the power of the address 
 from the pulpit and the desk, inasmuch as the gift of addressing 
 children in masses was one of the rarest gifts that the most ex- 
 perienced of ministers possessed." He considered that Sunday- 
 school lessons should be something much more than ordinary 
 lessons to learn and repeat just as the Bible should never be 
 considered and treated as an ordinary school-book. " The desire 
 and the determination of those engaged in the great work of 
 Sunday schools was to make as far as they could Christian men 
 and Christian women out of the children committed to their 
 charge. There were nearly three million of Sunday-school scholars 
 in this country, two-thirds of whom belonged to the working 
 classes, and they would form the working classes of the next 
 generation. Now what agency had such a vast power to bring 
 to bear upon that important class as Sunday schools ? He was 
 one of those who thought that the working classes had received 
 but very scanty justice; he thought their failings and their faults 
 had been too often unfairly exaggerated ; he believed their efforts 
 had been too often ignored, and that as a class, the working class 
 would bear comparison with any other. But that the working 
 classes were what they ought to be, and what it was for their 
 interest and the interest of the country and the Church they 
 should be, he did not hesitate to deny ; and he knew of no other 
 agency which appeared to offer so much encouragement with 
 
 34*
 
 532 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 reference to the working classes as Sunday schools. By their 
 agency would be brought to bear on them the only means of 
 elevating any class high or low true religion, and when the working 
 classes, forming as they did the basis of the social pyramid when 
 they were permeated with the spirit of Christianity, and not till 
 then, would England be the holy, the happy and the glorious 
 country she ought to be." 
 
 Of actual Sunday-school work Henry Fowler had no experi- 
 ence whatever. He was not a teacher in any sense of the word. 
 His incapacity for imparting instruction to those younger than 
 himself from the desk of a master, other than from the platform of 
 a speaker, combined with a natural reticence and reserve, rendered 
 him utterly unfitted for any technical church work ; and, besides, 
 he was a great believer in expert work and not in Jacks-of-all- 
 trades. He had a fine knowledge of his own limitations in matters 
 of work, he never attempted that which he felt he could not do, 
 and he drew the line well inside his capabilities. Soul-science 
 was not one of his subjects. This attitude of his concerning the 
 necessity of a special training for all work was illustrated by a 
 letter he wrote against the reports of the Conference being made 
 by the ministers themselves. " The Conference refuses to admit 
 the presence of ordinary reporters, but tacitly allows individual 
 members of its own body to send their notes to the metropolitan 
 and provincial Press. This plan is regarded with dissatisfaction 
 by both ministers and laymen. It involves the employment of 
 ministerial amateurs, who, devoid of the peculiar training of a 
 professional reporter, do not possess the qualifications which 
 ensure accuracy, impartiality and completeness, and who are 
 unconscious of that esprit de corps which is the safest guarantee 
 to the speaker as well as to the public. 
 
 "With all respect for the Methodist ministry, giving them full 
 credit for what they do, and for the manner in which they do it, 
 I venture to assert that they are not good reporters I do not 
 wish that they should be ; I merely suggest that the Methodis t 
 ministers should not undertake a duty for which they are neither 
 trained, nor qualified, and the performance of which will never 
 enhance either their pulpit power or their pastoral office/'
 
 As a Methodist 533 
 
 In 1861 he wrote a letter on the then vexed question of Church 
 rates to the editors of a leading Wesleyan paper the Watchman : 
 
 " GENTLEMEN, 
 
 " The evidence before the Committee of the House 
 of Lords assumed that there are only two distinct opinions 
 current in the Wesleyan body with regard to the abolition of 
 Church rates ; each of those opinions being opposite ex- 
 tremes. Will you permit me to assert the existence among 
 us of a third shade of opinion, which sympathizes with 
 neither of these, and to express my conviction that the feel- 
 ings of a very numerous and influential section of our ministers 
 and laymen upon the Church rate question have not as yet 
 been fairly brought before the general public. 
 
 " The opinion to which I allude may be condensed into 
 one sentence. It represents an intelligent as well as truly 
 Wesleyan veneration and affection for the Church of Eng- 
 land, combined with a decided support of the total abolition 
 of Church rates. In other words, we believe the national 
 Church to be a national blessing ; we believe that its destruc- 
 tion would be a great national calamity, and we also believe 
 that the ordinary repairs of its fabric, and the incidental 
 expenses of its worship, should be defrayed by those who 
 use those fabrics and join in that worship. As Wesleyan 
 Methodists, supporting the most gigantic voluntary system 
 which the Church of Christ has ever founded, we object, not 
 so much on conscientious grounds, as on the principle of 
 simple justice, to being compelled to relieve congregations 
 possessing far more wealth, and having much fewer claims, 
 from expenses which, in common honesty, they exclusively 
 ought to bear. . . . 
 
 " There are Wesleyan Methodists, I believe a distinct 
 minority, who on high and intelligent principle, oppose the 
 abolition of Church rates. There are Wesleyan Methodists, 
 I believe a distinct minority, who on equally high and intelli- 
 gent principle, object to all religious endowments by the 
 State, and who advocate the abolition of Church rates.
 
 534 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 There are also Wesleyan Methodists who, while they appre- 
 ciate and respond to the claims which the Church of England 
 has upon them as Wesleyans, yet distinctly clinging to a non- 
 conformity based upon spiritual rather than on political 
 grounds, and who contend that as a matter of justice to 
 Nonconformists, and as a measure promotive of the truest 
 interests of the Establishment, Church rates should be totally 
 repealed. 
 
 " I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 In 1862 my father was largely instrumental in a scheme for 
 the building of another Wesleyan chapel in Wolverhampton. It 
 was a project which was almost entirely his own in conception, 
 one that he carried through with his forceful enthusiasm, and which 
 he subsequently enjoyed during the whole of his Methodist life in 
 Wolverhampton. Trinity Chapel, as it was called, was the place 
 of worship he regularly attended, and if there was ever a lay rector 
 of a Wesleyan chapel, he most surely fulfilled that function to 
 the uttermost, in the conduct and ruling of that sanctuary. 
 He was on the building committee ; he visited the site daily, 
 and saw for himself how the work was being done. Indeed, in 
 after years, when it was desired to put up a memorial tablet inside, 
 it was almost impossible to get a nail rammed into the solid 
 masonry. The building became the embodiment of his own 
 cherished ideas. He and my mother gave the East window 
 (which was South), and to this day, in spite of all the higher critics, 
 it is my belief that Elijah went up to Heaven in an embossed yellow 
 chariot drawn by a pair of fiery red steeds, as impressed upon 
 my earliest recollections by that window. I remember how 
 grieved my parents were when their grown-up children, in all the 
 arrogance of youth, cavilled at the form and colouring of that in- 
 artistic effort ; crude it undoubtedly was, but to those who had, 
 with their eyes turned towards it, worshipped together for most 
 of the Sundays of fifty years, it was rich in an association which 
 no colouring could portray, it was beautified by a hundred
 
 As a Methodist 535 
 
 hallowed memories which lingered round and lit up the scenes it 
 so imperfectly pictured. 
 
 I think my sister must have had windows such as this 
 in her mind when she wrote the following paragraph in The 
 Farringdons : 
 
 " Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to 
 understand that this window was a type and an explanation of the 
 power of early Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its mar- 
 vellous capacity of adapting religion to the needs and uses of every- 
 day life, and of bringing the infinite into the region of the homely 
 and the commonplace. We, with our added culture and our 
 maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a Jacob's Ladder formed 
 according to the domestic architecture of the first half of the 
 nineteenth century ; but the people to whom the other world 
 was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous 
 in an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet 
 of angels, had grasped a truth which on one side touched the 
 Divine, even though on the other it came perilously near to the 
 grotesque. And He, Who taught them as by parables, never mis- 
 understood as did certain of His followers their reverent irre- 
 verence ; but understanding it, saw that it was good." 
 
 There my father insisted on a full liturgical service, very rare in 
 those days in Methodist chapels. There he allowed no tampering 
 with the Prayer-book, and only one very short extempore prayer 
 in the Sunday morning service. There he supervised the hymns, 
 and approved the tunes, though sublimely incapable of giving an 
 opinion on the latter. 
 
 There he ruled even the atmosphere, and woe to the chapel- 
 keeper who failed to keep the large thermometer hung in his hind- 
 most pew, up to the prescribed 60. " One day," so Methodist tradi- 
 tion runs, "the chapel felt like an ice-house and the thermometer 
 when fetched registered 62. ' Show me exactly where you had 
 placed it,' asked Mr. Fowler promptly. The man took him to the 
 hot-water pipe, whereon in despair he had laid it. Another 
 Sunday morning, the same offending chapel-keeper fetched the 
 bread for the Communion Service from a near shop. ' You bought 
 the bread for sacramental purposes on a Sunday ? ' exclaimed
 
 536 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Mr. Fowler furiously. ' Please, sir, I did not pay for it,' pleaded 
 the culprit. ' So much the worse ! ' was the thundered answer." 
 
 In those early years, whenever the minister especially appointed 
 for Trinity Chapel preached there, about ten of the principal men 
 of the congregation used to meet half an hour before the service, 
 for what is called a " class meeting." One of that number writes: 
 " Mr. Fowler was one of the most regular and devout of the 
 members and he took part in the exercises to the profit of all." 
 When the Rev. I. E. Page left that circuit, he told me that he 
 should always be thankful for the deepening of his spiritual life 
 which had largely been the result of those meetings." Henry 
 Fowler was a great lover of hymns, and especially of Charles 
 Wesley's. He used to say that wherever he attended service, in 
 any place of worship, one of Charles Wesley's hymns was sure to 
 be sung. My sister was a great admirer of Dr. Watts's hymns, but 
 he would always argue with her that Charles Wesley's were 
 superior. 
 
 In a speech in Wolverhampton prior to the building of Trinity 
 Chapel, my father gave the following description of the faith and 
 position which he held : 
 
 " Although those present might understand it, he believed 
 that there was no Ism so little understood by those who were not 
 connected with it, as Methodism. John Foster, in one of his letters, 
 called Methodists the Chinese of the religious world they were so 
 exclusive and, as a bit of satire, he said that they thought them- 
 selves a little above the rest of the religious world, just as the 
 Chinese thought their Government superior to that of the bar- 
 barians. Now Methodists were neither churchmen nor dissenters. 
 He should call them nonconformists, in that they belonged to a 
 denomination that occupied the middle point between the two 
 great conflicting ecclesiastical interests of this country so con- 
 stituted as to become the friends of all and the enemies of none, 
 yet nevertheless having its disadvantages ; never getting justice 
 done to it by either one or the other of the conflicting parties, yet 
 a great contribution to the spiritual commonwealth of the country, 
 and binding the conflicting parties together, which was a great
 
 As a Methodist 537 
 
 advantage, little appreciated, to the great Church Catholic. 
 Now he was quite ready to justify the position they held as non- 
 conformists not as dissenters, for they never dissented from the 
 Church, they were turned out of it. That circumstance Metho- 
 dists should never lose sight of. When they called to mind those 
 great questions which surged to the surface in the present day, 
 when they called to mind that not only their great founder him- 
 self, but also his immortal brother, with that great theologian, the 
 power of whose argumentative ability only lost its lustre when con- 
 trasted by the side of his saintly character John Fletcher; 
 when they remembered that these and Thomas Coke, the founder 
 of the Missionary movement, were all clergymen of the Church of 
 England, they must never forget that they could not assume 
 the position of dissenters t without completely forfeiting their 
 reputation as the successors of such men as those he had named, 
 and without throwing away some of their hereditary glories. 
 But they might be asked why did not they belong to the 
 Church still ? The answer to that was, that they were thrust 
 out, repelled from the Lord's Table, deprived almost of civil rights ; 
 and they did not care to go back, for they preferred their own sys- 
 tem of worship." He would tell them why he preferred that 
 system of worship. " The Church of England is shut-up to one 
 form of worship, we on the other hand have freedom. We 
 have another thing which the Church does not possess, and we are 
 proud of it and have a right to be proud of it, our glorious and 
 unrivalled Hymn-book. That we cannot give up. Then we have 
 the system of itinerancy one of the strongest foundations of 
 Methodism, and the system that welds people together, and gives 
 a far better appointment of ministerial talent, than any other 
 system that can be devised. The Methodists, too, have one more 
 advantage which they ought to prize inestimably everywhere 
 both at home and abroad they preach the same doctrine." 
 A former minister of Trinity Chapel Rev. I. E. Page wrote 
 the following recollections of my father in those early days, which 
 are of value in this volume because they touch a side of his cha- 
 racter, which he would never have shown to those of his own house- 
 hold ; and also deal with a period of which his children could have
 
 538 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 no knowledge. " Mr. Fowler loved a liturgical service like that 
 at Trinity, where the full Anglican service was used on Sunday 
 mornings. He was a rather critical hearer, sometimes a severe 
 one, but always listened with pleasure to the simple teaching of 
 Evangelical truth, this although his theological views were dis- 
 tinctly broad. He was wont to say that his brains were too much 
 on the stretch on week-days, to allow of his listening with comfort 
 to argumentative sermons on Sunday. When the writer began 
 his ministry at Trinity, not without dread of the wealthy and 
 cultured congregation, the ornate building, and liturgical service 
 to which he was unaccustomed, Mr. Fowler asked for a call from 
 him, and said : ' We have sent for you because you preach simply ; 
 though we have a fine chapel, we do not want fine sermons ; preach 
 Jesus Christ to us ; that is what we want.' The minister's mind 
 was thus set at rest and it was a joy not to preach before Mr. 
 Fowler, but to him. A class-meeting was held, though not regu- 
 larly, where he gave his experience with the others. One meet- 
 ing is vividly recalled at which he spoke of difficulties in private 
 devotion and the need of something to start the train, as he said ; 
 reading as a preliminary the Pilgrim's Progress he had found 
 helpful. 
 
 "He was at the time circuit-steward, and spoke in the Quarterly 
 Meetings, and congregational gatherings, with great spiritual power. 
 When the minister suggested that he should become a class-leader 
 his reply was : ' I haven't enough religion for that.' But his 
 address at the last Quarterly Meeting the writer attended, was 
 accompanied with such influence that some were moved even to 
 tears. So through the intervening years, the writer has carried 
 the memory of him as one who lived near the heart of things, and 
 drew his strength from Communion with the Highest. Those 
 who only knew him as a public man, with a certain imperiousness 
 of manner, little suspected how kind was his heart. Once near 
 Christmas he sent for his minister, gave him a considerable offer- 
 ing and said : ' I am not a rich man, but want to do a little to help 
 others ; distribute this at your discretion and say nothing about 
 it.' Another incident will reveal something of his character. 
 One of his friends, an iron-master and a member with him of the
 
 As a Methodist 539 
 
 Sunday-morning class, had a dispute concerning the boundary 
 between his works and his neighbour's. He placed the matter in 
 Mr. Fowler's hands. This was Mr. Fowler's reply : ' I will spend 
 your money with pleasure if you wish it, but if you take my advice 
 you will not go to law. I am a lawyer, yet if a man robbed me of 
 twenty pounds, I would rather lose the money than have a law- 
 suit. Go and see your neighbour in a friendly spirit and try to 
 settle it.' His counsel was taken, and the dispute ended amicably. 
 Strong man though he was he had a morbid dread of suffering 
 and death, and greatly disliked sermons which dealt with such 
 topics. He once wisely answered the minister thus, after such a 
 sermon : 
 
 ' I am coming to hear you on Sunday if you will not preach 
 horrors ! ' 
 
 ' If you knew how often we ministers address men for the last 
 time you would not wonder that we warn them.' 
 
 " ' Well, I will take you on your own ground. Suppose you were 
 seeing a dying man, and it was your last opportunity, would you 
 preach the terrors, or the mercy and love of God ? ' 
 
 ' The love of God, certainly ! ' 
 " ' Then preach that, it is what all men need.' ' 
 Speaking to preachers, Henry Fowler once said : 
 " Do not reserve all your special appeals for Sunday night, 
 and do not preach all your saint-building sermons in the morn- 
 ing ; because there are many servant girls and others, who can 
 only get out to a place of worship at night, and these want their 
 souls building up ; and there are many well-dressed people in a 
 morning congregation who do not want so much building up as 
 being invited to Christ." 
 
 Another minister in the Trinity Circuit, the Rev. Frederick 
 Briggs, writes thus of my father : 
 
 " I shall always be glad that I lived for three years in Wolver- 
 hampton, and had the privilege of seeing a good deal of the late 
 Viscount Wolverhampton in his private and Church life. I was 
 much impressed with the perfect simplicity of his religious faith 
 his reverence for all holy things his love of discipline, and his 
 catholicity.
 
 54 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " In many conversations he expressed his strong desire that 
 politics should be excluded from pulpit utterances. To him Sunday 
 meant rest from the turmoil of political life, and he found that 
 refreshment which he needed in the liturgy of the Anglican Church, 
 which was always read at Trinity, and in a sermon upon some 
 simple Gospel truth. 
 
 " His recognition of the Hand of Providence in his life was often 
 manifest. On one occasion he asked me to include his personal 
 thanskgiving, but without mentioning names, in the morning 
 service, as he had narrowly escaped an accident during the week. 
 On another occasion, when Lady Wolverhampton had been danger- 
 ously ill, he asked me to pray for her in the service, and after- 
 wards attributed her recovery to the direct answer of God to the 
 prayers of the Church. He was always most emphatic in expressing 
 his wish that no names should be mentioned. 
 
 " He always impressed me as one who had learnt ' to do justly, 
 to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God.' ' 
 
 In the building of the new chapels of Wesleyan Methodism, 
 Henry Fowler yet retained his historic and traditional love for 
 what was old and rich in association, thus possessing by rare 
 combination the Liberal and the Conservative characteristic. 
 Practically he was always a Liberal in progress, in policy and in 
 reform. Naturally he possessed an historic veneration which made 
 him conservative among the red-hot reformers who will change a 
 thing for the worse sooner than not alter it at all. However con- 
 temptuously the word " meeting-house " might be regarded 
 in modern days, " it should remind them of associations and cir- 
 cumstances of the past, from which they traced many of their 
 present enjoyments and triumphs. In the struggles which pre- 
 ceded the establishment of those old meeting-houses were linked 
 together the attainment of their present social and religious 
 liberties. Because in point of fact the two were inseparable ; they 
 grew from the same root, they were nurtured by the same warmth, 
 matured by the same tears, and perished and faded together. 
 And, as Englishmen, they were indebted for their social liberties, 
 in the main, to the religious men who, in the support of their 
 principles, suffered, struggled and died, to secure for themselves
 
 As a Methodist 541 
 
 and for us, what was the invaluable birthright of every man, to 
 worship his Maker in accordance with his own conscience. There 
 fore, that quaint word ' meeting-house,' although it might have 
 the sound to some of what they would call the vulgarity of dis- 
 sent, or be suggestive of what they would contemptuously term 
 a gloomy bigotry, was to him the name of one of those many 
 houses, which were hallowed with associations of the most holy and 
 venerable character, and around which clustered the memories 
 of some of the most honoured and honourable men in the nation's 
 history. That word ' meeting-house ' recalled to them the great 
 battlefield of their constitution, where men acting only on behalf 
 of their religious principles, and looking only for religious results, 
 succeeded in obtaining, not without immense sacrifice, those great 
 constitutional liberties which had raised England to the point she 
 now occupied. And although that day of struggle was passed, 
 and they now enjoyed the glorious privilege for every man to 
 worship God under his own vine and fig-tree, the names of those 
 quaint old meeting-houses would for ever be treasured, to remind 
 them of the saintliness, the zealousness and the self-devotedness of 
 their forefathers." 
 
 Yet on the other hand he advanced with the times in the desire 
 for different buildings for the public worship. On a committee 
 for the building of chapels, he said, that he could not help con- 
 gratulating them on the fact that so large a number of the chapels, 
 referred to in the report, were distinguished by the beauty and 
 appropriateness of their architecture. " I know that to some this 
 may appear an unimportant point, but I entertain a contrary 
 opinion ; and I venture to assert that the recognition and appro va 
 of that vast improvement, which has characterized our recent 
 ecclesiastical edifices, involves a principle, which, both in its cause 
 and events, must affect the position and the progress of Methodism. 
 Let me be distinctly understood as not intending to cast in the 
 remotest manner, the slightest reflection on those venerable, old- 
 fashioned Methodist chapels, which, reared under peculiar circum- 
 stances, often amid unparalleled difficulties, and in the teeth of 
 unbridled opposition, are monuments of a memorable past, which 
 has endowed them with the peerless beauty of the highest and
 
 54 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 most hallowed associations. The men who admire and appre- 
 ciate those preaching-houses of the past, and regard them as among 
 the most valued treasures of our modern Methodism, are the very 
 men who, I think, most cordially endorse the sentiment I have 
 now attempted to define. The characteristic of John Wesley, and, 
 I think, in the main, the characteristic of the denomination which 
 bears his name, is an inflexible adherence to old doctrine, old 
 teaching, old and yet ever youthful truth, with the most common 
 sense adaptation of all external, secondary, incidental agencies 
 and appliances, to the peculiar circumstances and emergencies of the 
 time. And I do not shrink from saying that what was peculiarly 
 appropriate, in harmony with, in advance of, the requirements 
 of the day, in 1765, or 1805, is out of harmony with, and is in- 
 appropriate in the year 1865. I do not contend that there is any 
 special sanctity, any obligatory appropriateness in any one style 
 of ecclesiastical architecture. I rejoice that the Connexion gener- 
 ally seems to be of the opinion that there is a fitness, appropriate- 
 ness, decency and order in that style of ecclesiastical archi- 
 tecture which for centuries, whether in the sublime magnificence 
 of our venerable cathedrals, or the exquisite simplicity of our 
 country churches, has been associated with our ecclesiastical 
 history. I refuse to admit a superiority in any one aspect of 
 those edifices which, ranging from the barn to the town hall, are 
 supposed exclusively by some, ' to be linked with the spirit and 
 teaching of Methodism.' " And he went on to express his hope 
 that improved services would also be found in the finer chapels. 
 
 " There are two aspects of Methodism the aggressive and 
 the conservative. The one is essential to the other, and a good 
 deal of our connexional weakness has arisen from the confusion of 
 the two ; the one admits and justifies irregularities, which would 
 be fatal to the other. In dealing with the wickedness, the sin, 
 and the ignorance which still disfigure our land, it matters not 
 what agency you employ, so long as it is successful ; but if you 
 are in this present day bearing in mind that it is a day of en- 
 lightened taste, a day in which cultivation and enlightenment 
 are no longer the special prerogative of one class, but are extended 
 through all classes to justify your claim to a complete, eccle-
 
 As a Methodist 543 
 
 siastical organization ; if you are to rally round a devoted pastorate 
 a devoted people, enjoying all the advantages of that relation, 
 you must not suppose that the forms and characteristics of a purely 
 missionary teaching, which in John Wesley's days invariably pre- 
 supposed previous public worship, will satisfy that delight in, and 
 craving for, sublime, decorous, reverential, devotion which is the 
 invariable characteristic of a Christian man. . . . 
 
 " We have a free, unfettered and faithful pulpit. I yield to 
 no man in giving that an undisputed pre-eminence. Without 
 that we know, as church history has always shown, that the most 
 beautiful ritual would become as a sounding brass and a tinkling 
 cymbal. But, whilst thankful for our pulpit, I would humbly 
 venture to submit, whether there is not room for improvement 
 in the proprieties and the solemnities of public worship. I am 
 of opinion that it will be a brighter day for Methodism a day 
 when not only its conservative but its aggressive forces will pre- 
 serve a greater power, and possess greater strength, when our 
 common prayer, whether it be liturgical, or whether it be extem- 
 pore, shall cease to be regarded as a mere preliminary to some- 
 thing beyond ; when a larger incorporation of the Holy Scripture, 
 both into our morning and our evening services, shall render to the 
 Word of God that conspicuous reverence, which characterized 
 alike the temple service of the Jew and the assembly of the early 
 Christians ; and when our Psalmody, expressing devoutly and 
 harmoniously a genuine and a general devotion, shall become 
 indeed a service of song in the House of the Lord. I will express 
 my hope that in these beautiful chapels which are springing up 
 in all corners of the land, furnishing as they do a legitimate teyt, 
 not only of approved taste, but of a true and genuine Christian 
 liberality ; providing as they do a religious home for those who, in 
 their absence, would perhaps find a home nowhere else ; that not 
 only in these beautiful chapels, but also in our venerable old 
 chapels, we shall, in combination with that faithful preaching of 
 the Gospel for which these chapels were erected, by a wise, a 
 prudent, a careful, a discreet and reasonable attention to the 
 various properties and departments of our public worship, render 
 our temple services beautiful illustrations of the worship of the
 
 544 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Christian Church on earth, and a true type of the Christian Church 
 above." Even as far back as 1858 he wrote on this same sub- 
 ject : " Our public worship ought to be and is, a truer model of 
 that most solemn and most sublime of all human acts. The fault 
 is with ourselves ; and when we believe that our attendance in the 
 sanctuary on the Sabbath or on the week-day, is not to hear a 
 sermon preached, but to publicly worship the King of Kings ; 
 when we believe that we are vitally interested in, and fearfully 
 responsible for, every particle of the solemn service, we shall make 
 that service, in all its parts, our own. Its commencement and its 
 close will then be exempt from the irreverent unpunctuality, and 
 the thoughtless departure, which the commonest proprieties of 
 social life would resent ; the details of its external appearance will 
 be distinguished by a completeness, and a costliness, which shall 
 boldly avow in the teeth of a miserable utilitarianism, an obedience 
 to Him Who required that the sockets of his Tabernacle should be 
 of silver and the snuff-dishes of pure gold ; and its service of song, 
 no longer an introduction or an interval, but the noble expression 
 of the melody of Christian devotion, by the melody of earthly music, 
 will anticipate the perfect worship of the glorified Church." 
 
 The first missionary meeting which was held at Trinity Chapel, 
 was presided over by Henry Fowler in 1865, and the ordinary 
 custom of Wesleyan chapels was then undertaken of holding a mis- 
 sionary meeting there once every year. He never liked the holding 
 of such meetings within the chapels themselves, though it was 
 usual to do so. So steeped was he in ecclesiastical tradition that 
 the incidents of a meeting jarred upon him in what he felt to be a 
 consecrated, or at any rate, a dedicated building, and in the follow- 
 ing words he tried to overcome this prejudice : " If a missionary 
 meeting necessarily partook either of secular details or pecuniary 
 or business arrangements, he, for one, should think it undesirable 
 to hold it in a building solemnly dedicated to habitual use for the 
 service of Almighty God ; but a missionary gathering, although 
 it still retained the secular title of ' meeting,' and although some- 
 what unwisely both fettered and disfigured by the formalities 
 and liberties common to popular assemblies, yet a missionary
 
 As a Methodist 545 
 
 meeting was a religious service, and anything, no matter how wise 
 or how good, or how genial it might be elsewhere, anything that 
 was inconsistent with a religious service was inconsistent at a 
 missionary meeting, which he took to be a means of enforcing 
 obedience to the great command of our Lord : ' Go ye into the 
 world and preach the Gospel to every creature,' and stirring up 
 their interest, their hopes and expectations, by recounting how 
 and in what degree, and with what success, that command had 
 been followed. He thought that missionary meetings, regarded 
 in this light, and conducted in this spirit, were not inconsistent 
 with the solemnities of the House of God, and he trusted, either 
 at that meeting or at any future meeting of a similar kind in that 
 house, nothing would ever transpire which would create in the 
 most refined or most susceptible ear a sensation inconsistent with 
 the stated worship and ordinary service of the Lord's Day." 
 
 The cause of foreign missions was always prominent in his 
 mind, and he showed great practical interest in the vast mission 
 field in which Methodist labourers were at work. But the Wesleyan 
 Home Missions were bound still closer to his heart, and he always 
 regarded that work as the chief glory of Methodism. 
 
 " I have no sympathy with that miserable proselytizing spirit 
 which enumerates and contrasts the statistics of the different 
 churches, as if they were rival commercial companies, but we must 
 look to two sources to strengthen our position. We must first 
 secure those who are ours by birth and education, and those also 
 amongst whom Methodism has won its chief victories, namely 
 the degraded and vicious poor ; and if Methodism ever deserts 
 them, then indeed will her glory have departed. 
 
 " Depend upon it our true policy is not to deal with details too 
 exclusively, but to proclaim the great truth that we want to 
 strengthen our Connexion in the way our fathers did by going 
 out literally into the highways and hedges and getting an increase 
 in that way. No circuit is complete in its organization unless 
 it embrace within its borders a home missionary. But we must 
 not lose those who are ours by the absence of those influences 
 immaterial to our aggressive Methodism, but essential to our 
 conservative Methodism. John Wesley never claimed the title, 
 
 35
 
 546 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and never assumed the privileges of a distinct and separate 
 church. Then Methodism was a Home Mission, and nothing else. 
 Now it justly claims, and nobly fills, another position ; and I 
 think we have a right to demand that those advantages, which 
 the early Methodists enjoyed, should be secured to us. I think 
 that if we thus conserve our own, and if we, with all the simplicity 
 and all the earnestness, and all the faith, of true Methodists, pro- 
 claim the glad tidings of the Gospel to the thousands of people 
 in our large towns, who are living without hope and without God 
 in the world, whose life is one great blank, we shall not only secure 
 and perpetuate that prosperity, for which we all so ardently long, 
 we shall vindicate our right to inherit and transmit that Methodism, 
 whose mission was, I trust is, and I pray ever will be, to spread 
 Scriptural holiness throughout the land." 
 
 At a large meeting held in Hull on the occasion of the laying of 
 the foundation-stone of the King's Hall in July, 1909, which would 
 probably be the last Methodist public meeting which my father 
 attended, he spoke strongly in favour of the Home Mission move- 
 ment, and pleaded for freedom from sectarianism and party 
 politics. He said : "A large section of the population they had 
 to admit was outside of the pale of Christianity altogether. Those 
 people will not come to us, and, if we would bring them within the 
 fold of Christianity, we must go to them. Thus Home Mission work 
 is old Methodism the Methodism of John Wesley, who went not 
 only to those who wanted him, but to those who wanted him most." 
 
 He advocated the establishment of separate Home Missions, side 
 by side with the Connexional movement in each local centre, by 
 which means he thought local support would be concentrated, 
 and a greater local success achieved, than by any centrally- 
 directed operation. The great Wesleyan missions, like that of 
 Manchester, were the fruit of this idea, and in them he always 
 took the keenest, and, I might almost say, the proudest, interest. 
 My father had a great faith in the power and the principles of 
 the laity. His confidence in them far exceeded that which he 
 reposed in any ministerial body. He judged by clear-cut, practical 
 standards, of which the ordinary clergyman or Nonconformist 
 minister often fell short. It was inevitable that he should, with-
 
 As a Methodist 547 
 
 out the training of the business man, the outlook of the man of 
 affairs, and the experience of practical science, to say nothing of 
 the vast temperamental difference between the scholar, the theo- 
 logian or the visionary ; and such a man was Henry Fowler. For 
 defects of such qualities as the former's he made no allowance. 
 The dealing with defects of any kind was not his mission. He 
 possessed no power of healing in his touch, and had little patience 
 with what was imperfect that he saw. But, fortunately, he was 
 blind to the defects of the qualities which appealed to him, and 
 never noted the imperfections of those with whom he was mentally 
 akin. Therefore his attitude was not so critical towards his fellows 
 as might have been expected from his intolerance of certain aspects. 
 The Methodist ministry was, by nature of its Methodism, exempt 
 from most of his strictures upon the clergy of the Church of Eng- 
 land ; but even in Methodism he extolled that great leaven of the 
 laity, and he fought hard and successfully to admit the laity into 
 the precincts of the Conference. The Methodist custom of local 
 preachers appealed to him as a use of the laity. For mission 
 work he strongly advocated the extension of this branch of lay 
 activity. " He did not think they utilized their lay agencies 
 sufficiently. The local preachers upon their plans represented, 
 so to speak, so much of the spiritual capital of the circuits, and 
 he doubted whether such capital were wisely invested. He thought 
 a large, local, preaching power might be brought to bear upon the 
 heathen population ; in outdoor or cottage services, as missionaries 
 in the large towns to the great masses of the people. As a rule, 
 the local preachers were exerting their influence upon societies 
 and congregations already brought in." " Laymen could preach 
 the Gospel in the Home Missions, and he had great faith in a move- 
 ment in which men of the world endeavoured to bring their own 
 Christianity to bear upon their neighbours and to lead them to the 
 House of God. In the Foreign Mission work all that the laity 
 could do was to give their money, but it was not so in the Home 
 Mission work." In these early days of Henry Fowler's life, when 
 his religious as well as his political sentiments were in bud, there 
 was no doubt what manner of tree he would be. The same consis- 
 tency that marked his political life was equally noticeable in his 
 
 35*
 
 548 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 religious life. The opinions which we find expressed by him on 
 the sunny side of fifty were but re-echoed in his later years, and 
 the actual expression of them, though perhaps toned by maturer 
 harmonies, was still in the same key. His characteristic in 
 Methodism, as in politics, was that of an administrator ; he was 
 indeed a statesman of their own. He represented all Methodist 
 interests as surely and conscientiously as he did his Wolverhamp- 
 ton constituents, and as far back as 1865 Sir Robert Perks alludes 
 to their first meeting one of the beginnings of those administra- 
 tive services which my father could not help rendering. 
 
 " The first time I met Mr. Fowler," says Sir Robert, " was in 
 1865 at my father's house next to Wesley's Chapel in the City 
 Road. My father, the Rev. George D. Perks, who was then the 
 Superintendent Minister of City Road, was a distant connection 
 of Mr. Fowler by marriage. They thought very much alike upon 
 Methodist affairs and general policy. John Wesley, when he built 
 the City Road Chapel towards the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 had not the foresight to select a freehold site for his church." 
 (" How exactly like a clergyman ! " was Henry Fowler's opinion 
 of this proceeding.) " The land belonged to the Dean and Chapter 
 of St. Paul's Cathedral, and when the lease lapsed, about the year 
 I name, no little alarm was felt in the Methodist community as to 
 the terms which would be exacted by the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners either for a renewal of the lease or the sale of the freehold. 
 The Commissioners, after lengthy negotiations, ultimately agreed 
 to sell the freehold, and that without demanding the very last 
 pound of flesh. The arrangement of this delicate matter was 
 among the first of a long series of services rendered by Mr. Fowler 
 to the Church of his fathers. 
 
 " The next time I met Mr. Fowler was in 1870, at Highbury, 
 in the north of London again at my father's house. Methodism, 
 and indeed Nonconformity, was split into two contending armies 
 upon the then, as it is now, vexed question of elementary educa- 
 tion, and it was in connection with the policy to be recommended 
 to the Methodist Church by the special Methodist Committee then 
 sitting in London to consider the provisions of Mr. W. E. Forster's 
 Bill, that Mr. Fowler came to take counsel with my father. Wes
 
 As a Methodist 549 
 
 leyan Methodism was sharply divided and both sides were well 
 led. William Arthur, the famous author of the Tongue of Fire, 
 led one party. This section was opposed absolutely to the prin- 
 ciple of Mr. Forster's Bill. They wanted the entire system of 
 elementary education throughout England and Wales to be placed 
 under State control and that all sectarian schools Anglican, 
 Methodist, and Roman Catholic, should alike disappear. The 
 only religious instruction to be given in these State schools was 
 to be the Bible expounded by the teachers, who were, needless 
 to say, to be subject to no sectarian tests. Mr. Fowler's sym- 
 pathies, though modified in after years, were undoubtedly with 
 this policy. The opposite party, led by Rev. Dr. Rigg, wished to 
 retain the denominational schools, partly on educational and 
 partly on sectarian grounds. They objected to the Wesleyan 
 Methodist day schools, to the number of more than a thousand, 
 being transferred to the State. They firmly believed that the 
 existence of such schools was a powerful aid to the religious work 
 of Methodism, and that their growing popularity, especially 
 among the middle classes, was evidence of their necessity. The 
 result of the discussions in the Committee was, as so often happens 
 in Methodism, a compromise. Mr. Forster's Bill was approved, 
 subject to some few amendments suggested by the Wesleyan 
 Committee. The agreement was, as the reports show, due in no 
 small degree to the advice given by Mr. Fowler. I well remember 
 Mr. Fowler asking me in those early days what I would do, and, 
 with the omniscience of youth, I did not hesitate to tell him. Mr. 
 Fowler was not a man of war. People who did not know him well 
 thought differently. He had a sonorous voice ; his sentences 
 were emphatic ; there was not a trace of uncertainty either in his 
 language or advice ; he had a disconcerting way of handling 
 opponents. But in spite of all this, he was a man of peace. He 
 seldom drove his enemy to the gate. ' We have often to take 
 not the best, but the second best,' was one of his favourite sayings. 
 Whether it was a sound policy I often doubted, but that it was 
 the bent of Mr. Fowler's mind is, I think, certain. It was so in 
 Methodism and so in politics. Mr. Fowler's mind was not theo- 
 retical, but practical. He never believed in pulling down unless
 
 55 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 he was certain he could build up. He was a constructor, not an 
 iconoclast." I should like to add that my father's spirit of com- 
 promise was never one of principle, but merely of detail. He felt 
 that there is a vast arena of opinion in which different men, by 
 reason of their temperaments, must go different ways. He often 
 said that a unanimous Cabinet which consisted of from thirteen 
 to twenty men was an impossibility. Seeing that it is a difficult 
 matter even to make two men view a question alike all along the 
 line, how far beyond the range of probability would it be to expect 
 a whole Cabinet to agree as to details. Every scheme or Bill must 
 contain features contrary to certain views held by those who 
 are nevertheless responsible for it to an outside public. The 
 man who would shy and bolt at such diversities of opinion was 
 no practical politician he would be merely a fanatic. For 
 instance, the members of the Cabinet who were against the initial 
 principle of Home Rule could not remain members of it, but he 
 would have a wide latitude for differences of detail within that 
 principle. And agains as regards finance, he adhered to Liberal 
 principles of finance, but he could not probably have followed any 
 other man's Budget with perfect approbation as to its details or 
 even in all its departures. It was in this spirit that he so deeply 
 deplored the loss of certain old colleagues who, he felt, had gone 
 on the confusion of essentials with non-essentials. Had his spirit 
 of compromise reigned more widely, and had others taken, with 
 him, a wider view than that of detailed legislation, then perhaps a 
 greater wisdom might have prevailed and a huge catastrophe been 
 averted. 
 
 And in Church matters beyond his own denomination, these 
 views of his were strong. The inelasticity of the Church of Eng- 
 land had, he believed, sadly limited her powers. Nonconformity 
 was often but a diversity of temperament, which broke away 
 because it could not be bound in certain directions, could not be 
 held by certain ties. He considered the uniformity of the Church 
 of England services a weakness rather than a strength, because 
 he felt that in religious life a man's tastes and temperament and bent 
 of mind had to be reckoned with and provided for. And that, of 
 necessity, what was suitable to one was uncongenial to another.
 
 As a Methodist 551 
 
 He thought that a freer hand in dealing with individuals and classes 
 and communities would have saved the Church from many of her 
 losses in different forms of dissent. And he specially bemoaned 
 her conduct in letting the Methodists go, because perhaps he 
 naturally assumed that they were the greatest loss. He sometimes 
 discussed certain failings, as he considered them, of the Anglican 
 Church, and I heard him wind up a severe criticism thus : 
 
 " There is no greater proof of the divinity of the Church of Eng- 
 land than the fact that she has survived so many of her mistakes." 
 But, on the other hand, he had a full comprehension of the power, 
 and the traditional as well as the spiritual value of the Es- 
 tablished Church. He always maintained that the greatest 
 power in this country was the Church of England, that many 
 underestimated its strength, because it was so seldom exercised 
 on matters of political interest. 
 
 " I told Harcourt," he said, " when he introduced his Welsh 
 Church Bill, that he did not seem to realize what he was doing. 
 I said to him : ' You have no idea of the hold which the Church 
 has upon the English people. If you attack it you will lose your 
 seat, and if you persist in it, our party will be swept out of power.' 
 He lost his seat, and no one knows how much that Bill has had 
 to do with our being out of office all these years." 
 
 He always maintained that one of the great powers of Methodism 
 was its harmonious combination of the aggressive and the con- 
 servative sides. At his own chapel in Wolverhampton he had the 
 two diametrically opposed services the liturgical one in the 
 mornings, which was practically identical with that of the Anglican 
 Church, and the real old-fashioned Methodist service of extempore 
 prayers and an immense sermon in the evenings. His chief attend- 
 ance was in the morning. I do not remember his going out on 
 Sunday evenings after I grew up, as he did not like to have his 
 carriage out twice on Sunday and it was too far to walk ; but he 
 would never lose a member of his church, or of his party, for lack 
 of the liberty which holds as surely as it sets free.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 IN METHODISM 
 " Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." //. Samuel. 
 
 TO write of Henry Fowler " in Methodism " is to write of 
 him just as he was elsewhere, for he was never not " in 
 Methodism," and therefore his religious life cannot be dissociated 
 from his secular life in any way ; though in some circumstances 
 it was naturally more apparent than in others, and to some of 
 his friends it was more clearly discernible, because of their kinship 
 with him in the Church of his fathers, and also of theirs. Of these 
 no living Wesleyan minister can speak more truly and personally 
 of my father than the Rev. Dr. Macdonald. So many of his own 
 generation, whose friendship with him was close, and whose know- 
 ledge of him was intimate, have also gone with him beyond our 
 reach. But of the younger generation my father thought great 
 things of " Fred Macdonald," and his rare visits to our home 
 were occasions which his host specially enjoyed. In past 
 days the Rev. George Macdonald both travelled and lived 
 as a retired Wesleyan minister in Wolverhampton to use 
 a Methodist phrase he " sat down " in what was subsequently 
 my father's Parliamentary "seat," and many memories hang 
 round that former intimacy and camaraderie with the Mac- 
 donalds which were rooted in a mutual meeting-ground of brains, 
 brilliance and Wesleyan Methodism. We, in our generation, 
 have rejoiced in the after-glow of much of their conversation, and 
 still treasure the stories of those good old days. Often in after 
 years they met, and met again, in the vastly different environ- 
 ment of London society, and beyond a gap of many years and 
 
 552
 
 In Methodism 553 
 
 varied experiences but the old harmonies were there. Echoes 
 of them ring through many of Rudyard Kipling's writings, caught 
 from his mother, who was one of the Macdonalds. The following 
 impression which Dr. Macdonald sends me of my father is singularly 
 true and real. 
 
 " I saw very little of Lord Wolverhampton during the last 
 twenty years of his life, though, when we met, there was always 
 a friendliness on his part, to which I think his acquaintance with 
 my father in earlier days contributed something. He took a warm 
 interest in my appointment as Missionary Secretary in 1891, and 
 when I was made President in 1899 he wrote me a letter of kind 
 and genuine appreciation. I sometimes regretted that our paths 
 lay so far apart as to prevent the interchange of thought in matters 
 in which we were both interested, an interchange that, on its 
 rare occasions, I always found pleasant and helpful. I believe 
 that his parentage and early training not only put their impress 
 on his character, but remained in conscious or sub-conscious form, 
 a master-influence through life. He was a Methodist preacher's 
 son, and remained such through all subsequent developments and 
 promotions. He neither concealed it nor over-emphasized it, but 
 it was there. The circumstances of his life were not such as to 
 produce in him any narrow, clannish feeling on the subject, and 
 in any case, his own strong sense would have preserved him from 
 it, but I do not think he ever changed his mind as to the benefit 
 he received from being his father's son. The stock from which he 
 came, the definite religious belief of his parents, and the domestic 
 life it inspired and controlled, together with the Methodist tradi- 
 tion that he inherited a powerful thing in its way these were, 
 I think, among the principal forces that determined the essential 
 and permanent elements of his character. He was a striking 
 instance of a man of great powers, whose life moved through a great 
 career to spheres remote from that in which it began, who carried 
 with him, all but unaltered, the convictions and ideals with which 
 he set out. 
 
 " As a Methodist Lord Wolverhampton belonged to a class now 
 rapidly diminishing. He was not easily kindled into enthusiasm 
 by this latest feature of it, or by that, however excellent, but he
 
 554 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 had a strong grasp of the circumstances and conditions;under which 
 it arose, of its historic place and significance, and of its relation to 
 other religious organizations and types of the Christian life. He 
 wished to see it prosper and grow, and sought to increase its effi- 
 ciency, but he wanted it to preserve its type, and to hold the 
 position, neither Anglican nor Dissenting, which he thought was 
 good for its people, and for the advantage of the Christian Church 
 as a whole. There was in him, as in so many of the older Metho- 
 dists, a Church of England strain. He appreciated the historic 
 greatness of that Church, he loved its liturgy, and stood by the 
 Wesleyan use of it in the morning service of Methodist chapels. 
 He did not, I believe, take much interest in schemes of reunion, 
 well knowing the difficulties, if not the impossibilities, that stand 
 in the way. But he strongly desired the relations between Metho- 
 dism and the Church of England to be as kindly as possible, and 
 characterized by mutual considerateness and respect. He did 
 not apologize for being a Methodist, still less did he apologize 
 for the existence of Methodism, to which he had given too many 
 hostages for his loyalty to it to be questioned. But it was no part 
 of the Methodist tradition, as he held it, to regard the Church of 
 England with hostile feelings, or to judge ungenerously those 
 features of it which he did not approve. He felt the blood- 
 relationship between the older and the younger Communions, and 
 resented bigotry and ill-will on either side. In his public utter- 
 ances on this subject he showed breadth of view and Christian 
 large-heartedness. 
 
 " Theologically Lord Wolverhampton was an unmistakable 
 evangelical. He had a strong reverence for religious ordinances, 
 with a corresponding dislike of looseness, levity, or showiness of 
 speech or observance where religion was concerned. Gravity and 
 simplicity in these matters appealed to him far more than ad 
 captandum methods, either in public worship or in the pulpit. 
 Notwithstanding his own great powers as a public speaker, he 
 set less store by pulpit eloquence than the preaching of the Gospel 
 in such a manner as to show the evil of sin, and the love of God 
 revealed to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, and to instruct and 
 strengthen men and women in the Christian life. I think that
 
 In Methodism 555 
 
 like most Christian men, who have lived long, and seen much, 
 and felt the limits of things, the essential and fundamental ele- 
 ments of religion became more and more to him, and that he cared 
 less and less for the things that are secondary and subordinate. 
 
 " It is perhaps worth mentioning at the close of this brief sketch 
 that in later years Lord Wolverhampton's great influence with 
 the Conference was generally exercised in the direction of adjust- 
 ing and reconciling opposed views of things. He deprecated 
 the logic of extremes, and was often successful in averting its 
 application." 
 
 All the recollections of my father from those within his Church 
 cluster round this attitude of what the world calls compromise, 
 and the Bible calls peace-making. The Rev. Nehemiah Curnock 
 says : "In the Birmingham and Wolverhampton District Meeting, 
 as it was then called, he took a leading part in our discussions on 
 Lay representation in the Conference. His spirit and temper, I 
 have always thought, did more even than his counsels to bring 
 about a peaceful settlement. He never exaggerated and never 
 exasperated. 
 
 " During the years of my editorship of the Methodist Recorder, 
 I saw, or heard from him frequently. He was a true friend, not 
 merely to me personally, but especially to the cause I then repre- 
 sented. His influence in the affairs of Methodism never abated, 
 though its expression was necessarily more restrained, or at all 
 events, less obvious. To this day very few, even in the inner 
 circle, have any adequate conception of the debt we owed him 
 during the anxious months of the Missionary Controversy. I 
 have always believed and I was constantly behind the scenes on 
 both sides that Sir Henry Fowler, more than any other man, 
 saved Methodism from another terrible rent." 
 
 A younger minister very slightly known to him personally, and 
 representing a vast number of the Wesleyan ministers to whom 
 my father was a name rather than a neighbour, sends me the 
 following few recollections which indicate his influence even over 
 that outer circle with which he rarely came into actual touch. 
 The Rev. W. C. Sheldon says : 
 
 " I never got close enough to Lord Wolverhampton ; I stood
 
 556 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 too much in awe of him. Once or twice only did he ever speak to 
 me ; once being at the first quarterly meeting of the newly-formed 
 Trinity Circuit, of which I was appointed Secretary, when, sitting 
 next to him, he asked me ' if that window was open ' ? " This 
 recollection is stamped with truth, but that it has amounted to a 
 recollection shows how great a man Henry Fowler seemed to the 
 Methodist public. " The other occasion was when I happened to 
 be in the vestry on a Sunday morning when the Sunday School 
 Anniversary was being held, I then being the General Secretary. 
 He asked me what the school was doing to feed the Church, and 
 delivered himself for the space of two or three minutes on that 
 subject. The Sunday school would lose its main purpose if it 
 failed to prove a feeder of the Church, and he enjoined the 
 necessity of making all efforts tend to that end. It was a bit 
 of teaching I never forgot, and I have frequently quoted it in 
 church meetings with which I have subsequently been connected, 
 down to the present date." Beyond any such slight individual 
 intercourse, amounting only to a few words, he was yet a very 
 living personality in the whole Methodist world, as is shown by 
 the following representative statement : 
 
 " My impression and observation of him began early, and from 
 beginning to end I had an unbounded admiration for him, both 
 as a public man and as, what I have frequently described him, 
 our most distinguished Methodist layman. You may measure his 
 influence when I say, that down to the end of his Parliamentary 
 career, my first thought on opening the morning's newspaper was 
 to see whether there was anything in it by Fowler. 
 
 " My first hearing of Mr. Fowler was when I was quite young, 
 and he excited my interest at once, the grip of which was never 
 relaxed. About that time he published a lecture on the Institu- 
 tions of Methodism, a most serviceable and educational little 
 book the kind of thing that to-day would be of infinitely more 
 value amongst our guilds than some of the light stuff which is 
 now their chief fare." And the same writer adds at a later 
 date : 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler was far too great a Methodist for small talk, 
 but as one of the founders of Trinity Chapel, Wolverhampton, in
 
 In Methodism 557 
 
 the early sixties, and the holder of all the administrative offices 
 of the circuit, he magnified and dignified every office he held, 
 and left a great example to his successor. It was an education 
 to be trained in his school. When on yielding up the circuit 
 stewardship, in 1878, the Quarterly Meeting did its best to express 
 its acknowledgment, the feeling was most effectively summed up 
 by an old local preacher, in very humble life, but a man of mental 
 grit and humour, who said, ' We mean the thanks we cannot speak.' 
 For an almost unexampled period Sir Henry Fowler was chapel 
 steward at Trinity. He knew every stone and detail of the church. 
 It was one of the joys of his Methodist life. His care for it espe- 
 cially until public life drew him more from home was devoted and 
 touching. Nothing was done to the structure or its appoint- 
 ments without taking him into consultation. He was jealous for 
 its beauty and would have nothing to mar it. Once, after a long 
 absence, he found that an outside blind had been put up to the 
 chancel window, but he had it taken down before the next Sunday. 
 For the order, and beauty, and perfection, of the service he was 
 equally jealous, and a long succession of ministers will remember 
 his unfailing presence in the vestry, guiding and noting the psalms, 
 collects and prayers proper to the day or the season. Society 
 stewards might come and go, ministers might come and go, they 
 might have knowledge of these proprieties, or they might not, and 
 they might have the sympathy and the instinct for them, or they 
 might not, but Mr. Fowler was always there, and with his presence 
 and guidance he must be a clumsy man who went wrong." 
 
 My father took the greatest possible interest in the revision 
 of the Methodist Hymn-book, and was a member of the Committee 
 which undertook that work. Its hymn-book was the liturgy of 
 Methodism, and he was never tired of comparing it with all other 
 collections of hymns to the latter' s disadvantage. Dr. Davison, 
 President of the Richmond College, says : "As chairman of the 
 Committee I felt it to be a very great advantage that Lord Wolver- 
 hampton, in spite of the many important claims upon his time, 
 made an effort to attend whenever it was at all possible. His 
 experience, judgment, and fine taste, helped us greatly. He did 
 not speak much or often, but when he did speak his words were
 
 558 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 weighty and usually decisive. The deeply reverent spirit which 
 marked his comments upon ' various readings ' in the text of hymns, 
 or upon the insertion or omission of verses for use in worship, 
 was very notable. In his attitude he was Liberal-Conservative, 
 rather than Conservative-Liberal. There was nothing narrow 
 or sectarian about any of his views, but he had such an apprecia- 
 tion of the value for religion and worship of Charles Wesley's 
 hymns, and, what I may call the Wesley tradition, that he was 
 rightly, very jealous of any rash meddling with treasures handed 
 on from the past. But he greatly helped those who were anxious, 
 whilst sacredly preserving traditions, to broaden and enrich the 
 hymnology of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. 
 
 " In this as in all his public work, if I may venture to say 
 so Lord Wolverhampton combined some of the best features of 
 both the Liberal and Conservative temperaments ; but whilst in 
 public policy, both civil and ecclesiastical, the stress lay upon 
 the Liberal element, in literature and religion the Conservative 
 strain came more markedly to the front." 
 
 In the handling of hymns my father was always strongly adverse 
 to tampering with the author's rights. He considered the intro- 
 duction of extra verses into well-known hymns, such as is found in 
 some church and many nonconforming collections of hymns, 
 an unwarrantable literary liberty. We have the following letter 
 written by him to the Rev. Thomas McCullogh, a late President 
 of the Conference, on this point. It was suggested that in 
 Lyte's matchless hymn, " Abide with me," the line " Hold thou 
 thy cross before my closing eyes " contained Romish tendencies, 
 and it was proposed to alter it to " Reveal thyself before my closing 
 eyes." This filled my father with indignation and he wrote : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " November I7th, 1900. 
 " DEAR MR. MCCULLOGH, 
 
 " I have read with special interest your reference to 
 the controversy as to the alteration in the hymn ' Abide with 
 me ' by the lastrrevision Committee. I have fought the same
 
 In Methodism 559 
 
 battle on the present revision. I do not believe that Mr. 
 Arthur's theory (which is absurd if the hymn is read) as to 
 the priest holding a crucifix was his own. I think it was 
 suggested by a well-known lady, more distinguished by hei 
 personal character and goodness than by wisdom. The hymn 
 is addressed to our Lord as a prayer, and He is asked in the 
 line to which objection is taken. I agree with you, if the 
 objection is sound, it applies to the lines, ' Simply to thy 
 cross I cling/ ' To thy cross I look and live,' both in our 
 Hymn-book, and also, if I may reverently make the compari- 
 son, to St. Paul's declaration, ' God forbid that I should glory, 
 save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 
 
 " If, or ever, the timid and the Orange section from the 
 Irish Conference have their way, the new Hymn-book will be 
 disfigured by this Unitarian depreciation of the Atonement. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 The whole organization of the Methodist Church, together with 
 most of its divers departments, were all under the wide wing of 
 Henry Fowler's interest and supervision. Its magazine he loved 
 and read each month from cover to cover, though he was inclined 
 personally to deprecate the desecration by fiction of those historic 
 pages. 
 
 He wrote the following letter to its editor : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " November i6th, 1907. 
 
 " DEAR MR. TELFORD, 
 
 " I wish to congratulate you on the great success 
 you have achieved in the Magazine, and I am anxious thai 
 it should be rewarded by a constantly increasing circulation. 
 My opinion is that it is one of, if not the best, religious maga- 
 zines at the present time. As I was for several yeais 
 the Chairman of Cassell's, I am not quite ignorant of the
 
 560 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 difficulties which attend the Magazine Department, and of the 
 importance of increasing in every possible way the circulation. 
 Having regard to the market of the Methodist public, I think 
 you ought to aim at a minimum circulation of one hundred 
 thousand. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 ' Yours very truly, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 This unsolicited letter was a great encouragement to Mr. Telford, 
 showing how all his efforts for the Magazine had been watched and 
 approved. 
 
 I think perhaps Sir Robert Perks knew as much about my 
 father's Methodism as any one. Ministers came and went, and 
 the three years' limit prevents long intimacies in one circuit. 
 Were it not for the camaraderie of Methodism that freemasonry 
 which greets each incoming minister as a tried friend before his 
 trial that limit would prevent intimacies. In Church of England 
 parishes, the new clergyman has to win his way through a critical, 
 and often hostile, congregation. They are suspicious of him, 
 his churchmanship, and his ways of working, and so the first 
 few years in most parishes is an uphill advance. But not so do 
 the Methodists treat their ministers. A newcomer and there is 
 always a newcomer every three years is welcomed straight away 
 into the inner circle of his people. He is a brother, for is he not a 
 Methodist ? He is a friend, for is he not a Methodist ? He is 
 one of themselves, for is he not a Methodist ? No further credentials 
 are necessary no time need be wasted reading prefaces and intro- 
 ductions. The first chapter is called Friendship, and the last can 
 find no better name. There is much to be learned from these 
 generous, warm-hearted people. I remember during the last 
 decade of my aunt's life, who was the widow of a Wesleyan minister, 
 she went about a great deal for her health, and spent long or 
 short periods in different places; but in every one of them she 
 found a circle of friends awaiting her, and their kindness, and 
 hospitality, and accepted kinship, would have been simply im- 
 possible outside Methodism. My father often quoted this as an
 
 In Methodism 561 
 
 instance of that beautiful brotherhood which is as admirable as it 
 is unique. 
 
 But my father was away so" much from Wolverhampton that his 
 Methodist life could not be gauged fully there. Besides, by his 
 very nature, he was not provincial it was the wider public life 
 wherein he was always to be found, and it was because of his 
 professional and political intercourse with his old partner Mr. 
 Perks, during so many years, that the latter is so specially able 
 to speak of his Methodism, too. He saw it as it looked out in 
 the world, while the testimony and tributes of others have lain 
 within the borders of the Methodist church. 
 
 " Lord Wolverhampton was," writes Sir Robert Perks, in a most 
 real and living impression of the man, " the most respected and 
 powerful layman British Methodism has ever had ; and his loss 
 severs one of the few remaining links between the Methodism of 
 to-day and our Church in those stormy times of dissension and 
 separation in which his boyhood was cast. 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler was the first man summoned from the ranks 
 of ' the people called Methodists ' to a place in the House of 
 Lords ; and he was the first Methodist to sit in the Cabinet. 
 Roman Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians, Independents, and Anglicans 
 without number, had found their way both to the Peerage and 
 the Ministry, but a Methodist no. The very qualities which 
 enabled Sir Henry Fowler to win his way in Methodism, were 
 exactly those which, when he entered Parliament, brought him 
 at once into the front rank of politicians. Sir Henry Fowler's 
 first advantage was that he was a powerful speaker. No organiza- 
 tion in the world supplies such a nursery as does the Methodist 
 Church for the public speaker. Sir Henry Fowler was never a 
 lay preacher, but in the yearly Conference, and in the public 
 gatherings of Methodism, he was the recognized lay orator of the 
 Church. Long before he entered Parliament his political influence 
 among his co-religionists was unrivalled, and all the more so, 
 because it was seldom exerted, and then with courtesy and modera- 
 tion. Although a brilliant speaker, Sir Henry Fowler seldom 
 trusted, as some orators do, to the inspiration of the moment to 
 clothe their thoughts with words, or to remedy the want of 
 
 36
 
 562 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 preparation. He was a man of indomitable industry. He never 
 spoke without making absolutely sure of his facts. Although he 
 never received a University education, he was a man of wide 
 learning, and had not to acquaint himself, as many Members of 
 Parliament have in later life to do, with the political, economic 
 and literary history of his own and other lands, for these were 
 the studies of his youth and early manhood. The result was that 
 when he entered the House of Commons at the age of fifty, he 
 went to Westminster with a well-ordered, well-stored and well- 
 balanced mind, and was not driven hither and thither by every 
 wind and wave of political discovery. 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler was not an extremist ; he would perhaps 
 often have spoken with more effect if he had shown more Metho- 
 dist fire. Even in the Methodist Conference, where in his palmy 
 days he was always at his best as a public speaker, he seldom 
 showed much of the enthusiasm which is one of the chief attributes 
 of that Church, although his friends knew the burning fire was 
 there. The characteristics which chiefly distinguished Sir Henry 
 Fowler, whether as a lawyer, a Methodist, a politician, or a man of 
 affairs, were his sound judgment, and the extreme moderation of 
 his views. The party man cannot afford to see both sides. If 
 he did, he would lose his sense of infallibility, and what is more 
 serious, lose votes. Possibly it was for this reason that Sir Henry 
 Fowler was not popular with the ' extreme left/ either in Church 
 or State. And yet he was a man who got things done. His 
 measures in Parliament were not always what people asked for, 
 or even were entitled to have ; but, as a whole, they worked well. 
 The Local Government Act, which he carried through the House 
 of Commons almost by his unaided effort, and as he sometimes 
 used to boast, without once using the closure, has been a useful, 
 workable charter. Sir Henry Fowler was one of those common 
 sense men who, rather than lose everything, was content often to 
 take the second best. He seldom attempted to gain the utter- 
 most fruits of party victory. He was, therefore, trusted by men 
 on both sides in the House of Commons, and nothing is more 
 dangerous than this for a politician ! But in the country, in the 
 days of which I speak, the days of educational conflict, of Home
 
 In Methodism 563 
 
 Rule, of the Boer War, there were multitudes of thoughtful men 
 and women anxious to do the right, who asked : ' What does 
 Fowler say ? ' 
 
 " And yet Sir Henry Fowler was not a timid man. His powerful 
 defence of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes at the Bristol Conference 
 of 1890, against the serried ranks of Methodist officialism ; or, 
 taking another illustration, his powerful letter to his Wolver- 
 hampton constituents in May, 1902, on the subject of Irish Home 
 Rule, are illustrations of what I say. 
 
 " When he came to the conclusion that a project was morally 
 wrong, and could not, therefore, be politically right, he stated his 
 views with boldness and cogency, not always pleasant to his 
 opponents, but infinitely useful to men with open minds. 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler's impress is seen in almost every ecclesiastical 
 reform in the Wesleyan Church during the last forty years. The 
 reconstruction of the Conference upon an elective basis, and the 
 introduction of the laity into that assembly ; the statutory union 
 of the Methodist Churches in Ireland ; the conferring of the right 
 of self-government upon the colonial churches of Methodism ; 
 the Burials Act, which secured for Nonconformists the right of 
 burial by their own ministers in the parish churchyards, and the 
 Nonconformist Marriage Act, both promoted by the Wesleyan 
 Conference, and both passed through Parliament largely by the 
 help of Sir Henry Fowler. 
 
 " He also passed a measure popularly known in Methodism as 
 ' Fowler's Act,' which enabled trustees of places of worship to 
 renew their trustees for a nominal sum, and practically without 
 legal aid. He vigorously opposed Mr. Balfour's Education Act 
 of 1902 and strenuously maintained, in opposition on one side 
 to the High Church party, and on the other to the secularist school, 
 the policy to which the Wesleyan Conference has always adhered, 
 namely, that of a State school under effective popular control, 
 within reasonable distance of every child, where the teacher is 
 exempted from sectarian tests, and where the religious instruction 
 given is from the Bible and not from any sectarian catechism. This 
 programme Sir Henry Fowler defended and propounded times 
 without number, not only in the Wesleyan Conference, but in the 
 
 36*
 
 564 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 House of Commons. He ardently supported two Nonconformist 
 Relief Bills, introduced and passed through the House of Commons 
 in 1892-95 ; one for the compulsory purchase of sites for Noncon- 
 formist places of worship the other for the enfranchisement of 
 leasehold churches, schools and manses ; and in his later days, 
 when a member of the Liberal Government of 1906, Lord Wolver- 
 hampton often expressed his deep regret that the Government 
 could not find time to pass these two small measures, so earnestly 
 desired by the Methodists and other Nonconformists. These are 
 some, and only some, of the services this industrious Methodist 
 preacher's son rendered to his Church in the State. 
 
 " It was sometimes said of Sir Henry Fowler that he was ' not 
 a Nonconformist,' and that he was out of touch with modern 
 Methodism. This criticism did not come from Methodists them- 
 selves. Undoubtedly his views on Disestablishment were not 
 those of Liberal Methodism. Methodistically he was what is 
 called an ' old-fashioned Methodist,' with a somewhat unusual 
 leaning to the Established Church. He entertained no foolish 
 delusions, however, about the future union of Methodism with the 
 Anglican Church ; nor did he waste his time advocating the unity 
 of Christendom. He was a great admirer of litanies and liturgies, 
 and was not an advocate of extemporaneous prayers nor of the 
 sermonette. He undoubtedly attached to the formal and cere- 
 monial part of worship far greater importance than many Metho- 
 dists do to-day ; but, on the other hand, no one insisted more 
 than he did upon the preached Gospel, and no one did more than 
 he to urge upon the ministers of his Church the necessity of raising 
 the standard of the pulpit. And nothing was more striking than 
 the vigorous support which Sir Henry Fowler gave to some of the 
 most daring experiments of modern Methodism. He was from the 
 first a supporter of Mr. Hugh Price Hughes, and the founders of 
 the great town missions. He voted and spoke in the Wesleyan 
 Conference for Methodist Re-union. He fought hard and success- 
 fully for the admission of laymen into the Conference. He came 
 to the rescue of Mr. Price Hughes in his unfortunate conflict with 
 the Foreign Missionary Society. And I most gratefully recall that, 
 when in the Conference of 1898 at Hull, I unfolded my scheme
 
 In Methodism 565 
 
 for raising one million guineas from one million Methodists, to cele- 
 brate the opening of the twentieth century, Sir Henry Fowler 
 was one of the first to declare his profound belief in the prac- 
 ticability and ultimate success of the scheme. 
 
 " Sir Henry Fowler was a simple and devout servant of Jesus 
 Christ. He often said to me that the difficulties of infidelity had 
 to him always seemed greater than the difficulties of belief. He 
 was almost too busy a man to be troubled with doubt. He was, 
 as many scholarly men are to-day, ' content to hold tight ' on to a 
 few of the saving truths of the Christian faith. He did not often 
 speak of personal religion, but now and then he did to me ; and 
 when he so spoke there was no possibility of mistaking the firm 
 rock on which his own faith was built. 
 
 " The following are the closing passages of Sir Henry Fowler's 
 brilliant speech at the unveiling of the statue of John Wesley at 
 City Road, on March 2nd, 1891 : 
 
 ' I would in closing, in one sentence, recall the scene around 
 that death-bed a century ago. 
 
 ' What was John Wesley's last confession of faith ? 
 
 ' What was the creed in which he died ? 
 
 ' " I the chief of sinners am, 
 But Jesus died for me ! " 
 
 " ' What was his last hymn ? 
 
 ' " I'll praise my Maker while I've breath, 
 And when my voice is lost in death 
 Praise shall employ my nobler powers." 
 
 ' What was his last prayer ? 
 
 ' " Bless the Church and the King, grant truth and peace, 
 Through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 ' And what were his final words of thanksgiving for the past 
 and hope for the future ? 
 
 ' " The best of all is, God is with us ! " 
 
 ' In that confession of faith, in that litany, in that inspiring 
 motto, you have an epitome of the Methodism which to-day 
 reverently, thankfully and hopefully gathers around John Wesley's 
 tomb,'
 
 566 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " I think I am not wrong in saying that this confession of faith, 
 and this undying confidence in the God-given destiny of the 
 Methodist cause, represent the deepest convictions and aspira- 
 tions of Henry Fowler, the great layman, who lived and died a 
 devout member of the Wesley an Methodist Church." 
 
 None but a Methodist could have seen into my father's character 
 quite so comprehensively as Sir Robert Perks has here done, 
 because there were depths which only a Methodist line could sound, 
 and aspects which only a Methodist appreciation could under- 
 stand. But here, also, this impression carries out the fact that 
 his religious life so mingled with his other life, that there was no 
 dividing the two, and that he was the same man everywhere, using 
 the same powers in the humblest meeting of his own church, as in 
 the most momentous of Cabinets. There were causes and people 
 who were not worth my father's while at least, so sometimes his 
 attitude conveyed but the cause and the people of Governments 
 were not such, nor were the cause and the people of Methodism 
 either. Indeed, had these two ever wrestled as rivals, I would have 
 foretold that the latter would have clasped him the closest, and 
 held him with the invincible bands of his early training as well 
 as by the tie of personal devotion. 
 
 Very shortly before his death my father saw the Rev. Arthur 
 Bestall, who was then in the Trinity circuit, and he said to him : 
 " My work is ended," that being the only reference he made to 
 the closing of his life. Thus, as it were, Methodism was in his 
 confidence, and he could to her alone whisper the secrets of his 
 soul. I never heard him speak one critical word of his beloved 
 Church. I never heard him express intolerance of any of its 
 imperfections, though he was quick enough to discuss those of 
 other denominations. 
 
 Once he went with a Wesleyan minister to hear Dr. R. W. 
 Dale, for whom he had an immense admiration, deliver an 
 Ordination Charge, and as he noted the Doctor's lay clothes, my 
 father whispered to his friend : " The ritualism of Dissent ! " He 
 was very particular in his ideas about all ministers of religion 
 wearing a distinctive clerical dress. On another occasion, after 
 listening to an address by an old but eloquent missionary, he
 
 In Methodism 567 
 
 remarked : " He did not use an illustration under twenty-five years 
 old ! " 
 
 The fact that if any politician were a Methodist instantly 
 put my father on his side. When Mr. H. J. Atkinson was con- 
 testing Hull, in the 1880 election, someone remarked that of the 
 few Methodist candidates then standing, he was the only Conserva- 
 tive among them, and my father said : "HI was in Hull I should 
 vote for Atkinson because I think he would do more good as a 
 Methodist than harm as a Conservative." 
 
 In January, 1891, some Wesleyan deputation to Mr. Gladstone 
 had evidently been proposed, and he seems to have written about 
 it to my father : 
 
 " Hawarden, 
 
 " January 21, 1891. 
 
 " MY DEAR FOWLER, 
 
 " I have this morning received the enclosed letter to 
 which, or to the deputation proposed, I should be sorry to 
 send a negative reply, which might be misunderstood. But I 
 certainly should be very glad if it were withdrawn. I must 
 be very brief in stating reasons. But I am entirely unequal 
 to the demands made upon me almost daily, from this and 
 other countries, for this and other times, to give opinion on 
 a multitude of subjects of the greatest interest and importance. 
 In the matter of religious plans and movements, I am obliged 
 to avoid, whenever I can, giving opinions, even on those 
 connected with the Church of England. 
 
 " How can I go, when this is so, into the affairs of other 
 Churches ? Are these opinions to be given by all who are 
 in political leaderships (an entire novelty, as far as I know) ? 
 Am I to do it in all the cases when it may be asked ? Or am 
 I to draw distinctions and agree or refuse on account of 
 theological differences ? 
 
 " The Wesleyan movement has become a great, and 
 apparently permanent, fact of the Christian world ; and 
 with time for full consideration of it as an historical question, 
 I might, I think, be able to give an opinion which would not
 
 568 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 offend ; but pressed as I am by the cares of leadership, in 
 a political situation altogether unexampled, as well as by 
 extraneous matters, I am wholly unable to do justice to myself 
 and others in such a field. 
 
 " In Midlothian, which has the first claim on me, I avoid 
 (and without giving offence) altogether these theological and 
 ecclesiastical matters. Nothing but confusion seems to me 
 likely to arise from mixing them with the responsibilities of 
 political leadership. 
 
 " Nor must I omit to say that I have an extreme dislike 
 to giving cheap verbal commendation to movements in which 
 I am unable to take a practical share. 
 
 " I trouble you in this matter because your name is 
 mentioned. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " W. E. GLADSTONE." 
 
 I don't know what this deputation was, or what it actually 
 involved, but the whole incident seems to me to illustrate one of 
 the aspects of Methodism, in which lies a great portion of its 
 charm. Methodism was born of spiritual genius. It was not 
 evolved out of plans or principles, or dissent, or any other scheme. 
 It came by the breath of the Spirit stirring one man, set apart 
 by God, and he breathed that Spirit on, and Methodism was born. 
 So there is much of the genius nature in Methodism. Take for 
 instance its friendliness. That is no mere freemasonry, compelled 
 by signs and shibboleths it is a genius of friendliness fresh and 
 warm and free, as is ever the nature of genius. Spending itself 
 and being spent for the sheer love of so doing, and with no thought 
 or desire of recompense. It is to be found in no other church, or 
 class, or community, this great brotherliness which binds the 
 people called Methodists together, and beautifies their social as 
 well as their spiritual life. Then, again, there is the perfect natural- 
 ness of Methodism. That, too, is born, not made. What a charm 
 there is in its originality, and its simplicity, in speaking of things 
 divine. Some may see irreverence or presumption, neither of 
 which are there ; it is rather the boldness of genius which
 
 In Methodism 569 
 
 could not be sedately timid or orthodoxly respectful. Genius has 
 the fearlessness of youth, and it has also the simple assurance of 
 childhood. So in Methodism we find both. Not in Methodists 
 necessarily, but in Methodism. My father had none of the cha- 
 racteristics of genius, and neither have thousands of good Metho- 
 dists but it is in the Ism itself that genius lies hid, and this fact 
 interprets some of its history, and much of its inspiration. Others 
 outside often do not respond to these attributes ; they misunder- 
 stand, they criticize, they condemn. I see in this reply of Mr. 
 Gladstone a clear setting of this truth. The genius, as the child, 
 never realizes that he could be in the way, and never imagines 
 the possibility of an aloofness from his concerns. So I have seen 
 Methodism naturally, confidently, buoyantly break down and step 
 beyond the fences which conventionality is ever putting up, and 
 genius is ever breaking down. Beyond these fences there may lie 
 '' fresh woods and pastures new," but sometimes preserves are there 
 instead. Can a child be made to understand that " trespassers 
 will be prosecuted ? " Can a genius ever be daunted by such a 
 threat ? Methodism was asking a question we know not what 
 and she wanted an answer from the great statesman of the Nine- 
 teenth Century why not, then, ask him ? It is so easy to see what 
 assurance she felt in so doing, and it is equally easy to see the 
 notice-board fixed up, in the cold, courteous reply. Both were so 
 natural. For the passionate Churchman could only freeze at the 
 touch of Nonconformity, and the inspired Methodist could never 
 doubt his welcome anywhere, either in this world or the next. 
 
 Though there were many subjects which engrossed the mind or 
 Henry Fowler during his long and stfenuous life, none lay so near 
 his heart as Methodism, and it was wonderful how fresh his 
 interest kept in her to the end. I am reminded by one of his private 
 secretaries, how when dealing with his vast daily correspondence, 
 all the letters from Methodists were put in a separate heap to be 
 answered by himself personally. And I remember how his face 
 would never fail to light up at the mere mention of Methodism, of 
 anything connected with it. Often when tired lines were stencilled 
 across his brow, when marks of vexation were cut deep in his 
 countenance, we would purposely turn the talk to Methodism,
 
 57 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 and instantly his whole face would change and radiate with that 
 sunshine in which all thoughts of his church were steeped. So 
 have I seen a woman's face shine when she watched her children. 
 So have I seen a child's face brighten as it looked up into its 
 mother's smile. So have I seen a preacher's face glow with the 
 radiance of his theme. But such a sentiment, in such a practical 
 man as Henry Fowler, was remarkable, if it was not unique. We 
 passed it by at the time as a commonplace, as one does so many 
 of the subtler beauties of life, but as we look back even though 
 as yet it be such a very little way we see something of the genius 
 of devotion with which Methodism had dowered this her son, and 
 exclaim that surely his love was wonderful, " passing the love of 
 women."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 " WHAT DOES FOWLER SAY ? " 
 " He being dead yet speaketh." Hebrews. 
 
 " A man cannot speak, but he judges himself; with his will or against his 
 will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every 
 opinion reacts on him who utters it." EMERSON. 
 
 SIR ROBERT PERKS reminds me how many thoughtful 
 men and women there have been in recent times of political 
 conflict who, anxious to think and do the right, asked for their 
 guidance : " What does Fowler say ? " 
 
 I cannot help feeling that though history has settled many of 
 these political conflicts, and though each upgrowing generation 
 is more competent than the last to make up its own mind on every 
 question, yet there are still, in Methodism at any rate, many such 
 left who will like to know, and to keep, much that Fowler said 
 about those deeper subjects of religious thought and work, which 
 never grow out of date, because they deal not with the changing 
 fortunes of the making and marring of Governments, but with the 
 eternal foundations of the building and strengthening of a 
 Church. 
 
 It is, of course, mainly the opinions of Henry Fowler, as a 
 matured statesman, which guide and influence and help, but it is 
 also possible to find in his earlier opinions much that was wise 
 and strong and true. If we go back as far as 1869 we ^ n< ^ such 
 worthy-to-be-remembered words as the following, concerning the 
 pastoral office, which apply for all time to those who are called to 
 be Methodist ministers : 
 
 " I am the son," he said, " of a man, who, if he was anything, 
 
 57 1
 
 57 2 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 was a Methodist pastor. The same Head of the Church Who gave 
 some prophets, some apostles, and some evangelists, also gave 
 some pastors and teachers. And if ever the day comes when we, 
 as a community, undervalue the pastoral teaching and functions 
 of our ministry, and unduly and unnecessarily exalt any substitute 
 for it, we shall be forfeiting our place as a Christian church. I 
 believe that the flock is to be watched over and fed, and all students 
 for the Ministry must learn that there are duties in connection 
 with the pastorate of Methodism which are quite as important as 
 any connected with the pulpit. There is also the mode of con- 
 ducting divine service. We may feel strongly about that giant 
 evil of the day called Ritualism. But there is a ritualism of dis- 
 order as well as a ritual of ceremony, and there is a danger in 
 avoiding one extreme of falling into the other. Those who attend 
 Methodist chapels have a right to expect not only that the ordi- 
 nances shall be conducted with propriety and regularity, but also 
 that the usages of Methodist law shall be strictly followed. As a 
 lawyer I would like to say that there is not a chapel in Methodism 
 settled upon the model deed, where it is not a matter of absolute 
 law that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper shall be administered 
 according to the Law of the Church of England, and a Methodist 
 minister has no more right to break that law than to preach 
 doctrines opposed to John Wesley's ' Notes on the New Testament/ 
 or opposed to the first four volumes of his sermons. Our system 
 is based upon that, and I am quite sure that the more we adhere 
 to the strict rules which fence the privileges of ministers and lay- 
 men alike, the better it will be for Methodism. I am afraid there 
 exists a type of dissent which is not in harmony with Methodist 
 history and is opposed to Methodist law. 
 
 " Methodism has always embraced two types of ecclesiastical 
 thought, and let us not attempt to crush out either the one or 
 the other. There was a Charles Wesley as well as a John Wesley. 
 There is a hymn-book as well as four volumes of sermons. There 
 was a Dr. Clark as well as a Richard Watson ; there was a Joseph 
 Benson as well as a Henry Moore. Some have said that they like 
 to attend the chapels of good old Methodism, and to hear the hearty 
 shouts of ' Glory be to God ! ' For my part I, too, love old
 
 "What does Fowler Say?" 573 
 
 Methodism, and I like to go to a Methodist chapel where -I have 
 the same sentiment embodied in that which has been the usage 
 of the Church in all ages ' Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, 
 and to the Holy Ghost ' linking the expression with the Church 
 of the past, the present, and the future. I like a Methodist who 
 is fond of a prayer-meeting, but I also like a Methodist who is fond 
 of that common prayer-meeting, where ministers and people join 
 together in using the language which has been consecrated by the 
 piety of forty generations. Let us agree to differ on such points, 
 but do not let us put down either one or the other, because we do not 
 see exactly alike. Let there be no such notion as ' The Temple 
 of the Lord are we, and heathens all beside.' ' 
 
 It is not only for Methodism that such words of wide tolera- 
 tion would be instructive. How many " Temples of the Lord 
 are we " are to be found in other churches and denominations, 
 when agreement to differ would be the wisest, best, and only solu- 
 tion of so many dissensions which are but a question of tempera- 
 ment and tradition after all. 
 
 In speaking on Foreign Missions a year or two later Henry Fowler 
 referred with enthusiasm to the sum of 149,000 which had been 
 contributed that year to the Wesleyan Foreign Missions. " He 
 ventured to say that, looking at the pecuniary position of those by 
 whom that income had been raised, and bearing in mind those 
 costly burthens of ministerial and church organizations which 
 had to be sustained from the same sources, and applying the only 
 true test of liberality the ability of the donors it was one of 
 the most princely offerings ever placed upon the altar of a 
 Christian Church." And then he went on to warn men against 
 numerical tests in spiritual work. " Are the number of converts 
 professing the Christian faith at all proportionate to the efforts 
 which Wesleyan and other missions are putting forth ? We may 
 think not but is the numerical result the true test ? Is it a test 
 at all ? The index by which the nineteenth century gauges all its 
 enterprises is figures ; and the Church of the nineteenth century 
 has, to a very great extent, adopted the same index ; and we, 
 as a section of the Church, have a voracious appetite for denomina- 
 tional statistics. I have no faith in, I have no sympathy with,
 
 574 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 this system of traffic receipts applied to the development of Christ's 
 Catholic Church. I do not believe in, I have almost a contempt 
 for, those statisticians who divide your annual income by the 
 number of your reported members, and tabulate the cost of conver- 
 sion at so much a head. Scientific research, political forces, 
 mechanical power, are right in testing their problems by statistics, 
 but the progress and the conquests of that Kingdom that cometh 
 not by observation, have ever been indifferent to, and as it were, 
 defiant of, that pride in numbers to which we all so fondly cling. . . . 
 The numerical test fails because the figures which it employs are in- 
 capable of denoting the results which it professes to represent, 
 and because the time has not arrived for the sum to be worked out. 
 With our figures we may reckon up the millions of money which 
 missionary societies have raised ; we may enumerate the illustrious 
 bands of missionaries they have sent out ; we may schedule their 
 sanctuaries, their scholars and their converts ; but what those 
 figures mean we know not now ; and the true, the final result of 
 all our numerical calculations must be left to that day when ' a 
 great multitude which no man can number, out of every kingdom, 
 and people, and nation, and tongue,' shall unitedly proclaim 
 the triumph of the Church's mission." He then went on to answer 
 another difficulty which is ever being brought forward against 
 foreign missionary work. " In India you have two hundred 
 million of subjects of Queen Victoria to whom the faith and the 
 teaching and the hope of Christianity are an idle tale. They are 
 not an ignorant, a barbarous, and savage race, whose intellectual 
 simplicity might render them peculiarly susceptible to the teach- 
 ings of a united superior race ; their learning and their civiliza- 
 tion date back from a remote antiquity ; their religion, enshrined 
 in some of the most gorgeous temples which the pride or zeal of man 
 has ever raised, is intertwined and associated with their national 
 and domestic life. You propose to convince them that this 
 religion is a huge imposture, and that the faith that you proclaim 
 is the only revelation which the Maker and Judge of us all has 
 vouchsafed to the human race. How do you set about this colossal 
 enterprise ? What instrumentality do you employ ? You send a 
 few men oh ! how few born in a distant land, speaking a strange
 
 " What does Fowler Say ? " 575 
 
 tongue, ignorant to a great extent of the habits and prejudices 
 of those to whom they are sent. They have nothing but a story 
 to tell ; they have no present rewards to offer their converts ; 
 they have no penal infliction with which to coerce their foes ; 
 no miracles attest their statement, no human authority enforces 
 their claims ; and before the telling of that story, distasteful to 
 human reason, humbling to human pride, you expect the national 
 faith of India to fall prostrate like the walls of Jericho at the 
 seventh day's blast. That is the argument. And the world not 
 only covertly insinuates but openly avows its disbelief in this 
 instrumentality. And is the Church quite free from complicity 
 in such doubts ? Is there not amongst a very large section a dim, 
 vague feeling that if ever the world is to be brought to the faith 
 of Jesus Christ, some agency, other than that now employed, must 
 be brought into play, and that miraculous aid, or millennium advent, 
 must precede the final overthrow of the powers of darkness ? Now 
 we, who profess the Christian faith, are bound to regard the sim- 
 plicity and, as the world reckons it, the utter folly of our agency, 
 as the sure sign of its power. And were the difficulties that gather 
 in our path multiplied a hundred-fold, we are bound to accept 
 with implicit and with active faith, the inspired declaration of the 
 great proto-missionary when he says, that it hath pleased God 
 to choose the weak things of this world to confound its wisdom, 
 and that He hath ordained the foolishness of preaching as the 
 instrumentality by which all men are to be brought to a knowledge 
 of the truth. But I do not want to meet this doubt or difficulty 
 simply upon that ground. Let us deal with it from a practical 
 common sense point of view. Test it by experience, test it by 
 history. I take it that at the present moment the power, the 
 energy, the life of the Christian Church, is in connection with 
 the Anglo-Saxon race. Those branches of the Catholic Church 
 which are at this moment doing Christ's work on earth, and 
 through whose instrumentality truth, and righteousness, and faith, 
 and hope, and love are yielding their fairest fruits ; these churches 
 are composed of, or have been founded by, men who speak the 
 English tongue. Whence did Anglo-Saxon Christianity spring ? 
 The Christianity of England, its Colonies and Dependencies,
 
 576 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 is as much the result of missions missions as we now defend 
 them, missions as they are now attacked, the mission of a preached 
 Gospel blessed by God's Holy Spirit as the Christianity of Fiji 
 or Madagascar. From the day when, twelve centuries ago, the 
 fair-haired, blue-eyed English slaves arrested the attention of one 
 of the Church's greatest bishops, as he passed through the streets 
 of Rome, and evoked the wish, wittily but devoutly expressed, 
 that spiritual light should illumine those graceful forms, down 
 to the present hour when, from the snows of Greenland to the 
 sunny islands of the Southern seas, from the Thames to the Ganges, 
 and from the Ganges to the Mississippi, one ceaseless strain of prayer 
 and praise is ever ascending in the English tongue from that 
 hour to this, the story of English Christianity, its foundation and 
 its progress, its trials and its triumphs, its labours and its suc- 
 cesses, is the story of a Mission church. Whoever else may plead 
 exemption, England, America, Australia must ever pay their 
 fealty to the Mission Cause. But it may be said that that is an 
 illustration drawn from the teaching of a superior to a subject, 
 a conqueror to a conquered, an enlightened to a barbarous race. 
 Very well, then, let me recall another chapter of the Church's 
 history ! Recall that convict ship which, eighteen centuries ago, 
 landed its apparently wretched cargo on the shores of Italy. 
 Realize, if you can, the brilliancy, the wealth, the grandeur, the 
 commercial earnestness, the military pride, the social festivities, 
 the religious solemnities which combined to make up the national 
 and social life of the world's mistress and the world's metropolis ; 
 and then realize, if you can, the scorn, the contempt with which 
 the intellect and the ignorance, the wealth and the poverty of 
 Rome, would have greeted the announcement that one of the 
 prisoners from Judaea, lodged in the hired house, with a soldier 
 fettered to his arm, was propounding the doctrine that the vener- 
 able religion in which the Roman Empire was cradled, reared and 
 crowned, was a delusion and a lie ; and that the teaching, the 
 example, and the death of One Whom the Roman proconsul had 
 condemned to a malefactor's doom, were destined to uproot, 
 supplant, and destroy that system of philosophy and faith, which, 
 brilliant with the noblest deeds of national glory, and hallowed
 
 "What does Fowler Say?" 577 
 
 with the dearest associations of domestic life, seemed lasting as 
 Rome itself the world of that day, like the world of this day, 
 the literary world, the scientific world, the political world, the 
 fashionable world, would have laughed to scorn the folly of such a 
 madman's dream. But we know now, reading it in the light of the 
 inexorable logic of facts, what that Jew wrote and taught and lived ; 
 and we know that three centuries, long, drearily-long to those 
 generations who lived through their slow progress, but very short 
 to one who can scan their story, as it were, with a glance three 
 centuries had barely passed from the landing of the Great Mission- 
 ary Apostle, ere the faith which he preached, and for which he 
 died, had mounted the throne of the Csesars, and subjugated to 
 its sway the genius, learning and glory of the Roman Empire. 
 Was that the case of a conquering teaching a subject race ? No 
 as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be the weak- 
 ness of this world confounding its strength, and its wisdom, and 
 its might. If these difficulties are brought out, let us look at 
 them in their real stature, and see the undue proportions into which 
 hostility and unbelief have magnified them. Let us also beware 
 of one feeling which it is natural should arise concerning missionary 
 effort, and that is an impatience as to time. We must learn to 
 labour, and we must learn to wait. The waiting is the more difficult 
 lesson of the two, and the lesson which this age, of all other ages, 
 needs to be taught. And when appalled at the sin and the sorrow 
 which blights so large a portion of this globe, and eager for that 
 blessed consummation when the knowledge of the Lord shall 
 cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, we impatiently, 
 inquisitively, almost distrustfully, ask, When shall these things 
 be ? there should be ever sounding in our ears the solemn 
 command with which, from its first utterance on the shores of 
 Galilee, down to the present time, the Church has ever been 
 rebuked, ' What is that to thee ? Follow thou me ! ' Yes, and 
 if we follow Him individually by ' not being ashamed to confess 
 the faith of Christ crucified,' by manfully fighting under His 
 banner against sin, the world, the flesh, and the devil, by ' continu- 
 ing His faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives' end,' if we 
 follow Him collectively in our ecclesiastical capacity, by unfailing 
 
 37
 
 578 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 loyalty to His teaching and unshrinking obedience to His com- 
 mands, especially to His last command, ' Go ye unto all nations 
 and preach the Gospel to every creature ; ' if we thus obey Him 
 and thus follow Him ; if we thus look for and hasten to His coming, 
 we shall acquire the stimulus of that expectant faith which links 
 the work of the Church on earth with the worship of that Church 
 above, with whose anthem of unceasing triumph has ever mingled 
 the martyr's litany, ' How long, O Lord, how long ! ' Nay, 
 more, while the Church thus works and waits, and works and hopes, 
 and works and believes, it reverently, but yet more closely, follows 
 Him, our risen, reigning Lord, of Whom it is mysteriously but 
 unerringly revealed, that He Himself on the Throne of Universal 
 Empire, is ' from henceforth expecting until His foes become 
 His footstool.' " 
 
 Again and again do we find Henry Fowler speaking about mis- 
 sionaries and their glorious work, and it is as needful now, as when 
 he spoke, to add fuel to the fire of missionary enthusiasm, for 
 on no department of Christ's work is there more cold water thrown, 
 even by professing Christians, than on the work of Foreign 
 Missions. 
 
 " We estimate," he said, " the progress of events at certain 
 times by how similar events operated in other times, and the 
 Great Missionary report, the great Vade mecum of missionary 
 work for all time and in ah 1 ages to come, is the Acts of the Apostles. 
 You cannot conceive of Europe apart from its Christianity. Its 
 proud position, heir of all the ages, foremost in the files of time, is 
 the outcome of its Christian faith. Its civilization, its laws, its 
 liberties, its literature, its life, are founded on the Christian revela- 
 tion, and in every department of its national and individual life 
 you discern the influence, power and the supremacy of Christian 
 teaching ; and yet the first sermon ever preached in Europe and 
 remember, that was a Europe of historic grandeur, of artistic pre- 
 eminence, and imperial domination was preached to a few 
 devoted women who had assembled for their weekly prayer-meeting 
 on the banks of the river near Philippi. We have the record of 
 two other of the missionary sermons to Europe. You have the 
 sermon of the great Apostle, addressed to the most cultured aristo-
 
 " What does Fowler Say ? " 579 
 
 cracy of the most cultured city of ancient history, and you have 
 the sermon preached in his own hired house in the obscure Jews' 
 quarter of the empire city of the world. No miracle attended 
 the mission. He preached precisely the same Gospel of Jesus 
 and the Resurrection, man's sin and God's love, that your mis- 
 sionaries are preaching now ; and I think it would be as absurd to 
 pronounce a positive opinion upon the future of Christianity in 
 India, and China, and Japan, by the results of simply half a 
 century's experience, as it would have been to predict what 
 Christianity would do for Europe, by the faith, or the powers, or 
 the influence, of the Churches of Rome or of Philippi. I believe 
 that our Gospel will uproot those ancient faiths and worships, 
 which have for centuries enthralled the vast populations of the 
 East ; because I know that it fought and conquered the far more 
 powerful faiths which composed the religion of the ancient world ; 
 and if the banner of the Cross is to float triumphantly, as I believe 
 it will, over Benares and Madras, over Delhi and Calcutta, it will 
 be because it floated triumphantly over Athens and Antioch, over 
 Corinth and Rome. The Anglo-Saxon churches have at this 
 moment set before them such opportunities of widespread universal 
 missionary enterprise as have never been afforded either to the 
 Church collectively, or to any one section of it, since the first great 
 missionary command was given. And yet with all this affluence 
 of opportunity there is one need which all missionary societies feel. 
 What is it ? It is not money. You can always get money in 
 this country for a good cause. What you want is men. The 
 noblest monuments of missionary enterprise are the monuments 
 of men, not of expenditure. A man with a sling and a stone has 
 done more for the Lord's side than many a well-disciplined host 
 with the best-equipped artillery. We want the churches to feel 
 that the gift of a man is the grandest gift they can lay on the 
 altar ; we want the societies to recognize that a man is the most 
 precious donation in their treasury. I think there are few scenes 
 in modern biography more admonitory, more truly sublime, 
 than that which is described in the life of the late Bishop Pattison, 
 where, in the Devonshire country home the grand old judge one 
 of the most learned, impartial, merciful, wise, Christian men that 
 
 37*
 
 580 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 ever sat upon the English Bench gave up his son, his only son, 
 the son of his old age, the heir of his honoured name, and, with a 
 full consciousness that he would see his face on earth no more, 
 devoted him to mission life. I think that noble father and that 
 noble son have left for all the sections of the Christian Church 
 a grand example of missionary heroism, which reached its true 
 consummation when, following the example of his nonconformist 
 predecessor John Williams, of Erromango, the martyr Bishop of 
 Melanesia joined the noble army of martyrs. How are you to 
 get the men ? You cannot buy them thank God for that ! - 
 there is something in this age you cannot buy. There is no stipend 
 that can compensate a missionary. You cannot reckon up what he 
 is worth. How are you to get them ? Our blessed Lord has given 
 the answer in, to my mind, one of the most mysterious passages of 
 the whole New Testament. As His omniscient glance, not limited 
 to the hill-sides of Judaea, but sweeping down the generations, saw 
 the countless millions of the human race, weary and worn and 
 faint, scattered abroad like sheep without a shepherd, running 
 hither and thither in search of some path which should lead to 
 peace and happiness as His pitying eye surveyed that sad pro- 
 cssion of sin and suffering and sorrow, He taught His Apostles 
 and His Church for ever their duty in the sight of that awful need : 
 ' Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that He would send forth 
 labourers into his harvest ' ; and when the Church has faith enough 
 to obey her Lord's command, the day will already have dawned 
 which shall witness the eternal harvest home." 
 
 Henry Fowler had a word to say about the accommodation 
 for the poor in the newer Wesleyan chapels. He said he noticed 
 " that there was a tendency rather to forget the just claims of 
 the poor, and that in a great many of their modern chapels there 
 was not the proportion of free seats which there ought to be, 
 and upon which the strength of Methodism to a large extent 
 depended. If they once got blinded with the notion that chapels 
 were to be sources of income and nothing else, there would be an 
 irresistible tendency in the trustees to develop the pew system 
 too largely. He should not fear the experiment of a free Metho- 
 dist chapel. He was not at all sure that it would not be a great
 
 "What does Fowler Say?" 581 
 
 success to have a chapel without a single pew rent in it. A great 
 many would no doubt say that they could not support the ministry, 
 but they had to grapple with the great question of the evangeliza- 
 tion of the masses. He believed that Methodism was calculated 
 to deal with the masses of the population quite as well as any other 
 system, but he was afraid that in their large towns they were not 
 giving it fair play. In all their buildings they should insist on a 
 certain number of seats being reserved for the benefit of the poor, 
 and that they should be as good as any other seats, and they would 
 find that although they might lose in the rent of their pews, they 
 would have a result in another balance-sheet, which was ten times 
 more important than all the trustees' receipts and expenditure 
 that ever were put into type." 
 
 In speaking to Methodists at a general Education Committee 
 just before the Education Act of 1870, he said, " He was a very 
 strong anti-denominationalist ; but whether denominationalism 
 were good or bad, it would be a gross breach of the public faith if 
 the men who had advanced the money and built the schools were 
 to be deprived of their property. He did not believe that the 
 Methodist body would establish any new denominational schools, 
 and he did not think it desirable that they should. He thought 
 it much more desirable that they should throw the weight of their 
 strength and influence into the proper development of what he 
 verily believed would be the schools of this kingdom, viz., school- 
 board schools. Some one had asked whether they would rather 
 have the education of the children of this country handed over to 
 the Church of England, or have a purely secular education. He 
 would say deliberately that he would rather that the children 
 should be handed over to the clergymen of the Church of England. 
 He maintained that the Methodists as a body had never dissented 
 from the formularies of the Church of England, and they were in 
 a false position if they got on the same platform with their non- 
 conformist brethren, who conscientiously objected to the formu- 
 laries of the Church of England. If they ever became political 
 dissenters, they would have to trample upon all the traditions of 
 Methodism, and abandon those principles which had been the 
 secret of their success for a century and a half. Therefore, at this
 
 582 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 crisis, let them not take a position antagonistic to the Church of 
 England. Let them not surrender one of their privileges, rights 
 or claims ; but not oppose anything and everything because it 
 might give the clergy of the Church of England influence over the 
 education of the children of this country." 
 
 This statement concerning the formularies of the Church of 
 England is an explanation of the fact, which may have puzzled 
 some, that my father was married in the Church of England, 
 that he was a communicant of the Church of England, that he 
 had his children baptized and confirmed in the Church of England, 
 and that, following his own precedent, he was buried according 
 to the rites of the Church of England. 
 
 At the first Conference to which lay representatives were ad- 
 mitted, in 1878, my father said: " I want to ask this Conference, in 
 both its sittings, whether they do not think that the real inner life 
 of the members of our Church, as exemplified in their every-day 
 world life, and their church life, does not compare favourably with 
 the past ; and whether we ought not to raise a note of thanks- 
 giving for the living, vigorous working faith and life of our people ? 
 To my mind, the supreme and final test of a falling or rising Church, 
 as tested by its individual members, is personal love and attach- 
 ment to the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe at this moment there 
 is a deeper love, a more entire devotion to our Lord in this land 
 than there ever was in any land, or at any period of the Church's 
 history, since our Lord ascended to Heaven." 
 
 He spoke also of the danger of broken or irregular attendance 
 at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in words that still have 
 their application : " I believe if that Sacrament were more honoured 
 amongst us, it would produce a robustness, a vigour, a piety, and 
 a charm about our office-bearers and members in their daily 
 Christian life, which would have its reflex action through all our 
 institutions, make the Church more holy, and more certainly assure 
 the conversion of the world." 
 
 The Sacrament of Holy Communion was to Henry Fowler a 
 true channel for the gift of Grace, which was to him the main 
 power of all spiritual life. He looked upon it as something far 
 more than the commemorative Feast, he looked for in it that
 
 " What does Fowler Say ? " 583 
 
 promised outpouring of the Spirit of God, which is granted only to 
 those " who in faith eat His Flesh and drink His Blood." He 
 believed in the outside power of Grace, which is above and beyond 
 all feelings and convictions, and desires, on the part of man ; and 
 I have heard him say in speaking of the reformation of character : 
 " However much a man may long to reform, however deep his 
 penitence, and firm his resolutions, all will avail nothing without 
 the gift of Grace." And he strongly deprecated, as shown above, 
 any disregard of that great Service through which he believed 
 it to be peculiarly bestowed. 
 
 At the dedication of the house attached to City Road Chapel, 
 where John Wesley had lived and died, and in which my grand- 
 father also died no other minister having ever died in that 
 house Henry Fowler spoke with perhaps even a deeper personal 
 interest than that which he felt in all the institutions and cere- 
 monies of Methodism. Having referred to this special individual 
 link with the old preacher's house, he went on to say : " This is 
 a celebration of what I may call John Wesley's personality, even 
 more than John Wesley's work ; and to my mind there is some- 
 thing very attractive and very suggestive in what we are doing 
 to-day. There is no record, no remains", in any shape or form, 
 of luxury, of splendour, or wealth, in this house. There is to my 
 mind the dignity of simplicity and the simplicity of dignity. I was 
 thinking this morning that it suggested another great member 
 of the same family. Many of you may have seen the bedroom 
 in which he died at Walmer Castle. He lived in the same simple, 
 hard, unluxurious state, with a narrow bed in which the Great 
 Duke said he never turned, because when a man wanted to turn 
 in his bed it was time for him to turn out. That is eminently 
 a Wesleyan saying. But this house, telling us as it does, of John 
 Wesley's self-denial, of his want of the wealth of this world, of 
 the simplicity in which he lived, and the simplicity in which he 
 died this house and this chapel and the tomb behind, are not 
 John Wesley's monument. We must not associate that idea 
 with them. John Wesley's work, John Wesley's life, John Wesley's 
 death are mightier monuments than anything that can be found 
 in the England of to-day. His monument is to be found in the
 
 584 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 people of England, in the Church of England (I mean the Church 
 of England in which he lived and in which he died), and in the other 
 branches of the Church in England outside that community. His 
 monument is to be found there. It is to be found in the religion 
 of England. It is to be found in the history of England, and you 
 will find that the great historians, who have written from the 
 purely secular point of view, men like Macaulay, like Lecky, and 
 like Green, have pronounced eloquent criticism and eulogism on, 
 and have dissected and detected, the great influence which John 
 Wesley exerted in the history of his country a century ago, and 
 which he is exerting to-day. This is a great age of statistics, and 
 we Methodists are very fond of statistics. They are all very well 
 in their way. But there is one thing about John Wesley that you 
 cannot schedule, and that is the permanent and widely-extended 
 influence of John Wesley. You will find it in all the Churches. 
 You find it in all the professions. You find it in politics. You 
 find it in art and literature. You find that strain running through 
 English life, and to an extent that I think no other strain, of what 
 may be called a denominational character, has ever reached. It 
 pervades the nation. I am, of course, alluding to a large number 
 of people who are not Methodists now, and perhaps have not 
 been for a generation or more ; but nevertheless the fact re- 
 mains ; and if I could tell you of the extraordinary people who 
 have been connected by birth or alliance, or in some way or other, 
 with the parent stock, you would be astonished at the chasm 
 which now separates men from what their forefathers were before 
 them. There is still another point of more importance, and that 
 is that the religious influence of John Wesley is not confined to 
 Methodism. I remember William Bunting, one of the greatest of 
 his followers, preaching at one of the Hull Conferences, and, after 
 having rendered a tribute to other churches and other creeds, he 
 said : ' You Methodists think that there is no Methodism but your 
 own, but there are far more Methodists outside Methodism than 
 there are in it.' That, no doubt, was a hyperbolical way of stating 
 a plain truth. But you have the influence of Methodism in every 
 church, in every denomination, and you have men who, in one 
 sense condemning it, will tell you it has been the parent of all
 
 " What does Fowler say ? " 585 
 
 the religious movements of the last century, and of this century. 
 I think you see it in the general tone of religious opinion outside 
 Methodism. You see the effect of that teaching, that revival it 
 was John Wesley's own word the revival of primitive Christianity. 
 It was that revival in the eighteenth century which has been 
 such an inexpressible boon to the nineteenth century. Now may I 
 say a word upon the relations of John Wesley to the Methodism 
 of to-day. When I was a boy there was a phrase very much used 
 which you never hear nowadays : ' Our Venerable Founder.' 
 Would that be applicable to-day ? Methodism has relations to 
 the church, and to the world, which did not exist in the days of 
 John Wesley, and it is pure speculation to say what John Wesley 
 would have done if he had been alive. The only thing we can say 
 of him is this he would have done what he always did when he 
 was alive ; he would have adapted himself to the day in which 
 he lived, and used the instrumentalities and institutions available 
 for the work he wanted to do. He was in advance of his age often, 
 he was always abreast of his age, and never behind it, and I think 
 the probabilities are that he would have done very much what his 
 sons and successors have done. Canon Gore in his ' Lectures on 
 the Ephesians ' has dealt with St. Paul as the founder of different 
 Churches ; he says the founder of a church is the gatherer in of 
 converts, and an organizer of institutions, and I do not think 
 we can have a phrase in which to describe what John Wesley 
 was in his relation to Methodism, better than that. Methodism 
 has grown, and there is no power either in the Church or in the 
 world to prevent its growth or its development. We do not hold 
 that ecclesiastical or secular history is a chapter of accidents ; 
 we recognize that there has always been a divine control running 
 through the whole course of history from the earliest days. You 
 cannot exclude that element from the Christian Church. We are 
 always quoting that line of Browning's, ' God's in His Heaven 
 all's right with the world.' The same principle must prevail 
 in the Church. It is impossible to deal on merely human 
 grounds, and to apply human reasoning to the development of a 
 great church like the Methodist Church in England and through- 
 out the world. I should like to refer to another point with
 
 586 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 reference to the Methodism of to-day, that it still retains, and I 
 hope will always retain, the unique position which John Wesley 
 laid down for it, and which if it ever abandons, it will make the 
 most gigantic blunder, namely, the principle that Methodism is 
 absolutely neutral, that it is the friend of all and the enemy of 
 none. Methodism is an aggressive church, but it is not a prosely- 
 tizing church ; it is a missionary church, but it is not a militant 
 church ; it has no desire to obtain converts from other churches. 
 That is a Methodist principle. They are the friends of all that is 
 good, and they recognize what is good in the aims, in the opinions, 
 in the institutions, in the work, of other churches, although they 
 may think that it is not the best way. But that is not the question 
 before them. The work is being done, and they are to bless and 
 not to ban any or every other church which is doing Christ's work 
 in this world. There is one other word I should like to say. It 
 is this, that Methodism must never be a political organization. 
 Our very strength, the strength of members, of institutions, of 
 men aye, and you cannot despise it in the present day the 
 strength of wealth and political influence that very strength is 
 a danger and a temptation. We may say, looking at this magnifi- 
 cent machine, ' How desirable to put it on the side we think is 
 right ! ' Now I am a very strong party man. I am ready to 
 fight for my political opinions anywhere and everywhere, but I 
 do not want Methodists to help me to fight for them. I know 
 men, far better Methodists than I am, who hold totally different 
 opinions from mine. They have a right to those opinions, and 
 they have as much right to say the world would be better if their 
 views were adopted, as I have to say that I think it would be 
 better if my views were adopted. The Methodist Conference must 
 hold the balance perfectly level. If it inclines either to the one 
 side, or the other, the Methodist people will begin to do the same. 
 I do not deny that there may come times when Methodism ought 
 to take part in a political crisis, such as was fully justified in the 
 Slavery question. But those occasions are very rare. I there- 
 fore take this opportunity of saying these words of caution as 
 one who is himself inside the very world to which I do not want 
 you to come as a body, and from which I hope you will as a church
 
 "What does Fowler say?" 587 
 
 for ever stand aloof. I have no doubt so long as the Methodists 
 of to-day uphold the great principles of John Wesley's work, of 
 John Wesley's life, of those guiding lines which he laid down for 
 those who were to follow him in the higher regions of Christian 
 thought and Christian work, we can face the altered conditions of 
 to-day, we can with perfect loyalty to him adapt our instru- 
 ments and our institutions to the needs of to-day, and in doing that 
 we shall render the best and the most undying homage to his name." 
 
 The opinions which my father expressed with regard to Metho- 
 dism and politics are emphasized by a note I have from the Rev. 
 William Perkins, describing one of the last conversations on Metho- 
 dism with one of its ministers in which my father took a part. 
 
 " I visited the late Lord Wolverhampton," writes Mr. Perkins, 
 " on the i4th March, 1910. I spent more than an hour with him 
 in his library in close conversation. He seemed deeply concerned 
 as to the present condition of Methodism and as to its future. The 
 two points on which he dwelt with great force and clearness were : 
 (i) The political character which Methodism seemed to be assum- 
 ing ; (2) The socialistic teaching given in many of its pulpits, and 
 also in speeches and pamphlets by prominent men. At the time 
 I saw him he was strong in his purpose to attend the Conference 
 of that year at Bradford, in order that he might make a statement 
 to the Conference in the form of a protest. I was struck by his 
 deep interest in the affairs of Methodism, his regard for its welfare, 
 and his keen perception of perils by which it was threatened from 
 within itself. His strong objection to political opinion on the 
 part of its ministers, and to the endeavours made to associate it 
 with a party, was the more striking, because it had reference to 
 the political party of which he had been a life-long supporter, 
 and in which he held Cabinet rank. He spoke very earnestly and 
 highly of an earlier and stronger Methodism which he had known 
 in years past. I carried away with me a life-long memory of the 
 courtesy and confidence which he showed towards myself." 
 
 In 1890 Henry Fowler spoke on the Forward Movement of 
 Methodism at the annual Home Missionary Meeting, also held at 
 City Road Chapel. He said : " This Society brings before us 
 on occasions like the present the kind of work to be done and
 
 588 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 how it is to be done. Now, one of the cant phrases with which 
 we are all familiar is ' the problems of the day.' Everybody can 
 call our attention to some problem that he is anxious to solve, and 
 to some problem to which he thinks the attention of the public 
 should be directed. We have political problems, we have social 
 problems, we have economical problems, and we have educational 
 problems. I am not going to belittle any one of these interesting 
 controversies, they are all characteristic of the age ; they are all 
 full of the deepest interest to the community at large ; but to-day, 
 and in an organization like ours, we have to deal with a problem 
 which we believe to be the one underlying all others, and to which 
 we attach supreme importance. This problem is the relationship 
 or the attitude of the working classes by which I mean the bulk 
 of the nation to Christianity at the present moment ; and the 
 attitude of the Church (and I use the word in its broadest form) 
 to the nation, and the best means for carrying out what I believe 
 to be the Church's highest mission and most pressing duty namely, 
 the preaching of the Gospel to the poor the evidence which our 
 Lord was pleased to select as the crowning evidence of His own 
 mission, and which is still, and will be, the evidence of the true 
 mission of His Church through all the ages. This problem differs 
 from the political, the industrial, and the educational problems 
 in this respect : these are all arguable and disputable, whereas in 
 the case of the problem on which I am speaking, we take our 
 position upon entirely different ground. We maintain that the 
 position of the church is not that it is desirable that men and 
 women shall be Christians, not that it is advantageous to them to 
 be so, not that it would be an advantage to society, but upon the 
 absolute truth of the sole supremacy of the religion of our Lord 
 and Saviour. I shall speak shortly on points on which there may 
 be great elasticity, but we can have no compromise here. Our 
 position is this : that the true and only basis of morality is the 
 fruit of one tree ; and we hold that the very essence of a man doing 
 his duty is in performing it with the belief in the existence of another 
 world, where he will be held responsible for the manner in which 
 he does his duty here. We hold that this principle is at the root 
 of our legislation, and all our policy, and our relationships in life.
 
 "What does Fowler say?" 589 
 
 I notice in a weekly paper an article written by a distinguished 
 statesman to the effect that the Gospel has been, and is, the charter 
 of human freedom. That is the verdict of a man who has lived in 
 the atmosphere of statesmanship for more than half a century. 
 We take our stand on precisely the same ground ; and with that we 
 go forth to meet the working classes of the country, telling them 
 that it is the only compass by which national life can be steered ; 
 we take our stand upon the Divine authority of the religion which 
 we profess and teach, and with this in our hands we have to deal 
 with the various problems of the day. What is the principle 
 upon which our Society, as Methodists, was founded, and what 
 was the object of our Founder ? It was to spread Scriptural 
 holiness throughout the land. The means might vary, the 
 machinery might vary the machinery ought to vary, and it will 
 vary ; but nevertheless our object must be, in the words of John 
 Wesley, ' the spread of Scriptural holiness ' ; and to bring Christi- 
 anity home to the hearts and lives of the population of this country. 
 I have been reading, to some limited extent, in the department 
 of periodical literature I refer to the weekly religious press, which 
 I sometimes read, generally for information, sometimes for amuse- 
 ment ; and I find there indications and I know also from my own 
 knowledge that we, as a Church, have embarked on what is 
 called the Forward Movement. As Methodists, and as Wesleyan 
 Methodists, we ought all to be supporters of any and every Forward 
 Movement. The most marked characteristic of John Wesley was 
 always the distinguished statesmanship with which he dealt 
 with the problems of the day before him with the means ready to 
 his hand. He adapted the machinery to his surrounding circum- 
 stances. He hated stereotypedness ; he had great contempt for 
 ecclesiastical rigidity ; and, as we are following in his footsteps, 
 we must act in a like manner by giving up rules and practices, 
 however time-honoured and excellent for years gone by, for methods 
 which are required consequent upon a change of time. A greater 
 than John Wesley has laid down that rule, for St. Paul has said, 
 that he became all things to all men if by any possibility he might 
 win some." 
 
 Henry Fowler then proceeded to compare the religious and
 
 59 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 civil life of the eighteenth century and the times of Wesley with 
 those of our own, and pointed out how the great Founder of 
 Methodism adapted himself to the circumstances and needs of 
 the period in which he lived. " We are now entering upon the last 
 decade of the present century, and the ninety years which have 
 preceded it have had no parallel in the moral, social, and religious 
 history of the world. We are face to face with preaching the Gospel 
 to the poor, with the spirit of intellectual inquiry and culture, 
 which never existed in the preceding century ; and we have also 
 to deal with democracy (I do not use the word in its political 
 meaning) ; Wesley and the early Methodists knew no more 
 about these things in those days than we know of the internal 
 economy of China or Japan at this moment. We have to face the 
 question of capital and labour at the present time, and to deal with 
 other questions as well ; and in these matters we are able to go 
 back to the highest type and example of all, our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ, Who not only preached the Gospel, but ' went about 
 doing good ; ' which was not that kind of good that is under- 
 stood in conventional, ecclesiastical phraseology, but assuaging 
 the sorrow and misery of human life. Do we really believe that 
 the best thing that could happen to the Queen's dominions through- 
 out the world, would be for them to be, in the highest sense of the 
 term, Christian dominions ? That I believe to be the faith of the 
 Christian Church ; and it is as we act up to that faith, and regard 
 such principles as strong enough for our commerce, for our relation- 
 ships as masters and men, employers and employees, as politicians, 
 merchants, and manufacturers, that our faith will be realized. If 
 Christianity is not good for everything, it is good for nothing. 
 I maintain that the Forward Movement in Methodism I will not 
 individualize it, but take it as a whole recognizes the facts to 
 which I have been calling your attention, and with the means 
 in its power has endeavoured to grapple with them." 
 
 On the unveiling of a statue erected to commemorate the 
 centenary of the death of John Wesley, Henry Fowler said : 
 " Seventy years ago the ablest of John Wesley's biographers 
 wrote these words : ' There may come a time when the name of 
 Wesley will be more generally known, and in remote|regions of the
 
 "What does Fowler say?" 591 
 
 globe, than that of Frederick the Great or Catherine of Russia.' 
 That day has come. In the remoter regions of the globe, the vast 
 extent of which never crossed the brain of Southey the remoter 
 regions of a greater Britain than John Wesley ever knew the 
 name, the history, the crimes of the Prussian despot or of the 
 Russian Empress are absolutely not only forgotten, but unknown 
 history the name, the influence, the power, of John Wesley are 
 a living and effective force. It is right to cherish the memories 
 of men whose lives, whose example, are among the most precious 
 possessions of churches and of nations. Heroes, saints, martyrs, 
 we all delight to honour, but they are gone their work is done, 
 ' well and faithfully done.' ' Good and faithful servants/ they have 
 ' entered into the joy of their Lord.' But we do not celebrate a 
 memory to-day. John Wesley is a greater force in the nation to- 
 day, in the Church to-day, than he was one hundred years ago. 
 We have not yet to write the last line of his epitaph ; we have not 
 yet to put the top stone on to his monument ; he influences power- 
 fully and effectively our national history, our national character, 
 our national position. We shall best discharge to-day's duty by 
 looking more at the work than at the man. His work stands out 
 in the history of our faith, in the history of our nation, as clearly 
 as the dome of St. Paul's stands out on the horizon of London. 
 Let me go for my evidence not to one of John Wesley's friends 
 and admirers, but to one who has little sympathy with John Wesley's 
 creed, a man who looks upon John Wesley's work with a cool, dis- 
 criminating eye, a fair, impartial historian, the greatest perhaps 
 of living historians, I mean Lecky. ' Although,' says Lecky, 
 ' the career of the elder Pitt, and the splendid victories by land and 
 sea that were won during his ministry, form unquestionably the 
 most dazzling episodes in the reign of George II., they will yield, 
 I think, in importance to that religious revolution which had 
 begun in England by the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitfield.' 
 Now why does a secular historian give Wesley's work thus political 
 pre-eminence over even the work of the Government of Lord 
 Chatham ? Why does he give it to John Wesley ? Because that 
 religious revolution was in the highest sense of the word a political 
 revolution. It has affected, it has controlled, it has dominated
 
 592 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 our national policy. Two great men in the eighteenth century were 
 contemporaries, Voltaire and Wesley. You trace the influence of 
 Voltaire through the French Revolution for that Revolution was 
 practically originated by him that influence is seen to-day in the 
 legislation, in the government, in the morals, in the irreligion of 
 France. The same description can be applied to Wesley. We 
 trace his history through the same period of time, and we see his 
 influence to-day in the legislation, the government, the morals 
 and the religion of Great Britain. And if we take the range of 
 the century, if we grasp the results of these two men's teaching, 
 through the generations which have flitted across the human stage 
 since they left this world; I say boldly that if this world were 
 all if this world, with its physical happiness and its physical 
 suffering, was the limit of the comparison I say that the teach- 
 ing of the one has been as great a blessing as the teaching of the 
 other was an unmitigated curse. And the great English historian 
 of the present generation, J. R. Green, has said : ' The Methodists 
 themselves are the least result of the Methodist Revival.' The 
 result of that Revival, the noblest result was ' the attempt, which 
 has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the immorality, 
 the ignorance, the physical suffering, the social degradation, of 
 the profligate and the poor. The church was restored to life ; a 
 new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and 
 wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave 
 the first impulse to national education.' 
 
 " Wesley preached, Wesley taught in his chapels, in his class- 
 meetings, in his journals, in his practice, the true application 
 of the great saying of Burke, ' that whatever is morally wrong 
 can never be politically right.' From the day that John Wesley, 
 as a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, visited the poor degraded 
 prisoners in Oxford gaol, to the last days of his life, when he wrote 
 his final letter leaving his dying testimony against the most 
 execrable of all human villainies, the slave trade John Wesley 
 never faltered in attacking cruelty, ignorance, intemperance 
 in alleviating all the forms of sorrow and suffering, and in up- 
 holding the Christian man's obligation to" bring his Christianity 
 into his daily performance of public duty in all its branches. What
 
 "What does Fowler say?" 593 
 
 was the result of such a Gospel as that, the result of the position 
 of the English mind, of English public opinion, through the great 
 cataclysm of the French Revolution ? If you refer to your history 
 you will find that there was an attack all along the line on property, 
 on authority, on morals, on religion and England escaped. Why ? 
 I believe it was the Methodism of the lower classes, the Methodism 
 of the middle classes, their intense antagonism to anti-Christian 
 teaching, which saved the nation and the constitution of England ; 
 and during the century that is now drawing to a close, gradually, 
 slowly, but surely, the teaching of the New Testament is becom- 
 ing year by year a stronger force in our national life stronger 
 far than when in her proudest days the undivided Western Church 
 dominated the thrones and principalities and powers of Christen- 
 dom. John Wesley's Methodism ' hid the leaven in three measures 
 of meal,' and, to-day, without distinction of class, or party, or 
 creed, our public life is being leavened with that blessed influence. 
 To-day I say it as a politician as a Christian politician the 
 strongest argument to the final court of appeal is not pride, not 
 revenge, not aggrandizement, not gain, but, ' Is it right ? ' 
 
 " Let us never forget what Archdeacon Farrar has so power- 
 fully brought before us this morning, that one of the noblest 
 features of John Wesley's Methodism was the abstinence of bigotry, 
 of sectarian rivalry, of ecclesiastical animosity. His catholicity was 
 limited to no church and no creed. I think one of the most 
 typical instances of this in his later life is to be found in the anec- 
 dote that, on All Saints' Day, one of the feasts of the Church which 
 he always reverently observed, he mounted the pulpit and, in 
 solemn silence, in meditation, in prayer, to the astonishment of his 
 congregation, he remained for several minutes. Then, as giving 
 expression to the thoughts that had passed through his mind, he 
 gave out that noble lyric of his brother's which sums up the Com- 
 munion of Saints in the words : 
 
 ' Come let us join our friends above 
 That have obtained the prize, 
 * * * * * 
 
 One family we dwell in Him, 
 One Church above, beneath, 
 Though now divided by the stream, 
 The narrow stream of death.' 
 
 38
 
 594 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " High churchman as he no doubt originally was, declaring as he 
 did within two years of his death that he had never varied in any 
 point of doctrine from the church in which he lived and in which 
 he died he held out the right hand of fellowship to all who feared 
 God and worked for righteousness. Read his wonderful com- 
 ment on the teachings of the Great Emperor Antoninus ; read his 
 prediction that that enlightened heathen would be among those 
 who sit down in that Kingdom of God with Abraham, Isaac and 
 Jacob, when many professing Christians will be shut out. I 
 am old enough to remember that one of the favourite domestic 
 books of devotion of the former Methodists was John Wesley's 
 abridgement of the work of the Roman Catholic Saint, Thomas 
 a Kempis. He held out the right hand of fellowship again to 
 orthodox and heterodox nonconformists. He declared that Metho- 
 dism required of its members no conformity either of opinion or 
 mode of worship ; one thing only was required, namely, to fear God 
 and to work righteousness. I think his last definition of the test 
 of admission into the Methodist Society was this : ' Is the man a 
 believer in the Lord Jesus Christ ? Is his life suitable to his pro- 
 fession ? ' He hated controversy although he was continually 
 involved in a great deal of it. And we claim to-day to be his true 
 and faithful followers. If we inherit but the smallest portion of 
 his spirit, we shall claim to be ' the friends of all, and the enemies 
 of none.' His conflict was with vice, with ignorance, with in- 
 temperance, and with sin. His motive and his aim were to destroy 
 the works of the Devil, and all who are fighting that battle no 
 matter what uniform they wear are the comrades of ' the people 
 called Methodists.' " 
 
 Much has been written and said about what my father did 
 for Methodism, but I should like to add something about what 
 Methodism did for him. I have already said that his love for 
 Methodism was that of a son for a mother, and Methodism was 
 most truly a spiritual mother to him. The debt to motherhood 
 can never be reckoned up, and therefore we can but hint at what 
 Henry Fowler owed to Methodism. That he was cradled in it, 
 brought up in it, impressed by it in the impressionable days of 
 youth with a stamp which even fourscore years could not blur
 
 " What does Fowler say ? " 595 
 
 or efface, is yet but a portion of the influence which it exercised 
 upon his whole being. The influence of motherhood lies not only 
 in the guiding, training, teaching, controlling, but in a far closer 
 tie. The nature of the mother is infused into the spirit of the son, 
 and it was this more subtle bond, this merging of the Methodist 
 type of religion with the man's characteristic religion, to which my 
 father owed far more than words can ever picture or even imagin- 
 ings can reach. 
 
 What he was as this mother's son we know. What he would 
 have been had other spiritual parentage directed his character, 
 we can only guess ; but this I think is clear, that Methodism 
 supplied to him just those ingredients which the natural man lacked, 
 and so helped to make far more perfect the whole. There is in all 
 natures a germ of religion ; there is in many natures a genius for 
 religion. I believe that my father was one of the latter, and that, 
 to whatever church he belonged, he would still have been a religious 
 man ; but I also believe that much of the freshness and strength 
 of his soul life, its mellowness, and its simplicity, he owed to his 
 inheritance of Methodism. Had Henry Fowler been born and 
 bred in an established church the strong response in his nature 
 to establishment might have hardened in Erastianism. His in- 
 stinct for ceremonial might have grown into formalism ; the Church 
 life might have been lost in the State life, and he might have been 
 only a statesman on the first day of the week as well as on the 
 other six. But Methodism does not so train her sons. She is so 
 unconventional, so home-like, so simple, so informal. She gathers 
 her children about her, instead of marshalling her 'forces, or teach- 
 ing her senators wisdom. And it often struck me how, whatever 
 had been the history of the week however great its work, or 
 momentous its interest, with whomsoever he had been brought into 
 contact of the greatest of the land, yet my father came back to his 
 Sunday services with a simplicity, a confidence, and a content- 
 ment which only can be found at home. The son of distinction 
 is ever a boy to his mother, and Henry Fowler always brought, 
 on Sundays, to his Methodist chapel, the faith of a little child. 
 
 By nature he was a reserved man. A reserved religion might 
 have congealed that reserve into a dumbness about holy things. 
 
 38*
 
 596 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 But Methodism is not reserved. She speaks quite freely and natur- 
 ally, and so he learned from her to let his eloquence beautify the 
 regions of the spirit, as well as the tracts of the intellect and mind. 
 By nature Henry Fowler was never of the " hail-fellow-well-met " 
 type. Might not his aloofness have cramped his character if the 
 blessed brotherliness of Methodism had not swept over it with a 
 flood of fellow-feeling for all the people who were called by that 
 name ? 
 
 He was a serious man a Puritan by birth, but to Methodism he 
 owed his sense of humour which leavens so many of the lumps of 
 life. He even went so far as to say that to have a perfect sense 
 of humour you must have a drop of Methodist blood in your 
 veins. But at any rate he appreciated that very subtle and 
 peculiar nonconformist humour, which is especially to be found 
 among Methodists and their descendants. 
 
 He was also an intensely practical man, and a man who would 
 naturally have gauged effort by its results. Had he never been 
 led along any other way than the high road of utilitarianism, he 
 might have become encrusted by a commercialism which looked 
 no higher than common sense and won no further than worldly 
 success. But Methodism enfolded him with her ideals, with her 
 radiant unworldliness, with her practical mysticism, and his whole 
 nature was elevated and illuminated and purified ; so that, clear 
 through all his practical administration, glowed the higher appeal 
 to what is right, and noble, and true. Loud through all his speeches, 
 and they were many, rang the tone that makes for righteousness, 
 and the truth that touches the heart. 
 
 Such were some of the benefits which Methodism bestowed 
 upon her son. But there was still something above and beyond 
 all these. It was in Methodism that Henry Fowler's spiritual life 
 was born, nurtured, and developed. It was in her that he 
 found " a ladder set up on earth, and the top of it reached to 
 heaven ; " it was to her that he owed his familiarity with holy 
 things his highest, best and most immortal interests, and of her 
 he could most surely have testified before he passed beyond her 
 portals, " This is none other but the House of God, and this is 
 the Gate of Heaven."
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE 
 " The glory of children are their fathers." Proverbs of Solomon. 
 
 " He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 " How well I know what I mean to do 
 
 When the long dark autumn evenings come 
 I shall be found by the fire, suppose, 
 O'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age ; 
 While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, 
 And I turn the page, and I turn the page." 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 A LTHOUGH my father derived deep interest and much en- 
 -f~V joyment both from public and from social life, though he 
 loved his Church and gloried in her service, yet I think it was 
 in his domestic life that he found his truest happiness. His 
 devotion to Woodthorne amounted almost to a passion, though 
 it was a house which he had built in his earlier days, and one 
 perhaps hardly suited to the position which he made for himself 
 later. It would have shown no snobbishness on his part, had he 
 felt that he had outgrown the home of his thirties, and that he 
 wanted a larger and more imposing dwelling-place. But he never 
 did. He loved every stick and stone in the place ; and always 
 returned to it after a short or a long absence with renewed 
 delight. 
 
 But that was one of his finest characteristics. He never out- 
 grew anything or anybody. The ties that he formed as a young 
 man with his way to make in the world, were the ties that held 
 him as a Cabinet Minister : the house that he built as a rising 
 solicitor, was the home that he loved after he became a peer. 
 
 597
 
 598 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 One of the most pathetic things in the last weeks of his life after 
 his mind had already become clouded by the approaching shadow, 
 and he no longer recognized his surroundings was his constant cry, 
 " I want to go to my own home ; I want to go to Woodthorne ! " 
 
 Not that he ever imagined or pretended it to be different from 
 what it was. He never imagined, or pretended, anything. He 
 loved Woodthorne as a home ; but he never thought of it as a 
 " place." When he was first raised to the peerage, and had not 
 yet selected a title, many of the newspapers suggested that he 
 might take the title of Lord Woodthorne. " Lord Woodthorne, 
 indeed," he exclaimed, " what nonsense! I'd as soon call myself 
 Lord Darlington Street." (It was in Darlington Street that his 
 offices were situated.) 
 
 As he was bound up in the home, so the home was bound up 
 in him. He was the mainspring and the centre of everything, 
 and every arrangement was made with reference to his wishes 
 and convenience. My mother certainly had no life, and no interests, 
 apart from his ; and if we, in the days of our youth, had as young 
 people always will have certain pleasures and interests of our 
 own, we always regarded these pleasures and interests, in spite 
 of their intrinsic innocence, as stolen waters and forbidden fruits, 
 and deprecated (and perhaps enjoyed) them accordingly. 
 
 Not that my father was in the remotest degree selfish ; he 
 was one of the most unselfish men I ever met ; but it never occurred 
 to him that the things which absorbed and satisfied him could 
 fail to absorb and satisfy a younger generation. He desired above 
 all things to make his children happy ; but happy in his way 
 and not in their own. He would gladly go without anything he 
 valued in order to give it to us ; yet he never understood that we 
 should frequently prefer something which seemed utterly value- 
 less to him. But, subject to these limitations, he was a most indul- 
 gent father. As my sister once laughingly said : " Father always 
 let us have his own way, and gave us everything he wanted." 
 
 All this was a source of the greatest amusement to us and 
 to him, too, when we pointed out to him how funny he was. It 
 used always to be a great joke amongst us that when anything 
 had disagreed with him, we were expected to take invalid diet ;
 
 Domestic Life 599 
 
 and when he was tired after a hard week in the House of Commons, 
 we were begged to indulge in a quiet and restful week-end. 
 
 But although we were only permitted such pleasures as would 
 recommend themselves to a middle-aged statesman, ours was 
 nevertheless a very merry home. We laughed at everything and 
 everybody especially at our father and nobody enjoyed such 
 laughter more than he did. I never knew anyone who so thoroughly 
 appreciated a joke against himself as did he ; he fairly revelled 
 in it ; and when his children were the perpetrators, his delight 
 was unbounded. As my brother once said : " We have had many 
 jokes, as well as most other things, at father's expense." 
 
 My father had a deep-rooted theory that a man must be a priest 
 as well as a king in his own household ; and whatever ministers 
 of religion might be present, he always insisted at home on saying 
 grace, and reading family prayers, himself. And he invariably 
 did read them ; I never knew him offer up an extempore petition. 
 Although frequently indulging in theological discussions, he never 
 " preached," even to his own family. With regard to that life 
 of the Spirit which few laymen show or share, and the strength 
 of which none can gauge, and few can guess, all that we can say of 
 it is that it was there. Of that, all who came into contact with 
 my father, are perfectly sure. He was very reserved in religious 
 matters, and in that he differed from many of his Church, but it 
 was perfectly plain to all who knew him that he was essentially 
 a religious man. A side light here and there might reveal some 
 glimpses of it, but the man himself, as he lived, as he acted, as he 
 thought and as he spoke, was the testimony of that faith in God 
 and obedience to Him, which my father practised so much louder 
 than he preached. 
 
 When Dr. Benson was Archbishop of Canterbury he wrote this 
 letter to my father : 
 
 " Lambeth Palace, 
 
 " ii June, 1892. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 " Those who were present at the Standing Committee 
 of the House of Commons tell me how much the discussion 
 of the Discipline Bill owed to your firm and just opposition
 
 600 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to obstruction, and to your clear principle that the best, 
 and not the worst, ought to be done with it, and for it. 
 
 " Of course I know that the sense of duty which actuated 
 you is above all thanks, but I hope that you will not consider 
 that I am taking an improper liberty if I warmly acknowledge 
 its effectual working, and say how much I feel these acts of 
 fairness, when we do not see all things in the same light. 
 
 " The spirit which you have shown is the spirit which I pray 
 may be the ruling spirit in all our counsels and on all sides. 
 " Believe me to be, with great respect, 
 " Your very faithful servant, 
 
 " EDWARD CANTUAR." 
 
 " I feel," writes the present Archbishop of Canterbury to me, 
 " that your father's life is one which may give a helpful stimulus 
 to many men in many fields of work. I was myself brought into 
 fairly close association with him in three at least of the offices 
 which he held. I have a vivid recollection of his helpfulness in 
 regard to questions about Poor Law chaplains, when he was at 
 the Local Government Board. He took, as always, a large view 
 of the problem and its difficulties, and I think it is to him that we 
 owe certain definite improvements in the status of the chaplains 
 and in the rules about their tenure of office. Again, I had of 
 course to take counsel with him frequently when he was Secretary 
 of State for India. No one could fail to be impressed by the pene- 
 trating view which he took of the responsibilities belonging to that 
 great office, and I found him the wisest and best of counsellors. It 
 happened also that, when he was Chancellor of the Duchy of 
 Lancaster, I had repeatedly to discuss with him certain official 
 questions, and, again, he left upon my mind a sense of thankful- 
 ness that we had, among our leading men, one who was able to 
 bring to bear upon duties, great or small, the force wielded by a 
 statesman who, among the complexities of political and official 
 work, can preserve a quiet stability of Christian purpose. I 
 mention these things because I think you may be glad yourself 
 
 to have my little testimony. . . . 
 
 " I am yours very truly, 
 
 " RANDALL CANTUAR."
 
 Domestic Life 601 
 
 I have also the following letter from the Bishop of London : 
 
 " London House, 
 
 " St. James's Square, 
 
 " December 5th, 1911. 
 " DEAR MRS. HAMILTON, 
 
 " The impression that your father's life left upon my 
 mind is that he was one of the most broad-minded, large- 
 hearted men I have ever met. He always seemed to me to 
 be a true man of God, and one who could sympathize with all 
 who tried to love and serve God, even if they showed their 
 devotion in a way very different from his own. I cannot 
 tell you how much I miss him as a personal friend, and as 
 a power for good in the Diocese. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " A. F. LONDON." 
 
 And Dr. Talbot, the Bishop of Winchester, then Bishop of South- 
 wark, also says of him : 
 
 " I have a very distinct recollection of one conversation 
 standing by a chimney-piece after dinner at the time of the 
 Education controversy. He impressed me by the grave and 
 serious way in which he looked at the matter, and made it 
 plain that the real interest of religion was greater and deeper 
 to him than any denominational advantage. I should have 
 felt certain that, at any moment when mutual conciliation 
 had been possible, he would have been one of those who would 
 have striven hard for peace, and, alike by his personality and 
 by the respect that all men bore him, would have been a 
 mighty asset in its scale." 
 
 This testimony, coming as it does, from four great dignitaries 
 of the Church of England, whom my father knew in public rather 
 than in his personal religious life, shows the reality of that atmo- 
 sphere of religion in which he always lived whether in public or 
 private. The life of the Spirit beat strong through all his active, 
 and what men would call, his secular life. And it was no trick of
 
 602 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 eloquence, no harmony of oratory, but the living power of a good 
 man which weighted his words with that convincing force which 
 all men felt who heard him speak. 
 
 In his early family life my father was somewhat awkward. 
 With all children he was helpless, and with his own no less than 
 others. He would metaphorically poke at and prod a child with 
 his umbrella for some sign of intelligence, which it consequently 
 never showed, but, in its childish way, unconsciously pitied him 
 for not possessing. A little girl was once sent to see him as a 
 celebrity ; and afterwards, when her parents questioned her as to 
 what he had said, she answered simply : " He only telled me one 
 thing, and that was a thing I knewed before." Which seemed 
 unfortunate, considering the respective sizes of his store of know- 
 ledge and hers ; but my father never could gauge, nor adapt him- 
 self, to the mind of a child ; he always credited it with more or 
 less intelligence than it possessed. 
 
 With regard to his own children, of whom there were three 
 Ellen Thorneycroft, Edith Henrietta, and Henry Ernest he was 
 constantly plucking them up by the roots to see how they were 
 growing ; and then trying to stimulate them to grow more quickly. 
 He was associated in their minds, from their remotest infancy, 
 with intellectual effort. One of my earliest recollections is repeat- 
 ing pages of The Fair child Family to him on a Sunday at tea- 
 time ; and the whole history of Mrs. Howard (as given in that 
 priceless work) without a wrong word. But I do not remember 
 his ever playing with us at any game, save the one great game 
 of conversation, of which he never tired. He used to say : " Now 
 talk to me, and amuse me." And we were trained to talk to him 
 and amuse him all our lives. Even when we were quite little we 
 were ordered to talk, as most other children are ordered to be 
 quiet ; which accounts, perhaps, for the fact that had Coriolanus 
 lived in our time he would never have found his " gracious 
 silence " in the Fowler family. 
 
 But while my father loved to be talked to, he hated to be bored ; 
 and I must candidly confess did not always succeed in con- 
 cealing this fact.
 
 Domestic Life 603 
 
 Perhaps one of the most amusing of his domestic characteristics 
 was his authority ; at least we, his loyal subjects, found it so. 
 His language was ever more forceful than the feeling it expressed ; 
 and he was constantly bringing to the front his verbal artillery 
 to slay the most insignificant butterflies. Thus strangers were 
 sometimes frightened of him ; but we, who knew him, never were. 
 His orders in the home were always stern and peremptory ; but 
 no one was more surprised than he was when they were obeyed ! 
 One morning, not long before my sister's wedding, when presents 
 came pouring in apace, he laid down the law most emphatically 
 that no parcels were to be opened until after breakfast ; indeed 
 the penalty was to be almost capital if they were. For some 
 unknown reason, my sister, contrary to her custom, implicitly 
 obeyed him, and sat down at once to her breakfast, leaving all 
 her parcels unopened ; when shortly a pitiful appeal was heard 
 from my father : " What ! am I not to be allowed to see any of 
 your presents before I leave the table ? What have I done that 
 everything should be kept secret from me ? " He always greatly 
 enjoyed the after-telling of this story against himself. 
 
 As an instance of the disproportionate strength of his language, 
 once on detecting my sister in a slight exaggeration he told her 
 that she was " the most inaccurate woman the Almighty had ever 
 made." She cheerfully replied that she was glad to be a master- 
 piece in any department of creation. 
 
 With servants he was just the same ; and I remember my 
 mother's maid once saying to her about a new butler : " He is 
 getting on much better, my lady ; you see, he is learning not to 
 take any notice of what Sir Henry says." 
 
 On another occasion my father's indignation was aroused 
 (and justly so) by coming into his library one night after dinner 
 to find our old nurse (who had been with us from our babyhood), 
 sitting in his favourite chair and reading his Times. After hearing 
 him express himself with his usual volubility, upon the liberty she 
 had taken, she said : " You are quite right, Sir Henry ; I ought 
 to have come in earlier, and then I could have finished the papers 
 without being disturbed." 
 
 We had an ancient gardener, also, of about thirty years'
 
 604 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 standing, whom my father dismissed nearly every week. But 
 the old man would follow him all over the garden, discussing 
 matters of Church and State (he was an ardent Churchman and a 
 strong Tory), and leaving his master's orders of dismissal to take 
 care of themselves. Yet with all his servants this master was very 
 popular. 
 
 My father's joy in his family never fully blossomed until they 
 began to "do things " ; and my sister's literary success was, I 
 believe, dearer to his heart than any success of his own. His 
 delight in Concerning Isabel Carnaby was twofold ; not only did 
 it bound into a full-blown success running into a sale of a quarter 
 of a million copies but it was a fair and true picture of the old- 
 world Methodism such as his soul loved ; and many looked upon 
 that picture who had never seen any correct illustrations of 
 Methodism before. Concerning Isabel Carnaby united the two 
 worlds that were dearest to my father's heart the political circle 
 and the Methodist circuit ; and it was a Fowler who joined them 
 together. The Fowler traditions, the Fowler humour, the Fowler 
 way of looking at things, and of talking, and thinking, were all 
 so familiar to him as to make the book almost a family hand- 
 book.; and his pride in it was as great as any mother's in 
 her first-born son. When my sister, at the instigation of Sir 
 William Robertson Nicoll (who has the reputation of knowing by 
 instinct what people can do, and of setting them to do it), wrote 
 this, her first novel, she read the MS. aloud to her family before 
 delivering it into the publisher's hands : and my father's imme- 
 diate enthusiasm over it knew no bounds. She was immensely 
 surprised at this ; partly because she did not think much of her 
 literary effort herself, and partly because it was contrary to my 
 father's custom to praise his children before their faces. In spite 
 of his usual inclination to take a pessimistic view of any new 
 venture, he predicted from that moment that Isabel Carnaby 
 would be a great success ; and the subsequent career of the book, 
 though a surprise to its author, was none to its author's father. 
 Her subsequent novels and she wrote about one per annum for 
 the next four or five years were to him sources of consuming 
 interest. He distracted her with the most detrimental advice,
 
 Domestic Life 605 
 
 he hindered her with most hampering help, he erased her best bits 
 and suggested artistic impossibilities ; and then, when the book 
 was at last in print and past reform, he took it to his heart, 
 and crowed over it, and crooned over it, as a mother over her 
 babe. 
 
 My father was a singularly guileless man. It was amazing that 
 he could have lived so long and yet learned so little about the 
 seamy side of life. To believe in evil was the last thing he did 
 not, as is more usual, the first. Tales against people's reputa- 
 tions he never accepted ; and if belief was forced upon him against 
 his will, then he put it away from him and did not refer to the 
 subject again. Evil-speaking was never heard in his presence, 
 since it neither interested nor amused him ; and though there 
 was plenty of sharp-shooting, the shot was always too small to 
 wound. One of his most frequently enforced rules was : " Talk 
 about things and not about people." The following instance of 
 his innocence was often quoted with a laugh at his expense. 
 
 One day my sister and I were spectators of a very thrilling 
 scene in Kensington Gardens. A beautifully-dressed woman 
 met a smart-looking man, and they were evidently in deep waters. 
 The woman sat down in a chair and began to weep bitterly, while 
 the man, with wild anguish, knelt at her feet and literally covered 
 the hem of her dress with kisses. They were utterly oblivious to 
 onlookers ; indeed, a small butcher's-boy stood close to them open- 
 mouthed, and they took not the slightest notice of him. Once or 
 twice the lady rose from her chair as if to walk away, and the 
 man drew her back with passionate caresses. It was a most 
 unusual occurrence. When we got home we recounted the incident 
 to my father. " Dear me ! It must have been his wife," was his 
 exquisite comment. And he had no idea that he was being funny. 
 
 It is worthy of note that my father read a certain novel, which 
 had obtained widespread notoriety by its suggestiveness, from 
 beginning to end without detecting one single innuendo. He 
 thought it a very nice story, and recommended it cheerfully to 
 several girls. 
 
 I do not know whether it was characteristic of their age or of 
 themselves, but certainly it would be difficult to find a school-girl
 
 606 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 nowadays who knew so little, as did both my parents, of the 
 ways of the transgressors. 
 
 My father's home-life was ruled by routine. When at Wood- 
 thorne he breakfasted punctually at a quarter before nine ; at ten 
 o'clock he drove to Wolverhampton, come rain come shine, in 
 an open carriage of his own invention. He was delighted with 
 this carriage from the utilitarian point of view the artistic he 
 never reckoned with. It contained four large seats close to the 
 ground, as he hated high steps up into a carriage. It had an 
 enormously high box-seat, partly to remove the coachman out of 
 hearing, and partly to enable the vehicle to be drawn by one of 
 the seven teen-hands horses he always had. It possessed a 
 huge hood, which far overlapped the two seats it was meant to 
 cover, and a very straight high back, so that you could 
 lean back without leaning back at all. It was certainly 
 comfortable to sit in, but to look at ! He was fond of saying 
 about ugly houses : " We do not live outside our houses, we 
 live inside them." And he sat inside his carriage! Long after 
 his active professional life had concluded, he retained his old 
 rooms in Wolverhampton, and in them he spent the main part 
 of the day. His luncheon consisted of two biscuits and a 
 penny bun of a certain kind, which a clerk purchased for him. 
 One day, so it was told me by his private secretary there, a new 
 clerk bought a wrong make of bun which had sugar on, and there 
 was no time to rectify the mistake. His bell for lunch rang, and 
 consternation prevailed. No one dared confront him with a 
 sugar-crusted bun ! In despair an intelligent understrapper pro- 
 duced the office duster, and dusted the bun of its unseemly cover- 
 ing. It passed muster, no comment was made, and the clerks 
 breathed again ! He always came home in time for tea, and 
 from five o'clock to at least eleven, with a bare hour's interval for 
 dinner, he read uninterruptedly. Ah 1 the newspapers and reviews, 
 many new books as they were published, and many old ones, too. 
 Talking was not encouraged in the evenings, and yet he liked us 
 all to sit and read with him. Fortunately we were such a book- 
 loving family that this was not as great a hardship to the younger 
 members as it might have been.
 
 Domestic Life 607 
 
 The entire absence of all interest in physical and outdoor 
 life was a lack in our home, though I do not think he himself ever 
 felt it to be so. He hated games and sport of all kinds, nor did 
 he understand the healthy love of any physical exercise. He had 
 no love of the country, and no appreciation of any but stereotyped 
 beauty. His favourite environment was London, and his love 
 of London was not entirely confined to Westminster, and White- 
 hall, though in a great measure. The power of association and 
 of history was strong in him. He loved the City, and knew it 
 from every possible standpoint; and the Temple, with its law- 
 laden atmosphere, was specially attractive to him. 
 
 When he visited Scotland he did so with a hidden protest 
 in his heart against shooting, fishing, deer-stalking and golf all 
 a deplorable waste of time, energy and money ! Once when on our 
 way to St. Andrews a young revivalist came up to our carriage 
 at Kirkcudbright station with an offer of some tract entitled 
 The Gospel Message. 
 
 " Certainly not," replied my father vehemently. " It is a 
 subject in which I take no interest." 
 
 The young man looked amazed, but not so amazed as my sister 
 and I did. 
 
 " Let me leave you a copy ? " he pleaded. 
 
 " I would not look at it," my father persisted. 
 
 " Then you, madam ? " And the young man, pale with sorrow, 
 turned to my mother. 
 
 " No, thank you," she firmly replied. 
 
 The missioner finally offered a copy of the rejected tract to my 
 sister, who fortunately accepted it, and the train moved on. 
 
 " What on earth did you mean by rejecting the Gospel 
 Message ?" we inquired with much curiosity. 
 
 " The what ? " they almost shrieked. " We thought the young 
 man said the Golf Messenger!" 
 
 How we laughed, and how terribly upset both our parents were 
 at having (apparently) rejected revealed Truth ! My mother took 
 the tract from my sister and read every word of it ; and after- 
 wards wanted to put a notice in the " Agony Columns " of 
 the Kirkcudbright local paper, explaining her error. This we
 
 608 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 prevented her from doing ; but on our way home from St. Andrews, 
 some weeks later, she literally hung out of the carriage window at 
 Kirkcudbright station, in the hope that she might see that young 
 missioner again. But she never did. After a time my father 
 was able to see some humour in the incident ; but not my mother. 
 To her it was always a dark and lurid memory. 
 
 My father's was a very absorbing personality, and he kept 
 the minds of all those about him at concert-pitch. It was im- 
 possible, in his company, to unbend the mental bow or to stand 
 at ease : there was a keenness and alertness about him which was 
 infectious, even if at times a little exhausting. Unconsciously 
 to himself his strong personality dominated the whole household, 
 and coloured everything in it. He was not at all a strict father 
 or master, and as has been seen he was not always obeyed in 
 'the letter. But he invariably was in the spirit. His unspoken 
 word was law to children and servants alike, by right of sheer force 
 of character. And this in small things quite as much as in great. 
 After we were married and had homes of our own, it took us quite 
 a long time to realize that open windows were compatible with 
 righteousness ; or that it was possible to spend an evening at home 
 otherwise than in reading, and yet be without reproach. 
 
 But though he might be a strain upon the intellect, he was not 
 at all a strain upon the heart. He was one of those satisfactory 
 people who, if they are not well to-day, are always better to- 
 morrow. Now my mother was the exact opposite of this. She 
 was a strain upon the heart-strings, but never upon anything else. 
 She was never better to-morrow she was always worse. When 
 he caught a cold it never went down to his chest ; hers always 
 did. After the heaviest week's work in London he came home 
 with a fresh-blown colour as if he had been by the sea, and nothing 
 had ever ailed him when away. Seeing that it was our household 
 rule to dine early on a Sunday, he had a weekly attack of indi- 
 gestion as a protest against suppers, though, as a matter of fact, 
 it was always a hot dinner that was served at eight-thirty on 
 Sunday evenings, but it was entitled supper, and was conse- 
 quently more orthodox and less digestible. He had a great dread 
 of medicines, and a lurking fear of poison in them all. He never
 
 Domestic Life 609 
 
 took a full dose of anything prescribed, in case some pernicious 
 drug should be threatening him therein ; and usually after the 
 first dose he kept it on a table in his dressing-room until he felt 
 better, which he invariably did without its aid. He was physically 
 extremely nervous, but mentally not so at all, nor had he any 
 power of dealing with those who were the latter. Once a member 
 of his family was very nervous about the way her cold was develop- 
 ing dreading chest complications. " I have rather a sharp pain 
 when I breathe," she said anxiously, pleading for comfort which, 
 of course, my mother provided ; but before she had time to do 
 so, he cheerfully remarked : " I expect it's just a touch of inflam- 
 mation of the lungs." 
 
 The old Puritan strain was strong in his blood, and many of his 
 characteristics were born of that. He had a great dread of boast- 
 fulness, and a lurking belief in the virtue of discomfort and self- 
 depreciation. He did not know himself the least as he was, and 
 when we psychically dished him up as it were, for his own benefit, 
 he always enjoyed the recipe enormously, but protested that we 
 were entirely wrong in all the ingredients. One of his theories 
 was how much he would have liked to have kept cows and had a 
 model dairy ! A less bucolic man no one could imagine, and as he 
 never drank milk, we often wondered what he thought when he 
 arrived at that conclusion. He never owned to being an orator, 
 but whether this was from Puritanical or from natural modesty, 
 I am not sure. Still, the description he once gave of his method 
 of speaking showed that he trusted to his powers of oratory. " I 
 do not write my speeches," he said. " My plan is to saturate my 
 mind with the facts and their verification. I trust that the words 
 will come at the right moment." When asked for any suggestions 
 for young speakers, he offered this characteristic advice : " Prac- 
 tise, practise, practise, and always be sure of your facts ! " 
 
 He always reproved us for speaking of our ability to do anything. 
 " Leave that for others to say," he would old-fashionedly declare. 
 
 My father's good qualities were all of a large make, and what- 
 ever he lacked was small and trifling. Consequently he was at his 
 best among big claims, great demands, strenuous effort. He would 
 face a crisis]]or catastrophe calmly, but an overturned coffee-cup 
 
 39
 
 610 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 filled him with despair. He could cover an injury with sublime 
 forgiveness, and a still more sublime forgetfulness, but he was 
 impatient over little vexations. He could lead and manage men, 
 but he would drive a schoolboy into defiance. He would sway 
 a multitude, but he could not control a child. And even socially, 
 in his dealings with people, he never responded except to what he 
 unconsciously felt was a demand worthy of his supply. To 
 people who did not interest him he was so indifferent, that they 
 never realized the other Henry Fowler, which was his true and 
 larger self. 
 
 My father had the greatest possible dread of haste or precipi- 
 tancy. He had a belief in the old-fashioned prescription to 
 " sleep over a thing," before making up his mind. He had no 
 sympathy with hasty or impatient people. " Don't be in a 
 hurry," he would say. And a favourite motto of his was : " When 
 in doubt, do nothing." Another saying which I always associate 
 with him is : " The troubles of to-day are the trifles of to-morrow." 
 
 At a public meeting in Wolverhampton, at the time of the 
 Boer War, one of the speakers made some remarkable statements, 
 which were directly contrary to my father's Imperialistic views. 
 He was not at the meeting, but on the following morning Mr. C. 
 N. Wright told him what had been said. " The man must be a 
 fool," he replied. Mr. Wright explained that perhaps the speaker 
 had not meant all he said, as he spoke exceedingly quickly and 
 had not time to weigh his words. " Then he is a fool," was the 
 caustic reply. 
 
 Mr. Wright, who was articled to the firm of Fowler and Langley, 
 remembers how, when he had passed all his examinations, and had 
 qualified as a solicitor, he was sent for by Mr. Fowler (as he was 
 then), who told him that he was going to give him some advice. 
 And he went on to say : 
 
 " In the first place, don't think you have learnt all there is to 
 learn. You have done well in your examinations, and we may take 
 it that now you are not behind other young men of the same age ; 
 but take care that those who are behind you now are not in front 
 of you when you are twenty-five or thirty. You must be learning 
 all the time.
 
 Domestic Life 611 
 
 " Next, don't spend your leisure time in public billiard-rooms 
 and hotel smoke-rooms. I know that a great many young men 
 do, but it is no place for you. No one will think any better of 
 you because they see you there, and a great many will think 
 worse, and will not give you their confidence. If you have nothing 
 better to do, stay at home and read. 
 
 " Then don't be in a hurry to get married. Remember that 
 what a young man in a profession has to offer a wife is generally 
 not money, but position ; wait till you know what position you 
 can offer. 
 
 " And, last of all and this is not on a par with the other points, 
 but more what you may perhaps think a fad of my own if you 
 have not already begun to smoke, don't begin. I don't like to 
 see a young man making himself into a chimney. It is a nasty 
 habit and a very expensive one." 
 
 And yet we often regretted that my father himself did not 
 indulge in the habit he so drastically and so characteristically con- 
 demned. In some ways it might have been a great advantage 
 to him. It was a lack that he had no avenue of diversion through 
 the senses no power of physical enjoyment for when his almost 
 indefatigable brain was tired there was no other possible resource. 
 
 The following impression of him at home is written from such 
 an entirely different standpoint from our own, that it is of interest 
 in showing how he struck one who was a complete stranger to him 
 as well as to his environment and country, though connected with 
 him by ties of blood. His half-brother had many years ago 
 settled in Canada, as a Wesleyan minister, and then he had married 
 and brought up a son and daughter neither of whom my father 
 had ever seen. The daughter came on a visit to England and the 
 Continent and stayed with us during the former. She sends me 
 these recollections : 
 
 " My own personal impressions of my uncle may be valu- 
 able if for no other reason than that they view him from 
 a Canadian's standpoint. You will no doubt remember 
 that I first met him at luncheon in your London house. 
 Your home-life was so different from any that could be 
 
 39*
 
 612 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 possibly lived in the Parsonage, that it somewhat over- 
 awed the little Canadian girl, and although your reception 
 had been of cousinly cordiality, yet I awaited the coming of 
 my uncle with much trepidation. His greeting was quiet, 
 but kindness itself. His quiet demeanour, I soon realized, 
 sprang from an innate heartsomeness that sought to put 
 everyone at ease in his presence ; nevertheless I was conscious 
 he was making a study of me, and knew the question : ' Is 
 she, or is she not, a Fowler ? ' was uppermost, and the conclu- 
 sion reached was favourable to the shy stranger. Later, 
 when I visited Woodthorne, all my ideals of a typical English 
 home were realized. My uncle's love of home and family was 
 a warm light that was not hidden under a bushel, but shone 
 out so as to be visible to every one bidden to partake of his 
 hospitality ; his deference to his beloved wife's opinion came 
 to the surface in many ways that he did not even suspect 
 himself. My plans of journeying did not always stand 
 approved by him. On one occasion my aunt said entre 
 nous : ' Where do you want to go, May ? You know I will 
 bring your uncle round to your plan.' And she did. 
 
 " His love for his family impressed everyone who crossed 
 his threshold. I will never forget my uncle among his books. 
 His library impressed me as being his sanctum sanctorum. 
 His admiration for the achievements of Earth's Greatest was 
 shown by his love of biography. He possessed the trait of 
 all really great characters which is wont to be labelled un- 
 ostentation this impressed me to a marked degree, as also did 
 another trait that stood out in striking contrast, namely, 
 that he was absolutely sure of the righteousness of his convic- 
 tions. He had evidently travelled so carefully over the ground 
 that led to them that his conclusions remained unshaken. 
 
 ' You, who were always accustomed to his conversation, 
 may not have realized its brilliancy. For this reason the 
 dinner-hours spent around his board linger with me. 
 
 " In Canada there exists a strong suspicion that many 
 even extraordinary Englishmen do not understand the length, 
 breadth and height of our marvellous country. The grasp
 
 Domestic Life 613 
 
 he had of Canadian affairs was a constant surprise to me. 
 On my expressing a desire to visit the Lake region of England 
 my uncle said : ' What are our lakes to your great water 
 stretches ? ' He made most minute inquiries as to the nature 
 and number of our cereals. His many questions on many 
 subjects revealing his exact knowledge of our dominion. 
 
 " He wrote in March, 1906 : ' Everyone who goes to Canada 
 seems full of the greatness and prospects for the future of 
 your country.' 
 
 " The position taken by him on the union of the Canadian 
 Methodist and Presbyterian Church is directly opposite to that 
 taken by the great men from across the Atlantic who were 
 delegates to the Toronto Ecumenical Conference. They 
 deplored that such an action was being contemplated, but he, 
 with his wider vision of world economics as they touch the 
 conservatism of men and means, to the furtherance of the 
 petition ' Thy kingdom come ! ' wrote as early as 1909 : 
 " I am interested in the negotiations with the Presbyterians, 
 and hope that they may be successful.' Although he led an 
 absorbing life to the highest degree, that might have legiti- 
 mately excused him from many details, he never forgot the 
 welfare of the wife and children of his only brother across 
 the seas whom, with one exception, he had never seen. 
 
 " My admiration for my beloved uncle was unbounded ; 
 his ability, kindness, courtly bearing, veneration for all that 
 was noble and good, won for him a place in my affections 
 which time and absence were not able to efface. His character 
 stood out pre-eminently ; and to the end of his life he never 
 disappointed me." 
 
 The strength of my father's family affection showed itself per- 
 haps more distinctly to the members of it who stood at a distance 
 than to us who stood too near to discern details of a picture of 
 which we ourselves formed a part. But it is quite true that he 
 was possessed of a loyalty to, and love for his own people, which 
 never waned. His reception of the girl from Canada was very 
 different from that which he would have accorded an ordinary
 
 614 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 visitor. The tie of blood was one which he never set on one side 
 or outgrew. He had very few near relations living in my life- 
 time, but his devotion to his mother, and his grief at her death, 
 stand out clear and denned in the review of his life. His love for 
 his only sister and his unremitting care for, and kindness to her, 
 could not be overlooked. 
 
 This letter was dated only three days before her death : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " Wolverhampton, 
 
 " September 22nd, 1893. 
 " MY DEAR LOUISA, 
 
 " We were thankful to hear from Lena this morning 
 a slightly more encouraging account of you. I need hardly 
 tell you how deeply we are interested in everything that 
 involves your suffering, and that any alleviation or mitigation 
 in this terrible affliction is a matter of the truest gratitude. 
 I should have come to see you but the doctor assures me 
 that the excitement of such a visit would be most injurious 
 to you. I know that you are having all that the kindest 
 affection can suggest or carry out for your comfort, and I feel 
 sure that He Who has enabled you to bear this heavy burden 
 for so many years with a fortitude and resignation beyond 
 belief will not ' leave you ' in this aggravation of your suffer- 
 ing. Lena is very good in sending us daily such full and 
 clear accounts of your condition that we seem to know 
 exactly how you are and what are the special difficulties with 
 which you have to contend. 
 
 " I came home on Wednesday to-night they present my 
 portrait to me, which is to be hung in the Town Hall. The 
 cholera gives me some anxiety, but I take a hopeful view 
 of the situation, but it requires very constant supervision. 
 Ernest has returned home from Scotland stronger and better 
 than he has been for some years. I send you what I know 
 you feel that you fully possess our united love and most 
 hopeful and prayerful sympathy. 
 
 " Your ever affectionate brother, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER."
 
 Domestic Life 615 
 
 This sister Louisa, the widow of the Rev. W. D. Tyack, had a 
 long and trying rheumatic illness during which her step-children 
 nursed her with true devotion. My father deeply appreciated all 
 that they had done for her, which he was not able to do or pro- 
 vide, and after her death he wrote to the eldest of them : 
 
 " Woodthorne, 
 
 " September 28th, 1893. 
 " MY DEAR LENA, 
 
 " I must take this opportunity of expressing to you 
 and to your sisters our deep and heartfelt appreciation of 
 the unceasing kindness and devotion which you have during 
 these long and suffering years so uniformly displayed. 
 
 " No children, however dutiful and however affectionate, 
 could have shown to any mother more self-sacrificing and un- 
 grudging consideration, attention and sympathy than you 
 have all done. 
 
 " May God bless you for it. I shall not forget it and when- 
 ever I can promote your interest and happiness I will do the 
 best in my power. 
 
 " With our kindest love and sympathy, 
 " I am, yours affectionately, 
 
 " HENRY H. FOWLER." 
 
 This is one of the few letters of his we have which expresses 
 something more than the purely practical or the strictly conven- 
 tional. Another was written to me on the birth of my younger 
 
 son : 
 
 " August 1 9th, 1908. 
 " MY DEAREST EDITH, 
 
 " I know your mother will have expressed to you 
 how pleased and thankful we are that you have got through 
 your trouble and that you and your little boy are going on 
 satisfactorily. We are waiting for further particulars and 
 especially for Gavin's remarks on all the circumstances by 
 which he is now surrounded. 
 
 " God bless you and your children is the constant prayer of 
 your ever affectionate 
 
 " FATHER."
 
 616 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Nothing but the exigencies of birth or death could extract 
 the expression of his real feelings, but that they were strong and 
 warm and deep no one could doubt. 
 
 The following impression is one from his sister's home, written 
 by the eldest of her devoted step-children, who, after her death, 
 were much with my parents in their later years : 
 
 " I first knew Lord Wolverhampton, then Mr. Henry 
 Fowler, after my father's marriage with his only sister, and 
 as I look back my earliest impression is that I was afraid of 
 him. He had a quick, sharp way of speaking, and of brush- 
 ing aside a statement with which he did not agree, which 
 was very alarming to an exceedingly shy girl fresh from 
 school. Even then, however, I admired his character from 
 afar, and though I scarcely dared open my lips in his presence, 
 I always felt that my fear came from my own folly and 
 ignorance as opposed to his wisdom and knowledge. I soon 
 found that much kindness was hidden behind that stern 
 exterior. His sister was very dear to him, and many presents 
 came into our home : they were sent to her, but the Christmas 
 hampers, and the gifts at other times, invariably included 
 much that could only be intended to give pleasure to the 
 children to whom she was so truly a mother, and in whom 
 for her sake he took a friendly interest. 
 
 " It was a great surprise to me when I found that he did 
 not like to know that I was afraid of him, and gradually 
 through long years of unfailing kindness I learned to know 
 him so well, that love did indeed ' cast out fear,' and my 
 intercourse with him became very happy. In those years of 
 growing friendship I discovered many things about him, 
 and in every case the discovery was to his credit ; greater 
 intimacy revealed nothing to lessen my trust and admiration, 
 it only increased my appreciation of a truly great and good 
 man, and deeper understanding explained away what at 
 first may have looked like blemishes. 
 
 " Nothing I think, is more true than that only those really 
 knew him, who saw him constantly and intimately in his
 
 Domestic Life 617 
 
 home, and only those who knew him thus, can justly estimate 
 his character. The rest only saw half the man, for of him it 
 was emphatically true that he had ' two soul-sides,' and the 
 one he ' faced the world with,' had not all the elements of 
 that other one which his inner circle knew and loved. 
 
 " His own people were very much to him, even distant 
 relations whom he had not seen for years were never forgotten ; 
 and not even seeming neglect on their part sufficed to put them 
 out of his life. He was always interested to hear about them, 
 and was ever keenly alive to conversation about old friends 
 and old times. My sisters and I won for ourselves a place in 
 his regard which we greatly valued, but his first interest in us 
 certainly arose out of our relationship to his sister, and was 
 increased and established by our affection for her. 
 
 " He had a very fair mind, not only in public affairs, but 
 also in private life, he liked every one to have what was due ; 
 when we stayed in his house, really in order to be of use, he 
 always recognized the fact that we were visitors, he was 
 very unwilling that we should do too much, and always 
 wished that some pleasure should be included. When I was 
 with Lord and Lady Wolverhampton in London the Sundays 
 were made very pleasant to me, for he usually took me to 
 some particularly interesting or attractive service. To him 
 the sermon was always important. He enjoyed good preach- 
 ing, not mere eloquence, but real, sound teaching. ' I like 
 to hear Dr. Campbell Morgan,' he once said to me, ' his ser- 
 mons are so founded on the Bible.' 
 
 " He liked to walk about South Kensington with me, and 
 to point out the buildings that had been erected, and the 
 improvements planned by the Commission of the great Exhibi- 
 tion, of which he was a member. Again, when he drove in 
 Hyde Park he was quick to notice and admire anything that 
 had been done, and took almost as much pleasure in the 
 trees and flower-beds as if they had been in his own garden. 
 Almost, not quite, for it was Woodthorne he really loved, 
 and when he was there he would walk among his roses with 
 calm enjoyment, and look at every detail of the home he had
 
 618 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 made with true joy of possession. He went to Wolver- 
 hampton for two days from Lo-ndon one summer and I can 
 see his beaming face when he came back carrying two treasured 
 roses, and saying, ' It was so lovely I wished I could stay 
 there/ And the last summer, when he had no London house, 
 he greatly enjoyed seeing his garden in all its summer 
 beauty. 
 
 " He rarely asked for little attentions, but he liked them 
 if they were given without fuss. To have his letters opened 
 and handed to him, his small possessions which often went 
 astray promptly found, his new books cut, the newspapers 
 laid ready to his hand, and the inevitable bag into which 
 letters and papers were put for conveyance to the office, 
 placed conveniently near all these things were grateful to 
 him in his later years. 
 
 " In the same way, though he seldom asked for companion- 
 ship, he liked to have it, and was not fond of going about 
 alone. I remember one Sunday morning in Queen's Gate, 
 when we were arranging at breakfast to what churches we 
 should go, Nellie and her husband were going to the Savoy 
 Chapel and invited me to go with them, but before I replied 
 I turned to Lord Wolverhampton and asked what he was 
 going to do. ' It is too hot to go far,' he answered ; ' I shall 
 go to the church that is nearest.' It is one of my happiest 
 memories to recall his smile when I said, ' Then I will go with 
 you.' 
 
 " It was a grave, strong, rather stern face in repose, but 
 the smile was radiant, like nothing so much as sunshine on a 
 grey rock. It often came, that smile, when he looked at his 
 children, or when any one spoke in praise of them. 
 
 " I spent a month with him just before the end, after the 
 great sorrow had clouded his life and when his health was 
 very feeble. He was then, as he had been always, very kind 
 to me, and very anxious that I should not do too much. ' You 
 have been writing nearly all day,' he said once, when I had 
 spent an hour or so over some business of my own. ' You 
 will wear yourself out. I want you to rest.' The days were
 
 Domestic Life 619 
 
 long and weary, for he could no longer work and he had never 
 known how to play, but talk about the past would always 
 interest him. 
 
 " To my sister and to me it is a source of lasting pleasure 
 to know that we were allowed to be so often with Lord and 
 Lady Wolverhampton in those last years when the marriage 
 of their daughters had left them alone. I have written my 
 impressions of him, and it only remains to say that she was 
 an ideal wife, and one of the kindest women friends we ever 
 
 had. 
 
 " LENA TYACK."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 OF ELLEN, HIS WIFE 
 
 " Distinct in individualities, 
 r5ut like each other even as those who love." 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 " Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of 
 the land. 
 
 " She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of 
 kindness." Proverbs of Solomon. 
 
 " Truly comfort beyond comfort is stored up in a mother 
 
 Who bears with all, and hopes through all, and loves us all." 
 
 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. 
 
 HENRY FOWLER'S biography would be utterly incom- 
 plete without some definite reference to the great influence 
 and inspiration which he found in his marriage, and some sketch, 
 slight though it must be, of that good and gracious woman whom 
 it was his happiness to call his wife. 
 
 Once a very intimate friend of ours was explaining to her little 
 girl that everybody does wrong sometimes. " Except Lady 
 Fowler," corrected the child ; and truth is found in the mouths of 
 babes and sucklings. My mother was not only a very good 
 woman, but she was a very wise one, and her judgments were a 
 great lever to all her husband's public and private actions. Very 
 few people outside his own immediate home circle realized how 
 great was her influence over him, and how strong. Everything he 
 did he talked over first with her, and he never, to my knowledge, 
 acted contrary to her counsel. When anything was suggested 
 of which he disapproved, he always, to quote her words, " struck 
 his top-note first " ; but if only we had enlisted her sympathies 
 on the other side, and when that was her children's it was not a 
 
 620
 
 VISCOUNTESS WOLVERHAMPTON, C.I.
 
 Of Ellen, his Wife 621 
 
 difficult task, she would always bring him to see the matter in 
 another light and finally to consent. " Leave it to me " so she 
 would assure our anxious hearts, and no combination of govern- 
 ments, no powers of earth, we almost felt no intervention from 
 heaven, could have been so potent in our service as that simple 
 sentence. It was always my father's nature to seem much sterner 
 and more unyielding than he really was, and those who never 
 penetrated below that somewhat alarming surface did not know 
 how willing he was to listen to reason, and how surely he proved 
 the largeness of his mind by the fact that he was incapable of 
 obstinacy. And she who was always not only below the surface, 
 but in the very depths of his heart and mind, smiled at the for- 
 bidding exterior and knew her power in the realm beyond it. 
 
 " When consulted about a matter of difficulty requiring judg- 
 ment, Sir Henry would frequently ask that it might be mentioned 
 to him again on the following morning, and it often happened that 
 in the interval he had discussed the matter with his wife, in whose 
 judgment he placed implicit confidence. ' It must be so,' he would 
 say, ' indeed it is so, Lady Fowler says so.' ' And Mr. C. N. 
 Wright, who is now a partner in his old firm, further adds : " He 
 said to me one day : ' I have come to the conclusion that your 
 view of the matter is a correct one. When you first mentioned it 
 I did not say anything, but, as a matter of fact, I did not agree 
 with you. I talked it over more than once with Lady Fowler, 
 and I found to my surprise that from the very beginning she took 
 your view of it. You have not convinced me, but she has.' ' 
 And another friend says : " His wonderful dependence upon 
 Lady Fowler's judgment and opinion was at first a great source 
 of surprise to me but by and by we got to know that if in ordinary 
 conversation, or in a meeting, he once said : ' Lady Fowler thinks 
 so and so,' that was final and he expected it to be final with others 
 also." 
 
 The enormous influence which my mother had she was wise 
 enough not to squander. She never made " a government ques- 
 tion " of a matter which was essentially unimportant, nor brought 
 out her reserve forces to secure a worthless victory. She possessed 
 a wonderfully accurate sense of proportion ; and she never wanted
 
 622 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 her own way because it was her own way (in fact, she was so 
 abnormally unselfish that this would have been an argument 
 against it to her mind) ; but only when she was convinced that it 
 was the right way. And she was so wise, as well as so sensible, 
 that her way and the right way generally were the same. She 
 never disputed, or wanted to dispute, the fact that a man's proper 
 place in his household is at the head of it, and she made all other 
 interests therein subservient to his. She understood him so per- 
 fectly that she knew what he would want to do far better than 
 he knew himself ; but though she legislated for what she knew 
 would be the fact, she never mentioned a possible discrepancy, 
 but threw herself into the theorizing with her ready and unfailing 
 sympathy. And here we come to the corner-stone of her whole 
 character and personality her enormous power of sympathy, 
 in which all her thoughts and feelings were steeped and soaked. 
 It was, indeed, almost too strong for her own happiness. Other 
 people's feelings she not only understood, but shared to the 
 utmost limit. " To rejoice with them that rejoice and to 
 weep with those that weep," was the simple practice of her daily 
 life ; she could not do otherwise, and she often literally cared 
 more than did the people themselves. "It is human nature to 
 weep with them that weep," she used to say, " but it requires 
 grace to rejoice with them that rejoice." But nature and grace 
 were so welded in her, that those who had the privilege of knowing 
 her best could not define between the two. Her nature seemed all 
 grace to us. Her consideration for others almost amounted to a 
 disease. If the footman coughed, nothing would induce her to 
 take him out on the carriage until she was convinced of his con- 
 valescence ; it never struck her that he was probably lounging at 
 the head of the area steps in his shirt-sleeves instead ! She had a 
 dear little habit whenever she gave an order to a servant of in- 
 stantly adding a reason for it, so that there should appear nothing 
 arbitrary in her requests. " Will you please post this letter it 
 is of great importance that Sir Henry should have it to-morrow." 
 As if it was exceptional that a letter need be posted, and some 
 special urgency that required it to reach its recipient on the follow- 
 ing day.
 
 Of Ellen, his Wife 623 
 
 To show how the intensity of her feeling for others was an 
 inherent characteristic the following illustration is worthy of 
 notice. As a little girl, she had a wonderfully bright colour ; 
 when she was in her early teens her father had a bad accident, and 
 when he was brought home his little daughter was so physically, 
 as well as mentally, distressed that her colour vanished that day 
 and never came back. There is an artistic sympathy with one's 
 fellow-creatures which is temperamental and an understanding 
 which is purely the product of a dramatic intellect, but such were 
 not hers. She was neither artistic nor dramatic ; she could not 
 enjoy pathos, nor appreciate the charm of feeling unhappy when 
 you know that you are not. Her sympathy was not born in senti- 
 ment but in sharing, and so her feelings were practical and real, 
 springing straight up from her heart and rushing out warm and 
 living and true. 
 
 So Henry Fowler never faced the world chilled by a lack of 
 sympathy at home, and that means a great deal to any man. 
 I never remember an occasion when he had been away from home 
 that she was not waiting to welcome him on his return. She 
 would sit listening for the horses' footsteps, and rush to ring the 
 bell, so that he should not be kept a moment outside his own front 
 door, and there was always her smile to greet him. " If there is 
 anything unpleasant to be told always wait until a man has had his 
 dinner before you tell it," was one of her maxims ; another was : 
 " When your husband has been out, never meet him with a re- 
 proach, however much he may deserve it." And yet another, 
 when confronted by any trouble or anxiety : " Live a day at a 
 time." Even when he had only been out for the day she would 
 not, if possible, be absent on his return, and it was a sort of family 
 ritual that we should all be assembled to meet him and to make 
 his home-coming pleasant. 
 
 She had the greatest possible objection to the atmosphere of 
 perpetual argument or bickering of any kind; and she would 
 emphasize the futility of a war of words by a saying, which many 
 associate with her unfailing wisdom : " You cannot have your 
 say and your way." 
 
 My mother was intensely interested in political life. That fire
 
 624 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 in my father's breast never required stoking, but, nevertheless, 
 she fed it constantly with the fuel of her untiring appreciation and 
 approval. His views were hers not, as is often the case with 
 married couples, because they were his but because her mind was 
 moulded in much the same shape ; and in big questions, outside 
 the inherent differences of sex, even in intellects, she had arrived 
 at similar conclusions. They had one vast meeting-ground in 
 the field of common sense, one trysting-place in unfailing good 
 judgment. His ambition for a life of great public service was 
 hers for him, and she never drew his energies away from that goal 
 for the gratification of any personal whim. 
 
 As regards public work for herself, she was not a moving spirit. 
 In fact, I think the only public work in which she took an active 
 part was that of Foreign Missions, in which she always showed 
 an intense and vital interest. Her vocation was her home-life 
 and all its radiating branches, but she took little part in women's 
 work, as the term is understood in these days. Wifehood, as she 
 exemplified it, was a profession in itself, and anything which it 
 did not absorb was consumed in motherhood. Her last years 
 were lit up by the light of grandmotherhood, and her love for her 
 two little grandsons was, we sometimes thought, the most radiant 
 passion of her whole life, and her last words on this earth were : 
 " How I do love those children ! " She had a strong sense of 
 kinship towards all her relations, and the fact that her lot was 
 cast near the home of her childhood, and in the midst of her large 
 family circle, was a constant source of happiness to her. She 
 loved to dwell among her own people. She shrank from publicity 
 and had an absurdly humble idea of her own powers, though as 
 years went on she would sometimes say : "I like to grow old 
 it makes one so much wiser." 
 
 She had a keen sense of humour but not a strong flow of animal 
 spirits, and was easily worried and made anxious. " Ellen will 
 never have much trouble," her husband's sister said, " for she could 
 never bear it. I unfortunately can, and I regret to say it does 
 me good." And certainly there was a striking difference in the 
 weight of sorrow which my aunt was called to bear and that which 
 fell to my mother's lot. Another attribute which my parents had
 
 Of Ellen, his Wife 625 
 
 in common was that of caution ; and though such attributes may 
 have their bad as well as their good sides, it is a great saving of 
 domestic friction when both err, or excel, in a similar direction. 
 I have known endless irritation caused when one of a couple is 
 cautious and the other reckless, or when one is timid and the other 
 daring. But in our home all such irritation was non-existent. 
 Their tastes were also strikingly alike especially in their ideas 
 of enjoyment. They both loved a London season, as they took 
 it; and dinner-parties were their greatest diversion. To dine 
 at a restaurant, to go out to supper after a theatre, to go up the 
 river, or to take a week-end out of town, were all anathema ; but 
 the ordinar)/, typical, London dinner-party, with a table stretch- 
 ing beyond its legitimate boundaries away into the morning-room, 
 and an assembly of what they called " interesting people " (though 
 not of the Bohemian type) ; or else a dinner at the House of Com- 
 mons provided they were not expected to go on the Terrace 
 and a debate afterwards, were true delights to them. They both 
 keenly enjoyed good conversation and took a prominent part in 
 it, and their estimates of their neighbours at a dinner-party 
 were significant of their own personalities. For instance, my 
 father would often say what a remarkably clever woman he 
 had taken into dinner, while my mother would see in So- 
 and-So such an astonishingly kind heart and amount of 
 sympathy which she had not expected in him, and no 
 one else had probably ever discovered ! People are usually 
 what we make them, and reflect us back our own charac- 
 teristics. That wonderful truth that the measure we mete 
 shall be meted to us again, is so worked out in every- 
 day life, social as well as religious. And not only do we receive 
 our quantity in like measure, but our quality also. My mother's 
 sympathetic nature would strike a stream of sympathy out of the 
 hardest rock, but she would never dream that her touch had 
 wrought the miracle. She always took a motherly care of the man 
 who took her down to dinner in seeing that he had proper food 
 for his sustenance. She knew so well how my father, when he was 
 interested in the conversation, would let course after course go 
 by and usually had to be fed with concentrated meat-juice, or 
 
 40
 
 626 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 something equally nourishing, on his return from a dinner-party. I 
 remember her telling us how a very distinguished man, whom she 
 sat next, would have had no dinner at all except a little asparagus, 
 if she had not interfered, and reminded him that he must be fed. 
 One of her favourite recollections was of Sir William Harcourt, 
 whom she would always extol as the kindest and most tender- 
 hearted of men. If her opinion should happen to be queried, she 
 told how he had confided in her at a dinner-party, that when 
 his eldest son first went to Eton, he went down himself from 
 London, putting aside all other engagements, every night for the 
 first week, to bid the boy good-night for fear he should be feeling 
 home-sick. What better could have fired a mother's heart ? and 
 how few fathers would have been guilty of such a divine 
 absurdity ! 
 
 On another occasion, when she was asking the late Lord 
 Kimberley then Foreign Secretary about his Ambassador's 
 life in St. Petersburg, he was moved to tell her how, in spite 
 of all the interesting associations of that time, a shadow lay 
 upon his recollections of it, for, he said, " we lost a baby 
 child there, and a day never goes by without my seeing 
 again that little dead face." Surely it was the mother heart 
 which drew forth from such unlikely men these tender con- 
 fidences. 
 
 My parents were both possessed by a perfect horror of draughts, 
 or, indeed, fresh air until it had been bottled up for some hours 
 and to feel cold was a form of torture from which they fled. They 
 liked to live in an atmosphere of at least seventy degrees indoors, 
 and the sight of an open window was an abomination unto them. 
 Had only one of them been made this way, what a trial for the 
 other ! but they were absolutely one in these peculiarities, so there 
 seemed no peculiarity as far as either was concerned. They both 
 loved listening to a good sermon, and their Sundays in London 
 were most varied as regards denomination and creed, but they 
 always ferreted out a good preacher. And even when they grew 
 older, and did not care to go out on Sunday evenings, I can picture 
 them with the electrophone pressed to their ears, enjoying the dis- 
 courses of Dr. Parker at the City Temple, or Dawson at the High-
 
 Of Ellen, his Wife 627 
 
 bury Quadrant Chapel, or Hugh Price Hughes at St. James's Hall. 
 They usually attended St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, on 
 Sunday mornings, and took their nonconformity later in the day. 
 I remember a London clergyman telling me what a joy it was to 
 see my mother in his congregation, sitting all athirst for his words, 
 and drinking them in as fraught with eternal significance. And 
 such they always were to her for those that seek find. They 
 neither took much exercise beyond the daily constitutional, which 
 was an article of their belief and they were both fond of com- 
 fort, but indifferent to luxury. They were even physically alike, 
 and we have often been asked if there was any blood relation 
 between them to account for it ; and as old age drew on the like- 
 ness increased ; they had excellent health, and took care of it ; 
 they were born in the same year, and they died in the same year, 
 after having lived in unbroken harmony for over half a century. 
 
 Though so gentle and loving in her ways, my mother had a great 
 spirit, and whatever the occasion might be she was always equal 
 to it. She was humble but not nervous : she was simple and 
 natural, but perfectly self-possessed. She was incapable of pre- 
 tence or snobbishness or any such vulgarity, and the word " gentle- 
 woman," in its highest as well as lowest meaning, applied to her 
 most absolutely. She had an almost morbid horror of saying 
 anything which could hurt anyone's feelings, and only twice in her 
 life was known to make a sharp retort ; and we were never tired 
 of telling of those two memorable occasions. On the first, just 
 after she had been honoured by the Queen conferring on her the 
 Imperial Order of the Crown of India, a noted Member of Parlia- 
 ment, whose previous history had somewhat interfered with his 
 promotion, said to her rather rudely : " And what have you done, 
 I should like to know, to be made a C. I. ? " 
 
 " Behaved myself," she smilingly replied ; " and if you had done 
 the same you might have had something, too." 
 
 On the other, she was being taken down to dinner by a very 
 grumpy old professor one broiling night in July, and she opened 
 her conversation by asking him if he did not find the great heat 
 very trying. He remained absolutely silent until they took their 
 seats, and then he said : " I make it a rule never to answer foolish 
 
 40*
 
 628 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 questions." " You are quite right," was her quick retort, " it 
 was a foolish question, because it doesn't matter in the least to 
 me whether you are tried by the heat or not." 
 
 As a rule, however, her conversational powers were not of the 
 repartee order ; they were full of wisdom if not of wit, and they 
 were steeped in a comprehensive knowledge of all the affairs of 
 the day ; and as the power of sympathy is the main attribute of a 
 good talker, and a good listener, she could not fail to be both. 
 She was, moreover, a very shrewd woman, and one of marvellously 
 quick perceptions. Not only had she the wisdom to deal with a 
 state of affairs ; she arrived at the true knowledge of a state of 
 affairs before anyone else did. Now my father was not a man of 
 quick perceptions ; he rarely saw anything that was not there to 
 be seen ; and herein his wife was indeed a help-meet for him by 
 supplying a quality that he lacked. 
 
 Again, she was less hampered by prejudices than anybody I 
 ever met, whilst he though extremely just in large matters was 
 apt to be influenced by prejudices in smaller ones. This was 
 characteristic of the Fowlers, for his sister Louisa once laughingly 
 said : " There is nothing I enjoy more than a good, unfounded 
 prejudice." But my mother though tender towards everybody's 
 faults and failings could judge a foe by exactly the same standard 
 as a friend ; and her opinion of an action was never regulated by 
 the personality of the perpetrator. She loved the sinner no less 
 because of her hatred of his sins : but, on the other hand, she hated 
 the sins no less because of her love for the sinner. Women are 
 popularly supposed to have no sense of justice ; but my mother 
 was always absolutely just, even though her justice was invariably 
 tempered by mercy. But it was never adulterated by prejudice. 
 
 Every personality has so many sides, and no one person per- 
 haps ever sees them all, so that it is difficult to give a true sketch 
 in but a few lines, and to make those lines in drawing with the idea 
 and the ideal, which, as I look back upon my mother, I see were 
 one ; but there is one tender touch without which no record of 
 her could be written by any who ever really knew her I mean, 
 her divine gift of comforting. It was not only that her sym- 
 pathy drew sorrow and suffering to her, but they never were turned
 
 Of Ellen, his Wife 629 
 
 empty away she could always give comfort, she could always dry 
 tears, and mellow misery, and soothe pain. As little children in 
 all our abandonment of grief over things that were of no import- 
 ance, we never found that she thought it did not matter, but brought 
 it to her with the knowledge that all would be made right again 
 and as children of a larger growth, we rushed to her for comfort 
 in every trouble and perplexity and pain, and never failed to 
 find it. And when illness and old age at last together drew her 
 out of the domestic circle, and weakened all her powers, the biggest 
 blank was that of the comforter ; but as a bright mirror, in which 
 we see reflected the Face of God, was the lesson she left us : "As 
 one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you."
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HOLIDAY MAKING 
 
 " Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys." CHARLES 
 LAMB. 
 
 ONCE every year, but fortunately only once, the question 
 of my father's holiday had to be discussed and decided 
 upon. It was a peculiarity of his that although it was apparent 
 from the first what his decision would be, that fact in no wise 
 lessened the discussion and laborious weighing of pros and cons, 
 which were always necessary in his scheme of life. To have once 
 pursued a certain course of action in such minor matters of domestic 
 detail was to establish a precedent which possessed unlimited 
 wear. I never knew such a home as ours for precedents. 
 But of this he seemed quite unconscious, and felt a freshness in 
 his conclusions, which they were really far from possessing. In 
 looking back I see the regularity of a chess-board in our daily life ; 
 and not only of actions, but of thoughts and feelings. For instance, 
 he was a man who always spent his Sundays at home the week- 
 end visit was an abomination to him, and he never dined out 
 anywhere on Sunday evenings. But at five o'clock, when we 
 sat down to Sunday tea, in a more solemn and fixed manner 
 than on a week-day, a great gloom always fell upon my 
 father's mind generally in connection with the future of the 
 Liberal party. Pessimism swelled almost to despair, and this 
 state lasted till six o'clock, when he retired into his library to read 
 the evening service, two or three sermons, a hymn from the Metho- 
 dist hymn-book, and a sort of dessert of what we used to call 
 Sunday magazines. It is noticeable that though he had such a 
 
 L630
 
 Holiday Making 631 
 
 love for the English Prayer-book he had a great dislike to Hymns, 
 Ancient and Modern, and would not even possess a copy of the 
 latter. All good sermons he loved. Liddon's were special 
 favourites, also Westcott's, but, of living preachers, he liked 
 Campbell Morgan's, I think, the best. His library was lined with 
 books of sermons and theology, and we were always brought up to 
 recognize a marked line of distinction between Sunday and week- 
 day literature. At a quarter-past eight almost to the moment 
 he would lay down his books, and hold out his hand, which my 
 mother promptly took, and they sat hand-in-hand for a quarter 
 of an hour until supper was announced, as it was part of our 
 evangelical training to dine early on Sundays. Beyond this they 
 rarely showed any demonstration one towards the other. 
 
 As the London season drew towards its close the question of 
 the holiday became open to observation. The first axiom laid 
 down by my father was, that, after his year of hard work, he felt 
 he must have a month's complete holiday, though we all knew 
 perfectly well that he would return home three weeks to the day. 
 The next thing was to decide upon a place, which must be bracing 
 and exactly the temperature and conditions of the East Coast 
 consequently it was impossible to find it anywhere but on the 
 East Coast ; and as Cromer, North Berwick, and St. Andrews were 
 the only places he knew well on that coast, it had to be one of 
 those. In earlier years he used to go to Switzerland with my 
 mother each August, but of those visits we have no recollections 
 or records, though I am perfectly certain that a diary of one would 
 have been the history of all. 
 
 Holiday-making to my father was a ponderous manufacture. 
 That his scheme of enjoyment did not of necessity embrace his 
 children's never for one moment struck him. He did not under- 
 stand that all young people had not the tastes of middle-aged 
 statesmen, and therefore he made no provision for any holiday 
 other than his own, or for any diversity of occupation even within 
 the stereotyped holiday. In looking back through the golden 
 pages of memory one is apt to linger longingly on those far-off 
 holidays when we were all together, and to see them as other 
 than they were. But in reality they were as heavy as lead on
 
 632 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 our youthful souls, and from them there was no escape. " We 
 don't mind going to increase father's enjoyment, and to amuse 
 and divert him as much as we can, but we do wish he wouldn't 
 think it was all our treat and that he was going for us." So we 
 would confide in our mother ; and she, being older and wiser, 
 would remind us that his way of enjoyment was to imagine he was 
 doing it for someone else ; and so not to accept and appreciate 
 that spirit noble and unselfish in principle, though a little trying 
 in practice would rob him of the enjoyment and recreation which 
 he so much needed. 
 
 We seemed always to start at eleven o'clock on those annual 
 holidays, and an enormous hired omnibus took the maid and the 
 luggage, of which latter we travelled with an exorbitant quantity ; 
 while we went in the carriage, and called at his office on the way 
 to the station for a still further instalment of despatch-boxes and 
 black bags. At the station, where we arrived about thirty-five 
 minutes before the train started, a flock of porters surrounded 
 the piled-up trucks, for the silver tips which were never lacking, 
 and we always had an engaged carriage. When at length the 
 send-off was accomplished, over a dozen daily papers bought, 
 and the sandwich-bag laid in the rack nothing else was ever 
 allowed in the rack, however light in weight my father would 
 put on his travelling cap, lean back with a smile in his usual left- 
 hand seat, with his back to the engine, and remark : " Well, I 
 think I have managed that very nicely for you ! " To which we 
 all enthusiastically and gratefully responded. And then, but 
 not till then, our holiday began. I often wondered, I wonder still, 
 why a luncheon-basket was never allowed, or a cup of tea, en route. 
 Except that my parents belonged to the age when lunches on a 
 journey consisted of sandwiches and a sponge-cake to follow ; 
 and a fowl in profile, or tea and bread and butter, were against 
 the traditions of the age, and therefore impossible to them. My 
 sister said that the glorious independence of the married state 
 was first revealed to her by a tea-basket on her honeymoon ; but 
 it was so contrary to the family traditions that she felt after- 
 wards as if she had been eating meat offered to idols, and her 
 conscience slightly pricked.
 
 Holiday Making 633 
 
 I remember a very successful holiday at Cromer in the year 
 1892. We always stayed at an hotel and took our meals in a 
 private room, which we youngsters considered decidedly dull, 
 and also the room was apt to be rather confined quarters, with 
 every table and most chairs covered with bags and despatch- 
 boxes, and such literature as my father had provided for his holi- 
 days which consisted of all the guide-books to the places 
 and district which were published, and one of Scott's novels. As 
 we usually went every year for about a decade to the same place, 
 and fresh guide-books were still bought, and carefully taken home 
 for preservation, there was a somewhat unwieldy collection of 
 them in the Woodthorne cupboards. 
 
 Cromer has always been our favourite holiday place. For one 
 thing we knew so many people in the neighbourhood who kept 
 my father amused and interested, and so we were relieved of that 
 responsibility, while we ourselves could participate in the social life, 
 a blessed relief from the stodgy hotel routine, which at some places, 
 such as North Berwick, was our sole resource. In 1892 Mr. 
 Morley, as he then was, had a house in the village of Overstrand ; 
 and he and my father had many long and pregnant talks of political 
 matters as they strolled on the links together utterly unconscious 
 of the agonized cries of " Fore " with which the golfers pursued 
 them ; though one of them owned afterwards, I forget which, 
 to believing that the shout was " Four," a method of scoring in 
 that incomprehensible game. Happily, however, they survived all 
 risks, and Mr. Schnadhorst, who was also staying in Cromer, some- 
 times joined the political conclave. Its purport is hinted at by the 
 question of a little boy Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson, M.P. for 
 Salisbury, in these days who, having caught with interest the 
 words which fell from the lips of these well-known politicians, 
 asked his father in an old-world, Fairchildish fashion : " Pray, 
 papa, what is a caucus ? " I believe he thought it was an animal 
 of the turtle tribe. It was during this visit to Cromer that there 
 occurred the only solitary occasion when my father took part in an 
 out-of-door game. He and Mr. Justice Denman had strolled up 
 to Newhaven Court where a great birthday tea-party for the 
 twins (Mr. Oliver Locker-Lampson, M.P. for Huntingdonshire and
 
 634 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Mrs. Conway Fisher-Rowe) was in full swing, and Mrs. Locker- 
 Lampson suggested that we should all play at trap, bat and ball. 
 It required great firmness on her part, and an unusual docility on 
 theirs, to include the statesman and the judge, but she triumphed, 
 and they obediently played for half an hour with such incapacity 
 and clumsiness as could only be found in men of their distinction. 
 
 Another holiday that stands out in my recollection was at 
 North Berwick in 1893, when the hotel caught fire on the night 
 we arrived. My father was the first to discover the smoke which 
 was rolling in clouds from the east wing, and he straightway went 
 downstairs and sounded the gong. Under the impression that 
 some rowdy young man was disturbing the whole hotel on his 
 way to bed, officials appeared to see the solemn apparition of a 
 statesman in his dressing-gown, from which nothing further than 
 a rowdy youth could be imagined. Lord Goschen was also stay- 
 ing in the hotel, and he suddenly appeared fully dressed in a frock- 
 coat, with a bunch of papers in his hand. He was to speak in 
 Edinburgh, I believe, on the following day, and we imagined 
 that he was resolved through perils of fire or perils of water (and 
 the latter became serious when a local hose was in manipulation), 
 to preserve his necessary costume and the notes of his speech. 
 Everyone rushed out more or less attired, and it is a fact that an 
 old lady appeared in the corridors that midnight who was never 
 seen again. There were plenty of young ones to be found next 
 day even some middle-aged. But the old lady was not. My 
 sister afterwards wrote a very popular short story founded upon 
 this incident. 
 
 Occasionally the annual holiday was terminated by a visit to 
 friends, and for many years my father never failed to spend a 
 few days with Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in later times at Skibo Castle, 
 his beautiful Highland home. During one of these visits we 
 had a great adventure, which we called a shipwreck, and this was 
 probably the only real adventure which my unad venturous parents 
 ever experienced. We were out for a day's yachting in the North 
 Sea, and when we were a long way from the mouth of the Firth, 
 something went wrong with the engines. We dare not lie to for 
 fear of drifting on to the rocks with the strong tide, and we all
 
 Holiday Making 635 
 
 ran up signals of distress, chiefly composed of towels and broom- 
 sticks ; to which in time a trawler responded, and with some diffi- 
 culty our party, consisting of Mr. Carnegie, Sir Walter and Lady 
 Foster (now Lord and Lady Ilkeston) and their daughter, my 
 father and mother and self, a Scotch minister and Mr. Carnegie's 
 private secretary, jumped from the yacht on to the trawler. The 
 Scotch minister was invaluable throughout. Not only did his 
 strong arms preserve both my parents in turn from a watery 
 grave, but he was able to converse with the fishermen in Gaelic, 
 and ascertain that they would land us at Cromarty that evening. 
 " If the wind held," seemed to have been implied, but not men- 
 tioned. It dropped about four o'clock after three hours' tacking, 
 and we felt rather anxious. We all sat round a hole on deck, 
 which contained we did not inquire what, but into which our feet 
 dangled. The sailors roughly tucked us up with sails or tar- 
 paulin to keep off the splash of the waves. Fortunately we were 
 all good sailors, but it was not a situation wherein a statesman 
 was at his best. A very dirty hold was subsequently discovered, 
 in which were a woman and two ragged children ; but our physi- 
 cian, Sir Walter Foster, laid down the law peremptorily that, 
 let it blow or rain or splash all night, none of us were to seek shelter 
 there. They had been fishing for a month or so in the North Sea, 
 so one night more or less meant nothing to the sailors ; it meant 
 a good deal to us. At last, late at night, they succeeded in making 
 the harbour at Cromarty, and the fisherfolk who crowded the pier 
 evinced a most natural astonishment at perceiving the cargo on 
 board. The problem of paying the men arose, and no one had any 
 money except the secretary ! To find adequate accommodation 
 for the night was impossible, but an ample, though very rough 
 supper was soon forthcoming. We reached Skibo again at two 
 p.m. on the following day. 
 
 I think the above recollections cover all that was not conven- 
 tional in my father's holidays, but there are still many purple 
 patches which he remembered with an afterglow of enjoyment all 
 his life. For instance, little visits at Dalmeny, where he would revel 
 in long talks with his distinguished host ; visits, too, to Newhaven 
 Court, Cromer, where he was always specially happy and at home.
 
 636 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 He often spoke of a particularly interesting day which he and 
 Mr. Locker spent with the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, Rector of Booton, 
 Norfolk, who succeeded Lockhart (Sir Walter Scott's son-in-law) 
 as editor of the Quarterly Review, and who had been in touch with 
 all the men of letters and politicians of his day. As he lived to be 
 eighty, he had known all the history-makers of two generations, 
 and my father greatly enjoyed meeting him. 
 
 After the death of that most fascinating of men, Frederick 
 Locker, the old brilliant circle still gathered in his house, and my 
 father always felt it a privilege as well as a pleasure, to be included 
 among Mrs. Locker-Lampson's guests. He met there from time 
 to time Mr. and Mrs. William Lowther, the Speaker and Mrs. 
 Gully, Sir Edward Hamlyn, the Dean of Salisbury and Mrs. Boyle, 
 Dr. Jessop, and many others too numerous to mention ; and 
 nowhere was he happier to stay, and nowhere was my father more 
 truly appreciated, than in the house of that friend whom he valued to 
 the very end of his life. Indeed, it was at Newhaven Court that 
 both he and my mother went out to tea for the last time, during 
 their summer at Overstrand in 1910. 
 
 Mrs. Locker-Lampson reminds me of an occasion, during one 
 of his visits, when a number of young people came to luncheon and 
 to play lawn tennis afterwards. My father went with the young 
 men into the smoking-room directly lunch was over. The afternoon 
 drew on and still the lawn was deserted, and there was no sign of 
 the white-flannelled figures. At last the library door opened 
 and slowly and reluctantly the young athletes passed out on to 
 the sunny lawn with that sigh of disappointment which children 
 heave on the completion of a fascinating tale. Sir Henry Fowler 
 had been talking, they said, and they could not tear themselves away. 
 
 Now my father was an old-fashioned religious man, and there 
 are not too many homes left where old-fashioned religious customs 
 prevail ; where family prayers are held, where Sunday is a day 
 set apart, and where the very atmosphere breathes of the faith 
 which our fathers fought for and held. But such a home is Mrs. 
 Locker-Lampson's, and my parents visited there with the readi 
 ness and content with which we are always drawn to a truly 
 congenial home.
 
 Holiday Making 637 
 
 Of all my father's holidays, however, those stand out in fullest 
 interest which he spent as Minister in Attendance on the Queen 
 at Balmoral. The fact of a holiday for a holiday's sake was 
 always somewhat of a burden to him ; but a holiday, which came 
 dressed up in the guise of a duty, was a sheer delight, and such 
 were his holidays at Balmoral. 
 
 The first was in September, 1894, when he was Minister in 
 Attendance on the Queen for the first time. We have a sketch 
 of his enjoyment in the letters he wrote to my mother from there : 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 "September 25th, 1894. 
 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Here I am in this lovely place on an exquisite 
 morning, and although there is a heavy bag of work, I write 
 to you first, and as fully as I can, reserving fuller details 
 until I see you. 
 
 " I left Mrs. Wallace (who was kindness and hospitality 
 to the uttermost) yesterday morning I had a very long 
 (as the engine broke down) but pleasant journey to Aberdeen 
 reached Ballater at 4.50 beautiful drive along the road 
 you will remember, and reached here about 6.30. As you 
 have seen from the papers, there was a theatrical perform- 
 ance, and the castle was full to overflowing. The Queen's 
 dinner was at eight and I was asked. The party Prince 
 and Princess Henry of Battenberg, Duchess of Albany, Prince 
 Victor (son of Princess Christian), Princess Henry of Prussia, 
 Count something (a German), Duchess of Atholl, Sir F. 
 Edwards and myself. I sat between Princess Beatrice and 
 Princess Henry, to whom the Princess Beatrice at once pre- 
 sented me, and we had a very pleasant dinner. I was only 
 three from the Queen, and could therefore answer her when 
 she joined in the conversation. Princess Henry is charming 
 very like her sister, the fiancee of the Czarevitch, and I 
 had a great deal of talk with her. She was interested in 
 many national things and talked very well ; after dinner 
 we followed the Queen to the drawing-room, and there the
 
 638 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Duchess of Albany told the Prince Christian Victor to present 
 me to her, and we had a very long talk. She is a charming 
 woman, and did not, as Nellie can understand, fall in my 
 estimation by telling me that she was reading certain of Sir 
 Walter Scott's novels to her children. After a while she 
 went off to the ball-room, where the theatricals were, and the 
 Queen and Royalties immediately followed. They gave me 
 a first-rate place, and we had two very clever performances 
 by the Beerbohm Tree Company, which lasted until nearly 
 twelve. Then back to the drawing-room, where the invited 
 guests (about fifty, I should think) passed before the Queen, 
 and the actors and actresses were presented the Queen then 
 withdrew and we went to supper. I had to take the Princess 
 Beatrice in to supper. After supper, which was not over till 
 late, I was glad to go to bed. This morning I have break- 
 fasted with the Household and had a short walk in these 
 beautiful grounds, and am now writing in the ' Minister's 
 room ' it is a room about the size of our library with the 
 octagon for a dressing-room. 
 
 " I enjoyed my visit to Glassinghall. Everything was 
 done to promote my comfort. I am glad to hear from Ernest, 
 and that he is so much better and stronger for his Scotch 
 visit. Sir F. Edwards asked me at dinner if I had seen the 
 Review of Reviews ; he expressed himself as greatly interested 
 in it; so nothing is secret in the lives and doings of public 
 men. Love to all. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " September 26th, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " I am very comfortable and enjoying myself. I 
 left off my account with Monday night. Yesterday morning 
 I breakfasted with the Household i.e., the Duchess of Atholl, 
 the Maid of Honour, the lady in attendance on the Princess 
 Henry, Sir Henry Ponsonby, Sir Fleetwood Edwards, and
 
 Holiday Making 639 
 
 Colonel Byng and the Doctor. I sat next the Duchess and 
 had a good deal of talk with her, both at breakfast and at 
 lunch. After breakfast, and work, and getting off bags, I 
 went out for a walk. Lovely day, and that fragrant smell of 
 heather, pines and limes perfuming the air which you will 
 remember, and the Dee as clear as crystal. Very hot. The 
 new Church is a gem. After lunch the Bishop of Rochester* 
 called on me, and then I went a drive to Birkhall to write 
 my name in the book of the Duchess of Albany. Sir Henry 
 Ponsonby and the German Count went with me. As we 
 returned it came on very heavy rain. I dined with the Queen 
 the Bishop of Rochester and Mrs. Davidson came to dinner. 
 I sat next the Princess Beatrice. After dinner the Princess 
 Henry came to me in the drawing-room to have a talk she is 
 as charming as she is pretty ; then a celebrated player on the 
 violin (Wolff, I think is the name) gave some wonderful 
 performances. The drawing-room is not large, and we sat 
 just like at any other lady's house. After the Queen went to 
 bed I went to the smoking-room with Prince Henry of Batten- 
 berg and Prince Christian Victor. I send you all these little 
 details, as I know they will interest you and the girls. Of 
 course they are strictly private. 
 
 " The Reays have asked me to spend a day with them 
 at their place in Berwickshire. 
 
 " Love to all, 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F. 
 
 " Had a beautiful walk this morning in the Balmoral 
 woods." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " September 27th, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Thanks for Nellie's letter. I do not think that I 
 can go to Cromer. If Rosebery is at Dalmeny when I go 
 South I shall most probably accept his invitation to stay a 
 
 * The present Archbishop of Canterbury.
 
 640 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 night there so I should not get home until the 6th of October. 
 
 " I continue to enjoy myself here lovely day yesterday ; 
 morning in the private grounds and up one of the hills to a 
 cairn. In the afternoon the Bishop of Rochester came over for 
 a walk, and I walked back with him to Abergeldie and had 
 tea with Mrs. Davidson, and I then walked back to the Castle. 
 As I was nearing home getting dusk, the Queen's car- 
 riage passed, and I heard her inquiry as to who I was, and 
 the reply of the lady with her. Directly I went to her in the 
 drawing-room she commenced about my walk, and was 
 interested in my gossip about it, and the Bishop and his wife, 
 whom I thought like her mother, and the Queen did not. We 
 had a small dinner-party and I sat next the Princess Henry, 
 with whom I had a long and interesting talk. After dinner 
 a quiet evening in the drawing-room, where I had a con- 
 versation with the Queen. To-day looks as if it is going to 
 be fine, but the sky is uncertain. I have to get off all my 
 work early as the letters are collected at half-past one. 
 
 " I think the Methodist Times is right about my career not 
 being unromantic. House of Commons life is so unobserved 
 in its progress that one readily becomes accustomed to the 
 Treasury Bench and the chief seats there but here, as the 
 Queen's guest and Minister, with all the surroundings, accen- 
 tuates the contrasts. 
 
 " Love to all, 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 "H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " Friday, September 28th, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " I got your letter yesterday my post is delivered 
 midday, so that your letters come to me about the middle 
 of the day after they are posted, as mine do to you. And as 
 post and bags go off at two o'clock, one has to finish all 
 correspondence before then it has the advantage of leaving 
 the afternoon at liberty. 
 
 " Yesterday I had a walk along the old familiar road
 
 Holiday Making 641 
 
 towards Braemar. In the afternoon I had a charming drive. 
 The party were the Duchess of Roxburgh, Miss Majendie 
 (the new Maid of Honour), Sir Henry Ponsonby and myself. 
 We went through the Balluchbuie woods at the back of the 
 Castle, and then to the falls of the Grandwalt, where you 
 and I went with Minnie and Bob when we were last at Braemar. 
 We then went through the woods (private), where we had 
 a good view of Loch Nagar and an exquisite prospect all 
 along the valley of the Dee. We went back along the main 
 road from Invercauld, getting here after six. Dinner-party 
 quite small. I sat between the Duchess and Miss Phipps 
 quiet evening in the drawing-room, where I had a long and 
 pleasant talk with the Queen. So I settle, you see, into the 
 regular routine of a courtier's life. My time is so fully 
 occupied that I have only read two or three chapters of one 
 of the novels I brought with me. The weather is far better 
 than yours appears to be, but I will not boast, as this morning 
 is cold and looks showery. Stead writes to me that he can 
 safely say that no character sketch he has published for 
 several months has been so widely quoted and so generally 
 commented upon with approval as that of the current month." 
 (One of my father.) " Sorry to miss your letter to-day, but 
 I shall hope to have a double portion to-morrow. 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " September 2gth, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " I am writing before breakfast. My ' charming 
 Princess ' passed my window nearly an hour ago on her way 
 to the station (nine miles off), to meet her husband, who is 
 coming this morning. Yesterday I had a lovely walk in the 
 private grounds on the banks of the river in the afternoon, 
 the Queen allowed us to go and have tea at her cottage, 
 ' The Glassall,' on the shores of Loch Minch, where she some- 
 times spends the night. The party were Sir H. Ponsonby, 
 
 41
 
 642 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Miss Majendie, Count Hohn, Fraiilein Von Plaeckner and 
 myself we took our tea-basket with us and immensely 
 enjoyed the expedition it was there and back a three hours' 
 drive through the moors we saw a fine herd of deer on our 
 return. 
 
 " At dinner I sat next the Princess Henry of Prussia, she 
 only between me and the Queen, and I had a conversation 
 with the Queen afterwards in the drawing-room. To-day 
 is not a promising morning, but if it is fine I am going up to 
 the Prince Consort's Cairn. 
 
 " Your non-posted letter of Thursday has arrived by the 
 early mail brought by the messenger. 
 
 " I wish I could have given Mrs. J 's husband a 
 
 chaplaincy. 
 
 " I am afraid you will not get this note until Monday morn- 
 ing as there is no second post on Sunday. Thanks for Edith's 
 letter glad to hear her tale is in the magazines. 
 
 " Armitstead has asked Ernest to dinner the night he is 
 going to the Websters'. Love to the girls. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " September soth. 
 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " The postal arrangements here on Sunday are rather 
 a mystery. The messenger went early and I fancy that until 
 midnight of to-morrow there is no post, but I will send you a 
 few lines. 
 
 " Yesterday was a quiet day in the afternoon the ladies 
 and myself were to have had a drive, but the Queen com- 
 manded the Duchess and the Maid of Honour to go with her, 
 so we had to abandon our expedition. Lord E. Clinton (the 
 new Master of the Household), Sir H. Ponsonby, Sir F. 
 Edwards and myself walked up to the Prince Consort's Cairn, 
 which is on the top of the principal hill about here. We had 
 a grand view, though the sky was cloudy. I dined again with
 
 Holiday Making 643 
 
 the Queen. The party was rather larger, as Prince Henry 
 of Prussia has arrived. I sat next the Princess Beatrice ; 
 after dinner I had a long talk with the Prince Henry. He 
 is very like his father. I also had a conversation with the 
 Queen. This morning we have had a service in the Chapel 
 in the Castle more like family worship than a formal service. 
 Two hymns, two lessons, two prayers and a sermon. Princess 
 Beatrice led the singing and played the harmonium. A Mr. 
 Campbell of Dundee preached. The Royal Family, Household 
 and as many of the servants as could get into the room it is 
 not large were the congregation. 
 
 " Love to the girls, who can see what I have marked about 
 them in the enclosed cutting. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " ist October, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " I dined again with the Queen last night only four 
 in addition to the Royalties viz., the Duchess of Roxburgh, 
 the clergyman who preached, Sir H. Ponsonby and myself. 
 Lovely walk in the afternoon up one of the neighbouring 
 hills. 
 
 " I sat at dinner next Princess Henry, and also had a con- 
 versation with the Queen. To-day is fine, but the glass is 
 lowering. Love to the girls. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 "H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " October 2nd, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 "I do not reply separately to the girls' letters, 
 but they will understand I am greatly obliged to them for 
 them. Last night we had friends in to dinner viz., Sir 
 E. and Lady Colebrooke she was a daughter of Lord Alfred 
 Paget and her brother, Mr. Paget. I sat between Princess 
 
 4i*
 
 644 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Beatrice and Lady Colebrooke (she is a beauty, and had the 
 honour of kissing the Queen's cheek when she went away). 
 We had a long drive in the afternoon all about Ballater. 
 
 " You will be pleased to hear that although my stay here 
 is so protracted I have not worn my welcome out. The Queen 
 told Dr. Reid yesterday that she was very sorry I was going 
 on Thursday, and added that she liked me very much. I get 
 on very pleasantly with the Household from the Duchess 
 down she is a wonderful woman she was a Duchess in at- 
 tendance on the Queen at her Coronation, and now does not 
 look older than Emma. I have bought the Bazaar Book 
 Under Lochnagar from the Minister. It is a souvenir of the 
 visit. I am going this morning after some Balmoral heather 
 honey. The Review of Reviews is in demand with the House- 
 hold here. Sir H. Ponsonby has it just now, and he told me 
 this morning he read it last night. 
 
 " I go from here on Thursday to Dalmeny, but I will write 
 
 you again as to my plans. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 "H. H. F. 
 
 " What the Queen said is strictly private." 
 
 ' Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " October 3rd, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 Yesterday afternoon we went to Braemar the old 
 spot changed horses at the ' Fife Arms,' then on to Mar 
 Lodge to write my name in the Prince of Wales's book, then 
 back to Braemar to tea and home. An exquisite day and 
 fine. No one came to dinner and we had a quiet evening. 
 I sat next the Princess Henry and had my accustomed talk 
 with the Queen in the drawing-room. The Duchess of Rox- 
 burgh told me she (the Duchess) was very sorry I was going. 
 " To-day is lovely I have bought some Balmoral heather 
 honey and a fine young collie dog for Edith he will follow 
 in a day or two they are now difficult to get, and I don't 
 think he is as handsome as our departed Cheviot.
 
 Holiday Making 645 
 
 " There is a Cabinet to-morrow. I have no intention of 
 going, but that will interfere with my visit to Dalmeny. I 
 shall most probably sleep at Perth and come home on Friday, 
 but I will telegraph you, if I do not know when the post goes 
 out. 
 
 " Love to the girls. Edith's collie is the facsimile of Princess 
 Henry's, which was given to her by Princess Beatrice. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F. 
 
 " The Queen gives me a haunch of venison ! " 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " Friday before breakfast, 
 
 " October 5th, 1894. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Just a line to say my visit is ending most pleasantly. 
 Prince Henry of Prussia brought his and the Princess's photo- 
 graphs to my room last night with their autographs. 
 
 " The Queen was very gracious in the drawing-room. I go 
 to Perth to-night and hope to reach home on Saturday at the 
 same time and to be met as I arranged for Friday. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 On the 2 ist of October, nearly three weeks after the termination 
 of his delightful and interesting visit he received the following 
 letters : 
 
 From the late Prince Christian Victor : 
 
 " Cumberland Lodge, 
 
 " Windsor Great Park, 
 
 " January igth, 1895. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " By to-day's post I am sending you a photograph of 
 myself which you asked me for at Balmoral ; it was taken last 
 month, hence the delay in not sending it before. 
 
 " I am not returning to India as I had intended when I last 
 saw you, as unfortunately some important business has
 
 646 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 cropped up which necessitates my staying in England and 
 helping my father; so in 3 or 4 weeks I shall go to Dover 
 to another battalion of the 6oth Rifles. I shall regret in many 
 ways not going back, but perhaps it is not a bad thing to get a 
 little home service in. I trust you are in good health, and 
 that I shall have the pleasure of meeting you again soon. 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 " CHRISTIAN VICTOR OF Sen. HOLSTEIN." 
 
 From Miss Phipps. 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " October 20th, 1894. 
 " DEAR MR. FOWLER, 
 
 " At last I send you my photograph of Balmoral with 
 Lord Herschell and Sir Henry Ponsonby in miniature on the 
 road ! The dull skies we have been under of late are the 
 photographer's excuse for being so slow in printing from my 
 negative. 
 
 " The Queen keeps well, though this wet snow cannot be 
 good for rheumatism. 
 
 " Poor young Lord Drumlanrig's death has shocked us all 
 greatly. The Queen and everyone here liked him so much. 
 
 " I hope you are having sunnier skies, but we miss you here 
 very much. " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " HARRIET L. PHIPPS." 
 
 Another holiday which he enjoyed at Balmoral took place the 
 following year and just when he specially needed one after his 
 severe attack of influenza. Indeed, it was her Majesty's gracious 
 and womanly consideration that made her select him just then 
 on account of his convalescence as her Minister in Attendance, 
 though it was contrary to precedent that a Secretary of State in 
 the House of Commons should be absent when Parliament was 
 sitting. But the Queen surmised, and rightly, that the air of 
 the Highlands would do more then to restore him to health than 
 any other prescription. He often spoke to us afterwards of her
 
 Holiday Making 647 
 
 Majesty's care for him until he was stronger ; commanding him to 
 sit instead of stand during their after-dinner conversations, and 
 when he at first demurred, and expressed a wish to stand, she 
 graciously reproved him by saying : " Then I am afraid our 
 conversation will have to be a very short one." 
 
 The following letter he wrote from Balmoral to my mother in 
 June, 1895 : 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " i6th June, 1895. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " I telegraphed you yesterday. I had a pleasant 
 though long day's journey on Friday, reaching Perth at 
 eight. Early next morning (seven o'clock), I started for 
 Aberdeen, which I reached at nine. Started for Ballater at 
 9.50 arrived at 11.10 and drove here. The weather and 
 scenery of the journey were exquisite. The drive here was 
 surpassingly beautiful, especially the golden glory of the 
 broom. Lunch and a long walk occupied Saturday. The 
 only other visitors at the Castle are the Countess Erbach, 
 the sister of Prince Henry of Battenberg a charming German 
 lady and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Dr. 
 Donald McLeod, the editor of Good Words, so we were a small 
 party at dinner. I sat next Princess Beatrice and had long 
 conversations with the Queen during dinner about the Shah- 
 zada, in whose movements she is deeply interested. After 
 dinner I had another long talk with the Queen at the close 
 of which she ordered me to sit down. This morning Dr. 
 McLeod has preached. Last evening it was light till between 
 10 and ii. It is cold ; I have a fire in my room and need 
 warm clothing. The landscape beauty of yesterday spring 
 beauty which I had never seen before was surpassingly fine, 
 and the air is charming. 
 
 " We shall have a great function here on Tuesday, the open- 
 ing of the Church. 
 
 " Love to the girls, 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F."
 
 648 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " June lyth, 1895. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Yesterday's letters except the early post may not be 
 delivered to-day so I wired you this morning. 
 
 " I dined with the Queen last night and sat between the 
 Countess Erbach and the bride-elect." (Miss McNeil, who was 
 just engaged to the Duke of Argyll.) " I duly congratulated 
 her. The Princess Beatrice, with whom I had a long and 
 sitting conversation in the drawing-room, was most pleased 
 to accept a copy of Edith's book, which has been sent upstairs 
 this morning. 
 
 " Miss McNeil will also have a copy. The Queen was very 
 pleasant and gracious, and I had a long chat with her. 
 
 " To-morrow is the Church function. The weather, though 
 inclined to showers, is very fine and to-day is much warmer. 
 
 " Love to the girls, 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " i8th June. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Awfully wet this morning for the Church opening ! 
 I am all right and enjoying myself. I sat next the Queen 
 last night at dinner, between her and Princess Beatrice. 
 The little daughter of the latter (to whom I have given a 
 copy of Edith's book) when she heard that so many clergy- 
 men were coming to-day, asked if they were ' all going to 
 preach.' 
 
 " The Queen was told by Miss McNeil about Edith's book, 
 and about the Princess having a copy, and expressed her 
 desire to see it. She was very pleasant at dinner and we talked 
 about things and books and people. Dr. Cameron Lees is 
 staying here. Prince Henry returned from London yesterday. 
 
 " Service gone off very well. Dr. Donald McLeod preached 
 an admirable sermon. " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F."
 
 Holiday Making 649 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " June iQth, 1895. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " Wet, wet, all yesterday and last night this morn- 
 ing is a shade better. 
 
 " We had a big luncheon yesterday of the clergy and people 
 at the Church opening and I made the acquaintance of the 
 great leaders of the Kirk e.g., Dr. Story, Dr. Macgregor and 
 Dr. Cameron Lees. The Queen sent for me in the afternoon 
 and we remained talking until a discreet footman announced 
 to her Majesty that it was five minutes to six ! I dined and 
 
 sat between Princess Beatrice and Lady , who is a very 
 
 godly and nice woman. 
 
 " The Countess Erbach told me that she had begun to 
 read Edith's ' pretty book,' and she talked of translating 
 it into German, so I offered to present her with a copy, which 
 she accepted. I sent it up to her this morning and enclose 
 her reply for Edith. 
 
 " At present my intention is to sleep at Perth to-morrow 
 evening and come from there on Friday by the day train. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 " H. H. F." 
 
 " Balmoral Castle, 
 
 " Thursday. 
 " MY DEAREST LOVE, 
 
 " As I did not get a letter from you this forenoon I 
 thought I had better telegraph to know how you all are, 
 although I suppose you thought that the post would not be 
 delivered before I left. I dined with the Queen last night 
 very small party, only eight in all. She was very pleasant, 
 and after she went upstairs she sent me an engraving of her- 
 self and her children and grandchildren as a memento of 
 my visit. I hope to be with you to-morrow at dinner. 
 
 " Ever yours, 
 
 "H. H. F. 
 
 " When I thanked her Majesty on bidding her good-night 
 she said how pleased she had been to see me."
 
 650 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The above letters seem to show that it was the incentive to 
 enjoyment that my father lacked rather than the power of it. 
 If in his own ordinary life a picnic with a tea-basket had been 
 suggested, he would have shrunk from the idea with horror, and 
 said, why could not people take their meals comfortably at 
 home ; but when a tea-picnic was arranged, stamped with a 
 Sovereign's sanction, and therefore possessing an importance 
 beyond any question of mere pleasure, he enjoyed it extremely. 
 Recreation was to him so rarely worth while ; but once draw him 
 into it with cords strong enough to claim his interest and his 
 effort, and it became quite another thing. It was always a neces- 
 sity to my father's real self to be called upon to make an effort. 
 An effort intellectually, an effort socially, an effort of any kind 
 he responded to, and it brought out all that was best in him. 
 But he was never enough of an artist to be, or to do, anything which 
 was only of value to himself for the sake of what he had himself put 
 into it. The love of work for the work's sake would never have 
 drawn out his powers ; his work was a means, not an end. To 
 the artistic temperament the work is always the end. So to the 
 latter the possession of an attribute which is beautiful in itself 
 is enough to be charming is to be charming, what matter the 
 environment. But my father rarely put forth his charm of manner 
 unless a distinct claim called for it ; then few could be more 
 charming than he. Where there was no effort he was often 
 misunderstood and never appreciated. Effort is the keynote of 
 progress and progress was his watchword, therefore the necessity 
 for effort was a necessity of his existence.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 IMPRESSIONS 
 " The memory of the just is blessed." Proverbs of Solomon. 
 
 " For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches." 
 
 BACON. 
 
 " My dear, dear lord, 
 The purest treasure mortal times afford 
 Is spotless reputation." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 L 
 
 ORD MORLEY writes to me : 
 
 " I do not feel that I can help you in your book by any 
 element of particular novelty or interest, but I should be 
 sorry to seem negligent in anything intended to do honour 
 to your father. If I had only kept a continuous diary of my 
 Parliamentary life, I should have found his name on many 
 a page, for our relations in all the chances and changes of this 
 time were close and unbroken. 
 
 " We entered the House of Commons almost together, and 
 we quitted it together ; and during the five- or eight-and- 
 twenty intervening years, first below the gangway, then for 
 two short spells of office, followed by two long spells of opposi- 
 tion, we sat on the green benches side by side, shared party 
 counsels, discussed public affairs morning, noon and night, 
 and enjoyed the satisfaction of cordial friendship, and as 
 I make bold to hope, mutual respect. 
 
 " The party had just achieved a prodigious victory. 
 Never did such fortune turn so swiftly. The first five years 
 of your father's Parliamentary life were a time of un- 
 paralleled embarrassment for the Government that he came 
 
 6 5 I
 
 652 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 to Westminster to support. Bradlaugh, Parnell, Gordon, 
 Majuba the names only hint at a portion of the chapter of 
 ministerial trouble. 
 
 " Mr. Gladstone's authority was still enormous both inside 
 the House and outside. Yet irresponsible aspirants behind him 
 came to have some searching of heart, and the prospect was 
 obscure. As it fell out during the twenty years that followed 
 Mr. Gladstone's defeat in 1885, we were only in power, so to 
 call it, for three years and a half. Such was the fortune of 
 war. But Parliament went on, and your father was born for 
 the House of Commons. His public life and all his purposes 
 in public life through his whole heart and mind, were centred 
 in it. He acquired an unsurpassed command over its proce- 
 dure, and over all the technical arts, devices, skilful computa- 
 tions and expedients, that are honourably essential to the 
 successful transaction of the national business within its walls. 
 
 " Though not without a perfectly legitimate and laudable 
 personal ambition, he gloried in the House of Commons, not 
 because success there opens the way to the sceptres and 
 thrones of politics ; not because an athlete exulting in thews 
 and sinews for debate there finds his grandest arena ; nor 
 because, like Cobden and Bright, he had any particular cause 
 to fight, or doctrine to expound, or set of principles to enforce. 
 It delighted him, because his master passion, without preju- 
 dice to his earnest interest in deeper and more mysterious 
 things, was an insatiable appetite for affairs. For the conduct 
 and unfolding of the mighty drama of national affairs in all 
 their varying phases, scenes, and episodes dull, exciting, 
 elevated, slack, irrelevant, intense Parliament is the great 
 imperial theatre. It was all a scene of irresistible attraction 
 to him. He was never one of the tribe of politicians, often 
 even men of plenty of talent, who insist on pushing and 
 elbowing their way forward. But he rapidly showed his 
 aptitude and capacity to play a worthy and a helpful part, 
 as he had amply shown before on a less conspicuous stage. 
 
 " He could not be other than an admirable and powerful 
 speaker anywhere ; but I never felt that he was half so much
 
 Impressions 653 
 
 at home on the platform as in the House. I do not in truth 
 think that he looked with much favour on that immense 
 prominence into which Mr. Gladstone first brought the plat- 
 form, not merely as an engine for a particular agitation, but as 
 a standing piece of our daily political machinery, in the famous 
 campaigns that ended in the sweeping triumph of 1880. He 
 very speedily made a high mark in debate. He became 
 one of the not very many men of whom we can truly say that 
 the House was always glad when he got up, for it knew that 
 he was sure to prove master of his case, and sure to put it 
 with the plain, direct, and completely intelligible force, that 
 is a safe key to the interest and confidence of parliamentary 
 assemblies. He was always vigorous, exact, manly, fair, 
 searching, argumentative, civil, and on one marked and well- 
 known occasion, he showed himself capable of producing 
 genuine and decisive oratorical effect. Singularly free from 
 what is called the forensic tone, he never fell into the tire- 
 some error of forgetting that he was addressing a common 
 jury, and not the Master of the Rolls, sitting with three 
 equity judges. I often used to say to him, ungraciously 
 and presumptuously enough, what a 'success he would have 
 had at the bar and on the bench, how shrewd and capable 
 an advocate and how impressive a judge, if he had taken his 
 clear head, his turn for common sense, his gifts of lucid exposi- 
 tion and logical reasoning, into the law-courts, instead of 
 bringing them to the House of Commons. But he would never 
 yield, for the House was his idol, and a noble idol it was. 
 
 " Of the political hardihood, that is sometimes a frightful 
 danger, and sometimes a sovereign gift, he had little share. 
 He had neither the ardour that is always thirsting for the 
 frontal attack, nor the dogged sort of hardihood that with 
 steady eye and firm heart, patiently defies time and casual 
 circumstance. Great high ventures were foreign to his tem- 
 perament, and when duty drew him into them, he would 
 hardly have gone even the length of Milton's language about 
 modest feasts of music and wine, that he who of these delights 
 can judge, and spare to interpose them oft, is not unwise.
 
 654 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 With cheap gammon and patter about the evils of party, 
 I think he had no sort of sympathy. He knew them well 
 enough, as'we all 'do";' he was as critical as we all are, of the 
 
 O * m m Gr mm 
 
 party tactics or party Strategy of the hour, whether on our 
 own side, or still more readily on the other. 
 
 " Though he sometimes distrusted the counsels of his own 
 party, he distrusted the counsels of the party opposite a 
 hundred times more. Though now and then overmuch of a 
 Cassandra, he stuck manfully to the ship. He was by all 
 his temperament, training, and habits of thought, Right 
 Centre ; in other words, he thought you could not govern 
 England against the middle classes. I used to think him a 
 little too sensitive about the newspapers, but then he had not 
 written so many leading articles as I had. He was a good 
 reader of books, and a serious judge of them ; fond of many 
 kinds of knowledge ; splendidly free of the lazy ignorance that 
 is indifferent to knowing better ; and he was able in a plain 
 working way to take the measure of men's competence to 
 have a right to a leading opinion on the things they were 
 talking about. People thought he was without the saving 
 grace of humour, and in fact he did not often show a native 
 turn for starting humorous points or phrases. But if a friend 
 applied a fugitive dose of jest, epigram, ironic incident, 
 I have never known anybody heartier or more spontaneous 
 in response. 
 
 " He never had a spark or trace of the personal jealousy or 
 rivalry that sometimes make a shabby speck even in upright 
 politicians. As a colleague he was the most loyal of men. 
 We always found him to use Harcourt's standing word 
 about him ' serviable,' infinitely ready to help, to oblige, 
 and to lend all the fruits of his experiences in many branches 
 of public work, to those of us who were weak where he was 
 strong. He could deal very faithfully with a man if he liked, 
 and had a fair command of the wholesome vocabulary of con- 
 tempt for political folly and imposture. At times he could 
 wear a manner that might seem to those who did not know 
 him, over confident, but I often thought he would have done
 
 Impressions 655 
 
 his knowledge and common sense still more justice, if he had 
 been twice as self-confident as he was. 
 
 " The ancients, as they are called, drew some public offices 
 by lot, and a satirist might perhaps find a parallel in Cabinet 
 appointments among us English moderns. Your father did 
 not choose either of his two Cabinet posts, yet everybody 
 knew that to whatever post the lot might bring him, he 
 was certain to do it well. And so, as the people who knew 
 him will tell you, undoubtedly he did. He fully understood 
 the drift of the biblical injunction, often quoted by me for 
 our common refreshment hi dark days : ' Seekest thou great 
 things, seek them not.' Search in these high matters seldom 
 being the best way of finding. 
 
 " Like such admirable public men as Sir James Graham, 
 Nature did not mean him to be a great Commander, but he 
 was the best type of strong and valuable henchman. And 
 last of all, as I had many a chance of discovery, he was in 
 other than political relations, a downright and constant good 
 friend. On one critical occasion a dozen years ago, when 
 party captains and crew on our side were pretty sharply divided 
 as to compass, chart, bearings, course, reckonings and all the 
 rest of it, he and I held strongly opposed views. A certain 
 war that in his judgment was inevitable and indispensable, 
 seemed to me an uncompensated blunder or worse. The 
 peril to our long habits of intimacy and confidence was for- 
 midable, but thanks mainly to him, I am sure, we turned the 
 corner safely. 
 
 " This little fragment has gone far enough, and I offer it 
 to you with much humility and sincerity." 
 
 I am indebted to Lord Rosebery for the following most true 
 understanding of my father during their comparatively short 
 
 association : 
 
 " 38, Berkeley Square, W. 
 
 " June 25th, 1912. 
 " DEAR MRS. HAMILTON, 
 
 ' You ask me to write a few words about your 
 father. They must indeed be few, for his death is so recent
 
 656 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 that he has not yet passed into the domain of history where 
 alone statesmen can be equitably judged. Moreover, I only 
 knew a part of him ; a small portion of his life, measured 
 in years, and even within those limits of time I knew nothing 
 of his home-life which reveals so much. Our acquaintance 
 practically began, I think, when we were colleagues in the 
 Cabinet of 1892, and our relations certainly became even more 
 intimate after the fall of that Government in 1895, and con- 
 tinued so till the formation of the Government of 1905, which 
 he joined, and I did not. After that our paths separated 
 and we met more rarely, though with unabated cordiality. 
 
 " I knew your father as a friend and a political friend 
 during this period, and it is of my experience of his friendship 
 that I wish to testify. There never was one more thorough, 
 more genuine, more true. He had, too, that unusual gift 
 of candour without offence which is so rare and refreshing a 
 feature of friendship in public life. The value of the candid 
 friend in politics depends upon his honesty. He may be 
 of that kind from which Canning prayed to be delivered as 
 the greatest of all plagues that an angry heaven can send ; 
 a person who under the cloak of ingenuousness deals mali- 
 cious and murderous stabs. But there is another rare and 
 choice category of candid friends to which your father be- 
 longed. He told the truth as he found it in him, kindly but 
 sincerely. That is the best kind of friend in public affairs. 
 There is another perhaps more useful, but on a lower plane, 
 the one who can feel the pulse of the public of a party and 
 diagnose its beat. But the able man of high capacity who 
 takes the trouble to speak his convictions honestly and fully 
 to his friend in political life is beyond rubies. 
 
 " Of your father's capacity it is needless for me to speak, 
 for it is sealed and secure by general reputation. In council 
 he was a man of broad judgment and ripe wisdom, not always 
 sufficiently translated into action and speech. He was, 
 indeed, rather a man of deliberation than audacity. As to 
 speech again he did not speak nearly enough in the judgment 
 of his friends, or sufficiently to impress his personality on
 
 Impressions 657 
 
 the country. Had he used his great powers more generally 
 and less cautiously he must have stamped himself more 
 deeply on his generation. But he was not an extreme poli- 
 tician and could not soberly applaud extremes. Moreover, 
 he was not satisfied without a mature statement of his case 
 with all the power he could impart to it. That sagacious 
 fastidiousness limited the number of his deliverances, but also 
 imparted a singular value to his annual addresses in his 
 constituency. It must also be remembered that he had 
 ascended to a high pinnacle in oratory from which he may 
 have dreaded to descend even for a moment ; he may, in a 
 word, have been afraid of his own reputation. If that were so, 
 he was not to be blamed, for his great speech on the Cotton 
 Duties was perhaps the only one that ever converted a whole 
 party in these days, or indeed in any other. 
 
 " Be that as it may, he left behind him a name of unsullied 
 repute, the fame of great capacity, both revealed and un- 
 developed, and with me, at any rate, the memory of precious 
 friendship. 
 
 " R." 
 Lord Haldane writes : 
 
 " As a debater Lord Wolverhampton showed great power. 
 I remember well the impression of capacity in wielding this 
 weapon which he invariably made on us who were his col- 
 leagues in the House of Commons. He had a splendid voice, 
 and, in addition, the gift of throwing into the act of speech 
 the whole force of his personality, whether or not the occasion 
 was one for which he was prepared, he rarely failed to convey 
 the impression of mastery of his weapon. This gift from 
 nature made him a most formidable opponent, and one of 
 the very best speakers at a time when fine speakers were not 
 rare. His effectiveness as a debater was enhanced by a far- 
 reaching and accurate knowledge of modern Parliamentary 
 records. No one was more ready with an illustration of 
 the way in which a crisis had been handled on a similar 
 occasion by preceding'statesmen, or in displaying with striking 
 
 42
 
 658 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 vividness the consequences which had on previous occasions 
 attended departure from principle. He could do this as 
 effectively in defence as in attack. His great speech on the 
 Indian Cotton Duties question was assisted by the possession 
 of this quality. 
 
 " But though formidable alike in attack or defence, he was 
 essentially a man of moderate views. His position in the 
 public mind was largely due to the fact that he was accounted 
 to be of safe and sound judgment. He rarely proceeded to 
 extremities in the statement of a political creed, and on this 
 account he was the more effective. He never varied in 
 characteristics, so far as my observation went. The Mr. 
 Fowler of the eighties was not different from the Lord Wolver- 
 hampton of twenty years after. He was deeply interested 
 in what the British public expects a politician to have at 
 heart, and rarely forgives him if he neglects it Finance. 
 This interest gave continuity to his method of approaching 
 great questions, and was a source of strength. 
 
 "It is always difficult to write an adequate appreciation 
 for those who did not know him at first hand of a statesman 
 whose name is not associated with any far-reaching and 
 dramatic reform. It is therefore not easy to convey how 
 much the name of Henry Fowler was on the lips of his col- 
 leagues in the House of Commons, through many years. But 
 his personality was constantly being impressed on those 
 colleagues and on the whole House. And the reason was, 
 that he was a man who stood for a type of public opinion that 
 had to be reckoned with, and stood for it strongly. This and 
 certain remarkable natural gifts rendered it inevitable that he 
 should impress himself on a succession of Parliaments. 
 
 " HALDANE OF CLOAN." 
 
 Lord Brassey sends me this tribute : 
 
 "It is a privilege to be permitted to add an appreciation 
 to those many tributes of friendship which will be brought 
 together in the biography of your lamented father.
 
 Impressions 659 
 
 " My words must be few. You will have abundant testi- 
 mony from those in positions of the highest eminence. I look 
 back over many years, in which, as one of the rank and file, 
 I was associated with your father, and I followed him as one 
 of my most revered leaders both in and out of Parliament. 
 As a statesman he had my unreserved confidence. He was a 
 sound Liberal never a revolutionary. He was distinguished 
 in an eminent degree for sober judgment. He was a sane 
 Imperialist. Whether in debate in Parliament or in the 
 private exchange of views, he rose far above the contentions 
 of party. He was loyal. He was disinterested. 
 
 "As an administrator he had the advantage of a wide 
 experience. He had been a lawyer in large practice. He 
 was a man of affairs, in close touch with enterprise and busi- 
 ness of many kinds. 
 
 " Living in a hive of industry he knew the condition of 
 the workers in the Midlands. He knew where the shoe 
 pinches for the many. He knew what was urgent to be done, 
 to improve the condition of the people. 
 
 " On his appointment as Secretary of State for India your 
 father worked with ardour and consummate ability in a new 
 sphere. He rapidly acquired a strong grasp of Indian affairs. 
 He made admirable speeches on India in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 " Your father was an orator of no mean gifts. I have heard 
 him in Parliament, and on many platforms. He was lucid 
 in exposition, convincing in argument, felicitous in the choice 
 of words, in tone and manner a most agreeable speaker. 
 
 " It were out of place to dwell on your father's commanding 
 authority as the representative of those great companies of 
 earnest men, who do not belong to the Anglican communion. 
 Their confidence was grounded not less in reverence for his 
 high character than in the knowledge of his ability to plead 
 the cause of religious liberty. 
 
 " In private life your father made friends wherever he went. 
 When in attendance at Balmoral he was a persona gratissima 
 to all members of the Household. It was delightful to see 
 
 42*
 
 660 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 how warmly they welcomed him when he came down to 
 Windsor. I was on duty as Lord-in-Waiting. I never saw 
 my valued friend in happier vein. The regard was mutual. 
 
 " My wife and I have the kindliest personal memories of 
 your father. When staying at Hastings he sometimes drove 
 over to Normanhurst. We remember other meetings, and 
 especially some charming walks in the green glades of Skibo 
 Castle. In those pleasant places firocul negotiis, far from the 
 madding crowd, listening to your father's discoursing with 
 the mellow wisdom of the riper years on things both new and 
 old, we seem to rise to a higher plane. In his company we 
 had some golden hours, long past but not forgotten. 
 
 " It is well that your father's life should be written. It will 
 offer an inspiring example to many readers. It was nobly 
 spent in the service of his country. 
 
 " It will be for you, his daughter, to bear testimony to 
 your father's private virtues. That grateful task will not be 
 neglected. Your home, as I well know, was a happy place. 
 
 " BRASSEY." 
 
 Bishop Boyd Carpenter, who as Bishop of Ripon for so many 
 years knew my father well, says : 
 
 " There are some men round whose memory racy and 
 pregnant anecdotes seem naturally to gather ; the lives of 
 such men will always be popular ; but the drawback of such 
 lives lies in the risk that the real personality of the man 
 may be lost sight of in a crowd of amusing and mirth-pro- 
 voking stories. Perhaps, therefore, we may say, happy is 
 the man whose personality is not obscured by tales more or 
 less legendary, which cluster round his memory, and who is 
 remembered for himself alone. I am led to this reflection 
 when I recall the late Lord Wolverhampton though I can 
 recall the innocently sly smile which rose to his face when 
 he was about to break into kindly banter what remains 
 with me, however, is a sense of his quiet and self-contained 
 personality ; he bore himself as one who had fought a good
 
 Impressions 66 1 
 
 fight and was happy in his success, but there were none of 
 those shallow arts and assumed affectations which mar the 
 success of less stable characters. Whatever his achievements 
 had been and they are written in our public history he 
 never lost the quiet, steadying influence of inner piety ; he was 
 what he had ever been, a man of simple faith, good sagacity, 
 great kindliness, and faithful affection. I write as I felt 
 about him ; his personality remains with me as that of a 
 single-minded man, guided by steadfast principle and 
 unspoiled faith." 
 
 Lord Crewe writes : 
 
 " July 5th, 1912. 
 
 " I had for a long time enjoyed the friendly acquaintance 
 of Mr. Henry Fowler as it subsists between men linked by 
 party ties and enjoying common friendships, but divided by a 
 stretch of nearly thirty years ; and during the period between 
 1892 and 1895, when he was so conspicuous a Parliamentary 
 figure, I was but little in London. It was not until the 
 Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was formed 
 at the close of 1905 that we were thrown into a closer relation, 
 and met more regularly. From 1908, when Sir Henry Fowler 
 became Lord Wolverhampton, we sat daily side by side in 
 Parliament. There are many, however, more qualified than 
 I am to speak of his official career, and of his political activities 
 during the ten years of Liberal Opposition after the summer 
 of 1895 ; I had not even the good fortune to be present at 
 the famous debate of the 2ist February in that year, when, 
 as Secretary of State for India, he achieved on the critical 
 subject of the Indian Cotton Duties one of the rarest of 
 Parliamentary feats, by winning over to enthusiastic agree- 
 ment a dubious and variously hostile House of Commons. 
 
 " I have often regretted that the fortune of parties pre- 
 vented him from coming to the House of Lords earlier. He 
 was seventy-eight years old when he joined us, and though I 
 can testify gratefully to the pluck and cheerfulness with
 
 662 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 which he engaged in many debates, some physical vigour was 
 wanting to an oratory, which, both in matter and manner, 
 would have been peculiarly acceptable to the peers. 
 
 " As a colleague, and in Council, his opinions never failed 
 to receive the consideration they merited if they did not 
 always command full agreement. He never wavered, I 
 believe, in his devotion to civil and religious liberty ; but some 
 of the later movements within the Liberal party seemed to 
 run counter to his primary convictions. Like not a few public 
 men as they advance in years, he mistrusted, and sometimes 
 dreaded, undisciplined enthusiasms and new departures ; 
 but he retained the faculty of feeling and expressing deep 
 moral indignation, thus differing from many whose reasonable 
 and balanced caution, by impoverishing and attenuating the 
 efforts of their experience, tends to weaken their influence with 
 the younger generation. Nobody could at any time doubt 
 the seriousness with which he approached social and political 
 problems, or his belief in the good ordering of the world. 
 
 " Of my private recollections of Henry Fowler, none are 
 pleasanter than those which recur with the titles of every 
 book by his daughter, Mrs. Felkin. I recall his delight in 
 their wit and invention, his not too marked parental partiality, 
 and his pleasure at the wide appreciation of them shown by 
 the public. In general, my memories are all of his generous 
 friendship and goodwill." 
 
 The following extract from a letter to me from Lord Halsbury 
 may be taken as typical of the position my father held in the 
 estimation of many of those who were opposed to him in politics : 
 
 " In one sense I knew your father very well. I always 
 knew him as the same straightforward, direct and able 
 advocate of the side he had espoused in politics. I need not 
 say I always respected his opinions, even where I differed. 
 I remember he and I agreed from time to time upon things 
 upon which we were both of different views from the views
 
 Impressions 663 
 
 of those with whom we generally acted. We differed from the 
 policy of abolishing the different courts of Westminster Hall, 
 and we were right, as experience, I think, since proved. I 
 remember sitting with him in the Judicial Committee of the 
 Privy Council, and there, as everywhere else, I found him 
 the same firm advocate of what was right, and of what he and 
 I believed to be the truth : and I think it might be said of 
 him what a poet has put into the mouth of his hero, ' He hath 
 the right, aye, though each word were fire.' Although our 
 friendship was but for a brief period, it was one of which I 
 always was, and always shall be, proud. 
 " Believe me always, 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " HALSBURY." 
 
 Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton, who knew my father as a lawyer, 
 writes : 
 
 " Lord Wolverhampton was a lawyer, by nature and pre- 
 dilection as well as by profession. Law was in his eyes one 
 of the great formative influences by which both individual 
 and national character are shaped, and as such it was of 
 permanent interest to him. The elaborate technicalities of 
 equity which still govern so much of our laws of real property 
 and the scarcely less intricate developments of the law of 
 contracts had no attraction for him. But there was no subject 
 which consciously or unconsciously influenced his thoughts 
 more than the obligations which arise out of relationships and 
 more especially the reciprocal obligations of the citizen and 
 of the State whether resting on our common law or formulated 
 by statute. 
 
 " True to the national characteristics of our jurisprudence 
 he regarded all this vast field of law primarily from the point 
 of view of the individual. Our law is the outcome of the 
 struggle of the individual in defence of his personal liberty 
 and for the recognition that his rights are inviolable, whether 
 those rights be peculiar to himself or possessed in common
 
 664 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 with other members of the community. These last-named 
 rights in his view could only be secured by well-organized 
 self-government, and the extension of that self-government into 
 every department of organized national life was his idea of 
 true national growth. It follows that such a task as the 
 conduct of the Parish Councils Bill was typically congenial to 
 him. It was an advance in the direction of more complete 
 self-government along lines which were essentially those of 
 our national progress in the past, and therefore it gave good 
 hope of being an abiding part of the national life of the future. 
 This was sufficient to secure his sympathy. Schemes of govern- 
 ment according to foreign models had no share of his favour 
 or his faith. He realized that law in this sense is part of 
 the national development, and that to ensure its permanent 
 usefulness it must be the outcome of national habits of mind 
 and life. 
 
 " His qualities came out most strikingly in connection with 
 Constitutional Law. This is law still in process of formation 
 as were Common Law and Equity during centuries in the 
 past, but in this case the growth is slower and more fitful. 
 It rarely forms the subject of formal decisions, which, in a 
 growing law, mark and make permanent the advances that 
 have secretly and silently been made. As in the case of 
 International Law, it is difficult at any moment to distinguish 
 between what has already become law and what is still in 
 the condition of approved tradition, respected but not binding. 
 To give to an individual authority in this realm of law there 
 must be an intimate knowledge of the history of the past 
 coupled with mental sympathy for all that makes for orderly 
 government. Lord Wolverhampton possessed all this in 
 an eminent degree, and his influence was always helpful to 
 the growth of respect for and obedience to those political 
 traditions which have hitherto formed an unwritten code 
 regulating our self-government. In this his loss will be sorely 
 felt. The tendency of to-day in all countries is to regard as 
 permissible all that which is not prohibited by positive law, 
 and there is an almost universal tendency to refuse to be
 
 Impressions 665 
 
 bound by rules that cannot be enforced. It remains to be seen 
 whether this will suffice for the needs of self-governing nations. 
 It certainly exposes them to ruder shocks in their national 
 development and makes it more difficult to secure that 
 advance shall be permanent. 
 
 " In all this domain Lord Wolverhampton possessed both 
 abundant knowledge and, what is far rarer, a true legal 
 interest, and if the slower progress along traditional lines with 
 which he was most fully in sympathy is out of keeping with 
 the impatience of to-day he evidenced, in its best form, how 
 law, rightly conceived, not only is in harmony with progress, 
 but can inspire and sustain it." 
 
 The Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell sends me the following im- 
 pression of my father at his club : 
 
 " When Mr. Gladstone (who was not quite at his happiest on a 
 social occasion) was laying the foundation-stone of the National 
 Liberal Club, he damped the ardour of his audience with this 
 depreciatory comment on clubs : ' Speaking generally, I 
 should say there could not be a less interesting occasion than 
 the laying of a foundation-stone of a club in London. For, 
 after all, what are the clubs of London ? I am afraid little 
 else than temples of luxury and ease.' No doubt those words, 
 though they have a disparaging sound, fairly describe the 
 prime purpose of a club. For ' luxury ' read ' comfort,' with 
 efficiency and moderate prices ; and you have the first use of a 
 club. Add ' ease ' freedom from the worries of home or 
 family, and liberty to say what one thinks and you have the 
 second. A third, and certainly not less important, is the 
 exchange of gossip. This is what Pennialinus means, when 
 writing his London Letter in the Drumble Dictator, he says that : 
 ' The clubs to-night are full of excitement about Mr. Popkins's 
 rumoured resignation,' or ' The report that the German Em- 
 peror, disguised as a nigger minstrel, has been found spying 
 on the beach at Brighton is widely discredited at the clubs.' 
 A fourth use of, at any rate, some clubs is study ; and at the
 
 666 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Athenaeum or the Reform Club the library is as much fre- 
 quented as the billiard-room or the dining-room. 
 
 " Now it happens that Mr. Fowler, Sir Henry Fowler, Lord 
 Wolverhampton to give him his successive designations 
 and I belonged to the same club, and I am asked to describe 
 his club-life. This forces me to consider him in relation to 
 all these foregoing points, and, after a careful survey, I am 
 bound to say that he did not seem to touch life at any of them. 
 I will take them one by one. Luxury certainly did not appeal 
 to him, though ' comfort,' ' efficiency ' and ' moderate prices ' 
 may have done so. He liked, if I remember aright, the kind 
 of food which Sir Henry Thompson considered to be the 
 root of all our national evils ' plain roast and boiled.' Tem- 
 perate to a fault, he drank one glass of sherry in a bottle of 
 soda-water, and looked none the more cheerful for it. But 
 ' efficiency,' as meaning a joint in good cut and a punctual 
 waiter, suited him, and ' moderate prices ' suit us all. Of ' ease ' 
 in a club he had no notion. Perhaps he had enough or too 
 much of it at home. Anyhow, he bustled into the club as a 
 solicitor might bustle into his office, or a stockbroker into ' the 
 House,' looking as if he were oppressed by a thousand cares 
 and as if every moment were precious. I don't think he ever 
 lounged, or sat back in a deep arm-chair, or fell into that 
 fitful slumber which so irritates the man who is on the watch 
 for the sleeper's paper. No he came to the club with 
 definite objects in view to get his luncheon, to read the 
 evening paper, or to look up something in a book of refer- 
 ence. There seemed to be nothing superficial about his 
 reading : whatever he read, he read it with concentration 
 and thoroughness and for a practical purpose. The lively 
 oracles of Hansard, and the bound volumes of the Times, 
 were objects of his fervent study, for in them he could find 
 material for those crushing reminders in which political 
 speakers delight : ' What did Mr. Balfour say in 1885 ? ' 
 ' Such sentiments come strangely from the Duke of Devon- 
 shire, who, when Lord Hartington, etc., etc.' He neither 
 smoked nor played billiards, nor took a hand at the whist-
 
 Impressions 667 
 
 table. My memory does not connect him with the library, 
 but I feel sure that if he ever went there it was to read a 
 political memoir or Mr. Herbert Paul's History of Modern 
 England. Again he never came to the club for gossip. If he 
 chanced to meet a friend, he was willing enough to talk ; but 
 his talk could not be called gossip. It was substantial, busi- 
 ness-like, and serious. Of private and personal matters he 
 never spoke, except to announce that his health required the 
 window to be shut, or to whisper a word of honest pleasure 
 in some recent performance of his gifted family. But the 
 bulk of his talk was political, and then indeed it was not serious 
 only but lugubrious. According to Fowler, everything was 
 for the worst in this worst of all possible worlds. If the 
 Liberals were out of office, they would remain out for a long 
 time to come. ' The extreme men were playing the mischief. 
 Compromise' (which he himself adored) 'was out of fashion, 
 and common sense had fled to Jupiter and Saturn.' If, by 
 way of a change, the Liberals were in office, disaster was 
 always impending. ' The by-elections were going against us. 
 The majority on the last division was alarmingly small. The 
 Skibbereen Eagle had a most mischievous leader, and its effects 
 would spread far beyond Skibbereen. The whole thing was 
 rotten ' (this with indescribable emphasis), 'and, when we went 
 to the country, some of us would be unpleasantly surprised.' 
 If there were any elements of joy in the political situation, 
 Fowler, when addressing his fellow-clubmen, kept them 
 locked in his own bosom. In general society, in his own house, 
 or even in the House of Commons, he would be cheerful 
 and chatty, but he left those qualities behind him (perhaps as 
 feeling that they would be out of place) when he crossed the 
 threshold of the ' Sarcophagus.' To him a club was no temple 
 of ' luxury and ease/ no bureau for the exchange of jokes or 
 rumours. Dr. Johnson denned a club as ' an assembly of 
 good fellows meeting under certain conditions.' He would 
 have pronounced Fowler not a ' clubable ' man, and would, 
 I fear, have detested his typically Nonconformist virtues of 
 seriousness, strenuousness, and unremitting industry."
 
 668 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 Now true as this snapshot is, my father was not in reality as 
 lugubrious as he appeared. That spirit of compromise, which he 
 adored, was an ingredient of his character as well as of his policy. 
 In the cheerful atmosphere of a club he was gloomy and depressed ; 
 in the dark seasons of trouble and anxiety he was calm and 
 optimistic. In order to adjust the balance between joy and sorrow, 
 he was ever ready to weep with them that rejoiced, and to rejoice 
 with them that wept. 
 
 The Right Hon. Arthur Balfour writes : 
 
 " 4, Carlton Gardens, 
 " Pall Mall, S.W. 
 
 " November 22nd, 1911. 
 " DEAR MRS. HAMILTON, 
 
 " I knew your father from his first entry into the 
 House of Commons, and I well remember on hearing his first 
 speech thinking that he had a distinguished career before 
 him. 
 
 ' Your father's character and ability stand out so clearly 
 and simply from the mere narrative of his achievements that 
 any impression is quite superfluous. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR."
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE LAST YEAR 
 
 " The night falls, and the watchman cries, 
 ' All's well.' " 
 
 S. R. LYSAGHT. 
 
 " Merit and good work is the end of man's motion, and conscience of the 
 same is the accomplishment of man's rest : for if a man can be partaker of 
 God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of God's rest." BACON. 
 
 ' I A HE first warning note was struck one day in November, 
 JL 1909, when I went with my father for his usual Saturday 
 afternoon walk. We had just reached Tettenhall Towers, about a 
 mile from our own house, when I noticed that he looked extremely 
 grey and pale. I asked if he felt ill, and he owned to doing so. 
 We went in and he had some brandy immediately, and sat still 
 for about half an hour, while I telephoned for a cab, which took 
 us back to Woodthorne. We had a trained nurse at that time 
 in the house attending on my mother ; and though she found his 
 pulse recovered since the little attack, whatever it might have 
 been, we sent for Dr. Coleman, our medical attendant, to examine 
 him thoroughly. He told my father that this must be a warning 
 to him not to live so strenuous a life, and also to take more food. 
 My father went about so much alone, and not feeling hungry, he 
 was very apt to neglect his meals. On close investigation we dis- 
 covered, to our dismay, that on one day of the previous week, he 
 had gone up to London by the eight o'clock train, having his 
 breakfast at home at seven a.m. He had done a day's work in 
 London, which included a Privy Council, an audience of the King, 
 and a long Cabinet Council, and then he caught the four-thirty 
 express which brought him home to dinner at eight o'clock. 
 
 669
 
 670 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 During the whole of the day he had had nothing to eat or drink. 
 He was then a man of seventy-nine years of age. 
 
 After this incident I noticed a distinct change in him physically. 
 The sad day had dawned for us his children when we first 
 realized that we were older than our parents. But even two 
 months later, on the 4th January, 1910, he addressed a huge meet- 
 ing of his old constituents in the Agricultural Hall in Wolverhamp- 
 ton, where he had held his annual great meetings for nearly thirty 
 years. He spoke for over an hour, though he mostly read his 
 speech, but it was an infinitely pathetic sight to see the veteran 
 statesman, facing for the last time, the men of his old constituency, 
 the meeting being held in support of the candidature of the present 
 Member Mr. G. R. Thorne during the election campaign. His 
 voice had lost much of its old force, but none of its old clearness ; 
 and owing to that tender solicitude which every man in that vast 
 audience felt for his old friend and representative, his words could 
 be for the most part heard in the perfect and considerate silence 
 which the meeting as a mass accorded him. He gave a short 
 review of recent politics, he eulogized the work of the Govern- 
 ment to which he then belonged, and with a characteristic touch 
 of fairness, even when it was not the most popular way of putting 
 the facts, he stated simply that the Act which would reflect the 
 greatest credit upon the Government, was that of Old Age Pensions, 
 and that, in his opinion, Mr. Chamberlain was entitled to claim 
 the authorship of that great boon, which had been rightly called 
 the Old People's Magna Charta ; and he would not in the slightest 
 degree detract from the honour so justly due to him. But no 
 practical scheme for carrying out this reform was ever submitted 
 to Parliament by the Government to which that great statesman 
 belonged. It was left to Mr. Asquith in his second Budget, 
 during Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's premiership, to lay the 
 foundation of a scheme by which the pensions could be provided, 
 a scheme which was now an integral part of our national finance. 
 He spoke of the Government's pledge to remove the pauper dis- 
 qualification, but added : " In justice to the tax-payer the Govern- 
 ment was bound not to yield to a great many applications made 
 for increasing the various conditions under which the pensions
 
 The Last Year 671 
 
 were granted. And some members, of whom he in the old days 
 would have been one, considered it better to get what was possible 
 rather than risk the chance of this great measure." He spoke, too, 
 of the glorious reform carried out in the Children's Act, which was, 
 in fact, the Bill in which he took the greatest interest in the House 
 of Lords, of the opening of the South African Federal Parliament, 
 and of the Government's general legislation. When speaking of 
 the additional cost of much of the legislation he said that great 
 changes could not be done for nothing, and asked where the 
 deficit of 16,000,000 that year was to come from ? " Out of 
 the Budget," some one cried ; and with a flash of his old readiness 
 my father answered, " Yes, but you have got to put something 
 into the Budget before you can get everything out of it." The 
 whole speech sounded as a muffled echo of those strong, fire-filled 
 speeches of former days, but true, as an echo must be, to the spirit 
 and temper which he had always shown. Fairness to an opponent 
 generous rather than merely just triumph in legislation which 
 benefited the poor and old, and particularly the widows, who have 
 a special claim on the care of a Christian country. Justice to the 
 tax-payer ; the necessity for compromise to take what was possible 
 and not wait for the sake of getting more ; loyalty to his own 
 party and full appreciation of its efforts. All these were truly 
 part of my father's political character, and as he sounded note 
 after note, we felt the full harmony of these last lines. The man 
 himself as he stood looking down on the vast audience, though 
 his hand trembled and his voice quavered, yet seemed so like the 
 stalwart statesman who had led them for so long that it was hard to 
 realize, even for those who did realize it, that he would never 
 speak to a mass meeting again. An election was in full swing ; 
 the tide surged on, the river swept past, and few perhaps saw the 
 pathos of that lonely figure which uttered its good-bye in its God- 
 speed. They gave him a right royal reception, they shouted 
 themselves hoarse in loyal, and I might surely add, affectionate 
 appreciation, and then they went on, while only a few of us felt 
 that he could not march on with them any longer. He could 
 only mark time amid the clattering march past ; he had reached 
 the farthest limit of his earthly career.
 
 072 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 We had hoped that my father would have gone out of office 
 when his party did; that a change of Government would have 
 come when a change for him was compulsory, and that thus he 
 might have been spared the shock of a break from his official life. 
 But it was not to be so. The Liberal Government survived the 
 General Election of 1910, and then a serious difficulty confronted 
 us. 
 
 What man realizes the limitations of age what woman has 
 the heart to remind him of them ? We of his household felt that 
 the time had fully come when he should relinquish the reins of 
 office, and yet the doctors dreaded for him the shock of any change 
 lest it might snap the taut and time-worn thread. The Govern- 
 ment's fortunes were uncertain, and still we looked for a natural 
 course of events to free him from a burden which he was no longer 
 fit to carry. On the day of the opening of Parliament as Lord 
 President of the Council, his duties were active ones, and though 
 his private secretary, Mr. Stanley, whose kindness and consideration 
 for my father will never be forgotten by those who valued it, especi- 
 ally reminded him to have a proper luncheon in the midst of that 
 arduous day, he forgot all about it, the result being that he arrived 
 at the Privy Council office after the pageant in almost a state 
 of collapse. Every persuasion was used to induce him to go 
 quietly back to the Reform Club where he had had a permanent 
 room for many years, and to receive medical aid ; but it was not 
 an easy matter, it was sometimes an impossible one, to guide 
 my father into a course which he felt to be away from his duties. 
 On the following day he insisted on attending a Cabinet Council, 
 though Mr. Stanley did all he could to dissuade him, seeing how 
 ill he was. One of the Ministers present told me afterwards 
 that he believed that he was barely conscious throughout that 
 meeting, and by this time his secretary had wisely telephoned to 
 Eltham for his son-in-law, Mr. Felkin, the only member of his 
 family within reach. They took my father to the Club, and a 
 doctor was then summoned, under whose advice, though he had 
 then rallied amazingly, he was taken down to his home at Wood- 
 thorne on the following day. The attack passed, but it had 
 wrought havoc which was never repaired. The end was in sight,
 
 The Last Year 673 
 
 even though he recovered himself in a wonderful manner, and still 
 clung to the hope of continuing his work. Then it was, during a 
 most difficult and distressing time, that the friendship and loyal 
 affection of Mr. Asquith stood out, as it will ever stand out in our 
 memories, in a consideration and patience and tenderness, which 
 men rarely show to each other in this working-day world. The 
 ladder of political promotion is steep and few are the rungs in 
 it ; impatient are the climbers, and few are their chances, for the 
 lives of Governments are short, and men must make the most of 
 them lest time and opportunity alike are gone. But the strong 
 hand of the Prime Minister held back those who would push up, 
 and saved his old friend from the risk of what might have been a 
 fatal fall. 
 
 While my father was trying to recuperate Lord Crewe wrote 
 to him : 
 
 " Colonial Office, 
 
 " ii March, 1910. 
 
 " MY DEAR WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " I trust that your rest is setting you thoroughly to 
 rights again ; it is a great loss that you have been laid up, 
 and I was particularly sorry that you could not be at the 
 dinner so kindly and generously given to me. Morley made 
 a delightful speech there. 
 
 " I quite agree that it will never do to put forward the 
 Veto Scheme as the final settlement of the House of Lords 
 question ; partly by our own fault the position has not been 
 made quite clear to our supporters and the country gener- 
 ally, so that we have to take more time in developing a future 
 policy than would otherwise be the case. 
 
 " I understand that Stanley, your secretary, goes with 
 Herbert Gladstone. One of my men, George Cunningham, I 
 hear is anxious to succeed him with you. He worked with 
 Rosebery formerly and I can strongly recommend him as a 
 trustworthy and capable secretary. 
 
 ' Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " CREWE." 
 43
 
 674 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 The Government at that time was in jeopardy, its days seemed 
 numbered, and we were waiting for the development of events 
 to induce my father to resign his office, and take the rest he so 
 much needed, when that great halt came in public life, caused 
 by the death of King Edward the VII. There was much for 
 the Lord President to do, and his kind friend and colleague, Lord 
 Crewe, who had been doing his work during the last few months, 
 was unable to continue it together with all his own duties. Besides, 
 the time had fully come for my father to relinquish all public work, 
 though there was something very pathetic, to those who were not 
 impatient of it, in the reluctance with which the old statesman 
 laid down the service which had been the goal, the inspiration, 
 the joy of his long public career. He loved it with the enthusiasm 
 of a lover to the end, and when he bid it good-bye his life was 
 over. 
 
 On the I3th June, 1910, he went in person to tender his resigna- 
 tion to the Prime Minister, who wrote this exceedingly kind letter 
 that same evening, feeling probably that his old friend might not 
 remember the spoken words, while he could keep and value those 
 which were written. 
 
 " MY DEAR WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " Let me repeat in writing what I endeavoured to 
 say at our interview to-day that it is a real grief to me to 
 part from so old and valued a colleague and friend, and that 
 I earnestly hope that, after an interval of well-earned rest, 
 you will again be able, as I know you will be eager, to take 
 your place in the fighting line. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " H. H. ASQUITH." 
 
 Many friends wrote to him at this time, and he valued, as he 
 always did, any sign of friendship, but such letters as the follow- 
 ing were especially treasured by him as a sign that he had not ut- 
 lived his welcome among the old friends with whom he had worked 
 for so long. Lord Eversley, a former colleague of his as Mr. 
 Shaw-Lefevre, wrote on June i7th, 1910 :
 
 The Last Year 675 
 
 " 18, Bryanston Square. 
 
 " MY DEAR WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " I am very sorry to read in the papers that you have 
 been compelled by waning health to resign your post as Lord 
 President. You were one of the old regime who can be very 
 ill-spared from the present Government. The only other two 
 remaining of the Cabinet of 1894 are Asquith and John Morley. 
 I hope you have resigned soon enough to recover your health 
 and to enjoy a ripe old age. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " EVERSLEY." 
 
 Mr. Lewis Harcourt also wrote on June i6th, 1910 : 
 
 " 14, Berkeley Square. 
 " MY DEAR LORD WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " I must write you one line to express my great regret 
 that our Cabinet association is to come to an end. You 
 have always been very kind to me and I have much valued 
 your confidence and advice. I sincerely trust that a real 
 rest will completely restore your health. 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 " L. HARCOURT." 
 
 This letter my father greatly valued as from the son of his 
 old friend and chief, Sir William Harcourt, and also as being from 
 one of the younger men in the Cabinet. Young men do not always 
 express regret when the time of the old ones is past, and perhaps 
 it is not to be expected that they should. Still there is something 
 very fragrant and rare in veneration and respect towards the old 
 and worn-out, attributes much out of fashion and rarely met with 
 in these later days of push and advance. Lord Pentland, another 
 of his younger colleagues, also wrote : 
 
 " i6th June, 1910. 
 
 " MY DEAR WOLVERHAMPTOX, 
 
 " As Beauchamp's appointment is announced and the 
 die is finally cast, I must write to say how truly I regret to 
 
 43*
 
 676 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 think that we shall no longer meet so often as we have in 
 recent years, and how much I for one will miss the chances 
 of talking things over with you which these occasions always 
 so pleasantly afforded. But there is a consolation in think- 
 ing and hoping that the reduction and cessation of official and 
 business meetings will multiply and increase the non-official 
 opportunities, and if any one has earned a right to leisure it 
 is surely yourself, after all the years given so generously and 
 strenuously to the public service and to Parliament. I sin- 
 cerely trust that her ladyship's health improves, and that 
 your own strength is returning. 
 
 " Ever yours very sincerely, 
 
 " PENTLAND." 
 
 Just at this difficult time my father's attention was fortunately 
 diverted by the marriage of his only son to the Hon. Evelyn 
 Wrottesley, only daughter of Lord Wrottesley, who himself died 
 a few months later at the great age of eighty-six. 
 
 The two fathers were present at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, on 
 the occasion of the wedding, but they both looked so pathetically 
 frail that it was evident to any onlooker that their days were but 
 labour and sorrow, " so soon passeth it away and we are gone." 
 
 On July ist, 1910, Lord Stamfordham (then Sir Arthur Bigge) 
 wrote the following letter : 
 
 " Marl borough House, 
 " Pall Mall, 
 
 " ist July, 1910. 
 " MY DEAR LORD WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " It was a source of great regret to the King that 
 the condition of your health necessitated your retirement from 
 the Cabinet. His Majesty, however, trusts that you will now 
 be able to enjoy your well-earned rest. 
 
 " With regard to the 1851 Commission, important alterations 
 must now be made in its officers. The King is about to 
 nominate Prince Arthur of Connaught as President and a 
 successor must be found to me as secretary. Meanwhile, it
 
 The Last Year 677 
 
 is imperative that there should be at an early date meetings 
 of both the Council and the Board of Management. Under 
 these circumstances His Majesty could not think of your 
 undertaking any work of the Commission, let alone the fatigue 
 of a journey to London. His Majesty, therefore, proposes to 
 appoint Lord Esher as Chairman of the Board of Manage- 
 ment. At the same time, His Majesty desires me to convey 
 to you his very highest appreciation of the valuable services 
 which you have rendered to the Commission since you joined 
 it in the year 1889. 
 
 " Believe me, yours very truly, 
 
 " ARTHUR BIGGE." 
 
 To which my father replied on July 8th : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR ARTHUR BIGGE, 
 
 " I have to apologize for my delay in acknowledging 
 receipt of your letter of the ist instant. I highly appreciate 
 the honour the King has conferred upon me, and thank him 
 most gratefully for the kind references which he has made to 
 myself. I think that the selection which His Majesty has 
 made for the Presidency and Chairmanship will be to the 
 advantage of the Commission, and satisfactory alike to those 
 who have taken great interest in its development, and to the 
 public generally. If I can be of any service to His Majesty 
 he may rest assured that I shall, health permitting, be always 
 ready to do everything in my power to uphold and extend 
 the great Institution, which is a permanent memorial of the 
 exhibition of 1851. The reason for this delay is that I had 
 arranged to attend the Privy Council on Wednesday last, and 
 I intended to call upon you in the afternoon, but, in order to 
 catch my train, I was obliged to go direct from Whitehall 
 to Euston. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " WOLVERHAMPTON."
 
 678 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 It was with some difficulty that my father was induced to leave 
 the neighbourhood of London, where he and my mother had been 
 staying for many weeks with my sister, Mrs. Felkin, at Eltham. 
 He was loth to leave the atmosphere of Westminster and White- 
 hall, as if he felt that he should never come back to them ; which, 
 indeed, proved to be the case. We entertained grave fears for 
 the result of the reaction on his vitality, but he bore it better than 
 we expected, and filled his days with a quiet busy-ness which 
 seemed to keep him happy and occupied. My mother's health 
 also at this time materially mended, and they both looked for- 
 ward to spending the summer in a new house at Overstrand, which 
 my father had just built. It was by a frantic effort that a fair- 
 sized, twenty-roomed house, which was not even pegged out till 
 January, was not only finished, but dried and furnished by the 
 beginning of July, ready for the reception of my parents, who went 
 there on July 2gth. 
 
 Shortly before he went there he received the following letter 
 from Lord Fitzmaurice : 
 
 " Brooks' s, 
 
 "St. James' Street, 
 " July lyth, 1910. 
 
 " MY DEAR WOLVERHAMPTON, 
 
 " I have heard of your resignation with regret, 
 both as an old friend and as a former colleague. You have 
 held a very high place in the esteem of the country, and you 
 have known the Liberal party in its best days. I take this 
 opportunity of thanking you for many acts of kindness and 
 especially a year ago when my health was beginning to 
 fail." 
 
 (Lord Fitzmaurice succeeded my father as Chancellor 
 of the Duchy of Lancaster, and when he was ill the Lord 
 President helped him, and as far as possible did the work 
 of both offices.) 
 
 " I feel very anxious about the future of the finances of the 
 country. There seems to be a spirit of absolute recklessness 
 about, and the cry is ' spend, spend.' I wonder what Mr.
 
 The Last Year 679 
 
 Gladstone would have thought of a two hundred million 
 Budget. And yet we are very near this. With kind regards 
 to Lady Wolverhampton, and congratulations on a recent 
 event in your family, 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " FlTZMAURICE." 
 
 From time to time in life there seem to come resting-places by 
 the way, where green pastures abound wherein we are led by still 
 waters. Such an one was the summer of 1910, which my father 
 and mother spent with their whole family at Overstrand. The 
 matchless air of that bracing coast revived them both, and my 
 mother especially re-entered into an amount of social life from 
 which recently her ill-health had completely cut her off. Among 
 old friends, and new ones, they spent much pleasant time, but it 
 was in the near home-circle, enriched by the two little grand- 
 sons, that my parents found their fullest happiness in those later 
 days. The old statesman and little Gavin Hamilton, who was then 
 five and a half years old, would talk together, and the likeness 
 between the mould of their minds, and their inborn characteristics, 
 was even then so marked that a positive comradeship was created 
 between them. One day my mother noticed a wave of sadness 
 sweep over her husband's face, and, after the manner of wives, 
 she inquired what was the matter. " That I cannot live to see 
 that boy grow up," was the pathetic reply. He was greatly de- 
 lighted on another occasion when I had been telling my little son 
 the story of Jacob and Esau and had just reached the moral against 
 such obvious deceit, when the child remarked decisively, " I 
 blame the mother," and there was no more for me to say. " He 
 has gone straight to the root of the matter," exclaimed his 
 grandfather. And when we added, " Just what you would have 
 done," he nodded a smiling acquiescence. 
 
 My father was not a man for children, he never had been, but the 
 Psalmist knew much of life who wrote that the glory of old men 
 is their children's children. And if that is true of the grand- 
 fathers, how much stronger language was required for the
 
 680 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 grandmothers ! Too strong, perhaps, to find in any tongue. The 
 joy of life came back to my mother in that summer holiday with 
 the children, and all seemed to unite outside our home circle as 
 well as inside it in brightening and beautifying that happy time. 
 The late Sir George Lewis continually took my father for little 
 drives, and cheered and interested him by much congenial talk. 
 Mr. Lyttelton, the Headmaster of Eton, whose house was next to 
 ours across the fields, also motored my father to places of interest ; 
 and he lunched with Lady Battersea and Mrs. Locker-Lampson, 
 and much enjoyed intercourse with all these old friends. Lord 
 Grenfell came in sometimes to see him, and interested him specially 
 with the account of his journey to Vienna to proclaim the accession 
 of King George V. During the three months at Overstrand my 
 father never missed going to church a single Sunday morning, and 
 he and my mother took the Communion together at Overstrand 
 church more than once. But his friends all saw, and were shocked 
 at, the change in him which a few months had wrought. He, who 
 used to talk so well on every subject, grew silent ; and, as the weeks 
 wore on, he experienced difficulty sometimes in finding the word 
 he wanted. " I can't say it," he would exclaim sometimes, and 
 the pathos of that admission seemed especially great in one who 
 had said so much, and said it so well, throughout all his life. As 
 the summer faded into autumn we noticed a distinct change for 
 the worse in my father, both mentally and physically ; and the sad 
 thought which had only flitted through our minds before, now 
 fastened on our consciousness that he would never visit his sea-side 
 home again. Perhaps some shrinking from the coming cloud was 
 the motive of my mother's desire to lengthen out that sunny 
 holiday almost into the month of November. She seemed so 
 loth to lose her hold on it and to bring it to an end. 
 
 In October a former colleague Mr. Sydney Buxton who had 
 taken Mr. Lyttelton' s house, came to see my father, who liked to 
 hear the Government gossip and to touch on questions of the day. 
 But his grasp was gone, and every day he stood further away 
 from any real activity, though a certain restlessness was beginning, 
 which never again left him. 
 
 On the 27th October I took my parents back to Woodthorne
 
 LORD WOLVERHAMPTON AND HIS GRANDSON. GAVIN 
 HAMILTON
 
 The Last Year 68 1 
 
 and stayed with them for about a fortnight. My mother was in 
 much better health than she had been for the last year or two, 
 but my father's heart was very feeble and his circulation most 
 unsatisfactory. When the day came for the children to leave 
 them, and come home, my mother's grief was abnormal. They 
 had been with her for over three months, and though she had 
 always made a trouble of parting from them, there was something 
 extraordinary in her bitter cry that time : "I shall never see them 
 again." And she never did.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 LAST DAYS 
 
 " ' Till death us do part ? ' Till death us do join past parting 
 That sounds like betrothal indeed ! " 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 " They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they 
 were not divided." //. Samuel. 
 
 FROM November to Christmas of 1910 my father again im- 
 proved greatly in health, and the doctors thought that his 
 increased strength might last him for months, and perhaps for 
 years. He drove daily up to Wolverhampton, where he had a 
 room in his old offices, and transacted some sort of business, though 
 probably purely nominal, with his secretary. But at the beginning 
 of the New Year of 1911, there fell upon him a blow in the death 
 of my mother, from which he could not recover. She who had 
 been so much better, suddenly failed, and from several little strokes, 
 almost imperceptible at the time, she never rallied. Every day 
 of that last, sad week, we were trying to prepare my father for 
 the worst, but he kept hoping on, and would not see that she was 
 really going. He never would see, all through his life, that which 
 he did not want to see ; and that attitude had proved more of a 
 friend to him than an enemy. On the 6th January she passed 
 away, and her husband's prostration of grief was so complete, 
 that the doctor did not think that he would live through the 
 day. 
 
 Mercifully the frail grasp of old age cannot grip a great sorrow 
 for long at a time, and there came interludes when he seemed 
 to have forgotten the actual fact, though he kept complaining of 
 
 682
 
 Last Days 683 
 
 a great darkness which he felt was overwhelming him. He was 
 confined to his bed, but his attacks of collapse were intermittent, 
 and between whiles he would have read to him every letter and 
 newspaper that mentioned my mother's name. The letters of 
 countless friends from every one of his worlds pleased and interested 
 him. He greatly appreciated the gracious telegram which the 
 King sent to him : "I am deeply grieved to hear of the irreparable 
 loss which you have sustained, and I offer you my heartfelt sym- 
 pathy in your great sorrow. GEORGE R. I." and had it continually 
 repeated. . . . He also showed a lively interest in such kind 
 letters as the following which my sister received : 
 
 " Privy Council Office, 
 " Whitehall, 
 
 " January gth, 1911. 
 " DEAR MRS. FELKIN, 
 
 " You will know, without my assuring you of it, how 
 deeply and sincerely we feel for you all. Your mother's 
 name is associated in our house with nothing but kind, cheer- 
 ful, and may I say, affectionate memories. I fear the sever- 
 ance from the companion of his life upon your father. If 
 you think well, please tell him how much we think of him, and 
 how warmly we sympathize we do so indeed, 
 
 " Your sincere friend, 
 
 " M." 
 (Lord Morley of Blackburn.) 
 
 " Rosebery, 
 
 " Gorebridge, 
 
 " Midlothian. 
 " DEAR MRS. FELKIN, 
 
 " I should have telegraphed to your father when I 
 read of your mother's death, had I not been informed that 
 he was too ill to receive messages. This line therefore is only 
 to beg you, if there should be an opportunity, to assure 
 my dear old friend of my true sympathy in his grievous
 
 684 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 bereavement, and to ask you and your sister to accept the 
 same proffer. It is sad indeed to think of one gone while the 
 other is prostrate.] 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 " R." 
 (Lord Rosebery.) 
 
 " India Office, 
 
 " I3th January, 1911. 
 " DEAR MRS. FELKIN, 
 
 " I hope that you are satisfied with the progress which 
 your father is making, as I saw with relief a better account 
 in the newspapers. I shall be grateful if you will give him 
 my warmest regards and an assurance of my deep sympathy 
 in the sorrow which has befallen him and you all. Yours has 
 been, I know, the happiest of homes, and I can imagine how 
 complete the break-up must be, after so many years of com- 
 panionship and union. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " CREWE." 
 
 His mind was quick to appreciate the many kind letters he 
 received from his former colleagues and many other friends, 
 and alert to notice those who had not written, and from 
 whom he expected to have heard, though from the newspaper 
 accounts of his health they probably thought he was too ill to 
 receive letters. So he was in one way ; but in another, he never 
 stepped outside the arena of active every-day life until his last 
 gleam of consciousness was gone. Sir Robert Simon, M.D., came 
 over from Birmingham in consultation on January gth, as we 
 thought it quite possible that medical assistance would be required 
 to prevent his attending the funeral on the nth, but he never asked 
 a word about it, and only apparently realized the fact of it when 
 my husband told him quite quietly and simply all about it in the 
 evening of the day on which it had taken place. My sister-in- 
 law went up to see him when she arrived for the funeral, and he 
 spoke to her first about the death of her father, Lord Wrottesley,
 
 Last Days 685 
 
 the preceding week, and then added : " You know we have had 
 a great sorrow, too." Great gusts of grief kept sweeping over 
 him, but my husband would calm and comfort him with the 
 present help of prayer, and then he would drift away into a dulled 
 quietness wherein the sharp sorrow was blunted, and the keen 
 realization blurred. In a week's time he was downstairs again, 
 and for the next month he seemed somewhat to improve in health, 
 but his mental powers waxed and waned with every physical 
 change. They were entirely dependent upon his circulation, as 
 there was no affection of the brain whatever ; but when the heart 
 failed, the circulation through the brain slowed down, and was 
 apt to block. An injection of strychnine would make him quite 
 himself again for a time, and he could even understand and trans- 
 act necessary business until its effect had passed away. About a 
 fortnight before his death, when he came down to breakfast as usual, 
 he suddenly asked us how my mother was, and why we had not 
 been up to see her that morning ? We knew that this was a very 
 bad sign, as some further block in the brain must have taken place, 
 and from that time he was consumed by an intense restlessness 
 and an utter oblivion of time and all conditions of his present 
 state of life. He was perpetually pressing to go on some journey, 
 to attend some meeting, to preside at some council, to make some 
 speech ; and then not recognizing any longer where he was he 
 would say that he must " go home." Day and night ceased to be 
 divided, and he would order his carriage or his meals at any hour 
 of either. He had worked all his life he could not cease from 
 work till the actual end came. He would come downstairs, he 
 would go out of doors, even when he was a dying man and he 
 was intensely impatient of any restraint which seemed to come 
 between him and what he thought was still his duty. When my 
 brother read him a telegram from the King inquiring how he was, 
 he answered : " Better ! say I am much better " ; and then he 
 expressed his appreciation of His Majesty's remembering to ask 
 about him. Shortly afterwards he said to his son : " I can't under- 
 stand where your mother is, and why I can't see her ? " and when 
 the reply came : " You will see her quite soon now, and then 
 you will understand everything," he seemed content and only
 
 686 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 repeated : " Are you sure ? " and received the " Quite sure " with 
 a sigh of relief. 
 
 The last words which my father spoke on this earth were cha- 
 racteristic of his life of service and his loyal sense of duty. He 
 tried to leave his bed and when the nurse remonstrated, he said : 
 " Don't keep me. I must go. The King has sent for me, and I 
 must not keep the King waiting." 
 
 Truly it was a King Who had summoned His servant, and he 
 passed into His Presence on February 25th, 1911, after a few days 
 of complete unconsciousness. 
 
 The Press had much to say on the death of Lord Wolverhampton. 
 His personality had stamped itself on the history of his day, and 
 especially on the history of his Church of which he was so devoted 
 and so distinguished a member. 
 
 His friends had little to say, for in the face of a real loss there 
 is little to be said. Just a few words such as the following out of 
 a pile of kindly letters : 
 
 " Mentmore, 
 
 " Leighton Buzzard, 
 
 " February 26th, 1911. 
 " DEAR MRS. FELKIN, 
 
 " So the end has come, I doubt not a merciful and 
 blessed release after long illness and the recent severance. But 
 to you and your sister and brother it comes as a sharp break 
 with a happy past, and so I cannot but intrude on your sorrow 
 with one line of the sincerest sympathy and regret. 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " ROSEBERY." 
 
 And from his old friend and colleague in America, Mr. Bryce : 
 
 " March 23rd, 1911. 
 " DEAR MRS. FELKIN, 
 
 " My wife and I have been deeply grieved to hear of 
 the two bereavements that have come in such quick suc- 
 cession upon your family, and we hope you will allow us to
 
 Last Days 687 
 
 convey to you our sincere sympathy. I had written to your 
 father when, after returning hither from S. America, we 
 heard of your dear mother's death ; but probably he never 
 got my letter, as I fear he was ill for some time himself, and 
 had the inexpressible sorrow of parting from the cherished 
 companion of his long life. We hope that the recollection 
 of two parents who were so much to you, and to one another, 
 may bring some slight consolation to you in your sorrow, 
 for those whom we most loved are in a sense always with 
 us. 
 
 " Believe me sincerely yours, 
 
 " JAMES BRYCE." 
 
 In politics he will always be remembered as one of the old 
 Liberals who link Gladstonian days with those of King Edward's 
 Liberal Government. He will be remembered as a wise, and 
 fair, and moderate statesman, whose life's work and ambition were 
 expressed in the few words which His Majesty telegraphed to my 
 brother on hearing of our loss. "I have received with deep 
 regret the sad news of the death of your father, who, for so many 
 years, faithfully served his Sovereign and country, and desire to 
 express my sincere sympathy with you and your family in your 
 sorrow. GEORGE R. I." He indeed faithfully served his King, 
 his country and his God. 
 
 In Wesleyan Methodism his position is, and ever will be, unique. 
 He was the first Wesleyan to enter the Government and the 
 Cabinet, to be a Secretary of State, and to be created a peer. And 
 in spite of all the upward progress of his political and social life 
 he never outgrew the faith of his fathers, or disowned the Church 
 in which he had been born. And it is no unusual thing for a man 
 to become too clever for creeds, too advanced for his religious 
 inheritance, too grand for nonconformity in any shape or form. 
 But my father was too large-souled a man ever to be influenced 
 by cheap motives too great a man ever to sink to the smallness 
 of pretence or the shoddy of pretentiousness. And more than that 
 he loved Methodism with a singularly strong and loyal affection, 
 and gloried in any service which he could render it, or in any lustre
 
 688 The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler 
 
 which his career reflected on it. He was a perfect type of a class 
 which is passing away. Not a self-made man, as the term implies 
 it, but a self-developed man and a self-dedicated man. Inheriting 
 culture and good breeding he built up on them a career of distinc- 
 tion and honour, and, as his friend prophesied of him so long ago, 
 " He went far." His place is filled up, as all men's places are as 
 time rolls by, but there are many homes in England, where the 
 interests of politics, of society, of friendship, and of Methodism, all 
 claim a share in the personality of the man who was best known 
 to his day and generation as Henry Fowler. 
 
 The scene of his funeral was singularly appropriate and im- 
 pressive. For the mile from his home to Tettenhall churchyard 
 the roads were lined with people, and vast crowds, chiefly of men, 
 gathered round his last resting-place. The sun shone brightly on 
 the massed flowers ; and the hymns " Come let us join our friends 
 above " and " Ten thousand times ten thousand " rang out in 
 tones of triumph and in no minor key. He always loved colour, 
 and a great scarlet wreath of flowers lay upon the centre of the 
 coffin. As we stood at the mouth of the grave, looking down the 
 slopes on to the sea of upturned faces and uncovered heads, it 
 seemed as if one of his old mass-meetings had come out to bid 
 him farewell ; and, as the Bishop of Lichfield turned to bless the 
 people, my father's voice seemed to speak once more to the men 
 and women of Wolverhampton in a silent benediction, higher and 
 more sure than any good which he had worked and striven to win 
 for them in the days that were vanished and gone. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey. 
 
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