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"I give theft Booh
for the founding of a, Colley in thi^ Colony"

Bought with the income of the
William C. Egleston Fund
1913

A MODERN HISTORY OF THE
ENGLISH PEOPLE

A MODERN HISTORY OF
THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

By
R. H. GRETTON
VOLUME I I880-I898

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
MDGGGGXIII

First Edition , ¦ ¦ November igis
Second Edition ¦ ¦ ¦ February igi3

PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDIHBURGH

PREFACE
The changes which took place in English life between the
years 1880 and 1910 were changes affecting every activity
of the nation, corporate and individual. They concerned
political ideas, social habits and commercial methods,
religious outlook and material equipment, education and
the housekeeper's supplies, keeping of holidays and furnish
ing of houses, philosophical speculation and the pursuits
of a clerk's Saturday afternoons. After long incubation,
the changes came about so swiftly that their magnitude
was not recognised. Yet these thirty years made more
difference to England than did the mechanical inven
tions of the early Victorian period. The locomotive,
the telegraph, the innumerable developments of manu
facturing machinery had worked obvious transformations ;
and those who saw them had thought that they saw a
changed England. Yet not until a generation arose in
whose lives these things were customary, did an England
inherently changed come into being. A Rip Van Winkle
of 1810, waking, say, in 1850, would have been completely
bewildered by the steam-engine ; but he might have passed
the remainder of his life in conversation which he would
have enjoyed and found reasonably familiar. A Rip Van
Winkle of 1870, waking in 1910, while he would have
grasped the principle of the motor car in twenty minutes,
would never have been on conversational terms with his
neighbours ; he would constantly have found he did not
5

6 PREFACE
know what they were talking about. For in this last period
the subtlest transformation of all had taken place — ^the
changes had become part of the men themselves. Club
windows were no longer full of old gentlemen who woke
from snoring to deplore the spirit of the age ; the old
gentlemen were all playing golf, and doing their best to
understand their sons' slang.
A few instances will suffice to bring out the contrast
between the conditions of 1880 and those of 1910. The
England of 1880, deep-set in a kind of habit of fighting in
far corners of the globe, held herself aloof from European
politics ; it could almost be made an election cry against
Lord Beaconsfield that he was likely to entangle us in
European disputes. The country had its nerves all in its
extremities. The England of 1910, a vital participant in
every European question, summoned from great self-
governing, almost independent, dominions a conclave of
premiers to be taken into the counsels of her Foreign Secre
tary. The sensitiveness had shifted back to the heart.
In the Parliament of 1880 a Hertfordshire borough, in
which the total poll was about 700, provided for Mr Balfour
a seat the moral validity of which was unquestioned. In
the Parliament of 1910 he sat as one of the Members for the
City of London ; and his constituency of 20,000, being com
posed in the main of plural voters, was regarded by more
than half the House of Commons as little better than a
rotten borough.
In 1880 the capital expenditure of even the greatest
municipal authorities of the country was limited to such
sums as they could obtain either from the Public Works
Loan Commissioners or from private lenders, such as
banks and insurance companies. The Funded Municipal

PREFACE 7
Loan, subscribed by the public, had not begun to exist.
In 1910 the total of municipal stock approached
£600,000,000. London society of 1880 was so circumscribed that the
lists of the Court presentations filled only two columns
of The Times. South African millionaires were not known
as yet; gold in the Transvaal was but just being dis
covered, and Kimberley diamonds were in social estimation
poor things beside the Brazilian and Golconda heirlooms
of the old families.
Naturally contrasts in manners do not admit of such
succinct presentation ; but what would an old member
of the Cavalry Club in 1880 have said if he could have
foreseen that in 1909 a serious point of rivalry between
the Cavalry Club and the Guards' Club was to be the
quality of their respective recipes for barley-water ?
Music halls, finding their feet after the slow decay of
the remnants of " Corinthian " London, were in 1880 ap
pealing to people of the middle class. But the vast tide
of humanity that flowed in and out of them in 1910
differed as much from the music-hall crowd of 1880 as
that had differed from the boon companions at Mott's in
1865. The two latter, far apart in class, were near enough
in a general inclination to dissipation and raffishness.
The Coliseum crowds of 1910, without a vice to divide
among them, represented thousands upon thousands of
petty suburban families, whose younger members were as
free to spend as to earn their sixpences, to stay out late,
and to turn, if so minded, into a hundred bars where no
one would be drunk.
Cheap money, cheap transport, cheap literature worked
so overwhelmingly after 1880 as to produce on all sides

8 PREFACE
a diminution of class consciousness. Society, though a
section of it might remain truly aristocratic, and in the
counties might be " the county " still, became in London
so wide that Its fringes were no longer distinguishable.
The social fabric was splitting into the two divisions of
capital and labour. After 1880 industrial and trading
stocks became a normal field of investment for the
surplus money of persons not engaged in commerce or
manufacture. This change, uniting the interests of the
aristocratic and professional classes with those of the manu
facturer, gives the fundamental aspect of that alteration of
class feeling which brought the South African millionaire
into Park Lane. Even the " social revolution," so burning
a gospel in 1880, did not escape the general obliterating of
landmarks. Militant republicanism, which could make
headway while the House of Commons consisted only of
the landowner and the manufacturer, lost ground. The
true strength of Fabianism lay in the fact that the great
pooling of industrial capital, which began in the eighties,
exposed it to all sorts of flank attacks by taxation.
Capital was no longer a stronghold to be besieged ; it
was a commonwealth to be administered ; and socialism,
instead of opening sluice-gates of revolution, ran its force
into a himdred administrative channels. Labour entered
Parliament and town councils ; and socialism became, in
legislative matters, a distinction of degree rather than of
kind. In politics the year 1880 was a real turning-point.
Weariness of the dragging wars of thirty years and grow
ing disgust at neglect of the problems at home, induced
the hope that a fresh Govemment would break away from
traditional political manoeuvring. At the same time the

PREFACE 9
presence of Mr Chamberlain in the new Govemment
seemed to promise, not only attention to domestic affairs,
but attention of a newly democratic kind — a fitting sequel
to the franchise reform of 1867. On the Conservative
side a spirit was stirring which expressed itself in the
Fourth Party's critical detachment from its leaders. The
Irish, having placed Parnell at their head instead of Butt,
came back to Westminster for the first time Nationalist
in the sense in which recent generations understand
that term. Lastly Labour, which, in the ascendancy
of middle-class politics following on the Reform Bill
of 1832, had deliberately abandoned political channels,
began with the eighties to return its force into those
channels. Economic developments cannot be so precisely
dated. Yet the first experiments with the telephone
in London, the first public use of electric light, the
beginning of the importation of meat in mechanically
chilled chambers, the establishment of postal orders, the
first instance of a funded municipal debt, all belong to the
year 1880.
Consideration of social and economic changes has
not formed an essential part of the scheme of previous
historians of our times. Mr Justin McCarthy, adding
three volumes to his notable work, brought it down from
1880 to 1901 ; and the last volume of Dr J. F. Bright's
admirable history treats also of these years. Mr Herbert
Paul closes with the fall of the Liberal Govemment in
1895. Each of these writers was, in regard to the period
covered by the present work, dealing with the final stage
of a long survey. My endeavour has been to string these
years on a new thread ; and to this end the prolongation
of the survey to a later date is more than the addition of

10 PREFACE
a certain number of years. It is a means of grasping the
whole. The death of Queen Victoria closed an epoch,
but the new epoch was to throw light upon that which
preceded it. A strong political revival was to make
plain what forces had been at work beneath the apparent
lassitude, almost impotence, of parliamentary institutions
in the last twenty years of Queen Victoria's reign ; and
in society an equally astonishing self-assertion was to
give the measure of the advance in wealth, in knowledge
(if not in education), in capacity for living, which had
been accumulating behind bounds. The long reign of
Queen Victoria did indeed somewhat chill English life
towards its end. In political affairs it was distinctly too
long for the well-being of Govemment. To the inevitable
difficulty of serving a sovereign fixed by mere weight of
years in a certain inaccessibility to new opinions, was
added the difficulty that the sovereign was a woman.
Society, the intellectual world, the arts, ethical move
ments, were under a crust of habit which, where it did
not produce complete inertia, distorted the ideas that
broke through it. In family life, in religious thought, in
the pursuits of the people, change during the eighties
and nineties was almost always combative ; it became
simpler and more straightforward under King Edward.
The militant agnosticism which was so rife in the periodical
pubhcations of the eighties, the heated discussion of the
" emancipation " of women from a purely domestic exist
ence — ^to take only two instances — ^lost in the later period
most of their violence and something of their terror.
The thirty years of my history fall, then, into two divi
sions. The first presents us the spectacle of governments
enmeshed in older political habits, bewildered by new de-

PREFACE 11
mands, besieged by new methods and pursued to the end
by entanglements ; untU the fall of Omdurman and the
Peace of Vereeniging English politicians were a House
of Atreus. But it presents us also a people busy at
accumulation, increasing its power, and its capacity for
the absorption of material supplies and of ideas. The
second division gives us, in both the political and the
social world, an explosion of energy, an expression of
stored force, a revelation of movement.
It will be clear from the references given in the text that
I have relied for my dates and facts mainly upon the files
of The Times. As for the popular interests of the moment,
they are always mirrored in the current numbers of
Punch, and to the files of that periodical I am deeply
indebted. I have, of course, drawn upon the notable
biographies of the period. Lastly, I am under a more
personal obligation to several friends, to whom I grate
fully express my thanks. These are chiefly due to the
Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell and to Sir Robert Hudson,
who have read the proofs of my work, and given me the
kindliest assistance and advice. Mr Charles Sturge also
has been most generous in helping me in my researches.
The Little House,
BuRFORD, Oxfordshire.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. the BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES . . 15
U. THE GENERAL ELECTION, 1880 ... 33
ni. 1881 : common sense .... 54
IV. 1882 : IRELAND, EGYPT — AND JUMBO . . 77
V. 1883 : A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL/- . . 102
VI. 1884 : GORDON AT KHARTOUM ; MR GLADSTONE
AT OTHER AFFAIRS .... 124
vn. 1885 : THE DEATH OF GORDON, THE GENERAW^
ELECTION, AND THE RISE OF S0CIALISMV< 150
vm. 1886 : home rule, the nameless party,
AND the labour RIOTS . . . 174
IX. 1887 : the jubilee  198
X. 1888 : the social conscience . . . 223
XI. 1889 : LONDON and labour face to face 242
xii. 1890 : A year with a stormy ending . 263
xiii. 1891 : the isolation of trade unions . 285
xiv. 1892 : A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION . . 305
XV. 1893 : MB Gladstone's last fight . . 324
XVI. 1894 : le bourgeois EPATi; . . . 342
xvii. 1895 : A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND . . 362
xviii. 1896 : the jameson raid, and motor cars 384
xix. 1897 : jubilee pomps and vanities . 408
XX. 1898 : MOSTLY other people's affairs . 431
appendix: governments from 1880 to 1898 . 445

13

CHAPTER I
the beginning of the eighties
THE year 1880 opened in the midst of a fog un
paralleled in our annals, which almost without
intermission brooded over London from November
1879 to the following Febraary. This gloom — ^bad for the
health, depressing to the spirits, obscuring the outlook —
might well have been an emanation of the feelings of
Englishmen ; for in nearly every department of the national
life at that moment were lowered health, depression and
uncertainty. Trade, which for several years past had been
struggling with falling prices, had reached a point ap
proaching stagnation. A soaking and inclement summer in
1879 had ruined the crops ; in every cornfield the shocks
had stood blackened and sprouting, till the farm-hands
could scarcely tear the sheaves apart. The complete failure
of the harvest, coining after years of steady decline in the
price of corn, brought to a head the discontent of agri
culturists. It immediately made itself felt in London,
where the season of 1880 was marked by a shrunken list
of entertainments ; one ball a night, instead of two or
three, showed that rent-rolls had been affected. Agri
cultural depression, as a social grievance, may be said to
date from this bad summer. In Ireland such a summer
had brought its inevitable result ; famine had taken cruel
hold before the Duchess of Marlborough's relief fund was
instituted. Hyde Park saw already those gatherings of
the unemployed which in the next years were to force
upon public attention a problem to which no year brought
the solution. In South Wales the ironworks were battling
15

16 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
with a market in which, between 1873 and 1879, the price
of sheet-iron had fallen from £18 to £9 a ton. In Sheffield
a survey of the condition of fifty-one limited hability
companies showed that only sixteen of them had
their shares above par; fifteen had either compoimded
with their creditors or been wound up ; and the total
depreciation of their share capital was put at three and
a half millions.^ The Potteries were Avitnessing disputes
about wages ; in Lancashire there were despondent
attempts to set on foot great emigration schemes, or to
devise " short time " agreements for working three weeks
of the month.
Affairs of State presented no more cheering aspect.
The two political parties were wrangling over embroilments
abroad that, while heavily burdening the national finances
and demanding attention which should have been occupied
at home, were beginning to appear to the bulk of the nation
as gratuitous and perverse. In Afghanistan our arms
were engaged in a war that looked like involving us in all
the cost and blood of a permanent occupation. In South
Africa we were confronting the resentment roused by that
first annexation of the Transvaal which was to prove so
inadequately considered. In South-Eastem Europe we
were entangled in a diplomatic situation which might at
any time issue in war. Meanwhile the national finances i
showed a deficit of six millions; Lord Beaconsfield's
Govemment had increased warlike expenditure from
twenty-five millions to thirty-two and a quarter millions
a year ; the Revenue accounts betrayed gravely decreased
spending power in the nation ; customs receipts had
fallen by a milUon, excise by nearly two millions, and
income tax by a quarter of a million.
Socially, too, though the world of the great did not
lack brilliant figures, the season of 1880 was overcast by
the prevailing dullness, and was one which put to its record
' The Tiines, 23rd December i88o.

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 17
no great event, " none of the accustomed star progresses
of Shahs, Sultans and Emperors," ^ no great work of art,
and no great novel ; for Beaconsfield's Endymion, though
its publication was an exciting event, did not, in a
literary sense, redeem the year's reputation. Society
was still adorned by Lord Houghton, and occasion
ally by Lord Beaconsfield and Bernal Osborne ; Sir
William Harcourt and Sir George Trevelyan were at the
height of their dinner-party fame, Mr Gladstone was
" talking shop like a tenth Muse," and Lord Sahsbury
was sharpening conversation with his cynicism. This
world was moreover in the very process of being widened,
alike in its interests and its outlook, by that falling of
barriers which, admitting first of all poetry in the persons
of Tennyson and Browning, painting in the persons of
Leighton and Millais, and less defined artistic gifts in the
fascinating and erratic Laurence Oliphant, was on the
verge of something like surrender to the coruscations of
Whistler and Oscar Wilde. The process was not yet
complete, though it had advanced speedily, as anyone
may see who compares Thackeray's Book of Snobs
with Punch for 1880. The direct advance of the middle-
class tide did not appear very great ; its real advance was
by creeks and inlets. Sir Gorgius Midas, returning home
late to find only six footmen awake to open the door to
him, is as easy game for Punch as De Mogyns, with
his flunkeys in peach-coloiu-ed liveries and pea-green
plush breeches, had been to Thackeray. Frontal assault
by huge wealth and bad breeding had not advanced far ;
but in subordinate ways change was appearing. A genera
tion had come up in which not only were the sons of
tradesmen sent to great public schools, but the tradesmen
themselves had been there; Punch could portray a
duke dining with his tailor, and complaining of the fit of
his trousers, to which the tailor replies that the duke,
1 The Tifnes, 30th July 1880.

18 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
ever since he had been the taUor's fag at Eton, had been
a whimperer. Then again, the old narrow circle of the
well-bom was growing bored with itself, and if a woman
like Punch's Mrs Ponsonby de Tomkjnis, a social
climber, but a shrewd, decent, capable body, liked to give
great parties, and angle desperately for guests, society
had no objection to providing the guests. A certain
awkward period of transition was past. The old days,
in which the great world had moved on an exalted stage —
its normal doings, its gambling, its passions canvassed by-
all the town — ^had passed away, with its outward signs
of rich dress, ornate vehicles and footmen on the board.
In those days men of the great world made all kinds of
excursions Into other worlds — spent nights in the London
dancing gardens, hours in furtive cockfighting pits, were
patrons of prizefighters, mingled in all the raffish under-
life of jockeys, horse-copers, night-houses, and West End
bars. They disported freely, because their world was
unapproachably theirs ; and there were no means of un
locking its doors from outside. Since those days changing
ideas, growth of immense middle-class wealth, had practi
cally made an end of the old " high life." It may, in fact,
be said to have died with the sixties. There had followed
a period in which society had stUl tried to oppose on
coming forces ; but it had had traitors within its camp.
Men like Lord St Aldegonde in Lothair had begun
applying ancient self-confidence in new ways. No one
could ever really rival them ; so why should they, for the
sake of separating themselves in appearances, be missing
new openings for pleasure ? A fresh element had been
introduced into national life by the development in the
middle classes on the one hand of a new athleticism and
on the other of an exquisiteness of their own. Society
looking over its barriers, saw that with its old-fashioned
"lions of a season," its beards and moustaches of the
Crimea, its exclusive traditions of sport, it was really

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 19
engaged in things that were vieux jeu. By now, rowing
had travelled far outside the imiversities, and the veriest
Cockney could laugh at Ouida's dandy flinging away his
cigar, leaping into an eight, and stroking it to victory.
Lawn tennis, which has done more for the mental enfran
chisement of the middle class than has been recognised,
was at the height of its first popularity In 1880 ; and
Punch's title-page for the year shows the Four Seasons
carrying racquets, with Toby tightening up a net. Cycling
was making headway, football clubs were increasing
rapidly. The very sneers which aristocracy aimed at
these forms of athleticism show how completely the
ordinary people were developing a world of their own ;
and were able to forget recent days in which any pro
clivities towards sport involved for them either preten
tiousness, or the parasitic life of a " Mr Sponge." As for
the new exquisiteness, society had waked to the spectacle
of clean-shaven young men, and women in gowns with no
waists but much embroidery, cultivating " intenseness "
and "living beautifully." These were the new amuse
ments open to society. The set called " the Souls " came
into being, brilliant figures like Mr Arthur Balfour and
Lady Granby moving in languid grace, and acquiring " the
Grecian Bend," neighboured by the Cimabue Browns,
Postlethwaite, and Maudle of Punch. At this time
Patience was presented to a delighted world ; and Gorgius
Midas Junior complained that his millions brought him less
deference in great houses than was shown to "some artist
feller." Even a short list of those present at an evening
party in 1881 includes the names of Mr Whistler and Mr
Oscar Wilde with that of the Prince of Wales.^
Nevertheless In 1880 — ^perhaps because there was so
much to make the year a grave one — ^the tone of the
season seems to have been set, not by the new " intensity,"
but by the old seriousness of that " evangelising " group
1 The Times, 4th June 1881.

20 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
which was stiU so strong and occupied a position strange
to modem eyes — ^Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Harrowby, Lord
and Lady Mount Temple, Lord Kinnaird, the Buxtons
and Samuel Morley.^ Mention of this group is a reminder
that, even in the sphere of the Church, the year 1880 was
one of gloom and embroilment. The tedious proceedings
against ritualistic practices at St Alban's, Holborn, were
stiU, after five years, dragging on ; the Rev. T. P. Dale
was haled to prison in November for not compljdng with
the requirements of the Court of Arches in regard to his
church in the City ; and in the same month prosecutions
were set on foot in respect to St Vedast's, London,
Bordesley, and Miles Platting. The strength of the
Evangelical party at this date was seen also in the appoint
ment of Dr Ryle in March to the vacant Deanery of
Salisbury ; this choice of a notable parish priest and writer
of tracts, for an office hitherto associated with scholarly
and donnish rather than with pastoral distinction, being
regarded as a striking departure from custom. It is a
mere coincidence, though an interesting one, that in this
year, in May, the Young Men's Christian Association
purchased for £25,000 Exeter Hall, the very name of
which had already become a synonym for Evangelicalism.
Indeed the cursory eye regarding the appearances made
by the Church in records of current events finds them
hardly less out of humour than those of other national
activities. Beyond the ritual question the only matter
in which the Church bulked largely in the newspapers
was in its resentment of the Burial Act; in September
the papers contained long controversies as to the power of
parish clergy to charge increased fees to Nonconformists,
to refuse the use of the church bells at Nonconformist
funerals, and other such pettinesses.
However, when we have recognised all the depression
that existed, all the grounds for anxiety, and all the lack
1 Lady St Helier's Memories of Fifty Years.

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 21
of inspiration, it has to be said that the time was certainly
not one of paralysis. At least two inventions of the fore
most importance made in this year their first advances
in England, and made them with great rapidity. The
year had hardly opened before it was announced that
Mr Edison's " carbon electric lamp " had reached the
stage of practical serviceableness the world had been
awaiting.^ At the end of February Dr Lyon Playfair
had partially lighted his town house by electricity ; in
April the new light was at work in Aldersgate Street
Station, and in December thirty-four lights were installed
at Paddington Station. But although this year first estab
lished electric lighting in England, and though its develop
ment was immediate, some years had to elapse before it
became a really practical method of lighting. As yet
every installation was an affair of a separate producing
plant, with the result that, besides being too expensive
for private houses except as a hobby, it was also too
tiresome. Thus, when installed in Her Majesty's Theatre
in July it annoyed the audience by the persistent
" thrumming " of the dynamo. Its other uses in this
year were chiefly on the sea. An Orient liner, the Chim-
borazo, was equipped with it in June, the lights used,
though described as " incandescent," being not what were
later called incandescent lamps, but arc lights of 70 c.p.
The more significant development at the moment was
the use of the light for naval purposes ; the potentialities
of its high power were at once perceived, and by the middle
of April two warships, the Minotaur and the Agincourt,
had astounded the dwellers at Gibraltar by suddenly
tummg upon the Rock beams of a light hitherto unknown.
The name of " searchlight " had yet to be invented, and
the general opinion among the garrison officers was hardly
favourable to the new invention ; it made, they thought,
the ships themselves an excellent mark.
' The Times, 5th January 1880.

22 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
The second invention, which equally found its develop
ment somewhat checked, though in a different way, was
the telephone. It had already gained so much ground in
England that in January 1880 there was talk of action by
the Postmaster-General to restrain an enterprise which
was likely to cut into the profits of the telegraph service.
It was doubtful if he could establish his case that a
telephone message was a kind of telegram, and therefore
an infringement of monopoly ; but it seemed to be certain
that he would make the attempt — certain, indeed, that he
could not afford to do otherwise. For at this time the
telephone was expected to render telegrams as obsolete
as the electric light would make gas ; there was not any
idea of the extent to which the two earlier inventions
would continue to exist alongside the two new ones.
The Postmaster-General's action was entered, and came
on late in November, the Attorney-General, on his behalf,
suing the Edison Telephone Company. At the same time
the Post Office Authorities could not fail to perceive that
it was impossible to deprive the public of the new
facilities ; if the telephone were a kind of telegraph then
the public would have a right to demand a telephone
service from the telegraph authorities. Consequently in
December the Post Office was ordering 200,000 Gower-
Bell telephones. Meanwhile a good deal of interest was
being taken in the first working uses of the invention ;
in AprU, for instance, lines were ran from several chambers
in the Temple to the Law Courts (then stUl at Westminster)
and the Houses of Parliament, the wires being carried
along the District RaUway. In some other large towns
the new idea had been more extensively taken up ; early
in July there were cries of alarm about the danger and
inconvenience of the network of overhead telephone wires
in Liverpool and other places.^
The Post Office had real ground for anxiety in face of
* The Times, gth July i88o.

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 23
this invention. The State purchase of the telegraph
system had just succeeded, after ten years, in proving
itself a good bargain. The telegraph revenue for 1879
had been £1,452,489, and the expenditure £1,111,547.
But the demand for postal facUities was ever growing.
A favourite scheme at this time was one of pneumatic
despatch-boxes to be set up in the streets, whereby the
public could shoot its telegrams into the post offices.
Then there was a demand for a parcel post, transmitting
small parcels " at uniform rates payable by adhesive
stamps " ; and another demand was in process of being
met by the Money Order BUI before Parliament this year.
It is interesting to note that this last proposal had no small
opposition to encounter. Several Chambers of Commerce,
including so important a chamber as that of Manchester,
lodged petitions against it on the ground that the issue
of postal notes woiUd damage certain private enterprises,
like the Cheque Bank, which had hitherto supplied a
form of easily negotiable paper money. Another point
of interest — a side-light on new commercial methods
which we shall have to consider later — ^was that some
advocates of the demand for money orders argued
that they would promote shopping with big firms, and
give people in the country the chance to avaU them
selves of the lower prices which the large stores then
coming into existence were able, by the size of their
dealings, to offer. In view of the ever-growing re
quirements of the public the Post Office may well
have been disturbed by anything which threatened its
one source of trading profit. It may be noted here,
though it is not strictly a Post Office matter, that the
" newly opened line of telegraph to South Africa " had
begun working in January 1880. Its first important
message conveyed the news of the arrest of the President
of " the Committee of Boers in the Transvaal " which had
been concentrating the local resentment of annexation —

24 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
a message ominous of the kind of work which was to fall
on that cable in later years.
An invention of a different kind, which in the end
affected the spending powers and prosperity of the poorer
classes in England to a degree not foreseen at the time,
also reached in 1880 the point of practical working. It
was announced on 3rd February that the steamship
Strathleven had arrived in London from Australia with
70 buUock carcasses, 500 sheep carcasses, and two tons of
butter. She had left Sydney and Melbourne in December
and had arrived with the supplies in " perfectly sound
condition." Now the importation of meat preserved by
low temperatures was not a new thing. For some time
carcasses had been brought from America, but the cham
bers in which they had been conveyed were kept cool with
blocks of ice. The system of chambers refrigerated by
machines practically dates from 1880.^ However, in spite
of new methods of storage, the trade would not have de
veloped so rapidly as it did but for a curious and almost
accidental circumstance. By enabling meat to be brought
from Australia and New Zealand (distances over which
ice-cooled chambers could not have been made to pay)
refrigeration tapped an astoundingly cheap market. Till
this time the great sheep-runs of those colonies had been
worked on the wool-profits entirely ; the carcasses were
regarded as practically worthless. Consequently when
sheep carcasses first became, thanks to the new refrigera
tion, of marketable value, there was no difficulty in obtain
ing them cheaply enough to allow the importers to face
a long period of prejudice and experiment. For some
time the meat was criticised, and even abused ; the first
shipment showed an adverse balance to the importers
of £19 on the cargo, the beef having been sold at an average
of 5|d. a lb., and the mutton at an average of 5d. Never-
^ Encyclopedia Britannica, article on Refrigerating, by T. B.
Lightfoot.

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 25
theless in November an " Australian Fresh Meat Com
pany " was floated, with a capital of £300,000 ; and the
keenness of the sheep-owner in the Antipodes for a source
of profit hitherto undreamt of was at work to break down
the prejudices of Smithfield Market, and to give the
English workman more butcher's meat in a month than
his fathers had in a year.
Nor was it the workman only whose resources were
enlarged. The daily menu of comparatively well-to-do
families had been extremely limited. The occasion of a
trade exhibition in Germany, at which a display of
American " canned goods " was made, served The Times
for a homUy on the lack of variety in English catering.
It wrote 1 : " No nation in the world has so narrow a
code of clean articles of food as ours." Householders
of moderate means rarely afforded fish, mutton was
" suspected and avoided," poultry " lacked flavour and
strength," and pork was " less acceptable above stairs
than below." Vegetables, moreover, must have been a
luxury in small houses. An indictment of the green
grocer's profits reveals the fact that the retaU price of
a cucumber in September 1880 was lOd., of a pound of
runner beans, 6d., and of a cauliflower, 8d. Even so,
the housekeepers had not complained ; the indictment
came from the grower, who felt himself to be getting an
inadequate share of the profit.^ Dairy produce was
hardly procurable at a more reasonable cost, fresh butter
being normally at Is. 7d. a pound. It is probable, how
ever, that many town families felt this pinch less, since
the Margarine Act was not yet in existence, and much
must have passed for butter which was not butter at all.
It was, for instance, noted as curious that, though oleo
margarine never had a price quoted in the market reports,
and was not displayed in shop-windows, a lawsuit about
patent royalties elicited the fact that the sale of this
• The Times, 22nd April 1880. " Ditto, i8th September 1880.

26 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
compound amounted to 98,000,000 Ibs.i But whatever
may have been the facts about other foods the question
of the meat supply was the only one formiUated. The
general supply had been restricted by severe Government
prohibition imposed on the importation of live animals
owing to fears of cattle disease ^ ; and drastic regulations
as to the movement of live cattle from the Metropolitan
Meat Market had caused real shortage of food in seaside
places and country towns.* It was high time that a new
traffic in dead meat should be established ; and it is not
difficult to see that the security for a new venture lay in
the middle-class demand. There is no mistaking the
calibre of the letters on the subject to the newspapers.
Certain persons complained of the toughness of the meat,
its bad colour ; others wrote of the precise way to treat
it, especially the necessity for long and slow thawing ; and
in their phrases describing the excellences of the meat when
so treated, how it " cut firm and tender under the knife,"
" the quality of the gravy in the well," there is all the
ponderous interest in eating, all the detaUed affection for
a joint, that Dickens portrayed in his middle-class fathers.
" Sweetness and light " had, as we have seen, affected
the upper strata of the middle class with unhealthy
violence in the shape of the aesthetic movement. It had
led also to advances in education, which were in some
respects slightly fevered, and ladies of very distinguished
learning— Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, Dr Garrett Anderson,
Miss Lucy Harrison, for instance — ^were becoming per
turbed by what they considered to be over-pressure in girls'
schools.* There was sanity enough, however, in the way
educational advances were affecting the business man's
idea of his business; and Matthew Amold might have
* The Times, 28th April 1880.
" Ditto, 20th July 1880.
" Ditto, 23rd May 1881.
* See, e.g:, The Times, 15th April i88oc

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 27
begun to feel he had not preached to deaf ears when Pro
fessor Huxley, speaking at the opening of Mason College,
Birmingham, on 1st October, in this year, celebrated the
passing of the day when the men and the methods of
science were pooh-poohed by the men of business. On
13th July the court of the new Victoria University held
its first meeting, the characteristics of the University being,
first, that for the attainment of its degrees it required
attendance at prescribed courses of lectures, thus differing
from the University of London ; and secondly, that it
was designed to federate a number of colleges — ^Man
chester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield. Akin to the spirit
of these matters was the announcement, »n 30th July, of
the first instance of an offer which was to become in time
a familiar, almost a national, institution. Mr Andrew
Carnegie had written from New York to the Provost of
Dunfermline, offering to present the town with a free
library. It is not difficult, again, to trace the growing
concern for reality in education in the deputation which
waited upon the Board of Education in July from the
Manchester Kindergarten Society, and other such societies,
urging the adoption of kindergarten methods in element-
arj' schools. The Board, however, had too much other
business on hand. It had not yet succeeded in perfecting
its machinery. School Boards had had ten years of
existence, but though they had done much they were stUl
far from the ideal of provisionj.for every child. In London
the total child population of^school age was reckoned in
1880 at 740,377. The voluntary schools had accommoda
tion for 269,469, the Board Schools for 225,236, a total
of 494,705. But the average attendance was as yet only
873,701 — just about half the juvenUe population.
The expansion of provincial university education is a
subject which wUl confront us again later. It was one
aspect of that growing|civic^ 'activity which, though it
might be despised by the fastidious and the aesthetic

28 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
as a mere exaltation of the material and the parochial,
was a very genuine piece of middle-class self-assertion.
Such cities as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and especi
ally Birmingham, had for some time before this history
opens been developing their resources and enlarging the
scope of the services they offered their citizens. Gas
companies, water companies, tramway companies had
been made aware that no monopoly would be allowed to
remain in private hands ; the principle of ultimate right
of purchase by the Corporation was well established.
Yet, great as previous developments had been, the year
1880 serves none the less well in this matter too as a
fresh starting point. It witnessed the first successful
flotation of Consolidated Municipal Stock ; and this was
a very important departure, for hitherto the capital
expenditure of corporations had had to be met by loans
from the Public Works Loan Commissioners, from banks,
insurance companies and private lenders. These arrange
ments involved varying rates of interest, from 5 per cent.
to 3| per cent., the keeping of separate sinking funds,
and separate approaches to Parliament or the Local
Govemment Board for powers for new works. In the
early seventies some corporations had adopted the idea
of a Suspense Account, into which money borrowed at
low rates was paid to be used for the liquidation of loans.
Then arose the idea of a Corporation Debenture Stock,
the Birmingham Finance Committee drawing up a scheme
for such an issue in 1876,^ and although the Local Govem
ment Board considered itself unable to sanction the pro
posal, an attempt was made in the foUowing year to raise
a mUlion and a half of debenture stock. Prospectuses
were published, but only £300,000 were subscribed, and
the attempt faUed. The first success in the venture was
achieved by the Liverpool Corporation, which issued on
^ For this subject I have drawn largely on Mr J. T: Bunce's
History of the Corporation of Birmingham.

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 29
1st September 1880 two mUlions of stock, under the
Liverpool Loans Act. Sir W. B. Forwood, who had
been chiefly responsible for the Act, told the Corporation
that " it had been a difficult and intricate matter to get
the BUI through, because the Liverpool Corporation were
the first in the kingdom to obtain powers to fund their
debt in the way proposed." ^ But Birmingham was close
on Liverpool's heels with its second attempt. Instead of
proceeding by a Loans Act, with aU the cost of a private
Bill, the Corporation applied to the Local Government
Board for a provisional order to amend and partially
repeal some local Acts and Orders, so as to enable the
Corporation to issue a consolidated stock in which trustees
who were empowered to invest in Govemment securities
might invest. This method of procedure nearly Avrecked
the enterprise, for although the Board, after public
inquiry, made the Order, the BUI confirming it was
opposed by Lord Redesdale on the ground that the
Board was exceeding its powers. However he finaUy
withdrew his opposition on condition that the question
of the Board's powers was raised in Parliament. The
BUI passed. It had cost the Corporation only £70, and
it would save thousands. The calculation in the case of
Liverpool was that £25,000 or £30,000 a year would be
saved by the raising of a large sum at a single, compara
tively low, rate of interest. What was more important
from the piiblic point of view was, first, that municipalities
had discovered a new form of financial power in the
exercise of which the Local Govemment debt of the United
Kingdom rose to six hundred mUlions in 1910 ; and,
secondly, that they had found a way of attracting the
general investor, and had no longer to borrow, in the old
sense of the word.
The pro\dsion of a new field for investments could not
have come at a better time than this. The possibUities
^ The Times, 2nd September 18801

30 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
of the new field were not, however, fully perceived at the
moment, and its opening did nothing to cure the special
source of depression in this depressing year — the state of
the money market. The year, as it progressed, brought
a revival of trade ; the signs were hopeful as early as
Febraary, and another summer of rain and flood could
not disguise the fact that business was recovering. Yet
re\'ival brought with it a new uneasiness. The money
market was not comfortable. Not only were Consols very
liigh, but all good stocks were high with them. There
had been for long. The Times remarked,^ no war to cause
new issues, no great economic changes, such as the inven
tion of raUways, or extensive measures of colonisation.
The general result was an accumulation of privately
held capital which might, on a recovery of trade, be a
temptation to the reckless floating of new enterprises, and
consequent financial disturbance. Fears were expressed
later on in the year that some of the new impulsion of
business was really — ^in the iron trade, for instance — only
speculative. Other conditions, besides prices and pro
duction, were affecting the market. It was never decided
beyond question, even in all the discussions of the great
period of bimetallism, precisely how the shortage of gold,
which became so serious between 1880 and 1890, affected
trade and industry. That it had some direct effect may be
taken for granted, since otherwise the bimetaUic theory
woiUd never have gained ground. One indirect effect is
certain. The " tightness," so to speak, of the coinage,
whUe producing a nominal lowering of prices, tended
to keep wages from rising ; and was thus responsible
for some of the force which at this time the agitations of
working people assumed. Masters of industry in every
part of the country were nervous about the strikes that
might be expected to accompany a revival of trade.
Not that the working class agitations were entirely a
^ 29th July 1880.

BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES 31
matter of wages. In one of the great industries, then as
now the most highly organised on the side of the employees
— ^the cotton industry — observers already thought they
saw signs of a spkit which we shall faad at its full activity
later. As yet the idea was only expressed in a vague
and obviously prejudiced form. The Times venturing the
opinion, when labour troubles in Lancashire became
serious in the autunrn, that the real cause at the back of
the agitation was not a matter of wages but " a struggle
for mastery." i The opinion, though crudely expressed,
was shrewd. The trade unions had attained to such
numbers that they felt the day within sight when they
should command practically all the working hands of the
country. At the Trade Union Congress in September of
this year the delegates represented an aggregate of 600,000
members, the strongest unions being the miners, with
50,000 members ; the engineers, with 45,000 ; the boUer-
makers, with 20,000 ; and the raUway workers, with 15,000.
They were already strengthening themselves by alliance
with the Co-operative Societies, a meeting between re
presentatives of the two movements taking place later
in September. The wages question, arising more acutely
from the shortage of gold coinage, was undoubtedly an
immediate cause of strikes (the cotton trade dispute ended
in December with the masters " risking " an advance in
wages), but there was a predisposing cause of a more
far-reaching nature. We shall have to record, under 1881,
the foundation of the Social Democratic Federation in
London. Whether or no it be true that the British work
ing man had been affected by contact with the refugees
fleeing to England from the repressive measures taken in
France after the Commune, and by Bismarck a few years
later in Germany, it seems at least certain, as WUliam
Morris put it,^ that " there was no longer, among the mass
1 The Times, 1 8 th September 1880.
^ Mackail's Life of William Morris, ii. 81 i

32 BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTIES
of the working class in London, any decided hostUity to
Sociahsm." But whatever suspicions may have been
growing of a spirit among workmen that was looking for
more fundamental advances than in wages, nothing
seems to have been less present to the minds of politicians
in 1880, as they approached and passed through a General
Election, than uneasiness about the conditions of the
temper of the working man. Yet it is fair to add that the
broadly determining influence in that election was such
a reviUsion of feeling in the direction of domestic and
internal politics that the nation might well have looked
forward to having its house drastically set in order.

CHAPTER II
the general election, 1880
YET to speak of the General Election of 1880 as
offering a prospect of national spring-cleaning is
to give a positive description to what was mainly a
negative movement. The distinction is necessary, because
in the following five years the prevalence of a habit of
confounding different matters under the common title of
" Beaconsfieldism " was to lead the reforming party into
disaster ; dislike of the positions in which Beaconsfield
had left Great Britain in various parts of the world was
to become, in more than one case, a refusal to deal with
those positions, hardly distinguishable from carelessness.
The tone and pitch of this election were entirely set
by Mr Gladstone ; the campaign which was to bring the
Liberals triumphantly to power being really begun at the
close of 1879. The events of 1878, the Russo-Turkish
War, the subsequent inflaming of bellicose spirit in
England, and the secret agreements with Russia and
Turkey that accompanied the Berlin Conference — ^had
aU touched Mr Gladstone in one of his tenderest spots :
Turkey and her dependencies in Europe. He had used
a phrase very significant of the line his thought was taking
— " the people want a little more experience of Beacons
field Toryism " ^ — before the occurrence of two events
which fitted exactly into his case. Affairs in South Africa,
already made ticklish enough by the annexation of the
Transvaal, were rendered more depressing by a campaign
undertaken, as it seemed even to the Government,
^ Motley's Life of Gladstone, ii. 583.
c 33

34 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
somewhat wantonly against the Zulus. More serious stUl,
the Ameer of Afghanistan having faUed to accede to
what the Govemment demanded of him by way of
recognition of the weight of British influence in his affairs,
war had been undertaken in Afghanistan also.
To these developments, which wore to Mr Gladstone's
mind the true Disraelian stamp of cjmical disregard of
righteousness, add the inevitable coroUary of the burden
on the national finances, and what more bumingly in
spiring text coiUd a man of Mr Gladstone's political
tradition have found to his hand ? When the Liberal
Committee of Mid-Lothian invited him in 1879 to contest
that division, and he accepted the invitation, he was, by a
sure political instinct, giving himself at once an inspiring
audience and the stimulus of a difficult fight. He had
declined in the prexaous year to stand again for Greenwich,
his seat at that date ; he had remained unpersuaded by
the offer of a safe seat in Edinburgh. The Mid-Lothian
suggestion gave him the chance of striking the blow at his
ovm. time, and not at what time Lord Beaconsfield might
choose to dissolve. Towards the end of November 1879
he went into Scotland, and the next fortnight witnessed
the historic " Mid-Lothian Campaign." In these days
of far more widely spread newspaper reading, and the
consequent organisation of reporting from outlying centres,
it is necessary to remind ourselves of the violently out
standing methods of this campaign. Political platform-
speaking then was restricted within limits generally
recognised and accepted. Such speeches as were reported
were placed under the rather odd heading " Parliament
Out of Session," which by itself is enough to suggest that
these efforts were regarded as mere aftermath. Iliere was
one other form in which they were recognised. It was
tacitly admitted that the ordinary practice of members of
the House in addressing themselves to their constituents
once a year or so had in some instances an interest beyond

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 35
the bounds of the constituency. Reports of the speeches
of such men appeared under the heading : " The Member
for Oxford," or " Westminster," or " Birmingham," a
form of title which made even Mr Chamberlain's Radical
pronouncements somewhat muffled. Nothing approach
ing the present mobility of notable speakers, or the fre
quent platform appearances of leading figures outside their
own constituencies, existed in those days. In a general
election such appearances were made, but not often. Mr
Gladstone lived to deplore our modern fashion ; but his
Mid-Lothian campaign was largely responsible for its
origin.^ Further, it was not only the unusualness of such a series
of speeches which roused the public mind ; it was also
the fact that Mr Gladstone was making them. He
had retired from the leadership of his party in 1874 ;
he had even intimated that he did not intend to face
another general election ; and here he was taking the
field in a way so marked and so far out of the ordinary
political course that the public could only draw one
conclusion. Mr Gladstone himself never displayed his
intellectual peculiarities more strikingly than in the
absence of any such conclusion from his own mind ; for
some months to come he spoke of the question of the
leadership as out of his own hands, in a manner that must
have been exasperating to less subtle-minded colleagues.
The British public entertained no doubts. The crowds
at the principal stations at which his train stopped on the
way to Edinburgh, the enthusiasm in Scotland, and the
reception of what Beaconsfield called " this drenching
rhetoric," aU meant one thing — ^the ushering back of Mr
Gladstone to leadership.
Mr Gladstone's tone, then — ^his choice of subjects during
the Mid-Lothian campaign — set the tone of the election.
It was, in spite of its trumpet-caU appearance, essentially
*¦ See Saturday Review, 29th November 1879J

36 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
negative.^ The Government's foreign pohcy, the Govem-
ment's bad finance and growing deficit, might, indeed, in
Mid-Lothian speeches, be the text of the plea for righteous
ness among nations and a restoration of national resources ;
but practically the appeal was only for that result which
Mr Gladstone himself described after the triumph as " the
downfaU of Beaconsfieldism." ^ He might teU one of his
audiences that " he had come down expressly to raise
effectuaUy before the people of the country the question
in which manner they wished to be governed " ' ; but in
fact the General Election amounted to no more than asking
whether they wished to be governed in the Beaconsfield
way, or not. Sir WUliam Harcourt, addressing a great
meeting in January, devoted himself entirely to denouncing
the Government for "recklessly pursuing an Asiatic
policy " ; and a week later, in Birmingham, the heart then
of Radicalism, devoted his speech to the evUs of jingoism
(still a new word) and the Afghan War.
This was, obviously, the soundest fighting policy. And
as no campaign can be purely negative, in the background
of this one were certain promises of domestic legislation.
Chief among them was a proposed equalisation of the
county franchise with the borough franchise — ^the charter
of the agricultural labourer. There were also schemes for
the establishment of representative County Government,
amendment of the laws of land transfer and settlement,
and a system of municipal government for London. It
is plain from this list that the favourite phrase of economic
writers of this time, " the era of administration has
come," was influencing the politicians. StUl it was the
negative rather than any positive line of attack which
kept — perhaps alone could keep — the Liberal leaders
^ The Times, ist April, had a leader expressing concern lest the
election should be taken by Continental nations as expressing com
plete repudiation of concern in European interests j
* Morley's Life of Gladstone, \m 615.
' Ditto, ii: 588:

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 37
together. Lord Hartington, the leader of the party in
the Commons, was very cool on the extension of the
franchise ; Lord Granville, the chief, as an ex-Foreign
Minister, was little interested in domestic affairs ; Har
court was already Mr Gladstone's staunch lieutenant, and
had his faithful eye mainly on Turkey. The franchise
question, in any case, was one with which the Tories had
coquetted ; and though it may have carried some votes
it can hardly have counted heavily. Beaconsfield, with
his extraordinary prophetic gift, raised in his manifesto to
the country in March 1880 the question of the government
of Ireland, and sought to fasten upon the Liberals five years
before its time the odium of a separatist policy. Ireland,
however, was not as yet a real problem to English electors.
Battle was joined on the ground Mr Gladstone had taken.
Some surprise was felt at its coming when it did. The
Mid-Lothian campaign had lighted such a flare that men
expected Beaconsfield to wait for some chance of damping
it, even if slightly, before a dissolution of Parliament.
The dissolution was announced on 6th March ; and the
accepted explanation of that early date is that Beacons
field was misled into a false estimate of the feeling of the
country by the results of two bye-elections, in February,
at Liverpool and in Southwark. In both the Liberal
candidate had been beaten, and Southwark moreover was
a seat gained to the Tories. It seems possible, however,
in view of the fact that Beaconsfield's manifesto attempted
to divert the minds of the electors to the Irish question,
that what influenced him was not so much the mere
return of Tories for these seats as the fact that in Liverpool
the Home Rule cry had been employed in the fight. The
Irish had made the Liberal candidate commit himself to
a promise to vote for " an inquiry into the nature and
extent of the Irish demand for self-go vemment." ^ A
storm had been raised at the bare possibUity of treating
* The Times, 5 th February 1880.

38 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
Home Rule as a valid question. Lord Hartington,
moreover, had taken the line that it was a matter for the
individual decision of members ; and this indication of
uncertainty in the Liberal ranks may have appealed to
Beaconsfield as a useful opening for driving in his wedge.
Unfortunately for him this occurrence of the Home Rule
demand was an isolated case. The brief month during
which Parliament sat, from 6th Febraary to 6th March,
had not been long enough to give the Irish members the
chance for which, under Parnell, they were ready ; and
the strategy Beaconsfield attempted proved impractic
able. The elections went heavUy against him. On the
first day's results, on 31st March, the Liberals had a net
gain of 15 seats in 69 constituencies ; by the end of the
second week of the election their net gains stood at
99 ; and finally the new Parliament showed itself com
posed of 347 Liberals, 240 Conservatives and 65 Irish
Nationalists. Mr Gladstone's own election was, as his speech-making
had been, the centre of importance. The interest taken
in it gives us a sidelight on what must have been the last
of old electoral methods — a survival due to the absence
of reform from the county franchise. One of the first
points that occurred to him in taking up the candidature
for Mid-Lothian was the matter of " faggot " votes. The
qualification in those days for the county franchise was
the possession of a 40s. freehold, or a £10 copyhold, or
a £50 leasehold, or an occupation valued at £12. It
was not difficult, with sufficient money at command, to
manufacture these votes ; and Mr Gladstone, franchise
reformer though he was, was too old a hand to be a
purist ; he had fought his first election before the Reform
BUI. So now the answer to Conservative faggotting was
Liberal faggotting ; and The Times of 27th January 1880
contains a curious and interesting article on the running-up
of houses in Edinburgh, but just over the county border.

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 39
to give one hundred and sixty new owner and occupier
votes on the Liberal side. The work went on night and
day, and men stood at dusk in the light of the flares
cheering for Gladstone. His majority at the declaration
of the poll on 5th AprU was two hundred and nine
teen. Another feature of the election, though not one that
was prominent in the newspapers, was that new ideas in
party organisation were on trial on the Liberal side. In
this, rather than in his legislative projects, is to be found
the basis of the dislike and fear of Mr Chamberlain as
a demagogue. A generation more accustomed than our
own to exalt a classical education used its words nicely,
and " demagogue " to it meant less the producer of
measures appealing to the masses than a man who
organised the masses. Judged merely by his legislative
proposals Mr Chamberlain showed no terrifying face. The
Employers LiabUity BUI, of which he was in charge as
President of the Board of Trade, was, after all, very much
a corollary of the Factory Acts ; and for the rest Mr
Chamberlain's own programme, as announced by him at
Birmingham in October of that year, was devoted to such
eminently middle-class questions as the reform of raUway
rates for goods traffic, of the bankruptcy laws, and of the
patent laws. But his organising schemes were a different
matter. In 1877 he had inaugurated a new means of
handling electoral forces. Hitherto the choice of candi
dates and the management of electoral affairs had been in
the hands of local committees, who corresponded, when
necessary, with the party whips, but were essentiaUy
independent. Mr Chamberlain aimed at making organisa
tion more democratic and more co-ordinated. The local
associations were to be much larger, and to be popularly
elected ; and, secondly, they were to be federated under
a central organisation which would give general orders,
provide candidates, have a sanctioning voice in any local

40 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
choice of candidates, issue literature, and wield an army
of speakers. This was perhaps the first matter in which
his future Cabinet coUeagues felt Mr Chamberlain's
determination and force. He invited Lord Hartington
to become the nominal head of the new system. Lord
Hartington did not much take to it, and declined.^ Mr
Chamberlain went on his way, with a warning to his
leader that he could not afford not to be associated
with it. By 1880 the idea was so well advanced that
after the election the " new democratic machinery " be
came a subject for letters to the newspapers from the
more timid Liberals and the more bitterly disappointed
Conservatives. One of the effects most dreaded was
the enhanced power which such organisation might
give to wealth in an election. Party funds would,
it was thought, unduly turn the day, when they acted
through a highly drilled system.
Lord Beaconsfield resigned on 21st AprU. The processes
by which Mr Gladstone returned in actuality to that leader
ship which, in everyone's opinion but his own, he had
assumed five months earlier, need not be set forth.
They have been given to the world in the words of those
who were concerned in them.* It is sufficient to say here
that Lord GranvUle and Lord Hartington were so im
movably agreed upon the impossibUity of carrying on a
Government without Mr Gladstone, and the equal im
possibUity of his occupying any but the chief place in a
Govemment, that Queen Victoria had to give way. Mr
Gladstone's Govemment * met the new Parliament on
20th May 1880.
It was a meeting full of enthusiasm, full of hope — and
almost tragic to look back upon now. So fine a career
' Holland's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 244-249.
* See Morley's Life of Gladstone, ii. 620-628 ; Holland's Life
of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 273-293 ; Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord
Granville. ' See Appendix.

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 41
seemed to open before a Govemment with a majority
clear of the Irish vote, pledged to end the policy which
distracted politics with foreign adventure, and headed
by a man who was a popular idol. Yet at the very
threshold the new House met with a difficulty which,
wasting its time, exasperating its temper, and dislocating
its procedure, was typical of the barren wrangling in
which the new forces were to expend themselves like
a river traUing amid a waste of sand. Before it
came to work, the House was suddenly divided by
the question whether one of the new members for
Northampton, Mr Charles Bradlaugh, who had, as an
avowed atheist, declined to take the oath, could be
allowed to take his seat. Mr Bradlaugh then professed
himself ready to take the oath ; but it was easy to
rouse the House against the cynicism of such an attitude.
The prolonged controversy which followed — continued
debates in the House, discussions in the press, proceed
ings in the law courts, to which Mr Bradlaugh took
the question of his rights — may in one respect be passed
rapidly over. In this parliament he never sat. So
curiously was the House cut asunder by this unforeseen
problem that even when, in 1883, an Affirmation Bill,
designed to relieve the difficulty, had the eloquent sup
port of Mr Gladstone, it was thrown out by a majority
of three. Removed more than once from the House by
physical force, Mr Bradlaugh turned to great meetings in
public halls and in the parks of London to try to break
down the opposition that had such bewildering obstinacy.
It was not untU eight years later that he may be said to
have won the case of principle, and eleven years later the
personal case. In 1885 he was allowed to take the oath
without any comment. But this sUent passing-over of
the tempest naturally did not satisfy him. In 1888 he
secured the passing of an Affirmation Act, and in 1891,
when he was on his death-bed, the resolution of 1881,

42 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
by which the House had finally asserted itself in the
original controversy, was expunged from the records.
But though the facts should be stated as briefly as possible,
their significance must not be missed. In the House
itself the most striking feature of the controversy was
that it revealed the existence of a group on the Tory
side which was to attain much notoriety during the
life of this Parliament. For the first time members
saw the co-operation between Lord Randolph Churchill,
Mr Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst and Sir Henry
Drammond-Wolff which earned them the name of " The
Fourth Party." Dissatisfied with the leadership of
Sir Stafford Northcote, who seemed to them dull and
slow in action, formal in his methods, a slave to the
conventions of politics, this group were as ready to
scoff at their own Front Bench as to attack the other
Front Bench. The formalities of Opposition would not
have admitted the seizing of the opportunity offered
by the case of Mr Bradlaugh ; it exactly suited Lord
Randolph's purposes. The existence of the Fourth
Party affected the Government seriously throughout
its career. The attacks of clever men, who had none
of the traditions of holding office, had always to be
met after the official answer on any question had been
given to the Opposition leaders, and accepted by them
in the official spirit which, as ex-Ministers, they were
ready to display. Moreover, as was very soon noticed,
Lord Randolph ChurchUl had a pecuhar gift for
"drawing" Mr Gladstone. The position which the
Fourth Party attained was due not only to the scan
dalous notoriety attaching to a revolt against con
stituted leaders, but to the fact that Mr Gladstone's
colleagues could never induce him to treat the group
as irresponsible interlopers. However, the taste of their
quahty was a comparatively minor aspect of the Brad
laugh controversy. That had also a deeper significance.

1880] THE .GENERAL ELECTION 43
It is true that the persistence of the House was largely
due to the mere tactical value to the Opposition of a
question in which the Govemment could not command
its majority. Sir Stafford Northcote refused in 1881
overtm-es made to him by the Speaker with a view
to reaching the solution of silence that was accepted
in 1885. But it is beyond doubt that at the time that
solution would only have left open the door of bitterness.
We have to face the spectacle of a House, not without the
approval of a very great part of the country, quite assum
ing its right to demand some form of religious conviction
in a member ; the spectacle, moreover, of intelligent men
convinced that to be an atheist was to be morally un
trustworthy, that to deny the existence of God was worse
than " that form of opinion Avhich would teach us that,
whatever may be beyond the visible things of this world,
whatever may be beyond this short span of life, you know
and you can Imow nothing of it, and that it Is a bootless
undertaking to attempt to establish relations with it." ^
Perhaps after all the Bradlaugh controversy did no less
in the end for genuine religious conviction than for the
freedom of those who have no such conviction. It was
one of the occasional shocks which force the pace of the
whole-hearted in either direction.
But at the moment the effect of the controversy was
one of barrenness and discouragement. The Radicals
in the country perceived their great majority already
" jockeyed." The position of Mr Bradlaugh himself can
now be disentangled from the discussions, and estimated
at its worth. The deep bewUderment of the moment arose
from the almost diabolical cleverness with which the
question was twisted in the House to a problem of religious
liberty. The Times saw what had happened ; " Mr
Bradlaugh, admitted to the House, will be of just whatever
account the House pleases. But Mr Bradlaugh and
• Mr Gladstone on the Affirmation Bill, 26th April 1883.

44 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
rehgious liberty together are not thus easUy to be dealt
with." ^ This was the first baiting of a Govemment which
was to pass so much of its time with its head down to at
tacks in the House that it could rarely get a real outlook.
In no matter was this lack of outlook more disastrous
than in the question of the Transvaal. In alarm at the
danger involved by the Boers' apparent inability to cope
with native attacks in 1877 — ^the danger that native
successes against them might light an appalling con
flagration — Sir Theophilus Shepstone had formally placed
the Transvaal under British sovereignty. He had ex
ceeded his instructions, which gave him no authority to
proclaim annexation except on assurances that the step
was in consonance with the wishes of the majority of the
Boers. It was immediately made apparent that practic
ally the whole Boer community was against it ; yet the
Conservative Govemment held to the annexation. Mr
Gladstone expatiated on the wickedness of this in his
Mid-Lothian denunciations ; even Lord Hartington as
serted that annexation in those circumstances could not
be maintained ; and public opinion must have been in
some degree represented by The Times which wrote * :
" We have to consider the welfare of the whole of
the South African colonies, as well as the interests of
the inhabitants of the Transvaal, and neither of these
can be weighed in the balance against a mere reluctance
to abandon a policy which was justified at one time
by circumstances which have now passed away. . . .
Englishmen will find it difficult to reconcile themselves
to the forcible occupation of a country whose people de
clare that they have never been and do not wish to be
her Majesty's subjects." The question was forced upon
the Liberal Government's attention publicly in May by a
memorial demanding the recall of Sir Bartle Frere, who
' Leading article, 29th June 1880;
2 Ditto, 17th January 1880.

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 45
was identified with the policy of annexation. The sum
of the Government's action in the matter during this year
is that two months later Sir Bartle Frere was recalled ;
but the annexation was not cancelled. What does this
contradictory conclusion mean ? By itself it is astonish
ing ; but taken in connection with those affairs in Egypt
which wiU confront us later it appears susceptible of
explanation. It may be thrown out here as a suggestion,
to be supported hereafter, that this Cabinet more than
once undertook the more difficult, in preference to the
point-blank, solution of a problem ; and then had not time
or sufficient freedom from immediate worries to carry out
adequately the task it had set itself. The Cabinet cer
tainly undertook a complicated solution of the Transvaal
difficulty, the reasons for which may perhaps be sought
in the Prime Minister's character. Mr Gladstone in
Mid-Lothian might thunder flat opposition to certain acts
of state, to certain lines of policy ; Mr Gladstone in
office felt the habit of office close round him, a habit in
which there are no violent and fundamental reversals.
It may also have been, as matters turned out, somewhat
imfortunate that the Turkish difficulty — ^to the almost
laughable surprise and glee of Mr Gladstone — coUapsed
instantly on a tentative application of precisely the kind
of pressure that Beaconsfield might have used ; Mr Glad
stone was capable of being attracted by the prospect of
showing his great rival that mere reversals of pohcy were
not the only way of governing better than he. At all
events, it is certain that the reversal of the annexation
was set aside in favour of a complicated series of moves
whereby, federation having been first established in South
Africa, local independence should follow ; and the Boers
be thus ultimately satisfied.^ The federation schemes
faUed; Frere, whose retention in South Africa was for
some weeks justified largely on the ground of his associa-
¦ Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii, 30J

46 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1^80
tion with the federation plans, was recalled. The com
plicated moves crumbled at the first stage. To judge by
the later analogy of Egypt, it would appear safe to assert
that Mr Gladstone's interest was diverted, and the matter
was aU disastrously left drifting.
What was the diversion of interest ? For one thing,
Mr Gladstone was extraordinarUy — one nught say, for
a Prime Minister, almost deplorably — ^interested in the
daily proceedings of the House. ^ It was not a great ses
sion, but it bore some fruit : the first Employers Liability
Act, establishing a system of compensation to workmen
for injuries infficted by defects in works, or machinery
plant, or stock connected with the business, or by default
of fellow-servants having superintendence or direction ;
the change of the Malt Tax into a Beer Duty, effected in
the Budget ; the Burial BUI, establishing the right of
Nonconformists to inter their dead with the services of
their own sect in parish churchyards. Another measure,
introduced in this year, both gave the Prime Minister
trouble in the Cabinet and, being ultimately rejected by
the Lords, brought on, after the session had closed, the
first acute stage of that Irish straggle which in the next
few years was so to drain the energies of both the Govem
ment and the House of Commons. This was the Com
pensation for Disturbance BUI. Mr Gladstone had
passed an Act in 1870 to meet the case of hardships suffered
by tenants In Ireland who, on being turned out of their
holdings, received no allowance for improvements they
had made. But the Act had never worked well ; there
was no provision in it for valuing the improvements, and
no provision that the rent should be a fair one, and it did
not apply in cases m which the tenant owed as mUch as
a year's rent. The case for an improved Act was streng
thened by the bad harvests of 1878 and, especiaUy, 1879,^
^ Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 7, 8.
" Cf. supra, p. 15!

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 47
and the new Bill entitled the tenant to compensation if
he could prove to the court (1) that he was unable to pay
the rent ; (2) that this was not from pure thriftlessness
or idleness, but from the bad harvest of the current year,
or of two preceding years ; (3) that he was wiUing to
continue his tenancy on just and reasonable terms as to
rent and otherwise ; (4) that these terms were unreason
ably refused by the landlord.
There were not a few in the House of Commons
who during the passage of this BUI perceived a warn
ing in the person of a certain sUent man. The new
Parliament saw at the head of the Irish party a new
leader, Charles Stewart Parnell. The House had some
loiowledge of his fighting power, and some reason to
be disturbed by his accession to leadership. In the
previous Parliament a profound change had come over
the behaviour of the Irish party. Under Isaac Butt's
leadership the Irish had for years pursued the patient
course of introducing measures on Ireland's behalf and
seeing them set by. They produced BUls for some form
of Home Rule year after year, and were told : " Parlia
ment will not, cannot grant Home Rule. The utmost
favour which the House of Commons can show to its
advocates is to listen to them with patience and courtesy
once a year." ^ When the prevaUing mind of important
people in England could be stated in that form, something
was bound to happen. Biggar and Parnell happened.
When the latter entered the House in 1875 the former had
already discovered the principle of obstruction ; the new
recruit, practically ignorant of politics ^ but full of hatred
of England's attitude towards Ireland, swiftly seized the
rudiments of the new methods, and there followed those
famous all-night sittings in which four or five Irish
members held up the whole business of the House by
' The Times, 20th April 1877)
^ Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell.

48 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
incessantly moving that progress be reported, or that the
chairman leave the chair. But when the new Parliament
met, there was in the minds of those who had eyes to see
much more than the fear of mere repetition of these scenes,
wliich in the old Parliament the leader of the party had
disliked and disavowed. The fact that Butt had now ceased
to be the leader was more than a menace to Parliamentary
order. Hitherto Irish agitation had had two wholly
separate currents. The Parliamentary agitation was a
steady-going plea for self-government on a federal basis.
The absolute separatist agitation, working through the
Fenian methods, was carried on by the Clan-na-Gael
in America and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in
Ireland, Michael Davitt being the chief link between the
two.i The leaders of this agitation wholly despised and
repudiated the Parliamentary party. Now between the
appearance of obstructive tactics in the House and the
meeting of the new Parliament these two currents had
ceased to be disconnected. That it is necessaty to use
so indefinite an expression is a tribute to the extreme
strategic skUl of which Pamell was master. All the
enmity he aroused in England, all the watchfulness to
catch him tripping, never succeeded in proving that he
was a Fenian, or that Irish Nationalism and Fenianism
were now one ; and yet it was patent that they were no
longer two. In December 1877 Michael Davitt had been
released from prison on ticket-of-leave from the end of the
sentence passed upon him for complicity in the Fenian
outrages of 1867. Pamell met him in Dublin in January
1878. By that time the Clan-na-Gael had marked the rise
and the effectiveness of the new spirit in the Irish Parlia
mentary party, to which Mr Barry O'Brien bears testi
mony : " ' Had Davitt come to America in the beginning
of 1877,' said a member of the Clan-na-Gael to me, ' he
would have found a few men ready to discuss the new
' Parnell Commissioners' Report, p. 30.

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 49
departure and to favour it. But'neither he nor we would
have dared broach it at a public meeting of the League.'
But a change had taken place in a twelvemonth. ParneU's
action in Parliament had made people think that some
thing might be done with Parliamentarianism after all." ^
Davitt went to America after that change, in August
1878. Moreover he went with a plan which provided a
channel whereby the two currents of agitation might
communicate. He had already devised the Land
Campaign. We shall miss the strength of this move if we do
not recognise that the land question in Ireland was,
if not actually different, susceptible of being made
very different from any such question in England. In
England land nationalisation is a political ideal on exactly
the same footing as other political ideals. In Ireland the
possession of land by the landlords could be represented
as a form of English garrisoning. Parnell more than once
spoke of the destruction of English landlordism as the
key to Home Rule. The landlords were indeed for the
most part English, and their relations with their tenants
had in general none of that idealism which even at the
worst has never been absent from these relations in
England. Too often the landlord's attitude suggested
that the Irish lived on a conquered land, and had no
rights save such as the landlord chose to allow. This
had been so obvious that there had been sufficient strength
of feeling in England to carry more than one Land Act.
" The landlord," wrote a chief secretary in the middle of
last century, " had a monopoly of the means of existence.
... ' The landlords in Ireland,' said Lord Donough
more in 1854, ' have been in the habit of letting land, not
farms.' " ^ These words sum up the problems of Irish
land tenure — exorbitant rents, and eviction without
^ Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, i. 165.
* Thomas Drumraond's Life and Letters

50 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
compensation. Therefore the land agitation could be
intimately associated with Home Rule; a subject —
and this was the brUliant point of the conception —
which the Clan-na-Gael could approach from one side,
and the Parliamentary party from another, meeting no
doubt in the middle, but never marching to it along
the same line. The conception had immediate success.
WhUe Davitt was in America in 1878 a telegram was
sent to ParneU offering the support of the Clan-na-Gael
for the Parliamentary party on the conditions : (a) of
the party's abandoning Butt's federal proposals and
making a general declaration for self-government ; (6) of
the party's agitating the land question on a peasant
proprietary basis, while accepting concessions tending
to abolish arbitrary eviction ; (c) of the party's voting
together on all questions, adopting an aggressive policy,
and energetically resisting coercive legislation.^ Was
not such a proposal, it may be asked, a complete con
junction of the two currents of agitation ? It might have
been — ^but Pamell never answered the telegram. It was
the first occasion on which his famous gift of silence came
into play. He did not accept the Clan-na-Gael's offer
overtly. But on 7th June 1879 he appeared on a platform
in Ireland with members of the Land League, which
Davitt had founded at a meeting at Irishtown on 20th
AprU, and on 21st October 1879 he was at the Dublin
Conference at which the League was organised finally into
the National Land League. Its main working clause set
up an organisation among tenant farmers for defending
those who might be threatened with eviction, for facUi-
tating the working of the Land Act of 1870, and for
obtaining such reform as would enable the tenant to
become owner of the land by paying a fair rent for a
limited number of years. Parnell was at first reluctant
to accept the scheme ; he saw, much as he disliked the
^ ParneU Commissioners' Report, p. g,

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 51
purely constitutional spirit of Isaac Butt, that the party's
effectiveness in Parliament depended in no small degree
upon not coming in^io contact with the law. But he
decided that he must " take the risk," ^ and it is a point
of some importance that the Land League constitu
tion contained no demand for the self-government of
Ireland. That made it merely a weapon, and not, so
to speak, a different impersonation of the Parliamentary
party. The last point for this brief summary is that
Pamell himself went to America in December 1879, and
was hurriedly recalled for the General Election of
1880. When the new Parliament met, there must therefore
have been every ground for regarding the Irish party,
thirty-five members of which were pledged Parnellites,
with new apprehension. Yet it may be doubted whether
actual apprehension was felt. The intervention of the
Home Rule question in the Liverpool bye-election had,
as we have said, been without any parallel in the General
Election. Liberals had beaten Home Riders in some
Irish constituencies — ^Dundalk, Athlone, and Mallow, for
instance. One cause of possible discomfort, which had
been foreseen, was avoided by the fact that the Liberal
majority did not depend upon the Irish ; and no un
easiness was shown in the summary statement that " the
Government may even approach once more the question
of Irish university education; and it will certainly be
expected to deal effectively in some way with the present
condition of Ireland." ^ The serene reliance of the
Ministerial party on Mr Gladstone's confidence in his own
mission floated the Compensation for Disturbance BUI
successfully through the House, and there were none but
momentary qualms in face of Parnell's sUence. That
sUence was obstinate. He was ready to see what the
^ Parnell Commissioners' Report, p. ij.
• The Times, leading article, 17th April 1880.

52 THE GENERAL ELECTION [1880
new Govemment would do, but he would take no single
step towards it. He would not answer the Clan-na-
Gael's telegram, but he would equally not answer any
signals from the English. He took practically no part in
the proceedings on the BUI. It was thrown out, as has
been recorded, by the House of Lords. Then the new
force for which Pamell stood revealed itself. Nothing
could have done more to strengthen the new Land League
than this event. The League was instantly at work in
every case that offered it a foothold. Rents were refused
above the " valued rent " scale, any man who paid more
was banned. Every farm where there had been an
eviction became a centre of activity, and any man who
took such a farm, or did anything for the landlord or the
agent concerned, was banned. On 15th September 1880
Lord Mountmorres was murdered near Clonbar. A week
later an agent — whose name came afterwards to stand for
the campaign, Captain Boycott — was put under the ban.
The police could get no information, and the banning of
men was accompanied by the shooting of those who held
on their way in spite of the League, by the maiming of
cattle placed on evicted farms, and by all sorts of minor
violences. Parnell and Biggar denounced all violent
action, and the Parnell Commission, examining later
all the evidence that was brought by Parnell's most
convinced and determined opponents, had to conclude
that these denunciations were not insincere.^ The other
current of agitation was operating, and the figures of cases
of agrarian crime rose from 863 in 1879 to 2589 in 1880,
although the acute agitation had not begun untU Sep
tember in the latter year ; evictions rose from 6239 in
1879 to 10,457 in 1880. The figures of crime for separate
months in 1880 show that from 67 in May the cases rose
to 165 in September, 269 in October, 559 in November,
and 865 in December. The crimes thus scheduled were
^ ParneU Commissioners' Report, p, 76.

1880] THE GENERAL ELECTION 53
chiefly those of sending threatening letters, kUling or
maiming cattle, arson, firing into houses or at the
person, and murder.^
In face of this onrush of events the first thought of
the executive in Dublin was one of regret that the new
Govemment had allowed the Coercion Act of the late
Govemment to lapse. Lord Cowper, the Viceroy, and
Mr Forster, the Chief Secretary, were insistent with the
Cabinet to promise renewal of the Act, and all through the
later months of the year were threatening resignation
unless the Habeas Corpus Act were suspended. Mean
while Lord Cowper was urging that the Land League
shoiUd be treated as an iUegal conspiracy and its leading
members arrested. Mr Gladstone, who had already lost
the Duke of Argyll from his Cabinet, and Lord Lansdowne
from a minor place in his Government, over the Com
pensation Bill, and who laiew that Lord Hartington had
never liked it, was not disposed to see much reason at the
moment to be at the pains of dissociating the Irish party
from these disturbances. He announced at the GuUdhall
banquet on 9th November that the Govemment would
stipulate that order must be restored in Ireland before
grievances could be considered, returning thus to the old
over-logical position that England cherished. A week
earlier, with dramatic effect, the Govemment in Ireland
had arrested five Irish members, ParneU, Biggar, DUlon,
Sullivan and Sexton ; and nine other Land Leaguers,
including Patrick Egan and Brennan. So the year ended
with the Government deeply into the first of its quagmires.
^ These figures are taken from the Parnell Commissioners' Report;

CHAPTER III
1881 : common sense
IN reviewing the events of 1880 there was occasion to
make allowance for a general depression. In 1881 it is
possible to trace, as a prevailing influence, a tendency
towards " common-sense " views, which may be the natural
British reaction from a period of self-pity.
The return to sturdiness arose primarily from a revival
of trade. The raUways gave the first distinct note of the
improvement, the half-yearly dividends declared in
February being much better than had been anticipated.
The favouring conditions recorded were " lowness of wages
and prices coupled Avith a good steady trade." ' Sheffield's
exports to America had in the previous year risen to over a
million pounds in value ; and there seemed to be no serious
prospect of strikes to disturb output. The year 1881 was,
in fact, fairly free of such troubles. Strikes occurred in
the month of June among the colliers in some districts,
the blast-furnace men and the nail-makers ; but, though
30,000 men were out in the last case, the only real menace
came from the colliers ; and as they were conferring on
the extension to all districts of the sliding scale, already at
work in the northern districts, Staffordshire and York
shire, there was no great alarm. The general confidence
must have been well restored ; for the early part of 1881
saw that large call for capital which the financial experts
had been foreteUing in 1880. In the first three months
of 1881 about a hundred companies were floated, and the
capital asked for was thirty-three and a quarter millions
» The Times, Sth February i88i. 54

1881] COMMON SENSE 55
sterling. Two mUlions of this were in Birmingham Cor
poration 3| per cent. Stock ; and the changed conditions
since that corporation's last attempt ' were sufficiently
indicated by the subscription of the whole amount at an
average of £98. 2s. Id." Over twelve millions were in
railway issues of preference stock, bonds and debentures.
But it is evident that the City believed the public to be in
a mood now for more than solid disposal of savings, for
the remaining nineteen millions were asked for in more
speculative ventures. StUl the timidity of the orthodox
observer of the money market remained very great. The
Times, for instance, considered that only about six millions
of real capital were called for beyond the corporation and
raUway issues. The Stock Exchange was not as yet a
normal field for middle-class savings, which were " as a
rule invested as they are made in houses or land, new
plant, increase of stocks, etc." ^ In accordance with this
state of things we find the stock and share list of the chief
daUy papers at this time no more than a column long —
a typical instance showing, besides home and foreign
Govemment securities, twenty-four mining companies,
twenty-six Colonial securities, eighteen industrial com
panies, twelve tram companies, five gas companies, three
shipping companies, and one land company. Even this
moderate compilation was not regarded as quite healthy.
Seventeen gold-mining companies appeared among these
early prospectuses of the year, and a month or two later
The Times was commenting on the " inundation of gold-
mining companies since 1879." * To modern eyes it hardly
looks like an inundation : the total capital of all the com
panies amounted to only three millions, and of those floated
in the year now under discussion only two asked for as
' Cf. p. 28.
" Bunce's Histor'y of the Corporation of Birmingham, ii: 34.-
» The Times, 4th April 1881;
* Leading article, 5th May.

56 COMMON SENSE [1881
much as a quarter of a mUlion; the majority were
floated at from £50,000 to £80,000. It is curious and
interesting to follow in these years all the effects
of the shortage of gold, all the complicated projects for
meeting the shortage, all the puny efforts to increase the
supply, knowing, as we do now know, what an immense
source was all the time awaiting exploitation in South
Africa. Both from the political and the financial point
of view it should be borne in mind, in reading of the events
of the succeeding three years, that the British public as
yet knew practically nothing of the mineral wealth of the
Transvaal ; and the world of high politics and high finance,
some members of which must have had the information,
did not believe in it. The public knew no more than the
occasional rumours of a nugget having been found here
and there — " a fine little nugget from the north side of the
Tugela," or " undoubtedly payable gold in the Lydenburg
district " — and the rumours were generally accompanied
by a warning that opinion in Pretoria was very wild, and
that there was nothing to warrant a gold " rush." In
fact, similar rumours from the head waters of the River
Yukon, in Alaska, were much more hopefuUy regarded.
That ministers had more knowledge than this is certain ;
Sir Gamet Wolseley, the Administrator of the Transvaal,
in a despatch to Sir Michael Hicks Beach on the question of
annexation, at the end of 1879, had written : " The Trans
vaal is rich in minerals ; gold has already been found in
quantities, and there can be little doubt that larger and
stUl more valuable goldfields wUI sooner or later be dis
covered." Yet this emphatic statement appears to have
made no more impression on the Cabinet than the news
paper rumours had made on the public. Goschen, for
example, laboured long at the Exchequer to devise solu
tions of the gold problem without any apparent expecta
tion of relief from a new supply. Scientists worked at
• Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 26.

1881] COMMON SENSE 57
new methods of treating auriferous ores, which had been
sent to them from South Africa — one of such methods, the
use of hydrochloric acid, for refractory ores, was exhibited
in London on 19th August 1881. But did even they
know the significance of the task they had been set ? At
any rate, for the present no new supply was in contempla
tion ; and the prevailing consciousness of the problem is
sufficiently indicated by the meeting in Paris in May of this
year of an international conference to deal with it. But
as the bimetallic theory did not attain its full height in
England until a year or two later we may leave that
conference with the bare mention of its meeting. In this
country the more active economic theory was of another
kind. Early in May the question of the new French tariff
became acute. Existing commercial treaties with France
had determined by lapse of time ; and the new proposals
of that country showed a considerable, and even grave,
enhancement of import duties. The cotton and woollen
trades were the most seriously disturbed, the previous
taxes on their products having been 20 per cent, ad valorem,
and the new taxes being 44 per cent. The Protectionist
party, numbering still many of the surviving opponents
of Repeal, was not slow to take this opportunity. By
the month of September the Fair Trade League was in
existence, with a programme singularly like a famous
programme of twenty -two years later. It opened its
campaign with emphasis on " retaliation " against high
duties in other countries ; and, again as happened later,
the idea of enabling these detached islands to take as
downright a line as countries with large and varied re
sources by the formation of an Imperial Bund was early
affixed to the programme, and in the end became more
prominent than the original idea. The movement attracted
the politicaUy roving spirit of Lord Randolph ChurchUl ;
and on 18th September he was laying before an audience
at Oldham the desirability of taxing aU foreign manu-

58 COMMON SENSE [1881
factured goods to relieve the burdens on land, and dUating
on " the antagonism set up by the Liberal party between
manufacturing and agricultural interests." In November
he was even so near the later spirit as to be expending his
sarcasm on " the commercial edifice constructed by the
immortal Cobden and the divine Bright." In October
the movement was being presented less aristocratically
to the working man, a meeting at Sheffield passing a
resolution to deplore " the faUure of the present system
of free trade so called . . . endangering the steady em
ployment, the fair wages, and the future well-being of
our working classes."
However, such trade problems as there were in this year
did not disturb the general sense of restored comfort.
The great middle class, convinced of its mission as the
repository of " progress," had enough to engross it.
Electricity was the new god of progress, and it continued
its advances. Among public buildings two more railway
stations. Charing Cross and Liverpool Street, installed the
new light in January; the General Post Office began
using it in the same month ; in June the Prudential Assur
ance Company had nine lights of 150 c.p. in its offices ;
and the House of Commons first did its work under electric
light. Among great private houses Trentham was fitted
with the light in November. But the novelty in this year
was the application of the invention to street lighting.
Bristol appears to have been the first town to make the
experiment, which it did in some of its principal thorough
fares in January ; and Brighton followed with an installa
tion on the sea-front in Febraary. Liverpool set up sixty
lamps over two and a half mUes of its streets in April.
London, more able to command the rivalry of inventors,
offered the lighting of the City to be divided between three
companies for an experimental period of twelve months,
with a view to selecting one of them at the end of the
period. Great interest was taken, even from the artistic

1881] COMMON SENSE 59
point of view of " seeing London in a new light," though
a sarcastic person wrote to the Press to remark that the
City was the worst part of London for the experiment,
since 685,000 of its 800,000 inhabitants were not there at
night, and only " the cats and the caretakers " would enjoy
the fun. For the first time the gas companies took alarm ;
they had somewhat unwisely raised their charges at the
beginning of the year, and the best comfort that could be
offered them was that there was stUl a great future for
gas as a heating and power agent. Their panic subsided
later owing to an unexpected slowness of pace in the
development of the new illuminant. MeanwhUe one of the
most useful applications of electricity was in its extreme
infancy. In May Mr Alexander Siemens was lecturing
at the Society of Arts on the transmission of vehicles by
electric power. The system he lectured upon was the use
of a positive and a negative rail, replacing the customary
tram-rails : after consideration, Mr Siemens told his
audience, the authorities had decided to class the vehicle
as a tramcar. But this was obviously too dangerous a
method to last ; " live " raUs would be impossible on the
road surface. For several years yet invention faded at
this problem. An " electric railway " was opened at the
Crystal Palace in April, and towards the end of the year
an electric tram was running on the Giant's Causeway and
Portrush line ; but both these were worked with live raUs.
The latter, however, must have stimulated the inventors,
for it was announced that it could be worked at a cost of
a penny a mUe, whereas the steam-trams, to which, in
spite of their noisiness and dirt, corporations in large
centres of population were finding themselves forced to
consent, cost from Is. to Is. 9d. a mile. It may be added
here that the general advances in electrical invention were
summed up in an Electrical Exhibition opened in Paris
in September of this year. Beyond its more common uses
the delicate developments of electricity were attracting

60 COMMON SENSE [1881
the medical profession. An " induction balance " had been
used in the case of President Garfield in August to locate
the bidlet that had been fired at him ; and at the end of
the year experiments were made with a needle fitted with
a kind of telephone attachment fixed to the surgeon's ear,
which might, it was hoped, supersede the old probe.
The particular medical interest of the year, however,
so far as general knowledge went, was the new theory
of bacteria. The researches of Pasteur had for some
time been closely watched from England ; and although,
as we shall have occasion to see later, it was chiefly the
immediate and palpable cause of his researches, the treat
ment of hydrophobia, which interested the public mind,
yet incidentally the more profound results were known
even to the newspapers. In February telegrams from
Paris stated that in investigating a case of hydrophobia
Pasteur had found " a small organism or microbe," and
the question had been raised whether this was a new form
of disease, or whether rabies was caused by a microscopic
organism. The ensuing months saw much discussion,'
the existence of these small organisms being admitted,
but one school of medical thought maintaining a theory of
" spontaneous generation," and holding that if water were
put into a bottle living organisms would be " evolved "
by putrefaction, but were not themselves the putrefaction.
Again, the idea of progress was at the root of all the
interest taken in ballooning at this time. Some of it,
indeed, was merely a matter of fashion. The gatherings
at Hurlingham and Ranelagh nowadays to see the start
of balloon races had their origin in 1881 in a garden-party
given by the new Balloon Society at Lillie Bridge ; the
company was content with the spectacle of a single
balloon, and its passengers made the report that London,
owing to the people in the streets being indistinguishable,
looked like a city of the dead. On 1st Jime two Guardsmen
> See, for instance. The Times, i8th March and 9th August 188 1:

1881] COMMON SENSE 61
went to the Derby by baUoon, starting from the Crystal
Palace and landing at Epsom, in a field a quarter of a mile
from the grand stand. But the real impetus of the
balloon craze of these years was the serious middle-class
enthusiasm. It was most ingeniously enlisted. A scheme
would be propounded for reaching the Pole by triple
balloons " lashed together for mutual aid," and launched
on a " wind-curve " calculated to carry them in eighteen
hours from a ship's chosen winter-quarters to the Pole.
There would be devices for using balloons for army signal
ling ; for sending them up in fogs to explode dynamite
and blow off the vapours ; for employing them to
illuminate large surfaces with electric light.
It is all rather solemn ; and indeed the middle-class
of England, conscious of itself as a class for some time
now, had not yet been penetrated by self-consciousness
in the subtler sense. Sport and the worship of exercise
never fUled more than a couple of columns of the daily
papers ; there were considerable intervals between race
meetings ; the word " polo " was printed in inverted
commas ; there was no golf ; football was still open to
antagonism, for the Mayor of Southampton issued in
September 1880 an appeal to the heads of families and
schools to prevent the game of football " being played
according to Rugby Union, Association, and other rales
of a dangerous character," and the winter of 1881 brought
another outcry, accompanied with specimen lists of
casualties. The appearance of cycling in the sporting
columns marks the first approach of a new era. Yet
however distinctly we may see the middle-class as still
ponderous and solid, it is no less a shock to come upon
a perfectly grave notice in The Times * to this effect :
" Fashion seems to have decreed that photographic albums
are in future to be ornamented on each page. We have
the ' Mikado ' album with Japanese scenes, the ' Language
14th February 1881:

62 COMMON SENSE [1881
of Flowers,' and the ' Picturesque ' with copies of etchings
of quaint and pretty places." We are indeed in the days
yet of albums ; and it was not a hopelessly old-fashioned
member of the aristocracy who had presented to the
Princess Frederica of Hanover at her wedding " a plush
table." The most depressing circumstance, however, was not
the impenetrability of the middle-class, but the fact that
when penetrated, as on some matters of taste it was
beginning to be, by new ideas, it sucked them up in a
thoroughly wrong-headed way. The laying of the founda
tion stone of the City and Guilds of London Institute at
South Kensington was accompanied by the reflection that
the time of shoddy and bad work was over. " Think,"
wrote the impassioned leader-writer, " what a museum of
horrors a furniture shop was before 1851. That was the
beginning of our renaissance." And a month or two
earlier we find papier-fnache imitations of stamped leather
seriously commended by the same newspaper as a form of
decorative art. The death of Decimus Burton in December
of this year called forth genuine and not ill-balanced
appreciations of his architectural work in London — ^the
Athenaeum Clubhouse, the Hyde Park Comer screen, and
the Constitution Hill Arch — ^yet at the same time the
beautiful and dignified old buUding in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
which our own generation rejoices to have seen saved from
demolition, was described as " that large, dull, heavy-
looking mansion, Newcastle House." A stUl more de
plorable tendency is seen in a sarcastic leading article of
this year on the conference of master buUders, in which
the builders are implored to consider " the pitiful elevation
of the lengthy roads from the market gardens of Tybumia
or South Kensington " and to reflect " how very far its
monotonous doors and windows fall short of the ideal
street m which each dweUing shall look as if it could stand
by itself with a character of its own." So lamentably was

1881] COMMON SENSE 63
the middle class taking at a gulp its own interpretation
of what " artistic " meant, and longing to translate the
genuine town architecture of London — the not unworthy
attempt to treat the street, rather than the house, as the
essential consideration in massed centres of population —
into prettiness and picturesqueness. This was the year
which saw the formation of the Bedford Park Com
pany in July, with a capital of £125,000, to develop that
estate. The most forceful influences in matters of taste at this
time — influences destined in the end to spread through
every social level — ^had turned their backs upon the
middle class. One voice that had long raised itself against
that class in this year fell silent. In Febraary Thomas
Carlyle died : the world lost in him not only a Avriter of
history, but even more a prophet of the social conscience,
a man of genius to whom the masses of the people were real.
A teacher yet with years of life before him who had in
no small measure reached his democratic feeling by way
of revolt against the lack of a sense of responsibUity, the
lack of light, in the middle classes, was John Ruskin ; he
was by now addressing himself almost entirely to the
working man. Matthew Amold, starting from yet a third
position, was reaching the same end, and in carrying his
gospel of the humaneness of education to the working
men's colleges he was taking part in the new movement.
We are at the period of conjunction between art and
socialism, of which WUham Morris is the typical exponent.
In May 1881 various Radical clubs of working men in
London combined, forming the Democratic Federation i
and, although the working man's circumstances in the
ensuing years would in any case have endued such an
organisation with power, it is none the less trae that
the presence in the movement of such men as Morris made
it more formidable. He had a voice that was unwearying
and was listened to. No one has expressed more tersely

64 COMMON SENSE [1881
than he the theory that was behind the alliance of art
with socialism. " I know," he said, referring to a recent
demonstration by working men, " what these men want :
employment which would foster their self-respect, and
win the praise and sympathy of their fellows, and dwellings
which they could come to with pleasure, surroundings
which would soothe and elevate them ; reasonable labour,
reasonable rest. There is only one thing that can give
them this — Art." ' The self-respect of the workman
coming from labour that was reasonable was the heart of
Morris's social creed ; and it had this soundness — that
he had come to it not from a theoretical consideration of
the workman, but from his own experience in dealing with
the world. He wanted to have, and to make for other
people, beautiful things. He was roused to fury, not by
blank impenetrabUity on the part of the middle class, but
by the quality of its susceptibUity. It allowed itself to
be told that many of its surroundings were ugly, and it
substituted for them others of a different taste with exactly
the same superficial attention. In his own work as
a craftsman he was " confronted everywhere with the
double barrier of material that would not take good colour,
and colour which in its own substance was uniformly bad."^
Worst of all, he saw his gospel running to waste among
people who bought things made in that inadequate way
and were satisfied with them. It was to his mind the same
spirit that showed itself in lack of regulation of employ
ment ; in the blundering semi-charitable movement for
workmen's dwellings ; in such groping efforts on the
workman's behalf as the Coffee-house movement, now
very active.
In this spirit art as the gospel of genuineness, of reason
ableness and of reality was being preached to the workman.
In 1881 the first Whitechapel art show was held in a school-
1 Speech delivered at Burslem, 13th October 1881.
2 Mackail's Life of WilUam Morris, i. 311.

1881] COMMON SENSE 65
room, with pictures by Leighton, Watts, Burne-Jones
and Walter Crane, and an exhibition of pottery and
embroideries. More directly the buUding of the City and
GuUds of London Institute was heralding a fresh era in
industrial art ; the new Natural History Museum, opened
on Easter Monday in this year, began to put order into the
educational chaos of South Kensington ; and the Ruskin
Museum at Sheffield was far advanced. The opening of
the University College at Nottingham on 28th June led
to a gratified survey of an educational movement which,
beginning with the University of London, had expanded
to the Queen's Colleges of Ireland, the University of
Durham, with its offshoot in the Science College at New
castle, the Victoria University, the Science College at
Leeds, Mason College at Birmingham, and the most recent
university colleges of Liverpool and Nottingham. The
vigour of educational interest in the provinces was matter
for comment. The School Boards were making progress
towards secondary education, and, though the teaching
of domestic economy had as yet but limited support, the
movement for including in the code such subjects as
cooking, heating and ventilation had come into existence.
We may see the effect of the year's access of common-
sense in the state of ecclesiastical controversy. Mr Dale
was transferred from the conspicuousness of his city church
to a country living ; and early in the year an attempt was
made, by means of a memorial to the Archbishop of Can
terbury, to set up a policy of " live and let live." The
memorial pleaded for " recognised toleration of even wide
diversities of ceremonial," and also petitioned that the
courts for ecclesiastical causes should be " such as to secure
the conscientious obedience of clergymen who beheve
the constitution of the Church of Christ to be of divine
appointment." The memorial was signed by five deans :
Dr Church of St Paul's, Dr Lake of Durham, Dr Cowie of
Manchester, Lord Alwyne Compton of Worcester, and Dr

66 COMMON SENSE [1881
Purey Cust of York ; by several archdeacons ; and among
the canonry by Gregory, Liddon and Stubbs of St Paul's,
and Dr King of Christ Church. What, again, could be
more sensible than the comment made upon that notoriety
which the attacks of street roughs were bringing upon the
Salvation Army ? The disturbances had produced a
question in Parliament, to which Sir WUliam Harcourt,
as Home Secretary, had replied that, if the Salvation Army
complained of attacks, it was fair to remind the Army that
its methods were somewhat provocative. The comment
made on this was that such a doctrine might easily go
too far. " We need not assist the roughs to put the
Salvation Army down. Another course lies before us all.
It is to do the Army's work in a better way." ^ These
disturbances became more deliberate and more organised
later on ; but they are mentioned here because, although
the Army had been in existence since 1865, this
year was the first in which it attracted widespread
attention. Even the world of fashion seems to show us in 1881 the
working of common-sense. It is a small but not quite
insignificant fact that " Evans's " this year ceased to be
even a name. It had previously come to the end of its
too lingering career as the only survival of the "night
houses " of the sixties ; and now the last familiar name
of that rowdy high life of Lord Hastings and his friends
disappeared, and the place became the Falstaff Club. An
event, however, of more importance is the indication that
the great world was changing its habits in regard to the
old-fashioned London season. The idea was being mooted
that the time had come to be done with the old sharp
distinction between " the season " and " out of season."
The modem comfort of railway travelling — dining cars,
for instance, had appeared this year on the Great Northern
and Midland raUways — was making it unnecessary, and
' The Times, 13th October i88i.

1881] COMMON SENSE 67
indeed almost silly, to keep up a fashion due to a time
when the journey to London of a great household was too
large an affair to be undertaken more than once a year.^
Common-sense seemed too to be colouring very strongly
the relation of great families to their territories. Rents
had had to be reduced on account of the combination
of general agricultural depression with particularly bad
harvests ; and whUe on the one hand this led to a perverse
and peevish kind of common-sense in the deliberate turning
of some large tracts into rabbit warrens,' it led also to a
new hardheadedness in the forwarding of agricultural
associations to make experiments in crops, fertilisers and
soils. Rectors complained that their glebe could find no
tenants ; yet land could hardly have been valueless when
a farm of 190 acres in Sussex fetched £7200, and 103 acres
of marsh pastureland fetched £7500. It is significant also
of a new feeling in society that the sale of game by great
landlords was taken quite calmly. Preserving was al
ready a business.
The season of 1881 was again chronicled as one devoid
of notable interest. It had its " lion," of the kind usual in
those days, in the shape of the King of the Sandwich Islands,
who came to Claridge's in July, and was at all the parties
in London and elsewhere for a month. A " lion " more
interesting to us now was Ivan Turgenieff, who came, as
was fitting for the writer of A Sportsman's Sketches,
in the autumn, and was shooting partridges in Cambridge
shire in October. The season had its mild sensation in
the marriage of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts in Febraary
to an American ; and it is a coincidence that one of the
marks of the season was a new impulse of friendliness
between this country and the United States. The linger
ing soreness of the Alabama claims was dispeUed by the
' The Times, 30th July 1880.
* Cf. the case of a large estate of a thousand acres in Hampshirej
The Times, 23rd July 1881:

68 COMMON SENSE [1881
feelings of sympathy aroused by the assassination of
President Garfield. New York became once more a subject
of interest free of afterthoughts, and the British public
read this year of the " costly house " of Mr Vanderbilt,
which had absorbed only the sum, petty to a mUlionaire
of these days, of £300,000 ; and of the advance of high
buddings, which now sound equally petty ; houses were
being put up actually of seven or nine storeys high, and
the New York correspondents prophesied that in a few
years the streets would " tower to the height of ten or
eleven storeys."
Early in the year the season had been overcast by
two events. In March the papers began to contain
intimations of Beaconsfield's failure of health. On 19th
AprU he died; and modem generations, to whom his
domination appears to have been absolute, will find the
leading articles at the time of his death singularly re
served, and not obscurely tinged by a mistrust that he
never surmounted. Perhaps the reason was that, as an
old man, he had relapsed into those characteristics of the
alien — the avowed alien — which were partly racial and
partly the Daemon of his genius. That strange figure,
with the dyed hair, the sunken, smouldering eyes and
parchment cheeks, which only broke its silence at London
dinner-tables to launch some levin of an epigram, must have
reminded the great world that, after all, the new spirit of
Imperialism, the new regime in India, and almost all such
power as the Tories had of appealing to the working man,
were the achievement of an individual whom people yet
alive could remember in a fringed waistcoat and green
velvet trousers, affronting in person and manner every
canon of their tastes. Perhaps, too, in the later years of
his power the absorption of English energies in foreign
affairs, the apprehension that it raised of entanglement
in European disputes, had savoured of a cosmopolitanism
not English ui the great man, a quality, it may be, which

1881] COMMON SENSE 69
his eminence had kept out of sight, until age brought back
the ineradicable trait of his race. At any rate the strange
ness of him sounded its note at the end as at the beginning;
at the sale of his effects three months after his death people
crowded the house in Curzon Street to stare at the bedroom
walls hung with blue silk embroidered with roses in bloom,
the crimson satin damask dining-room, the brocades of the
drawing-room. Even in the formal tributes of the Press
the strangeness is more commented on than anjrthing else :
" His secret lay perhaps," The Times wrote, " in the mag
netic influence of a dauntless will, in his unrivalled power
of patience, in his impenetrable reserve and detachment."
" Magnetic " and " impenetrable " were curious epitaphs
for a Prime Minister of England.
The other shadow on the year was one which afterwards
became so heavy that it is somewhat difficult to recall the
spirit in which it was first met. On 28th Febraary the
telegrams announcing the British defeat on Majuba Hill
were published in London . Bitter as the news was, prompt
as the outcry was in some sections of the community, yet
the country did not as a whole forget how ready it had
been in the previous year to accede to the Boer demand
for the withdrawal of the annexation. On the whole it was
conscious that it had slipped into this disaster by some
thing approaching carelessness. True, the outbreak of
hostUe operations by the Boers had at the beginning of
the year somewhat dimmed that consciousness ; and there
were not lacking signs of a very different kind when, on
Lord Roberts's departure to take command in South Africa,
ladies strewed his path from his carriage to the train with
flowers. But prevaUing influences were in the main for the
steadying of opinion. It was affected partly by the old
spirit towards Colonial responsibUities — ^the pre-Disraelian
spirit " There are," The Times wrote, " some thirty-five
mUlions of people in these islands. . . . Can it be said
that any one of these is benefited by the sacrifices that all

70 COMMON SENSE [1881
have made on behalf of South Africa ? We cannot but be
proud of the heroism displayed by Englishmen at Rorke's
Drift, or at Ulundi, but can we honestly say that a quarrel
with Cetewayo or the Boers of the Transvaal is one in which
it is worth while for a single Englishman to shed his blood ?
. . . Are we indeed the weaker or the stronger, the richer
or the poorer, the happier or the reverse, for our vast
Colonial possessions ? " ^ Of course after Majuba, opinion
underwent modification. But the attitude even then was
not one of reasserting annexation, but only of insisting on
a considerable measure of control of the Transvaal's affairs.
The doctrine of suzerainty, appearing in answer to this
demand, was but coldly received. The word, it was felt,
was virtually invented for the occasion, and had no real
meaning. " To style the Queen suzerain is not to specify
her relations to the feudatory republic." " What was
required was " a practical reconciliation, which to some
persons seems at present impossible, between the liberty
of a population of sequestered farmers to select their own
magistrates and determine their own taxation, and their
privation of right to irritate the sea of native life on their
borders into periodical storms and tempests of war." *
Most important of all is it to realise that the Government's
announced policy of not pursuing the war, and of meeting
the Boers to decide the status of the Transvaal, had strong
support. The idea was placed beside the withdrawal from
Candahar, which had taken place quietly early in this
year, as the most sensible course to pursue. In the month
of June Mr Chamberlain, speaking at Birmingham, ex
posed some of the errors of the preceding months. Even
to the beginning of December 1880, in spite of all that had
become pubhcly known about the Boer hatred of annexa
tion. Sir Owen Lanyon, the Administrator, was still telling
' The Times, 6th January 1881;
"Ditto, 8th March 1881.
» Ditto, Sth April_i88i!

1881] COMMON SENSE 71
the Government that three-quarters of the Boer population
had ceased to care about it. After the insurrection had
broken out there were more blunders. Mr Krager had
spoken of submitting the question to a Royal Commission,
and Sir George Colley had been instructed to arrange a
settlement on the first condition that the Boers must lay
down their arms. " WhUe the correspondence was going
on," said Mr Chamberlain, " and in the midst of the negotia
tions, the British troops unfortunately on three several
occasions marching in inferior numbers to attack the
strong position of the Boers met with a repulse." In
the midst of rumours, disquieting and reassuring, as to
the progress in South Africa of the commission which had
been appointed to arrange the terms of settlement, the
persistent story of error was recalled. " We know now
that we were wrong, that the annexation was unpopular
from the first, and that the injudicious way in which it
was carried out only served to fan the smouldering dis
content. It is not the fact that they have defeated us
that has opened our eyes, for that taken by itself would
rather have tended to keep them closed, but the fact that
they have satisfied us of the substantial justice of their
case. . . . Nor is it possible to acquit the present Govern
ment for declining to do a year ago what it had subse
quently admitted the justice and necessity of doing. . . .
We were misinformed and misled from the outset." '
There was a genuine wish that the settlement now should
not be hedged about by conditions that could only lead
to spite and irritation. Nothing, in fact, it was thought,
could be better than to have done with the whole matter,
and the news that the Convention was signed was received
with relief. " England can now have no desire to intrude
herself upon the Transvaal. The more completely its
people can get on without interference of any kind the
better pleased we shall be. . . . The fact is that between
' The Times, 12th July 188 1:

72 COMMON SENSE [1881
England and the Transvaal there is no natural connection
whatever." ' " I am sure," Mr Gladstone said, speaking
at the Mansion House two or three days after the signature,
" that there are no rival interests between us and the
Boers." Lord Salisbury, who had been elected at a
meeting at Lord Abergavenny's house on 10th May to
succeed Lord Beaconsfield as leader of the Tory peers,
might make speeches about the loyal minority in the
Transvaal, and say that everything in South Africa would
now happen " under the shadow of Majuba HUI " ; but
the question practically dropped out of English political
life for some years.
Indeed only with difficulty could it have continued to
occupy a place. Parliament had found itself reduced to
a lamentable barrenness. After the turn that events had
taken in Ireland, men loiew what to expect in England ;
and before Parliament met there was much discussion
about the forms of closure of debate (the idea was stUl so
new that the word for it retained its French form — cloture) ^
in operation in the parliaments of other countries. The
blow struck by the executive in the arrests of Parnell,
Biggar and others in November 1880 was mistimed ; the
accused were brought for trial in January, and on the
disagreement of the jury were all discharged. Lord
Cowper and Mr Forster, backed by Lord Hartington, had
never relaxed their demand for renewal of the Coercion
Act ; and they could now bring to bear on the Cabinet
discussions the effect of this futile trial. Yet it was not
believed that the Government would agree ; they were
supposed to be too much under the control of the Radical
wing. " Mr Chamberlain and Mr Bright wUl not vindicate
the law ; they will dismember the Empire, and Mr Glad
stone and the rest wUl consent to register their decrees." ^
' The Times, 5th August 1881.
' It was Matthew Arnold who first pointed out that the English
language contained the word " closure," which quite met the need.
' Quarterly Review, January 1881.

1881] COMMON SENSE 73
That view was mistaken. The Queen's speech at the
opening of Parliament hinted at suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act ; and almost immediately Mr Forster intro
duced a Coercion Bill, giving power to arrest suspected
persons and keep them in prison for any period up to 30th
September 1882. Irish obstraction met this at once in
such force that the first stage, the leave of the House
to introduce the Bill, was only attained by a course of
action which remains one of the historic incidents of Par
liament. When the debate had lasted several days the
Speaker cut across all forms of procedure by putting the
question on his own responsibUity. The House was taken
by surprise, and the debate was ended. The Crimes Act
became law in March, and the old attitude towards
Ireland was in full sway in Mr Gladstone's idea of pro
ducing, concurrently with the Coercion measure, a Land
measure, establishing the " Three F's " — fair rent, fixity
of tenure, and freedom of sale. The Bessborough Com
mission had just reported in favour of such legislation ;
but it was unfortunate that it had not reported a year
earlier. In 1880 the Bill might have changed the face of
the Irish situation ; in 1881 it was doggedly wrangled
over by Irishmen infuriated by the revival of coercion.
Conservatives displeased with any land legislation, and
Liberals sore and angry at the conditions which had driven
them into coercion. Moreover, the moment the Land Act
was passed it was cleverly taken over by the Land League.
Instead of weakening that body it strengthened it. Pamell
contrived that no one should apply to the Land Court
without consulting, and obtaining the consent of, the local
branch of the League.
These two measures, and bewildered discussions of the
paralysis of debate and the forms of procedure in the face
of obstruction, occupied almost the whole of a very long
session. The Judicature Act, taking the opportunity of
the approaching transfer of the Law Courts from West-

74 COMMON SENSE [1881
minster to their new site at Temple Bar, made changes
in the organisation of legal administration ; and the Chief
Baron, the Serjeants at Law, and other dignitaries were
abolished. The Bankraptcy Act did away with old
methods of liquidation, which had led to much corrapt
bargaining with creditors and to fraudulent arrangements ;
and provided for the establishment of a new Bankruptcy
Court, for public examination of debtors, and an audit of
accounts in liquidation.
The place Ireland had been taking during the session
was not in the least out of proportion to the urgency and
gravity of the Irish problem. Already the Land League
was achieving the end set before it by Irish newspapers,
notably The Irish World and The Irishman, which had
been fond of saying that Ireland could not hope to beat
England in battle, but she might render the work of govern
ment " nervous and distracted." ^ The House of Commons
had cheered the announcement early in Febraary that
Michael Davitt had been arrested on his unexpired ticket-
of-leave ; but those who cheered expected a counterstroke
in the shape of dynamite, and the precautions adopted
are exemplified in the care taken when a heavy parcel
addressed to Sir William Harcourt was delivered at the
Home Office. Removed by the police and opened by them
it was found to contain an old pistol. Davitt's arrest
itself was a sign of the confusion of thought that had set
in. He had been the first and the most energetic in the
condemnation of the violence that broke out in 1880 ^ ;
but his name stood in the popular mind for Fenianism,
and Govemment followed the popular mind. For some
months no other spectacular step was taken. But agrarian
crime in Ireland was making another great increase ; the
figures for 1880 were 2590 ; for 1881 they were 4439.
Boycotting was rife, with its accompaniments of shooting,
' Cf. PameU Commissioners'- Report, p. 70,
' lUd., p. 88.

1881] COMMON SENSE 75
cattle-maiming, and murder. For a whUe the Government
hesitated on the subject of the Land League. Their law
officers had given opinions on its vulnerability as a con
spiracy ; but there were other considerations summed up in
a letter of Lord Cowper's to the Cabinet. "If," he wrote,
" the restraining influences of the central body were with
drawn, and the local branches driven to become secret
societies, crime, particularly assassination, might increase,
for though the central body gives unity and strength
to the movement it does to a certain extent restrain
crime." ' This is very close to what Pamell himself had
said in a speech at New Ross, co. Wexford, in September
1880, when he took the line that violence was a corollary
of lack of organisation, and that if the Land League were
completely organised no man would dare abuse his rights
as a landlord.^ But the Govemment could see only one
step to take. In October 1881 it suppressed the Land
League, and under the Crimes Act lodged Parnell, Sexton,
O'Kelly, O'Brien and Dr Kenny in KUmainham gaol. The
Land League, its responsible heads removed, transferred
its headquarters, under Patrick Egan, to Paris, and left in
Ireland the Ladies' Land League, which had been founded,
in February 1881, under the command of Miss Anna
Parnell. Mr Forster had had his way, and one incident
of this autumn must have gratified him. Pamell, against
the advice of DUlon, issued from KUmainham the "No
Rent " manifesto, urging tenants to refuse all rent untU
constitutional rights were restored. But the priests were
against this open defiance of law, and the manifesto " fell
absolutely flat." * The arrests may therefore have seemed
for the moment to be a successful move. Yet Mr Glad
stone admitted in after years that the pohcy of the Govem
ment had been a mistake ; and John Bright confessed that
» Quoted in Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, i. 287.
2 ParneU Commissioners' Report, p. 88.
» Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, i. 320;

76 COMMON SENSE [1881
the mistake was due to a misapprehension of the forces of
the Land League.*
The brewing of another storm was at present un
noticed by the British public. In August rumours began
to reach England of disaffection among the native
troops of Egypt. These rumours were denied by the
Khedive; and even when, a month later, circumstantial
reports followed of an emeute in Cairo, in which the palace
had been surrounded by troops and guns, and demands
had been made on the army's behalf by one whose name
was given as " Achmet el Ourabi," the ordinary English
man was not much stirred. He knew only vaguely of
Egypt as a country whose ruler by extravagant expendi
ture and reckless borrowing had ran his nation into
hopeless debt, and had had to submit to the appointment
of a joint French and English control, which worked
badly owing to mutual jealousies. He saw these jealousies
breaking out now, French newspapers suggesting that
the military rising was in some way engineered by England
as a step towards intervention, English newspapers suggest
ing, when (in exercise of her supremacy) Turkey sent
commissioners to investigate the outbreak, that this was
some Machiavellian stroke of Bismarck's, and that there
might be worse things than anarchy in Egypt. The year
ended with the Turkish commissioners, whose arrival had
caused immense excitement in Cairo, going peaceably to
dinner-parties, but doing little else ; and with an interview
in which Arabi, now arrived at the familiar spelling, pro
tested to Sir WUliam Gregory his loyalty to the Sultan,
his faithfulness to religion, his sole desire to improve the
conditions and efficiency of the Egyptian army, and his
lack of any intention to undermine the joint control.
1 Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, i. 331 ; ii. 36o.'

CHAPTER IV
1882 : IRELAND, EGYPT — AND JUMBO
THE Liberal Govemment of 1880-1885 was itself
conscious of carrying certain handicaps. The
worship of Mr Gladstone, useful though it may
have been in holding the party together, was apt
to become a dead weight when problems arose in
which he took but a perfunctory interest. Mistrust
of Mr Chamberlain caused such members of the
Cabinet as Lord Hartington and Lord Granville to feel
uncomfortable and uncertain in their work. In Parlia
ment the Irish disaffection and the harassing activity of
the " Fourth Party " incessantly hampered the progress
of public business. But there was a heavier handicap
than any of these. The forces of idealism in the national
life — ^the forces making for reconsideration of social duties,
for readjustment of social conceptions — ^were to a very
large extent divorced from politics and political creeds.
They had been drained off along several channels. There
was the Socialist view, that Parliament was in the hands
of the professional and ma^nufacturing middle class, and
worked solely from the standpoint of that class. There
was the view of the ardent social reformer, who, though
he may be said actually to date from a famous piece of
Parliamentary action — the Factory Acts — had grown
impatient, and preferred almost any nostram to the hope
of reforming legislation. There was the somewhat chilly
ethical enthusiasm, born of the new religion of science,
which held that sanitary inspection could cure more evils
than the most drastic Act of Parliament. There was the
77

78 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
Christian zeal, whether of the type of Charies Kingsley or
of Father DoUing, which, seemg with new eyes the terrible
state of its vineyard, caUed aloud for labour that would
never have time to look beyond the immediate day's work.
All this diversion of idealism the Govemment did not
number among its handicaps ; yet it was certainly the
heaviest. The bad effect was twofold. On the one hand
social problems accumulated such a force of highly
educated opinion that they became exasperatingly thorny
to handle ; and on the other hand much of the Radical
strength in the country was sapped by the easy habit of
looking on, detached from the necessity of distinguishing
between right and wrong, so long as one Government was
as good or as bad as another. So far the Government had
displayed no capacity for drawing to itself the vitality of
all that independent enthusiasm.
At the beginning of 1882 it nearly achieved, however, a
great clearing of its path. Mr Gladstone never showed
more briUiant political instinct than in the masterly con
ception of a stroke of Irish policy by which he could sweep
influences, apparently hostile at the time and weakening
to his power, into a single whole-hearted purpose. Within
the Cabinet his own disappointment at having been obliged
to revive coercion coincided in some measure with the
Radical feeling of Mr Chamberlain. Coercion was also,
for very different reasons, the especial object at the moment
of the attacks of the " Fourth Party " in the House.
Mr W. H. Smith was hinting at the possibUity of a Con
servative scheme of land purchase for Ireland ; and Lord
Hartington was in a mood which he expressed thus to
Lord Granville : " It seems to me that an effort ought to
be made to unite the two great parties on an Irish policy.
. . . Though we go on talking about local govemment,
and about the county franchise and redistribution of seats,
and though Chamberlain thinks that we are on the eve of
great political changes, I do not believe that one of them

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 79
wUl be made whUe the Irish difficulty lasts." ' All these
influences were at sixes and sevens. Hartington's union
of the two parties would have been rather repressive than
otherwise, so the idea had no reality ; Smith was only
making the kind of remarkwhich is safe and comforting out
of office ; the " Fourth Party " was merely scoring debat
ing points about the inconsistency and faUure of Ministerial
professions. But, whatever the separate intentions, they
all expressed one opinion — ^that the present situation of
the Irish question was hopeless. The day-to-day method
of meeting it had produced such a tangle that it was time
to attempt a wider and longer view, if Govemment was
to escape suffocation. Mr Gladstone's brilliance lay in
seeing that these very different lines of criticism made a
kind of current on which he might set floating a policy of
genuine advance in Ireland : and it fell out that an oppor
tunity was not unwelcome to the Irish leaders. Parnell in
gaol was feeling that the direction of events in Ireland was
in danger of slipping from his hands. The co-operation
between the extremist section and the Parliamentary
party was his work, and nobody but he could manage it ;
his sUence, his refusal to be " drawn " either by the ex
tremists or by his own party, his capacity for locking up
the precise threads of co-operation in his single mind, and
keeping that mind impenetrable, were the only conditions
on which the co-operation could be safely worked. In gaol
he was out of touch, and was growing nervous. He
mistrusted the Ladies' Land League and lived in dread
of the party's being publicly and irredeemably associated
with Fenianism. He was therefore in a mood not to hold
oft from the intimations which presently reached him of
Mr Gladstone's desire to make a fresh start. Intimations
had previously reached Mr Gladstone of Parnell's state of
mind.^ These exchanges (never acknowledged as such by
1 Holland's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 344.
2 Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 64.

80 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
either of the two men) took place in AprU 1882 ; and to
PameU they must have been strengthened by the fact
that the Arrears of Rent BUI, introduced originally by
an Irish member, Mr Redmond, to supplement and ameli
orate the Land Act of 1881, had been taken up by the
Government, and passed into law on 18th April. It pro
vided that, in cases in which the tenant could satisfy the
legal tribunal of his inabUity to pay the whole of his
arrears of rent, he should be called upon to pay the rent
for 1881, but only half the arrears of preceding years, the
State paying the other half. Mr Gladstone, as his nature
was, having seen a piece of rectification to perform, moved
very rapidly in his opinions. There is a famous letter of
his to Mr Forster, dated in this month (it became famous
later in the discussion of whether the trend of his mind
towards Home Rule could have been foreseen by his
party), in which he showed this rapidity very clearly. He
asserted that, until there were seriously responsible bodies
in Ireland, every plan framed by the Govemment came
as an English plan, and was as such condemned, and that
there must therefore be some form of local self-government.
This was the passage afterwards most canvassed ; but
the passage most to our immediate purpose, as showing
how far Mr Gladstone had moved, was this : " If we say
we must postpone the question till the state of the country
is more fit for it, I should answer that the least danger
is in going forward at once. It is liberty alone which fits
men for liberty. This proposition, like every other in
politics, has its bounds ; but it is far safer than the
counter-doctrine, wait till they are fit." * This was a
fairly swift change in eighteen months from the position
he had taken at the Guildhall Banquet on 9th November
1880, that order must be restored before grievances could
be considered.
As Gladstone and Pamell never admitted the exchange
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii; 58.

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 81
of preliminary intimations in April 1882, so neither of them
would ever admit the implication contained in the words
" The Kilmainham Treaty." But when Parnell and the
others were released from gaol, on 2nd May, it was fairly
well understood that, if the Govemment would continue
to consider sympathetically the difficulties of the Irish
tenant, there would be a diminution of agrarian crime.
Parnell's side of the bargain was variously stated. The
fact probably was that he merely meant to prove the truth
of what he had said in 1880, that violence was really lack of
organisation, and that the Land League, if he were free
to control it, would neither murder men nor maim cattle.
Though on the release of the prisoners Lord Cowper re
signed the Viceroyalty, and Mr Forster the Chief Secretary
ship, the Cabinet on the whole was with Mr Gladstone,
even Lord Hartington holding the opinion that enough had
been done to reassert the law, and that no danger was
involved in the release.' A new hopefulness pervaded the
political atmosphere. Lord Spencer succeeded to the
Viceroyalty and Lord Frederick Cavendish undertook
the Chief Secretaryship.
Before a week had passed, the Phoenix Park murders
took place. Lord Frederick Cavendish was walking with
Mr Burke, the Under Secretary, across the park on 6th
May, after a long consultation with Lord Spencer at the
castle, when they were set upon and stabbed to death.
" It has been said," Lord Morley writes, " that the nine
teenth century had seen the course of its history twenty-
five times diverted by actual or attempted crime. In that
sinister list the murders in the Phoenix Park have a tragic
place." 2 For one horrified moment every eye turned to
Parnell ; but there could be no mistaking his innocence.
He bore too obviously the marks of having received from
the crime a blow which seemed to him nothing less than
' HoUand 's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 353:
2 Life of Gladstone, iii. 68.

82 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
fatal ; prostrated and despairing he caUed on Mr Gladstone
on the moming after the murders to tell him that he felt
unable to do any more for Ireland ; he was with real
difficulty restrained from resigning his seat. That first
horror relieved, there emerged from the inevitably re
newed conflict of political views a dignity of spirit which
forbade any bandying to and fro of the tragedy. Whether
in the bearing of those whose personal loss was cruel or of
those whose political work was for the time ruined, whether
in the language of the Press or of the House of Commons,
there was no reckless accusation, no bitterness of re
crimination. Years afterwards it could even be written
that " the crime cleared the air like a disastrous storm,
and made possible the beginning of better relations be
tween the English and Irish." ' That is not true of the
state of feeling at the moment. The murders did certainly
produce a softening, even a wonderful softening, of hearts,
in which no wild words were permitted ; but English
feeling returned at once to its fixed point. On 11th May
Sir WiUiam Harcourt introduced a new Crimes Bill, and
Ireland was put back under coercion and abnormal pro
cesses of law for the detection of the murderers. Irish
members fought the BUI, even with violence in the House,
but it was quickly passed. Indeed, the condition of
Ireland seemed to justify the most stem Tory view.
Parnell's worst fears of what might happen whUe he was
in prison were reahsed. He had lost control, and for the
time being was too bitterly stricken to attempt to regain
it. The Land League without his guidance plunged help
lessly. The Invincibles, a Fenian organisation which
hardly affected to conceal its responsibUity for the murders,
" roved with knives about the streets of Dublin. Dis
content had stirred in the ranks of the Royal Irish Con
stabulary. . . . Over half the country the demoralisation
of every class, the terror, the fierce hatred, the universal
' HoUand's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 353.

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 83
distrust, had grown to an incredible pitch. . . . The
power of random arrest and detention under the Coercion
Act of 1881 had not improved the moral of magistrates
and police." '
In such conditions vaguely informed public opinion con
centrated upon Ireland could only do harm. It happened
fortunately that popular interest was suddenly drawn off,
by the discovery that a riot in Alexandria on 12th June
was an affair of the utmost seriousness. Fifty Europeans
had been killed, and the troops under Arabi were raising
new batteries round the harbour. The great mass of
commonplace people in England never penetrated, during
the ensuing events, much beyond the figure of Arabi him
self. He was a rebel of some sort, and the reason for our
being engaged in suppressing him gave no pause to the
ordinary man. He linew that three years earlier, in June
1879, the Khedive Ismail of Egypt had been deposed in
order to make way for a complete reconstruction of the
financial position of his country. He knew also that
in this reconstruction England had taken a leading
part among the European Powers ; and it was obvious
that the work could not go forward if the peace
were disturbed. Roughly speaking, such a simplifica
tion of the facts had actually occurred by this time ; but
for the authorities both in England and in Egypt the pro
gress of events during the past eighteen months had been
extremely baffling. The Intemational Commission of
Liquidation, whose main work had been to unify at a fixed
rate of interest the immense mass of irregular unrelated
loans raised by IsmaU, had naturaUy been obliged, in
securing the administration of the finances, to overhaul
some departments of the public life of the country. The
army, for very good reasons, had not been dealt with. For
one thing, it was more unequivocally a Turkish affair than
most of the questions in Egypt. The suzerainty of Turkey,
1 Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 70;

84 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
a mere shadow in most respects, had been maintained over
the army, and the permission to keep a standing army of
18,000 men was specifically given in the Sultan's new
firman after IsmaU's deposition. Any attempt, there
fore, to bring the army into relation with the new life of
Egypt was bound to be a delicate matter ; and unluckUy,
when the attempt was made, it was unwisely handled.
The presentation to the Khedive in January 1881 of a
petition from the army seems to have been such an attempt,
since it complained not only of arrears of pay, but also of a
system of promotion based on anything but merit. But
the petition further demanded the dismissal of Osman Rifki
Pasha, the Turk who was Minister for War in the Egyptian
Govemment, and showed generally so much anti-Turkish
feeling that Riaz Pasha, the Khedive's Prime Minister,
treated it as mutiny. Technically, no doubt, it was mutiny,
but the plain course in that case was to take steps to secure
some part of the army, and arrest the ringleaders. Riaz
took the foolish step of sending for the two officers known
to be chiefly responsible for the petition to appear before a
Council of Ministers, hoping that his intention of conveying
them from the councU to prison would not be divined,
and that the army, left leaderless, could then be reduced to
discipline. Of course, the troops saw through the device,
broke into the room where the Ministry was sitting, and
rescued the two officers. They were Arabi Bey and Ali
Bey Fehmi. The Khedive, caught with no force at his
back, was compelled to overlook completely the rescue of
the two colonels, and the army was given a sudden new
sense of power. In fact, the collapse of authority was
so thorough that the army itself was scared, as people
are apt to be when a door which they were making
ready to force suddenly opens from within. The question
arises : what is behind the door ? This nervousness, the
fear of retribution at any moment, had produced the
6meute of September 1881, which had vaguely brought

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 85
Egypt back to the mind of the English public. An order
issued to the 8rd Regiment of Infantry — ^Arabi's regiment
— to proceed to Alexandria had been interpreted as a first
step towards punishment, by separating the leaders of the
movement. Arabi with 2500 men and some artUlery
marched to the Abdin palace, demanding to see the
Khedive. The Khedive was at another palace, but under
the advice of Sir Auckland Colvin, the British Agent in
Cairo, he returned to Cairo — displaying no little courage —
and met Arabi, who dictated to him the dismissal of the
Ministry, the summoning of a parliament, and the raising
of the army to the full establishment allowed by the Sultan's
firman. The Khedive acceded at once to the first demand,
on the condition that the two others were referred to
Turkey. It will be noticed that in these demands a new element
appeared. The phrase about summoning a parliament
was an open profession of co-operation between the army
and the Nationalist party in Egypt ; and this brings
us up to the year of our present survey — 1882. The
Nationalist party was not strong ; it was a group which
had come together in the days when Ismail's rather crude
interest in European progress had created an expectation
of experiments in constitutional government. At the
beginning of 1882 the group had, however, attained some
importance, because, on the dismissal of the Riaz Ministry,
Cherif Pasha had been appointed Prime Minister, and he
had imbibed deeply the idea of constitutional experiments.
He had therefore persuaded the Khedive to agree to the
summoning of a Chamber of Notables, one of IsmaU's
schemes, and it met in 1882. The question of how far
Arabi's movement was a Nationalist one is at the root
of much of the controversy that has since taken place in
England. Mr WUfrid Blunt was in Egypt at this time, and
he wrote a letter to The Times, published on 6th February,
in which he asserted that the army had not made a political

86 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
move, and did not intend to make one. At the same time
the two movements could hardly be kept apart. Arabi
himself had remarked in a statement of his case that " the
army was the only power able to protect the growing
liberty of Egypt " ' ; and before many months were past
Mr Blunt was championing Arabi on the widest Nationalist
grounds. There was indeed some fusion of the two move
ments ; and it is traced by Lord Cromer to an unfortunate
mistake by the British Government.^ In January 1882
Gambetta was stUl in power in France, and his ambition led
him to try to keep pace with British energy in Egypt.
He suggested a Joint Note to the Kliedive, in which Lord
Granville, agreeing after some demur to its presentation,
let pass a phrase harmless enough in appearance but dis
astrous in effect. It was this : " The two governments,
being closely associated in the resolve to guard by their
united efforts against all cause of complication, internal
or external, which might menace the order of things
established in Egypt . . ." etc. Now the Chamber of
Notables had just met for the first time when the Note was
presented, and inevitably it saw the word " internal " in
the phrase just quoted as aimed at itself. In the resent
ment thus aroused the Arabists and the Nationalists were
thrown into one another's arms ; and the tone of the whole
Note, as thrusting back the Sultan's prerogative in
Egyptian affairs, took on a deeper colour. At that
moment Gambetta fell, and confusion was made worse
confounded by a sudden reversal of French policy. Under
M. de Freycinet, his successor, the party which believed
the whole Egyptian question to be a device of Germany's
for locking up French troops in Egypt prevailed ; the pro
pulsion due to Gambetta in the direction of an Anglo-French
occupation ceased, and was replaced by a policy of inviting
Turkish intervention. It was a policy singularly difficult
' The Times, 3rd January 1882.
^ Modern Eg'ypt, i., cap. 13.

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 87
to direct at a time when the earlier policy had been carried
far enough to irritate the Porte ; but the British Govem
ment did its best. A conference of the Powers was in
vited to meet at Constantinople, to enter into consultation
with the Porte with a view to mUitary action by Turkey
against Arabi under Anglo-French instructions. But the
Porte at first refused to take part in the consultations ;
and when at length it did agree to do so, it wasted weeks
in considering, altering, accepting, and withdrawing from
the Anglo-French proposals. Meanwhile it had sent two
more commissioners to Egypt with contradictory in
structions, one to repudiate Arabi and the other to
intrigue with him. Not unnaturally the " nerves " of
the leading spirits in Egypt grew worse and worse under
the delay.
Arabi, suspecting plots against himself, had forty-two
officers and men arrested on a charge of conspiracy, and
had Osman Rifki Pasha and forty others exiled to the
furthest Soudan. The army was out of hand, its pay
had been increased with no reference to the abUity of the
Budget to provide the money, and officers were being pro
moted absurdly. The riots in Alexandria in June, and
Arabi's feverish entrenchment of himself in the forts,
showed that the nervousness had become uncontrollable.
The Powers, not being possessed of nerves, continued to
confer, but a message was sent from the Sultan ordering
discontinuance of work on the forts, and England invited
the Powers generaUy to send ships to make an inter
national demonstration off Alexandria, from which and
from all the Delta the Christians were taking flight.
The invitation was not accepted ; and when, a month
later, Arabi was defying the Sultan and mounting guns
again in new forts, only a British squadron lay off the
port. The public at home, little concerned as to the origin of
such a situation, waited on the tiptoe of excitement. It

88 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
was not disappointed. At daybreak on 10th July Admiral
Seymour, in command of the squadron, gave notice that,
failing Arabi's compliance with the Sultan's orders and
surrender of the forts within twenty-four hours, he should
open fire. A night or two before, the ships had suddenly
turned their electric lights upon the forts, and the startled
gunners, not knowing but that the new flash might be some
deadly form of gunnery, stampeded from the batteries.'
When the bombardment began on 11th July they were far
from stampeding, and their reply from the forts was not
ineffective ; they had big and powerful guns to handle.
But by five o'clock in the afternoon the bombardment had
done its work, and Arabi's troops were in flight. A certain
irresoluteness on the part of the British Govemment
showed itself in the absence of any orders to the fleet
beyond the bombardment. No force was landed, and in
the general disaster of the flight Alexandria was set on fire,
and immense damage done. However, on the whole the
policy of merely taking each question as it arose was for
the present not unsuccessful. When it became clear that
Turkey's suspicions and dilatoriness were unsurmountable,
the British Govemment made ready more ad interim steps.
Sir Garnet Wolseley was sent out to Egypt before July was
over, with an expeditionary force, the line taken now being
the necessity of protecting the Suez Canal, as the Egyptian
troops were practically at large in the Delta. Arabi had
in fact written a letter to Mr Gladstone, offering him an
allied Egypt which would keep open England's road to
India, but threatening, if he were attacked, to bring about
a general Mohammedan rising and the destraction of the
Canal. In little more than two years this Government, which
had come into power to end foreign embroUments, had
become engaged in war, and involved in a conflict of
interests as hazardous as any of Beaconsfield's. France,
1 The Times, loth July 1882.

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 89
at the time of Wolseley's operations, " resumed her liberty
of action in Egypt," and England recognised the end of
the Dual Control ' ; so that a very present source of inter
national disagreement had definitely opened. The measure
of this distortion of the hopes and intentions of Liberals in
1880 was given by the resignation of John Bright from the
Government. He declined on his Quaker principles to be
a party to the prosecution of war ; and though Mr Glad
stone felt that Bright had shown insufficient appreciation
of the " facts of the case with the obligations that they
appeared to entail," ^ it is not difficult to see the general
justification of his action. The mind of England was
ranning again on the barren glorifications that he hated.
The rare spectacle of a fleet in action had stimulated
popular imagination, and the armoured train with its
Gatling guns, which was used for reconnaissances from
Alexandria, was almost like a new toy to the public. Later
in the year there was great disappointment because the
authorities refused a request from the City of London that
British and Indian soldiers from Egypt might be allowed
to take part in the Lord Mayor's Show. It was
a condition of popular temper which might well be
too much for John Bright. Nor could it but confirm
that detachment of idealistic forces from politics which
has been mentioned. This Govemment seemed indeed
indistinguishable from any other Government ; and Parlia
ment had at the same time a curiously helpless aspect.
A peculiarity of its work just now, which was commented
upon with some gloom, was the number of temporary
measures of legislation.^ The Employers' LiabUity Act
of 1880 was to terminate in 1887 ; the Corrapt Practices
Acts were aU limited in duration ; the powers of the Rail
way Commissioners were not perpetual ; a measure to
'¦ Cromer's Modern Eg'ypt.
» Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 83.-
' The Times, 12th July 1882,

90 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
remove restrictions on the negotiation of promissory notes
was valid for only three years ; a measure dealing with
habitual drunkards was to remain in force until 1890.
Parliament seemed to mistrust its own efforts. Moreover
it did its work with great difficulty, and had to face this
year a profound alteration of its procedure. Closure of
debate, so much discussed in the previous year, took shape
in a new Standing Order permitting the Speaker or Chair
man of Committee to bring debate to an end by putting
the question on a motion being made to that effect, pro
vided that division on the motion showed not less than
two hundred members for the closure, or not less than a
hundred when the opposition to the motion showed less
than forty members. It was not a severe resolution, in
view of later steps of the same kind. Yet it was much
disliked ; and Lord Randolph ChurchUl found it a good
stick for beating the Government. That it was necessary
is clear enough, when we find the Govemment programme
again " carrying over " such measures as the Bankruptcy
BUI, the County Govemment BUI, and the Municipality
of London Bill. Other questions, too, were accumulating
for Ministers. For instance, several great inland towns
were pressing for an assimilation of excise procedure with
that of customs, the grievance being that, whereas at ports
the customs arrangements allowed " bonding " on a large
scale, there was no such possibUity in inland towns, except
in some " wet " trades. A few towns — ^Manchester, Leeds,
Halifax and Bradford — ^were by a fiction treated as ports ;
other big places like Birmingham, Sheffield and Wolver
hampton had no way of " bonding " dry goods.
However, while idealists were standing so far aloof from
the proceedings of Parliament, an Act was passed which
was to give them the widest possible scope in that sphere
of " administration " which they so much affected — ^the
Municipal Coiporations Act 1882. It did not attract
notice at the time, being] nominally designed for the con-

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 91
solidation of all the amending and supplementary Acts
which had been passed since the Municipal Corporations
Act 1835. Some such consolidation was indeed necessary,
owing to the perpetual accretion of duties under laws like
the Public Health Act of 1875, the Contagious Diseases
(Animals) Act 1878, and the Weights and Measures Act
1878. Moreover reform was stUl called for in the matter
of old, sometimes corrapt, corporations which had survived
the Act of 1835. There were still bodies like the Mayor
and Burgesses of Dunwich, an almost extinct village, who
were entitled to receive copies of all public documents
from the Stationery Office ; the Mayor and Barons of
Corfe Castle, who had the patronage of a number of
sinecure salaries ; and the Corporation of New Romney,
who disposed among themselves of an income of £800 from
municipal lands. The new Act, by making burgess-ship
purely a franchise, and not an office, effected a final reform.
The important feature of the Act, however, was that, while
specifying the obligatory work of a municipality (such as
the provision of necessary establishments, the maintenance
of local police, etc.), the Act did not circumscribe its
functions. In other words, while setting forth what a
corporation must do — ^not on any exacting scale — it re
frained from putting any statutory limit to what it might
do. The limitations in that respect were judiciously left
to the natural human objection to paying heavy rates.
This stroke of peculiarly English genius arouses the en
thusiasm of a foreign observer like Professor Redlich.'
The things that a corporation might do, instead of being
subject to the approval of a bureaucratic department,
remained in the sphere of private bUl legislation ; and
thus Parliament, and not a department, is the final
authority. The wide democratic franchise under the Act,
including all ratepayers of twelve months' residence before
15th July in any year, and not excluding women, pro-
' In his book, The Local Government of England.

92 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
vided both a stimulus and a check ; the corporation would
be anxious to retain the support of the citizens by pro
gressive measures, and at the same time any overloading
of the town with debt would show its result in the ballot
boxes. " Rate collectors far more than any central Boards
of Control are the real schoolmasters of municipal policy." '
In the national life generally the year was marked by a
return of better temper. Trade was good ; reconsidera
tion of rents had somewhat eased the farmer ; the cereal
harvest was fair, and the root harvest good. The social
world was enlivened by a greater disposition on the part
of the Queen to be seen. It may be mentioned in passing
that the last of the few attempts on her life took place on
2nd March, when a man, who was subsequently adjudged
a lunatic, fired a pistol at her as she was driving out of
Windsor station. There was, it is true, a singularly heavy
death-roll of notable men. On 3rd January Harrison
Ainsworth died, out of humour with a world which his
later novels had failed to attract, and in which he had not
succeeded as the man of fashion he wished to be. On 4th
January Bernal Osborne made his exit from a London
where he had kept alive the witty traditions of the days
of Alvanley. Dante Gabriel Rossetti died on 11th April,
in the midst of the period when the Pre-Raphaelite move
ment was being violently spread abroad by the general
aesthetic craze. The death of Darwin on 20th April
brought from abroad such unprecedented appreciations
of an Englishman's work that this country became con
scious in a new way of the achievement represented by the
evolutionary theory ; and this may account in some degree
for that outbreak of extreme antagonism between scientific
research and orthodox theology which reverberated
through the middle eighties. Dr Pusey died on 17th
September ; and the occasion served for articles reminding
a generation much entangled in Ritualist controversies,
' RedUch's Local Government, i. 393.

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 93
in the imprisonment of recalcitrant clergymen, that only
a vulgar confusion could have made the word " Puseyism "
synonymous with advanced ritualism ; his mystical
conception of the Church and her work, founded on a
wonderful knowledge of eariy Christian writers, remained
throughout his life indissolubly linked with a piety of the
Wesleyan rather than the Tractarian spirit. On 4th
December died a very different Churchman, Archbishop
Tait. He had had stormy years of rule, yet he preserved
to the end that belief in a sweet reasonableness which
he was always ready to apply. His last application of it
came before public notice within a week of his death.
He had effected a compromise in the St Alban's case,
by which Mr Mackonochie was transferred to St Peter's,
London Docks. It did not in the least conciliate anti-
ritualists. In the revival of trade the shortage of gold grew more
troublesome. Some of the responsibility for it was put
down to the prosperity of the working classes, which caused
" a large absorption of gold " ; and it was this aspect of the
problem which brought to the front this year a proposal
for issuing one-pound Bank of England notes. Another
aspect which worried the financial authorities was the
question of meeting the wear and tear of the gold currency.
Short supplies of the metal caused the coins to remain
long in circulation ; and the result was that the currency
was falling dangerously in real value. This point, however,
may be postponed until the time when the Treasury at
last attacked it. The South African goldfields were com
ing more into the public eye ; there had been a " rash "
to the De Kaap fields, and " placer " mining was not un
successful. But the men with money were showing them
selves more cautious than the men without, although it
was pretty well known that only mining on a large scale,
with heavy machinery, could work the deposits thoroughly.
For the time being fortunes were made in other ways.

94 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
Nitrates just then were making millionaires ; and the ex
perience of American farmers in fattening stock was causing
almost a boom here in oilcake, and new speculations
in cotton-seed oil works.
It is not, after all, these signs of a solid prosperity that
most give the year its air of better spirits. That is to be
found rather in such a revelation as is provided by the
immense and serious interest taken in the removal of
Jumbo to America. Jumbo was the great elephant at the
Zoological Gardens — the largest that had ever been seen
out of the native lands of elephants — but he might have
been thought to be otherwise an ordinary elephant untU
it was suddenly announced at the end of January that
Bamum, an American showman, had bought him for
£2000, and was going to transport him across the water.
The whole nation was stirred. Some disputed furiously
as to whether he had or had not been a difficult animal to
handle, and whether his keeper's statement that his temper
had grown queer was or was Rot a mere excuse to cover his
removal. Others, equally serious, called in question the
legal right of the " Zoo " to dispose of animals without
obtaining in some way the consent of the nation. Lighter-
hearted folk jested, often as ponderously as the subject
coiUd require ; songs sprang up in the streets, and Jumbo
practicaUy ffiled the ordinary man's mind until, two months
later, the departure took place. It was described as
fully as if it had been the departure of a prince. The
adventures of the enormous crate in which Jumbo was
drawn to the docks by a long string of horses, the quarters
provided for him on board ship, were all set forth by every
newspaper in the land ; and Lady Burdett-Coutts went
on board to give him his last London bun. The public's
cheerful readiness to be amused had another opportunity
in August, when Cetewayo came to England. Responsible
people were shaking their heads about his visit, and it had,
in fact, been once postponed ; it was not long since he and

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 95
his Zulu people had been in arms against us, and the
question of his restoration to the chieftainship, which he
undoubtedly hoped to forward by his visit, caused some
nervousness. But London only saw in him a stout, genial,
black potentate, whose beUicose prestige they could
pardon because, if it had cost the English something to
beat him, he had at any rate very handsomely worried the
Boers. So people gathered in crowds at Melbury House,
Kensington, where he stayed, to see him drive out. He paid
visits to both the Queen and the Prince of Wales ; and he
managed to keep up his imperturbability untU he was taken
to Woolwich Arsenal, and then he confessed that he had
reaUy been overwhelmed with astonishment at the sights
and sounds and resources of England ever since he had
landed. The newest marvels of civilisation were continuing their
advances. The year is notable in the history of electric
lighting for the fact that a new step, described by Professor
Sylvanus Thompson in a scientific lecture in March, had
been taken by the invention of " little electric lamps made
by enclosing in glass bulbs thin wires of platinum or thin
strips of carbon which on the passage of an electric current
grow white hot " ' ; the importance of the invention for
domestic lighting was at once seen. The immediate sequel
was a series of disputes as to patents between rival in
ventors, chiefly Mr Edison and Mr Swan. The use of arc
lamps for street lighting had meanwhile so thoroughly
established itself (Birmingham, Brighton, Canterbury,
Newbury, Sheffield and East London had installed it) that
the great corporations, led by Manchester, were on the
alert against possible monopolies; and the Government
had in hand an Electric Lighting Bill designed to regulate
the foundation of companies. The BUl ultimately included
a clause giving local authorities power of compulsory
purchase of electric light undertakings at the end of twenty-
» The Times, i8th March 1882.

96 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
one years. The telephone was conquering long distances ;
in July experiments were made in speaking from Brussels
to Paris, and in December a line was working between
Brighton and London. But as yet the National Telephone
Company's revenue was no more than £27,000 in the
year, and its profits £4217.' Tramway experiments moved
more slowly ; a car, worked from accumulators under the
seats, was tried at Leytonstone in March. A minor in
vention of the year which should not miss a place in this
record is the fountain pen ; the stylograph had been in
use for some time, but late in this year descriptions were
published of the application of the reservoir principle to
a pen with a detachable double-pointed nib.^ Nor need
one hesitate to attach to the march of progress the tenta
tive prominence attained this year by the advocates of
" rational dress." A lecture in Febraary by Mr Frederick
Treves on the unhygienic dress of women was followed in
March by an exhibition organised by the National Health
Society of hygienic dresses, the patterns being gathered
chiefly from America and Germany ; they included
" divided skirts," but the mocker was not yet aroused.
So much indeed was progress in the air that the
Londoner's dissatisfaction with his own local govemment
grew acute. A month could not pass without some com
plaint either against vestries or against the Metropolitan
Board of Works ; of the former this one or that was slow
to lay down wooden paving (1880 had seen much activity
in that work), whUe the latter was attacked because of the
smell of sewers, or petty interference with private building
projects. From this atmosphere of complaint about the
merest trivialities of local control the Londoner looked
out and saw the provincial corporations, not niggling over
petty duties, but launching out into all sorts of public
services. He found himself under a form of government
' The Times, 19th August 1882;
» Ditto, 6th December 1882.-

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 97
which derived no fresh strength from the new Municipal
Corporations Act, because it was not a corporation ; and
for the same reason had but the meanest responsibilitj
towards the citizens. The demand for a municipality oi
London becametherefore one of the items ,of regular appear
ance in political speeches of this time. It happened that
the autumn provided two striking examples of the courage
of provincial corporations. In October the Manchester
Ship Canal project first became of interest to the country
at large ; Alderman Bosdin Leech, of that city, was
writing letters to the Press to enlist the public attention.
The scheme was unanimously approved at a town's meet
ing held in Manchester on 14th November, and although
there was naturally some apprehension as to the cost of
the undertaking, the prospect of direct importation of
goods to Manchester was a powerful argument, especially
as only in the previous year the cotton trade had been
seriously hampered by a " cornering " of cotton in Liver
pool, and a period of gambling which had raised the price
of raw cotton by 10 to 20 per cent. The other piece of
remarkable municipal energy was the progress of the
scheme for supplying Liverpool with water from the Welsh
hUls; the laying of the great mains through Delamere
Forest at the end of this year was a picturesque period of
the work. But the provincial corporations were by now
influencing the community in more subtle ways than these.
A great Art and Industrial Exhibition was held this year in
Manchester ; and WUliam Morris, speaking at the opening
ceremony, was able to point to a general improvement in
industrial art. The work of aU the local schools of manual
art, which had slowly been established in the large
industrial centres, of the Workmen's Institutes, the
Athen^ums, and other such places, was beginning to
tell. A Royal Commission was sitting, which, hnper-
fectly appreciated though it was at the time, ended by
altering entirely the aims and scope of national education

98 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
—the Commission on Technical Instraction. It was
the recognition of aU the local schools, and so the first
step towards their expansion into a system of higher
education. General Wolseley did not keep the nation waiting
long for news from Egypt. Moving rapidly, he attacked
Arabi at Tel-el-Kebir on 13th September— one of the
notable night attacks of mUitary history — ^inffictmg a
complete defeat on his troops, and taking him prisoner,
with other leaders of his army. No memory remained
now of a Nationahst character in the movement ; Arabi
was caUed a mere mUitary adventurer, Egypt had had
to be " rescued from him," his foot had been " on her
throat " ; and a general impression that the war was over
led to the commutation a few months later of the sentence
of death passed upon Arabi by the court martial in Cairo
on 3rd December. He and six of his associates left Egypt
for exile on 26th December. It seemed that the Govern
ment, pottering on from point to point, had come out of
the business fairly well after all. They directed their agent
in Cairo, now Lord Dufferin, to proceed with a rehabUita-
tion of Egyptian finances in view of a speedy withdrawal
of the British troops. But their lack of a clear purpose
in Egypt showed itself now in the fact that, whUe speaking
of withdrawal, they were lending an ear to considerations
which could not possibly be reconciled with withdrawal.
Upper Egypt was the last great stronghold, it was thought,
of slavery, and the licences to trade in the Soudan, which
were issued by the Egyptian Government, were more or
less open licences for slave-raiding. Consequently even
those Liberals who had been least inclined to continue a
policy of interference in Lower Egypt now began to con
fuse Mr Gladstone's mind by pressing upon him duties
in Upper Egypt. We miss much of the difficulty of
the Egyptian struggles of the next few years, and the true
nature of Gordon's mission to Khartoum, unless we see

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 99
that Mr Gladstone's lack of any real interest in the Egypt
ian question rendered him peculiarly open to conflicting
impulsions from different sections of his followers. The
suppression of slavery was an old ideal, and the zeal to
pursue it in the Soudan is one of the reasons why Tel-el-
Kebir is the beginning, and not the end, of a story.
Another reason had recently been causing anxiety in Egypt
itself. Just at the time when Arabi's movement had been
growing strongest in Cairo, in August 1881, a man in the
Soudan had proclaimed himself Mahdi — an assumption of
direct spiritual kinship with Mohammed, and divine in
spiration — and the universal hatred there of the Egyptian
Govemment secured him an immediate foUowing. But
no real knowledge of what was going on in Upper Egypt
prevaUed among those well-intentioned people who were
pressing the slave trade upon Mr Gladstone's attention.
On the whole the year ended not amiss for him and his
colleagues, and the foundation of the National Liberal Club
at a large meeting on 5th November was an enthusiastic
mustering of new forces. In Ireland the Crimes Act, put
ting an end to those activities of the Land League which
had survived in the Ladies' Land League, had been helped
in its effect by the loss of heart in the Irish party after the
Phoenix Park murders. It may be mentioned here, since
Patrick Egan rendered his accounts of the Land League
funds to Pamell in October of this year, that the League
had handled the sum of £244,820. Of this, in round
figures, £50,000 had gone to relief of distress ; £15,000
to the expenses of trials ; £148,000 had been spent by
the League and the Ladies' League in support of evicted
tenants, the erection of wooden houses for them, defence
against ejectments, etc' The cases of agrarian crime
now feU from 4439 in 1881 to 3432 in 1882; but the
trae state of the case is better shown by the fact that for
1883 the figures dropped with a run to 870. We see
^ ParneU Commissioners' Report, p. 96;

100 IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO [1882
Mr Gladstone himself, according to one of his Cabinet,
taking a " couleur-de-rose view " of the condition of Ire
land.' Egypt appeared to have been successfuUy dealt
with ; and the summing up of the Government's position
on the traditional occasion of the GuUdhall Banquet was
that they had done well, and that the Conservatives had
no good fighting ground ; Lord Randolph ChurchUl's
" Balaclava charges " were magnificent, but not war.^
The autumn and winter were singularly free from labour
troubles. In the early part of the year there had been
some anxiety in London ; a large deputation of unemployed
men waited upon the Lord Mayor, representing printers,
carpenters, bricklayers, painters, warehousemen, navvies
and smiths. Except in its combination of a number of
unrelated trades, this deputation hardly amounted to the
faintest mutter of the storms of a few years later ; and the
winter brought no distressing signs of lack of employment.
The vitality of the Socialist movement was, however,
apparent in the revival of the newspaper Freiheit, in spite
of a general refusal of printing firms to publish it. At the
same time the prosecution of a paper called The Free
thinker on a charge of blasphemous libel was attended by
comments which showed that even the respectable world
was inclined to think that it was a mistake to aim at
suppressing such organs of opinion. " Whether from
growth of charity, or indifference, or perplexity, or ex
perience of the mischievousness of persecution," The
Times remarked, " most men are not inclined to put in
prison the apostles of the views which they most detest,
and they are rather at a loss what to do with persecuting
laws which remain unrepealed." ^ The socialists, fighting
for their own freedom of speech, have often since fought
for freedom in other than political matters ; and in the
1 HoUand's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 369.
" The Times, loth November 18821
" 19th July 1882.-

1882] IRELAND, EGYPT— AND JUMBO 101
struggles of the eighties for the liberty of street-corner
meetings socialism and irreligion were confused together,
as we have already seen them confused in the case of Mr
Bradlaugh's seat in Parliament.
A subject which attained no little public discussion in the
autumn of 1882 was the idea of cremating the dead. Two
persons who died about that time had left instructions
in their wUls that their bodies were to be burned. No
facUities existed for carrying out the instructions ; never
theless the bodies were burned, and the subject continued
to be so much written about that within a few years the
difficulties experienced in regard to these early cremations
were entirely removed.

CHAPTER V
1883: A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL
AS the Government's tenure of office extended, it
became more and more clear that the Liberal
victory of 1880 had been due rather to a revulsion
from Disraelian policy than to any arraying by the Liberal
leaders of the progressive forces of the country. By this
time the temporary bond had fallen asunder, and the year
was marked in every direction by a futile restlessness. The
Egyptian question had brought about a coolness with
France, an atmosphere in which any subject of dispute
might become very dangerous. The Irish question reeked
once more of dynamite. The forces of social reform and
moral effort moved in a world agitated by strikes, and
those of material reform saw the spectre of cholera looming
across the waste of bad housing and sanitary deficiencies.
The " resumption of liberty " in Egypt, which had been
the French attitude towards the bombardment of Alexan
dria, revealed itself in certain respects at the beginning of
the year in Cairo as a complete breakuig up of the Control.
Unfortunately Baring, who had displayed a peculiar gift
for investing the Control with a loose working equipment
in which points of punctilio could not arise, was in India.'
He did not return to Egypt untU June 1883. Meanwhile
a quarrel was brewing in regard to the Suez Canal. The
irritation of shipowners at what they regarded as excessive
levies for the passage of the Canal had issued in a proposal
that application should be made to the Khedive for a
concession for a second canal, parallel with the existing one,
' He was Financial Member of the Viceroy's GouncU; 102

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 103
the idea being rendered plausible by the argument that
in any case the amount of the traffic demanded a second
waterway. This, however, did not help the shipowners, for
M. de Lesseps, the buUder of the existing canal, claimed a
monopoly for his enterprise, and a prior right to any con
cession for a second ; he had a draft agreement in readiness
for its construction at a cost of eight mUlions.' The
French authorities saw in the proposal another sign of
England's determination to secure to herself every advan
tage in Egypt, by tricking them out of their chief remaining
source of power there. Towards the close of the year the
dispute took a different direction, the English demand
being now for the acceptance by the Suez Canal Board of an
advisory committee of shipowners. De Lesseps was him
self in England at the time, and was being entertained in
Manchester, where the citizens hoped for the support of his
name for the Ship Canal project. He avoided committing
himself to that ; and took instead every opportunity of
insisting upon the autonomy of the Suez Canal Board.
It was, indeed, a period of bad blood between the two
nations in which an amicable settlement of such a question,
however much either side may have had its legitimate
grievances, was impracticable. In July there was an ugly
outburst of feeling in England, caused by rumours that the
French flag had been hoisted in the New Hebrides ; the
demand was instantly raised that the New Hebrides should
be formally annexed to Australia, and that, to make
complete use of the opportunity. New Guinea should be
annexed at the same time. Barely a week later reports
reached England of the arrest of a British subject by a
French admiral at Tamatave, in Madagascar. The island
had been under French influence for two hundred years,
but this treatment of it as a French possession was not to
be allowed to pass. Luckily the British subject, who had
been deported to Reunion, was released six weeks later,
1 The Times, 24th July 1883.

104 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1888
and that incident was closed.' It may be noted here that
the state of our relations with France in 1883 settled a
question which of late years had agitated a good many
minds. Early in 1881 the scheme for a tunnel under the
Channel to connect England and France by raUway had
made a sudden advance. Borings had been undertaken
at Dover, and as a result detailed estimates of cost had
been made possible. Now the English military authorities,
headed by Sir Gamet Wolseley, declared against the
project ; they said they could not assure the country
against invasion by the tunnel, and an Anti-Channel-
Tunnel Association was formed. The promoters, however,
went forward, and introduced a private Bill into Parlia
ment, which came before a Joint Committee of the two
Houses in April 1883. It reported in July against the BUI,
though not unanimously. The mUitary evidence had
carried the day.^
The distortion which had been given to the Irish
situation by the Phoenix Park murders only became fully
apparent in this year. In Ireland itself difficulties
diminished ; the statistics of agrarian crime fell, as has
already been mentioned, to 870 ; evictions fell from 5201
to 3643 ; and agitation by speeches and all the forms
of boycotting diminished greatly. But alarm and panic
shifted to England ; dynamite explosions occurred in
London, and there were a number of seizures of explosives
by the police. The " Kilmainham Treaty " had been
disliked by the Clan-na-Gael ; and Parnell's attitude after
the Phoenix Park murders would have led to an open
repudiation of him but for his useful gift of never being
agreeable to the English.* We have seen that he had felt
in KUmainham gaol the danger of leaving the field to less
cautious persons ; and the helplessness that overwhelmed
^ The Times, ist September 1883.
•Ditto, 19th July 1883.
• Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, i. 377*

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 105
him at the news of the Phoenix Park murders prevented his
recovering his influence over the Clan-na-Gael. Therefore,
while he could and did moderate the pace of agitation in
Ireland, he had lost for the moment his general hold on
violence ; and the London explosions were the result.
It was the Invincibles' year, and it opened with one of the
most famous dramatic moments in criminal records. The
Crimes Act of 1882 had rendered possible processes of
arrest which had placed under lock and key a number of
men suspected of complicity in the Phoenix Park murders.
By the middle of January nineteen men were in detention.
Two informers had given assistance to the police, but the
prisoners did not really fear the evidence of these two.
Then, as they filed into the dock one day during the pre
liminary proceedings, they saw one of their own number
divert his steps, and their defiant confidence was over.
The scene when James Carey took the witness-stand has
been described by more capable pens, and need not be
retold here. His evidence convicted six men, and two
pleaded guilty, Six were sentenced to death, but the
sentence on one was commuted. Five men were hanged,
Brady, Curley, Fagan, Kelly and Caffrey ; and Delaney,
Mullet and Fitzharris were sent to penal servitude for life.
The Invincibles were not men to sink into obscurity after
such events. Throughout the first half of the year they
were the bogey at which suburban England continued to
shiver. The newspapers canvassed the identity of the
terrible " Number One," who had appeared in the Kilmain
ham evidence to be a power horribly supreme. The British
Government made friendly representations to the Govern
ment of the United States on thehatchingof Irish-American
plots in that country ; Fenian brotherhoods were reported
to be devoting Sunday excursions up the Hudson River to
the amiable purpose of experimenting with explosives. The
Home Office stimulated local authorities in England to a
more vigorous search for dynamite, and more alertness to

106 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
its possible manufacture in their districts ; and prohibited
in the public interest an exhibition of explosives which
was to have been held in aU innocence m Sheffield. On
the top of all this the Invincibles showed that the popular
notion of their organisation was not exaggerated. On July
80th a man, who had attracted no notice among his fellow-
passengers, was shot dead on board a liner which had just
reached East London, Natal. He was Carey the Informer.
The police protection which had sufficed to screen him
entirely from the eyes of the world at large, and ship him
off in complete secrecy to South Africa, had not saved him
from the Invincibles. Beside this coup their other vio
lences of the year seemed almost tame. On 15th March
an explosion took place at the Local Govemment Board
offices ; it caused no loss of life or serious injury, and not
much damage to any part of the building beyond the
windows ; but it remains a famous explosion, because it
was the return of a terror that men had begun to forget.
On 30th October two explosions occurred on the Under
ground Railway, one at Praed Street Station, and one
between Charing Cross and Westminster. In both cases
some persons were injured, but no one was killed.
If Pamell had lost his grip on this current of Irish
agitation, he had certainly not lost the confidence of Ire
land. It became known during this year that in his zeal
for the cause he had let his famUy estates and his own
financial position become heavily encumbered. A public
subscription was set on foot, and it acquired a more than
passing interest, because it was the means of bringing into
public notice what has been known as the Errington
incident. In 1881 the English Govemment had had the
curious notion of getting aid from the Vatican in dealing
with Ireland. At first the idea was only that the Vatican
might restrain priests in Ireland from supporting agitation ;
and Mr Gladstone, in a letter to Cardinal Newman,
expressed the opinion that it was the Pope's positive duty

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 107
to exercise this restraint.^ With that object, documents
detaUing the attitude of certain priests had been conveyed
to Rome by Mr George Errington, an Irish Roman Cathohc
gentleman, who had gone there for the purpose. He was
not, Mr Gladstone was careful to explain, an official
emissary, but a volunteer in the matter. However, as he
had gone with letters from Lord Granville, and as his
despatches were deposited in the Foreign Office, the dis
tinction is insignificant. It would be hard to find any real
difference between the position of Mr Errington at Rome
in 1881 and the position of, say. Lord Odo Russell in the
late sixties. No representative of the British Govemment
could be acknowledged an " official " representative at the
Vatican, since that would have implied a recognition of the
temporal power of the Pope. But just as Lord Odo Russell
was to all intents and purposes a Minister Plenipotentiary,
so Mr Errington was an Envoy Extraordinary in all but the
name. Cardinal Newman had held out little encourage
ment to Mr Gladstone to look for Papal intervention, and
none came at that time. It did come in 1883, in connection
with this national tribute to Pamell, and the result of it
showed that the Vatican's first decision had been the wiser.
A Papal rescript against the tribute was issued. Up to
that moment the sum collected had been £7000, and six
months after the rescript it was £37,000. Mr Gladstone in
after days told Mr Barry O'Brien that the acceptance by
the Government of the Errington mission had been chiefly
due to Lord Spencer. ^
The influence of the Irish question on the Parliamentary
year of 1883 was rather indirect. The obstruction of recent
years had been met for the moment with the Closure
resolutions ; but the effect of it had gone deeper than the
immediate result. The House, in long and trying sessions,
had been feeling that it must strike out some new lines of
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 52.
2 Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, ii. 26.

108 A YEAR OF GROUNDSVTELL [1883
dividing its work, if it was to have time for real discussions
of policy. It had the high ideal of not bounding its view
by the legislative necessities of the day : " Parliament is
not merely a legislative body. It is the Grand Inquest of
the nation charged, in addition to its legislative duties,
with the custody of Imperial interests, and called upon to
lead and to form the public opinion of the time.^ " The
institution of Grand Committees, to relieve the House of
some of its work, was the first attempt of Parliament to
keep its head, so to speak, above water. These Committees,
empanelled by the Committee of Selection, were two in
number — ^the Grand Committee on Law and the Grand
Committee on Trade.^ They were sanctioned by the
Commons in 1882, but went to work for the first time in
1883, relieving the House of the necessity under which it
had hitherto laboured of forming itself into committee
on every Bill other than a private Bill. By the new ar
rangement a considerable quantity of work was delegated.
Two other attempts to save time were now in progress.
In 1882 a Department of Agriculture had been proposed,
and in 1883 a Department for Scotland was a prominent
subject of discussion. Both were the butts for somewhat
easy sarcasm ; the Board of Agriculture, it was said, would
not know what to do with itself, and as for a Department
for Scotland, there was not more logical reason for setting
it up than for setting up a Department for Yorkshire.
However, the scheme went forward ; and Lord Rosebery's
assistance in working out the details was perhaps his first
important public service. For the rest Parliament had but
a stale bill of fare. Bankruptcy legislation was still before
it, a reforming Act being passed this year ; County Govern
ment (with its attendant subjects of London Municipal
' The Times, 6th January 1881.
' The committees were not altogether invented at this time.
Sir T. Erskine May found precedents, upon which the committees
were designed;

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 109
reform, and especially a reform of the water supply author
ity) and the county franchise had not yet been touched.
The last was the most vital of the subjects, for Lord Ran
dolph ChurchUl was devoting himself to it. He was argu
ing that the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourer
was not called for, even by the labourer himself, and that
a rearrangement of boroughs and a redistribution of seats
would be the truer franchise reform at the moment.^ The
failure of the Affirmation BUl of this session has been
recorded ^ ; it was the last expenditure of the time of this
Parliament on the controversy that had arisen about Mr
Bradlaugh's right to take his seat. In spite of Mr Glad
stone's eloquence, in spite of a widely spread feeling that it
was unwise to mix dislike of Mr Bradlaugh's opinions with
the general question of preserving in Parliament a religious
test which had elsewhere disappeared, the Bill was rejected
on Srd May. But at least this particle of good resulted —
that there was agreement henceforth to leave time to do
the work — time and the ultimate disappearance of condi
tions in which the question was useful to an Opposition
somewhat poorly equipped. How ready the Opposition
was to adopt weapons from any quarter is seen in their
immediate following of the Liberals' idea of a huge political
club, which should give the social amenities of such insti
tutions to men of political inclinations who could not hope
for admission to the older clubs. Two months after the
meeting for the promotion of the National Liberal Club,
one was held by the Conservatives to found the Constitu
tional Club. Both places may be, and have been, regarded
cynically by those of Pall Mali and St James's Street.
The historian's interest in them is that they were the first
clubs in which considerations other than those of social
fitness were recognised in the election of candidates, and
in which political opinions became a quahfication.^
» The Times, 12th April 1883. » See p. 41.
' The Carlton and the Reform, thaugh broadly Tory and Liberal,
do not technicaUy require the holding of certain political opinions

110 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
It is remarkable that the year saw no fewer than eight
Sunday Closing Bills before Parliament, three of them
applicable to the whole country and five to separate
localities. This, like the growing strength of the Local
Veto movement, is an interesting reminder that the Blue
Ribbon Army was at the time making great strides. It had
been founded in 1878 on the model of an organisation
which had been very successful in the United States. Mr
William Noble, who had for some years before that date
been a prominent platform speaker in the cause of temper
ance, on returning from a tour in the States enlisted the
interest of several phUanthropists and took the Standard
Theatre, Shoreditch, which was then untenanted. His
ardent zeal was so contagious that for nearly two years,
from February 1878 tUl January 1880, he continued to fUI
that place with audiences ; and when he was compelled to
leave it, because of its approaching demolition, the Blue
Ribbon Army was already a great force, and the pledge
cards used by Mr Noble were in demand all over the
country. English distaste for the parading of opinions
must have been undergoing curious modifications when it
was possible to note, among the striking events of a year,
the spread of two such organisations as the Blue Ribbon
Army and the Salvation Army.^ The latter, indeed, was
fighting its way in a very literal sense. We have already
had occasion to note the hostility it caUed forth, and an
actual organisation of a sort had arisen to combat it. The
" Skeleton Army " has been forgotten now ; it appeared
in 1883, fighting the Salvation Army outside the Eagle
Tavern in the City Road, and these encounters occurred
persistently, Sunday after Sunday. Both the Salvation
Army and the Blue Ribbon Army (and we may perhaps
as a quaUfication. Brooks's, again, is broadly Liberal, but that
is a survival of its original character as the Whigs' Club, and
Whiggism was always as much a social as a political quaUfication.
' The Times, 30th December 1882.

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 111
mention with these the missions of Moody and Sankey,
who returned to England in 1883, and were in Liverpool
and Manchester in March and in London in November)
were elements in that reconsideration of a nation's duty
towards its less fortunate members, which was replacing
the individualism of the great industrial expansion. Crude
as the Salvation Army's methods appeared, the way for
educated people to meet them was seen to be by doing the
work better ; and this was more than an intellectual retort.
The death of Arnold Toynbee, on 11th March 1883, served
to bring to light suddenly a whole world of sociological
enthusiasm, of zeal and affection for the unfortunate,
which had been steadUy modifying the trend of politico-
economical thought; and when the knowledge of Toynbee's
own efforts turned men's minds to the poorer parts of our
great cities, it was with the result of making them conclude
that the Church of England was not behindhand in the new
spirit, and that " in forty years the clergy had advanced
immensely in public esteem," by their devotion to the
practical as well as the spiritual work at their doors. Two
distinct lines of thought were, in fact, tending towards the
same end. The spiritual revival which began with Wesley
and Whitefield, as an evangelising movement not parochial
in its scope, had been followed by the more parochial,
because more strictly canonical, revivalism of the Oxford
Tractarians. WhUe the religious spirit of the universities
had been thus modified, the phUosophical outlook imder-
went a change almost as profound under the domination
of T. H. Green. He had but lately died— on 26th March
1882 — and his lectures had been spoken of at his death as
"the very heart of the phUosophical education of Oxford." ^
The effect of his work had been to quicken the sense of
social responsibUity, and to raise up a school which both
hastened the distrust of the old individualism, and pre
sented a very guarded front to the new theories which the
1 The Times, 27th March 1882;

112 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
popular mind was summing up in the phrase " the survival
of the fittest." The forces that came into view on the
death of Arnold Toynbee therefore were combined forces
of religious and secular impulse, and this dual character
has continued to be displayed in the Social Settlement
movement that arose with the foundation of Toynbee
Hall in 1884. There was, indeed, an earlier settlement
in existence. The Ancoats Brotherhood had been founded
in 1877 in Manchester by a devoted citizen, Mr Charles
Rowley. It was not specifically a University settlement,
but drew upon the services of any one who could be
attracted to the work. It was an isolated enterprise,
and not untU after the death of Toynbee can there be
said to have been a Settlement movement. The move
ment crystallises for us several of the somewhat inchoate
aspirations of a new day. The settlements were to be
centres in the poorest parts of great cities for the dis
semination of that humaner education without which
the improved conditions that were the workman's goal
would be but a barren achievement. They were to
help the educated classes to see that a sound Liberalism
must hope, not to raise the working man out of his class
but to produce a community of mental outlook between
classes. They were to help the masses of the poor to see
in knowledge their truest leadership, and to learn to
distinguish between knowledge and frothy acquisition
of political dogmas. Thus the Settlement movement
was partly, at least, the reply of the intellectual middle
class to the attitude of the artist-socialists. " Radical
ism," WUliam Morris wrote in this year, " is made by
and for the middle classes ; they wUl have no objection
to its political development, if they think they can
stop it there ; but as to real social changes they wUl
not allow them if they can help it." And agaui : " It is
obvious that the support to be looked for for constructive
socialism from the working classes at present is nought

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 113
. . . What we want is real leaders, themselves working
men, and content to be so tiU classes are abolished. But
you see when a man has gifts for that kind of thing he
finds himself tending to rise out of his class." ^ University
settlements were the denial of both of these positions.
Such advances as the Sociahst movement made in 1883
were not spectacular. Some knowledge of the propa
gandist work that was being done may be gathered
from the fact that late in August the question of the
power of public authorities to prohibit meetings in such
places as the London parks was being raised. Nervous
ness about these meetings was certainly growing, assisted
perhaps by the dynamite explosions, which had nothing
to do with them; for, when it was announced that the
site of the disused TothUl Fields prison at Westminster
had been bought by the Roman Catholics for their
cathedral, the Govemment was sharply criticised for not
keeping the site as a central depot for troops in case of
rioting. Something of the same nervousness is visible
also in the withdrawal of several members from the Cobden
Club this year, because of the admission of one or two
foreign politicians " of an advanced, not to say revolution
ary, character." ^ But though the socialists were clearly
mustering some of the unemployed waste lives of London
streets, they were not yet definitely mobilising them. In
January Louise Michel came to England to lecture on the
oppression and sweating of women in France, and to urge
English people not to let the education of the girls of the
working classes fall behind that of the boys. She spoke,
as it happened, at a moment when women in this country
had achieved a notable amelioration of their status. The
Married Women's Property Act came into force at the
beginning of this year, abolishing the old system under
which a woman's property passed on her marriage into
1 Mackail's Life of WilHam Morris, iij 103, 11 ii
> The Times, i8th June 1883;

114 A YEAR OF GROUNDSVSTELL [1883
her husband's control. Henceforward a married woman
could hold property and carry on business in her OAvn
right. One of the minor effects of the measure was to
give particular interest to the debate on a Woman Suffrage
BUl introduced by a private member in July. The question
arose whether married women were also to have this form
of liberty, but the mover of the Bill repudiated any such
intention, confining his proposals to single women who
would be able to qualify as householders. The BiU was
rejected by a majority of 16 in a House of 245 members.
MeanwhUe the advanced woman was interested in a subject
which came to be attached, like a kind of label, to the
feminist movement — a Rational Dress Association, with
Lady Harberton as a moving spirit, offered prizes for a
design of a suitable knickerbocker costume for women.
One of the most prominent items in the programme of
social reform, the better housing of the poor and the
destruction of insanitary areas, was forced upon public
attention this year by a scare which was to be repeated in
ensuing summers. Early in July the ravages of cholera
in Egypt grew alarming. The disease did not on this
occasion spread as far north in Europe as it did in a later
year ; but our traffic with Egypt was sufficient to cause
the issue of most stringent regulations in this country.
These were aimed less at setting up quarantine than at
making the amplest provision for dealing with any cases
that might make their appearance here, the idea being
that, if energy went too much to quarantine preparations,
which could hardly be relied upon to exclude infection
absolutely, we might be caught behind the barriers with
inadequate isolation arrangements. A Cholera BUl was
hurriedly passed through Parliament ; in effect it con
stituted the local managers of the Metropolitan Asylums
Board separate authorities under the Public Health Act,
and it suspended certain Acts of Parliament and extended
others so as to give the fullest powers everywhere for

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 115
making hospital provision. The more lasting result of the
alarms was a new concern in this country for sanitation
in every town, and especially in the ports. In November
Sir WiUiam Forwood was calling the attention of the
Liverpool Corporation to the fact that there were at that
moment 15,000 houses in that town, containing 60,000
people, which were all unfit for human habitation. At this
time no section of the community was under any responsi
bility in the matter of house sanitation, nor was any
authority charged with enforcing a general standard. In
1880 there was a proposal to set up in London a society
which should provide for its members, at a subscription of
a guinea, expert inspection of the drainage of their houses ;
and peculiar point was given to the proposal a few months
later by a doctor, who related the disastrous processes by
which he had discovered that his own house, in one of the
wealthy quarters of London and on an estate which had
been developed not haphazard, but deliberately as a region
of the well-to-do, was actually not connected with the main
sewers, but was built over old cesspools.^ Medical men
generally were disturbing the public apathy in such mat
ters. The bacterial theory was a fresh and forcible ally ;
and in 1883, even before the cholera alarm spread, the pro
blem of housing and sanitation was being attacked from a
new angle — ^that of the infectious nature of tuberculosis.
One reason, no doubt, for the advance which medical
opinion was making in affairs of public health was the
feeling — a somewhat complacent feeling, perhaps — ^that
this was a scientific age. The same spirit which put
Agnosticism and Religion into the lists, and watched them
fight out their battles in the public prints, predisposed men
to attend to the gospel of the doctors. The theory of the
survival of the fittest justified every exhortation to being
on the side of the fit. IncidentaUy it sent the Londoner
and his country cousin to gaze at a creature exhibited this
' The Times, 20th April 1881.

116 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
year at the Westminster Aquarium, a very hauy chUd
brought from the territory north of Siam and said to have
a slight taU ! To call this creature " the missing link "
was enough to make it the talk of the town. The Aquarium
was stiU prospering in the curious career which made it
in itself a historical link. Some of the old free promenad
ing and some of the old impropriety of Ranelagh and
VauxhaU lingered in its large spaces and its vague
atmosphere of side-shows ; while the performances of
such people as " Zaeo," who was much advertised during
1880 and 1881 in the programme on the central stage, was
a sign of the changes that were turning the old cellars
and halls of song into the modem variety music-hall. The
Aquarium clung to its character, and thereby to its public,
even though the music-halls had developed entirely on
their own lines. Mere singing no longer sufficed for their
programmes. They had even a public which made them
rebel, at this date, against the restrictions preventing them
from producing stage plays ^ ; and which caused the
observant to reflect on the division of classes which was
growing up in amusements as in everything else. It was
a somewhat superficial reflection, but at the moment it
was easy to think that there were divisions, just because
the places to which people of any class might go were easy
to single out. One of them was St James's Hall, and its
chief entertainment in this year was of a kind that had
taken a curious hold of the public caprice. It was a
thought-reading performance ; and the exposures in previ
ous years of the fraudulent character of the grosser forms
of " spiritualism " had caused those who made their living
out of this kind of interest to turn to the less material
devices. In 1881 there had been two prosecutions on
charges of false pretences arismg out of the older sort of
performance ; one an affair of " slate-writing," and the
other of crystal-gazing and table-tuming. The thought-
' The Times, 3rd February 18831

1888] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 117
reading which succeeded those exposed tricks did not long
go unattacked ; the performer at St James's Hall was
chaUenged by Mr Labouchere to " read " the number on
a banknote deposited by him in an envelope held by
a certain Member of Parliament. The thought-reader
demanded conditions on his OAvn side, and for weeks the
fairness or unfairness of the challenge, and the real nature
of the performance, were under discussion in the news
papers, even scientists like Professor Ray Lankester
coming forward with theories. The challenge never
developed beyond a contest of wits as to the conditions.
Another event in the amusement calendar of this year was
the Fisheries Exhibition, the first of a series of specialised
exhibitions which had great success, and became annual
London entertainments. The Fisheries Exhibition was
said at the time to have done much to popularise the
eating of fish, but probably its success could be attributed
to the exhibition of strange kinds of boats and boating
gear. The centre of attraction was the display of equip
ment for Arctic exploration, which at this time shared with
baUooning the first place in the popular admiration of
adventure. It was even a craze which could be mUdly
scoffed at, for The Times, writing in AprU of the opening
of the Arctic " season," said it had become as regular
as the University Boat Race or the Twelfth of August.^
Exploring parties of various nationalities were annually
engaged in taking observations round the Polar basin.
Aeronauts, perhaps fired with a desire to be taking the
popular eye with definite performances, were devising
oversea flights. An attempt made in 1881 had been
disastrous, Mr Walter Powell, M.P., having lost his life
in the Channel while crossing to France. It was not until
1883 that the first success was achieved. On 13th June
of this year the news arrived that a Frenchman had made
an ascent, and at first it was thought he too had perished ;
14th April 1883;

118 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
but a few days later he was landed by a fishing boat, having
been picked up in the Channel ; he had come near enough
to the English shore to hear the waves breaking. On 1st
August a voyage was at last accomplished. Sir Claude
de Crespigny and others crossing from Maldon in Essex
to Flushing ; and in September the English Channel was
crossed twice — on 10th September by a Frenchman who
landed near Folkestone, and a week later by an English
party which started from Hastings and landed at Cher
bourg. To the year's record of adventure belongs also the
news published in London on 26th July that Captain Webb
had been drowned in attempting to swim the rapids below
Niagara Falls. It was a foolhardy enterprise, but the
world could anticipate anything from the man who had
achieved the feat of swimming the English Channel, with
its baffiing tidal currents. On that former occasion
Webb had been in the water for twenty-one hours and
three-quarters, and the distance he swam was estimated
variously at from thirty-nine to forty-five mUes.
Mention may be made here of the death of another man
who stood in a different way for daring and romance.
Captain Mayne Reid died in London on 23rd September.
He was the last writer of those immense and fluent tales
of adventure, of which he and Fenimore Cooper and
G. P. R. James had the secret. Their works were already
" books for boys," and taste for the long novel in masculine
hands had gone back into the main channel of English
fiction, from which the writers of adventure stories had for
a time partially diverted it. John Inglesant had been pub
lished in 1881, and won its instant success ; the work of
George Meredith had certainly accomplished no insignifi
cant advance when it was spoken of, not as obscure, but
as " dazzling with excess of light " ; Mr Henry James's
art was already classed as " exquisite." ^
A survey of the state of trade at the beginning of the
^ The Times, 13th August 1883.

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 119
year gave rise to the warning that a time of restricted
profits was at hand ^ ; and there can be no doubt that the
warning was based largely on the uneasiness of the labour
market. The Trade Unions took a new step this year
by joining in an International Congress of workmen's
organisations. In one sense the Congress was not taken
very seriously ; it was thought that there could be little
real co-operation between labour movements In this
country and those in other countries, since the latter aimed
rather at producing direct State action upon industrial
problems than at assisting sectional efforts of the
workmen for better conditions. But even without inter
national agreement there was enough to make employers
anxious, and Mr Henry Fawcett, urging them to take up
profit-sharing as a means of steadying the industrial situa
tion, expressed the opinion that it was " vain to expect any
marked improvement of general economic conditions as
long as the production of wealth involves a keen conflict
of opposing pecuniary interests." What effect any wide
adoption of the profit-sharing principle might have had at
this time, before Trade Unionism underwent the vigorous
development of the later eighties, it is vain to conjecture.
It was not attempted. In January the year saw its first
strike, a serious one on the Caledonian RaUway, in which
long hours and an exacting system of fines were the chief
complaints of the men. The passenger traffic was carried
on with difficulty, and the goods traffic was practicaUy
suspended, a state of things which was bound to lead to
an early settlement. The strike was over before the end of
the month. The autumn brought other strikes. Late in
August the weavers in Lancashire came out, and their
dispute lasted over a month. The Darlington iron and
steel workers were also out, and so were the Sunderland
engineers ; and by the end of November there was daUy
expectation that the cotton spinners and the Yorkshire
1 The Times, loth January 1883.

120 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
miners would strike. Masters and men were at logger
heads as to the reality or otherwise of the trade revival,
the latter demanding a share of increased profits, whUe the
former denied that the revival had brought any real profits.
The coinage problem was a baffling element in such dis
agreements. For the moment the bank rate, which had
been 6 per cent, at the beginning of 1882, had gone down
to 4 per cent., though no one believed it could long remain
there. The lightness of gold coins, owing to wear and tear,
was becoming too serious to be set aside, and in February
there was talk of a steady calling-in of sovereigns. How
ever, this year saw the first distinct expectation of relief
from a new supply of the metal. In May Mr Goschen
suggested that the Treasury authorities could perhaps
afford to wait, in view of " the rumours, apparently well-
fotmded, of a great discovery of gold in the territories
north-west of the Transvaal." This shows how curiously
the real area of mineral wealth — ^the Rand — ^was still in
the background ; and a communication a few weeks later
from South Africa shows the same thing. It spoke at
large of the " Transvaal goldfields," but the details were
all of nugget-mining in the Lydenburg and Spitzkop
districts, and on certain farms where old Portuguese
workings, long overgrown, were being opened up. The
scale of mining which was in the public eye can be judged
from the statement that two claims worked quietly for
twelve months past had actually yielded £6000 worth of
gold ; and that claims owned by Cape Town adventurers
had gone up in value from £24 to £50. Yet before the
year closed, telegrams from South Africa were beginning to
be couched itt terms which can easUy be seen, in the light
of subsequent developments, to give the first hints of the
truth. A Transvaal mining law was promulgated on 18th
August ; and in November it was announced that certain
" rotten quartz leads " were being opened, and crushing
operations commenced. The " placer " miners had been

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 121
throwing away quartz that would have crushed out at four
ounces to the ton. Their day, and the day of four-figure
annual retums, was almost over. Naturally, however, there
was some reluctance to risk money in mines situated in the
territory of the Boers. No friendliness on their part could
be relied upon to protect mining rights, or to encourage the
production of gold to the profit of British shareholders.
It happened that delegates from the Transvaal were in
England at the end of the year, laying before the Govern
ment a request for the abolition of the indeterminate
" suzerainty " of Great Britain, and the establishment of
the absolute freedom of the Transvaal. Their presence
was put to service by the exploiters of one or two gold
companies, floated in December. The delegates were
appealed to on the subject of the Transvaal Government's
attitude, and they replied in some indignation that that
Government had no desire with regard to the goldfields
except " to see the mineral resources of the country de
veloped to their fullest extent." But as yet only some
rather shoddy enterprises made their appearance, with
so much accompaniment of quarrelling as to the real
vendors and the real owners of claims that the public
remained cautious.
In a year of restricted business spirit new ventures were
not likely to advance far. Electric lighting was checked
by the non-existence as yet of any system of supply from
a central generating station ; the inventors were for the
time being in their laboratories again, trying to work out
such a system. The only event of the year worth record
ing under this head is the first use of the light in a church ;
it was installed at St Matthew's, Brixton, m September.
No advance was made in the use of electric power for
propulsion, though a tramcar working on storage batteries
was put into service on the Acton lines, and did regular
duty among the horse cars. The extent of the field open
to the inventor of a practicable method of propulsion was

122 A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL [1883
seen to be great ; trams had become so general that
London now had seventy mUes of line working, Manchester
and its suburbs had forty-two mUes, and the total length
of tram lines in the kingdom was four hundred and forty-
four mUes.
Almost at the end of the year came a piece of news which
was the opening of a most unsatisfactory chapter in
Egjrptian affairs. On 22nd November information reached
Cairo that Hicks Pasha, the British officer who was in
command of the Egyptian forces in the Soudan, had been
completely overwhelmed by the Mahdi, and his army de
stroyed, during a march undertaken by him from Khartoum
to attack the Mahdi. He ought never to have been in the
Soudan ; but the English Government were now displaying
the foolish attitude of supposing that, when they had said
they did not intend to be drawn into difficulties in Egypt,
they had settled their part in the matter. They had
thought this enough when, in the spring of 1883, General
Hicks had been appointed to the Soudan army. The
dangers in the Soudan were obvious to the English authori
ties in Egypt. It was a vast territory of provinces with
widely separated headquarters under various governors ;
it was garrisoned by an army undisciplined, unpaid,
thoroughly unsoldierly ; its provinces were nearly all
cut off from one another by the Mahdi's forces ; one pro
vince, Kordofan, had fallen completely into his hands in
Febraary 1883. Darfur, under Slatin Bey, was practically
beyond defence. What could there be, it might well be
asked, to entangle the British Government in a war in the
Soudan, when the utmost that could reasonably concern
them was the existence of sufficiently stable conditions in
Lower Egypt to keep the Canal open and the bondholders'
interest regularly paid, and when even to preserve that
minimum they had become impatient of maintaining
mUitary responsibUity ? After the annihilation of Hicks
Pasha's force it was too late to ask that question. It was

1883] A YEAR OF GROUNDSWELL 123
indeed possible even then to determine upon withdrawal
of the Soudan garrisons, and the establishment of a firm
frontier against the Mahdi between Upper and Lower
Egypt. But it was not possible for the Government to
leave the work to either the Egyptian or the Turkish
authorities. The Mahdi had seized the popular imagina
tion. Ministers had put off determined consideration of
their duty until the humanitarian pressure not to leave
the field to slave-raiding — a pressure which they might,
with a little clear sight and plain speaking, have overcome
— ^was reinforced by public outcry against the supremacy
of a barbarous ruffian. The Government moved now in
a series of jerks, communicated by successive outcries,
having missed once for all the opportunity to establish a
purpose of their own.
The record of this year may be coloured by mention
of a curious phenomenon which fUled many evenings
with beauty. The sunsets of the summer and autumn
were so magnificent that they became the general topic
of conversation. The reason for them appeared to be
an eruption of the volcano Krakatoa, in the South
Pacific. This, according to the scientific view of the
phenomenon, had loaded the whole atmosphere of the
globe with impalpable dust, which caught brUliantly
the level rays of the setting sun.

CHAPTER VI
1884 : GORDON AT KHARTOUM ; MR GLADSTONE AT OTHER
AFFAIRS
ON 8th January 1884 it was announced in the
London newspapers that General Gordon was
leaving England for the Congo to take up an ap
pointment offered him by the King of the Belgians ; and
there ensued gratified comments on the possibUity that the
slave trade through Upper Egypt might be checked at its
source by a firm hand in the Congo territory. But there
were other comments, far from gratified, on allowing
Gordon of all people to pass into the service of a foreign
state at such a time, when, if anything was to be done in
Upper Egypt itself, he was, in the popular opinion, the
man to do it. By 18th January the Congo appointment
had been declined, and Gordon and Colonel Stewart left
London for Egypt.
In the ten days' interval there had been another public
outcry, vigorously gathered to a head by The Pall Mall
Gazette. It has an interest beyond the immediate circum
stances, because it was probably the first occasion on
which a newspaper set itself, by acting as the organiser
of opinion on a particular detaU of policy, to change a
Government's mind at high speed. However strongly
newspapers had spoken before this on political subjects,
they had not adopted the method of hammering, day
in, day out, at a single detaU, and turning policy into
a catchword. That was almost what happened now. The
cry of " Gordon for Khartoum " was raised to such a pitch
that the Govemment decided they had after all been right
in their first idea. For they had been thinking of him a
month earlier. In December 1883 they had suggested to
124

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 125
Sir Evelyn Baring in Cairo that Gordon might be sent to
Khartoum. Baring had rejected the suggestion, and he
rejected it again when it was repeated. He was for with
drawal from the Soudan, establishing the Egyptian frontier
either at Berber or at Wady Haifa ; and was maintaining
that attitude in the face of the resignation of Cherif Pasha,
the Egyptian Prime Minister, and the refusal of Riaz Pasha
to form a ministry ; and he did not wish anyone to be
appointed to carry out the withdrawal who might be
moved by conflicting ideas. He mistrusted Gordon in
that respect. But unfortunately the Belgian appointment
brought Gordon's name into prominence at the moment.
He had been in the Soudan before, having only retired
from command at Khartoum in January 1880, with a fine
record of energetic action against the slave dealing along
the White NUe ^ ; he was a hero both to the general public
and to the Anti-Slavery Society ; and as the Government
had not previously adopted the only indefeasible line, that
of forbidding any English officer to go to the Soudan, it
faded to stand up against the clamour for sending Gordon.
The Cabinet had had its warning from its representative
in Cairo. Baring had been perfectly explicit against
sending any Englishman to the Soudan at this crisis, and
especiaUy against sending Gordon. No Englishman could
be left unsupported at Khartoum, so that to send one was
bound to mean a Soudan expedition ; and to send a popular
hero would mean also an unmanageable heat of feeling in
England.2 Mr Gladstone's reputation has suffered heavUy for the
blunder. His great age, which he seemed to bear so easUy,
inevitably appeared in his inability to deal with subjects
that faded to interest him, in over-absorption in the
subjects that did interest him. One member of the
' See an article on his work there in The Times, 22nd January
1880J ' Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, i. 428?

126 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
Government used to say afterwards that Mr Gladstone
took virtuaUy no notice of public affairs between the
Irish Land Act of 1881 and the Home Rule BUl of 1886 ;
in the House he often appeared quite torpid during debates
on any subject remote from Ireland. At the same time his
great reputation and popularity with his party made the
state of his thoughts and feelings the final consideration
in the Government. He disliked having any responsibUity
to Egypt ; the undertaking of it was to his mind the worst
piece of " Beaconsfieldism." The result of this was that
those who saw the gravity of the situation — saw that Mr
Gladstone was neither turning his back on the whole
question, nor facing it clearly — could not against the weight
of his personality compel the Cabinet to consider the
question. In the critical months of 1882 Lord Hartington
had written : "I wonder whether any human being (out
of Downing Street) would believe that not a word has been
said in the Cabinet about Egypt for a fortnight, and I
suppose wUl not be for another week, if then " ; or again :
" I am afraid that there is no chance of a Cabinet or of
getting Mr Gladstone to pay any attention to Egypt whUe
the Arrears BUl is going on." ^ The same conditions existed
in 1884. In the summer, directly after the preliminary
credit for the Khartoum expedition had been voted, the
Cabinet dispersed over the country, even though no one
definitely knew the facts of Gordon's situation ; and a few
days earlier Mr Gladstone, drawing nice distinctions be
tween Khartoum " surrounded " and Khartoum " hemmed
in," had blandly proposed " to collect the sum of the evi
dence as to Gordon's position " ^ — a position as to which
some of Mr Gladstone's colleagues had for months been in
correspondence with the Government's representative in
Cairo. The passionate resentment against Mr Gladstone
after the death of Gordon was not quite justly based. It
1 Holland's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. ^6'^, 365;
= Ihid. i. 477.

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 127
was not the single — and to some extent debatable —
question of the delay in the lOiartoum expedition which
provides the most serious charge ; it was the extent to
which a Prime Minister allowed his distaste for the whole
Egjrptian complication to prejudice his mind against
dealing with detaU.
The situation in the Soudan was in itself complicated
enough to demand steady attention ; it demanded more,
once Gordon had been despatched. Possibly the con
siderable amount of service which he had undertaken for
foreign Powers, in circumstances which had emphasised
his personal responsibUity, combined with a strongly
marked religious strain which in any case made his sense
of that responsibUity high, had rendered him by this
time iU-fitted for the mere carrying out of orders. It is
at any rate certain that before he was finally shut up in
Khartoum he had virtually refused to act on orders, and
was pursuing a policy of his own. The apprehension
which Lord Cromer had felt in regard to the appointment
was to be fuUy justified. Even on the way out to Egypt
Gordon had procured the first modification in his in
structions. He had in his interview with the Cabinet in
London undertaken no more than the duty of reporting
upon the situation in the Soudan, with a view to evacuation.
WhUe on the voyage he thought that he could do the work
better if he had definite official status, and he induced
the British Govemment to secure from the Egyptian
Government his nomination as Governor-General of the
Soudan, believing the evacuation could be carried out
with more dignity if it were accompanied by a restoration
of the petty sultans of the Soudan provinces, instead of
leaving the country openly to the Mahdi. This was not in
one sense a great change of policy, especially as Gordon,
on receiving his written instructions at Cairo, himself in
sisted on the insertion of a most emphatic clause binding
him to evacuation ; but it was a great departure from the

128 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
British Gk)vemment's previous determination. An
Englishman as Governor-General was far from a non
committal attitude.
On his way up to Khartoum Gordon made a strange and
serious mistake. At Berber he proclaimed the intention
of evacuating the Soudan. It was characterised by Lord
Wolseley as " a fatal announcement " ; he wrote to Lord
Hartington (13th AprU 1884) : " This has prevented all
men of any influence from helping. . . . Knowing that
anarchy, or possibly anarchy plus the Mahdi, must follow
upon Gordon's departure, every one thought only of his
own safety. . . . To help Gordon under such circumstances
would have been suicidal on any man's part."^ The
proclamation was particularly Ul-timed, since the Mahdi's
influence was being extended by Osman Digna dangerously
close to Berber. Valentine Baker Pasha, who had been sent
to reinforce the Suakin garrison when the defeat of Hicks
Pasha threatened the Suakin-Berber route, had moved out
rather hastUy with Egyptian troops against Osman,* and
his force had been cut up on Sth February. Consequently
when Gordon reached Khartoum, on 18th February,
the surrounding of that place had become more than a
possibUity. LuckUy the Egyptian Government was able
to send up to Suakin at once 4000 British troops under
General Graham, whose two defeats of Osman Digna at
EI Teb on 29th Febraary and Tamai on 13th March kept
that warrior for a whUe from assisting in the isolation of
Khartoum. The news of these battles, with all the picturesque detail
of fighting in squares with Gatling guns at the comers, and
of the wUd charges of the " Fuzzies," as the Mahdi's troops
were being called, was followed by the first of the eagerly
awaited news from Khartoum itself, messages reaching
London on 21st March from Khartoum by way of Berber.
^ HoUand's Life of the Duke of Devonshire!
* Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, i. 400,

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 129
They were dated 14th and 15th March, and conveyed the
information that Gordon had been engaged in smaU
mUitary operations round Khartoum, chiefly for the purpose
of extricating the garrison of Halfiyeh ; it was also intim
ated that Khartoum was practically surrounded by the
enemy. To the British public the affair was already a war ;
they had in their own simple view pitted Gordon against the
Mahdi ; and in the constant meetings held throughout the
summer to protest against the " abandonment of Gordon "
(for as early as the month of May the situation was so
regarded) there was one continuous note of bewildered
amazement at the Govemment's faUure to conceive the
position in this plain sense. Unfortunately to Gordon also
it was by that time a war. He had passed through another
of the changes of mind which so perplexed the Government
at home, and their representative in Cairo. He had not
yet entirely declined (as he was to do before long) the policy
of evacuation which he had so emphatically accepted in the
beginning ; he had only got as far as a new and more
complicated version of " evacuation, but not abandon
ment." He was asking in March that an Egyptian
Governor-General with a British Commission (his own
being technically an Egyptian Commission) should be
appointed ; and he asked for a particular man — Zobeir
Pasha. Now although to the general public in England
this was an incident of no such vividness as battles in the
desert, it is not too much to say that it made the Govern
ment gasp. Moreover it upset that humanitarian opinion
which had worked so ardently for Gordon's appointment
Zobeir had been the greatest and most unscrupulous of the
slave traders of the Soudan and had been deported for that
reason to Cairo ; and here was the idol of the Anti-Slavery
Society demanding his appointment as Governor-General 1
As a matter of fact this was exactly one of those strange
quixotic pieces of fearlessness which had made Gordon a
popular hero. In his former period of office in the Soudan

130 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
he had had occasion to approve of the execution by one of
his lieutenants of Zobeir's son. Yet believing now that
Zobeir was a man who could hold Khartoum against the
Mahdi, and even recover a large part of the Soudan, he
declined to be influenced by any possible danger to himself
in bringing Zobeir up to IQiartoum. He was, no doubt,
right in his belief. The experiment would, indeed, have
been a risky one. Zobeir might join the Mahdi ; or, if he
did not, he might become as troublesome to Lower Egypt
as the Mahdi could. But of his warlike reputation in the
Soudan, of his abUity to raUy the natives to him and hold
Khartoum if he chose to, there could be no possible
doubt.^ However, Gordon's wish never got beyond the
stage of suggestion. The general proposition that the
Soudan should not be abandoned had support in England ;
Khartoum left to be the capital of a slave-trading state was
not a pretty picture. But the difficulty was that no one
could think of any person capable of holding it except
Zobeir ; and the only practicable policy was that of sending
him. The Anti-Slavery Society hotly opposed it, and they
found the Govemment especially ready to listen to them,
since Gordon's proposal involved a direct British Com
mission to Zobeir and a subsidy of money. At the same
time it was distinctly implied that the policy of evacuation
was beginning to slip into the background in Gordon's
mind. Two or three weeks after this Gordon finally
abandoned the idea. Towards the end of March two of his
pashas were defeated, by the treachery of their own troops,
in engagements near Khartoum ; Berber was seized with
panic, and all who could left the place. The fighting spirit
in Gordon was roused, and those in England and in Cairo
whose minds had been wholly set on withdrawing from the
Soudan to a point of safe defence for Lower Egypt were
staggered by receiving from him furious telegrams in which
he announced his intention of " smashing the Mahdi "
1 Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, i. 450.

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 131
before considering anything else. His change of mind was
complete. It is fair to pause here for a moment to consider
how differently the situation must have appeared to him
and to the Government at home. It is probable that only
he knew the extent to which the Soudan provinces were at
that moment mere detached headquarters amid a sea of
Mahdism, islands incapable of communication. It may be
doubted whether even before Gordon arrived the garrisons
of the southern provinces — ^Darfur, under Slatin Bey,
Bahr-el-Ghazal, under Lupton Bey, and Equatoria, under
Emin Pasha — could possibly have made their way north.
Their predicament weighed heavUy on Gordon's mind ;
he could see no way of saving them and at the same time
saving the garrisons of the eastem and northern provinces,
Sennar, Kassala, Berbera, Khartoum and Dongola. The
Soudan was cut in two halves by the Mahdi ; and this
explains the historic telegram despatched by Gordon on
7th April 1884, announcing his intention of retiring
to the Equator, and leaving to the British Govemment
" the indelible disgrace " of abandoning the northern and
eastern garrisons. He intended evidently to gather up
Lupton, Slatin and Emin on his way, and withdraw by
the Congo, since he could see no possibUity of conveying
them northwards. It could hardly be of much profit now
to speculate on what might have been done. Gordon,
as we have seen, began by a proclamation which set the
whole disaffected population of the Soudan on the alert
for withdrawal movements, and went on to a misleading
distinction between evacuation and abandonment. By the
time that he sent the telegram of 7th AprU the situation
had changed as completely as his own mind had changed.
Khartoum was cut off from Dongola and Berber, and no
relieving movement towards Berber from Suakin could
be undertaken, because the weather was too hot for the
marching of troops. The only thing that had not changed
was the attitude of the British Government ; and the

132 GORDON AT KHArTOUM [1884
result was a hopeless interplay of cross purposes for two
or three months. Gordon, feeling himself shut up in
Khartoum, was confident that, as his isolation was known, a
relief expedition would be on the way to him, and he issued,
therefore, whenever opportunity offered, intimations of his
abUity to hold out. The Govemment, never having had
any intention of sending British troops to the Soudan, and
interpreting Gordon's messages in a wholly different spirit
from that in which they were sent, held to instructing him
to withdraw, and awaited his appearance. Mr Gladstone's
view, as late as 31st July 1884, was that to send an expedi
tion either to Dongola or to Khartoum would be "to act
in the teeth of evidence as to Gordon, which, however
imperfect, is far from trivial." ^ That Lord Hartington
was as much bewUdered as anybody by Gordon's behaviour
and his contradictory telegrams may be seen from his
letters to Lord GranvUle. " I have read Gordon's tele
grams again," he wrote, " and I confess that I am utterly
unable to understand them. . . . I think that all we can do
is to look at the position as it is known to us from other
sources, and to pay no attention to what he says." Gran
viUe was inclined to conclude, from the fact that messages
were passing from Gordon to the Mudir of Dongola, that
the Cabinet's messages were equally reaching Gordon and
that he would not answer them.^ In the end it was
" looking at the position as it is known from other sources "
which at last moved the Govemment to undertake an
expedition. The preliminary credit was voted on Sth
August ; and Lord Wolseley drew up a plan of campaign.
This did not commend itself to General Stephenson, who
was then in command at Cairo, and Lord Wolseley had to
be sent out to take command. He left Cairo with his force
on 5th October. By that time there had been no communi-
^cation with Gordon for six months, except that on two or
^ HoUand's Life ofthe Duke of Devonshire, i. 477.
2 Ihid. i. 489, 492!

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 133
three occasions in June and July messages had come from
him asking as to the whereabouts of the relief expedition.
It had been a long delay ; but, as we have said, the blame
which the Government has to bear should be placed further
back than these events, and on more general grounds. The
confusion of ideas at the time must have been extreme,
and the blame must rest on the mistakes of omission and
commission alike which led up to the events of 1884. It
is, for instance, worth recalling that Mr H. M. Stanley,,
who happened to reach London in July of this year froiCT
the Congo, expressed himself in an interview as perfectly
confident about Gordon. He derided the whole idea of a
Nile expedition in the summer (for which popular opinion
in England was pressing), saying that the men would die
like flies ; and he asserted that Gordon could leave
Khartoum when he liked, and withdraw by the Congo —
that he only needed " to act like a soldier," and rescue
would be unnecessary. 1
With the undertaking of the expedition popular atten
tion slackened. Little news was coming through from
Egypt, and what came was not of importance. It is more
interesting to us now than it was to people then to know
that Major Kitchener was at Dongola, whence there was
some hope of his making communication with Gordon.
If in the pause that ensued English people looked at
affairs nearer home, they must have decided that, if their
attention had not been so taken up with Egypt, they would
stUl have had a sufficiently exciting year. An earthquake
had occurred, which was distinctly felt in London and the
Midlands, but was quite serious in Essex, where so much
damage was done in the vUlages that a fund had to be
started for rebuUding houses. There was a succession of
dynamite explosions, generally occurring two or three at a
time in different places, which gave the appearance of a
regular campaign. The long-expected County Franchise
' Interview pubhshed in The Times, 29th July 1884.

134 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
BUl had been produced, and over it Lords and Commons
were flatly at war. The dynamite explosions began with
a raUway station series : on 27th February there was one
at Victoria Station ; fortunately it occurred in the small
hours of the morning, and there was no loss of life. A
day or two later infernal machines were discovered, before
they went off, at Charing Cross and Paddington. On
31st May there were explosions at Scotland Yard, the
Junior Carlton Club in Pall MaU, and a frustrated attempt
at the MUitary Education Office in St James's Square ; at
the same time a bag of dynamite was found near the Nelson
Column in Trafalgar Square. In September the alarm
spread Outside London, a quantity of dynamite being
found at Sunderland on the 13th, and an explosion
taking place in the CouncU Chamber at Salisbury on the
29th. Nervous as the public had become, there was by
good fortune so little loss of life, or even injury, in these
explosions that there was no panic ; nevertheless black bags
without obvious owners were for a year or two regarded
with extreme disfavour and suspicion.
The County Franchise BUl, which would in any case have
given the Government plenty of work, found itself early in
the year dragging an unexpected weight. On 7th February
a meeting of members of Parliament was held at the House
of Commons to consider the moving of a Woman Suffrage
amendment to the BUl. One was drawn up, and the mov
ing of it was undertaken by Mr Woodall ; it proposed to
enfranchise women householders. The movement for en
franchising women was at this date influential, but limited.
It had been in existence for some twenty years, and was
almost exclusively a movement of educated women who,
having found their own careers hampered by the absence
of arrangements for admitting women to university
courses and examinations, to professional diplomas and
professional practice, naturally went on to contemplate
the general position of women under the law and under

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 135
social custom ; and came thence to the conclusion, ex
pressed for them most efficiently by J. S. Mill, that until
women had the same political status as men they must
continue to labour under disabilities in any society
politically constituted. Theoretically the movement was
not confined to the more highly educated classes of women ;
but practically, although its leaders spoke and wrote to
some extent of the wage-earners, the active suffragists
were women who had had a university training, or had
qualified as doctors, or were distinguished writers. The
pledged supporters of the movement were not very numer
ous, the annual income of the principal suffrage society
being about £350 ^ ; but its members were mostly women
of proved capacity, and the suffragist cause did not lose
by the limitation. Mr Woodall's amendment gave the
movement an occasion such as It had not yet enjoyed.
Since it had attained force and publicity its only oppor
tunities, and they but rare ones, had been in the shape
of private members' BUls, which no one took seriously.
Now, however, an opening of a different kind presented
itself, and frequent public meetings were held in support
of Mr Woodall's amendment. Whether it was a genuine
opportunity is questionable ; it could hardly in cold blood
be considered possible that a measure dealing only with
a certain class of constituencies, and proceeding on lines
already tried, should be the vehicle for an experiment In a
wholly new principle over the entire kingdom. Moreover
the subject fell instantly into the vortex of party. A good
many Conservatives were said, indeed, to be convinced
supporters of the movement — Lord Salisbury, Sir Stafford
Northcote, Lord John Manners and Sir Michael Hicks
Beach among them — and it is interesting to find The
Times speaking of a Woman Suffrage measure as " the
trump Conservative card which Lord Beaconsfield kept
' See, e.g., report of the annual meeting of the society. The
Times, loth July 1889;

136 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
in his hand." ^ But the honesty of general Conservative
support for the amendment was deeply suspect. Mr Glad
stone had announced that if the clause were carried he
would throw up the BUl, and thus a great deal of the
Opposition vote for it was purely opportunist. On 12th
June the amendment came up for discussion, and was
rejected by 271 votes to 135.
This adventure was speedily lost sight of in the gathering
of a far more considerable storm in regard to the BUl.
By assimilating the county franchise to that created in
the boroughs by the Acts of 1832 and 1867, the Bill
swept away the old property limitations of the vote in
country places, and gave it, as in boroughs, to the
occupiers of rated dwelling-houses. It thus enfranchised
the labourer ; and the change, both in the number and
in the educational level of the electorate, was great. In
July the House of Lords rejected the Bill, some warning of
such an event being perhaps conveyed by the action of the
Opposition in the Commons who, on the third reading, did
not go into the Lobby at aU, but walked out of the House.
The ground which the Lords alleged for their rejection of
the measure was that it was only half a scheme, and that a
redistribution of seats should have accompanied so large
an alteration of the electoral basis. Mr Gladstone, whUe
agreeing that the two operations should come into action
together, asserted roundly that to have grappled with them
in one BUl would have been an insane attempt. He
informed a party meeting, held at the Foreign Office
immediately after the vote in the House of Lords, of an
offer made to the Tories that, if the BUl passed, both Houses
should adopt an identical resolution saying that they had
passed the Franchise BiU in reliance on a promise that the
accompanying Redistribution BiU should be introduced
and passed the next year. The offer was characteristic
of the moderation with which Mr Gladstone handled the
' 13th June 1884.

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 137
whole situation. There was not lacking a quantity of
strong feeling against the House of Lords which might,
if he had chosen, have been worked into passion. Indeed,
the summer and autumn saw some very downright
meetings in the country — in Chatsworth Park, at Leicester
and Manchester especially — and some violent ones ; there
was a regular riot at Bournemouth at the end of July, and
another at Birmingham in October, when Sir Stafford
Northcote and Lord Randolph ChurchUl were refused a
hearing, and their platform was stormed after a free
fight. A Democratic Committee for the Abolition of the
House of Lords was established in London, Sir WUfrid
Lawson, Mr Labouchere, Professor Beesly and Mr Brad
laugh at its head — and it absorbed no doubt an earlier
body quaintly named " The Society for Removing Bishops
from the House of Lords." But all this feeling did not in
the least hustle Mr Gladstone out of his chosen path. He
had set his mind on carrying his BUl, and he did not intend
to have it swamped in a general campaign between the two
Houses, or a general test of the constitutional privileges
of the Peers. The Tories were not in a strong position ;
whatever may have been their real dislike of the new
franchise they had paid too much lip-service to it to
confront easily the indignation the Peers had roused.
" The Conservatives," Mr Goschen wrote about this time,
" never pronounce against the Franchise ; they have
never had a meeting against it ; never spoken except
as regards the time of yielding." ^ Moreover Mr Glad
stone had a valuable ally in Queen Victoria, who,
dreading as she always did the Radical element in the
Cabinet, was only too ready to assist Mr Gladstone in
any course alternative to a wholesale attack upon the
House of Lords. She feared above all things the atti
tude expressed by a most interesting new recruit of the
Ministerial benches in the House of Commons, Mr John
' Elliot's Life of Lord Goschen, i. 277.

138 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
Morley,! who had said to a political audience : " Be sure
that no power on earth can henceforth separate the ques
tion of mending the Commons from the other question of
ending or mending the House of Lords." ^ The Queen's
influence was active throughout the months of recess, and
Mr Gladstone made handsome acknowledgment of its
patient and prosperous application.*
A session which had opened with the expectation that it
would be entirely concerned with Egypt and the Franchise
ended by fulfilling that prophecy. Various Bills were dis
cussed; a Merchant Shippmg BUl, extending the Em
ployers' Liability Act to shipping, and setting a limit upon
insurance of ships and cargo ; a London Government BUl,
setting up a single Mimicipality (a Common Council of 240
members to take over the powers of the City Corporation,
the Metropolitan Board of Works, the Commissioners of
Sewers, the magistrates for Middlesex, Kent and Surrey
within the limits, and the Burial Boards and Vestries,
reserving only the poor law, education and the police for
other control, and enjoining the acquisition by the new
body of the undertakings of the gas and water companies) ;
and finally a more curious BUl, designed to relieve the gold
shortage by turning the half-sovereign, which suffered
more than the sovereign from wear and tear, into a token
coin, and making sovereigns the only legal tender on BUls
of Exchange. But all three proposals were dropped.
A considerable measure, however, was the attempted
conversion this year of the National Debt. The scheme
was to convert six hundred mUlions of 3 per cent, stock into
2| per cent, stock, by issuing £108 of the new for every
£100 of the old. The high price of Consols for so many
years justified the belief that the interest was more than
the nation need pay, and a lower price would, it was argued,
1 He had been elected for Newcastle in 1883.
' The Times, 31st July 1884.
" Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 138.-

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 139
have the advantage of making the security more market
able. The conversion scheme was gazetted on 8th August,
but did not attain any great success ; the public converted
about nine and a half mUlions, and twelve miUions which
the Govemment held were also converted, but this was a
very smaU proportion of the total. ^
It was not altogether a happy year for such an attempt.
The stock markets, disturbed by the uncertainty of our
foreign relations, and by a heavy selling of Suez Canal
shares, were too nervous for experiments. The bank rate
had been reduced to 3 per cent., but only by a strictness
on the part of the bank in fixing definite occasions for mak
ing advances to bUl brokers. Trade was slack, except in
the woollen industry ; an abundance of shipping had de
pressed freights and checked shipbuUding ; raUway traffic
retums were poor, and a coal strike was threatening in the
Midlands. The competition of foreign manufactures was
growing with the growing solidity of the German Empire
and the growing immigrant population of the United
States ; the militant Tory spirits in England were
divided between abusing foreign imports and abusing the
demands of Trade Unionism.^ The new Bankruptcy Act
was a source of some uneasiness ; for whUe working well
on the whole, and putting an end to the vicious private
compositions with creditors, it was also keeping in existence
firms of a somewhat shaky solvency, which shrank from the
publicity of the new arrangements. The cotton strike
begun in 1883 overshadowed the beginning of 1884. It
may even have had some damping effect upon the progress
of the Manchester Ship Canal scheme, which came before
Parliament in a private BUl this year, and was discussed by
a Select Committee of the House of Lords in the spring.
The scheme had to meet the opposition of Liverpool, which
1 The Times, i8th October 1884.
¦ E.g. Lord Dunraven and Sir E. Beckett (Lord Grimthorpe) in
The Times, 4th November 1884.

140 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
was expressed in the form of anxiety as to the possible
effect of the new waterway upon the existing channels of
the Mersey. The BiU passed Its second reading in the
Commons ; but came to grief in the general abandonment
of legislation during the Franchise controversy ; though
the determination of Manchester in the matter was seen in
the decision, taken later in the year, to promote another BUl
in the following session.
Manchester figured also in a remarkable controversy
which arose in the early autumn. It was said that the
corporation wished to undertake the management of a
hotel in the city. The truth at the back of the story was
that a hotel built on some land leased from the corporation
had been suddenly thrown on the corporation's hands by
the financial faUure of the lessee, before its completion ;
and, rather than leave the place idle, a licencee had been
put in as the corporation's tenant. Birmingham had,
however, attempted before this to obtain the leave of
Parliament to carry on the business of a licensed victualler,
so that it was natural to suppose that Manchester was on
the same track. The controversy on the subject, which
was raised by a licensed victuallers' organisation, is chiefly
interesting because it revealed no intellectual objection to
municipal trading, as such ; the only argument was that
to include hotel-keeping was going rather far. MeanwhUe
the enormous impulse given to municipal affairs by the new
power to issue stock may be judged from a report published
early in 1884 of the towns which had already obtained the
power ! ; they numbered no less than twenty-seven, and
the amount of authorised municipal stock had gone up
from five and a quarter millions to about seventy-five
mUlions. The local govemment debt of the country at
this time was already over a hundred millions.
In the region of social reform the year is notable for the
appointment of the Royal Commission on the Housing
' The Times, i8th January 1884;

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 141
of the Poor, which was gazetted on 4th March. The
presence on the Commission of the Prince of Wales as
chairman expressed strikingly the degree to which the
general national conscience was aroused on the subject.
The housing conditions in London were most prominently
discussed (in January the Local Government Board had
sent round a circular to the local authorities of London,
pointing out their powers and duties under various Acts,
as to the inspection of houses, the abatement of nuisances,
and the demolition of unsuitable dwellings) ; but the
public was well aware that sanitary conditions in country
places were exceedingly bad. Some committees of private
people in the richer parts of London had been investigating
conditions in such districts as Southwark ; so that in every
way the commission came at a time likely to render it
fruitful. It coincided with an event which, if as much
designed for pleasure as for business, was likely in a small
way to be of some assistance, the Health Exhibition, the
successor to the Fisheries Exhibition of the previous year.
Conferences on sanitary matters were held in connection
with the exhibition ; and both to them and to the housing
question a renewed alarm of cholera gave great importance.
' The first anxiety arose from a case discovered at Port Said
on board a homeward-bound troopship in AprU ; at the
end of Jime the disease appeared at Toulon, and spread to
MarseUles, to Spain and to Italy ; it continued to ravage
the south of Europe almost untU the winter set in. The
precautions taken in England still followed the principle
of improved sanitation, cleanliness, etc. ; and out of this
attitude grew the sharp attacks made in this year on the
Duke of Bedford on account of the shameful condition of
Covent Garden Market, where vegetables lay about rotting,
and no standard of cleanliness had ever been enforced.
" Mud-Salad Market " was the name Punch gave to it at
this time. A somewhat odder, and yet no less lasting,
result of the Health Exhibition was the sudden impulsion

142 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
it gave to the consideration of healthy clothing. From
this year dates the rise of Dr Jaeger's teachings in England ;
and The Times somewhat rashly committed itself to the
assertion that Englishmen would not be ashamed of wearing
a comfortable coat because it was ugly.^ But healthiness
does not necessitate the colours in clothing which the
enthusiasts adopted ; and they remained, therefore, when
the first ardour of the movement waned, a somewhat
conspicuous snuff-brown band. The ordinary man had
not as a whole displayed much interest in the sanitary
conferences of the Health Exhibition ; but it was some
consolation to record that by its means he had learned
again to walk in gardens of an evening and listen to a band.
Indeed the ordinary man's pursuit of health was opening
up everywhere fresh avenues. Cycling was giving access
to country places, and the National Cyclists' Union and
the Cyclists' Touring Club were in their second year of
existence. Swimming was much in vogue, and the Beck-
withs' entertainment had for a season or two been one
of the most popular in London ; it was announced in the
summer of 1884 that Miss Beckwith was going to attempt
to swim the Channel. The famUy visit to the seaside in
the summer had ceased by now to be a subject for superior
jokes ; and Punch's butt had become the Cockney tourist
at " BuUong." However, BoiUogne had no objection to
receiving him, and was in this year dredging its harbour to
allow of a fixed-hour steamship service across the Channel,
Lord Radnor at the same time being approached for
foreshore rights for a corresponding deep-sea harbour
at Folkestone.
At a great demonstration in July against the House of
Lords, after the rejection of the Franchise BUl, there was
a small group which, whUe joining in the demonstration,
preferred to have its own platform. It was a group of
socialists, and it attracted little attention until a speaker
14th October 1884.

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 143
referred contemptuously to John Bright (who had been
roused to battle again by the action of the Peers) ; where
upon the group was broken up by wrathful bystanders.
Yet though socialism was as yet contemptible to the
London populace it was already giving rise to some anxiety.
Henry George was lecturing in London in January of 1884
on Land Nationalisation ; and the frequent references to
him, spiteful or humorous, in newspapers and comic prints
throughout the year give some measure of the great impres
sion he had made. His theories coloured the whole of the
Radical programme. The first number of a new socialist
paper, Ju,stice, was published on 9th January 1884.
MeanwhUe middle-class attempts to do what was just
by the poor and the oppressed were increasing. There
was some inclination to perceive the rise of a " new
Radicalism," humanitarian and courageous, but distinctly
inclined to interference ; trade unions were warned that
it was not wise to invoke too much State interference.
But this was a misreading of the signs. The fault of the
trade unions was rather, as Mr Chamberlain saw, a more
marked tendency to exclude politics from their sphere of
work. In a letter to a correspondent published early in the
year Mr Chamberlain deplored this tendency, as " a practi
cal abnegation of the most vital interests of the working
classes." There is in this an interesting indication that
the disjunction of official Liberalism from the main current
of social change was causing some anxiety to Radical
leaders. But the latter had no opportunity of keeping
their minds with any continuity upon a restoration
of understanding. They missed such chances as were
offered them, for instance, by the prolonged discussion of
the condition of the Friendly Societies, some of which were
not financially above suspicion ; they did not see in the
earnest work of the societies' most prominent critic. Canon
Blackley, the nucleus of a scheme of national insurance for
workmen. They missed even such chances of action in the

144 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
socialist direction as were offered by the middle-class
themselves ; the railway companies, exhausted by com
petition, were tentatively expressing, through some of their
chairmen, the opinion that increased control by the Board
of Trade would not be unwelcome, if it would limit the
competition. The Government had, in fact, come to office
with an imperfect appreciation of the spirit of advanced
sections of the community, and it never had leisure to
obtain a clearer view. Meanwhile the sense of the increased
power of the working classes in the community, their
improved economic and, consequently, civic weight, so to
speak, is shown by a certain tendency to call in question
the whole basis of taxation. It was urged that the corol
lary of all the efforts being made for a social amelioration
should be a greater union in responsibUity ; and the
debates on the County Franchise BUl were accompanied
by the criticism that we were multiplying the voters
without increasing the number of taxpayers. Hence arose
the plea that there should be less reliance on indirect
taxation ; the days had passed when we " drank ourselves
out of the Alabama indemnity " ; and that there should be
no exceptions from direct taxation. Another idea was that
the Income Tax should be abolished, and money raised by
stamps on every sale of goods. However, social ideas of
any kind failed to penetrate into the rather narrow circle
of the politicians' outlook, and remained in the region of
private effort, where the benevolent spirit was more active
than the critical. New ideas, for instance, in connection
with elementary education showed to what astonishing
lengths the departure from the old individualism was
proceeding. Thoughtful people had begun to perceive
in the elementary schools not mere machines for giving
knowledge, after the operation of which chUdren must sink
or survive, as they could, but also fresh opportuni
ties for dealing with poverty and the inadequacies of
poor homes. Thus we find a New Education Code showing

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 145
signs of an inclination to lay less stress on examination
results, and more on a classification of children with
proper regard to their health, and at the same time a
movement of private philanthropy for providing the
children of the very poor with decent clothing and with
cheap meals at school. Compulsory education was having
its indirect effect in bringing to the light of day chUdren
whose lack of clothing and nourishment would otherwise
have been concealed in the swarming courts of town slums.
It is curious to find that an early difficulty in the way of
feeding chUdren was the distrust they showed of such food
as macaroni, lentUs, haricot beans, and even of soup ^ ; so
strong remained the British feeling that only meat made
a meal, even among those who could hardly ever have
meat. The fact that other forms of food were being used
in this work may be an indication that the more well-to-do
people were becoming aware of that narrowness of range
in catering which was remarked a year or two earlier.
The limitation of the meat supply by the embargo on im
ported cattle was stUl very great ; but the chilled meat trade
was steadUy advancing. The largest cargo yet landed in
England arrived on 26th September in a shipment of 22,000
carcasses, and 1000 pieces of beef, from New Zealand ;
cold storage warehouses had been constructed under
Cannon Street Railway Station in order to handle large
consignments. It was fortunate that the leaders of this
enterprise were persistent, for the impossibUity under the
existing regulations of moving live cattle was leading to
some atrocious experiments in conserving dead meat ; thus
a system had been devised of injecting boracic acid into an
animal before kUling it, the circulation of the blood con
veying the preservative over the body ; and other experi
ments were made with carbonic acid.^ The new inventions
which had so enlivened the past three or four years were
' The Times, 13th December 1884.
" Ditto, 31st January and 26th July 1884.

146 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
in 1884 a little at a standstUl. Electric lighting had not
yet reached the stage of central supply stations, and to
install it stUl meant buying a complete producing plant.
The slowness of development was put down in some
measure to the provisions of the Electric Lighting Act ;
itwas beginning to be felt that empowering local authorities
to purchase lighting undertakings at the end of twenty -one
years was rather too drastic, since the companies could not
expect to cut out the gas companies with such speed as to
recoup themselves within that period. In electric traction
the year witnessed a distinct change of method. The
" live rail " was replaced by the first practical " feed "
system for street use, the employment of a sunk conduit
carrying the current rail. It was tried at Blackpool, and
with no small success. But it was expensive, and so many
other experiments were being made in America that most
of the tramway companies preferred to hold their hands for
the present.
The opening of the new University College for Wales in
September carried on the advance of provincial university
education. About the same time the question of over
pressure in girls' schools, which had become a somewhat
heated item in a general discussion of the emancipation of
women and their entry into occupations hitherto ex
clusively masculine, came up again in the form of a report
by Dr Crichton Browne. The report was considered
somewhat rhetorical, and weak in evidence, and likely
therefore to put an end to genuine discussion.
Autumn brought an unprecedented return of life to
London. Instead of an adjourned session, such as had
previously been the means of finishing a heavy year's work,
the Government opened a new session in November. The
reason, of course, was that the Franchise Bill, having been
rejected by the Lords, could only reappear in a new session,
and as a Redistribution BUl was ahead it was necessary
to take at once the chances of a new attempt with the

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 147
Franchise BUl — chances which the Queen's influence had,
as we have said, rendered much brighter. The great world
made the best of the business, decided to have an autumn
season, and to amuse itself in London until Christmas —
a thing it had never done before. In any case, the rela
tions between the two Houses were exciting enough to
make hostesses sure of vivacious dinner-tables and gossipy
evening parties. The Tadpoles and Tapers came back to
town discussing the propriety or otherwise of a creation of
peers to pass the Bill, a course Mr Gladstone preferred to
avoid ! ; and meanwhile two men from the opposing sides
who could hardly have been better chosen — ^Lord Harting
ton and Sir Michael Hicks Beach — were parleying on
possible means of adjustment. Outwardly there was to the
last minute uncertainty as to the attitude of the House of
Lords, Lord Salisbury still demanding the actual production
of the Redistribution Bill before he would undertake to
pass the Franchise Bill. But on 18th November the crisis
was passed. The Franchise Bill was read a second time in
the Lords, the committee stage being postponed for the
Tory leaders to see in private the Redistribution BUl.
All went well ; on 27th November the Franchise Bill
passed its committee stage ; the Redistribution Bill was
introduced in the Commons on 2nd December, and on the
6th Pariiament adjourned until the following February.
The Redistribution BUl, discussed as it had been in private
between leaders of the two parties, promised an easy pas
sage ; but it, like the other Bill, raised at the outset a kind
of corollary discussion. The advocates of Proportional
Representation saw their opportunity, just as the advocates
of Woman Suffrage had seen theirs, and held meetings in
December to commend their views to the electorate. But
they did not succeed in persuading Mr Gladstone ; and Mr
Courtney, the chief advocate of the new idea, resigned his
post in the Govemment. ^ Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 130.

148 GORDON AT KHARTOUM [1884
The Redistribution BiU, in order to bring about the
proper digestion of a large accession of voters, had to
readjust drastically the electoral areas. Boroughs of less
than 15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised, and thrown
into county constituencies, to balance the new rural
vote. Towns with a population of less than 50,000 were
to have only one member ; and in general, save for the
very large towns, the constituencies were all to be
single-member areas. By these means 160 seats were
set free, to be allotted to the new constituencies pro
duced by the re-division of the county areas.
Mr Gladstone had steered his BUls through after his own
fashion. Only the boldest members of the party ventured
to remark that he had done exactly what he said he would
not do ; he had let the Lords see the Redistribution BUl as a
condition of passing the Franchise Bill. So unquestioned
was his supremacy that his party accepted what he had
done ; indeed, they hardly realised it. But the true
Radicals in after years put down to Mr Gladstone's action
on this occasion the confidence with which the House of
Lords rejected Liberal Bills. No other business had
occupied Parliament, though there was at this time some
discussion of our naval strength, and a demand for
extensive building of torpedo boats. This class of boat,
with its swiftness and deadliness of attack, was at the
moment the idol of a navy which only four years before
had seen the disappearance from the active list of the last
of the wooden armour-clads.
Yet even the political excitement about the Franchise
BUl could not conceal the more general anxiety about
Gordon. In September news of gloomy omen had come.
Colonel Stewart, Gordon's companion in Khartoum, on
whose cool judgment the British authorities in Cairo had
relied much in their bewUderment about Gordon himself,
left Khartoum on 10th September, with some other
Englishmen, in an attempt to reach Lower Egypt by way

1884] GORDON AT KHARTOUM 149
of the Nile. Their steamer was wrecked sixty mUes below
Abu Hamed, and Stewart and his companions, having been
lured into a village, were murdered there. After this an
other long silence ensued. Wolseley was making his way
up the NUe, but was not ready until December for the move
across the desert from Korti. There he divided his force
into two columns, one under Sir Herbert Stewart starting
to take the desert route, and the other under General Earle
to take the Nile route. On the day that Herbert Stewart
set out a message arrived from Gordon, on a scrap of paper
about the size of a postage stamp : " Khartoum all right.
14. 12. 84. C. G. Gordon." A verbal message accompanied
it to the effect that Khartoum was in great straits. But at
least Gordon was still alive, relief was approaching him,
and the year ended in good hope.

CHAPTER VII
1885 : THE DEATH OF GORDON, THE GENERAL ELECTION,
AND THE RISE OF SOCIALISM
IT was a remarkable stroke of Fate which placed the
Govemment at the beginning of 1885 in the position
of not having to " meet Parliament." As the session
had been opened in November, and only adjourned over
Christmas, the reassembling in 1885 was not accompanied
with the formalities of a Speech from the Throne, an Ad
dress in either House, and a general engagement of forces.
On the contrary, there was at the critical moment all the
natural instinct of the politician to carry through a large
piece of half -finished work ; and, as the holding-over of the
important stages of the Redistribution BUl provided that
condition, the Govemment did not actually have to go to the
country until the popular mind had undergone no slight
change from a temper on the subject of Gordon, which
would beyond a doubt have wrecked the Liberal party at
the beginning of the year.
The first news of the year from the Soudan was cheering.
On 16th January it was announced in London that Herbert
Stewart had reached Metemmeh, and on the 22nd the
papers had the news of the battle of Abu Klea. The story
of the fight was one to soothe ruffled popular pride ;
the British square had been broken in the battle, but by
sheer fighting courage, sheer pluck, the troops had re
stored their formation, and it was reported that when the
enemy had drawn off 1100 of their dead had been
counted on the field. Nevertheless the battle cost the life
of one who was a hero of adventure. Colonel Bumaby.
The next piece of news was a blow. Herbert Stewart
150

1885] THE DEATH OF GORDON 151
himself had been shot on 18th January, whUe his force was
advancing through bush the day after the battle, and his
wound was grave. But the force pushed on, and on
21st January reached the NUe at Gubat. Here it met
four steamers, the river fleet which Gordon had had at
Khartoum, and with them was one more tiny scrap of
paper. It bore the words : " Khartoum is aU right.
Could hold out for years. C. G. Gordon. 29. 12. 84."
The decision to use the steamers for a hasty advance to
Khartoum was instantly taken, but Sir Charles WUson,
who had succeeded Herbert Stewart in command,
ordered certain reconnaissances to be made before they
moved. They actuaUy started up the NUe again on
24th January.
On 6th February England had the news that Khartoum
had fallen, and the relief force had been too late. In
official quarters it had been known twenty-four hours
earlier. Sir Charles Wilson's little advance force, steaming
up the Nile, had come in sight of Khartoum, and simul
taneously under heavy firing from the river-sides, on 28th
January. Their eyes searched for the flag that should
have been flying. A man had shouted from the bank on
the previous day that Khartoum had fallen, and Gordon
was killed. The flag was not there. After satisfying
himself by other observations that Khartoum was wholly
in the Mahdi's hands Sir Charles WUson turned his steamers
and went downstream. For a few days England refused to
believe the worst ; rumours about Gordon were rife among
the natives around Wolseley's camp at Korti, and for ten
days England remained in suspense. Then on 16th
February was published a telegram from Wolseley, saying
that Gordon had been kUled. Just before sunrise on
26th January, with the steamers so close at hand, he
had faced at the entrance to his residence the spears of
the Mahdi's horde, and died as fearlessly as he had
lived.

152 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
The angry excitement in England was intense. From
the Queen herself, who sent her Ministers a sharp telegram
of rebuke without observing the ordinary custom of putting
the message in cypher,^ down to the humblest of her
subjects, the outcry against Mr Gladstone and his Govern
ment arose. Gordon had indeed become almost a figure
of legend in the popular mind ; men told how he had gone
through the whole of the campaign of the Ever- Victorious
Army in China with no weapon but a cane, how little
he had cared for danger in his earlier days in the Soudan.
His religious fervour, his disregard for himself, his mission
ary enthusiasm, all contributed to produce a kind of ideal
isation of him against which no amount of knowledge of the
inner history of his last mission could have prevaUed. Be
this at least said to the honour of those most bitterly
attacked on account of his death — ^that no word was
uttered by them to destroy the character which the pre
valent hero-worship buUt up. It is trae that no contrary
word would have been likely to carry weight ; but the
many that might have been said in heat or exasperation
by those who were now held responsible were left unsaid.
In the nation's hour of bitterness the news published on
21st Febraary that Herbert Stewart had died of his wound
was a real additional grief. Gallant, frank and sweet-
natured, he was in the opinion of many the finest soldier
of them aU. Parliament had just met again ; and in spite
of its not meeting with the usual discussion of the Govern
ment's work in a debate on an Address, it could not of
course proceed far without an opportunity for arraigning
Ministers. On 27th Febraary aVote of Censure was moved,
and was only defeated by 302 votes to 288. The Govern
ment had to face a double disaffection among its followers,
the greater one contained in the reason for the motion of
censure, and a lesser one arising from the hostUity of one
group of Liberals to the announced policy of not aUowmg
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 167.

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 153
the Mahdi to hold Khartoum. The latter led to a number
of abstentions from the division. But, as we have said, the
existence of a great piece of work, half -accomplished, tided
the Cabinet over the internal dissensions which followed
such a vote. It was agreed in the Cabinet that the Redis
tribution BiU should be carried through. There was also
reason to believe that the Conservatives were not at the
moment very anxious to come into office, and shoulder the
thankless task of taking secondary decisions about the
Soudan.^ Indeed the Conservatives were in no sense in
a strong position ; the reproaches for the death of Gordon
had not been aimed entirely in one direction, and Con
servatives were reminded that they had at no period in the
past year displayed the possession of any policy of their
own which might have helped to guide events ; their work
of criticism and of extracting from the Ministry at any
given moment its intentions had been so Ul-done that
there was even room for asking, with what would in
easier circumstances have been comical bewilderment,
whether we were actually at war, and if so, with whom.^
For one half of England these were the events that
shadowed and embittered the opening of 1885. There was
another half which had not at this time heart or strength
to look beyond its own urgent need. The winter was full
of distress and unemployment. Early in January three or
four thousand men in Birmingham presented themselves,
orderly, quiet, but near starvation, before the mayor,
asking for work. From every great town came a similar
cry, and in London the distress was as much greater as the
poor streets spread further. Deputations had gone to the
Lord Mayor in earlier years, and a few thoughtful people
had paid attention to them. Now with the more bitter
need came a new and more menacing frame of mind
among the men. On 16th February a deputation of
unemployed went to the Local Government Board, where
1 The Times, 2nd March 1885. 'Ditto, 14th February 1885.

154 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
they were received by Mr George Russell, the Parliamentary
Secretary. He could make them no more than an official
reply ; the problem they represented could hardly be said
officially to have any existence. That fact was, to the men
concerned, the heart of their reproach ; and this was what
they meant when they asserted at the end of their fruitless
visit that the Board and the Govemment would be respon
sible for the deaths that destitution would bring in the next
few weeks. " Responsible for murder " was the exagger
ated phrase they used ; but they saw strong and wiUtng
men being pushed out of life, and if it were not a deliberate
process, such as might fairly be called murder, then the
sooner someone began to deliberate about it the better.
As the men left the Local Government Board they dis
tributed a manifesto fiercely worded against a Government
which had acknowledged its helplessness ; the manifesto
bore the names of John Bums, J. E. WiUiams, WUliam
Henry, and James Macdonald. Round the comer in
Downing Street they held a defiant meeting before the
police had gathered force to stop them, and a man spoke
hanging to the cross-bar of a lamp-post. We may picture
him there — ^the first portent of a series of troubled
years. The problem of the unemployed had, we have remarked,
no official existence. Yet at this very moment it came
nearer to having one than it was to come again for some
years. At the end of January a conference, extraordinary
to look back upon, took place in London. It was called the
Industrial Remuneration Conference, and it had been
rendered possible by an anonymous gift of £1000 for the
purpose. The fact is significant of how much the social
unrest had begun to impress thoughtful people, however
little appearance it made on the surface of things. The
proceedings of the conference are a most interesting index
of the state of sociological opinion at the time of the
dissolution of the old individualism. The intellectuals of

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 155
the official and political world met face to face the teachers
of socialism, and those leaders of the trade unions who were
introducing profound changes into the theory of trade
combination. Sir Charles Dilke presided over the meeting.
Lord Bramwell read a paper against socialism ; Mr
Bernard Shaw joyously defended a thesis that the landlord,
the capitalist and the burglar were equally damaging to the
community. Mr Arthur Balfour criticised Henry George's
Progress and Poverty ; Mr Shaw Lef evre spoke of the
English land system as " relics of feudalism " which should
be swept away ; Mr WUliams, of the Social Democratic
Federation, retorted that when Mr Chamberlain spoke of
nationalising the land, but avoided saying anything about
manufactures, he was but an " Artful Dodger." Mr John
Morley, with a watchful eye upon the proceedings of the
Fair Trade League, warned the Conference of the fallacies
of the Imperial Zollverein school, and of the hopelessness
of expecting any colony to give up its tariff. In the less
controversial hours of the conference the Rev. H. Solly
preached the doctrine, more famUiar to our day than to
his, of avoiding congestion of labour by the institution
of industrial vUlages ; and Mr John Burns, with no little
common-sense, pointed out how much the principle of
socialism was already embodied in the normal activity of
great and advanced municipalities.
There was leaven enough here, and some of it seemed to
be already at work in the community. Mr Shaw Lefevre's
references to the land had this additional point — that he
had been Chairman of a Departmental Committee which
had reported in the middle of January in favour of an
allotment system for labourers ; and Mr Jesse CoUings was
at the height of his advocacy of smaU holdings, whUe Mr
Chamberlain was making speeches which were thought to
point not obscurely to a special taxation of landed property
such as might advance a break-up of big estates.^ Again
' The Times, 5th February 1885.

156 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
the hostUity visible on one side of the conference to the
middleman and the capitalist had its practical counterpart
in the advancing work of the co-operative movement.
It was already including both production and distribution,
though it was more engaged in the latter. Mr Bums's
reference to municipalities was also full of significance.
The opinion of the social reformers of the period that " the
era of administration had come " issued in January 1885
in the formation of the Fabian Society, whose principle was
the advancement of socialistic ideals at every opportunity
afforded by the existing machinery of the State, in contra
distinction to those socialists who wished to begin by
recreating the machinery. Mr Bernard Shaw had appeared
at the Industrial Remuneration Conference as a represen
tative of this new society. The Fabians based their hopes
mainly on Local Govemment. The great municipalities
had at the moment not much further to expand ; the chief
project of the year, that of Manchester's water-supply from
Thirlmere, had been really settled when parliamentary
powers for the work had been obtained in 1879, though
six years had intervened before the Water Committee of
the CouncU resolved to commence the undertaking. But
the lesser municipalities might stUl be aroused ; and in
any case there remained the prospect of reorganisation
of county govemment, which was stUl an unfulfiUed
promise. Once again, just when a domestic problem had gathered
force and impetus which might have moved Parliament, an
urgent distraction intervened, and again it was a bequest
of "Beaconsfieldism." It came this time from Afghanistan.
Russia, advancing her possessions in Central Asia, had
annexed Turcoman territory; and the necessary conse
quence had been a commission to delimit the frontier
between that territory and Afghanistan. The British
relations with the Ameer were such that the commission
consisted of British and Russian diplomats. WhUe they

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 157
were at work Russian troops came into conflict with Afghan
troops at Penjdeh, routed them after a heavy fight, and
occupied the place. On this question Mr Gladstone showed
none of the lack of interest which had been so fatal in
Egypt. Partly, no doubt, this was due to the detached
sharpness of the incident ; there was no ambiguity as to
England's position. But at the same time, however serious
the matter was at the moment, however anxious the diplo
matic problem, the fact remains that the Penjdeh incident
could be looked back upon afterwards as " a perfect god
send " from a Liberal politician's point of view.^ England
was so much roused that a vote of credit was passed with
no difficulty, the reserves were called out, and every eye
was turned upon the possibUity of war with Russia.
Mr Gladstone, seizing the opportunity to deplore a dis
traction of our forces, was able to abandon quietly the
whole of the Khartoum problem, and in addition to meet
the remaining costs of the Soudan expedition, amounting
to four and a half mUlions, out of a vote of credit already
obtained, instead of having to move a separate vote and
thereby definitely raise the question of abandoning
Khartoum. Thus Mr Gladstone achieved the feat of
satisfying at one and the same time the Radicals, by
removing the possibUity of more bloodshed in Egypt, and
the Whigs, by opposing Russian aggression. The result
rewarded his admirable party skUl. The Russian menace
subsided, and by the beginning of May an agreement had
been reached which removed all danger. Wolseley was
ordered home from Dongola, the decision was taken to
establish the Egyptian frontier at Wady Haifa, and the hot
fit in England passed as opportunely as in one sense it had
arisen. Baring's despatches from Egypt were to the effect
that, whUe he could not pretend to agree in all the decisions
that had been taken, he was sure that the general lines of
the Government's policy were perfectly practicable, and
1 HoUand's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, ii. 3 1 .

158 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
would, if persevered in, lead to success. On 30th June
the Mahdi died, and his place in the Soudan was taken by
the Khalifa.
A minor interest brought out by the return of the
troops was the fact that, for the first time, colonial troops
joined the British regular forces in an affair in which their
colony was not directly concerned, and took, as it were.
Imperial status. An Australian contingent had been
landed at Suakin, and had taken part in operations under
Sir Gerald Graham. With this development of colonial
spirit may be linked a speech made by Mr Goschen at
Manchester in February, which marks the beginning of the
most striking change of our time in the hierarchy of
Govemment departments. He pointed out that colon
ising, both by the British and by other nations, had now
spread so widely that in every part of the world Britain
had civUised neighbours ; therefore statesmanship, which
had never found a home at the Colonial Office, would have
to be brought to bear upon our colonial relations and upon
the foreign relations springing out of them. For the
moment this pronouncement lost its value amid the
difficulties of the year, but it deserves to be recorded in
its place.
The Govemment appeared now to have ridden out
another storm. But the Cabinet was working un
comfortably ; Mr Chamberlain was making speeches
which his less Radical colleagues disliked ; coercion was
holding Ireland down ; and the question of relieving its
severity and at the same time introducing some measure
of local self-government was a constant source of friction
amongst Ministers. On 8th June the Govemment feU,
being defeated on an amendment to the second reading
of the Budget, dealing with the proposed increase of the
beer duty. It was common knowledge that the Govem
ment Whips had deliberately permitted the defeat.
Mr Gladstone resigned. His action has a place in

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 159
constitutional history, since it had not hitherto been
customary for defeat on a minor point to involve resigna
tion, whUe a government had a majority for its general
policy. 1 But on the other hand the smallness of the
majority on the Vote of Censure would have been sufficient
cause for a change of government, if the desire to pass the
Redistribution BUl had not operated. The step that was
now taken caused some difficulty. A dissolution of Parlia
ment was impossible untU both the new franchise and the
new distribution of seats were in operation ; and it
became necessary therefore for Lord Salisbury to consider
taking office without a majority in the Commons. Not
unnaturally he began by stipulating for a promise of
support from the outgoing Liberals. In the end he took
office without any definite promise, but with an under
standing that necessary matters, such as supply, would not
be contested. Yet the brief remainder of the life of this
Parliament was not to be devoid of interest or importance.
Now that the party balance was again in question the Irish
vote recovered that power of swaying the scales, which
since 1882 it had largely ceased to possess. For some time
coercion, which at the period of the Phoenix Park murders
had been restored without compunction, had been afflicting
Radical consciences ; though the revival of dynamite
outrages had blurred sensitiveness on the subject. Those
outrages had not ceased. At the very beginning of
January 1885 there was another explosion on the Under
ground Railway, this time between Gower Street and
King's Cross stations ; only slight personal injuries
resulted. On 24th January there was another group of
simultaneous explosions, such as the previous year had
seen, and these were the most notorious explosions of this
period of Fenianism. They occurred in Westminster Hall,
in the House of Commons itself, and in the White Tower
1 See an article on English Public Life in The Edinburgh
Review, July 191 1.

160 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
of the Tower of London. In Westminster Hall two
policemen were very seriously injured, but practically no
damage, save to the stone flooring, was infficted on the
buUding ; the concussion had the extraordinary effect
of shaking down from the timbers of the roof the
dust of ages, and those who entered the hall directly
afterwards walked on a thick grey carpet of it. Parlia
ment had not yet met ; consequently the explosion in the
House of Commons, beyond half-wrecking the seats and
galleries, had no result, except the natural alarm at the
thought that dynamite could be deposited in a spot
normally so well policed. In the Tower of London several
people were injured, and damage done by a fire which
followed the explosion. Yet when party exigencies
required it, politicians did not find that difficulty in keeping
their minds clear of a confusion between Fenianism and the
Home Rule movement, which they were equally ready on
other occasions to indulge. Some of them displayed
certainly after the change of govemment a suppleness
which those who were not politicians found unaccountable.
The spectacle of Lord Randolph ChurchUl supporting,
and even Sir Michael Hicks Beach regarding benevolently,
a motion by Pamell calling attention to Lord Spencer's
" maladministration of the law " under the Coercion Act,
was bewUdering to most, and repugnant to many. Lord
Randolph ChurchUl's reputation stamped his share in
the matter as being purely tactical. But what was to be
thought of the speech delivered in the House of Lords
by the new Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Carnarvon ? ^ He
had been Governor-General of British colonies, and in his
speech he remarked that, as he had seen those communities
living in loyal obedience to the law and the Crown, so he
could not see at home " any irreconcilable bar to the unity
and amity " of English and Irish. It was a hint, rather
than a statement ; the only positive part of the speech was
» The Times, 7th July 1885.

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 161
its repudiation of coercion. But since it was a speech made
by the new Viceroy in the presence of the new Prime
Minister (and a speech by a viceroy was in any case so un
usual that it had had but two precedents since the Union) ^
no slight interpretation of its meaning could easUy be
formed. It was not an imf air conclusion that the precedent
of the self-governing colonies was in the Ministry's mind.
What had the Liberals to set against it ? The answer is,
a policy of local self-government, for which at this moment
Mr Chamberlain stood most prominently. He was taking
a strong line, and in June 1885, just after the defeat of
Mr Gladstone's Ministry, had shown his sense of the
suddenly restored importance of the Irish vote by making
the famous speech in which he compared the existing rale
of Ireland to the rule of oppressed Poland ; an Irishman
" could not move without an official controlling him."
At the same time his policy amounted not to a separate
government for Ireland, but only to a system of local
councUs, under a central board in Dublin. Even that
degree of Irish independence had not been accepted by
most of his colleagues ; and meanwhile on the Conservative
side Lord Randolph Churchill's fair words to Ireland were
so much disliked that at a great meeting at Liverpool,
which he addressed at the end of July, the two members
for the constituency in which he spoke took the serious
step of declining to appear on the platform. The Irish
party was thus confronted with a situation in which
two concUiatory policies were being expressed, but neither
with such authority that it could be definitely selected at
the expense of the other. Strong as Lord Carnarvon's
speech had been, it could not be used to pin the new
Government down. As soon as Liberals began to for
mulate the idea that between Lord Salisbury, Lord
Randolph ChurchiU, and Parnell there was an understand
ing as to the support of the Irish vote, it was seen that
"^ Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 211.

162 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
nothing had happened to render impossible a flat denial
of any such understanding.^
A summer of most unusual heat interrupted political
warfare. The thermometer more than once reached
90° in the shade ; and trade, which had begun the
year somewhat slackly, had no chance of recovery when
the heat combined with the collapse of the session to send
people at an early date out of town. The sight of the
unemployed at the beginning of the year had given some
measure of the commercial conditions. There were those
among business men who thought that one cause of weak
ness was that means of production had outstripped means
of distribution ; this was a Lancashire view. Trade was
bad not only in England, but all over the world, largely
because of the appreciation of gold ; and at the same time,
although capital was cheap, there was little encouragement
towards speculation.^ A Royal Commission on Trade
had been asked for, and was believed to be in process of
formation ; but its actual appearance was delayed, and
many people felt that after all, with the various nostrums
then in the market — Bimetallism, Fair Trade, and the
repeal of the Bank Act, for example — a commission might
be but a hotbed for faddists. Its best work would prob
ably lie in inquiring into the relations between British
traders and foreign customers, and into the possibUity of
more assistance to those relations from the Foreign Office.
MeanwhUe so much change was beginning in the banking
world that it seems to be fair to conclude that the struggle
of trade with enlarged competition and narrowed coinage
supply was leading to a reconsideration of the principles
of banking. In 1885 Glyn, MUls, Currie & Co. decided
to register themselves under the Companies Acts (though
not with limited liabUity), and so undertake the statutory
duty of publishing a balance sheet ; this was thought to be
1 See The Times, 8th and loth August 1885.
2 See a speech by Mr Goschen, The Times, 24th June 1885.

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 163
a good example for private banks to follow. An equally
important change is seen in the commencement about
this time of the absorption of smaU banks into larger
combinations ; the Capital and Counties Bank took over
the Gloucestershire Banking Company in 1885 ; and
there had previously been one or two amalgamations in
the Birmingham district. The relief of the gold supply
had not yet begun, though the progress of events in
the Transvaal is marked by the description of the new
" slimes " process for dealing with gold from deep levels. ^
Early in the summer the Royal Commission on the
Housing of the Poor issued a first interim report. It
recommended for the time being a more active enforce
ment of the existing law ; but it proposed also the
purchase of three prison sites — ^those of Coldbath Fields,
PentonvUle and Millbank — and setting them free for
housing purposes by demolishing the prisons. That at
Coldbath Fields was already out of use, and MUlbank was
shortly to be abandoned as a place of detention. A
Bill to forward these recommendations was passed by
Parliament after the change of Govemment. It also
strengthened and made applicable to the whole coimtry
certain powers of the Local Govemment Board hitherto
confined to London, and contained a provision that any
one letting a house to a tenant without taking reasonable
precautions for the health of the inmates would be liable
for any death due to his negligence. A more remarkable
provision (especially as events had placed the BUl in Tory
hands) was a stipulation that the two prison sites which it
had been decided to take over should not be taken at their
market value ; this was regarded as a step towards State
socialism.^ StUl more curious in the mouth of Lord
Salisbury, who moved the second reading of the BUl in the
House of Lords, was a clause deciding that the price of land
' The Times, 12th August 1885.
2 Ditto, 17th July 1885.

164 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
for housing purposes was not to be the best that could
be got, but the best that in all the circumstances could
reasonably be obtained. So easy a thing was the Fair
Rent principle when its field of operation was not Ireland !
Oddly enough, there was less comment on the clause
empowering the Local Govemment Board to set Housing
Acts in operation, a duty hitherto left to local authorities.
Society lost in this year two or three notable figures.
Lord Houghton died in August with one of the most famous
and most charming of death-bed sayings on his lips :
" Yes, I am going to join the majority, and, you know,
I have always preferred minorities." Both the charm and
the truth of the saying were characteristic of him ; he was
never prone to take the facUe view of things ; and under
his tj^ically English appearance there lay an essentially
un-English nature, alike in his ease of manner and in his
wide tolerance. At the beginning of October died Lord
Shaftesbury, a man whose natural goodness directed him,
as perhaps natural goodness seldom does, into the very
paths where he could most fulfil himself. He was proud,
somewhat intolerant of opposition, unyielding in principle,
and for those reasons unlikely to have made his life success
ful in the normal paths of office ; but, diverted by his
passionate sympathy and eager mind into phUanthjopic
paths, he found every quality he had work together for
good.^ He died before he had seriously to measure his zeal
for doing what he thought right by the working poor against
the working men's new inclination to judge what they
themselves thought to be their due from the commimity.
But his advocacy of the Factory Laws had been the first
assault upon individualism — an assault made much more
effective by the support of his great name. A person
sociaUy less lofty, but none the less a real figure of the
' For the characters of Lord Houghton and Lord Shaftesbury
see Mr G. W. E. RusseU's Collections and Recollections, chapters ui.
and V.

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 165
London world, was Sir Moses Montefiore, who died in July,
well past his hundredth year ; he was associated with
the RothschUds, and had been the second Jewish sheriff of
London, just after the days of Emancipation.
Of material progress the year offers little to record.
The Manchester Ship Canal BUl at last was law, after
having had to be promoted three times. The enormous
cost of these preliminary stages raised the whole question
of the oppressiveness of private bill procedure, and the
futUity of a separate inquiry before a committee of each
House ; but the criticism died down in the face of
more stirring parliamentary events. Before the end of
the year it was said that the project had already reduced
raUway freights between Manchester and Liverpool from
9s. 2d. a ton to 8s. a ton.^ Naval experts were excited
by the trials of the first submersible boat. It had been
invented by Nordenfeldt, the gunmaker, and it was sixty-
four feet long, constructed of steel plates varying from
five-eighths of an inch in thickness at the centre to three-
eighths of an inch at the ends. It was submerged partly
by fflling water-tanks and partly by the action of vertical
propellers, and when under water its fire-box was sealed,
and pressure was obtained from tanks previously heated.
Its best performance was staying down for six hours with
a crew of four men.^ The invention gave fresh point to
the advocacy of liquid fuel for the navy, which Admiral
Selwyn started this year. But a steam submarine was not
a very practicable machine, and the idea made no real
advances till electricity had become much more potent. A
new electric locomotive made its appearance in November,
the fresh principle being a revolving motor rendering
belt transmission unnecessary, which was one more step
toward electric trams. MeanwhUe the steam tram at last
invaded London, and one was running on the North
' The Times, 30th October 1885.
2 Ditto, 1st October 1885.

166 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
Metropolitan lines. A strange new method of propelling
vehicles must be modestly recorded at this point. A
Mr Butler constructed a vehicle, in the form of a tricycle,
which was driven by an internal combustion engine. Ever
since the days of Trevethick's steam carriage, in 1802,
mechanical propulsion of carriages had interested inventors.
Against a dead weight of opposition they pursued their
schemes, and for heavy haulage steam traction engines had
long been in use, under the strict limitations of the Act of
1865, which forbade a speed of more than four mUes an hour,
and enjoined that every such vehicle must be preceded by
a man carrying a red flag. Even this discouragement did
not whoUy extinguish invention, and in 1881 an attempt,
though a vain one, had been made to prove that the Act
did not apply to a steam tricycle. Mr Butler's was a com
pletely fresh start. He applied to his machine the prin
ciple of exploding vapour — benzoline vapour was the one
he used — ^inside the piston cylinder by means of an electric
spark. At the same time Gottlieb Daimler in France was
applying the same principle, but using petroleum spirit
to provide the vapour. ^ As far as England is concerned
the subject has to be left for the present, with Mr Butler's
isolated idea useless in face of the Act of 1865, and
commerciaUy stUl-born.
The demand for sixpenny telegrams had been acceded to,^
but the detaUs required no little arrangement, since under
the old minimum of a shilling the names and addresses
of the receiver and the sender had been transmitted free
of charge, and the Post Office declined to continue this
practice with a sixpenny minimum. This year also saw
the completion of the Revised Version of the Bible, the
version of the Old Testament having been finished on
1st May, after fifteen years' work. The New Testament
version had been finished and published two or three years
' See the article on Motors in the Encyclopadia Britannica.
'The new system came into force on ist October 1885.I

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 167
earlier. The Church of England was at present in smoother
water, and the Ritual controversy had largely declined.
Evangelicalism, indeed, had not weakened ; for a year or
two earlier the Church Army had been founded (it held its
first large annual meeting on 28th May 1884) to take up
in the streets and byways the same kind of work as the
Salvation Army was doing. The latter stUl met with
strong opposition ; dragoons had to be caUed out to quell
a fight between it and the Skeleton Army at Worthing,
and there were savage riots at Derby, in which stones flew
and the band instruments were used as weapons. A
somewhat old-fashioned outbreak of morality in this year
was the discussion of the nude in art which accompanied the
course of the Royal Academy Exhibition in the summer.'
A more important event in the history of art is that in 1885
was founded the New English Art Club. There had been
until now hardly any opportunity for an artist not in accord
with the theory and practice of the Royal Academy to set
his work before the public. The Grosvenor Gallery had,
indeed, attached to itself the Pre-Raphaelite group and
the aesthetic movement. But it had no inclination to
pass outside the safe financial ground provided by a craze.
MeanwhUe there had been growing up in England a school
of painters, trained for the most part in Paris, whose work,
not so mannered as to take the ecstatic fancy of the
Eesthetic, nor so consciously original as to have a public of its
own, like Whistler's, was nevertheless vital and revolution
ary enough to fail altogether of entrance to the Academy.
The work of this school had been the most notable feature
of the Glasgow Exhibition of 1881, and it was high time
that it should be seen in London. The New English Art
Club gathered genius and talent which has ever since
sapped the reputation of the Royal Academy.
In the world of education the year 1885 is significant
as showing the first signs of a general acceptance of
^ The Times, 22nd May, and other dates, 1885.

168 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
new duties. At a conference In Manchester it was stated
with some pride that Owens CoUege was in a position
to offer to the working man a choice of three hundred
lectures, the cost of which was voluntarUy met by Man
chester residents. Towards the end of the year the
People's Palace scheme took shape, the object again being
the provision of advanced education for working men and
women ; and something of the same sort is to be traced
in the movement for making the London University a
teaching body, instead of a merely examining body.
The year saw also a notable step forward in science,
photography being for the first time successfully applied
to astronomical purposes. The value of this was promptly
seen in the proposal, emanating in the first instance from
Dr GUI, Astronomer Royal at the Cape, for intemational
co-operation in a great work of charting the heavens.
The autumn brought with it the uproar of a general
election, in which one great issue was obscured by con
flicting half-lights. Over the field of politics there were
issues enough. Mr Chamberlain's speeches outlined the
whole range of the Radical programme, including bank
ruptcy reform, a reform of the Charity Commission with
a view to" enlarging the social area of educational endow
ments, county government reform, free education, cottages
and land for labourers, shipping measures, a graduated
income tax; and some form of self-government for Ireland,
and disestablishment of the Church of England. Mr Glad
stone's manifesto was naturally less far-reaching. On his
own side critics called it a " rather weak production," and
opined that " if it was not that the party are ready to take
anything from him, it would fall rather flat." ^ He placed
first reform of the procedure of the House of Commons, and
on county government reform avoided committing himself
to a definite scheme ; on the land question he proposed the
^ Lord Hartington to Mr Goschen : EUiot's Life of Lord Goschen,
ii. 2:

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 169
abolition of entaU and a system of freer transfer, adding
that he " would rejoice if these or other means in them
selves commendable led to a large increase in the owners
of the soU"; on disestablishment he spoke oracularly, and
seemed to regard it as but a distant possibUity ; on free
education he was careful to point out the disadvantages ;
on Ireland he expressed himself in favour of the greatest
possible extension of self-government consistent with
maintenance of the authority of the Crown and Parliament.
Of these proposals one — ^that of county government
reform — was as prominent in the programme of the other
side. The existing confusion of the spheres of local
authorities was extreme, the justices administering some
Acts, the local Health Boards others, the Guardians of the
Poor and the School Boards stUl others. Disestablishment
had appeared somewhat unexpectedly as a very forcible
item in the election ; apparently there was some hope that
the newly enfranchised might be moved on the subject,' and
it was at any rate found, as the polling time approached,
that nothing more interested the electors. Mr Chamber
lain had by this time rather drawn in his homs ; he had had
an interview with Mr Gladstone at Hawarden on 8th
October, and by the end of the month was saying that
disestablishment could hardly be dealt with in the coming
Parliament. But many candidates were already com
mitted to it, and churchmen were roused in every constitu
ency. Against the general Liberal programme the Tories
had not, beyond county government, much positive line
of their own. But they made a good fight out of the
differences between Mr Gladstone and the advanced
Radicals. Lord Randolph ChurchiU vastly increased his
reputation at this sort of warfare, and did not shrink from
competing with Mr Chamberlain on his own caucus ground.
He became president of the Conservative News Agency,
an organisation for supplying caricatures and pamphlets
» See, e.g.. The Times, nth April 1885.

170 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
to candidates in aU constituencies, and for supplementing
the resources of local newspapers. The mistake of raising
the disestablishment question enough to irritate the clergy,
and then dropping it enough to discourage Nonconformists,
was a notable score for the Tories. It may be added here
that the Woman Suffrage movement had been so far
forwarded by the opportunities it had received for debate
in the House that it had been able to exact after the
General Election more precise information of the position
occupied by the question in the opinions of the new House.
Out of 495 members for England and Wales 253 were in
favour of Woman Suffrage and 102 against ; of the 72
Scottish members 24 were in favour and 18 against ; of
the 86 Irish members 25 were in favour and 3 against.
Behind all the electoral conflict was that issue which we
have described as obscured by half-lights. The Liberals
offered Ireland local govemment by councils. The Tories
made no specific offer ; but it was fairly well known that
Pamell had spoken of having got " something better "
than the Liberal offer.' He himself had declared outright
for national independence in a speech at Dublin in August
1885 ; but no one in England supposed the " something
better " to amount to this ideal. The final disposal of the
Irish vote in English constituencies turned on a matter
that involved no revelations. Mr Gladstone in a speech at
Edinburgh had spoken of the " dangers of a situation in
which either party would be liable to be seduced from the
right path by the temptation which might be offered to
it by the vote of the Irish members," and exhorted the
electors of Great Britain to return one party or the other
by a majority which would make it independent of the Irish
vote. Some of his followers were dismayed ; they ex
pected PameU instantly to denounce Gladstone as insincere
in his promises to Ireland, if he was so anxious for an
independent majority. But PameU stUl used no language
' Barry O'Brien's Life of Parnell, u. 137.

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 171
but that of attempting to persuade Mr Gladstone to formu
late precisely his proposals with regard to Ireland. Mr Glad
stone replied with a rather bantering speech, to the effect
that he was not in office, and that it did not lie with him to
make proposals. This it was that stirred PameU to fury,
and he issued the sharp manifesto by which the Irish vote
went to Conservative candidates.
It did not, however, carry the day in Great Britain : the
result of the election showed a return of 333 Liberals against
251 Tories. But the pledged Home Rule party, the
unquestioning adherents of Parnell, who had been but 35
in 1880, were now a solid block of 86 ; they had carried
every seat in Ireland that was not Conservative. As for
the newly enfranchised electorate, analysis showed that
the Tory fears had been singularly unfounded, and their
opposition to the Franchise Bill, as a piece of party legisla
tion, singularly foolish. Of a county electorate of 2,303,133
voters no less than 1,837,088 had gone to the poll, and of
these votes 1,020,774 had been Liberal, and 816,314
Conservative. It was a fair deduction that party divisions
ran now to the bottom of English life, and that there was no
such class feeling as had made the sweeping results after the
Reform Bill of 1832. A minor interest of the election, but
one which closes for the time a subject of prominence in the
few previous years, was the general defeat of the " Fair
Trade " party. Its leader, Mr Ecroyd, had been beaten
in Lancashire ; Mr James Lowther lost his seat in Lincoln
shire, and four or five other candidates committed to the
policy had been beaten. A general criticism of the results
on the Tory side was that apathy among their leaders on
domestic questions, and the activity and force of the trade
unions, had largely turned the election.'
Almost immediately, however, this second start for the
Liberals was gravely compromised. On 18th December was
published the famous rumour that Mr Gladstone was con-
1 The Times, 15th December 1885;

172 THE DEATH OF GORDON [1885
sidering a scheme of complete Home Rule for Ireland ;
the denial which followed was cautious, amounting to no
more than that the statement was unauthorised. It was
enough to set at work the liveliest specidations as to the
position of Lord Hartington, Mr Chamberlain, Mr Goschen,
and other Liberal leaders, whose repudiation of any measure
of real independence for Ireland had been emphatic ; and
the political year ended in uncertainty and disturbance.
Socially, too, it ended in apprehension. The approach
of winter revived all the distressing evidences of unemploy
ment, and a new mUitant atmosphere had been aroused
by the determined campaign of the police against street
meetings. In September occurred the first of the cases to
attract much attention. The police arrested a banner-
bearer in the midst of a socialist procession, and in the
police-court case which followed WUliam Morris was fined
for interference. This drew attention to the Social Demo
cratic Federation, which in AprU had hardly succeeded in
interesting even the casual crowd of a Hyde Park meeting.
The free speech campaign grew before the end of the year
to a size which caused The Times to pronounce upon it as
very dangerous and ominous, when it was taken in con
junction with the Irish agitation, the Crofter movement
in Scotland, and the whole programme of advanced
Liberalism.' Within twelve months its ominousness
depended on no conjunction with other movements. In
general elections labour had as yet no large direct share ;
but the Trade Union Congress issued in September an
election address to the trades bidding them demand of
the candidates promises of land for allotments, of free
elementary education, and of the removal of " all unneces
sary obstacles to civil and magisterial work." In this last
direction a step had already been taken by the appoint
ment of the first working-men magistrates ^ — a printer,
^ 31st December 1885.
" Announced by The Manchester Guardian in May 1885.

1885] AND THE GENERAL ELECTION 173
a spinner and a weaver, all secretaries of trade unions,
being appointed to the Bench of the Duchy of Lancaster
in May, and a miners' agent being appointed in June.
In the closing days of 1885 occurred the last Soudan fight
that was to take place for some years. The withdrawal
to Wady Haifa was not quite completed when, on 30th
December, the Khalifa attacked the troops at Ginniss.
He was badly beaten, 800 of his men being killed ; and
the chief satisfaction growing out of the battle was that
Egyptian troops had been engaged, as well as British, and
had thus had some of their fear of the dervishes removed.
The general policy in regard to the Soudan had been carried
on by Lord Salisbury without alteration.

CHAPTER VIII
1886 : HOME RULE, THE NAMELESS PARTY, AND THE
LABOUR RIOTS
EVEN at the very dawn of 1886 the great Home
Rule " split " was in the making. The published
rumours of Mr Gladstone's intentions were as
much an effect as a cause of popular speculation about
them ' ; speculation had begun, because everyone was
sure that he must have intentions ; and assurance arose
from the fact that everyone was pretty certain Lord
Salisbury had some. However, the actual publication
of the ideas which Mr Gladstone was said to have in his
mind did undoubtedly create a new situation; and the
excitement it caused was not in the least out of proportion
to the gravity of what was taking place behind the scenes.
Lord Hartington and Mr Goschen were already half
alienated. At this crisis, as at the time of the Mid-Lothian
campaign, Mr Gladstone displayed his curious custom of
regarding the real factors in a situation as materially
affected by the formal political factors. He was not in
office, and Lord Salisbury was ; therefore the circum
stances of the election results warranted an understanding
between the Tories and the Nationalists, in order to keep
the former in office ; therefore Mr Gladstone felt himself
justified in awaiting a Tory plan of Irish legislation, and
his own ideas were not a project in the real sense. This
was an attitude much like his conviction that even after'
the Mid-Lothian Campaign he was free to accept or"
refuse the Premiership. To Lord Hartington both these-
* Morley's Life of Gladstone, ui. 265. 174

1886] HOME RULE 175
cases were equally an empty adherence to forms. What
ever might be the political theory of the situation, the
truth was that Mr Gladstone was considering a plan of
Irish self-government. This fact dominated the situation.
If the Tories had any intentions of concession to Ireland,
they could not now be known ; whenever Mr Gladstone
moved, his unrivalled position in politics and in the public
view gave him the field, and the other party merely re
acted automatically in the opposite direction. Mr Glad
stone did not himself recognise this ; he made an offer
to the Tories, in December 1885, of leaving the field
to them ; and the argument was used on the Tory side
that the Irish were Conservative people, only accidentally
thrown in 1880 on to the Liberal side.' But in truth
the return of the importance of the Irish vote had revived
as much of old prejudice as of new energy ; and there
were already complaints of the Irish question being
" thrust to the forefront," when local government in
England, land transfer, and the procedure of the House
of Commons were the questions awaiting decision.^
Besides, the nature of the exchange of opinion among
Liberal leaders must have been shrewdly gauged by the
Tory leaders, for by the time Parliament met the latter
had decided upon a course in which no glimmer of their
last year's temper of tentative concession to Ireland was
to be found. Not only were they leaving the field to Mr
Gladstone, but they were going to drive him into it. They
must have known the instant cost to him. Parliament
met for the Queen's speech on 21st January ; on 26th
January notice was given in the House of Commons of the
Government's intention to introduce a Coercion BiU for
Ireland, and on the same day the Government fell. Mr
Jesse CoUings carried an amendment to the address on the
' See a letter by Mr Wilfrid Blunt in The Times, ist January
i886. " The Times, ist January i886j

176 HOME RULE [1886
subject of Labourers' AUotments — ^the " three acres and
a cow " amendment — on which the Irish party voted with
the Liberals. But the significant point was that eighteen
Liberals, including Hartington, Goschen, Courtney, Henry
James, Lubbock, Arthur EUiot and Albert Grey, voted
against the amendment; and more than fifty Liberals,
including John Bright, abstained from the division.
Govemments have often been overthrown by more or
less irrelevant votes ; but what was there in Mr CoUings's
victory to cause The Times at once to start the idea that
"a sagacious Liberal Leader" — Lord Hartington, for choice
— should seize the opportunity to construct a new party
out of equally dissatisfied Liberals and Conservatives ?
To that degree had the " split " already become notorious.
MeanwhUe, on 28th January, Lord Salisbury resigned
office, and on 1st February Mr Gladstone became Prime
Minister for the third time.
As if the year were not opening in sufficiently unusual
circumstances, a thoroughly startling event now inter
rupted the bent of public attention. The troubles and
distress of the unemployed had faded to attract notice
amid the political excitement. On 8th February a meeting
was being held in Trafalgar Square, which appears to have
been chiefly an occasion taken by the Fair Trade speakers
to call attention to unemployment as a product of Free
Trade. Suddenly the meeting was invaded by men from
branches of the Social Democratic Federation, headed by
Hyndman, John Burns, and Champion. To them such
a gathering seemed a mere exploiting of the sufferings of
the unemployed for a political purpose, and they captured
it. In an instant its temper was wholly and violently
changed. A seething mob left the Square, marched
through PaU MaU, St James's Street, and PiccadUly,
smashed the club windows from which men were looking,
as they had looked before, at the woeful procession, over
turned and smashed broughams and other private carriages

1886] HOME RULE 177
and then divided into raiding parties, which went breakuig
¦windows and doors along South Audley Street, Oxford
Street and Regent Street. For a couple of hours the
mob held these sacred precincts in terror. The police
had been entirely taken by surprise, and could not muster
in time. No life was lost, no personal injuries were in
flicted ; the crowd was admitted next day to have had
" forbearance," and to have included a large proportion
of men who though poor and distressed had no thought of
crime ' : but all the same London at large felt that it had
had its glimpse of revolution. This, it said to itself, was
at the back of the vague mutterings it had heard about
street-corner meetings and the right of free speech ; and
it proceeded to draw the distinction, which has always
comforted the respectable classes, between the genuine
unemployed and the agitator. The latter was pronounced
a " moral dynamiter," and the former class was said to
be made up of the " inevitable " products of casual labour,
bad housing and laziness. Yet fright remained strong
enough to cause the ventUation of some rather vague
plans for undertaking " public works " to give employ
ment ; and from letters written to the newspapers by
various employers it is plain that they at least knew better
than to blind themselves by drawing facUe distinctions
in regard to the temper of labouring men. WhUe no
one was arrested on account of the startling incidents
in London, trouble was brewing elsewhere. There was
rioting in Bristol ; and in Gateshead, Glasgow, Manchester,
Norwich, Nottingham and Sheffield there was such acute
distress that at any moment outbreaks might occur."
In Manchester, indeed, there was a small riot, which had
a curious origin ; it began not with the mere holding of a
^ The Times, loth February 1886.
2 In Leicester, where the battle between vaccination and its
opponents was raging, prosecutions were suspended at this time,
because of the prevaiUng distress.
M

178 HOME RULE [1886
socialist meeting one Sunday at the end of February, but
with the gathering of a crowd after the public-houses
closed in the afternoon, to attack the socialists.
Those menaces, however, died down again for a time.
They had not yet, so far as could be seen, affected the
trade unions ; and the trouble was regarded as merely
an unfortunate conjunction of theories in themselves
negligible with the existence of an unusual degree of
destitution. Interest swung back to politics, but prac
tically to only one subject in politics. The annexation
of Burma, announced on 2nd January, passed almost un
noticed ; a mUitary expedition from India had occupied
Mandalay early in December 1885, and King Theebaw and
his army had surrendered ; the stories of his cruelties and
excesses made him for a short time a kind of popular ogre.
On the same date it was annoimced that an envoy had
started for Abyssinia, with autograph letters from the
Queen, a mission which, issuing first in the withdrawal
under agreement with King Menelik of the Soudan garri
sons near his frontier, established relations with him
important to many British interests. On the same date,
again, were published rumours that Bishop Hannington
had been kUled by the King of Uganda. But Central
Africa could not attract any attention while Mr Gladstone
was gathering a new Cabinet about him. Of his old
colleagues. Lord Hartington, Lord Derby, Lord North-
brook and Mr Bright were absent from it ; and Mr Goschen
had not taken that place in it which a few months before
would certainly have been his. Mr- Chamberlain had
joined ; but both he and Sir George Trevelyan aUowed it
to be known that they committed themselves no further
than to an examination of proposed legislation for Ireland ;
it was the public belief that Mr Chamberlain intended to
try for his own solution of local councUs for Ireland ; but
no one knew whether he had stUl in mind that Central
Board in Dublin which had previously been the suspected

1886] HOME RULE 179
feature of the scheme.' Cabinet meetings throughout
February and March were of unprecedented frequency.
The public speculated on the possibUity of Mr Gladstone's
resignation, and the construction of a new Liberal Cabinet
under Lord Hartington, with Lord Wolseley as Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, to carry out a policy of severe
repression, with local government to follow. Then on
26th March Mr Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan
resigned ; Mr Gladstone remained in office, and the nation
knew that it would have to consider a full Home Rule
proposal. The death of Mr W. E. Forster, occurring on
5th AprU, caused at this moment a recalling of recent
Liberal relations with Ireland, which may well have con
firmed in their opinion both those Liberals who were
determined to make a new effort, and those who felt that
for the present there could be no new way. Each group
read in its own fashion the life-story of the most bitterly
disUlusioned of them all.
The concentration of interest on the one subject was
assisted in some measure by proceedings which for the
time being held the socialist movement in suspended
animation. Four of its leaders — ^Hyndman, Burns,
Champion and J. E. WiUiams — ^were put on their trial
for sedition. The faUure of the authorities to make any
arrests after the riotous proceedings of 8th February
in London had produced a newspaper agitation, which
finally forced them into taking such steps as could be taken
to meet the pressure of opinion. Socialist meetings were
continually going on, and the speeches at them provided
sufficient excuse for some Govemment action. But not,
as proved, sufficient evidence to support a heavy charge.
The trial was a long one, the defendants being, of course,
committed to the Old BaUey. They were acquitted,
though the jury allowed themselves the expression of a
rider to the effect that Burns and Champion had used
1 Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii; 194.

180 HOME RULE [1886
language inflammatory and greatly to be condemned. The
importance of the trial lay in the new view that it gave
to people of superficial thought of the quality of these
leaders of socialism. Such men as Morris and Edward
Aveling, indeed, the respectable world had heard of ; it
dismissed the rest as " ranters." But four men who could
conduct their own case at the Old BaUey to an acquittal,
men of whom only one was in the middle-class sense
educated, were a new portent ; and from that day the
ordinary view of working-class disaffection took a different
turn. In general, the trial, by removing the whole matter
from the streets to courts of justice, took it for the time
out of the foreground of the popular mind.
The House of Commons at the moment practically
marked time, awaiting the Home Rule BUl ; but it had
one interesting incident when a Woman Suffrage BUl
came up (of course, a private member's BiU) at the very
end of the sitting on 19th February. Only an hour of
time remained, and that was largely occupied by the
protests of members against the mere idea of considering
such a BUl in such a way. But it ended in the BUl being
given a second reading ; and, though a vote taken in the
smaU hours of the morning in a more than half empty
House could not be regarded as of genuine importance, the
supporters of Woman Suffrage were jubUant at having
established the fact that a second reading for their BUl
was not an impossibUity. This was the first time one
had ever been given. An academic triumph scored by the
movement this year was the qualification of the first woman
surgeon ; Mrs M. E. Dowson, the wife of a London
engineer, obtained her diploma from the Irish CoUege of
Surgeons in June.
The long and frequent Cabinet meetings achieved a
result which, whether politically good or bad, was beyond
cavU remarkable ; for they had in six weeks constructed
from the keel-plate a BiU of the utmost magnitude and the

1886] HOME RULE 181
very first order. In the early days of AprU it was suffi
ciently advanced for Parnell to be privately in consulta
tion with Mr Morley, the new Irish Secretary ; and on
Sth AprU it was introduced upon a stage in every way
worthy of it. The House of Commons was crowded to the
doors, and even the floor space between the table and the
Bar was covered with benches ; every gallery was full ;
and many members had come at daybreak to secure their
seats. Mr Gladstone rose magnificently to the occasion,
and spoke for three and a half hours. The Bill as it stood
set up a legislature of two Houses in Dublin ' to deal Avith
Irish, as distinct from Imperial, affairs, and as a corollary
excluded Irish members from Westminster ; it left the
control of customs to the Imperial Parliament, fixing the
Irish contribution to Imperial funds at one-fourteenth of
the total sum collected, the rest being handed over to the
Irish Parliament ; it left the control of the police for two
years in British hands ; the Viceroy was to continue to
exist, but not as a party appointment, and in his Privy
CouncU was to be formed a Cabinet which, as in Great
Britain, would be the real executive, and would be re
sponsible to Parliament.
' The first reading of the Bill took place without a division
on 13th April. Before it reached its next stage the effect
of its policy on party balance was given an unexpectedly
swift propulsion. Mr Chamberlain, with that instinct for
handling the electoral machine which had so distinguished
him in 1880, went down to Birmingham on 25th AprU to
discuss the new situation with the Liberal Two Thousand ;
they wished to delay their vote, but Mr Chamberlain
induced them to decide at once, with the result that, by an
overwhelming majority, they refused their support to the
1 The Upper House was to consist of 28 representative peers and
75 elected members ; and the Lower House of 206 elected members.
The two were to sit together, but either House might demand
a separate vote.

182 HOME RULE [1886
Home Ride BUl. The clevemess of this move lay in its
preparation of the way for the compact whereby the seats
of Liberal Anti-Home-Rulers might be left unattacked by
Conservatives ; this course was, in fact, propounded be
fore a month had passed.' On 10th May the second read
ing debate on the BUl opened, and Lord Hartington moved
an amendment of simple rejection. Pamell, speaking for
his party, expressed his intention to attack in committee
certain points of detaU, such as the control of the police,
and the exact amount of Ireland's contribution to Im
perial funds. This may have given a vague sense that
after all the Irish might not be satisfied, and may have
turned a few waverers. Others quaUed before the pro
posals contained in the BUl for buying out the landlords ;
and Mr Chamberlain had given notice of moving the
rejection of the Land Purchase BUl which was introduced
on 16th AprU to carry out these proposals. FinaUy,
Lord Randolph Churchill in the middle of May was inciting
Ulster to take arms against the BUl, and the position of
the " loyal minority " was turning yet other votes. For
a month the fight went on ; calculations of the result
grew more and more tense, and the most sanguine hope
on the day before the division was that the BUl might have
a majority of about six. In that case the presumption
was that it would be carried no further on such a slight
majority, but would be taken merely as an assertion of the
principle of autonomy for Ireland ; the session would be
prorogued, and the Cabinet would set itself to drafting a
new BUl which might concUiate some of those who at the
present stage were objecting only to detaUs. PameU
disliked this prospect, which he thought would discourage
Home Rule Liberals. It never became a practical question.
In the smaU hours of 8th June the BUl was rejected by
341 votes to 311. In effect the vital decision had been
made a week earlier, when a meeting of dissentient
1 The Times, 17th May 1886.

1886] HOME RULE 183
Liberals, with Mr Chamberlain in the chair, decided not to
abstain from the division, but to vote against the BUl ;
this decision gave 93 votes to the Opposition. The
meeting was finaUy swayed by the influence which, out
side as well as inside Parliament, most deeply affected
Liberals who had an uncertain mind on the question — ^the
influence of John Bright. When he declared against the
Bill he greatly sharpened the immediate issue.
London was at the height of the season, and a season of
such excitement as it had not known for years. In every
drawing-room the split had made itself felt. One of the
greatest Liberal peers, the Duke of Westminster, ostenta
tiously sold the portrait of Mr Gladstone, which MiUais
had painted for him ; and Birmingham Radicals were
guests in great Whig houses. Men were blackballed at
clubs for no other reason than their opinions on Home
Rule. Hostesses had a new terror to face, for they hardly
knew from day to day what old friends would no longer
sit at the same table. To a large part of society Home
Rule was not only a political tenet : it became a social
barrier ; and the tendency to regard differences in political
opinions as implying differences of class — a tendency en
tirely the product of the last hundred years — ^was con
siderably enhanced. For Mr Gladstone himself, even in
the first outbursts, there was some pity, and some kindly
feeling. That so unrivalled a political life should end in
such a scattering of his own forces had an obvious touch
of melancholy. But on the other hand it was clear that
only Mr Gladstone could have raised Home Rule to the
pitch of a party test, and therefore there was little room for
pity in the general view. MeanwhUe, from the standpoint
of commercial London, the net result of the struggle was
that town had not for a long time been so fuU or so busy ;
and that across the middle of the money-making fell
dissolution and a general election, the second within seven
months. The resolution to dissolve was taken by the

184 HOME RULE [1886
Government on 10th June, but the agreement of Queen
Victoria to a somewhat tiresome course was only obtained
with some difficulty ; she yielded finaUy to Mr Gladstone's
representations that a year of embittered Home Rule
controversy would do more harm than a second dis
solution. Complaints from the public were loud ; Mr
Gladstone was accused of " springing the election on
an absolutely unprepared country," and was warned that
he would find Scotland and Wales, those Liberal strong
holds, far less in his favour than he supposed. Some
Liberals were complaining that the production of the
Home Rule BUl had rendered any alternative policy of
peace towards Ireland extremely difficult ' ; others
waUed in a barren controversy as to whether or no Mr
Gladstone had done wrong to the party by " concealing
his thoughts." " The truest word came, as so often,
from a looker-on ; Professor Goldwin Smith, writing
from Canada to chastise a Liberal Government for bring
ing in a BUl with no reasoned defence of it, but only
sentimentalities about Ireland and the " G.O.M.," re
marked also that there was a suspicion, "which, unfor
tunately, after what has taken place, cannot be said to be
fantastic," that the Conservatives had not been far from
a Home Rule BUl of their own.^ The recalling of that
suspicion was the best answer both to those who talked
of the election being " sprung " upon the country, and to
those who complained of Mr Gladstone's sUence. Events
had moved so fast that politicians had forgotten how much
Home Rule had been talked in the previous year, and the
rumours of Tory intrigues, as well as of Liberal manoeuvr-
ings. The election went rapidly forward ; in spite of some
acrimony the general compact that the seats of dissentient
'¦ See, e.g., Mr Goschen in The Times, i8th June 1886.
2 See, e.g., the correspondence between Bright and Gladstone in
The Times, 3rd July 1886.
' The Times, 7th July 1886.

1886] HOME RULE 185
Liberals shoidd not be attacked by Tories held good ;
the party was so divided that, although the central
electoral organisation declared for Mr Gladstone, its big
new club, the National Liberal, promoted a subscription
for candidates standing against Home Rule.. Before the
end of July the new House had been returned with 196
Liberals instead of 235, 316 Tories instead of 251, and
74 dissentient Liberals. Only against Home Rule could
there be said to be a majority ; and the question was how
far that meant a majority against a Liberal Cabinet in
general — how far, in other words. Home Rule in future
was to be a permanent Liberal attitude.
It is more than likely that the damage done to trade by
a dissolution at the height of the season had some slight
effect upon the polls. To business men it was peculiarly
exasperating, since their affairs were not in a condition to
bear disturbance. The smallness of the bank reserves
was a standing cause of uneasiness ; and the stock market
had been restless in face of a railway-rate war in America
and the " capturing " of line after line by iinancial mag
nates there. Copper had been a badly falling market, too,
but was felt by this time to have reached a level which,
if low, was probably healthier than its recent heights ;
the tin market had had a revival, and so had the sugar
market, which throughout the early eighties was never in
quite a normal condition owing to the disturbing effects
of the bounty system.' The shipping trade, if not at the
moment prosperous, was looking forward more cheerfully,
since it had just passed through a period of change, and
triple-expansion engines had now established themselves
firmly. 2 When business men took a rather wider view of
commercial conditions than those afforded by the London
exchanges they could not help seeing that, although in
their own narrower sense business was not yet good, there
' Deputations to Ministers on this subject were frequent.
" The Times, 2nd January 1886;

186 HOME RULE [1886
had been a great change since 1880. The consuming power
of the people had distinctly improved ; the consumption of
tea and sugar had risen strongly, and the income-tax
assessments were also rising. People began in fact to
ask in some bewUderment, as they faced these signs, what
was the trade depression ? It is possible that some of the
apparent depression throughout these years may be traced
to the steady growth of the limited liabUity principle in
trading. In every town businesses were being put upon
this basis, and with the increased capital thus obtained
were absorbing or squeezing out of the market the smaller
middlemen. Great department shops, like the Army and
Navy Stores, the CivU Service Supply Association,
Whiteley's, Lewis's, were at their busiest expansion in the
early eighties. The result was a diminution in the number
of the channels of trade, without diminution of the volume.
The bankraptcy statistics were depressing, and individual
traders in almost every part of the country could speak
of bad times ; but the broad statistics of the nation's
housekeeping showed at any rate more financial elasticity
than it had possessed for years previously. Much might be
hoped from a period of political steadiness ; and the amount
of capital which was waiting for employment may be
gathered from the fact that in October, when Guinness's
made the first of that series of brewery flotations which
we shall have to deal with later, the capital offered was so
much over-subscribed that no less than 13,000 letters of
regret were posted.
Every trade undertaking seemed in this year to be
busy at turning itself into a limited liability company.
Punch described the tendency as a new fashion. At the
same time capitalists were not losing their caution ; the
first attempt to float the Manchester Ship Canal, which
was made in this year, met with faUure. The prospectus,
backed by RothschUds', was issued on 21st July. The
contractors, Lucas & Aird, undertook the work for five

1886] HOME RULE 187
and three quarter miUions, which was less than the
engineers' original estimates ; the estimated gross revenue
was put at £885,000 a year ; and interim dividends of
4 per cent, payable out of capital had been allowed by
Parliament.' But the public proved shy ; Lancashire
was already full of expensive means of transit, and the
cotton mills had been built everywhere in accordance with
railway facilities, and might not, it was thought, easily
adjust themselves to the canal. The apparent coolness
of Lancashire investors was remarked, and for the present
the flotation failed. A trade problem which attained some
prominence this year, but waited long for a solution, was
the absence of any power to compel the working in this
country of patents taken out by foreigners ; the only
possible procedure was to issue a mandamus to compel the
patentee to grant licences for manufacture of his patent ;
but as the mandamus could not reach him the power was
useless. As for the gold problem, it still sought solution.
The bimetallists' theories began to gather more force.
Lord Grey in February of this year brought the whole
subject forward agam, relating it to the most startling
difficulties of the moment by arguing that the labour
troubles were largely due to the shortage of gold, since the
wages bills of employers were in fact going up by the ap
preciation of the sovereign, and the masters, without know
ing the real reason, felt only that they must cut wages down ;
while the workman, whose sovereign bought him no more
than before, could not see why he should be paid less. The
bimetaUist proposal which Lord Grey revived was for the
issue of one-pound notes payable in sUver ; and that for a
limited period these notes should be issued at the bank in
exchange for sovereigns, whatever the weight of the latter.
1 This method of tempting capitalists to put their money into
large projects was noted by the sociaUsts, who suggested, in
deputations to Ministers, that it might be appUed to reUef works
set on foot for the unemployed;

188 HOME RULE [1886
But there were two objections to this — ^the first that, if you
were to escape the ultimate necessity of reconverting the
sUver into gold, you must come to an international agree
ment that gold should cease to be the only valid exchange ;
and the second (a serious objection which the bimetallists
never really overcame), that there was no unanimity as to
the basis of calculation of the relative value at which sUver
was to be coined. The knowledge of the gold supply in
South Africa was stUl wide of the mark. The air was full
of rumours : about one thousand Europeans were said to
be at the goldfields, and Delagoa Bay and Cape Town were
alike full of adventurers. Yet the most authoritative
article of the moment on the goldfields ' dealt entirely with
the Barberton and James Town districts, with the opera
tions of companies no one of which had a capital of more
than £200,000, and most had only £25,000 or £30,000; and
the article concluded with the opinion that the whole
industry was insignificant in comparison with the great
days of the Australian fields. The Rand was stUl being
kept out of sight by those who knew of it. In the autumn
a Currency Commission was appointed, with Mr Balfour,
one of the foremost bimetallists, as its chairman.
A striking feature of the year was the interest aroused
by the announcement that Pasteur had discovered a cure
for hydrophobia. The England of to-day, to which rabies
is unknown, has forgotten the recurrent horror of deaths
from the bites of dogs, for which no aUeviation had ap
peared untU Pasteur's system of injection was believed
to have provided one. Fortunately, in this matter, as in
that of cholera, medical opinion was by now so sane that re
liance upon cure was not allowed to weaken the arguments
for preventive measures. The public was warned that,
untU the first element of novelty had passed away, it would
be impossible really to sift the evidence of cures, or to be
certain that in the cases treated the dogs had been actually
1 The Times, 23rd September 1886.

1886] HOME RULE 189
rabid ; and meanwhile the wisdom of muzzling orders was
being steadily emphasised.
It was not, on the whole, a year of great interest in
science ; the aesthetic movement was beginning to have
the effect of shifting middle-class interest from progress
to literature. Electricity had fallen upon didl times.
A slight ffllip was given to the ballooning craze by the
voyage across the Channel of a French balloon fitted with
steering gear, wherewith the aeronauts had manoeuvred
over ships in the Channel, and dropped imitation torpedoes.
But a controversy between rival publishers about their
respective libraries of cheap literature showed the true
tendency just then of middle-class culture. The con
troversy revealed how large and profitable a sale there
was for cheap standard books. The originator of this
form of enterprise, Mr H. G. Bohn, had died two years
before (on 25th August 1884), just as his idea was becom
ing a popular success. The contrasts presented to the
world in Patience were being repeated in the less exalted
ranks of the community. In society they had already
begun to fade, and women, instead of hanging on the
utterances of the exquisite, were filling the schools of arms,
and devoting themselves to boxing and fencing. Young
ladies were distressing their parents by travelling on the
tops of omnibuses ; and playing the banjo was the most
desirable accomplishment in Mayfair drawing-rooms. The
elegant pale poets and the massive heavy dragoons of
Patience were now being repeated ad infinitum at suburban
tea-parties, in young men who conversed with a finger to
the brow, and other young men who played lawn tennis,
and rode high bicycles, and were muscular and obtuse.
Theosophy began this year to have a rather large and Ul-
informed foUowing, with the result that " astral bodies "
became a current joke ; and telepathy and phantasms
occupied the smatterers in science, as well as the Psychical
Research Society.

190 HOME RULE [1886
The promoters of annual exhibitions in London were
again as successful as they had been with the " Fisheries "
and the " Healtheries " in attaching their provision of
mere amusement to a serious subject. This year the ex
hibition was of Colonial and Indian products and industries;
and it fitted very cleverly with that new view of the im
portance of the Colonies to which Mr Goschen had given
expression.' The Secretary for the Colonies announced
that he would be At Home in his department on certain
days to Colonial representatives ; and the latter, arriving
in England in July in connection with the exhibition, were
given an official round of entertainments, the Queen re
ceiving them at Windsor, the Admiralty giving them a
day with the fleet at Portsmouth, and various banquets
being arranged. Permanent results followed ; at the
end of the year the Colonial Secretary (Mr E. Stanhope)
made proposals for a Colonial Conference, to be attended
by the Agents-General in London, and any leading public
men from the colonies who might happen to be able
to come to England — a more informal affair than the
later developments of the kind ; colonial defence and
telegraphic and postal services were the subjects proposed
for discussion. It was also largely due to the Colonial
and Indian Exhibition that, when interest in Queen
Victoria's approaching JubUee began to be strong, the
Prince of Wales suggested the foundation of the Imperial
Institute, to give permanence to the kind of presenta
tion of colonial activities this year had achieved. The
main sporting event of the year was the racing for the
America Cup, for which, after a long interval, a challenge
had been sent from England. The British representative
was the Galatea, and the winds proved far too light for
her. Her rival, the Mayflower, had been given the
" skimming-dish " form, which was then so new that it
had not been ventured upon for the boat that had to
1 See p. 158.

1886] HOME RULE 191
cross the Atlantic before the contest ; the Galatea's beam
was 15 feet, the Mayflower's 23*5 feet, and the Galatea's
draught was 13-5 feet, whUe the Mayflower's was only 9 feet.
The sporting world was shocked later in the year by the
suicide of Fred Archer, the most popular jockey of his
day.' He rode in the course of his career no less than 2746
winners, and his great gift was in riding horses that could
not possibly have won with any other jockey. The sensa
tion caused by the news of his suicide has, too, more than a
personal importance ; it marks, and was felt at the time to
mark, the enormous increase in the popularity of racing,
which had been growing up almost unobserved. The
interest in Fred Archer reached households which twenty
years before would have paid no attention to his death ;
and his pleasant steady character had done much to break
down the old view of the turf as a disreputable interest
for anyone but owners. His suicide was attributed to
depression of spirits caused by the incessant " wasting " to
keep down his weight.
When the new Parliament met there was in it a party
which as yet was no party. What were dissentient
Liberals to do ? The Liberal headquarter organisation had
exUed them ; and indeed after the results of the election
they were not likely to want to attach themselves to a
party standing for Home Rule. Yet were they going to
abandon all Liberal principles ? The only answer to this
question was that when asked, towards the end of July,
to formulate a new Radical programme of reform, and
found a new club upon it, Mr Chamberlain replied that
after such an upheaval it would be better to wait a few
months before taking any definite steps.^ Mr Chamberlain,
there can be little doubt, was feeling solitary at the
moment. He had political satellites, but no political
friend. Lord Hartington acted with him in regard to
Home Rule, but the gulf between the two on other topics
1 8th November 1886. 2 The Times, 28th July 1886.

192 HOME RULE [1886
was too great to be easUy bridged. It happened unfor
tunately that at the same time Mr Chamberlain, by another
current of events, lost the help of a genuine political
friendship. Sir Charles DUke, whose own entrance into the
Govemment of 1886 had been, owing to his great abUity
and wide democratic sympathies, combined with an unusual
knowledge of foreign affairs, quite beyond question, had
secured Mr Chamberlain's presence in that Govemment
by refusing to serve himself unless Mr Chamberlain were
invited to join. Now at the crisis of the latter's career.
Sir Charles DUke withdrew from Parliament, his personal
honour and morality having been brought into question by
a case in the law courts. Thus isolated, Mr Chamberlain
decided to travel abroad for some time, leaving politics
and Liberal Unionism behind him. The Government had
in the end been formed on a purely Conservative basis.
Lord Salisbury had offered (though at the time this was not
definitely known) to stand aside in favour of Lord Hart
ington, and to serve under him if he would form a Govem
ment. But Lord Hartington was not a man who moved
at that speed, and the offer was declined. A Cabinet was
formed in which there was only one appointment that
excited comment. Lord Randolph ChurchiU, the bane
of his leaders, the rash apostle of Tory Democracy, the
incalculable element in the party, was made Chancellor of
the Exchequer, with the leadership of the Commons. No
wonder men thought that old political traditions were
perishing, if the path to office was to make yourself
obnoxious to your leaders, and a wUl-o'-the-wisp to your
constituents. At the same time no one doubted Lord
Randolph's brUliancy ; and as it was now evident that the
Conservative working man was a reality, there might be less
temptation to embark on " Tory Democracy " as a policy.
The only doubt was whether he would manage weU the
somewhat delicate relations with the dissentient Liberals.
For some weeks the latter were too much taken up with

1886] HOME RULE 193
their own difficulties to be critical. By August they had
acquired a name. The Liberal Unionist Association had
been formed outside Parliament; but it was tUtimately
announced that Mr Chamberlain and all the dissentients
were joining it.' During the autumn sitting the new party
were sufficiently established to be showing signs of offence
at their treatment in the House of Commons ; there were
complaints that the Tories howled them down, but were
afraid of the real Home Rulers. A sign of very strained
relations was given in the Birmingham municipal elections,
where the Liberal Unionists supported Gladstonian Liberal
candidates, with Mr Chamberlain's approval, because of
the Tory attitude in the town.
These ins and outs were supposed to be the only
legitimate interest of politicians. The heavy hand shut
down again upon Ireland, the new Govemment's first step
being pretty sharply criticised even by many of their
friends. Sir Robert HamUton, the Permanent Under
Secretary for Ireland, was removed from his post, because
he had been identified with Mr Gladstone's proposals.
It was felt that this was a serious blow at the principles
of public service. An agitation for a revision of judicial
rents in Ireland was being pressed upon the Government,
partly because the summer of 1886 had seen another
failure of harvest, and partly on the more general plea that
the appreciation of gold made the judicial rents unfair ;
it was pointed out that even in England the rent-roll was
calculated to have dropped from sixty mUlions to forty-
five millions a year, and the evidence before the Royal
Commission on Trade had tended in the same direction.^
The Government refused to take any steps ; evictions
increased ; " moonlighting " began once more to aggravate
' The name was in existence some years earlier (see, for instance,
an article in The Fortnightly Review, vol. i., 1880), but it was now
first definitely adopted, as a party name.
2 See The Pall Mall Gazette " Extra '-- on Irish Rents, 1886;

194 HOME RULE [1886
the figures of agrarian crime ; and the Plan of Campaign
was launched in November.
Party difficulties blinded politicians once again to the
very serious trouble at their doors. The temper which
had broken out in the brief street fury of 8th February,
and had been suspended for a while by the trial of the
socialist leaders, was bad enough in June to cause people to
say that the excitement of elections in London was really
to be dreaded. Nor was the nervousness confined to
London ; at Cardiff, for instance, the police were so
perturbed that, having had to deal with a crowd which had
given them some difficulty, they went on to fall upon a
perfectly harmless one, listening to speeches at the Liberal
Club, and very nearly batoned the new member ; and in
Liverpool socialist meetings were acting as sparks to the
magazine of Orange fever which is always in store there.
Nevertheless London was naturally the centre of anxiety.
When a big socialist demonstration was held in Trafalgar
Square at the end of August no less than 2000 police were
on duty : they had warning enough then to be ready. But
a new danger was revealed when the socialists took to
invading other meetings, such as a demonstration in
favour of Free Education at the beginning of October,
which had naturally appeared to call for less policing.
Nor was London aUowed to forget the real misery
which was issuing in these disturbances. A manifesto was
published by the Social Democratic Federation caUing on
the destitute and unemployed to follow the Lord Mayor's
Show, sUently, in thousands. This was, of course, in
stantly forbidden by the police, and the result was that,
after the Lord Mayor's Show had turned as usual from the
Strand down to the Embankment, there was a sudden rush
of men to Trafalgar Square, and a defiant meeting began.
But troops were at hand which had been on duty for the
procession. Suddenly a line of Life Guards appeared
trotting round the square to a strategic position, and with

1886] HOME RULE 195
this force in reserve the police marched into the crowd and
set to work to scatter it. The energies of the leaders of
upper-class opinion at this time were turned to attempting
to separate the distressed from those who were organising
and leading them. The accepted point of view was that
open-air meetings were wholly unnecessary, and that the
socialist demand for free speech was only being craftily
attached to a genuine trouble, and should be firmly
handled.' The distress, at any rate, had been so pressed
upon public notice that the closing months of the year were
full of suggestions for meeting it. There were appeals for
charity, signed by men of such different views as the Bishop
of London, Cardinal Manning and Mr Spurgeon ; there
were requests for a mitigation of the rules of outdoor
relief, and appeals for funds to enable public bodies to
set on foot relief works ; a Mansion House Committee was
appointed to collect information as to the unemployment,
and to consider schemes to meet it. But as a political
question the trouble was not allowed to rank ; it was held
to be " undignified " to expect any reference to it at the
Lord Mayor's banquet ; and the single exception to this
attitude, which can be quoted as of any importance, is the
plea by one whose early death deprived the poor of a good
friend, Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne. He was busy in
October urging the Government to attend as a Govemment
to the matter. Though not strictly affairs of the unem
ployed, the trouble at this time in Skye, where the mUitary
were called out against the disaffected crofters, and the
tithe riots in Lancashire and Wales, shoiUd have added
to the general uneasiness about the temper of the working
people. It was a time too much disturbed by poverty and
1 An interesting side-issue was that large new hotels, such as
the Grand, opened in 1880, and the Metropole, opened in 1885,
were attracting many visitors, especially Americans, to the neigh
bourhood of Trafalgar Square, which was therefore pecuUarly
unsuitable for public meetings.

196 HOME RULE [1886
hardship for any very immediate interest to be taken by
working men in their representation on the benches of the
House of Commons. Joseph Arch was returned as the first
agricultural labourer in the House, and the Labour
members at the beginning of the year numbered nine —
Messrs Abraham, Arch, Broadhurst, Burt, W. R. Cremer,
Fenwick, Leicester, Pickard and J. WUson.
At the end of the year the party problem was suddenly
galvanised again into prominence. To everyone's amaze
ment. Lord Randolph ChurchUl resigned the Chancellorship
of the Exchequer. His reason was that he had been unable
to carry his declared policy of economy against the de
mands of the Admiralty and the War Office. Even those
who sympathised with him felt his resignation, before he
had so much as produced a Budget, an extraordinarUy
hasty step. It is known now that he calculated on the
Government being obliged to ask him to resume his post,
and so give him a vastly strengthened position. But he had
been too sure that the Liberal Unionists were not yet ready
for coalition — ^he had considered his possible Conservative
successors alone. He can hardly be blamed for this.
On the very day of his resignation, for instance, Mr Cham
berlain had been asserting himself " unchanged " on such a
Radical proposal as that of Disestablishment ; and although
on 17th December Mr Chamberlain had a great meeting in
Birmingham, as a counter-blast to a Home Rule meeting
in November at which Morley and Parnell had spoken,
it was rumoured on 23rd December that he was consider
ing a rapprochement with the Liberal leaders. The
revival of coercion had held the dissentient Liberals at a
distance from the Conservatives ; and the truth at which
the rumours guessed was that Sir WUliam Harcourt, Lord
HerscheU, Mr Chamberlain, Sir George Trevelyan and
Mr Morley were meeting quietly at Sir WUliam Harcourt's
house. But the most important person was not there ;
Lord Hartington had refused to attend ; and meanwhUe

1886] HOME RULE 197
the Conservatives, really anxious about their position in
the Commons, were moving heaven and earth to get him
to accept the leadership there. He would not consent to
that, but he would do what was at the moment almost as
much help to the Tories — ^he would persuade Mr Goschen
to take the Exchequer. The results were considerable;
the Tories got a Chancellor of the Exchequer who as a
financier commanded everyone's respect, and were really
better off in that regard than before Lord Randolph
ChurchUl resigned ; but they also got what they valued
stUl more, an admission that Liberal Unionists could serve
under a Conservative Prime Minister.
The public mind slipped back comfortably into those
varied plans for celebrating the Queen's JubUee which
largely occupied the newspapers in December 1886 ; and
expended some of its leisure in speculating about Emin
Pasha. News had ffltered through that he alone of all the
provincial governors of the Soudan was still holding out ;
and proposals were being made for sending him relief.

CHAPTER IX
1887: THE JUBILEE
THE report of the Royal Commission on Trade,
which was one of the first events of the New Year,'
proved to be a much more balanced attempt to
diagnose industrial difficulties than had been anticipated
at the time of the Commission's appointment. The " Fair
Trade " remedy was, indeed, recommended by a small
minority of four commissioners ; but was dismissed by the
majority on the ground that it was " hardly worth whUe to
discuss a scheme which involves at once a total upset of
our present Budget arrangements, a reversal of our trade
policy, and a breach with our foreign customers." The
report dwelt upon some of those inconsistent features of
the trade situation which had already puzzled the obser
vant. There was no falling off in the volume of our foreign
trade, or in the amount of capital engaged in it, or m the
accumulation of capital throughout the country, or in the
aggregate of production. Yet something certainly was
amiss. The commissioners put part of the responsibUity
down to over-production ; they also suggested, but only
in tentative terms, that the rise in the value of gold was
a source of difficulty ; they asserted more confidently that
the workman was getting wages which were perhaps too
little affected by falling prices. Their recommendations
moved, as was to be expected, on extremely official lines ;
they advised, for instance, that traders should be exhorted
to cheapen production and so widen the market, and should
realise that as competition became keener business methods
' Pubhshed on 17th January 1887! 198

1887] THE JUBILEE 199
must become better ; higher education, and a more
attentive coUection of statistics were coroUaries of this
proposition. But some of the recommendations were
rather less academic ; they called for re-examination of
railway traffic rates, for the freeing of canals from railway
ownership and control, for light railways to assist agricul
ture and make possible an industrial decentralisation ; and
for legislation against counterfeit marking, and for some
improvement of the Limited LiabUity Acts.
Such a document could not mean much to the thousands
out of employment ; and what it meant to their leaders
was not concUiatory. Kindly people were ready enough
to feel sympathetic, and hold drawing-room meetings to
discuss whether the distress was exceptional or chronic ;
that distinction was at the time a favourite method of
attacking the " agitators," the argument being that there
was always inevitable distress, as a sort of "waste product"
of an industrial age, and that the prominence given to it
was only a move of the socialists. The latter were repre
sented as objecting to phUanthropic inquiry, and resenting
" inquisition " ; this was, no doubt, one way of describing
the socialist's impatience at seeing the whole question
shuffled off into a phUanthropic atmosphere against all
their endeavours to keep it in a political one. But it is
possible that, like most reformers, they had their eyes so
firmly set upon the goal that they failed to observe how
many laps in the race they had already run. It was Lord
Salisbury, to continue the metaphor, who rang the bell in
one of those moments of frankness with which he was apt
to disturb his friends and allies. He was replying to a
correspondent on the subject of State-aided emigration —
a favourite project of the time for relieving industrial
congestion ; private effort had already established a settle
ment of East Londoners in Manitoba. Lord Salisbury
wrote that untU this remedy was more demonstrably a
success Parliament would not adopt it ; but when it was,

200 THE JUBILEE [1887
Parliament would not be frightened by any sociahst
quality in the scheme. " If it is convinced that a measure
is likely to answer," he said, " it never troubles itself about
the school of thought from which the measure is drawn." '
This is in its way a version of the Fabian position ; but the
socialists, in contact with the problem of the unemployed,
demanded for it a political formulation ; and the appar
ently impregnable habit of treating trade questions as a
middle-class affair exasperated them into making their
demand one for separate formulation. They pursued their
campaign of street meetings, and early in February there
was more rioting, not only in London, where windows
were broken in Clerkenwell and up Goswell Road, but also
at Blantyxe and Coatbridge ; in AprU John WUliams was
arrested again, with some others, after a socialist meeting
at the Marble Arch.
One immediate effect of the report of the Commission
on Trade makes this year peculiarly notable. The in
sistence upon the need for better trade methods and higher
education provided a rallying point for all the energy which
had been going into municipal art schools and training
classes. Here was a piece of work which Parliament might
well undertake for the business community, the more
easUy as that community had already created the skeleton
of a system. Lord Hartington, to whom technical educa
tion in this country owes more than to anyone else, was
the first prominent public man to take up the idea. In a
speech at the London Polytechnic on 16th March he urged
the great municipalities to organise technical education on
a large scale In subjects suitable to the industrial needs
of their districts ; as yet, no suggestion was made of any
other than private provision of the necessary funds. On
21st March a deputation waited upon Lord Cranbrook at
the Education Department to ask for departmental action ;
he, too, attributed the duty of taking action to the local
' Letter pubUshed in The Times, 22nd February 1885.-

1887] THE JUBILEE 201
authorities, on the fairly sound principle that they could
go on to " that real secondary education which can never
be reached by the Elementary Education Department " ;
he added a quotation from a speech some years earlier by
Mr Mundella, to the effect that the idea of giving technical
education to the whole working class was an entire mistake,
the inference being that local authorities could move in a
partial way that would be impossible to a public depart
ment. MeanwhUe the stirring of a new spirit in education
was seen in a growing revolt of teachers against " the
Juggernaut of percentages " ; they wished for a little more
flexibUity in method, and a little less rigid judgment by
examination results ; there was, perhaps, something in
the dry comment that their revolt was from one point of
view a confession that the system got a great deal of work
out of them.
The death of Sir Joseph Whitworth on 23rd January
may have helped to awaken men to some understanding
of what modern trade exacted — ^what alertness, what high
degree of technical knowledge. For he had made his
immense fortune by certain mechanical inventions which
were thoroughly of the new movement — accurate measur
ing machines, true planes, standard gauges, and other
such implements. He himself had had no technical
education beyond that which he picked up in engineering
shops ; personally he was in the tradition of the story-book
men of business who build up a fortune on a foundation
stone of half-a-crown, and was to the end of his life a rather
rough man, with a passion for trotting horses. But his
work made such education more than ever necessary for
other men. In the end, he also made it more attainable
in his own city, for he left the greater part of his huge
fortune on trust for public purposes in Manchester, and
the first expansion of technical education there was due
to his bequest.
The greatest fUlip of all to technical education was given

202 THE JUBILEE [1887
by the fortunate association of it with the great affair in
all men's minds this year — ^the JubUee. When the cele
bration was only a month away, and popular enthusiasm
for the Queen at its height, she went down to open the
Queen's HaU of the People's Palace in MUe End Road, and
to lay the foundation stone of the Technical and Handi
craft Schools of that institution. It had grown from a
long-buried seed. In 1841 Mr Barber Beaumont left a
large sum of money " for the intellectual improvement and
the rational recreation and amusement of the people of
the East End." There had been no organised means of
applying the bequest, and for forty years it lay practically
idle. Then a novel by Walter Besant, All Sorts and Con
ditions of Men, drew an imaginary picture of a great palace
of education and recreation in East London ; men recaUed
the dormant bequest, and the scheme for the People's
Palace sprang to life. Besant worked hard for it ; Mr
Beaumont's money did not suffice for the purpose, and
subscriptions were raised, the great City companies, especi
aUy the Drapers' Company, contributing largely ; and the
project was sufficiently advanced by May 1887 to be able to
gather to itself some of the JubUee enthusiasm. Besant
was presented to the Queen after she had laid the foun
dation stone. MeanwhUe the City justifiably reminded
the world that it was doing a good deal already. The City
and GuUds of London Institute at South Kensington was
advancing towards completion ; the Finsbury Technical
CoUege was teaching 169 day students and 764 evening
students, a large majority of whom were artisans, and 200
of whom were apprentices ; the South London School of
Technical Art had 187 pupUs ; and the guUds also made
grants to the schools of engineering and chemical tech
nology at University College, and the school of metallurgy
at King's College.
The public was ready to be interested in social affairs.
The uneasiness among the Conservative leaders at the

1887] THE JUBILEE 203
time of Lord Randolph Churchill's resignation was one of
those curious political alarms which belong to pure politics
and not to real life at all. In point of fact, although people
were startled and interested by that event, there was in
the nation at large none of that canvassing of its effect
upon party relations which Lord Salisbury seemed to fear.
The nation had had its fUl of politics for a while. The new
Franchise and the quarrel between the two Houses of
Parliament, the death of Gordon, and the Home Rule BUl
had given it two years in which political subjects were
the prime interest. The ordinary man was quite ready to
let them slip into the background. One event, however, of
the beginning of the year touched him. On 12th January
Lord Iddesleigh died suddenly in an ante-room whUe wait
ing to see Lord Salisbury. It was sad even from the most
casual point of view. As Sir Stafford Northcote, Lord
Iddesleigh had had to see his position in the House of
Commons slowly but remorselessly weakened ; he had been
too old, too slow, too formal in his leadership of the Opposi
tion from 1880 to 1885 to hold his own in a Parliament fresh
and active. Lord Randolph Churchill's gadfly activities
had been as damaging to Sir Stafford Northcote as to
Mr Gladstone; and in the brief Govemment of Lord
Sahsbury from June 1885 to Febraary 1886 Northcote
found no place at all ; his leadership in the Commons
was taken away, and he accepted the consolation of
a title, going to the House of Lords as Lord Iddesleigh.
When Lord Salisbury returned to power in July 1886
he made Lord Iddesleigh Foreign Secretary ; but in the
disturbance caused by Lord Randolph ChurchUl's re
signation Lord Salisbury changed his mind again, and did
it somewhat unkindly. Lord Iddesleigh read in the news
papers one moming that Lord Salisbury had decided to
take his place at the Foreign Office. It was no wonder
that when the news came that the old man, tired, dis
appointed, but patient and loyal to the end, had died in a

204 THE JUBILEE [1887
chair in Lord Sahsbury's ante-room, people who had
never known him felt grieved.
His last piece of work at the Foreign Office had been in
connection with the expedition for the relief of Emin
Pasha. Mr H. M. Stanley left London towards the end
of January to reach the Soudan by way of the Congo.
With the approach of the Queen's JubUee, the national
pride in her was reviving the feeling that the British were
a fine race, and their Empire a noble achievement. Perhaps
because this form of patriotism had but poor sustenance
in recent affairs, it grew somewhat self-conscious and ag
gressive, and a little inclined to " traU its coat." It made
much of the Colonial Conference which assembled early
in AprU. Imperial Federation was proposed as a subject
for debate, but beyond a rather empty discussion of the
types of ship that colonies might keep up in a general
system of Imperial Defence little was accomplished, except
that Australia definitely undertook a payment for the
maintenance of a British squadron on her coasts. Other
debates of the conference were on the desirabUity of
making colonial guaranteed stocks legal trustee invest
ments, and on commercial relations, and postal and tele
graphic facUities . The last point had already been adopted
as his own by Mr Henniker Heaton, and his advocacy of
an Imperial Penny Post was well under way. These were
the kind of assertive but not immediately pressing affairs
for which the ordinary man was in the mind. His view
of the political situation was simple : Gladstone had been
beaten, Salisbury was in, therefore there would be nothing
searching or subversive to bother about, and he might,
politically speaking, take a speU off. He was suddenly
wrenched from his security in AprU by a newspaper
bombshell. To those more vitaUy concerned political parties were
StiU in no smaU confusion. When the first flush of
Goschen's acceptance of the Chancellorship of the Ex-

1887] THE JUBILEE 205
chequer had passed off, men asked. What, after all, would
his position exactly amount to ? They felt that, whatever
might be the readiness for a coalition among some of the
dissentient Liberals, there was a strong Conservative feeling
against it ; Mr Chamberlain had not ceased to be regarded
as a dangerous Radical. Yet on the other hand it appeared
with some suddenness that he would never again be a
Gladstonian ; the Round Table conference which had met
in December to attempt to patch up the Liberal split had
not achieved its object. An article from Mr Chamberlain's
pen, speaking of the Irish people as " disloyal," ' revealed
a temper which was so remote from that of the Gladstonians
that the hopes of a rapprochement were extinguished. Yet,
again, Mr Chamberlain was believed to entertain still his
own scheme of concession to Ireland — some fair rent pro
posals and a system of local governing bodies, without any
control of the administration of justice or of the police —
and was not likely, therefore, even if his general Radical
views did not stop the way, to pull in harmony with the
Govemment. The Crimes BUl was a serious obstacle to
coalition; its production was a reply to the Plan of
Campaign. The Plan was another stage in the dis
integration of Parnell's control of Irish agitation. It was
that tenants in Ireland, carefully organised by estates,
and acting under committees for each estate, should cease
entirely to deal with the landlord's agent as individuals ;
should offer as a body, through the committee, the half-
yearly rent subject to the reduction they demanded ; and,
if this were refused, should fund the money, drawing upon
it for relief when the agent had put in force all the tedious
and objectionable processes of eviction, sale, and distress.
PameU condemned the Plan, which was first published as
a supplement to United Ireland on 20th November 1886 ;
it was over that border of obvious Illegality which he had
always refused to cross. But it went forward in spite of
1 PubUshed in The Baptist, February 1887.-

206 THE JUBILEE [1887
him ; and he was driven back to fighting in the House
of Commons against the inevitable coercion measures.
PracticaUy he was where he had been before 1880, with
the two currents of Irish agitation again wholly separate,
and the Irish party handicapped by the odium of
violences with which it had no connection. Moreover he
was now often Ul, and he moved about the precincts of the
House carelessly dressed, with lank hair, a wUd dark figure,
his old sUence and reserve turned into a new and more
mystifying habit of disappearing entirely from sight for
days or even weeks at a time ; no one laiew where he was
at such times, but there were already many who suspected
in what company he was. Both his own circumstances
and the political circumstances of the moment must be
taken into account as we come to the sensational blow
struck in April of this year. In politics we have the only
hope of a stable and continuous Government held in
check by the delay of the coalition, a great cause of
delay being the reluctance of dissentient Liberals to accept
the Govemment's Irish policy ; at the end of March separate
meetings of Conservatives and Liberal Unionists were being
held on the Crimes BUl. On the personal side we have
Parnell stUl in control of his party, but clearly, by reason
of the persistence in the Plan of Campaign, less able to
maintain his old attitude of aloofness from violence ; and
also, for other reasons, in a position which might be
reckoned on as making him less ready to resent attack.
It was a tempting occasion for a stroke which should so
deeply discredit him as to brush away the last reluctance
of Liberal Unionists, and also render co-operation with the
Irish Nationalists a kiUing handicap to the Liberals. So
the stroke was dealt. The Times began publishing a series
of articles entitled " Parnellism and Crime," in which
extracts from speeches by members of the Pamellite party
were so conjoined with the story of agrarian crime in
Ireland as to make the parliamentary agitation and Fenian

1887] THE JUBILEE 207
lawlessness one thing. But these articles would not have
accomplished the object in view. The final attack was the
publication on 18th AprU of a facsimUe of a letter purport
ing to have been written by Pamell soon after the Phoenix
Park murders. The text left no doubt of the insinuation.
The letter— dated " 15/5/82," a fortnight after the murders
— ^ran thus :
" Dear Sir, — I am not surprised at your friend's anger,
but he and you should know that to denounce the murders
was the only course open to us. To do that promptly was
plainly our best policy. But you can tell him, and all
others concerned, that though I regret the accident of
Lord F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that
Burke got no more than his deserts. You are at liberty
to show him this, and others whom you can trust also, but
let not my address be known. He can write to the House
of Commons. Yours very truly,
" Chas. S. Parnell."
No one who at this interval of time opens that famous
number of the newspaper, and sees the middle of one of
its central pages occupied by the facsimUe, can fail to
respond to the thrUl that its publication caused, especially
in days when in the normal course nothing interrupted the
plain typography of newspapers, when there were no photo
graphic illustrations or any other efforts of " process "
reproduction. It was the sight of the handwriting which
swept away all suspension of judgment. To the world
at large it was clear enough that at the very time when
he had been denouncing and repudiating completely the
Phoenix Park murders, ParneU had been writing to a
Fenian leader to say that these repudiations were merely
diplomatic — ^that he only regretted Lord F. Cavendish's
death as an accident, and had less than no regret for the
death of Mr Burke.

208 THE JUBILEE [1887
The publication of the facsimUe was carefully timed.
The day of its appearance was the day of the second reading
division on the Government's Coercion Bill. No one
could say that Pamell lacked occasion for an immediate
denial, and members of Parliament, who had brought to the
Lobby that excitement which had run like wUdfire over
the country during the day, clustered silent in the House
when Parnell rose immediately before the division. He
gave the most downright denial to the authenticity of the
letter ; he was as calm as ever, and he put his denial
in the plainest, simplest terms. But even in this assembly
the power of the reproduced handwriting was strong, and
the high standing of the newspaper concerned was a con
siderable element in the estimation of the worth of the
denial. The Conservatives openly derided it ; the Liberal
Unionists, if less jubUant, felt it so inadequate that they
could act as if the letter were genuine. They had been
assisted over their scruples, and the Coercion BUl got its
second reading. It was a measure severe even in the
history of coercion ; for its operation had no time-limit.
It gave the usual powers to the executive to proclaim dis
turbed districts and dangerous associations, to order in
quiries upon oath even when no one was actually on trial,
and to suspend trial by jury for a list of offences that
practically covered all the operations of the Plan of
Campaign. Yet once again the old rule held good, that
with a Coercion BUl a Land BUl should pass. So great
had been the hurry for coercion that the Govemment did
not appear to mind what variations of purpose it went
through on the land question. In 1885 it had refused aU
reconsideration of judicial rents ; in 1886 the Cowper
Commission and the Govemment's own envoy, Sir Redvers
Buller, alike reported that the demand for a reduction of
rents was an honest demand, and that the Irish tenants, as
a whole, genuinely could not pay the old rents. StUl the
Govemment held to its refusal, evictions weiit forward (the

1887] THE JUBILEE 209
famous Woodford evictions on the Clanricarde estate took
place in the winter of 1886-1887) ; and then in July 1887
Lord Salisbury calmly accepted the evidence he had been
steadUy refusing, and established new judicial rents under
a land court. These two BUls, it may be remarked in
passing, were Mr Balfour's introduction as a member of
Government to the House of Commons. He had succeeded
Sir Michael Hicks Beach as Chief Secretary at the be
ginning of March.
The Coercion BUl is memorable as having led to one of
the most drastic alterations of procedure in the House of
Commons. It was the first BiU to which " guiUotine "
closure was applied. Curiously enough, the Bill had not
been subjected to the purely obstructive tactics of the Irish
party. But on 10th June the Govemment carried a
resolution that a week later the committee stage of the
Bill should end, and clauses stUl undiscussed should be
put forthwith without debate. This was a violent answer
to the growing bewilderment, which was expressed at
the opening of this session (and at the opening of every
session for the past six or seven years), as to how the House
of Commons was to get through its work. Before the
guUlotine closure was adopted the House had already made
the existing closure resolutions more readily applicable.
The stipulation in the resolution of 1882 for a majority of a
certain size was abolished, and closure of debate by a bare
majority was authorised, provided the chairman accepted
a motion to that effect and not less than two hundred
members supported it. Parliament made very little pro
gress this year with anything but its Irish legislation. The
Government accepted from a private member a Truck
Bill dealing with certain methods of paying workmen in
kind, which had escaped earlier Acts ; it was stUl, for
instance, the custom in some districts to pay agricultural
labourers partly in supplies of cider. The passing of the
First Offenders BUl, introduced by Sir HowardVincent, not

210 THE JUBILEE [1887
for the first time, was a good piece of work rather hastUy
done ; gloomy critics predicted that it would lead to such
espionage as this country had never tolerated. A Technical
Education BUl was introduced, givingpower to local author
ities to set up technical schools and to combine for this
purpose with other localities in order to save overlapping
and spread the cost ; but the Bill was dropped to make
way for other legislation. An Allotments BUl was more
fortunate, and became law ; the authority to administer
it was the Local Sanitary Authority, appealing to Quarter
Sessions, but there was a strong disposition to eliminate
the latter and set up the Local Government Board as the
supreme authority. This disposition (and indeed the
production of the BUl itself) indicated that the legislation
on County Government, long promised by the Liberal
Ministry of 1880 but always postponed by the various
complications of that Ministry's career, was going to be
taken up by their opponents. One of the reasons given
by Mr W. H. Smith (who had succeeded Lord Randolph
ChurchUl as Leader of the Commons) for the abandonment
of certain Bills in August was the necessity for passing a
Local Boundaries BUl to clear the way for a Local Govem
ment BiU in the following year.
Nothing shows better the suspension of public interest
in politics than the curious history of the Govemment's
Irish legislation of this year. A Coercion BUl for the first
time permanently at the disposal of the Executive, a Land
BUl which was a bland " doubling " on aU Lord Salisbury
had said the year before, and incidentally a drastic inno
vation in the procedure of the House — all accomplished
without any disturbance. Mr Gladstone could not have
attempted one quarter of such changes without rousing the
country. Partly this was due to his great personal position.
What he did stood in the popular mind for the fiery, the
exalted, the breath of the future. His defeat had been
enough to make men settle down in their normal ways

1887] THE JUBILEE 211
again ; and the men who defeated him were free to do
almost anything without risk of disturbance. Partly too
the supposed ParneU letter in The Times had had on the
normal Englishman the effect it was intended to have on
the Liberal Unionists. Pamell had always despised English
public opinion, and, as we have seen, part of the secret of
his power in Ireland was his avoiding any friendliness from
England. His curt denial of the authenticity of the letter
therefore was taken to be his usual contemptuous way of
treating this country, the result being that in the general
sense no one felt himself called upon to have any conscience
about the Irish party or the Irish. The public after a
week or two dropped the letter as it had dropped all
politics, and gave itself to a summer of heightened gaiety,
a holiday summer.
Everything was done — even to the appropriation of a
Parisian popular tune for street and barrel-organ use — ^to
make people think of the .JubUee and nothing else. Shops
placarded it, vUlages feasted it, errand-boys whistled it.
Last of all the weather rose to it. On 20th June the Queen
proceeded to a great thanksgiving service in Westminster
Abbey, where her venerable figure was enthroned upon a
dais on the very spot on which fifty years before she had
received the homage of her realm. Her procession to the
Abbey was such as had never in the world's history accom
panied a crowned head. Three kings were in it — the King
of Denmark, the King of the Belgians, and the King of
the Hellenes — and the Crown Princes of every throne
in Christendom, and of some outside Christendom, Three
sons, five sons-in-law, and nine grandsons and grandsons-
in-law rode behind her carriage ; midmost in the line of
sons-in-law rode the tall Crown Prince of the German
Empire, his sUver helmet, his long fair beard, and his white
tunic making him the princeliest figure of the whole. The
day was a universal holiday, and there was not a town
or vUlage which had not the means of making festival, and

212 THE JUBILEE [1887
of giving it lasting commemoration in some monument,
however modest. At nightfall bonfires were lit on aU high
hUls. A new coinage was struck, chiefly remarkable, after
the first novelty had passed away, for the fact that the
sixpence was identical in design with the half-sovereign,
so that a little gUding was sufficient for the perpetration
of frauds.'
The JubUee was an occasion which prompted retro
spects, and every newspaper and review fell to taking
stock of England's progress during fifty years. Develop
ments of machinery and means of communication belong
in the main to a period earlier than that of this history.
They provided ground for almost unmitigated satisfaction.
Yet the social condition of the country gave some pause ;
it hardly seemed to express the results of a general advance,
except in the broadest kind of material well-being. Even
in that respect, though the country as a whole was vastly
richer, there seemed to be forms of poverty more acute than
the old days had known ; and there were still horrible
slums, horrible corners in country vUlages, hovels on the
thresholds of mansions. Wealth had indeed been more
widely distributed; but the distributionhadrun in channels.
The growth of industrialism had, since the passing of the
Limited LiabUity Acts, begun to carry the profits of in
dustry out into the professional middle classes, as a return
for the investment of savings. Professor Leone Levi, one
of the greatest political economists of the day, writing soon
after the publication of the Report of the Royal Commis
sion on Trade, to contest the view that the fall in prices was
due to the shortage of gold, pointed out that the fall might
easUy be an apparent one, due to the fact that the increase
of Limited LiabUity Companies diminished apparent
profits, spreading them more widely ; private shareholders
looked for less return on their money than the manufactur
ing capitalists. Again, that same growth, by calling for
^ These sixpenny pieces were caUed in.

1887] THE JUBILEE 213
a corresponding expansion of means of distribution, had
profoundly affected the middleman class ; and here also
the Limited LiabUity Acts came into the field. Large
" Stores " were in existence ; and the shareholders in
them were a kind of sleeping middlemen. This feature
of English commercial life was already important enough
to have attracted the notice of the taxation experts of the
country. ' Industrialism had not adjusted itself to the new
weights it had to carry ; and its periods of production were
being governed rather by the call for dividends than by
considerations of steady trade. It could not fail to be
remarked at the same time that, as the spread of wealth
had increased, the standard of living had gone up. In
education, in material comforts, in amusements, the upper
middle class were now approximating to the habits of
Society ; and the lower middle class, the smaller profes
sional men and the shopkeepers, were coming into the
position of the upper middle class. The consciousness
of this, working in the artisan and the labourer, who
had not yet shared as much in the growing wealth as in
the spreading intelligence of the community, was no
small element in the new uprising of labour, the new
demands for something more than mere advancement of
wages. It is interesting to find in this very year of the JubUee
signs of another change, incalculable in effect. Compulsory
education and the abolition of the stamp duty on news
papers had begun to make England a newspaper-reading
nation. This had been seen in one respect in the influence
which a newspaper agitation had had in the sending of
Gordon to the Soudan.^ In 1887 it disturbed the minds of
the respectable by its obvious fruitfulness in new forms of
gambling. In January one cheap print had set on foot the
' Elliot's Life of Lord Goschen, ii. 158.
"See page 124; and Mr G. W. E. RusseU's One Look Back,
p. 246J

214 THE JUBILEE [1887
form of competition which has ever since been readUy
worked into a craze ; it offered prizes for discovering
certain easy words in a series of pictures, the prizes to go
to the first correct solution which happened to be opened.
Other kinds of gambling due to the spread of newspapers
appeared in the autumn. There was a riot at Lillie
Bridge on 19th September, where a crowd of five or six
thousand had gathered to see a race ; the race did not take
place, and the crowd wrecked the stands and raUings of the
ground, and burned the fragments. It was pretty well
known that the stoppage of the race was really brought
about to suit some betting-books ' ; and the riot drew
attention, first, to the immense crowds which were
attracted to sporting events, and, secondly, to the cheap
newspapers which sent them there. The riot was foUowed
by a police raid on a gambling club in London ; and these
were the first steps in a somewhat ineffectual attack during
the late eighties and early nineties upon the betting
tendencies of the workman. Another effect of cheap
newspapers on ideas of sport was observed about this
time. A famous old cricketer, signing himself " F. G.,"
wrote to The Times ^ to complain of a new school
of cricket reporting which classified counties into first
and second class counties, and talked of " championships "
and " premierships " ; the cricket enthusiast, he thought,
was becoming a mere statistician, with " records " at his
fingers' ends. The football mania had not yet begun ; but
the same spirit was evidently at work to create it.
The Jubilee, not overshadowed by parliamentary battles,
was equally free of social shadows. The palpable exist
ence of unemployment was rendered les6 pressing by the
warmth of the summer weather; yet in various minor
ways a certain financial pinch left its marks. Thus
the trade in meat was slack, and the importers of the
' The Times, 24th September 1887.
" 5th September 1887.

1887] THE JUBILEE 215
chUled supply found it a depressing year ; however it may
be mentioned that even a depressed market now took
76,000 cwt. a month, which gives some measure of the
growth of this industry in seven years. WhUe we are on
the subject of food. It may be mentioned that 1887 saw at
last the passing of the Margarine Act, by which the word
" margarine " had to be stamped on all packets containing
that substance ; the makers and purveyors had fought hard
to alter the legal description to " butterine." If the meat
market was not as good as a festival year seemed to imply,
there were other means of jollity ; and when the Chancellor
of the Exchequer introduced hisnext Budget he commented
gratefully on the large increase in the product of the beer
and spirit duties, which the Jubilee festivities had put into
his pocket. Tobacco duties also were becoming more
productive, and for this there was an interesting reason.
Anyone who turns over the newspapers for 1887 will be
struck by an outbreak of advertisements of cigarettes.
Of course cigarettes had been smoked in England for some
time previously, but they were still looked upon as rather
outlandish. Mr Labouchere's incessant smoking of them
was enough to mark him out, and the aesthetes affected
them as a piece of elegance. It was not until about 1887
that their use became common ; and the change had been
caused by the Soudan expedition. Officers and men alike
had learned to enjoy cigarettes in Egypt, and as they
brought their new habit home it spread among people,
both high and low, who would never have picked it up
from the aesthete or the dandy.
An event of the summer which was almost as popular
as the JubUee was the " WUd West " Show at Brompton.
Colonel Cody, with his romantic past of fighting Indians
and his troupe of picturesque cowboys, became the rage.
Even the most grown-up persons recalled their boyhood
and went to see the show. MeanwhUe a sign of some
uneasiness about the standing amusements of London was

216 THE JUBILEE [1887
seen in the strong opposition to the application made
this year by the Empire Theatre for a music-hall licence in
place of its previous theatre licence ; the application was
granted, but not without a great deal of public criticism
of the condition of music-hall entertainments.
Parliament had an unusually long session, and had not
risen when, in September, a sudden violent occurrence took
place in Ireland. But again the withdrawal of public
interest showed itself in the comparative coolness and ease
with which the Govemment were able to take the affair.
A meeting at Mitchelstown, co. Cork, at which Mr DUlon
was speaking, was turned into a riot by the determination
of the police to force their official note-taker through the
midst of the crowd. In the end three men were kUled
by rifle fire from the police barracks. Yet so little was
the British public inclined to care for such things at the
moment that Mr Balfour was able to answer indignant
questions in the House by merely giving the police version
of the affair ; and even Mr Gladstone's cry, " Remember
Mitchelstown," roused no one who would not have been
ready to be roused by less tragic events.
Mr Balfour was able to carry out through the executive
in Dublin the severest kind of repression. Some two
hundred branches of the National League were suppressed ;
the Lord Mayor of Dublin was prosecuted for publishing
In a newspaper, owned by him, reports of League meetings ;
Mr WUliam O'Brien was sent to gaol as a common criminal
for speaking at proclaimed meetings ; Mr WUfrid Blunt
was simUarly treated for trying to address a gathering
on the Clanricarde estate. Mr O'Brien's refusal to wear
prison dress drew some flippant attention, for his own
clothes had been taken away, and his demand for their
restoration was echoed in British jests about " O'Brien's
trousers." Mr Blunt's arrest also caused a slight stir, be
cause, being an English squire, he was appaUed into strong
language by the discovery that a policeman could positively

1887] THE JUBILEE 217
prevent him from making a speech. But otherwise no
one in England paid much heed to Mr Balfour's rule ;
even though the Irish problem took one of its curious
twists when in August there came loud complaints from
Ulster because the large London Livery Companies, taking
advantage of the Land Purchase Act, were clearing out of
their Irish estates, and leaving to their fate all religious
and charitable institutions to which, as landlords, they
had hitherto subscribed. Private landlords were not
clearing out in quite this conscienceless way ; and in
dignant Ulstermen were inclined to question whether under
the terms of the Plantation it was legal for the Livery
Companies to act as they were acting. In any case Mr
Balfour's policy did not interfere with the progress of the
Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists towards coalition.
One prominent Unionist, Sir George Trevelyan, had
returned to the Gladstonians in May, when he knew that
Mr Gladstone was not of fixed mind on the question of re
taining Irish members at Westminster. Lord Hartington,
on the other hand, was speaking more strongly than ever
against all the proposed or hinted forms of self-government
for Ireland, and against the Parnellite party. A flicker of
the spirit of the previous year arose upon a speech by Sir
George Trevelyan in July, which caused Liberal Unionists
to ask him by what right he " took upon himself to
excommunicate Bright, Hartington and Chamberlain."
But the plain man's view of the situation was the true one :
the coalition would take place by a process of driftings,
and letters were even being written to the papers to prove
that before common opposition to Home Rule united the
two groups they had had a bond of union in a common
policy, Mr Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill being
almost as near together in democratic schemes as, say,
Mr Goschen and Sir Michael Hicks Beach were in distrust
of such schemes. Before the end of the year the Liberal
Unionists held a great meeting which virtuaUy amounted

218 THE JUBILEE [1887
to adherence to the Conservative side ; and when Mr
Chamberlain left England In December for New York, to
act as British Commissioner in the Canadian Fisheries
dispute, he was not only taking a post offered by Lord
Salisbury, but was also arranging a convenient absence,
on the further side of which he might with less emphasis
take the final step of severance from his old party. It is
curious, considering how events developed sixteen years
later, that at this time one of the reasons given by the Tory
newspapers for welcoming Mr Chamberlain was that he
and his Liberal Unionist aUies might be expected to
counteract a tendency towards Protection in the Conserva
tive party. The Fair Trade cry had been, after aU, less
damaged by its defeats at the polls than many people
thought, and it was vigorous towards the end of the year.
The papers which deplored it as a reactionary movement
looked to the democratic ideas of Mr Chamberlain as a
useful influence against it.
Nothing that modern retrospect can add would make
the Home Rule split more serious, more damaging, than
it was at the time. Yet we can perceive now concurrent
effects of it unperceived at the time. Events had so
fallen that both Lord Randolph ChurchUl and Mr
Chamberlain were out of office, and out of influence, at
a time when a politician in any sort of touch with the
working poor might have diverted the whole course of
social history. As it was, the world at large continued to
satisfy itself by mentally separating the socialist speaker
from the mass of working people. The latter, politicians
thought they understood. When in May a deputation
of pit-brow women waited upon the Home Secretary to
protest against the attempt which was being made to put
a stop to the work of women at colliery pit-mouths, he
expressed his readiness to accede to their views, and re
joiced in the opportunity of showing that a Conservative
Gkivemment was open to the reasoned requests of labour.

1887] THE JUBILEE 219
When the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union
Congress decided in June against taking part in an Inter
national Conference of Labour they were commended for
maintaining the independence of the British artisan, and
keeping him clear of associations with foreign workmen who
founded their programme upon more State intervention
than men in this country demanded.' Nor was there any
misgiving about the conference in the autumn on the
conditions of v/orking women, when a strong committee,
on which Miss Maude Stanley, Mrs Bamett, Mrs Hickford,
Mrs Allison, Mrs Verney, Canon Bamett, Lord Meath,
Mr G. R. Sims and Professor Stuart served, met to con
sider the relation of women's work to social life, and more
specifically the hours, wages and conditions of women's
work. This conference, again, was largely due to a novel
of Walter Besant's, Children of Gibeon, which had depicted
the circumstances of sweated women in the East End;
Besant served as honorary treasurer of the committee.
AU these movements were supposed to be separable from
London street meetings, which again began to be trouble
some in October. In one sense they were separable ;
even William Morris himself was thinking at this time
that the free speech campaign was beginning to take on
an importance of its own, apart from the subject of the
speaking. He thought he discerned in the leaders of the
campaign a desire to figure as heroes.^ But in the deeper
sense there was no line of division. What was happening
was the birth of a new school of labour aspiration, which
was not satisfied to see all political economy brushed aside,
because the individualist form of it had been dethroned.
The tendency of even thoughtful men in other classes
just now was to replace political science by a humani
tarian spirit in administration ; and the knowledge that
such a spirit was abroad made men the more ready to be
1 The Times, 15th June 1887.
" Mackail's Life of 'William Morris, ii. 179;

220 THE JUBILEE [1887
impatient with the London street meetings. As these
meetings had become a battle-ground the socialist leaders
were disposed to keep them going ; they could not be
blamed for seeing the opportunity. Having tried to hold
one in Trafalgar Square, and caused the authorities to take
action on the somewhat absurd legal point that the Square
was Crown territory, and could therefore be arbitrarUy
closed, the socialists called a large meeting in Hyde
Park on 20th October, and thence led a mass of men as a
deputation to the Home Office ; the police devoted them
selves to riding constantly through and through the march
ing men, and breaking up the ranks. Two or three days
later, on a Sunday, there was a march of the unemployed
to Westminster Abbey. Some months earlier they had
simUarly attended service in St Paul's ; on both occasions
the men sat for the most part quite quietly amid the
nervous congregation, though one or two shouted remarks
during the sermon. The closing of Trafalgar Square
was rescinded, and a meeting was held there on 24th
October, after which men paraded the West End
streets, but nothing occurred beyond the excusable panic
of the shopkeepers. Hyndman had issued a programme
of demands, including an eight hours' day in all Govem
ment workshops, the opening to cultivation of all waste
lands in Crown or Govemment possession, and the
establishment of relief works at State or local charges.
For the moment the reopening of Trafalgar Square ap
peared to have had its effect in causing the demonstrations
there to dwindle by the removal of a grievance. But some
arrests in the Square early in November for using threaten
ing language led to a fresh prohibition of meetings there,
and the result was the fight of " Bloody Simday," 13th
November. The unemployed and their leaders made a
determined attack on the Square, which was held by a
strong barrier of police. Police vedettes met the oncoming
processions from every direction, and had broken them

1887] THE JUBILEE 221
up before they reached the main cordon. The chief
fight took place at the corner of the Strand. " No one
who saw it wUl ever forget the strange and indeed
terrible sight of that grey winter day, the vast, sombre-
coloured crowd, the brief but fierce struggle at the corner
of the Strand, and the river of steel and scarlet that moved
slowly through the dusky swaying masses, when two
squadrons of the Life Guards were summoned up from
Whitehall." ' Before the columns of the unemployed were
finally headed off, the upper side of the Square was lined
by a battalion of Foot Guards with bayonets fixed and
ball cartridge in their pouches. After the affray two of
the stoutest fighters remained in custody — Cunninghame
Graham, then a Member of Parliament, and John
Burns. For weelis the alarm caused by this wild scene
lasted ; special constables were enrolled as for a revolu
tion, and Trafalgar Square was held daily by pickets
of police. There was no further attack ; but there
was one other socialist manifestation. In December
a man named Alfred Linnell, who had been injured
in the fight, died. His funeral on 18th December
was attended by a huge but perfectly orderly crowd, and
WUliam Morris and Henry Quelch, of the Social Democratic
Federation, spoke atthegraveside. Cunninghame Graham,
John Bums, the Rev. Stewart Headlam, and Mrs Annie
Besant were in the procession. No one knew what effect
a man's death might have on the agitation ; it made
an anxious close to the year. Moreover in the Western
Isles of Scotland the crofters were raiding the deer forests,
declaring they were starving, and the tithe riots in Wales
had not ceased.
In December the British public learned for the first
time where the real wealth of gold in the Transvaal lay. A
Board of Trade report on the Witwatersrand district was
published on 15th December. The Rand had been pro-
' Mackail's Life of William Morris, ii. 191;

222 THE JUBILEE [1887
claimed a goldfield in March, but for all effective purposes
the secret had been kept until the industry was under way ;
and by this time eighty or ninety companies had been
registered in connection with the Rand, and 1400
stamps were already working. The discovery of the
gold there was attributed to a Mr Struben, an English
man long resident in Johannesburg.' Smaller fields still
continued to be opened up, as at Luipaard's Vlei ; and
altogether the export of gold from South Africa was
expected to approach £200,000 in this year ; in 1885 it
had been £69,543. A hint of the monopolising of wealth
by a large ring at work in South Africa was given by
the announcement in August 1887 that the De Beers
Company were buying out the French Diamond Mining
Company at Kimberley. A mining subject of a somewhat
different kind had caused scandal in political quarters in
the summer. The recent annexation of Burma had
brought under British control the rich ruby mines which
had belonged to King Theebaw. It became known that
a lease to work these mines was being granted, and there
were circumstances connected with the grant which caused
Lord Cross, the Secretary for India, to cut short the pend
ing negotiations, and reserve the subject for inquiry.
Late in the year the final stage of an undertaking, which
has made several appearances in these pages, was in
augurated. The first sod of the Manchester Ship Canal was
cut on 11th November at Eastham Ferry by Lord Egerton
of Tatton. Shares to the value of five miUions had been
issued in the summer, three millions having been taken up
in Lancashire before the prospectus was published for the
second time,^ and Barings and RothschUds had under
written a considerable amount. The raising of the three
mUlions was a fine piece of local patriotism.
' It has also been attributed to Sir J. B. Robinson.
" See p. 1 86.

CHAPTER X
1888 : the social conscience
IN the year 1888 it seemed that the many currents
of restlessness — ^the restlessness not only of working
people and the people on the " starvation line," but
of educated and thoughtful people also in regard to the
responsibUities of citizenship — were producing a genuine
effect. The body politic of England stirred uneasUy, and
could not quite go to sleep again. There was no cause
for anxieties abroad. For the moment our relations
with France were patched up ; in October 1887 the
Government had announced simultaneously the con
clusion of an agreement neutralising the Suez Canal in time
of war, and the withdrawal of aU French claims on the
New Hebrides.' Germany lay under a double oppression :
her famous old Emperor William, first wearer of the crown
of a united Germany, was at the end of his long life (he
died on 9th March) ; and his heir, the Crown Prince who
had taken all London's eyes in the JubUee procession, was
a stricken man. He only reigned three months, dying on
15th June, of cancer in the throat.
So England practically spent the year with its own
conscience. In January the horrors of sweated labour
were for the first time systematically revealed by a
Board of Trade report, coinciding with the work of
the private committee investigating the conditions of
women's industry. The subject was approached without
" See page 103. The subject of the New Hebrides had provided
the liveUest passages of discussion at the Colonial Conference;
See The Times, 27th July 1887.
223

224 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
any sentimental excess. Sweating was diagnosed as an
evU largely due to the extreme subdivision of labour in
certain trades ; for instance, a single subdivision of the
taUor's trade, coatmaking, was further subdivided into
the work of cutters, basters, machinists, pressers, feUers,
buttonhole makers, and general workers. It was urged on
behalf of the various sub-contractors in trades so divided
that they worked as hard as any of the grades below them,
and that care should be taken to distinguish between a
system itself and excesses in a system. When Lord
Dunraven a month later raised the question in the House
of Lords, and obtained the appointment of a Select Com
mittee, the same careful spirit was at work ; the mere
system of manufacture of cheap clothing (which was the
trade mostly impugned) was, after all, it was said, the
same as the system in other industrial work ; cheap pens
and cheap cotton goods were equally made possible by
subdivision of labour ; and with an export trade of four
miUions a year in clothing it behoved reformers to be
cautious. An increase of inspectors might be desirable.
But was it not a matter in which a general improvement
of tone in the community would be the only valid method
of reform ? So sharply was public attention roused that
the Salvation Army was attacked for producing, by its
charitable system of providing work for those in need
of food and shelter, an undercutting of the market in
laundry-work and match-making ; the accusation was
strenuously denied. The subject ran off into all sorts
of side-issues. Was the middleman to be blamed ?
But the middleman must be a necessary and not un
economic link in the social fabric. Was alien immigration
a chief source of sweating ? But, if that were stopped,
would the underpaid work be refused by English people ?
Was not the fault as much with the purchaser as with any
body else ? No direct legislation against sweating would
avaU, if the purchaser insisted on extreme cheapness. The

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 225
private committee on women's work formed itself into
a larger and more immediately phUanthropic body, caUed
the Women's Protective and Provident League, which was
active in coUecting evidence for the Select Committee.
A more important step was taken in July, when the
match-making girls of a large factory in the East End
were encouraged to strike by the outcry against sweating ;
Miss Clementina Black at once devoted herself to forming
a Match-makers' Union ; the girls won their fight them
selves, and wrote a new chapter in the history of women's
labour. It was altogether no wonder that in the autumn
Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne should express rather
sombre gratification in the reflection that at last some
knowledge of the awful conditions of the East End and of
provincial slums was penetrating an England which with
these horrors at its doors went on subscribing half-a-mUlIon
a year for foreign missions, spent its money lavishly on the
buUdingof a Church House,' and its time on a Pan -Anglican
conference of bishops from all over the world.
The sarcastic implication of this reflection, as well as its
main purport, was thoroughly in the spirit of the year.
In religious matters too the nation was singularly stirred.
A focussing point for much new thought, some of it very
yeasty, was provided by the publication early in April of
a novel, Robert Elsmere, by Mrs Humphry Ward. Refer
ence has been made to that conflict between divines and
men of science, which arose out of enthusiastic accept
ance of the evolutionary theory, and was sharply revived
in the eighties by the death of Charles Darwin and the
consequent recapitulation of his achievements. As it
happened, the controversy found the Church of England
in a phase of slight, perhaps too slight, attention to purely
doctrinal and historical work. That had become associated
chiefly with the Tractarians ; and in the reaction against
1 The Church House at Westminster was begun in 1887, after a
great deal of discussion.

226 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
High Church methods and practices, which centred in
F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley, there had been a
tendency to feel that ecclesiastical learning was not alto
gether a healthy pursuit. To show to the world that
passion for the poor and affiicted, devotion to parish work,
and zealous care of souls were not necessarily bound up
with a sacramental interpretation of priesthood and an
ascetic life tending to monasticism, was the object of the
Maurice group ; and as the priestliness and asceticism were
founded on the historical teachings of the Tractarians, the
group had a tendency to avoid learning which was, so to
speak, technical Church learning. The muscular curate
was the prevailing type of young clergyman. When the
attack came, when new scientific schools of thought, new
theories of the origin of life, assaUed the whole Christian
cosmogony, and thereby raised the searching problem of
Christian evidences, men of religious faith retired into
more than one camp. The High Church, secure in its
own mysticism, held no parley at all from its citadel.
Churchmen of the Maurice and Kingsley type became the
Broad Church, and started throwing up earthworks to
enclose a portion of the debatable ground, from whence
they might answer the shots aimed at them ; in other
words, they rationalised certain regions of evidence, especi
ally in the Old Testament. MeanwhUe a strong inteUectual
movement among lay churchmen rationalised the whole
body of Christianity, and these people, ceasing thereby in
mere honesty to call themselves churchmen, yet caUed
themselves Christians. The Evangelicals, with a section of
Nonconformity (one portion of which was in the broadest
Church position), rejecting the extreme ground of the
mystics, battled faithfully with the exponents of the higher
criticism, and gave not the least convincing proof of the
reality of their religious feeling in the firmness with which
they refused to yield an inch of ground. A controversy of
some fame took place just at this time ; Dr Henry Wace,

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 227
Principal of King's College, London, engaged in an argu
mentative duel with Professor Huxley in the pages of
The Nineteenth Century, and this type of discussion never
received a better summing-up than on this occasion. The
question of the origin of life seriously disturbed dinner
parties, and protoplasm was a word that could destroy
the friendships of years. If the theologians' position
showed some obstinacy, the scientists on their side laid
themselves open to the biting comment that " nothing
is infallible now, except science." Floating somewhat
vaguely in the welter was the recent school of taste in
art and life. jEstheticism in its worst aspect offered a
cynical kind of support to the Ritualists ; in its best
it held a large part of the intellectual world aloof from
destructive criticism and from an exaggerated emphasis
on the exercise of the intellect.
Matthew Arnold, who had, if often indirectly, borne so
large a part in this drastic reconsideration of belief, hardly
lived to see it become (though the phrase is rather inappro
priate) a popular affair. He died on 16th AprU, just after
Mrs Ward, whose uncle he was, had published her novel.
Mr Gladstone found himself at leisure to take up the
ecclesiastical discussions which always interested him even
more than politics ; and an article by him on this novel ' set
all the country talking. It is ancient history now ; the
modem world would not be stirred by the spectacle of a
parish priest, who has resigned his living owing to an
inability to believe in miracles, founding in the East End
a sect based on an indeterminate mixture of Positivism,
social enthusiasm, and sacramental phrases without the
Sacraments. But the appearance of the book remains a
monument of that searching of the social conscience which
had so strikingly come to light every now and then in the
early eighties, and in 1888 was the predominant influence.
Housing reform was at work. Large private benefactions
' In The Nineteenth Century, 1888.

228 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
were being projected to supplement the work of public
bodies, and at least one great ground landlord, whose
leases were falling in, was setting aside, in his plans for
rebuUding, sites for workmen's dwellings.' Educational
reform was advanced a stage in this year by the Report
of the Royal Commission on the Education Acts. It had
nothing to say about making education entirely free,
though Mr Chamberlain in his new surroundings main
tained that ideal more frankly than any other part of his
former Radical programme. The commission was indeed
Conservative in essence, a majority of fifteen supporting
the volimtary school system and recommending a develop
ment of religious education, from which a minority of
five, including Sir John Lubbock, Mr Lyulph Stanley and
Dr Dale dissented. But on more general topics some
useful recommendations were made, as, for instance, that
teachers' salaries should be fixed, instead of being dependent
on the grant ; and that, whUe the system of payment by
results in the Government grant could not be entirely
abolished, it might be subject to much relaxation. An im
provement of the training colleges was also recommended.
A movement was on foot earlier in the year to ease the
conditions under which elementary schools might enter
on technical education. It was beginning to be felt that it
would be difficult to lay down the line at which elementary
education ends and technical instruction should begin, so
that the sounder policy might be a wide and deep improve
ment of elementary education. The Associated Chambers
of Commerce, on the other hand, preferred that the two
forms of teaching should be kept separate. The subject in
general had a year of helpful ventilation and discussion.
Events had so fallen out that the chief parliamentary
work of 1888 was also in the spirit of the year. The Local
Govemment BUl gave the representative principle a new
sphere hitherto occupied by non-elective authorities.
'¦ Lord Cadogan, on his Chelsea estates.

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 229
Not only had " the era of administration " come, but the
power of administration was placed within reach of all.
Until this time the authority in the counties had been the
justices in Quarter Sessions ; it was now to be a body
similar to the great popular municipalities, elected on
the same household suffrage, with some modifications,
such as the removal of the disqualification of clergymen
and ministers. But more important still from the
democratic point of view was the amount of delegation
of work which the Bill was framed to permit. Practic
ally all county work might be delegated to committees,
with the provision that they must report to the council,
and that the council had the sole power of expenditure.
Two committees were compulsory under the Bill — the
Finance Committee (which was not only a watching
committee, as in the existing municipahties, but an
estimating committee, without whose sanction no sum over
fifty pounds could be expended) ; and a Standing Joint
Committee, formed of councillors and justices, for police
purposes. But any number of other committees might be
formed, and in order to save wasteful expenditure from
overlapping in such matters as drainage, roads, etc., a
councU might unite with other councils in setting up joint
committees with delegated powers. The result of all the
delegation was that the council as a whole need not meet
often (four meetings a year was the statutory minimum),
and thus membership was open to men who had not much
time to spare from their work, and at the same time county
business was not hampered with incessant debating. A
general county rate was authorised by the Bill. The
BUl did not apply to Ireland ; but Liberal Unionists
congratulated themselves on having an instrument the
possible extension of which might undermine the Home
Rule movement. Conservatives indeed regarded the
measure as savouring far too strongly of Liberal Unionism,
and the Govemment had to face much resentment among

230 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
their supporters in the country. Tory critics pointed out
that administration by Quarter Sessions had been econ
omical, fairly efficient, and, above all, free from jobbery.
Other critics, while more friendly to the principle, objected
that much more ought to have been done to unify rating,
that interference with the old control of the police might
endanger the efficiency of the service, that triennial elec
tions were not frequent enough to keep up local interest,
and so on. Liberals regretted the exclusion of Poor Law
administration from the work of the new councUs ; but
the creation of a County of London, with the consequent
abolition of the Metropolitan Board of Works, was no
small consolation to them. All was going well with the
BUl, when suddenly a controversy sprang up on the
clauses detaUing the licensing powers of the new authority.
The councils were to be allowed to refuse the renewal of
licences to public-houses, on payment of compensation
to the licence-holder. Temperance reformers detected
danger in the implication contained in this clause, that an
interest in a licence was a valuable interest ; they main
tained hotly that a licence was an annual grant, and that
the licensing authority had a right in any year to refuse
renewal. Less extreme men were puzzled by the absence
of any basis for computation of the value of a licence.
Brewers and licence-holders for their part disliked any
change which would place them under new and popularly
elected bodies. So great an outcry arose from all these
conflicting interests that the Government decided to
withdraw the licensing clauses altogether. The Bill
then made a prosperous passage, and was law before the
House rose In August.
The licensed victuaUing trade was at a critical point in
its history. We have recorded the first large brewery
flotation, that of Guinness's, in 1886. Others followed,
notably that of Samuel AUsopp & Sons, in February 1887,
with a capital of £1,100,000 ; and that of Bass, Ratcliff

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 231
& Gretton, in January 1888, with a capital of £2,720,000.
For some time breweries all over the kingdom had been
buying public-houses, in order to avoid the expense and
uncertainty of constant competition for the custom of
licensed victuaUers. The possession of a large number
of licensed premises gave a brewery a regular and steady
trade. But the acquisition of them was an extremely
expensive affair, and the standard of price for such pre
mises constantly rose. Brewing firms had therefore been
obliged to raise a large number of mortgages and loans,
and had only been waiting for an easy investment market
to come to the public for capital to consolidate these
liabilities. It was natural that they should at the same
time decide to put their businesses under the Limited
Liability Acts ; the old private partnership was apt to be
a tiresome arrangement in businesses so large in scale.
But apart from the legal and financial convenience of
limited liability the only object which it was wise to have
in view was the consolidation of the mortgages and loans.
Even a moderate call for new ordinary capital would not
have done any harm. But the Guinness flotation had
been so eagerly taken up, and brewing profits at the
moment were such a temptation to the investor, that
some breweries put their whole capital on the market.
The two courses of action were exemplified in the cases
of AUsopp's and Bass's. The former brewery offered all
classes of its shares for subscription ; the public demand
was almost entirely for the ordinary and preference shares.
Bass's on the other hand kept the ordinary and preference
shares in the possession of the old shareholders, and offered
the public £910,000 of debentures. They were taking the
course that really represented the actual requirements of
breweries at the time ; AUsopp's were using the opportunity
of those requirements for a wholly different operation.
The amount of money waiting for investment was
enormous. The application for AUsopp's shares amounted

232 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
to something like a hundred miUions, and Bass's debentures
were issued at 107 per cent. The rush of prospectuses
was becoming so lively as to cause a fresh scrutiny of
the limited liability laws, and a fear that the company
promoter was not sufficiently under control. Suggestions
were made that the law should demand two registrations,
an initial one, which might be easy enough to keep the
ball rolling, and a final one of a much more stringent kind
in respect to paid-up capital and the proportion borne to
it by preliminary expenses. Besides brewery flotations,
this year saw also the formation of several Trusts, the chief
one being the Cheshire Salt Trust, with a capital of three
mUlions ; and — a more exciting affair — ^the beginning of
the South African gold " boom." The industry on the
Rand was going ahead fast. The gold exports for a single
month (February) were £75,647 — more than the whole
year's export in 1885 ; and from the Rand alone the export
for March was 14,706 oz., and for AprU 15,853 oz. There
seemed to be no cloud on the promising outlook. An
article in The Times ' on the Rand conditions dwelt on the
absence of any disturbance such as the inrush of capitalists
and labour had been expected to produce. President
Kruger had appointed as Landrost of the district not a
Boer unlikely to be in sympathy with the work, but a
naturalised Austrian " of agreeable maimers " ; and the
Englishmen on the Rand were saying that they were
better off than at Cape Town. The monthly output by
the end of the year was about 21,000 oz., though it was
believed that for private reasons a good deal of gold was
being kept back.^^ The connection which has already been
spoken of between the new goldfield and the immensely
wealthy diamond mines of South Africa came out clearly
at a meeting of the Goldfields of South Africa Ltd. in
i22nd May 1888.
' Board of Trade Report on the Witwatersrand. PubUshed 17th
Pecenjber 1888.

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 233
October, when the shareholders expressed themselves
as so confident in the gold industry that they wished to
get rid of their De Beers shares, and put the money into
the Rand. De Beers had in May amalgamated with the
Kimberley Central Diamond Mining Company, and was
now a virtual monopoly.
The already prolific output of the Rand took the wind
from the sails of the Currency Commission's report, which
was published in November. The commission was equally
divided in its recommendations, neither of which was
original. One half recommended the Issue of banknotes
of smaU values ; the other half were for the bimetaUist
solution, and for an intemational agreement fixing the
ratio at which coins of either metal should be avaUable
for the payment of debts, at the option of the debtor.
No action was taken on the report. The Treasury was
otherwise occupied, for Mr Goschen, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, had decided to carry out compulsorily the
conversion of the Three-per-cents., which Mr Childers had
attempted on voluntary lines in 1884. That attempt
had not been useless. The twenty mUlions or so of stock,
which had since that time borne 2| per cent, interest
instead of 3 per cent., afforded an extremely useful in
dication of the real position of public credit ; they stood
at 102. It was obvious that, if the lower rate of interest
could stUl command a premium, it was absurd for the
country to be going on paying 3 per cent. The. fact that
municipalities had been reconsidering their rate of interest
must also have influenced Mr Goschen. In 1887 the Bir
mingham Corporation found its 3| per cent, stock standing
at a premium of 3 to 4| ; and decided that the issue it was
about to make should be at 3 per cent. only. It had
obtained for an issue late in the year an average price of
£98, 15s. Consequently Mr Goschen had double reason
to feel confidence in the lowering of the national rate of
interest, and he did not hesitate to apply it to the whole of

234 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
the national stock. His Budget of 1888 contained a scheme
by which five hundred and fifty-eight millions of Three-
per-cents, were to fall after the current year to 2f per
cent., and after a further fourteen years to 2| per cent., at
which they were to stand for twenty years. Some portion
of the stock could legaUy be converted without notice ; and
in order to induce stockholders who were entitled to notice
to bring their holdings rapidly into the scheme, Mr Goschen
offered a premium of 5s. per £100 on stock converted before
12th AprU, and also a brokerage of Is. 6d. per £100 to
brokers converting before that date. The result was that
by 12th AprU the new stock amounted to four hundred and
fifty millions, and the success of the scheme was assured.
It too had profited by the better business conditions.
To say, as we have said, that this was a year in which
the public conscience was stirred must not be allowed to
carry too sombre an implication. The passion of the year
for coster songs (" 'E's all right when you know 'im. But
you've got to know 'im fust " was of this date) reveals
depths of innocent ease. Strenuous ideas, social con
ventions, had in many directions been relaxed. People
of exalted birth were going almost ostentatiously into
trade ; impoverished younger sons were taking positions
in city businesses, and noble ladies were opening millinery
shops. With the decline of fashionable sestheticism,
artists had taken to dressing in the ordinary smart clothes
of men about town, and velvet and long hair were no more
the mode. The New Gallery, opened this year, found
itself taking over from the Grosvenor Gallery a school of
taste in art which had already become respectably tradi
tional ; and Mr Whistler had so far ceased to infuriate the
ordinary citizen that he had become to Punch " the licensed
Vistler." Advanced artistic taste was now occupying
itself with WUliam Morris's special gospel of " reasonable
labour," and work in which the workman could take
interest. The Arts and Crafts Guild, which had been

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 235
founded in 1884, held this year its first exhibition. The
restoration of the individual hand and brain to the chief
place in manufacture was destined, in Morris's view, to
chasten industrial art, wherein the domination of the
machine was producing a gulf betwixt utility and orna
mentation ; the latter was becoming an excrescence,
and increasingly meaningless in design.
The great excitement of the summer was the railway
" Race to the North." It began in July, when the London
& North-Western and Caledonian RaUways announced
an eight-and-a-half-hours run to Edinburgh. As the
journey had been one of ten hours this was an effective
advertisement ; but the Great Northern and North-
Eastern Railways promptly replied byannouncing an eight-
hours run. The North-Western and Caledonian did the
same early in August ; and the race hit the public fancy.
Men surrendered like chUdren to the fascination of raUway
engines ; and rejoiced in this colossal duel of locomotive
monsters, hurtling across England through the night, and
pantingly comparing times in Edinburgh in the moming.
After the respective routes had shaved down their
difference to a matter of a minute or two, the rivals took
a rest, and the public travelled by whichever route it had
backed. Historically the principal interest of the struggle
lies in the obvious deduction that the passenger traffic to
Scotland was becoming very valuable ; which is another
indication of the spread of wealth in the middle classes,
and the readiness to expend it. Scientifically too the race
had a special interest. Such tremendous rates of speed
with such heavy loads meant firstly that the modern
engineering tools had succeeded in producing large surfaces
with a minimum of liability to destructive friction, and
secondly that Bessemer steel raUs would bear an astonish
ing amount of shock and strain.
The other craze of the summer was neither useful nor
scientific. It was in 1888 that Mr Baldwin first performed

236 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
the feat of dropping from a balloon with a parachute, which
opened as he fell and floated him to earth. It gave a fresh
impetus to the rather faUing interest in baUooning.
Electric lighting had at length made the advance which
enabled it to take its share in the busy company-promoting
of the year. House-to-house supply had been rendered
possible, and at the same time an Act was passed extending
the duration of Provisional Electric Lighting Orders to
forty-two years. This made the enterprise commercially
profitable, and two companies were at once formed in
London. They prudently undertook districts which con
tained enough theatres, clubs, and large hotels to secure a
steady consumption — the districts of Pall Mall, St James's
and St Martin-in-the-Fields. A new process for making
aluminium, reducing the cost from forty shillings a pound
to about fifteen shillings a pound ; more experiments with
a " spirit motor " ; and a successful employment of wax
instead of tinfoU for the cylinders of phonographs, were
minor activities of the inventors. Phonographs of the
new kind were a great interest of the year.
The Local Govemment BiU was the only parliamentary
business to which the public paid much heed. The move
ment for setting up a Department of Agriculture was
revived, and, as was natural, began to have more weight
under a Government strong in the landed interest. Reform
of the House of Lords was in the air. The case of a peer
who had been warned off the turf late in 1887 had led The
Times to remark that such a case brought us " nearer to the
highly necessary reform of the House of Lords " ; but a
motion In the House by Lord Rosebery proposing a
Second Chamber of 200 members, some elected by the
Peers, others by the town and county councUs, others
provided by an increase of life peerages, was but tamely
debated, and was rejected by a majority of more than two
to one. However, a few Conservative peers and several
Liberal Unionist peers voted for it. The real interest of

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 237
the session, after the Local Government Bill, was a vivid re
crudescence in the House of Commons of Irish controversy.
Since his complete denial of the authenticity of the letter
published in The Times in April 1887 Pamell, true to his
constant disregard of English, opinion, and little inclined,
in a state of poor health, to give himself trouble, had taken
no further steps in the matter. He had declined all advice
to proceed against The Times for libel. But at the end of
1887 a member of his-party, finding what he considered to
be ground for action on his own part in the articles on
" Pamellism and Crime," had entered a libel suit. It came
on for trial in July 1888, and a verdict was given against
him. The trial was used to strike another blow at Parnell.
Counsel for The Times was the Attorney-General ; and in
consequence, when he produced and read in court further
incriminating letters alleged to have been signed by Parnell,
his speech was not far removed from an official Indictment.
Even Parnell could hardly treat this with contempt, and
he moved in the House of Commons for a Select Committee.
The Government offered him instead a commission of three
judges, set up by an Act of Parliament. Feeling in the
House ran very strong ' ; it was said by the Liberals and
the Irish that the proposal to set the Bench to work meant
the hope of a prejudiced English verdict, and when the Bill
was found to empower the commission to consider charges
against " other persons " besides Parnell there was great
indignation at the idea of placing virtually the whole
question of Irish government before a legal tribunal.
Mr Gladstone was in his most impassioned mood, and
the committee stage of the Bill was marked by violent
scenes in the House. The temper of Irish Nationalist
members had been rather hot throughout the year. They
were indignant at what they considered an insulting
nonchalance in Mr Balfour, and from the beginning of the
.session they had accused him of deliberately absenting
1 Cf. Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 390.

238 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
himself from the House when Irish questions bulked largely
on the notice paper. This smouldering resentment was
partly responsible for the violence that accompanied the
PameU Commission BUl debates. The world outside
cannot be said to have cared very much about the details of
the affair, and when the commission met, in October 1888,
no one paid great attention to the immense production
of evidence. The terms of reference to the commission
practicaUy necessitated an examination into the speeches
of Irish members and all disturbing events in Ireland for
years past. Nor was there even as much popular interest
as there would have been a few years later, when it was
announced that Mr Cecil Rhodes, an ex-Cabinet Minister
in Cape Colony, and a principal shareholder in De Beers,
had been in correspondence with Parnell, and, in order to
mark his view of Home Rule as a possible commencement
of Devolution and Imperial Federation, had subscribed
£10,000 to the Irish party funds . Mr Rhodes expressed his
own conviction, from his experience with the Dutch in Cape
Colony, that the difficulty of the loyal minority in Ulster
was one that would settle itself.
Parliament assembled for an autumn sitting. It had
an Employers' Liability Bill to deal with, modifying the
doctrine of " common employment " in the workman's
favour, introducing the responsibility of sub-contractors,
and extending the benefits to seamen. Mr Chamberlain
was evidently making his presence felt in the Coalition, for
this was one of the measures of his Radical days. The
session was also notable for some changes in procedure ;
the House began meeting at three o'clock in the afternoon,
instead of at four o'clock, and the Standing Committees on
Law and Trade, which had been allowed to lapse, were again
set up. This revived the idea of an Estimates Committee,
but a Conservative Government was not likely to take so
new a step. Its advocates found some cogent arguments in
the agitation which was beginning about the defences of the

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 239
country. It was clear that there would be strong pressure
to increase the Naval Estimates, and an Estimates
Committee might, it was pleaded, bring about that co
ordination of naval and military expenditure which was
surely to be desired. The pressure was fully at work in a
meeting at the Mansion House in May, when Admiral
Hornby asked if England was really able to keep the sea ;
and gave as his own reply the opinion that she would
require 186 cruisers for the purpose. A committee had
reported upon the state of the defences of our naval ports,
and, cautious as its official phrases were, men discerned in
the report a real concern about the existing circumstances.
In every suburban railway carriage of a morning the navy,
new battleships, new men, new methods, were the pre
vailing topic of conversation ; and Lord Charles Beresford,
who had made a fighting reputation for himself at the
bombardment of Alexandria, and Lord Randolph ChurchUl
raised the subject on every possible occasion. The
celebrations of the tercentenary of the Armada were a
rallying ground for the agitators ; they were also an early
instance of the local pageant, for the historic game of bowls
on Plymouth Hoe was re-enacted, and was followed by a
procession of all the sovereigns of England. The discussion
of our defences gave some prominence also to an agitation
persistent throughout these years for giving better atten
tion to the Volunteer movement, which was feeling itself
neglected and very inadequately supported in funds by the
War Office. This year saw it in peculiar difficulty owing
to the necessity of abandoning its old training and shooting
ground at Wimbledon. A year or two passed before it was
in possession of new ground at Bisley. Volunteers, it may
be remarked, were introducing cycling into their service,
but the high bicycle did not lend itself well to such uses.
In the world of labour there was a singular lull. To
some extent, no doubt, the better trade conditions had
absorbed unemployed labour ; and street meetings were

240 THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE [1888
not so severely under the ban of the police. Organisation
was taking the energies of the most prominent labour
leaders, and the Independent Labour Party was set on foot.
The removal of all restrictions upon combination was the
one item of the Intemational Trade Union Congress upon
which there was harmony. But the year is chiefly remark
able in this connection for the appearance of a newspaper
which, though not formally associated with the labour
movement, aimed at becoming a power among working
men. This newspaper was The Star, a halfpenny evening
paper, first published in January 1888. Several towns
in the north had had such papers for some time ; and
London had one. The Echo, designed like The Star to be a
democratic organ. But The Echo displayed a rather un
diluted idealism, which tended to limit its public to men
already possessing energetic political opinions. The pur
pose of The Star was rather, by providing an attractive and
readable staple of news, to instil politics and other interests
of the mind into readers who would never buy a paper for
such things in the first place. It appealed also to the
new generation at large, by starting with a galaxy of
subversive talent in its staff of critics. Mr Bernard Shaw
contributed the musical criticism, Mr Walkley, the
dramatic, Mr John Davidson, and later Mr Richard Le
Gallienne, the literary criticism.
December brought round again a deputation of unem
ployed men to the Lord Mayor, but no one expected a very
anxious winter. Public alarm about the East End was
given a very different, and a much more gruesome, turn ;
the notorious Whitechapel murders began this autumn. A
woman was found murdered in the backyard of a house in
Whitechapel on 31st August, and another on 8th Septem
ber ; two more simUar murders took place on 30th Sep
tember, and on 15th October the incident occurred which
introduced a peculiar horror, the police receiving postcards
and letters signed " Jack the Ripper." The mutilations

H»

1888] THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 241
which accompanied the murders were atrocious, and
seemed to prove that they were all the work of one man,
and that he must have had a training in surgery. It
was incredible that such things should continue with the
hue and cry that was raised, and yet a fifth murder took
place on 8th November. They even continued into 1889,
and then the terrible series suddenly came to an end.
The perpetrator was never brought to justice.
At the end of the year news arrived of Stanley's progress
on the expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha. The news
was a whole year late ; the messages received from him
reported the expedition safe and well in November 1887.
As a matter of fact, reports had already reached England
which rather dimmed the satisfaction. Stanley had left
part of his force under Major Barttelot encamped at a
certain point, to maintain his communications. He
had trusted to a well-known chief of an Arab tribe,
Tippoo Tib, an old slave-raider, to supply the camp
with provisions, and Tippoo Tib had undertaken to do so.
He failed to keep his word, and in July rumours had come
to England that Barttelot and his force were in the greatest
straits. In October word came of Barttelot's death, and
no one laiew then where Stanley was. The messages from
him in November were followed by some in December,
from Zanzibar, to the effect that the meeting between
Stanley and Emin had taken place in January 1888, and
that both were safe.
Just at the time when this happy appendix was being
placed to the history of the Soudan war, there was fighting
once more at Suakin. Sir F. Grenfell was in command in
Egypt, and he inflicted a defeat upon some dervish forces
which had been inclined to press Suakin too closely. The
battle revived in England discussion of our position at
Suakin, but Lord Salisbury made no declaration of policy
beyond the determination to retain the place.

CHAPTER XI
1889 : LONDON and labour face to face
IT was natural that after a year such as 1888 men
should come to the next with good heart. Trade was
cheerfid, and may for the moment stand personified
in jolly Colonel North, then at the height of his fame,
spending his money on his great house at Eltham, on
his greyhounds, and on large genial benefactions — a
mUlionaire playing up to his character. The Stock
Exchange found the way to middle-class pockets, and the
investors who had surrendered to the fascinations of the
brewery boom and the gold boom were ready for all sorts
of further adventures. An underground raUway from
St James's Street to Holbom Circus, with a capital of
£750,000 ; a tramway, working on the conduit system in
an experimental stage at Northfleet, Kent ; a number of
electric light companies ; an amalgamation of the two chief
telephone companies — ^the National and the United — into
one concern, with an enlarged capital ; and an incessant con
version of private trading companies into limited liability
concerns — all flooded the market with prospectuses,
but did not exhaust the money awaiting investment.
Another sign of the greater distribution of wealth is to be
found in Mr Goschen's Budget speech of the year, when he
pleaded for a new policy of taxing a much greater number
of articles of consumption, since the old policy of taxing
a small number no longer spread taxation fairly according
to wealth.' There were also indications of prosperity,
however deplorable from the strictly ethical point of view,
in the steady increase of the return from duties on intoxi
cants, which helped to keep up the Budget surpluses of
1 ElUot's Life of Lord Goschen, ii. 158. 242

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 243
these years, and in the growth of betting and gambling.
This latter subject greatly exercised respectable minds at
this time ; raids upon gambling clubs by the police were
frequent ; the Convocation of Canterbury had a report
on the subject made to it by a committee ; and legislation
was vaguely demanded. It was felt that clubs were not
the only point at which the police might strike. Cheaper
newspapers had produced so large a betting population
that a regular professional class of bookmakers had sprung
up to meet the requirements of those who were from their
circumstances unable to go to race meetings, but found
in betting from newspaper reports the kind of excitement
which could colour their monotonous lives by being
crammed into factory dinner-hours. MeanwhUe one of the
countless prospectuses of the year can be seen now to have
been a promise of yet more cheap newspapers to come ; it
asked for a capital to run wood-pulp paper-mUls in Norway.
Some moralists, contemplating this result of news
paper reading, were inclined to deplore the teaching of so
many people to read. But on the whole the movement
for free education advanced strongly, with the argument
that, if education had led to difficulties, this only meant
that education must be fuller. The Technical Education
Act was passed this year, with very little discussion ; its
provisions have been already noted.' In this year also
University " Extension " teaching took a new form ; a
meeting of Extension Students at Oxford had been tried
as an experiment in the summer of 1888, and had been so
successful that it was now decided to establish the idea on
a more complete and definite scale. Courses of lectures were
to be so arranged that students could come into residence
for either a fortnight or a month at choice ; and in the more
continuous association of tutors and students the extension
system would acquire, as it were, the additional value of a
brief university term. 1 See page 210;

244 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
An unfortunate Incident in the general revival of cheerful
interest in aU kinds of subjects was that ecclesiastical
controversies also revived. Dr Benson was now Arch
bishop of Canterbury, and he allowed himself to be induced
to cite the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr King, before him for
ritualistic practices. No one had much belief in this res
toration of a form of procedure, the validity of which was
more than doubtful, and the enforcing power nil. Dean
Church described the precedents as " fishy." The " Lin
coln Judgment " which issued from the case remained,
failing appeal to a tribunal which had enforcing power,
an expression of opinion from which each side was free
to extract what it liked and neglect the rest. But the
proceedings served to irritate a number of old sores ;
and, as it happened at the time that the new and very
elaborate reredos in St Paul's Cathedral had been attacked
as papistical, another centre was provided for disagreement.
How radically general public opinion had altered since the
old days of ritualistic prosecutions may be seen in the
tendency to be more interested in aesthetic than in doctrinal
criticism of the reredos. The change may also be seen under
another aspect in the report of a joint committee of both
Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury, which recom
mended the establishment of brotherhoods of celibate
clergy as the most useful way of supplementing the work
of the Church in large towns.'
The elections to the first county councUs took place in
the spring, and, although the social stirrings of the previous
year had given some indication of the new spirit, no one
was prepared for the astonishing energy aroused by the
elections to the London County CouncU. It may in some
lights be seen as pathetic that London should thus confess
its backwardness in municipal development, shoidd be
genuinely excited by the prospect of activities which were
1 One brotherhood, caUed the Order of St Paul, was founded,
but came to a premature end;

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 245
an old story In every other large centre of population ;
Manchester and Glasgow men might have smiled as a
grown man smiles at a child. But at least, when the
elections were over, London had such a councU as probably
had never been gathered for municipal work anywhere in
the world. Some of the most capable members of the
House of Lords were on it — Lord Hobhouse, Lord Rose
bery, Lord Monkswell ; Radical scions of great houses,
like Mr George Russell and Mr Richard Grosvenor ;
philanthropists like Mr Quintin Hogg ; some of the most
notable economists, such as Sir Thomas Farrer, Sir Reginald
Welby, and Sir John Lubbock; men of letters like Mr
Frederic Harrison ; City magnates, barristers and, above
all, a very powerful force of working men, among them John
Bums, who had shown in fighting his election at Battersea
that his recent exploits in London streets were not those
of a mere ranter, but those of a man whose power with
workmen was almost what he chose to make it. Alto
gether the elections blew a blast of new air into every
comer of London. The doctrine that the working man had
little to expect from the ceaseless strife of party in Parlia
ment was hasty ; but it did far more good than harm in
turning the minds of the labouring men to the possibUities
of the London County CouncU. " Practicable Socialism "
was the motto with which Burns entered the councU.
The novel which we have already mentioned as having
borne a great share in the foundation of the People's
Palace, Walter Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men,
gives us the real key to the enthusiasm with which
the first London County Council was elected. One of
the characters in that book is pleading with a club of
working men to turn from barren political theories :
" Has any Government," he cries, " ever done anything
for you ? Has it raised your wages ? Has it shortened
your hours ? Has it protected you against rogues and
adulterators ? . . . Listen. You want clean streets and

246 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
houses in which decent folk can live. The Govemment has
appointed sanitary officers. Yet look about you. Put
your heads into the courts of Whitechapel — what has the
sanitary officer done ? You want strong and well-built
houses. There are Govemment inspectors. Yet look at
the lath and plaster houses that a chUd could kick over.
You want honest food. All that you eat and drink is
adulterated. How does the Govemment help you there ?
. . . You want your own Local Govemment. What every
little town has you have not." ' Seven years later
London had its ^Local Government, and rose to the occa
sion as keenly as the most ardent reformer could desire.
There is no more important landmark for the social
historian of the last thirty years than that election. The
point is not that there was a large majority on the more
democratic side — ^the Progressives, as they were ultimately
called — ^but that the keenness displayed is a measure of the
quantity of thought and activity which was at this ti'me
deliberately diverted from parliamentary politics, because
of the opinion that better work could be done elsewhere.
The deliberateness must be borne in mind, because when
that activity returned at last into political channels it was
in some quarters mistaken for a new force.
Another event of the early months of 1889 which sprang
from the introspections of 1888 was the foundation of
the Christian Social Union. Its aim was to take full
account of the changes which were occurring in the social
system, the immense nexus which was replacing the old
relations of employer and employed, of salesman and
purchaser, and to awaken a new kind of responsibUity.
In a word, it asked afresh the question. Who is my neigh
bour ? — ^and suggested that only the widest possible answer
coidd now satisfy a Christian.
The parliamentary session of 1889 was chiefly interesting
for the triumph of the party which had been agitating the
^ All Sorts and Conditions of Men, chapter xxviii,

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 247
question of our naval defences. The naval estimates
provided for a new construction programme of the
enormous size of twenty-one and a half miUions, ten of
which were to be dravm from the Consolidated Fund over
a period of seven years, the remaining eleven and a half
to fall on the estimates over a period of five years. Ten
new battleships were to be laid down under this programme,
the truth being that one of the great changes in ideas of
naval construction was taking place. The introduction
of armour-plating had, quite naturally, turned the minds
of naval constructors rather to the defensive side of ship
buUding; armour was to protect the ship from destrac
tion. It now occurred to the authorities — or perhaps
especially to Mr White, the Chief Constructor — ^that the
offensive duties of a fleet had fallen too much into the
background ; and these ten battleships were to inculcate
the new doctrine of offensive power. The voice which
might most honestly have been raised against this great
expenditure was stiUed. On 27th March John Bright died,
after a long illness. He must for years have felt himself
but little in accord with political developments ; and the
support his name gave to the Unionist Coalition must have
been as sad to him as his own inability to remain in the
Govemment which bombarded Alexandria. It was by an
impulse little short of Inspiration that The Times applied
as his epitaph the words written by Matthew Arnold of
Byron : " He taught us little, but our soul
Had felt him Uke the thunder's roll."
Beyond naval affairs the session had only minor
interests. The long-talked-of Department of Agriculture
was at length set up, with Mr Chaplin as its first President.
The Scottish Local Government Act, extending the
establishment of County Government to Scotland, was
found to be more remarkable than had at first sight

248 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
appeared, since it gave permission to apply part of the
Exchequer grant to the county authority for the payment
of school fees, and so established the principle of free
education. Mention must also be made of the Cruelty
to ChUdren Act, passed this year, since it extended the
protection given under the old Act so as to include the
exposure of chUdren for begging purposes in the streets,
and also added an improvement by permitting the issue
of a search warrant by a magistrate on sworn information,
instead of leaving the duty of prosecution to Poor Law
Guardians only. There was some hope that Parliament
might also face in this year the problem of the light gold
coinage, by applying part of the Budget surplus to the
calling-in of light gold coins at no loss to the holders of
them, provided they were paid in before a certain time.
It was fairly clear by now that if once the gold coinage
could be restored to its value there was every prospect
of such a supply from the Rand that for a very long
time to come there would be bullion enough to maintain
the value. Any man may see for himself to-day what the
new supply meant. Out of every ten sovereigns that he
receives in ordinary transactions he wUl probably not
find one more than fifteen years old ; it is quite possible
that no one of any given ten would be more than eight or
nine years old ; and three or four of them would be only
a year or two old. In 1889, when the Light Coinage Bill
was introduced, it was quite a common thing for people
to have sovereigns of more than one previous reign in their
pockets — ^and the nearest previous reign was ftfty-two
years away. There had been such a shortage of bullion
that new coinage had fallen hopelessly behind the demand.
But the BUl was dropped. Even in 1889 the solution pro
vided by the new supply of gold was of course less of a
certainty than it afterwards became ; and the bimetallists
held their ground, whUe those who were against them felt
it necessary to express, as that conservative financier, Mr

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 249
Gladstone, did at this time, a readiness to permit the issue
of small banknotes. MeanwhUe the Rand output rose
until it reached a monthly average in this year of some
35,000 oz. ; the white population of the Transvaal was
about 100,000, but the Boers were said to be treating the
new industry fairly, and no ominous sounds came from
that part of the world. The relations between the two
groups of the Ministerial Coalition were still uneasy. Mr
Chamberlain was difficult for the Conservatives to absorb.
He was advocating the production of some " substitute
for Mr Gladstone's rejected BUl," ' when the Government
preferred to let the grass grow over the whole question of
alternative measures for Ireland ; his idea was the pro
duction of a large and final scheme of land purchase, by
which the difficulties in the way of a generous grant of
local govemment would be, he thought, much lessened.
The Tories, on the other hand, were talking of abolishing
the Viceroyalty, as the logical conclusion of the Act of
Union, and were drawing careful distinctions between the
state of things on the Clanricarde estate — ^the extreme
case of an absentee landlord — and that on the Massereene
estate, where the Plan of Campaign had, they said, been
" worsted at close quarters," and boycotting had faded.
A Cabinet Committee did indeed sit on the question of
land purchase at the end of the year ; the price of coalition
had to be paid, and Mr Chamberlain possessed the means
of enforcing payment. He returned during the year to
his old occupation of constructing electoral machines. A
Central Organising Committee for the Liberal Unionist
party, on which representatives from all portions of the
country were to sit, was formed in March. A Liberal
Unionist van campaign over the country, with speech-
makers, magic lanterns, and pamphlets, was opened in
October ; and a Government which had lost five seats at
bye-elections could not afford to offend the master hand
> Letter to his constituents in Birmingham, 20th March 1889.

250 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
at campaigning. A quarrel between Mr Chamberlain and
Lord Randolph ChurchUl over the question whether the
latter had, or had not, the first reversion of John Bright's
seat in Birmingham showed that there was plenty of touchi
ness in the Coalition ; and Lord Salisbury's speech to the
conference of Conservative Organisations, in which he
again offered to make way for another Premier, if that
would advance the progress of the Coalition, was a signi
ficant confession. The quarrel mentioned was afterwards
looked back upon as the beginning of the end of Lord
Randolph's career ; Mr Chamberlain had his way in the
matter completely.
But all this was, to the general public, taking place
comparatively behind the scenes. Its only interest in
Ireland had more spectacular opportunities. The Pamell
Commission suddenly turned dramatic at the beginning
of the year. After weeks of evidence the judges came to
the question of the letters alleged to have been written
by Pamell, and demanded the production of the man who
supplied them to The Times. The moment he appeared
Irishmen were on the alert ; he proved to be a broken-
down journalist named Pigott, whom every Irish member
knew as ready to do anything for money. To Englishmen
the sensation came a few days later, when Sir Charles
Russell, who was counsel for Pamell, made Pigott write
certain words in the witness-box, confronted him with the
same misspellings in the notorious letters as he now made
in court, and thundered him into a total breakdown and a
confession. He had forged the letters. He made a full
confession next day, and fled to Madrid. Detectives
followed him, and the news published on 2nd March that
he had shot himself in a hotel there on the arrival of the
detectives was, for the ordinary man, the end of the drama.
The Parnell Commission might again relapse into the
patient taking of evidence ; it had at least provided a
genuine excitement. However, there was another small

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 251
excitement of a different kind to come. A warrant was
out for the arrest of Dr Tanner, an Irish member, on
account of a speech he had delivered in Ireland. He had
escaped the police for some time, and suddenly appeared
in the House of Commons, when no one but his friends
had for weeks known where he was. London enjoyed the
comedy of his Jack-in-the-box appearance enormously, and
when he left the House in the middle of a close bodyguard
of members the group grew into a kind of hUarious pro
cession to a neighbouring hotel. There Dr Tanner sub
mitted to arrest ; and the whole affair was too much of a
joke for anyone but Radical members to labour the point
that this kind of execution of an Irish warrant was a
new piece of Mr Balfour's tyranny. It was to the
Londoner a gay beginning to a season which brought him
visits from General Boulanger, who flaunted himself as a
Republican hero; the Shah of Persia, who got himself
instantly into street songs; and Barnum's show.
The summer brought also one of those baffiing criminal
trials which have the power of absorbing the whole nation's
attention. Early in Aug-ust Mrs Maybrick was condemned
on a charge of poisoning her husband, and it was said at once
that " not one in three of the thousands who have followed
the case expected a verdict of guUty." ' Mr Maybrick
was a man who had taken all sorts of drugs — eighteen
different kinds within a single fortnight — and the doctors
called during the case differed hopelessly as to the cause
of death. A great popular agitation followed the verdict,
and public meetings were held all over the country. The
sentence of death was commuted, and very distinguished
lawyers devoted themselves to the task of trying to secure
Mrs Maybrick's release. The agitation was unsuccessful.
The case must find a place in history because it focussed
anew all the strong feeling in favour, first, of a reform
of procedure which should allow prisoners to be put on
* The Times, 8th August 1889.

252 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
oath and give evidence, and, secondly, of the establish
ment of a Court of Criminal Appeal.
Thus in a full tide of interests the country swept on to a
profound shock. On 14th August 2500 dock labourers at
the East and West India Dock and South London Docks
struck work. For a day or two no interest was taken in
the matter. Then the large but orderly crowd at the West
India Dock gates began to draw people's attention, and,
as an uneasy temper manifested itself in other docks,
the cause of the strike became known. The men, working
at the most casual kind of casual labour, attending daUy at
the dock gates, getting perhaps an hour's work one day, and
no work for three days, and then two or three hours again,
had struck on a demand that hiring of labour should not
be for less than four hours at a time, and that there should
be a uniform rate of pay of sixpence an hour. A neces
sary corollary of these demands was that the " contract "
system of work at the docks should be abandoned — ^that
is to say. Instead of letting out separately the job of loading
or unloading this or that ship to a contractor, who then
hired men as he needed them, the dock companies should
themselves be responsible for the labour in their docks,
and by not splitting up the various jobs should be
able to hire men for a decent period, transferring them,
as needed, to different ships. Dock labour was an
extreme case of unregulated interaction of supply and
demand. It was unskUled labour, crowds of men
were always ready for it, and the dock companies had
acted accordingly. By letting out the work on contract
they made their money without any responsibUity,
and the contractor made his profit on the basis of the
overwhelming supply of the labour he needed. The
men's demands amounted to a minimum wage of two
shillings a day for those who were lucky enough to be taken
on. This implied no weekly minimum, because no man was
sure of being taken on two days running, much less for

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 253
a week. It implied no general wage-earning standard,
because no man could be sure of being taken on at all.
There can be little wonder that a strike begun by men of
such casual employment was not expected to last long.
On 17th August 2000 men marched from the docks
to the offices of the West India Dock Committee in
the City, and a deputation of them saw the chairman, Mr
Norwood, a Member of Parliament, who told them that
their demands should have attention, but that he could
promise them nothing until they were in a different state
of mind. He made the great mistake of miscalculating not
only the possibUity of organisation among the men, but
also the change in public opinion about the operation
of laws of supply and demand. The organisation began
to show at once what had been happening in the past few
years at those street meetings, which had from time to
time broken the surface routine of London ; men of the
most casual type of workman had come to recognise certain
leaders and to be accustomed to listen to them. In other
parts of the country, where a single industry was dominant
— on the coalfields, in the cotton towns in Lancashire,
the engineering towns of the T5me and the Wear and the
Clyde — workmen had for years had their leaders. But
in the great welter of London, where there were so many
small industries that there was no common industrial
feeling, there had been no opportunity for such concentra
tion, untU the lack of employment, due to a period of de
pressed trade, threw together in the streets workmen of all
kinds ; and men of force and capacity seized the chance to
give a general basis to labour movements. The fact that
this had been accomplished was of immense importance
now when a specific case arose. John Burns instantly
came back upon the East End scene, and found ready to
work with him a dock labourer with an extraordinary hold
on his fellows, Ben TUlett.
By 20th August the strike had extended to all the docks.

254 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
Pickets from MiUwaU, Victoria Docks, and Albert Docks
reported that all the men there were out, and from TUbury
1000 had come out. The dock companies had attempted
to get the work done by coolies from the ships, but these
men had refused to do it. More important stUl was
the announcement which Bums was able to make to the
men, that he had received virtual promises from other great
ports — ^Liverpool, Glasgow, Grimsby and Hull — ^that the
dock labourers there would support the London men by
striking for an equivalent rise in wages, if ships were sent
round from London to those ports for loading or unloading.
Next day the dock directors placarded their docks with
posters offering men twenty shillings a week to come in
behind the strikers' backs. The average wage of a London
dock labourer had rarely reached ten shUlings a week. But
the strike leaders were confident that "blacklegging" would
be impossible on a large enough scale to break the strike.
They picketed the docks ; and then another procession
went to the City, with 20,000 men in it this time, quiet,
and giving no trouble to the police. Not the least re
markable fact about the whole affair is that already it
was clear that the general feeling in the City was on the
side of the men ; the dock companies' attitude had been
so careless an exploiting of the mass of unskUled labour
that even the City man felt uncomfortable.
When another large procession marched up, on 22nd
August, various business men brought pressure to bear
on the dock directors, to induce them to meet the men's
leaders again. On this occasion the directors said they
would agree to a four-hours minimum engagement, when as
much as four hours of the working day were left ; but they
would not give up the right to engage men at any hour they
chose (which meant that the minimum wage would not
always be earned), nor would they agree to the pajonent
of sixpence an hour, except with the maintenance of the
contract system. The interview therefore came to nothing.

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 255
The companies now tried importing labour from other
places, and a number of men were hired from Liverpool.
But the pickets successfully brought them out next day,
and telegrams from the strike leaders stopped an attempt
to get men from Southampton. Two shUlings an hour was
now being offered to " blacklegs," but the picketing was
effective, and although a few men were smuggled into the
docks, and kept there continuously, being fed and lodged
in the sheds, the companies were baffled. MeanwhUe the
lightermen on the river, whose services might have been
used to unload ships out in the stream and land the cargoes
at wharves, had also come out on strike for better con
ditions. By 25th August, when a great meeting took place
in Hyde Park, it was clear that public opinion was very
largely with the men, the contract system having been
one of the recognised forms of sweating condemned by the
House of Lords Committee ; the " docker's tanner " made
its appearance in music-hall songs, always to a burst of
applause ; and a fund was set on foot — ^Dr Liddon taking
a large share in the work — ^to provide food for the wives
and chUdren of the men on strike. More important still,
the shipowners were against the dock companies, who
charged shipping companies heavy prices for handling
cargoes, and then proved themselves such inefficient
middlemen that they lost the means of doing the work.
The organisation of the strike now included a regular
daily programme. There was always a huge meeting of
men on Tower Hill, a procession to the City with collecting
boxes, which never came back empty, and a meeting after
wards at the West India Dock gates. Money was shared
out by the leaders in the evening. Before the end of
August the streets around the docks had been emptied of
almost all traffic ; there was no work for waggons or carts
to do. The Corn Exchange and the Coal Exchange were
practically idle, the wool salerooms and the Mincing Lane
rooms were idle too. On 26th August a new element

256 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
came into the struggle, Mr Sydney Buxton, Member of
Parliament for Poplar, the dockers' division, joining in
the interviews between the dock directors and the strike
leaders. On 28th August the directors said that, if the sixpence
an hour was not insisted upon, they might meet the other
demands ; but the men kept firmly to that minimum. If
the directors had believed in the men's power of continuing
the fight, they might by this time perhaps have taken
warning from the sound of the cheers which greeted Burns
and TUlett as they left the dock offices after that interview.
The two leaders had come this time without the customary
procession ; the cheers were from sober City men in the
street, who had happened to recognise them as they left
the dock offices. Mr Buxton now suggested that the
shipowners might deal with the men directly, engaging
the labour to handle their own cargoes, and Sir Thomas
Sutherland, chairman of the Peninsular & Oriental
line, was ready to take up the suggestion, if the dock
companies would stand aside altogether. But some ship
owners, chiefly men in a small way of business, did not
care for this solution.
September opened with a new interposition' of negoti
ators. Cardinal Manning, whose father and brother had
been chairmen of dock companies, had been to see the
Lord Mayor, and to suggest an attempt at intervention.
The two of them went to interview Mr Norwood, and spoke
to him plainly of " the isolated and untenable position
of the dock companies " ; Mr Norwood now argued that
it was impossible in the existing state of the dock finances
to accede to the men's demands. It may be noted that
a sidelight on this view of the question can be gained
from the angry comment of the shipowners, to the
effect that the " stupid rivalries " of the dock companies
had caused them to overweight themselves with capital.
For a day or two after the intervention of the Cardinal

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 257
and the Lord Mayor public opinion was in suspense, and
the proceedings of the strikers were more critically watched
The issue of a manifesto by Bums and Cunninghame
Graham, threatening a " general strike," was condemned
as a rather hectoring proceeding ; and the work of the
strikers' pickets was so jealously scrutinised that accusa
tions of incitement to violence began to be made. Then
the dock directors foolishly threw opinion against them
once more by refusing to recognise Bums and TUlett at all
in the negotiations, which had now narrowed themselves
down to the single question of the extra penny an hour.
On 6th September a new move was made. A conference
was called at the Mansion House, consisting of the Lord
Mayor, Cardinal Manning, the Bishop of London, Mr
Sydn^ Buxton, John Burns and TUlett. There seemed
to be a possible line of negotiation in a resumption of
work at fivepence an hour, on condition that within
a certain period the rate should rise to sixpence an hour.
Burns and TUlett refrained from pressing for recognition
by the dock directors, and the Lord Mayor, the Cardinal,
and Mr Buxton conducted interviews with the directors.
This led to an unfortunate hitch. By some misunder
standing the three negotiators thought that, if the sixpence
an hour were granted on 1st January, the men would
accept those terms, and they succeeded in making the
dock directors agree to this. But as the extra penny was
not, in this agreement, applied also to overtime payment,
the men refused to accept so long a delay, and the terms
were rejected at a mass meeting. The negotiators, who
had believed that they could on their part offer the definite
adherence of the men, were offended, and it seemed likely
that public sympathy would be alienated. Probably one
thing that prevented such a change of opinion was the
unswerving energy which the leaders of the strike were
devoting to the suppression of tendencies to violence.
Burns, interposing his sturdy shoulders and fists between

258 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
strikers and blacklegs whenever a fight seemed imminent,
deserved aU the credit he got for riding the storm. More
over the sharing-out of relief had been admirably organised ;
the pickets were on the whole showing excellent discipline ;
and the strike was altogether being conducted with no
little dignity.
On 13th September, when it had lasted four weeks,
settlement at last began to appear within sight. The
conference of negotiators had begun again on 9th
September, and Cardinal Manning and Mr Buxton were in
communication with the dock directors. The announce
ment that the lightermen were willing to return to work,
pending arbitration in their case, was the first real relief ;
and it was accompanied by a rumour that the dock negotia
tions were proceeding on the basis of the payment'of six
pence an hour beginning on 1st November. On Saturday,
15th September, the dock settlement was signed on those
lines. The men had won practically all their demands,
and a huge triumphant meeting was held in Hyde Park.
The dock directors undertook not to discriminate against
strikers, and the strikers not to discriminate against
blacklegs. The latter undertaking had behind it, as
everyone knew, the strength of the fact that the strike
had organised at last some of the most casual labour in
the country. The Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers
Union had grown out of it, and under one of the most
prominent of the strike lieutenants, Tom Mann, it grew
rapidly into a body formidable enough to be sure that the
ground gained would not be lost. Within a month many
of those who had been blacklegs in the strike were
members of the union. The dock directors held a peevish
meeting, complaining of the attitude during the strike of
the clergy and the big shipowners, and even of the public.
The Strike Committee published their accounts, duly
audited,' and showed the world that, out of £46,499 re-
* The Times, 4th December 1889.-

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 259
ceived in subscriptions (£4000 had come in one sum from
Australia, and large sums from Germany and France)
there was only a sum of £192, lis. for which the auditors
could not account. This minute failure was due to a
natural difficulty in keeping accounts at the beginning of
the strike. That it was so minute, in an average distribu
tion of over £11,000 a week to a great number of men not
at the time boimd together in a regular organisation, is
an astonishing tribute, alike to the leaders who carried it
out, and to the men's acceptance of their leaders' control.
London had at last seen organised labour at war ; and,
because things that happen in London have the newspapers
at their service, the whole country had seen it too, in a
way in which it had never yet seen a strike. This may
partly account for the friendliness of the London public
to the strikers ; London is always ready to be carelessly
genial towards something that is fresh. In one sense
indeed the strike did inaugurate a new chapter. The
trade unions all over the kingdom had supported men as
yet unorganised, and that unrest in London, which had
appeared to casual observers so vague and so easily to
be distinguished from the recognised — even, by contrast,
respectable — ^labour movements, had coalesced with Trade
Unionism. For the most unskilled and casual labour the
laws of supply and demand were no longer to be in control
of the market. The dock strike had done effectively for
men what the Committee on Sweating was trying to do
for women ; and political economy as the elder generation
understood it had been dethroned. The organised
strength of the workmen, with pubhc opinion acting to
some extent as the " governor " on the engine, had intro
duced the new element of regulation. As long as strikes
were confined to skUled trades the change was not so
apparent, for, after all, the wiUingness of the skUled
men was a vital feature of the supply; it could not be
regarded as such in an unskUled labour market.

260 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
Barely had the dock strike been settled when another
serious one occurred in London, at the South Metropolitan
Gas Works. Then came a regular crop of strikes : the
workers at the SUvertown Rubber Works came out, and
so did bakers, omnibus men and tramcar men. The
engineers at the Maxim-Nordenfeldt Works foUowed, and
the employees in the gas department of the Manchester
Corporation. PhUosophical observers noted two distinct
forms of strike among those going on in the last portion
of the year. One form — ^that, for instance, of the strikes
of bakers, omnibus men and tramcar men — was for the
lightening of a heavy load of work ; the other — ^that of the
gas employees and the engineers — arose from the men's
claim to a voice in the control of the work, on such points
as the abolition of overtime and the regulation of piecework.
The latter came to be called the " New Trade Unionism,"
and people, who had never had enough bitter things to say
of the old straightforward strikes for more wages, began
now to think of them as almost praiseworthy in contrast
with the new kind of strike. The South Metropolitan
Gas Strike was rendered notable by the policy which the
directors adopted ; they offered to apply the co-operative
principle to the work, the men to participate in the profits
on a sliding scale, receiving 1 per cent, on their wages for
every penny by which the price fell below two and eight-
pence per thousand cubic feet.' The Union objected to
this arrangement, as likely to weaken the men's aUegiance
to the Union, and the dispute went on. It lasted until
well into the new year, and then in February 1890 ended
in the complete surrender of the men, who accepted the
profit-sharing principle, and returned to the hours in
force before the strike. The serious outbreak of strikes
caused considerable discussion of the possibUity of setting
* The price of gas in London is regulated by an Act of Parlia
ment, under which a faU of price accompanies every advance of a
certain magnitude in profits.

1889] LONDON AND LABOUR 261
up concUiation boards. They had been working well for
twenty years in the north of England,' and the London
Chamber of Commerce appointed a committee to consider
the introduction of the principle as part of the chamber's
work. A Blue Book on strikes, published in November,
showed that, out of 509 strikes in 1888, 332 had been
settled by arbitration.
One or two other interests at the end of the year diverted
the public mind from industrial experiences. Late In
October a meeting was held at St James's Hall to urge the
Government to action in the matter of rabies among dogs.
In 1870 eight counties had been affected by it ; in 1889
thirty-three were affected, and the number of deaths from
hydrophobia had amounted in thirty-eight years to 939.
There was a movement for founding a Pasteur Institute
in London for the treatment of cases ; but the desire for
prophylactic treatment was kept subordinate to a demand
for a general muzzling order to be enforced for twelve
months. Even Pasteur himself was strong on the point
that by such regulations hydrophobia could be entirely
stamped out. Moreover prophylaxis by inoculation was
at the moment somewhat on its trial in England. There
has always been a strong opposition to the vaccination
laws, and so many people had been going to prison rather
than conform to them that the Government had this
year to set up a Royal Commission on the subject.
In November Stanley and Emin Pasha were at last
approaching civilisation, and in December they reached
Zanzibar. Emin had been Ul, but his health was improv
ing, and it seemed likely that his long years in the Soudan,
his extreme danger, and the anxieties he must have suffered
when the fall of Khartoum left him utterly alone, would not
lastingly have injured him. Stanley was returning, not
only with the rescued man, but with new geographical
1 See a letter by Dr Spence Watson in The Times, 5th October

262 LONDON AND LABOUR [1889
knowledge as to the extent of the great Victoria Nyanza.
There was, however, reservation in the enthusiasm over
the news of the arrival in Zanzibar. The affair of Major
Barttelot and the rearguard of the expedition was still
awaiting elucidation.
In the closing days of the year Robert Browning died
in Venice. A well-known and well-liked figure ia London
society, he was in advance of his day in his refusal to play
the poet, and his taste for passing among his fellow-men as
one of themselves. Yet those with whom he had least
association — ^the over-earnest and the over-intense — ^had
done most to foster admiration of his work.

CHAPTER XII
1890: A YEAR WITH A STORMY ENDING
TEN years of the new social spirit, of the revolt
against political economy, may not have achieved
much for the poorest and most oppressed forms
of labour. Sweating, the knowledge of which had gone
to the hearts of decent people, remained almost un
diminished, though here and there workgirls had com
bined. Yet those who could see further than their own
pet remedies (and pet remedies abounded to a degree that
makes the innocence of the eighties almost as remarkable
as their warm heart) had cause to rejoice. Labour had
not grown tidier in its habits, more elevated in its amuse
ments, more thoughtful in its leisure. On the contrary
it was betting and drinking rather faster than before.
But it was far on the road to being able to bargain for its
wages ; and, slow though the visible differences may have
been, it was none the less a vast change that has put the
great majority of labouring men in the position formerly
occupied by the most skUled and most intelligent alone.
Moreover even among the inteUigent and the well-organised
worlonen there was new force of will. One of the strikes
of the early part of 1890 was a coal-mining strike in the
Midland district. It lasted only four days, the men ob
taining their demands ; but it aroused its share of comment.
" Twenty or even ten years ago," said The Times,^ " it
would have been out of the question for 300,000 workmen
to combine so perfectly as to stop work at one given
moment and to resume it at another." The importance
1 2 ist March 1890.
263

264 A STORMY ENDING [1890
of a big strike having occurred in London is nowhere better
seen than in the greatly enlarged interest which was now
taken in all labour disputes. Much of it ceased to be a
sympathetic Interest. The world, pursuing its custom
of making distinctions satisfactory to itself, was careful to
separate sweating and bad housing conditions from the
general labour movement ; it thought it could hold up
Its hands at the latter whUe devising remedies for the
former. But at least it was more aware of the general
movement than it had ever been, and the summer brought
it sufficient reason to hold up its hands.
Financially the year opened with the " cold fit " which
not unnaturally foUowed the company-promoting booms
of the past year or two. After three years of its new exist
ence AUsopp's brewery was in difficulties, and a share
holders' committee was appointed in February ; the
committee decided that there had been no misrepresenta
tion in the prospectus, but a large body of shareholders
adhered to their opinion that the goodwill had been greatly
over-estimated. In any case the policy followed in the
flotation, of placing all the ordinary and preference stock
on the market, had thrown a heavy burden on the profit-
making, which owing to increased agency charges from the
severity of competition had faded to respond to the need.
But apart from the rights and wrongs of the case, the
mere fact of the discontent of shareholders was enough to
cool the speculative mood. One of the principal business
activities of the year was the advance in the amalgama
tion of the banking companies. The Capital and Counties,
the Birmingham and Midland, the Union, and Prescott
Dimsdale's carried out several absorptions in 1890 ;
WUliams Deacon's combined with the Manchester and
Salford Bank ; and Lloyd's Bank, which had taken up
several local banks in Worcestershire and Warwickshire
in 1889, was growing into a widespread business. The
reasons for these amalgamations were, no doubt, sound

1890] A STORMY ENDING 265
enough. The shortage of gold made the maintenance of a
number of separate bank reserves increasingly difficult,
while the advance of wealth depending more and more
upon paper exchanges made the burden of disjointed re
sponsibUities much heavier. Moreover one bank depended
so much upon the solvency of another that the separate
stability of each had almost ceased to exist, and large
amalgamations hardly altered the reality of the situation.
At the same time they undoubtedly lessened the elasticity
of local trade. Personal character ceased to be valid
security for loans and overdrafts when the old local
bankers, with their individual knowledge of all their
clients, were replaced by distant directors whose lack of
such knowledge compelled them to confine their loan
business within hard and fast rules. Many a merchant
and tradesman, who could once have pulled through a
difficult time by the help of a banker who knew his recti
tude, faUs under the present system, which demands more
formal securities. MeanwhUe, the gold difficulty brought
about a vigorous revival of bimetallism, and of discussion
of the true relation between money and gold and prices.
The Rand continued to enlarge its output, reaching in
this year 43,000 oz. a month. But the Treasury proposals
to deal with the coinage still hung fire, and made no
appearance in Parliament this year.
The London County CouncU, if late In the field of muni
cipal enterprise, distinguished itself in its very first year of
existence by a policy new in conception. This became
famous in private Bill controversy a little later as " the
betterment principle." The principle, for which oppor
tunity was given by the necessity confronting the council
of making up the deficiencies of the Metropolitan Board
of Works in the sphere of street improvements, was that
enhancements of the value of premises, such as might
accrue from better frontages, better means of approach,
and better surroundings, should go by rights not to the

266 A STORMY ENDING [1890
owner, who had done nothing to bring about the new
conditions, but to the public body, which had done all.
The principle was an old one in America, but there the
enhancement of value was paid down by the owner in
a lump sum ; the London County CouncU proposed to
make it a tax on the premises. The idea was at once as
saUed, the Duke of Argyll being its most prominent critic ;
and it appeared that not the least drawback to the scheme
was going to be its distortion of the English tongue.
" Betterment " was bad enough ; but the duke did worse
when he wrote that the tax was illogical and unjust because
the " goodment " of a house in a small street was no more
due to the owner or occupier than the " betterment "
of a house in a big new street. Other critics followed with
a further atrocity of language, arguing that if " better
ment " applied to some houses, " worsement " might be
claimed against a municipal authority by the owners of
premises unfavourably affected by the diversion of traffic
to new streets, or by tradesmen compelled to move else
where. The opponents of the scheme as a whole treated
the affair as one of the property market ; the councU's
experts, notably Sir Thomas Farrer, took the higher and
less disputable line that a public authority had a right of
taxation, and, as street improvements cost money, taxation
should fall to a special extent on those benefited by the
expenditure. An attempt, however, to introduce the
principle in the Strand Improvement Bill, promoted by
the council this year for pulling down Holywell Street
and opening up the " bottle-neck " of the Strand at that
point, faded ; the clause was thrown out by the House
of Commons Committee, chiefly owing to the objectors'
arguments that the council made no estimate of the
amount of " betterment," and that the definition of the
principle and the limitations of its application were
arbitrary. Before the session opened, one of the| heroes of the

1890] A STORMY ENDING 267
Irish conflict had passed from the scene. On 19th January
J. G. Biggar, the inventor of obstraction, died. On 22nd
AprU 1875 he had first baffled the House of Commons,
holding back an important debate by the simple process
of reading enormous extracts from volumes bearing more
or less remotely on the subject, and adding brief
comments of his own. Later on he invented the more
subtle method of endlessly moving the Chairman out of
the Chair in Committee. His name stood for fifteen years
of constant fear of parliamentary paralysis.
Hardly had the House met in February when the
Report of the Parnell Commission was published.' Lord
Morley has given us a vivid picture of the members during
a dull debate all poring over the Blue Book just put Into
their hands ^ ; but, hard as both sides tried, with cheap
' The chief findings of the commission were, briefly :
(a) That the Invincibles were not a branch of the Land League,
nor organised nor paid by the League ; nor did any of the Irish
party associate with known Invincibles. The Pigott letters were
aU forgeries. PameU and the rest of the party had no knowledge
beforehand of the Phoenix Park murders and were not insincere
in condemning them.
(6) That there was no ground for the charge made by The Times
that the leaders of the Land League based their scheme on a system
of assassination, or, even in the case of the most dangerous
language, intended to procure murder ; though such language did
cause an excitable peasantry to carry out the Land League's laws
even by assassination.
(c) That the Land League leaders never denounced boycotting
and intimidation, and never took any steps to assist the police in
detecting crime.
(d) That there was ground for suspicion that Land League funds
were used to compensate persons injured in the commission of
crime. (e) That the Irish Party funds had received large sums of money
from the Irish National League of America, which was controUed
by the Clan-na-Gael, the d3mamiters' organisation.
' Life of Gladstone, iii. 408;

268 A STORMY ENDING [1890
annotated editions of the report, to whip up feeling on the
subject, it cannot be said that outside the political world
anyone cared very much for detaUed decisions of the
commission as to whether Pamell and his followers
had in this, that, or the other way sanctioned or been
encouraged by violence and the party of violence. The
ordinary man's interest was only aroused when, in the
debate on the report, a month later. Lord Randolph
ChurchUl electrified everybody by roundly attacking the
Conservative Govemment. He was at this time rather
erratic in his political appearances, and the remonstrance
which his constituents at Paddington addressed to him
shows no little anxiety.
Pamell himself was hardly ever seen during the session.
Since his Ulness in 1886 he had grown more and more
mysterious, and the pUes of letters and telegrams awaiting
him from time to time at the House of Commons were a
strange spectacle. In his absence — and in the uneasiness
which his absence caused to those who knew the circum
stances — ^the Irish party were faced with the necessity of
making up their minds about what looked like a large in
stalment of Mr Chamberlain's alternative to Home Rule.
Mr Balfour introduced in March an Irish Land Purchase
BUl, setting up a scheme of voluntary transfer of owner
ship from landlord to tenant, purchase money being
advanced to the latter from a Govemment loan at 2|
per cent., the total amount being limited to thirty-three
mUlions. At the same time Mr Balfour proposed to set
up a Congested Districts Board, with power to create
small holdings, and to promote migration within Ireland
or emigration from it.
Fortunately for the practically leaderless Irish members
the two proposals were not pressed forward at the time.
The House was engaged on other matters — ^notably the
Tithe Rent Charge BUl, which removed the duty of paying
tithes from the occupier of land to the owner, and the

1890] A STORMY ENDING 269
Employers' LiabUity BUl ; amending BUls on this subject
were, it was said, becoming a " hardy annual," but the
need for this one was shown by the fact that on an average
62 per cent, of the workmen's claims under existing Acts
faded on some technical point. The present Bill made
the great step of placing the liabUity entirely on the
employer, removing sub-contractors out of the case. The
work of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor
was finally met this year by a Housing of the Working
Classes Act, which for twenty years was to govern the
activity of public authorities in this direction.
, The final report of that commission had been a fairly
drastic document. In the sphere of administration it
recommended that a statutory duty should be laid upon
local authorities of enforcing the powers they possessed in
the matter of insanitary dwellings ; that medical officers
of health should reside within, or within a mile of, their
districts, and give their whole time to their work ; that
the staffs of sanitary inspectors should be increased,
and should consist of men acquainted with the principles
of building construction ; that for London the Home
Secretary should appoint special inspectors to report at
once ; and that any vestries and district boards which
had not made by-laws should be obliged to do so immedi
ately. Secondly, the report recommended the consolida
tion and amendment of existing Health and Housing Acts.
Thirdly, in the direction of new proposals, it recommended
that local authorities should have greater facUities for the
erection of workmen's dwellings, and compulsory powers
for purchase of land for dwellings ; that vacant sites should
be rated at 4 per cent, of their selling value ; that com
pensation for land acquired under Housing Acts should be
reduced to market value and no more ; that there should
be a system of cheap Government loans for municipal
housing schemes ; that raUway companies destroying
houses in extending their lines should be obliged to provide

270 A STORMY ENDING [1890
accommodation for the number of persons so displaced,
and to provide it concurrently with the destruction of the
original houses ; and that cheap transit to outlying districts
should be facUitated, the Government initiating provision
of cheap trains. There were also some recommendations
as to easier methods of securing damages against owners
of property by those who had suffered from the owners'
neglect in sanitary matters ; as to small holdings ; and
as to Mr Chamberlain's new doctrine of loans to enable
workmen to become owners of their houses.
The report was too sweeping to be embodied all at once
In legislation, but the Act of this year was quite energetic.
The first part re-enacted and consolidated earlier Acts,
and the second part created new powers of buying up
insanitary areas, demolishing unfit dwellings and ob
structive dwellings (so as to permit the opening of closed
courts and culs-de-sac), and of erecting new houses on
those sites. Power was given In this part of the Act to
deal with smaller areas than those for which powers were
given by the Artisans' Dwellings Act.
Two Acts dealing with infectious diseases should also
be mentioned. That of 1889 empowered local authorities
to make by-laws for the notification of infectious diseases
by the head of the famUy concerned and by the doctor
attending the case. That of 1890 gave powers for stopping
the sale of mUk from dairies notified as infectious, and for
undertaking the disinfection of houses. To some Con
servatives all this social legislation seemed excessive, and
again the Liberal Unionist influence was blamed. Even
those who were not of this mind felt that Parliament was
overloading itself. Its real difficulty, however, lay in
none of these things, but in a second attempt to create a
policy of extinguishing public-house licences with payment
of compensation. Mr Goschen in the Budget proposed
to aUot a sum raised by extra duties on beer and spirits
to the local authorities. The ground was prepared by

1890] A STORMY ENDING 271
a return of licensed houses, showing that the proportion
of them to population ranged in county districts from
2-2 per thousand inhabitants, in Cornwall, Middlesex,
Northumberland, Surrey and the West Riding, to 7-9
per thousand in Cambridgeshire ; and in boroughs from
1-6 per thousand in Jarrow to 7-6 per thousand in
Canterbury and 10 per thousand in St Pancras. The
statistics had many curious features, but the whole
subject was fought out again on the broad question of
whether a licence was really and actually an annual thing,
or included a genuine presumptive value.
It happened that at the moment a suit was in progress
which brought the question to the proof of law — ^the
famous case of Sharp v. Wakefield. It was a case in which
the renewal of a licence had been refused point-blank by
licensing authorities on the evidence of the police, and
the licence-holder based a claim for compensation on the
argument that, though a licence was nominally only
given for a year, it carried implicitly the expectation of
renewal, since without that no one would spend money
on a public-house, or have any interest in maintaining it
decently. The brewers (who were of course behind the
case) had made a tactical mistake. They had chosen to
fight on the claim of a public-house remote from any
ordinary population that might need it, far from police
supervision, and suspected of being a haunt of poachers
and bad characters. Consequently when the Court of
Appeal upheld the magistrates' decision — as in the end
the House of Lords also upheld it — ^the party which refused
to recognise any right to compensation had been given a
handsome weapon. Mr Gladstone pronounced that the
annual power of non-renewal was " the one healthy spot
in our licensing law " ; and the Liberal Unionist wing of
the Ministerial party refused to admit the compensation
principle except subject to a ten years' time-limit, after
which the absolute power of non-renewal should hold

272 A STORMY ENDING [1890
good.' The net result was that the Govemment dropped
the whole proposal ; but, as the extra tax on liquor was
established, the money had to be used. It was therefore
attached to technical education. In the latter subject
the year was not without importance. The Act of 1889
had proved to be obscure on certain points, and a
conference between local authorities and the education
authorities was held to clear up doubts. It had the great
result of establishing the right of local authorities to grant
scholarships, which infinitely increased the value of the Act.
An Act securing this point, and also definitely including
manual instraction under the terms of the earlier Act, was
passed in 1891. It is not without interest to note that
the London School Board caused an outcry in 1890 by
providing pianos for its schoolgirls.
With the summer came the sequel to the dock
strike of 1889 — a stirring among wage-earners. Profit-
sharing schemes succeeded to concUiation board projects
as the most widely discussed methods of meeting
the new unrest, but the workmen, as they had
already shown in the South Metropolitan Gas Strike,
were extremely suspicious of any weakening of their
attachment to their unions. The Labour Electoral As
sociation, which had been founded a year or two earlier,
was beginning to receive the adherence of the large trade
unions, and this political tendency puzzled the kindly
people who had been telling the workman that Parliament
was useless to him. The association opened a special
fund to support candidatures of labouring men for Par
liament ; and the idea of paying salaries to members of
Parliament, which was brought forward from time to time
during these years, received additional argument. Dis
missal of the idea took usually the grimly brief form that
few young men of parts and ambition would be tempted
1 See a statement by Mr W. H. Smith in The Times, 24th June
1890.

1890] A STORMY ENDING 273
by £400 a year, and no working men were worth it. As
May day approached, it looked as if the old struggle with
the police might revive ; the socialist bodies arranged
a demonstration, which the police prohibited ; but the
affair proved in the end too smaU to fight over. Two
books just at this period were the means of conveying
socialist visions to the public outside the socialist
ranks. Bellamy's Looking Backward, a presentation of
the phalanstere system in its logical completeness, was
published in 1889 ; and WiUiam Morris's News from
Nowhere, a charming fiction of an England without capital
ists or landlords, pervaded with the golden afternoon light
of the wide meadows of the Upper Thames, where he had
made his home, was published in 1890. But neither book
had any relation to the working activities of the moment.
John Bums was extraordinarily energetic, addressing
meetings of workmen almost every day, and enlarging the
number of trade unions ; while Ben TUlett, his colleague
of the year before, was upholding the need for keeping
all the unions national in scope, so that in any given
case not the local men alone would have to be dealt
with. Women workers were also on the way to vigorous
combination. Certain associations of ladies in various
tovms for the care of friendless girls had been developing
under pressure of the growing concern for working women
into local unions of women workers. In 1890 the Bir
mingham Union held a conference at which papers on
various subjects connected with the industries of women
and girls were read. It was an important conference,
because it led to a succession of others, from which in the
end the National Union of Women Workers arose. In one
of the hardest of women's trades, that of chain-making,
there was an endeavour to set up a trade union. Un
fortunately the Sweating Committee was ending in dis
appointment. On the Conservative as well as the Liberal
side there was some indignation when it was announced in

274 A STORMY ENDING [1890
the summer of 1889 that the committee was postponing
its report ; and when, early in 1890, Lord Dunraven dis
charged himself from the chairmanship, because his draft
report had been unanimously rejected, there was little
hope of light or help from the inquiry. The report was
a cautious document, which made no proposals for legisla
tion. The state of public feeling, however, prevented the
disappearance of the subject, now that it had been
effectively raised.
At the Trade Union Congress of the year Bums
triumphed in the mingling of the new men with the old
in the labour movement, the new men being wholly and
solely working men ; and in the fact that in 1889 forty-
five new unions had been established, and seventy-two
more in the nine months of 1890. The total income of
trade unions in 1890 was very nearly a mUlion pounds.
The gospel of the Eight Hours' Day largely occupied the
congress ; and even prominent politicians like Mr Courtney
and Mr Morley— nay, Mr Gladstone himself — ^had to weigh
very seriously their opposition to it.
Strikes were frequent. Boot and shoe makers, brick
makers, raUway porters and quay labourers, Liverpool
dock labourers and bargemen were all out in AprU ; and
ironworkers and colliers in South Wales during the summer.
Such manifestations aroused much more than purely local
anxiety. But at the height of that anxiety, relief was
given by an event which could only be taken as vastly
diverting — ^the police struck ! They demanded in June
more wages and allowances, and although a month later
their strike had collapsed to an affair concerning some
forty men, the story had roused such hilarious excitement
that Life Guards had to be called up to disperse the mob
which hung about Bow Street. Less amusing, but equally
shocking to the official mind, was a strike of postmen
which foUowed. In this the principle of Union labour
in a Govemment department was at stake, and the

1890] A STORMY ENDING 275
authorities only won a temporary victory, after great
inconvenience to the public, by the dismissal of 400 men.
Though probably without relation to labour troubles,
an outbreak of insubordination in the Grenadier Guards
added to the respectable citizen's indignation at the general
spirit of revolt ; the matter was at any rate serious enough
to cause the second battalion of the regiment to be ordered
to Bermuda as a punishment. It must be added that the
new Trade Unionism showed that it had no srnall control
of its men in the case of a strike at some of the London
docks in September, concerned with the unloading of
grain ships. Tom Mann and the Dockers' Union ordered
the men back to work, and they went. It is interesting
to find the British Association at its meeting this year
diagnosing the social condition very shrewdly ; in a dis
cussion on " Some Typical Economic Fallacies of Social
Reform " its members gave the first signs of knowledge
that the humaneness which had usurped the place of
political economy was not the force of the future ; and
there was an astonishing tendency to accept the doctrine
that the problem of socialism was only one of degree, and
not of kind. One of the greatest of the older political
economists, Professor Thorold Rogers, was just at the end
of his life ; he died on 13th October.
At one moment in the summer foreign policy laid hold
of the public mind in such a way as it rarely does in England
during peaceful times. In June an agreement between
Great Britain and Germany was published, by which, in
return for recognition of our status in various parts of
Africa, we ceded Heligoland. The cession was violently
criticised, and there was a momentary recrudescence of
Jingoism. The young Kaiser was not popular in England,
as his father had been. He was regarded as over-ambitious,
impatient, self-wUled ; and his acquiescence in Bismarck's
retirement from the Imperial Chancellorship this year was
thought to have been rather too ready. The British public,

276 A STORMY ENDING [1890
crediting the Kaiser with self-assertion and dreams of
German expansion, was in no mood for cessions of territory.
However, Lord Salisbury's reputation survived the
momentary outburst. Our profit from the German agree
ment was the establishment of our interest in Zanzibar,
SomalUand, and Uganda. When the Anglo-Portuguese
agreement followed, later in the year, it was remarked
that Africa was now " pretty weU parcelled out." It was
not quite. Trouble was brewing in the Transvaal, where
some Europeans at Johannesburg in March pulled down
the flag of the Republic, and three arrests were made for
high treason. A reminder that the fflling up of the map
of Africa did not necessarUy mean the end of adventure was
afforded by the life-story of Sir Richard Burton, who died
in October. Whatever might happen to the map, Arabs
remained on the earth, and a man who could live with
them, as Burton had lived, need never want for romance.
Virile, emphatic, impatient, uncontrolled. Burton was
one of the most picturesque figures of his day. Outside
Arab life and literature his great interest was swordsman
ship ; and he was the first to stand out in England against
the over-elaboration of style in fencing.
Among the domestic interests of the year the most
remarkable was a wave of self-consciousness in regard to
British art. The aesthetes had themselves to blame, but
theymust have shuddered when they saw the newly aroused
sensibUity of England expressing itself as a John Bull
kind of appreciativeness. In one art this new sort of
Jingoism did not advance very far. The announcement
in 1890 that Sir Arthur Sullivan was engaged in the com
position of grand opera on the subject of Ivanhoe marked
one of the least happy moments of British art. But
British painting was a different affair, and it had recently
followed a trend genuinely national. There was therefore
much enthusiasm behind the proposal to found a
National Gallery of British Art ; the movement first

1890] A STORMY ENDING 277
acquired force in March and April 1890 ; and in June
Mr Henry Tate, a millionaire sugar merchant, offered his
collection of modern British pictures, fifty-one in number,
as the nucleus for the Gallery. But he had stipulations
to make. He maintained that the authorities of the
National Gallery were not to be trusted with a new collec
tion of pictures, since they kept buried out of sight in the
basement of the Gallery a large number of paintings,
especially the Turner water-colours, which ought to be in
the public view. He would therefore only offer his pictures
on the understanding that satisfactory arrangements
should be made for keeping them on exhibition. This was
bound to mean a new buUding ; and the whole project
was for the time held back by negotiations between the
Government and Mr Tate.
The Church of England mourned in 1890 the loss of Dr
Liddon, who died in September. His preaching in St
Paul's was one of the most powerful instruments in that
restoration of the cathedral to a living agency in the life
of London, which had been proceeding under Dean Church.
But, great as his preaching had been, his influence upon
young men at Oxford and in London was greater. A little
earlier the Roman Catholics in England had lost Cardinal
Newman, who died in August. He had always been rather
a great convert than a great Roman Catholic. The story
of his spiritual struggle was so intimately the story of
many souls of his time, whether the goal reached had been
the same for them or not, that he became a figure almost
of legend. For the greater part of his life he failed to
find favour at the Vatican for any of his plans or his ideas
for extending the Roman Catholic influence in England.
Manning appeared to suspect him of Liberalising tendencies
of thought. But late in his life a change came at the
Vatican, and from Leo XIII. Newman received the
cardinal's haf; Manning, who had received his from
Pius IX., may have felt that Newman's was easUy earned.

278 A STORMY ENDING [1890
The national concern, which had expressed itself so
largely in 1889, about the increase of betting, showed
no diminution. It was augmented by the very natural
readiness to point an obvious moral, from the fact that,
whUe on the one hand the workmen were fighting for
more wages and more control of their lives, they were
at the same time spending more money on gambling,
and more of their hours in a barren form of excite
ment. The real secret of the spread of betting on
horse races was rightly discerned to be the originating
of the " Starting Price " idea. It was impossible for
bookmakers not on the course itself, and therefore unaware
of the ran of the betting at the last moment, to make a
profitable business of betting imtU there was some fixed
form of the odds to be laid. The invention of a starting
price provided this. The chief sporting papers arranged
that their reporters at races should establish, just before
each race started, the most commonly offered odds in the
ring, and these were telegraphed to London as the starting
prices of the horses named. Then all that the backer had
to do was to pay his money to the bookmaker, the under
standing being that he took these odds. The publication of
the odds by the evening papers completed the setting up of
a regular racing system for those who need never go near a
race. Norwas this the only form of popular gambling. Prize
competitions in newspapers, which had already attracted
the attention of the police, were enormously enlarged by
the violent rivalry of two penny weekly papers just at this
time. The proprietors, or their advisers, made the ingeni
ous discovery that all the advantages of a lottery — ^namely,
the temptation of an enormous prize, drawing so many
small sums that handsome profit would stUl be left — could
be gained by a penny publication with this extra ad
vantage, that the sale of tickets was the sale of the paper.
A prize of several hundred pounds, a freehold house and
garden, even of "£l a week for life," sounded magnificent;

1890] A STORMY ENDING 279
but hundreds of thousands of sixpences would cover the
cost several times over. A bald lottery being iUegal,
prizes were offered for some competition easy enough to
make hundreds of thousands of persons enter for it. But
as the early efforts of this kind were so easy that the
selection of a winner had to depend upon pure chance,
the authorities had ground for action under the Lottery
Acts, and the papers concerned took alarm. Not, how
ever, before the main popular demand for amusement
had been attracted into this new channel. Outdoor pur
suits took one or two new turns. In 1890 golf had
become so popular that for the first time it seemed to
challenge the supremacy of lawn tennis ; golf clubs rather
than tennis racquets were the smart thing to carry on a
Saturday afternoon. " Safety " bicycles too were making
their way fast. They had been invented in Coventry
in 1885, but had not at first displaced the high machine.
Now they were beginning to be seen everywhere. In
regard to more passing interests of the ordinary man
it may be mentioned that the famous forty days' fast of
Succi was successfully completed this year, and drew crowds
to the Westminster Aquarium, where Succi sat in a glass-
sided room, melancholy and nervous-looking, and smoked
cigarettes. An old craze of the early eighties was revived
by Dr Nansen's plans for reaching the North Pole; he
proposed to give up the earlier plan of establishing the ship
in winter quarters somewhere out of the ice-pack, and to
shorten the sledge-marching, by having the ship built with
a V-shaped hull, so that she could be taken right into the
ice-pack, and would, when the pack closed, be merely lifted
up and wedged, instead of being crushed. A glance at
other scientific interests shows us that the telephone was
by now so greatly improved that lines were opened this year
from London to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
The frozen meat trade, too, had issued finally from its
probation ; the New Zealand traffic, which in 1882 had

280 A STORMY ENDING [1890
amounted to £19,000 in value, touched in 1890 a million
sterling. Nor was the meat market the only gainer.
Whereas there had formerly been no direct service of
steamers to New Zealand, there were in 1890 ten mail
steamers and twenty-two cargo steamers aU on the New
Zealand service, and all buying coal and stores there as
well as their cargoes. %
The year is also memorable in science as having seen the
publication of Dr Koch's theory of tuberculosis and its
remedy ; in the closing months of the year a most vigorous
discussion of it took place in the British medical profession.
The clinical use of hypnotism attracted some attention ;
experiments at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris were
being watched carefully.
The year had a strange and wUd ending. Early in
November the contests of employers and workmen
threatened to rise into a savage war in the shipping trade.
Everyone was expecting at this time a labour war on
a great scale — ^railways, mines or shipping seemed most
likely to provide the battlefield ; and shipping gave the
first menace. The establishment of unions had spread to
it, and under J. H. WUson the Seamen's and Firemen's
Union had been set up. Inevitably there had followed an
objection on the part of union men to working with
non-union men ; the microcosm of a ship could not but
intensify differences. The shipowners not only expressed
their feelings with more violence than most employers,
asserting that they would " lay up " aU British shipping
at need, but also immediately formed a combination of
their own, the Shipping Federation. For the time being
neither side fired the first shot ; but a dock strike at
Southampton, issuing in disorder and riotousness, which
had been markedly absent from the London strike, kept
uneasiness very much alive.
Then the affair of the Stanley expedition to relieve
Emin broke out into that bitter controversy which had long

1890] A STORMY ENDING 281
been vaguely in the air. Stanley had come to England in
the summer, and gave public lectures to crowded audiences.
For a time he was the lion of the season. Then his
popularity cooled a little on the discovery that he did
not at all take the ordinary Briton's view of Germany's
ambitions. Emin Pasha, after having been rescued, had
actually entered the German service ; and Stanley not
only faUed to see any fault in this, but even revealed a wish
to behold German enterprise at work in different parts of
Africa. People remembered that the fate of his rearguard
stUl called for explanation. In November he made the
first move himself by attacking his critics ; he accused
Major Barttelot and his companion, Mr Jameson, of having
resorted? to cannibalism and cruelty to the natives round
their camp. His critics replied by a plain charge against
him of carelessness and gross mismanagement, amounting
to sheer abandonment of his rearguard, in order to push
on to the personal glory of relieving Emin.
Stanley had published an account of his journey under
the title of In Darkest Africa. At the time when the
quarrel arose England was being stirred by a book
which, cleverly taking a cue from this title, was caUed
In Darkest England. It was written by General Booth,
the head of the Salvation Army, and was an extreme pre
sentation of that misery of poverty and sweating in great
towns which had had so many presentations of late years.
Booth's plea was that the Salvation Army was able to reach
lower strata than any other organisation had attempted
to reach ; and he wrote the book as an appeal to the
country to provide him with so large a sum of money that
his Army could set on foot what amounted to permanent
relief works, refuges, night shelters, and a whole network
of institutions. He threw over aU economic considera
tions, to a degree which even the most ardent reformer
had as yet shrunk from ; his relief work had already been
accused of doing more harm than good by undercutting the

282 A STORMY ENDING [1890
market. His present challenge was instantly taken up ;
prominent people pointed out his ignorance of the work
that was already being done, his faUure to guarantee
adequate administration of the funds he asked for, and
the danger of diverting to one object, and that largely
untried, the money which at present was flowing ui
many useful channels. His statistics were disputed too.
But before the year closed his fund had reached £90,000.
The scheme was unfortunately launched. It had small
chance of public attention against the two shattering events
of November 1890. When men opened their newspapers
on the 14th all the mysteriousness of ParneU's recent life,
all the hints and suggestions which had gathered round his
first refusal to bring The Times to trial, fused to a thunder
clap in the report of the divorce case of O'Shea v. O'Shea
and Pamell. The case was undefended. Parliament, as
it happened, had met again this month, and by a stroke of
Fate Irish business was the work before the House. The
Irish Land Purchase BUl, postponed from the summer,
and the Irish Relief Bill, setting up the Congested Districts
Board, were resumed. The Irish party was not in the
House to discuss them ; It was sitting upstairs, in Com
mittee Room 15, which those days rendered famous, with
Pamell in the chair presiding, sometimes cynically, some
times tyrannously, over discussions of his retention of the
leadership. His constant absences from London had led
to a confusion at the beginning of these sittings. Mr
Gladstone, acting on the unmistakable sense of the Liberal
party organisations, had intimated that, whUe Pamell
remained leader, he could not himself lead a party whose
chief work, as long as he led it, would be Home Rule ;
therefore either Pamell must resign, or he must. This
intimation could not be conveyed to Pamell immediately ;
it was the moment of one of his disappearances. It could
hardly be conveyed first to anyone but him ; and so it
fell out that the Irish party met, and expressed confidence

1890] A STORMY ENDING 283
in him as leader, before Mr Gladstone's attitude was known.
The party had met far too hastUy, and their resolution was
rather an expression of their feelings towards British re
ception of the disastrous news than a considered decision.
No party largely Roman Catholic, and representing a
country preponderantly Roman Catholic, could have
remained under a Protestant leader in such circumstances.
But the resolution delivered them into ParneU's hands.
He fought his ground in a way which was the final revela
tion of his contempt for public opinion in England.
He refused sympathetic and influential advice to retire
for the moment, and trust to the storm blowing over. He
drove his party into such a position that, in order to avoid
the ultimate reproof to him, the majority, forty-four In
number, at last walked out of the committee-room. Then
he dashed over to Ireland, suppressed an issue of United
Ireland which would have been fatal to his position, and
made speeches in Dublin as if he were stUl leader. He
fairly took his opponents' breath away. Parliament only
sat for a fortnight, and in that time the two Irish BUls
were passed. The effect of the O'Shea case on the de
meanour of the House was extraordinary. All spirit
seemed to have gone from it, and it was spoken of as " The
Long-faced Parliament." The affair was such a complete
disaster, and was ending in such a desperate struggle, that
the men not immediately concerned felt it like a cloud
upon them.
In consequence Parliament had perhaps too little atten
tion to spare for the other shattering event. On 15th
November financial London was shaken to its foundations
by the news that the great banking firm of Barings had
come to grief, its difficulty being attributed to imprudent
commitments for public loans and private enterprises in
Argentina and Uruguay. The one hopeful element in the
situation, to which tottering credit clung, was that the
announcement of the disaster was not made untU it could

284 A STORMY ENDING [1890
be accompanied by intimations that the Bank of England
had the firm's affairs in hand, with a guarantee of twelve
mUlions to meet the liabilities. Everyone trusted that
this meant that in the last resort the Treasury would be
behind the bank. As a matter of fact it was not. Mr
Goschen had been summoned to town by the governor of
the bank directly the danger became known, but he had
seen no course to pursue except to throw the responsibility
of meeting the crisis entirely on the City. He could not
run the risk of pledging the Treasury to a guarantee, and
then perhaps having to defend in Parliament the use of
public money in support of a private firm. Yet he was
much distressed, and some of the visits he paid to financiers
in the City did not encourage him ; he found most of them
near panic. But the governor of the Bank of England
rose to the occasion, and gathered sober men around him.
He borrowed a mUlion and a half in gold from Russia,
RothschUds' secured the assistance of the Bank of France
to the extent of three mUlions, and the bankers and
merchants of London guaranteed seven mUlions. Thus the
Bank of England was able, when the announcement of
Barings' situation had to be made, to convey reassurances.
The firm's liabUities were about twenty mUlions, and the
whole object at stake was to give time for the realisation
of assets without such a panic as would have depreciated
them beyond remedy. This the guarantee fund did.
Immediate liquidation was staved off, and the firm was
quietly reconstructed as a limited liabUity company, and
registered on 21st November. Consols dropped to 93,
but that was a small penalty to pay. If the shock had
added to the storminess of events, it had at least been
prevented from ending the year in chaos,

CHAPTER XIII
1891 : THE ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS
ONE of the most baffling difficulties of the Home
Rule question was that, whUe on the one hand it
provided an ideal capable of calling out all that was
high-minded and devoted in the Liberal forces, it was at the
same time so entirely a question by itself, and so detachable
from all normal social advance in Great Britain, that a
party committed to it was not thereby committed to any
thing else. More — ^Mr Gladstone was an old man, and the
enormous plan for Irish self-government had not been
constructed untU he was old. The result was that he
frankly remained in leadership for tbat single purpose
only, so that the Liberal party stood committed to a policy
which not merely did not include, but positively precluded,
other activities. The downfall of Parnell, disturbing as it
was, did not affect the Liberal party's position altogether
adversely. No harm was ever done to an ideal by events
which force its supporters to uphold its righteousness
beyond and above all personal faUings. It was of little con
cern in the end that opponents of Home Rule should now
be saying that the O'Shea divorce case amounted morally to
a reversing of the ParneU Commission's Report. But that
Pamell should have refused the Liberal party's tactical
decisions, that Home Rule should no longer be the united
demand of a homogeneous force in Parliament, but a
bone of contention between two groups, who were cap
turing and recapturing one another's newspapers, one
another's platforms, one another's seats in Parliament —
all this was of serious concern. The cause was further
285

286 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
weakened by statements which Parnell was making, to
the effect that he and his party had never really liked
the Home Rule Bill of 1886, and only accepted it on Mr
Gladstone's threat of resignation. The Unionists were
able to gain much ground by pointing out what a serious
difference it made if the Irish party had not genuinely
accepted the BUl of 1886, and the Liberal party were not
really in accord with their supposed allies. From the
Liberal point of view the worst of these recriminations
was that, since Mr Gladstone remained where he had been
for Home Rule, and Home Rule alone, these wrangles
demanded the best brains of the Liberal party to overrule
them. This in turn meant that the party was not taking
its share in other affairs, and had too little attention for
social reform. Trade Unionism was left to fight its
battles alone. Whether, if circumstances had been other
than they were, the development of the labour movement
woidd have been different — whether any politicians would
have been ready at this time to see that the purely social
consideration oi wages and labour conditions was now as
Impossible as the old purely economic consideration, and
that the problem was becoming political — ^must remain
an open question. At any rate one example on each side
in politics can be quoted as showing a perception of the
new conditions. Mr Courtney, speaking in Febmary of
this year, remarked upon the change in labour aspirations
from an inclination towards isolated socialistic experiments
to a conviction that the goal must be reached by legislation.
Lord Dunraven, a little later, was expressing himself in
favour of a State Department of Industry.
That industrial conditions formed a very large and in
sistent question was admitted in the establishment in 1891
of a Royal Commission on Labour Problems. Wage dis
putes were for the moment in the background. Trade
union leaders believed in the power of organised labour to
mend many flaws in the industrial system, which employers

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 287
had so far faded to cure. Unemployment and irregularity
of employment came, they thought, largely from the fact
that labour was almost as helpless as raw material ; a
master could pour both alike into his factory at high speed
in a time of demand, and leave both alike outside when the
demand was slack. Fully organised labour, on the other
hand, could secure that an employer's prudence for his
own profits should necessarUy imply prudence also for his
employees' wages and conditions. Consequently, practic
ally all the labour struggles of this time were rather on
questions either of working conditions or of the recogni
tion of unions than on questions of wages. There were
not a few of such struggles. In January the miners in the
SUksworth CoUierystruck on a demand that the "deputies "
should be union men. The managers refused to have
union men in that position, and for two months the fight
went on. It was complicated by the decision of the
managers to evict men on strike from cottages owned by
the coUiery, a course which caused a sympathetic strike
to spread in pits which had taken no part in the original
dispute. The settlement reached in March was that whUe
the men would not insist on the " deputies " being imion
men, the managers would not forbid them to be. A rail
way strike in Scotland, affecting the Glasgow & South
Western Railway, the North British RaUway, and the
Caledonian Railway turned on complaints of overwork
and heavy overtime exactions. It faded, because although
the business community agreed that the men were over
worked they would give no support to the strike. The
companies held out against receiving any representatives
of the men's union as such, and against entering on any
negotiations before the men returned to work. At Cardiff
the Seamen's and Firemen's Union struck against the issue
by the shipping firms of a " ticket " which insisted on
union men not refusing to work with non-imion men.
This also faded, partly because the dockers, stevedores,

288 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
and coal -porters were not in alliance with the seamen and
firemen. In London taUors struck on \three points —
better workshops, a uniform " time-log "> (the existing
system of pajrment being a complicated one) and the
abolition of partnership in a piece of work ; the masters
conceded the first and third points, reserving the second
for consideration, and the men returned to work after a
ten days' strike distinguished by the elaboration of its
picketing. In June there was an omnibus strike in
London, and again the picketing was good — ^hardly a 'bus
was on the streets for a week. Overwork was the chief
complaint, and the men won a seventy-hours week, a
minimum wage of six-and-sixpence a day for drivers and
five shillings a day for conductors, the right to a day off
in the week at their own charges, and an understanding that
if the companies' dividends rose there would be an advance
in wages. An interesting effort of the year, apart from
strikes, was the attempt made by the Dockers' Union, which
was also a General Labourers' Union, to bring into its ranks
the agricultural labourer. The idea was that a pooling of
interests might lead to an improvement of conditions in
the country — an increase of allotments, as well as advances
in wages — and that this, in turn, would react on the dockers'
conditions, by diminishing the flocking of rural labour to
the towns, where it became for the most part casual labour
at the dock gates.
It was no wonder that Trade Unionism of this nature
roused fresh opposition. It was denounced as an attempt
to set up a new monopoly, and the special point of attack
was the policy adopted by Trade Unionists of intimating
to employers their intention not to work with non-union
men. This was described as " intimidation," and was
actually held to be so in a county court judgment delivered
this year, but overridden by a decision of the Queen's
Bench in July. Other opponents argued that the attempt
to set up a monopoly would have a bad effect on prices ;

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 289
that, for instance, higher wages in trades which were
absolutely necessary to the public, such as shipping,
docks, raUways and collieries, would only mean that less
money would be spent in other directions in which there
was no compulsion for the public to spend, so that wages
in the cotton and other such industries would decrease.
A more curious criticism was that, if men by success
ful development of their unions forced their wages
up, women's wages would suffer, because, being outside
imions, they would get no work unless they consented to
take a poor wage. On the whole the first feeling in the
labour world when it became known that the Govemment
contemplated setting up a Royal Commission was one of
anxiety ; It seemed probable that the object of the com
mission, whether acknowledged or not, would be a
restriction of the rights of combination. The commission
was appointed in AprU. It was said at the time that the
Prince of Wales, who had been deeply interested in all the
sidelights on life in great towns which the Housing Com
mission had produced, would have liked to serve on this
new commission, but had been persuaded that it would
be unwise. The members of the commission were : Lord
Hartington, Lord Derby, Sir M. Hicks Beach, Sir John
Gorst, Mr Mundella, Mr Courtney, Sir H. Fowler, Mr Jesse
CoUings, Mr Gerald Balfour, Mr T. Burt and Mr W.
Abraham, from the two Houses of Parliament ; Mr
Harland, of the Belfast shipbuUding firm, Mr Bolton of
the Caledonian RaUway, Sir F. Pollock, Professor of
Jurisprudence at Oxford, Professor MarshaU, Professor
of Political Economy at Cambridge, Sir W. Lewis, of the
Cardiff Docks, Mr T. H. Ismay, of the White Star Line,
Mr David Dale, an ironmaster, Mr G. Livesey, managing
director of the South Metropolitan Gas Works, Mr TunstaU,
a cotton employer, and Mr Hewlett, managing director of
the Wigan Coal and Iron Company — ^for the masters of
industry ; and for the men, J. Mawdsley, of the Operative

290 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
Cotton Spinners, Tom Mann, of the Dockers' Union,
E. Trow, of the ConcUiation Board of the Iron and Steel
Trades, H. Tait, of the Glasgow United Trades CouncU,
S. PlimsoU, and M. Austin of the Irish Democratic Labour
Federation. The reference to the commission was wide
and simple ; it was " to inquire into questions affecting
the relations between employers and employed and the
conditions of labour, which have been raised during the
recent trade disputes in the United Kingdom, and to report
whether legislation, and if so what, could be directed to
good ends." The commission divided itself into three
groups ; Group A undertook inquiry into mining, iron
works, engineering, shipbuUding, and cognate industries.
Group B undertook, roughly speaking, the transport
industries ; and Group C undertook the textUe and
chemical industries, and buUding, and other miscellaneous
trades. In the last group two women " sub-commis
sioners " were appointed late in the year to investigate
the conditions of women's labour. The work was
enormous, and it was difficult for the commissioners,
in the mass of detaUed complaints and petty vexations
brought before them, to keep any general view of their
task. But some main lines of Trade Union policy were
prominent enough to provide landmarks. At the Trade
Union Congress, for example, which now represented over
a miUion and a quarter workmen, the most prominent
subjects were an eight-hours day, and an amendment of the
law of conspiracy so that technical conspiracy should only
be if directed to an object criminal in itself, and intimida
tion should only consist in actual threats of violence.
The plea for limitation of work, in particular, provided a
raUying-point for the evidence of employers before the
commission. One of the strongest proofs of a prevaUing unconscious
ness of the reality of the new forces at work is provided by
the comments on the doings of the London County Council

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 291
When the first councU came into existence the comments
even of Conservative organs were wholly favourable. So
incredible had it been thought that the new social move
ment, the new labour forces, should actually issue in any
administrative act. Barely twelve months later the
tone had changed completely, and by 1891 hardly any
thing was too bad to say of the council. It proposed to
set up bands in the parks, and was stormed at for wasting
money on pastimes for the poor ; it proposed to purchase
tramways, and to take over the London Fire Brigade, and
was told that its career was a long succession of "ab
surdities which have humUiated London." Yet there was
so little objection in principle to any of these proposals
that the real offence of the councU seemed to be that ,it
proposed to do things for itself, instead of waiting to
be given what the governing classes thought good for
it. This was the worse offence, since these classes at the
moment were in a liberal mood. The Conservative Ministry
had set up County Government, they had passed a great
Housing Act, and in 1891 they accomplished another of
the tasks which the Liberal party had for years promised
to undertake : they made elementary education free of
charges. It was done by a simple process of adding ten
shillings a year per pupil to the capitation grant. This sum
was based on an average school fee of threepence per week.
If any school charged more than that, it was at liberty to go
on charging the difference. But in effect this was a Free
Education BUl ; and so the Liberal party's committal to
Home Rule was made still more exclusive of other interests
by the removal of another traditional item of its pro
gramme. The BUl was not such as a Liberal Government
woiUd have introduced ; there would almost certainly
have been some provision for increased public control over
voluntary schools iti a Liberal measure.^ But in the dis
cussion of the BUl the Opposition were content not to
1 See The Daily News, 24th April 1891.

292 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
press that point. The Act came into operation in Sep
tember of this year. Mr Goschen had a sufficient surplus
in his Budget to provide at once the half-year's cost of the
change, so that there was no need to delay its introduction.
He had also enough money at last to press through the
reform of the gold coinage which had been projected two
years earlier. The Light Coinage Bdl allotted a sum of
£400,000 to the cost of withdrawing light gold coins at
their face value. Parcels of gold coin of not less than £100
in value were to be received at the Bank of England with
out any light-weight deduction. It was decided that the
average life of a sovereign before falling " below the
remedy " was twenty years, and that of a half-sovereign
about ten years ; so that, if the South African gold supply
proved to be as good as was said, the object of the Treasury
would be in future not to allow gold coins to retum from
the bank into circulation after they had served for those
periods. The Factory Act of this year, though it had nothing
to do with current labour movements, was an important
piece of work. By setting up the local authorities as the
inspecting power for sanitary purposes in connection with
workshops, a position from which the appointment of
factory inspectors in 1871 had deposed them, it created
a dual supervision of industrial places, the inspectors being
stUl charged with the supervision of hours of labour and
age of employment ; the inspector and the local authority
were put into a situation In which there was boimd to be
a good deal of intercommunication, with a chance of
excellent results.^ Provision was made for the Home
Secretary to have power to enforce the law, in the case of
inaction on the part of a local authority ; and workshops
where adult men only were at work were brought under
regulation. The Home Secretary was also given powers
for certifying dangerous and unhealthy trades — a provision
1 Cf. The Factory System, by R. W. Cooke-Taylor, p. 121.

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 298
which year after year proved more fruitful of good ; and
an echo, somewhat feeble, but important, of the increased
concern for sweated industries was to be found in the
clause requiring every occupier of a workshop, and every
contractor for work, to keep lists of their outworkers.
The same kind of influence too may be seen in the provision
that all piece-workers In textile factories should be supplied
with Information to enable them to understand their scale
of payment. These regulations were, however, the work
of the social conscience, and in the tradition of the last
twenty years, rather than in the spirit of the coming time.
That spirit may perhaps be detected in the restoration of
important work to the local authorities, through which,
as we have seen, the socialists hoped to operate most
effectively. The new Act paid no attention to one popular
demand : it appointed no women inspectors.
Parliament was prorogued at the beginning of August,
which gave a comfortable sense that the national affairs
were at last returning to a normal high-water mark. The
London season had not been a very cheerful one. Influenza,
which had hitherto been only a winter scourge, attacked
London In May, and as a summer fever it caused nervous
ness. Dinner-parties failed, because people were really
afraid of infection ; the after-effects of the disease seemed
to be worse than they had been in previous years. In ad
dition to this, the notorious " Baccarat scandal " had
damped society's spirits, because when the name of a very
great personage, almost the highest in the land and quite
the highest in active social life, was brought into the case,
there was an uneasy feeling that society had better tread
gently for the moment. It was pretty generally known
before the case came to trial that the Prince of Wales was
concerned in it. Sir William Gordon Cumming brought
an action for slander against Mr and IMrs Arthur WUson
of Tranby Croft, and against others members of a house-
party there, for having said that he cheated at cards, The

294 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
Prince was called as a witness. He appeared in the box,
the packed court gazed breathlessly, counsel In the case
were appropriately submissive and respectful, and the law
emerged from the ordeal of a wholly unprecedented event
without a stain on its reputation for inimitable bland-
ness. Outside the courts the results of the case were
rather more lasting. Even those little inclined to' notice
such gossip as had long been current about the Prince of
Wales felt the difference made by such a public revelation
that "his ' set ' was a baccarat ' set.' " ^
Materially, as well as morally, the season was damped.
Though the Baring disaster had been staved off, the effect
of the strain was visible in a general contraction of financial
activity. Flotations decreased ; the Bankers' Clearing House
retums fell 12| per cent. The Baring crisis had raised
again in Mr Goschen's mind the question of the country's
gold reserves ; and he took up once more the suggestion
of banknotes of small values. He let it be known that
he was ready to consider authorising the Bank of England
to issue twenty-five millions in one-pound notes against a
reserve four-fifths in gold and one-fifth in Consols. But the
hint was not favourably taken ; and the banks pursued
their own policy of entering into amalgamations ; Parr's in
1891 became one of the prominent absorbing banks. In
spite of the financial stringency the general purchasing
power of the people remained good, as far as official figures
showed. But there was no enterprise in amusements, no
cheerful craze. When a new music hall in London, the
Tivoli, was put up to auction, the reserve was not reached ;
however, as the bidding rose to £100,000 there must have
been sufficient belief in the popular support for such places.
In the autumn the gambling mania received an en
couragement which must have seemed deplorable to those
who were trying to wean the workman from betting. This
was the year of the famous " man that broke the bank at
1 The Times, loth June 1891:

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 295
Monte Carlo," and he was hymned on every barrel organ.
He was a Mr WeUs, and he first rose to fame by winning
£20,000 at roulette within a week. When his luck at
that table stopped he turned to trente et quarante, and in a
few stakes made £6400 more. He was playing for months,
and his success gave rise to a great discussion of gambling
" systems." In November his net winnings were said to be
£30,000, and occasionally he " broke " a table in half-an-
hour from the opening of play. His career relieved a
somewhat dull year.
Hardly even in science is any notable event to be found.
Electric light had made at last its final stride ; and it was
said in 1891 that the number of incandescent lamps in
London was greater than in any one of the five largest
cities of America. One or two events of engineering
history may be recorded. In August the last of the
old broad-gauge lines of the Great Western Railway were
taken up, and replaced by lines of the standard gauge.
At the beginning of the year naval experts were greatly
interested by a system of tubular boilers which Yarrow's
had fitted in a torpedo boat built for the Argentine navy ;
the firm had been for three years experimenting with them
as a rapid means of getting up steam, and also, it was
hoped, a safer method of keeping up the high pressures
demanded ; but this Argentine boat was the first practical
trial of the system. The Manchester Ship Canal was
well advanced ; in June water was admitted to the section
from EUesmere Port to Eastham, and a second section,
making a total of eleven mUes, was open by the end of
September. The first attempt to bring the Manchester,
Sheffield and Lincolnshire RaUway — ^now the Great Central
RaUway — ^to London was also made, but the private BUl
for the purpose was rejected by the Select Committee of
the House of Commons.
We come this year for the first time in our period upon
a really popular demand in fiction. The field since 1880 had

296 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
been held by writers more or less established, more or less
conscientious artists — Meredith, Hardy and Henry James ;
Besant and Mrs Humphry Ward ; Edna Lyall, Mrs Lynn
Linton, Miss Braddon and WUkie CoUins. But when we
read in a review of a new book by Mr Rudyard Kipling,
The Light that Failed, a protest against " his apparent
power — ^the affectation of barbarity," and the remark that
" the public read him, so his dissatisfied critics must wait
to be justified by an unbom generation," we recognise
that here was a demand wholly beyond the normal guides
of literary taste. It was a new impulse, a new British
self-consciousness. The story told of battles of the
Egyptian campaigns, and although the phrase had yet
to be invented (by that same author) the idea of " the
white man's burden " had been initiated. It had an
impulsion of a practical kind this year in the first annual
meeting in December of the British South Africa Company,
which in a halo of romance was beginning its pioneer work
north of the Transvaal. Mr CecU Rhodes was already a
figure of note in the London world, a figure lacking in
social flexibility, positive, greatly given to argument,
but wielding a large fortune, tireless, not afraid of the
social sin of being a bore with his schemes of advancing
British frontiers in the land of his adoption. He had by
now made the British South Africa Company so import
ant a body that the whole question of the position of
chartered companies was being discussed. Some of
those who most strongly approved of the existence of such
companies thought that they should be set up by Act of
Parliament rather than by Royal Charter, and should be
compeUed to keep their commercial and their administra
tive accounts separately. The informality of this method
of governing uncivilised races was naturally popular with
a generation which, through Mr Kipling's Indian stories,
was learning to see itself as peculiarly gifted for the
shouldering of responsibUity in remote places of the earth.

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 297
Drama, as well as literature, has an important date in
1891 . During the autumn Mr J. T. Grein set up the organ
isation which he caUed " The Independent Theatre." He
asked for two hundred subscribers of £2, 10s. each, for the
production of plays of serious interest, which, from lack of
elements of popular appeal, were unlikely ever to appear in
the English theatres of the time. The theatrical adver
tisements in newspapers of the eighties had been certainly
barren reading. At the head of the profession Irving was
playing chiefly Shakespeare, varying it with somewhat
disastrous experiments in Tennyson's verse plays, and with
frankly money-making productions of popular pieces, like
WiUs's Charles I., or The Bells, or The Corsican Brothers.
Other leading actors confined themselves to old-fashioned
comedies, such as Money and Caste, to new melodramas,
to farces, generally taken from French originals. The
Bancrofts, Charles Wyndham, John Hare, WUliam Terriss,
Toole and Edward Terry rang their changes on
a paltry list. Mr Grein's object was principally to
produce plays by Ibsen, and the Independent Theatre
did in fact first introduce those plays to British audiences.
But the venture was regarded askance by most of the
London world. To many, Ibsen stood for an unhealthy
analysis of subjects better left unanalysed ; to others he
stood for a foreign impropriety, different from the old
kind, but still not to be encouraged ; to the advanced
aesthetes he stood for a deplorable solemnity, very hamper
ing to the gracefulness of life. But a sufficient appeal
could be made to the middle-class culture, which somewhat
heavUy pursued the difficult life of appreciative enjoyment,
and the Independent Theatre might perhaps have lasted
longer if its efforts had not revealed the fact that the field
of drama it affected was not a very wide one.
Educated taste at this time was much engrossed with
"applied art." Furniture, wall-papers, hangings were
all subjected to anxious, even over-anxious, canons of

298 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
beauty ; the gxeat period of the " hand-made " was being
ushered In with rather barbaric chairs and tables, and
sUver implements speckled with little hammer-marks.
In 1891 WUliam Morris added printing to his many ac
complishments, and set up the Kelmscott Press, working
with founts of type designed by himself, after a laborious
study of early models of typography.
During the parliamentary recess the Liberal party
made up its mind to overhaul its electoral banners.
How dUapidated they were we have already seen. That
the great leader should have devoted himself exclusively
to one overmastering purpose would have been less serious
if he had not been at the same time, by belonging to a much
earlier generation, incapable of estimating new conditions
in domestic politics. There is no evidence that Mr
Gladstone in these years took any interest in the new
forces and the new mind of labour. He had made Mr
Broadhurst a member of his short-lived Government in
1886, but Mr Broadhurst was not, in the official view, a
Labour representative ; he was only a Liberal with an
unusual and interesting career. A Member of Parliament
of a democratic turn, who was not a Liberal in name as
well as outlook, would have had no meaning whatever for
Mr Gladstone. But it might have been thought that this
disability on Mr Gladstone's part was rendered less serious
by his very frank and constantly repeated declaration
that he had now only one object in political life. Did not
this lay upon other important members of the party the
duty of keeping the party in the forefront of advanced
thought on social questions ? In their defence it must
be said, first, that Mr Gladstone was apt to be masterful
in regard to the formation of public opinion by his
coUeagues. Moreover, most of those colleagues went back
to the days when schemes of social reform were usually
coupled with the name of Mr Chamberlain, and regarded as
impracticable Radicalism. Therefore when Mr Chamber-

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 299
lain took himself and his programme elsewhere no heat was
left among the leaders in which new ideas might germinate.
Consequently, when the approach of the next General
Election became imminent the party managers had to
take that most futile step, the construction — ^not the
selection — of a programme of legislation. County Govem
ment, Factory Legislation, Employers' Liability, and even
Free Education had been taken away. What could be
put in their place ? One prominent item, indeed, of Mr
Chamberlain's programme had not been even nibbled at
by his new friends — Disestablishment of the Church. But
Mr Gladstone would never lead a general assault on the
Church he loved and magnified, and any wholesale measure
of disestablishment must commit him at least to counten
ancing accusations against that Church. But he had shown
in the case of the Irish Church that he could make dis
tinctions. Statistics and local grievances couldf plausibly
be used to make distinctions in the case of the Church of
England in Wales, and perhaps also in that of the Presby
terian Church in Scotland. The disestablishment of those
two Churches therefore was a possible item in the pro
gramme. Next, a backward glance over the career of the
Conservative Govemment discovered its weakest moment
in the licensing proposals which it had tried to attach to
the duties of the new Local Governments.^ The decision
in Sharp v. Wakefield had given the sanction of the
highest legal tribunals to the opponents of those proposals.
Here then was another possible party advantage. In a
non-party way the legal decision had already had its
effect. No less Conservative a person than Sir Michael
Hicks Beach had announced at the licensing sessions in
his part of the country — Fairford, in Gloucestershire —
that the licensing magistrates would be ready to hear
testimony as to any public-house which was felt to be
unnecessary ; in other words, that they were prepared to
1 See pp. 230, 270.

300 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
enforce the purely annual existence of a licence, by refusing
it on groimds other than those of misconduct. He also
revealed a less direct result of recent controversies in an
announcement that in future managers of " tied " houses,
when asking for renewal of licences, must produce their
agreements with brewers — a sign that public opinion was
not at the moment friendly to the idea of licence-holders
as the mere nominees of brewers. But stronger stuff was
needed for a programme in vacuo than for processes of
administration. The idea of Local Veto had already been
made famUiar by the apostles of total abstinence ; it was
now seen to combine the question of licensing with the
new spirit of Local Govemment in a way that qualified
it for a prominent place in party politics, and it became
another element in the programme. Extension of the
Local Govemment principle by district and parish councUs
with considerable powers for acquiring land for allotments,
erecting cottages, and establishing small holdings ; electoral
reforms, including the abolition of plural voting, the pay
ment of members, and State payment of returning officers'
expenses ; land reforms, with the abolition of primogeni
ture and entail, and the taxation of land values ; and lastly,
reform of the House of Lords — these miscellaneous pro
posals completed the party outfit.
Mr Gladstone was to speak at Newcastle on 2nd
October. He accepted his conventional duty, and
enunciated the doctrinaire list which had been evolved
from the minds of party organisers. It fell flat. No one
had any difficulty in deciding that Mr Gladstone cared
about none of the speech, until he came to Home Rule.^
The mass of Liberal agents saw the Church roused against
them on Disestablishment, the brewers against them on
Local Veto ; and no real force roused for them. The Pro
gramme could only command the habitual and traditional
1 In Morley's Life of Gladstone (iii. 462) the whole speech is
dismissed with a dozen Unes of distant reference.

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 301
Liberals, and such enthusiasm as might exist would be
personal enthusiasm for Mr Gladstone. He after aU was
their beacon, and the programme only a disagreeable
necessity. Home Rule was a reality ; the other pro
posals were not. Nor was a minor factor in the speech,
which was Mr Gladstone's own. He insisted on
an early evacuation of Egypt. On the old lines of
policy in regard to Egypt he was justified. Early in this
year a battle fought by Sir Francis Grenfell at Tokar, in
which Osman Digna was totally defeated, put the finishing
touch to that restoration of confldence and security
which had been decided upon as the governing con
sideration after the fall of Khartoum. Three battles
had now had the result of establishing the frontier and
relieving it from dervish pressure, and also of giving con
fidence to the Egyptian soldiers and maldng them into a
real army. The battle before Suakin In 1888 has been
mentioned.^ In 1889 Grenfell defeated at Toski a
threatening force under a warrior named Wad El Nejumi,
who was believed by those qualified to laiow to be the
really great soldier of the Mahdi's and the Khalifa's power. ^
The defeat of Osman Digna completed this stage of our
work in Egypt ; and Mr Gladstone therefore had some
ground for reintroducing the question of evacuation. But
of recent years temper in England had changed. The new
sentiment for the British burden of responsibility was
in the air ; Mr Kipling was inflaming recollections of the
Soudan campaigns ; and Egypt under Baring and GrenfeU
was a satisfactory subject for national contemplation.
Mr Gladstone had better have left it alone.
Even in that portion of his speech which dealt with
Home Rule some observers thought that Mr Gladstone
was troubled and embarrassed. He was indeed distressed
by the spectacle of ParneU fighting, in a way he thought
' See p. 241.
» Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, ii. 64, 65.

302 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
mad, for control in Irish affairs. Bye-elections had occurred
in Ireland, and Parnell had put up candidates against
other Home Rule candidates ; they had been beaten
disastrously, but he would not give in. On his marriage
with the lady who had been Mrs O'Shea the last powerful
force in Ireland, which had not yet declared against him.
The Freeman's Journal, submitted to the Roman Catholic
view, and threw him over. He was to and fro between
England and Ireland almost every week ; each time his
retum showed him more haggard, more hoarse. Suddenly,
a few days after the Newcastle speech, it was announced
that he was lying desperately Ul of pneumonia in his house
at Brighton, having taken to his bed on his latest retum
from Ireland. The next day it was announced that he was
dead. He was only in his forty-sixth year. The desperate
strain and effort of the last twelve months of his life, the
struggle, not against England directly, but against his
late colleagues, seemed to the normal English mind to be
aptly summed up by The St James's Gazette, in a quotation
from the scene of Brian de Bois GuUbert's death in Ivanhoe :
" Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a
victim to his own contending passions." Some time
afterwards, when the Irish party became once more
united under one leader, the enduring work of Parnell
could be perceived. He had roused Ireland to a
single enthusiasm, which, though centred in himself
whUe he yet led the party, was so bumingly alive that it
could centre finally in the party as a whole. His tactical
work faUed, because it depended too much on his own cast
of mind ; it was a balancing of policies which no one else
could successfully imitate. But his conception of his work,
his unwearying refusal to present the Home Rule case as
other than a demand, buUt up a spirit in Ireland which
neither fell with him nor died with him. Not by the party
as he left it, any more than by the party as he found it,
could he be judged ; but by the crystaUine compactness

1891] ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS 303
with which for twenty years past the main Irish question
has been kept free of all the legislation that was once
supposed to be alternative to Home Rule.
On other benches too Parliament was to see gaps, when
it met. On 6th October died Mr W. H. Smith, a more
perfect type of the bourgeois than England has since pro
duced. Methodical, capable, not without solid dignity, he
left a stronger tradition behind him than his contemporaries
expected. His upbringing made him less sensitive than
his almost as solid predecessor, Stafford Northcote ; but
he also suffered less from the goading of Lord Randolph
Churchill, who had in the later eighties begun to fall
out of parliamentary life, and in this year left England
for a hunting tour in South Africa. Another great figure
passed out of the House of Commons upon the death, late
in December, of the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Hartington
succeeding to the title. Had he remained in the Commons
he would have had to face the strongest pressure to identify
himself finally with the Conservative party by taking the
leadership there ; as it was, he was able once more to move
as deliberately as he always liked to move.
The lapse of a year since the inception of the Salvation
Army scheme, Icnown as the Darkest England scheme,
provided an occasion for further criticism of it. It ap
peared that the year's expenditure of £17,000 had been
taken from the capital sum subscribed ; and the work had
not been regidated on the basis of an income from the smn.
General Booth had asked for much more, and was pro
ceeding on the assumption that the larger sum was assured.
He was considering a method of assisted emigration to
South Africa, and here also was somewhat hampered by
fairly direct intimations that the class of persons he pro
posed to send would not be welcomed in the Colonies, or
in the British South Africa territories. His scheme,
instead of being laimched complete, had grown into
little more than an enlargement of the Army's charit-

304 ISOLATION OF TRADE UNIONS [1891
able work, which might or might not be prolonged, accord
ing as its power of appeal to the public was maintained.
MeanwhUe the Army was in the midst of some of the worst
— and some of the last — of its street battles. It had been
received with violent resentment in Eastbourne, a town
which prided itself upon its manners and its social amenities.
Every Sunday the Salvation Ai'my fought with rowdies in
the streets, and another kind of hostility confronted it
in an attempt by the town authority to enforce a section
of a local Improvement Act against street processions.
The warfare raged undiminished through the winter.
London at the same time saw a revival of police action
against socialist meetings. In Chelsea, Hoxton, Peckham,
Southwark, Mile End, and Wanstead meetings of the
Social Democratic Federation were broken up, and speakers
were arrested. But this singling out of one form of
meeting among the many that were held every Sunday had
now no public opinion to back it. The winter was passing
without any serious strikes, or grievous distress. But the
insistence with which unemployment had been kept in
the eye of London, and the new spirit of investigation
of labour problems, had secured a patient and genuine
interest for a great work which at this time was being
published, Mr Charles Booth's Life and Labour in London.
Mr Booth had himself been led on by his investigations
into pauperism to propose, in a paper read before the
Statistical Society in December, a system of Old Age
Pensions of five shillings a week, which would not, in his
opinion, be enough to discourage thrift, but enough to
keep the deserving aged poor from the workhouse. It is
characteristic of the Liberal paralysis of the time that,
within twenty-four hours of that paper being read, Mr
Chamberlain was adopting the subject as an urgent piece
of domestic reform, and that no prominent Liberal seized
upon it as a more vital appeal to the country than anything
in the Newcastle Programme.

CHAPTER XIV
1892: A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION
THE year in which " Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay " over
ran the streets of our towns may well give pause
to the observer of English habits. The tasteless
and irrepressible air was at the time a universal annoyance ;
it appears now almost a portent. It was such an affront to
English respectabUity as had never yet been administered,
not only because it flaunted a vision of a high-kicking
dancer on a music-hall stage, but because the very sound
of the tune was jeering, as well as ludicrous. The sudden
absurd jolt of its high note became a grin at the gait and
carriage of a respectable man. Its penetrating shrillness
warned people that nothing was going to be taken seri
ously. The street boy whistled it ; the junior clerk sang
it in suburban drawing-rooms ; the gay dog went to see
Lottie Collins dance it ; even the cashier and the junior
partner thought it. It was essentially different from any
popular song which had from time to time ruled the pave
ment. The wildest of comic songs hitherto had been
something said, which might appeal to you individually
as funny, or be dismissed as nonsense. This one said
nothing ; it was a mere conspiracy against gravity of
deportment, which every errand boy challenged you to
join. It had no individual interest whatever ; it was the
voice of the crowd asserting itself. That overriding of
the British self-consciousness of behaviour which had
begun — and had been resented — in the Blue Ribbon Army
and the Salvation Army, and had been forced forward by
circumstances in the struggles of the unemployed, and the
u 305

306 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
more flamboyant side of socialist street meetings, now
invaded the mass of the careless. Cheerful blatancy was
as ready to parade the streets as profound conviction was ;
and the year of " Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay " contained the
germ of the " Mafficker." The origin of the tune was
gravely discussed In a law suit concerning copyright in it ;
it came from America, where it was said to have sprung
either from lower-class negroes, or from disreputable
haunts in St Louis. Certainly in its peculiarly idiotic
quality of sound it has never been equalled.
To say that a street tune substantially modified the
course of politics would be, in spite of Fletcher of Saltoun,
to treat popular melody rather too gravely. Yet there
certainly was at this time a tendency on the part of the
plain average man, without much interest in politics or
social reform, to make a little more of his own interests,
and rather less of the labour revolt, the state of Ireland,
the blessings of education, than he had been obliged to
make in recent years. He advanced his own amusements
with vigour. Golf attained in this year so much of a
position in England that for the first time the Amateur
Championship competition was held outside Scotland ;
it took place in May at Sandwich. The popularity of the
game was felt to be " bewilderingly sudden." ^ Cycling
had been receiving an immense impetus from the invention
of the safety bicycle, which, besides being far handier, and
easier to ride, than the old high bicycle, had rendered
cycling practicable for women. In its evening hours half
England was crazUy intent upon " missing word " com
petitions ; later in the year, when it was decided at Bow
Street that these were lotteries, it appeared in the evidence
that the coupons sent in by competitors ran into hundreds
of thousands every week. The world of art was diverted
by the publication of Whistler's Gentle Art of Making
Enemies ; but found some more serious interests in the
1 The Times, 14th May 1892.

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 307
successful issue of the negotiations with Mr Tate for the
foundation of the National Gallery of British Art, and in a
considerable protest against the growing disfigurement of
towns by sky signs, and of country districts by advertise
ment boards. In literature the publication of Tess of
the D'Urbervilles awoke a livelier interest in modem
novelists ; and the work of William Watson encouraged
people to believe that the death of Browning and Tennyson
would not leave the nation without a poet of the grand
scale. Tennyson's death occurred in October of this
year. Even the heavy ground of the drama was stirred ;
comedies by Oscar Wilde and J. M. Barrie blew over it a
breath of wit and native high spirits such as England had
not been known to possess. Finally, Paderewski's first
appearances in London created a wild enthusiasm which,
if at the time exaggerated, and often lacking in genuine
appreciation, did nevertheless make music a subject of
common interest, and prepared the way for a removal of
the reproach that England as a nation cared nothing for it.
The year opened with sorrow. A form of influenza, apt
to lead on to pneumonia, was again prevalent during the
winter months ; and on 14th January the Duke of Clarence,
eldest son of the Prince of Wales, died from it. On the
same day Cardinal Manning died. He had filled for a
long time with tact, but with unflinching assertion, a
difficult position in a society which could not admit the
claim to princely rank, which he could not forgo. Every
opportunity of position and power was to him a means of
advancing the ends of his Church. His secession from
the Church of England had been at the time more alarming
than that of Newman, because he was a greater preacher
and a greater administrator. His intervention in the dock
strike of 1889 was part of an increased activity during his
later years in the cause of reform at home. This activity
has been attributed to the decline of his influence at
Rome, which had, under Pius IX., been considerable ;

308 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
with Leo XIII. he was less in sympathy.^ The Free
Churches also lost this year a very prominent figure by
the death of the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. His preaching at
the great budding in Newington, known as the Metropolitan
Tabernacle, had for many years attracted enormous crowds
to the place ; and his sermons, being always reprinted in
pamphlet form, probably reached a wider public than was
in the compass of any other popular preacher. Homely,
positive, charged with an amazing vigour of appeal and of
denunciation, and delivered with marvellously effective
control of the voice, these sermons were profoundly satis
fying to Free Churchmen. They did not at this time look
for such direct political quality in their preachers as the
later fashion demanded.
The Church of England was involved in the final bout
of controversy with the Agnostics on Biblical inspiration.
From the staid pages of monthly reviews the battle had
spread to the newspapers ; and the Duke of Argyll, Mr
Gladstone, and Professor Huxley were solemnly debating
whether men should or should not believe in God, since
the Book of Genesis shows no knowledge of the existence
of kangaroos, and the story of Creation is demonstrably
unsound in the matter of the greater sanrians. This kind
of controversy was doomed by the approach of a new
spirit, which, if in many respect;s too light-hearted, was
sane in its inclination to think that a Church stood or feU
by other tests than those of reason, just as it had learned
to feel that a social structure stood or fell by other tests
than those of strictly logical principles.
One of the most striking instances of this spirit was
provided now by the second election for the London County
CouncU, which took place in March. All the criticism
which the councU's work had brought upon it from Con
servatives, from irritable rich householders, from any who
disliked and feared democratic administration, was con-
1 See Mr G. W. E. RusseU's Collections and Recollections, chap. iv.

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 309
centrated in a great attack during the early weeks of 1892.
The strange result was that resentment of carping criticism
was expressed not only by the advanced side of the council,
but by the whole body of members. Even the leaders of
the Moderate party complained of grumblings and growl -
ings which were meant to " crab " the council, and might
have the effect of frightening useful men from joining
it. It was a Moderate member, too, who went so far in
his admiration for the councU as to say that It had in
London so great and important a charge that it ought
to have a permanent organisation, somewhat on the scale of
Government departments. This was exactly the kind of
large view of the council's duties which fussy ratepayers
detested. At any rate, the attacks proved futUe, and the
new body elected this year had almost as large a Pro
gressive majority as the original councU had had. It made
the first attempt to run trams along the Embankment,
but faded to obtain powers from Parliament. Late in the
year it accomplished an advanced piece of administration
by setting up a works department of its own, and thus
giving itself a strong hand against the contractors for
public works. This was distinctly the most socialistic
step that any municipal authority had yet taken, and was
on quite a different plane from the provision of public
services, such as gas and water, which in their day had
made stir enough. Discussion of the water-supply, which
from time to time was a pressing subject in London, when
a dry summer revealed the inadequacy of the Water
Companies' services, arose this year in a new form. The
Birmingham Corporation promoted a BiU for powers to
obtain a water-supply from certain mountain valleys in
Wales, at a cost of six mUlions. The question whether
London did not need that particular source of supply was
raised. But it was not a matter on which there was as yet
any comnianding force of public opinion, and Birmingham
secured the right to the vaUeys. The water-supply of all

310 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
large towns was becoming a more serious problem, not only
from the perpetual increase of domestic demands, but from
at least two other demands. One was the demand for
public swimming baths and washhouses, and the other
was the great extension of the use of lifts in big buddings.
To take one example alone : in Birmingham the require
ments of water for the latter purpose had amounted to
30,000 gallons daUy, even in 1885, and by 1890 the amount
had risen to 80,000 gaUons. Another municipal interest
of the year 1892 was the first instance of an electric
tramway worked by a municipality. ^ At Blackpool the
local authority took over the lines of tramway which had
for some years been working on the conduit system.
In this year Mrs Rylands, the widow of an immensely
wealthy cotton-spinner, bought complete the famous
Althorp Library, belonging to Lord Spencer, a library
rich in every kind of treasure of book-collecting, and
gave it to the citizens of Manchester.
Early in the year events began to be coloured by the
prospect of a parliamentary election. The Govemment,
having been in office for six years, had come to the custom
ary time for a dissolution. The London County CouncU
election was considered by the Liberal party organisers to
be of good omen, and Liberal leaders talked County CouncU
politics (Mr Gladstone even going so far as to suggest that
the councU might have control of the police), untU the
other side scoffed at them for " throwing Imperial questions
into the background," though no one seemed very clear
as to what Imperial questions there were at the moment.
The advocacy of Old Age Pensions remained chiefly with
the Conservatives, and was cautiously handled ; Mr
Chamberlain had persuaded both Lord Salisbury and Mr
Balfour that It was not a matter to be neglected, and they
wrote letters supporting the idea of a contributory scheme
1 See The Municipal Journal, 2nd September 1910 ; article ou
the Jubilee of Trams.

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 311
of pensions, in which the State would have no concern
beyond the setting-up of the machinery. Liberals were
critical, both of this and of more general schemes of
industrial insurance, which had been brought into the
political atmosphere of the moment by the recent estab
lishment of the German system of workmen's insurance.
AUotments again provided matter for speech-making, and
here, too, with the Act of 1887 to their credit, Govemment
speakers took a high line. Mr Chamberlain asserted
that 100,000 labourers now had aUotments ; and the
Duke of Devonshire, going as usual to the root of the
matter, even when the root was rather deep digging
for a noble landlord, advised his party, besides making
efforts to increase the effectiveness of the Allotments Act,
not to neglect " those other and older objects of Liberal
policy that were directed towards the freeing of the land
from those encumbrances and difficulties under which our
existing laws place it, as to inheritance and transfer."
In the end this matter turned less to Conservative ad
vantage than was expected ; but in the preliminary rounds
it was of more value to them than to Liberals. For a
short time Woman Suffrage came to the front again.
During the brief session before the dissolution Sir Albert
RoUit introduced a Woman Suffrage Bill, and the question
was discovered to have a new kind of vitality, when the
platform at a meeting in St James's Hall in support of
the Bill was stormed by a section who objected to the class
limitations in the Bill. Hitherto Woman Suffrage measures
had been so remote from practical politics that precise
terms of enfranchisement had never been in dispute. The
BUl was defeated in the House by 175 votes to 152. The
most direct pronouncement on the position of labour from
either great party came from Lord Randolph ChurchUl,
who had returned to England in January. He upheld
once more that form of democracy which consisted in
trying to excise the middle class from the body politic.

312 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
In a letter to a candidate he remarked that political
power had passed from the landlords and the landed
interest to the capitalist and the manufacturer, who made
laws to suit themselves ; why, he asked, should not the
Conservatives combine regulation of aU conditions of labour
by the State, under the guidance of the Labour vote, with
" a foreign policy which sought to extend, by means of
tariff reforms, over our colonies and even over other
friendly states the area of profitable barter of produce ? "
But Lord Randolph ChurchUl had already ceased to be a
real force in politics, and newspapers no longer made much
of any suggestions from him. Besides, Labour had com
pleted the turn of thought by which it had come back
to faith in parliamentary work, and a determination to
signalise in that, as well as in municipal affairs, the coming
of the era of administration. Leaders on both sides had to
take account of a new kind of Labour candidature. Mr
Balfour took account of it, genuinely enough, by asserting
that Liberals were always more interested in political
reform than in social reform, and were therefore not the
truest friends of labour. Mr Gladstone took account of
it, not altogether happUy, by deprecating independence
of candidatures on the Labour side, as distinct from
independence of action in Parliament ; in other words he
preferred a member nominally Liberal, whose votes might
occasionally go against the party, to a candidate whose
poll must inevitably weaken the Liberal poll In any con
stituency. But indeed, whatever had been said on either
side, the Labour candidatures would have remained de
tached from both. Two or three times in the spring and
early summer the power of trade unions shook the country.
Early in March there was a strike of colliers, and although
it only affected one-third of the coalfields it caused a panic
at the thought of the possible laying-idle of factories and
furnaces everywhere. Fortunately that strike was over in
a fortnight, though it was followed by a more serious one

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 313
on the Durham coalfields, which lasted for twelve weeks.
The two strikes were on wages conditions, the masters
claiming the right, in view of the state of the market, to
reduce wages by 13| per cent. The men won a point in
getting the reduction put at 10 per cent. In each case
the working of the Union organisation was of a kind to
make Labour little inclined to rely on any party but itself.
Amid all these political excursions Home Rule lost none
of its party importance. Even in 1891 there had been
lively discussion of whether Mr Gladstone should or should
not be giving the country some details of the shape that
Home Rule was then taking in his mind. One of the
most prominent of the young men of his party, Mr Asquith,
was pressing him on the point in public speeches. In
1892 all that was known was that the retention of a con
siderable number of Irish members at Westminster had
been decided upon. The Conservatives, besides boasting
of the effect of their five years of " resolute govemment "
of Ireland, introduced this year an Irish Local Government
Bill. But it was not very seriously intended ; the elective
nature of the bodies it set up was " bulwarked," as the
ingenious phrase had it, in every possible way ; and the
BUl in the end was dropped. It had never been worth
whUe for Liberals to give it serious opposition. Yet they
went to the country in the end with their own policy to the
last degree vague in such vital points as the control of the
police and the judiciary and the treatment of the land
question ; and relied to no small extent upon attacking
Mr Balfour's coercion, instead of explaining their own
proposals. Coercion, indeed, and the comparative faUure of the
Allotments Act proved in the end the two most pointed
weapons for the use of Liberals. The employment of
them, combined with a certain weakness in Conservative,
as distinct from Liberal Unionist, electoral organisation,
provided the Tories' excuse for their defeat. Parliament

314 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
was dissolved in June ; and although the Govemment had
been losing seats continuaUy at bye-elections, probably no
one on the Liberal side, except Mr Gladstone, had expected
a complete Liberal victory. He expressed the most ex
travagant anticipations. In an article pubUshed in The
Nineteenth Century'^ he tried to persuade the country
to expect a Liberal majority of at least 100, and to be
prepared even for the possibiHty of a Tory "landsUde."
Not only was he wrong, but his disUlusionment took
a peculiarly personal tum ; his majority in Mid-Lothian,
which had been over 3000 in 1885, and unassaUed in 1886,
feU to 690. In the country generaUy the only sign of
opinion which could be called at all striking was the
comparative faUure of the Liberal Unionists. They had
numbered 74 after the election of 1886 ; they numbered
after the election of 1892 only 47 ; it seemed therefore
that the attachment of the word " Liberal " to a position
which did not include Home Rule was of no value as an
appeal to electors ; and to that extent Home Rule became
a more firmly settled point of Liberal policy. The new
House, which assembled in August, contained 274 Liberals,
81 Home Rulers (72 Anti-Pamellites and 9 ParneUites),
268 Conservatives and 47 Liberal Unionists. This gave a
Home Rule majority of 40. It was not a strong majority,
but it was remarkable, if the purely political circumstances
alone be considered, that there should have been such
a majority at all. The Conservative Govemment had
passed a very considerable quantity of democratic legisla
tion, and their record in that respect was far more satis
factory than that of the Liberal Government of 1880.
One of their final pieces of work was a Shop Hours Act,
prohibiting the employment of young persons under
eighteen years of age for more than seventy-four hours
in a week, including meal times. The Act required
amendment later, as no provision was made in it for the
* September 1891,

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 315
expenses of administering it. But it was another instance
of the kind of social legislation of these five years.
Much of this, no doubt, was due to Mr Chamberlain's
influence. But Lord Salisbury was quite as much alive
to democratic demands as anyone of his time, for all
the cynicism with which he occasionally presented them
to his party. He was probably more alive to them than
Mr Gladstone, who never successfully separated in his mind
constitutional reforms and social advancement. Lord
Salisbury had but little patience with the rights of man or
the rights of citizenship ; but he could see any given claim
when it was presented to him apart from abstractions.
Thus he had been able to move far in social reform since
1886. But he could not move in the spirit of the rights
of democracy, and this spirit was what most distinguished,
next to his own legislation, the past six years. Herein we
may find some part of the reason for the defeat of the
Conservatives. Much though they had done, they held
themselves capable of either giving or withholding ; and
political Trade Unionism was bent upon breaking down
that attitude. The fact that the Conservatives and
Liberal Unionists failed to obtain against the Liberals
alone a majority sufficient to counterbalance the Irish vote
may be attributed firstly to the personal popularity of
Mr Gladstone, and secondly to the new Trade Unionism.
Incidentally new journalism had its share in the result. It
is beyond doubt that The Star already wielded a formidable
power ; and in the spring of 1892 it was foUowed by the
estabhshment of two halfpenny morning papers. The
Morning Herald and The Morning Leader, the latter being
published by the proprietors of The Star. These were the
first halfpenny morning papers in the kingdom, and they
came in time to help sway the election. The working man
could not yet retum many members of his own class to
Parliament. His sense that Tories, even when they had
passed Factory Acts and a Local Government Act and a

316 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
Free Education Act, were stlH Tories, could for the most
part only express itself in voting for Liberals. This, with
the persistent Liberalism of Scotland and Wales, just
defeated the Unionists. Lord Salisbury did not im
mediately resign ; he was not, until a vote was taken,
in a minority. But the vote came speedUy. Mr Asquith
moved a motion of No Confidence on 8th August, and it
was carried by 350 votes to 310. Then Lord Salisbury
resigned, and Mr Gladstone formed his fourth Govemment.
It included some new men, Mr Asquith becoming Home
Secretary, Sir H. H. Fowler, President of the Local (Govern
ment Board, and Mr James Bryce, Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster.
I" There were new men in the House also. In some
respects newness was perhaps unnecessarily self-conscious.
The brass band which accompanied Mr Keir Hardie to
Westminster when he took his seat gave some offence ; his
tweed cap hardly less. He was elected for South-West
Ham ; and if the band and the cap were intended to
announce that a Labour member had arrived who did not
call himself a Liberal, expected no favour from Liberals,
and did not want the patronising kindliness which had
been shown to previous members from the ranks of labour
ing men, they were not altogether out of place. Mr John
Bums, too, was returned to Parliament, sitting for
Battersea. These two stood for a change in the political
spirit of labour, not unlike that which Pamell had made in
the case of Ireland. The other Labour members had, like
Isaac Butt, accepted the forms of the House, and parlia
mentary action to them meant all the old forms ; they
sat with the Liberals, and their hope lay in moving
Liberals to action.
MeanwhUe outside the House advanced Labour men,
in the same way as the Clan-na-Gael, had begun to despise
parliamentarianism, and preferred to rely upon their own
organisations acting directly on the social body. The

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 317
Independent Labour Party proposed now, as PameU had
done, to have at its back aU the energy of these outside
forces, whUe employing parliamentary action. At the
moment, indeed, the outside forces showed some tendency
to become as detached from all normal and lawful methods
of agitation as the Clan-na-Gael was. Some members of the
Social Democratic Federation developed anarchist lean
ings, abolished the chairman at their conferences, and held
frankly revolutionary meetings in Hyde Park. Four men
were arrested at Walsall, for manufacturing bombs, and
were sentenced to penal servitude. The publisher and
proprietor of The Commonweal, the organ of socialism,
were indicted for publishing a violent article, after this
trial, denouncing the Home Secretary, the judge who tried
the case, and the inspector of police who conducted it.
They were sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour for
incitement to murder.
I^But on the whole the Labour forces outside Parliament
were not likely to become as embarrassing to their leaders
as Irish dynamiters had been to Parnell, and the Trade
Union Congress in the autumn, while it showed the vigor
ous influence of the new movement, confined itself to an
effective and not at all extravagant programme. It
instructed its Parliamentary Committee to prepare a
scheme for Independent Labour representation ; and it
passed resolutions demanding an easier franchise qualifica
tion (of three months' residence, instead of a year's) ; the
appointment as factory inspectors of men who had worked
not less than five years in factories ; and an eight-hours
day. The last demand received an unexpected encourage
ment from a vote in favour of it given by the cotton
operatives' trade unions. This was a great surprise,
because the cotton hands had never hitherto favoured the
movement ; there were some who were inclined to attribute
the vote less to conviction on a Trade Union theory than
to a knowledge that there had been a good deal of over-

318 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
production in the trade, and that an eight-hours day
would be a form of short time convenient to the
operatives.
Unfortunately the winter m Lancashire was to pass under
the shadow of something worse than short time. Affairs
there had not been going well. The Ship Canal was
proving disastrously costly ; instead of the eight and a
half miUions which were to have covered all the cost of
construction and the purchase of other undertakings, ten
millions had already been spent, and it seemed likely that
fourteen mUlions would be swallowed before the work
was finished. Then depressed trade turned the cotton-
masters to thinking of bimetallism, and seeking in that
a cure for Uls that had no connection with currency.
Finally at the beginning of November the masters decided
that they must make a 5 per cent, reduction in wages, and
the operatives struck, asking for a short-time agreement
instead. Fifty or sixty thousand operatives were out
before the first week of the strike was over. It was
expected to be a tough fight, because for some years the
alternatives of short time or lowered wages in a trade crisis
had been in dispute between masters and men, and now
had come to trial ; but that it would be a fight through
the whole dark winter no one supposed. The strike
added a sharper interest to the Conference of Women
Workers at Bristol in November, which gave much of its
time to the consideration and advocacy of womens' trade
unions ; the Women's Trade Union Association, meeting
about the same time, had to confess to a year of poor
results, although great efforts had been made.^ The
Bristol Conference, a sequel to the Conference of the
Birmingham Union of Women Workers in 1890, also
pressed forward the question of the appointment of women
factory inspectors ; and one of the first services of the
new Liberal Government was to accede to this pressure,
' This was the Association's third yearly meeting.

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 319
Mr Asquith as Home Secretary appointing several women
inspectors. NaturaUy the new Government also went to work early
in Ireland. Mr Morley, who had again taken the Chief
Secretaryship, set up in October a Royal Commission to
investigate the conditions induced by the steady course
of evictions under the recent " resolute govemment."
The bitterness of feeling was seen in the assertions of
landlords that they would have nothing to do with the
commission. The first petulance passed away, and the work
seemed likely to proceed fairly smoothly, when a breeze
between the judge who presided over the commission and
certain lawyers who appeared for landlords brought Ul-
feeling back again ; and in the end the landlords carried
out their original threat, and declined to appear. Another
matter in which the Ministry seized its new opportunities
was the question of allotments. So much of their Social
Reform programme had been taken from them that any
point in which the arrogance of the other side might be
pricked was of no small value. A return was at once
prepared, and was published in August, showing how poor
a thing the Allotments Act of 1887 had proved to be in the
working. Instead of Mr Chamberlain's 100,000 men, it
appeared from the returns that only 2891 tenants had been
set up under the Act ; and the perfunctory character of
the Act was shown by the discovery that only fifty-six
rural sanitary authorities (the local bodies which ad
ministered the Act) had acquired land, whUe five hundred
and eighteen authorities had taken no steps at all.
There was some apprehension of distress as the winter
approached. But in one sense the worst struggle of the
unemployed appeared to be over ; they no longer had to
rouse the comfortable world to the fact of their existence
and their starvation. The new Home Secretary speedUy
removed one of the old grievances by opening Trafalgar
Square to meetings on Sundays, Saturdays and Bank

320 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
Holidays ; though he ventured on ground which might
have been provocative when he spoke of the mischief
of holding meetings there day after day — ^the very thing
which in extreme states of popular feeling was the most
impressive means of action. But the concession was well
received; all the energy of those who concerned them
selves with the problem of unemployment could go to
trying to devise remedies, and the Local Govemment
Board was urged again to relax the rigidities of the Poor
Law, and to sanction some form of relief organisation.
It was at last being admitted that a neglected state of
unemployment brought a terrible train of consequences, in
that it finally submerged workmen who could never recover
from a fortnight's failure of work, and were thrust down
into pauperism beyond remedy. The official response was
not very fruitful, but it was some acknowledgment of
the difficulty. A Royal Commission on the Poor Law was
set up. It was less concerned with immediate labour
problems than with the subject of Old Age Pensions, to
which it was obvious that the new Government must pay
attention. The commission's work gradually narrowed
itself down to this, and no effort was made to devise modi
fications of the Poor Law to meet the case of the un
employed. The commission did not represent in any way
the new labour forces ; John Burns declined to serve on it.
The only Labour members were of the old school — Joseph
Arch, and Henry Broadhurst. Mr Chamberlain was one
of the commissioners ; he had lately promulgated a
" labour programme " which showed him for the first
time out of real touch with those democratic movements
which ten years before he had pre-eminently represented.
He proposed to shorten hours of labour in mines and other
dangerous employments ; to set up arbitration tribunals ;
to found a system of contributory insurance for com
pensation for injuries, and for old age pensions ; to limit
pauper immigration ; to increase the powers of local

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 32l
authorities in matters of housing and town improvements ;
and to empower such authorities to advance money to
working men to enable them to become owners of their
houses. This last item, curious as it sounds now, was
ardently advocated by Mr Chamberlain for a year or two.
He had in fact undergone the inevitable change from his
environment. He had not become a Tory ; but he had
missed the contact with the new element in democratic
feeling by which such a man as he would have profited,
if he had remained on the Liberal side. Even on his
present side he did not overlook the existence of the new
element ; but he could have no contact with it, and the
result was that he miscalculated it. He denied that the
new Labour members represented any real force in the
labour world, and that led him to mistake an advanced
programme ui the spirit of 1880 for an appeal to advanced
labour. Meanwhile the Salvation Army scheme was showing
itself as founded rather on experience of destitution than
on a proper understanding of the problem of unemploy
ment. The honesty of the administration of the fund,
and the adequate keeping of accounts, were established
by the investigations of a committee which had under
taken the work at General Booth's request. But the
committee found that the relief works of the Army were
really underseUing the market in lines of cheap labour,
and were thus creating as much destitution as they relieved.
It may be added here that the Salvation Army's years of
street struggles now came virtually to an end ; the clause
in a Local Act, under which the Eastbourne authorities
had repressed the Army's activities, was repealed by
Parliament in this year; and when the Town Council
tried to make by-laws permitting repression the Home
Secretary refused his sanction. Active persecution of the
Salvation Army may from this time be said to have ceased.
By the end of the year it was becoming terribly evident

322 A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION [1892
that distress of a grievous kind, even if It did not amoimt
to starvation, was at thousands of doors where no such
visitant had been expected. In October a business with
vast ramifications, called the Liberator BuUding Society,
went into bankraptcy. The small savings of an immense
number of people were in it ; it had, indeed, never been
an affair for large investments, but had acquired practically
all its capital from the artisan and the small shopkeeper.
The first announcement of its faUure left, perhaps,
some hope ; the announcement in November that the
Public Prosecutor had been approached in the matter
began to put a different complexion on the state of the
society's business.
As for the large investor, a bad trade year in Great
Britain had kept his new interest in South Africa alive.
The gold boom continued in a mUder form, and Mr
Rhodes was a stalwart figure to give the investor confidence
in the possibUities of the territories he so largely controlled.
He was in England again in the winter, rousing a great
meeting of the British South Africa Company to en
thusiasm for his schemes, which were now being revealed
at their height. He spoke of telegraph lines from south
to north of Africa by way of Uganda and Wady Haifa, and
of an advance of civdisation by that route, which should,
so to speak, take the dervishes in the rear, and remove
the necessity of having to fight them. The idea was that
other interruptions of the magnificent whole might also
be removed without fighting. Complaints about the
Boers' treatment of the gold industry, which had been
maldng a slight appearance from time to time, were
growing rather more loud. However, the hope was
expressed that the backward nation which occupied the
Transvaal might be removed from it ultimately without
war ; though references to " gratuitous germs of race
bitterness" betray^ glimpses of the real feelings at work.
Alarm about cholera, from which England had been

1892] A HALF-HEARTED ELECTION 323
free for some years, returned in the summer, when the
presence of the disease at St Petersburg and Hamburg
led to fears that it might be introduced into this country
by immigrants. In the autumn there were a few cases
in the ports on the English as well as on the French
side of the Channel. The authorities had the more
reason to be uncomfortable since a fever epidemic in
London in the summer, 4000 cases being under treatment
in September, had shown once again the prevalence of
insanitary conditions. However, the cholera was success
fully kept within bounds. The cases in England were
limited to thirty-five, and the isolation arrangements
were so good that in no single instance did the disease
extend to other persons than those who landed in
England with it upon them. That is to say, there was
no spread of infection at all.

CHAPTER XV
1893: MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT
L ALTHOUGH the Liberal majority was unreal
for any purpose but that of Home Rule, the
Government entered on its first serious session
amid as much obloquy and fear from Conservatism as if
it were a revolutionary junta in command of absolute
power. Mr Gladstone was the sole cause of this attitude.
In the clash of violent feeling roused during the Home Rule
controversy of 1886 the personal dislike of him, active
enough in the late seventies, had assumed an almost
superstitious form. For a few years before the election of
1880 it was actually difficult for a London hostess to gather
a dinner-party to meet Mr Gladstone, unless she was
content to confine herself to his known adherents. His
power of moving great audiences, his desire to move
them, and the directions in which he wished to move
them, appeared as a terrible break with the old gentleman
like politics in which he had been reared. Dread of his
power grew to be a very large element in Queen Victoria's
obvious mistrust of him ; and she was only reflecting the
feelings of the higher social ranks of the country. When
he took up the cause of Home Rule, dislike was inflamed
into hatred. He alone at that time could have created
and held together a party against the furious attacks
of the Tories and the Unionists ; therefore the fact that
he was there to do it focussed upon him the intense
bitterness of feeling. A yet more amazing stage remained.
That adoration of him on his own side which took such
affectionate pride in the vigour of his old age, which gloried
324

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 325
in his capacity at eighty-three to lead one more Govern
ment to attempt Home Rule, which pinned its faith so
fiercely to him as the " Grand Old Man," was answered
on the other side by a belief, ridiculous as it might seem,
that such a spirit in so old a man could only be attributed
to some form of demoniac possession. Numbers of people,
otherwise sensible, actually believed that there was some
thing satanic In Mr Gladstone ; and, once that super
stitious feeling was aroused, his constant expression of his
deeply religious convictions only made the case worse.
The working of his mind, often involved, and showing
such expertness in mental processes that the result was
frequently a balanced pronouncement, in which simpler
minds could see no finality, became in the eyes of the
superstitious another sign of " possession " ; they took
it as a form of gathering into his toUs those who, if they
had read his real thoughts, would have ceased from follow
ing him. In the two Mr Gladstones of popular fancy —
the Grand Old Man who would perform a miracle, and
the Terrible Old Man who would ruin the Empire — the
ordinary person's interest in politics was centred, not
upon the new Govemment as a Govemment.
The times were not propitious. The great strike in
Lancashire, which had begun in November, showed no
signs of coming to an end, and hunger stalked through the
cotton towns. Other industries were in a nervous, irrit
able condition which portended more strikes. At the
same time the full effects of the Liberator bankruptcy
began to be apparent ; early in January it was said that
the examination of the society's affairs was leading to the
conclusion that the shareholders would lose everything,
and the depositors would be fortunate if they got three or
four shUlings in the pound. Angry discussions raged as
to the responsibUity of prominent persons who had allowed
their names to figure on the prospectus ; but there were
individuals upon whom it soon appeared that direct

326 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
punishment would fall. The man who was supposed
to have been chiefly responsible for fraudulent handling
of the funds, Jabez Spencer Balfour, had fled the country
at an early stage of the disaster, and no one knew where
he was. But three men were put on their trial, Hobbs,
Wright and Newman, and though the evidence of the
financial juggling which had gone on — the interweaving
of building speculation with private borrowings which
had, for instance, the prosecution aUeged, transferred two
miUions sterling to the pockets of Hobbs from the
Liberator's funds — was extremely complicated, the end
of the trial was plain enough. Hobbs and Wright were
sentenced to twelve years' penal servitude, and Newman
to five years. In April, a month after the trial was over,
news at last arrived of Balfour ; he had been recognised
at Buenos Ayres, and application had been made for his
extradition. He was regarded as the real vUlain of the
piece. Hobbs had only aspired to be Mayor of Croydon ;
but Balfour had posed as a financial magnate, with a great
extravagant country house, a seat in Parliament, and a
reputation for benevolence. He proceeded now to prove
that at any rate the clevemess at the back of the Liberator
frauds had been largely his contribution. His extradition
was formally granted by the Argentine authorities on
17th AprU ; he invented ingenious processes of the law by
which he delayed for two whole years the carrying out of
the extradition order, and almost caused his victims to
despair of his ever being brought to justice. But mean
whUe some vengeance had been taken ; and energy was
now turned to setting on foot a Relief Fund for those who
had been ruined.
The cotton strike terminated on 24th March in the
famous Brooklands agreement, which has ever since
governed the relations of employers and employed in
that industry. It provided that the immediate reduction
of wages should be, not 5 per cent., against which the null-

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 327
hands had struck, but 3 per cent. The more important
feature of the agreement was that in future no changes
should take place at intervals less than a year from the
date of the last change, and that no single change should
exceed 5 per cent, either of advance or of reduction ;
machinery for consultation and arbitration was also set
up, and an arrangement made for establishing committees
of the masters' and the men's organisations, two com
mittees on either side, a lower and a higher, each of which
should have not less than seven days, in a case of dispute,
to consider its attitude. The agreement was hailed as
a credit to Lancashire ; it was also a remarkable sign of
the new relations which labour was setting up with its
employers. A strike was no longer an isolated affair, and
no longer a simple affair ; it contained various possibilities ;
it was almost always now a declaration of unity of which
masters might take account, if they wished. The statistics
of strikes showed an increasing number of disputes which
were not about wages ; thus in 1890 wages disputes were
62 per cent, of the whole, and in 1891 were 54 per cent.
An equally significant fact was that in strikes undertaken
purely to defend Trade Union principles, although the
masters won rather more than half the battles, the cases
which the strikers won were the far more important ones.
These statistics of the industrial world had been published
for several years past, and in this year the work of collect
ing and presenting them was put under a special branch
of the Board of Trade, the Labour Department, which
Mr MundeUa, President of the Board, created.
During the winter the new education was of as much
Interest as the new Unionism. The two subjects were not
devoid of a remote connection, because upper middle-class
people, seeing prices disturbed, and conveniences of life
affected, by the demands of workmen, began to question
why they should at the same time be paying more for the
education of those workmen. It was not a very reasonable

328 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
train of thought, but it was an enticing one. Local taxa
tion, according to a Local Govemment Board report
published in AprU of this year, was certainly tending
to fall more heavily on the house-occupier and less
on the landowner. Sometimes the grievance was
put differently ; the ratepayer complained that he was
being mulcted for the education of the working classes,
who then used their education to form unions, and
endanger dividends. People grumbled increasingly at the
effect of compulsory education in making the educated
less content with their station in life ; to meet them with
more education was in this view deplorable. A time of
uncertain trade and a wet, depressing winter made these
grievances louder, so that It behoved the champions of
education to bestir themselves. It was useless to blink
the fact that the new education would not only go on
making demands upon the national pocket, but would make
ever-increasing demands. There was already a dearth of
teachers in technical schools, and the state of the teaching
staff of elementary schools cried aloud for more and better
training colleges. The Duke of Devonshire, in his level
headed way, attacked the most prevalent ground of com
plaint ; he argued that, instead of increasing the attempt
to migrate from one class to another, technical education
would diminish the " black-coat fetish," would set up an
ideal of workmanship in place of the feeling that the desk-
worker was a more respectable person than the skilled
artisan, and so would diminish the tendency to congestion
in the world of clerks and shop assistants. The answer
made to this argument was that technical schools showed
a danger of turning out bad artists rather than good crafts
men. It fell to Mr Balfour, speaking at Manchester, to
remind the country that, after all, a progressive and
energetic community like Manchester had had a
Mechanics' Institute twenty years ago and a School of Art
fifty-six years ago; the Technical Education Act had

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 329
only put upon a national basis work which the great
industrial towns had found so desirable, that they had
instituted private efforts to set it on foot long before any
one dreamed of it as proper work for public authorities.
MeanwhUe other speakers like Lord Justice Bowen re
minded the public that education (which he caUed " the
cultivation for market-purposes of brute brain power ")
was not thought of by its best supporters as supplanting
morality and religion ; a leaven had been set to work, and
time must be given for its operation.
Parliament met on 31st January for what became the
longest session that had ever been known. It sat tUl the
third week in September, and then, with only five weeks'
recess, sat again untU the beginning of March 1894 — a
session of thirteen months. The Government introduced
rapidly three large measures. The Home Rule BUl was
produced in February, the Welsh Disestablishment BUl
in the same month, and the Local Veto Bill at the beginning
of March. But of these only the Home Rule BUl counted
for the moment in the Liberal forces. The introduction
of the other two might have been thought to have been
designed, in some extraordinary faUure of judgment, to
serve as irritants during several months in which the
Liberal party would be too much occupied to defend
them in the country. The licensed victualling trade at
once organised meetings against the Local Veto BUl ;
and even people well affected towards licensing reform
were cooled by the production of a measure, which made
no alterations in the system of licensing, but was devoted
solely to such projects as establishing polls of districts,
to be taken on the demand of ten persons, on the question
of prohibiting the sale of liquor in the district, and setting
up a form of public management of licensed houses with a
bonus to the resident manager on the sale of non-
intoxicants. It was little wonder that Mr Chamberlain
saw as much profit in attacking this measure as in com-

330 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
bating Home Rule.^ The Welsh Disestablishment BUl
also provoked meetings against the Government all over
England ; and, as neither Bill was advanced a single stage
in all this year, their production seemed a gratuitous
rousing of opposition. Practically the whole of the time
untU the adjournment for the short recess in September
was taken up by the Home Rule BiU. Its only novel feature
as compared with the previous BUl ^ was the retention
at Westminster of Irish members, their numbers being
reduced from a hundred and three to eighty. But exactly
what their position was to be, whether they were to vote on
all subjects or only on Irish subjects, and what was to be
said in the former case of a situation in which Irishmen
might govern England, by holding the balance between
parties, but Englishmen could not govern Ireland —
these were the points of hottest dispute in the inter
minable debates in Committee. The second reading
debate was a long one, and at the beginning of it the
Opposition were not wholly united in their policy. A
party meeting had to be called at the Carlton Club (it was
notable as marking Lord Randolph ChurchUl's retum to
the fold of the orthodox on Irish questions) ; and, though
some strong differences of opinion as to the method of
fighting the Bill were expressed, the decision was ultimately
taken for a solid vote against the second reading on 22nd
April. Then the long Committee stage began ; it occupied
sixty-three sittings, and Mr Gladstone himself was not
free from some responsibility for the inordinate length of
the proceedings. The concentration of the past seven
years upon the subject of Ireland had so preserved his
energy, besides enlarging his store of knowledge, that he
brought to these debates an incredible vigour. Unfortun
ately vigour with him meant copiousness ; he maintained,
in a House of Commons which had learned obstructive
arts, the tradition of a day when these were unknown,
' The Times, 7th April 1893. * See p. 181.

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 331
and the result was that his speeches offered a thousand
points of petty debate, in sentences which he threw in
merely for purposes of illustration or amplification. ^
Dull though the whole debate became to the world
outside the waUs of Parliament, there was little else to
talk about. The introduction of the BiU had Intensified
the animosities in society, which were so bad for the spirit
of the London season.
Then the business world was depressed by a disastrous
faUure of credit in Australia. In March banks began to
suspend payment there, and the whole structure of credit
in the colony was found to depend to a dangerous degree
upon land speculation, which at a time of crisis dropped
with a run. Banks had also been engaged in direct trading,
and their capital was insufficiently paid up. Moreover,
though the gold reserves were larger than in England,
being on an average 20 to 25 per cent, of the deposits, as
against an average of about 12 per cent, in England, they
were not large enough for a country in which, owing to
its isolation, securities were necessarily almost impossible
to realise in a moment of difficulty. Out of fifteen large
banks in Australia seven had suspended payment in April,
and the crash had the more serious effects in England,
because, oddly enough, there were few British shareholders,
but a very large number of British depositors ; one bank
alone, the Commercial Bank of Australia, held British de
posits to the amount of five or six mUlions. Such a disaster
as this, following on the disaster to a less speculative class
in the Liberator Society's downfall, disposed the country
very Ul to the reception of a Budget showing a deficit of a
mUlion and a half, and demanding an extra penny on the
Income Tax. The alcohol revenue, which had been so
strong a support of Mr Goschen's management of national
finances, had fallen off heavily, as was usual in years of
bad trade ; and that enhancement of revenue which Sir
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 502.

332 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
WUliam Harcourt was known to have in mind, the Death
Duties, could not be proposed in a session so over
whelmingly occupied as this was by the Home Rule BiU.
At this moment, too, a strike occurred which was
more menacing and disturbing than recent strikes had
been. It was a dock strike at Hull, and it arose out of
unionists' refusal to work with non-unionists. We have
had occasion to remark that the first threat of a shipping
strike on these lines had been accompanied by peculiarly
sharp exchanges from either side.^ It was now to be seen
that such appearances were not empty. The struggle at
once became a severe one. The Seamen's and Firemen's
Union joined the dockers ; the Shipping Federation, now
a virtually complete organisation of shipowners, would not
yield an inch. The careful keeping of order which had
distinguished other strikes gave way, and fires occurred at
the docks which could hardly have been caused by any
thing but incendiarism. The mUitary were caUed out.
But the strike never became a widespread movement
affecting other ports, and it ended after six weeks in the
defeat of the men.
In June a trouble of a different kind descended upon
the nation. WhUe the fleet in the Mediterranean was
carrying out some tactical exercises, the flagship, the
Victoria, was rammed broadside by the Camperdown, and
sank so rapidly that the Admiral in command, thirty-three
officers, and three hundred and twenty men were drowned.
The reason for the accident appeared to be that orders
given for a certain turning movement of the two lines, in
which the fleet was being handled, had been based on an
error in calculating the distance between the lines, and
the Victoria and the Camperdown, the leading ships,
instead of clearing one another in the turn, came into
collision. The news appalled the country, and was a
grievous spot in a somewhat sorry year.
' See ps 2801

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 333
In July temper in the House of Commons grew pugna
cious. "The committee stage of the Home Rule BUl was
placed under the operation of a closure resolution, bringing
discussion to an end on successive sections of the BUl at
certain hours. Considering the time that had been spent
on the BUl, the Government seemed to have no alternative ;
but the resentment shown was far greater than in the
previous applications of that kind of closure under the
late Govemment. It flamed up at the end of the com
mittee stage into a free fight on the floor of the House.
Words had been used which created an uproar, and a
Nationalist member, who had been shouting at an Ulster
member, and could not make him hear in the noise, went
to sit by him, to make sure of his hearing. A neighbour of
the Ulster member pushed the Nationalist away, and that
let loose the fight. The Speaker was sent for, and, as his
dignified presence fortunately caused the fighting to die
down, the incident terminated there and then. But it
seemed to many people in the country characteristic of a
misguided session, and of a year of irritable feelings. The
summer witnessed a second strike which led to rioting,
and this time with more serious results than had occurred
at Hull. The prices of coal had been adversely affected
by the prevailing wealcness of trade, and the masters
demanded a reduction of 25 points of the 40 per cent.
advances in wages which had been conceded between
1880 and 1890. The strike against the reduction was not
universal ; the Northumberland and Durham miners
never joined it, and the South Wales miners were only In
volved for a time. The Midlands, Yorkshire and Lanca
shire were the heart of the strike, and it was in Yorkshire
that its most deplorable incident occurred. Men had been
imported to work mines in South Wales and South York
shire, and the determination of the strikers to prevent this
led to violent riots. Soldiers were drafted into those
districts, and it happened that at Featherstone in South

334 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
Yorkshire a fight against blacklegging occurred on a day
during Doncaster Races, The authorities had unwisely
pursued their usual method of mustering police at Don
caster from other districts, making no special allowance
for the disturbed state of the colliery regions. The result
was that the strikers were able to move far too rapidly,
and did so much damage to the colliery that, when the
mUitary arrived, the mob was completely out of hand.
Orders were given to fire, and two men were kUled. This
brought a sharp attack upon Mr Asquith from Mr Keir
Hardie, and an official inquiry was opened. But of course
no blame could be attached ; the colliery was in danger of
being entirely wrecked, and the action of the mob, what
ever its excuse, was not technically defensible. The
report made by the committee of inquiry was that the
soldiers were justified in firing ; and the whole matter
could only survive as one more grievance of the socialists
against capital. Capital on its own side was not blind to
the suggestions of counter-combination which the strike
conveyed. In September there was no little talk of the
formation of a huge Coal Trust, which should maintain
the prices of coal. The ordinary point of view was that
it was all very well for the miners to talk about a living
wage, but, if the public would not buy the commodity,
how could an artificial standard of wages be kept up ?
This gave a very plausible argument for a coal trust ;
by controlling prices, and establishing a sliding scale of
wages in relation to the market, the trust could secure
the men's position. But in point of fact the coalowners
were so far from a spirit of combination that they could not
even stand together during the strike. As the dispute
lengthened out, and the price of coal rose, some of the
masters found the temptation too much for them, and
broke away from their own side, conceding the miners'
terms, in order to have their pits at work. Those who
did so were said to have made fortunes ; but incidentally

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 335
they embittered the dispute on both sides. It dragged
on throughout the autumn, with various side-issues. A
Labour Disputes BiU was introduced at the end of July,
to enable the Board of Trade to appoint a concUiator or in
quirer in a dispute ; no power was given to enforce any
award that might be made, and the BiU was therefore
regarded as bloodless. The great work that might
be done by an official, inquiring into the two points
of view, and acting as a channel of communication,
was hardly likely to be foreseen at a time when strikes
were at their sharpest. A more curious concomitant of
the present strike was the spirit displayed at the annual
meeting of the Chambers of Commerce in September.
Never before had the gradual change from the old idea of
free competition to a desire for State interference shown
itself so clearly. The resolution in favour of compulsory
arbitration boards had a fairly obvious connection with
recent events. But it was curious to see the same spirit
which animated working men moving now in the trading
classes, in resolutions in favour of a State system of second
ary education, of a reduction of railway rates, of graduated
taxation designed to relieve the trading middleman, and
of the creation of a department of Government for com
mercial affairs. It was small wonder that the phUosophical
economists, looking on, should say that socialism was now
only a question of the degree to which State action was in
voked, and was no longer a battle-ground between classes.
This kind of comment was rendered much more possible
by a change in the attitude of the leaders of professed
socialism, a change which corrected the somewhat violent
swinging of the pendulum during the disputes of the late
eighties in London. May day of 1893 was made the
occasion for the issue of a new socialist manifesto. It was
the work rather of Mr Bernard Shaw, Mr Sidney Webb,
and the Fabians, than of WUliam Morris and the older
school. It formulated definitely the return to political

336 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
economy in its pronouncement that moralisation of the
conditions of a capitalist society would not serve as an
^ ideal. Complete ownership by the community of the
means of wealth, and the end of the wage-system, must
be the goal. At the same time the manifesto repudiated
the anarchist tendencies which had made their appear
ance, not so much in actual violence, as in the doctruie that
aU tinkering reform should be opposed, in order that the
flood might gather for revolution. The new manifesto,
on the contrary, urged that all ameliorative measures
should be accepted, as giving the workman more leisure
and more equipment to work for a new social order. In
practice, therefore, socialists would use their efforts for
an eight-hours day, for the establishment of a minimum
living wage, for the suppression of sweating and sub
contracting, and for universal suffrage. In other words,
the socialist woidd not stand outside politics, but would
be in the midst of them, distinguishable from a Radical
only by the end he kept in view, and not at all by his
conduct at any given time. Fifteen years later it was to
be difficidt for many Liberals to say whether they were
socialists or not.
An immediate sequel to this new attitude on the part
of the socialists was the formation of the Independent
Labour Party. An earlier attempt to form such a party
in 1888 had faded. In 1893 a conference was held in
Bradford, with better results, and the LL.P. was con
stituted, " with the object of securing the coUective
ownership of aU the means of production, distribution
and exchange, by means of direct Labour representation in
Parliament and on local authorities." It was the natural
outcome of the arrival in Parliament of the new spirit
infused into trade unions during the eighties — of Mr Keir
Hardie's tweed cap and brass band. He was elected the
first President of the party.
When the Home Rule BUl at last went to the House of

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 337
Lords, at the beginning of September, its course was
speedUy run. There had already been one smaU brash
between the two Houses. The London County CouncU,
in its BUl for constructing a proper approach to the south
side of the Tower Bridge, attempted once more to establish
the " betterment " principle. It had asked for the sup
port of other corporations, and so much ground had been
won for the idea since its inception that its advocates
in the House were not confined to one side. The clause,
after passing the Commons, was Cut out of the BUl by the
Lords. But on the return of the BUl, the Commons insisted
by a majority of 221 to 88 on the retention of the clause,
many Unionists voting for it, although the stronghold of
Unionism — ^Birmingham — ^had not been persuaded to
support the principle. The Lords, however, were in
no mood for agreement, and again struck out the clause.
For the Irish BiU they mustered in astonishing force. Lord
Spencer moved the second reading on 5th September ;
the Duke of Devonshire moved the rejection of the Bill ;
and on 8th September the House divided. There were
41 votes for the Bill, and 419 against it. The division has
certainly one feature of interest. Some measure of the
almost passionate feeling against Home Rule is given by
the great size of the vote. That In September, sacred
month of sport, the House of Lords should have felt it
necessary not only to reject the Bill — fifty men could have
done that — ^but to overwhelm it, to obliterate it, to stamp
it out of existence, shows what kind of opposition had been
aroused. Mr Gladstone had let it be known, before the Bill was
introduced, that he did not intend to make its inevitable
rejection by the House of Lords a ground for immediate
dissolution. The Commons had turned to other work.
They took up, not the two large and controversial measures
which had been formally introduced early in the session,
but two of a sound popular appeal. One was the Parish

338 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
CouncUs BIU, extending the system of local govemment
to smaller areas than the counties, and the other, which
chiefly occupied the remainder of the year in Parliament,
was an Employers' Liability BUl, one more amendment of
the existing Acts. It brought domestic servants under
the Act ; and it also cleared away the last confusions
about " common employment," making the employer
liable for accidents due to the negligence of a fellow-
workman. A more doubtful provision was that allowing
the removal to the High Court of a claim for more than
£100 ; the value of compensation to a worlonan's famUy
would be seriously diminished by months of delay. The
real point of struggle, however, was in the repeal of the
power of " contracting out " of liability. The chief justi
fication for " contracting out " had been the existence in
very many cases of accident insurance societies, main
tained by large firms for the benefit of their workmen ; it
was reasonably argued that, if employers were to be liable,
without distinction, to actions for compensation, none of
them would add to their burden the maintenance of such
societies. In October the distress and disturbance of the coal
strike grew so serious that the mayors of the Midland
towns met to try to arrange a settlement. As this was
just the period at which some of the masters were giving
way, the opportunity was hardly favourable, and the
attempt faded. For another month the dispute remained
as it was. Then the Gk»vemment was moved to intervene,
and was able to arrange a conference of fourteen coal-
owners and fourteen representatives of the miners, to meet
at the Foreign Office under the chairmanship of Lord
Rosebery. Not only did the conference succeed in coming
to terms, but it laid the foimdation of a system which was
to prove as lasting an instrument of negotiation between
masters and men as the Brooklands agreement in the
cotton trade. Their immediate point the men won ;

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 339
they were to retum to work at their old wages, not subject
to the deduction the masters originaUy claimed, until 1st
February 1894 ; and meanwhUe a ConcUiation Board of
fourteen from each side, under an impartial chairman,
was to consider the position and make an award.
For the moment, however, the advanced labour men
were concerning themselves with " the right to work."
The directions to Poor Law authorities under the Act of
1818 were recalled, and in December Mr Keir Hardie
moved a resolution in the House expressing the new idea.
But he found only thirty-three to support him, and the
general opinion was that the efforts of Poor Law authorities
to deal with unemployment by providing work were in
evitably wasteful. A Mansion House Conference reported
at the end of the year against the notion of relief works,
saying that the employment which could be provided in
that way was only intermittent, and the knowledge that
it was being provided attracted men out of work in other
places, so producing a worse congestion of labour. A
deputation to Mr Gladstone on the subject took place on
28th December, and received a reply on lines similar to
those of the report.
Far more directly profitable was a widely spread dis
cussion which arose out of the debates on the Employers'
LiabUity Bill. The question of what could fairly be called
ground for compensation brought up the case of trade
injuries, which were not, strictly speaking, accidents.
The most flagrant instance was that of lead poisoning,
caused by glazing processes in the manufacture of china
and earthenware, which had in the previous year been
declared by the Home Secretary a dangerous trade, under
the terms of the Act of 1891. Mr John Bums and other
Labour members had spoken very strongly in the course of
the debates, and a committee had been appointed by the
Home Office. It reported that it was unable to recommend
the prohibition by law of the use of white lead in such pro-

840 MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT [1893
cesses ; but it endorsed to the full the terrible charges which
had been made. Certain administrative rules were pro
posed, and it was hoped that by insistence on better ventUa
tion, to carry off the powdered lead in the air, and better
provisions for cleanliness on the part of the workers en
gaged, the use of white lead might be rendered almost, if
not quite, innocuous.
In truth the mind of the ordinary public was not con
cerned with the doings of this long-lingering session. Its
real interest in December was the Ardlamont murder trial.
A baffiing case had arisen out of the death at the end of
August of a young man of considerable possessions in
Scotland. He had been found one day shot on his estate
at Ardlamont, and his tutor, a man named Monson, was
arrested. The trial took place in Scotland, and ended in
the Scottish verdict of " not proven." It expressed prob
ably the feelings of most of those who had followed the
case ; and they were by far the greater part of the popula
tion. Those who hardly found the murder a subject to their
taste had enough to discuss in a new play, The Second Mrs
Tanqueray, which made its appearance in the autumn of
this year. It seemed at the time to be a portentous change
in native drama, which had hitherto shown no inclination
towards a theatrical presentation of social or moral
problems. Such indigenous character as it had shown
hitherto was rather in the vein of caricature, and, at the
best, of comedy. The burlesques of notable operas,
which succeeded one another steadUy at the famous
Gaiety Theatre, were an imported idea ; but the GUbert
and Sullivan " comic operas " were an entirely native
product, and in the early nineties a new form of enter
tainment, more loosely constructed, and amounting
sometimes to little more than a series of " star "
turns connected by a vague thread of story, had
grown up out of the " comic operas." It was so sue-

1893] MR GLADSTONE'S LAST FIGHT 341
cessful that people with a serious interest in the theatre
began to think that the taste for the modem music halls
was going to be the death of the drama in England.
This feeling had coincided curiously with a largely
increased interest, among people of social standing, in
the theatre as such, and in artists of the theatre. It
had not been an interest in drama ; indeed The Times, in
commenting on it, remarked complacently that no menace
to British standards of morals and conventions was to
be apprehended from the new fashion of going to see
the performances of French plays by French theatrical
companies in London. But comedy had undergone a
revival in the works of WUde and Barrie ; and the Inde
pendent Theatre had gathered a public for the drama of
social ideas. The theatres were ready for a bid in this
direction, and The Second Mrs Tanqueray was produced.
It gave us an actress of a wholly new type in Mrs Patrick
Campbell ; and it also gave London engrossing matter of
small talk for the winter.

CHAPTER XVI
1894 : LE BOURGEOIS :6pat6
THE year that followed was not devoid of important
political events. It witnessed the withdrawal of
Mr Gladstone from Parliament, the production of
the Death Duties Budget, the enunciation of the " two-
Power standard " as a naval Ideal, and other incidents less
lastmg in their effect. But the year bears quite as deeply
marks of the shocks experienced in its course by the re
spectable strata of England, from the height of the upper
ranks of the services, and the professions, down to the
levels of retaU trade. It was a year in which the face of
a startled bourgeoisie looks out from every month. None
of the shocks came from quite unexpected directions ; but
they were not the less startling.
Early in the year the rather vague horror of anarchism
was focussed by an extraordinary explosion in Greenwich
Park ; during a fog on 15th February a PYenchman,
Bourdin, was blown to pieces by a bomb which he was
carrying. The incident followed closely on the execution
in Paris of a man named VaUlant, who had thrown a bomb
into the Chamber of Deputies. It foUowed also a long
period of more or less reasonable uneasiness in England
about the currents and cross-currents of socialism. The
case of the Walsall anarchists ^ had given unnecessary
prominence to a small group which had formed itself inside
the Labour movement. Yet that it was not whoUy a
negligible group is clear from the repudiation of anarchism
in the new socialist manifesto of May day 1893. There
• See p. 317. 342

1894] LE BOURGEOIS EPATE 343
had been a new tone in the meetings of men on Tower HUI ;
the unemployed were still numerous, still united in a kind
of loose organisation by daUy meetings ; and they varied
the monotony of meetings by parading the West End
squares. But their actions would have had less import
ance if they had not succeeded in catching public attention
by a disgusting phrase ; their favourite threat was to
send police and officials " to heaven by chemical parcel
post." 1 About this time, too, a club of foreign anarchists
in Soho became a familiar name to the public — the
Autonomic Club. Upon these definite things respectable
people vented a great deal of respectable fury. The abuse
by anarchists of the asylum offered by this country to
foreign refugees, the inertness of the police in the matter
of the Autonomic Club (which can hardly, once it was so
weU known, have been the source of any anxiety to the
police), the threats uttered at Tower HUI meetings, had
led to many murmurings before the Greenwich explosion
acted as detonator to all the stored-up anger. Writers
of letters to the newspapers had their counterparts among
humbler people who thought dynamite, like knives in a
quarrel, a " dirty foreign trick," and the funeral procession
which followed Bourdin was attacked by a mob near
Fitzroy Square. Many foreigners had gathered there to
see it pass, and though the police diverted the procession in
order to avoid an outbreak, the anti-anarchist forces
deployed on the new route in time to make a very con
siderable riot. Throughout the year the smallest excuse
served for a little homdy to Labour men or to trade
unions on their neighbourhood to these deplorable
anarchists. The solid kind of Briton, who presented a less disturbed
front to these anxieties, suffered from qualms of a more
searching nature. The national^ solidity itself was, he
' The phrase was in existence some years earUer, but it now
became common.

344 LE BOURGEOIS ^PAT^ [1894
lamented, being sapped. The Pre-Raphaelite painters,
whose work he had regarded as maundering and unhealthy,
he now saw acclaimed. The death of Ford Madox Brown
in 1893 had called forth the warmest appreciations of his
work and his influence ; now in the very beginning of
1894 the solid Briton read that Burne-Jones had been
made a baronet, and rubbed his eyes still more in amaze
ment. He began to feel himself a stranger in his own
art-dealers' rooms. If he went to the theatre he saw
a procession of " women with a past " following The Second
Mrs Tanqueray across his stage. When he read novels he
found books like Keynotes, The Yellow Aster, Dodo and
Esther Waters, upsetting equally his views of what women
should be thinking about and his idea of what novelists
should write about. The Yellow Book presented the work
of Aubrey Beardsley to his astonished eyes. On country
roads he met women not only riding bicycles, which he
had not as yet admitted to be a proper occupation for them,
but actually riding them without the hampering accom
paniments of either a skirt or a chaperon. The " new
woman " with her symbolical latch-key was a purely
middle-class product ; and she shook that class profoundly.
She was so mixed in her qualities. It was all very well to
have a wholesome dislike of her novels and dismiss them
as neurotic ; but somehow she had a way of presenting
herself also in athletic shapes on the tennis-lawn or the
golf-links (the latter were just now sadly depleting the
former, and the " tennis girl " was dropping out of fashion)
which defied the Briton to be otherwise than proud of her.
Then just when he was feeling proud, the same girls would
light cigarettes, and talk slang, or they would thunder
round baUrooms in the pas de quatre. If he consoled
himself with the thought that after all not every young
man was too decadent, or every young woman too
emancipated, to think of one another, he was reminded
by the charming Dolly Dialoguies that, even when they

1894] LE BOURGEOIS l^PATE 345
did think about one another, they did it in strange
new ways which no old-fashioned Briton could wholly
approve. Such cross-currents made the national temper a complex
thing for any Govemment to ride ; and now the Liberal
Government had to ride it without Mr Gladstone's control.
His resignation of the Premiership was inevitable, yet
it could not have been more inopportune for his party.
Even before the labour of the second Home Rule BiU he
had been forced to recognise a faUure in himself, not of
intellectual but of physical powers — and among those only
of his hearing and his eyesight — ^which he could not but
admit to be the limit of his political career. ^ He had been
able to give the Bill not only his constant guidance in the
House, but that exacting measure of guidance which his
high standard of duty demanded ; he had been able to
take his very large share in the work of a long session.
When therefore, with the New Year, rumours arose of his
intention to retire they carried no conviction. Mr Glad
stone was at Biarritz in January, and he returned to the
somewhat dismal winding-up of the session. In his own
mind his course of action had been settled. The immedi
ately determining cause, sufficing to turn the scale in the
final moment of decision, was disagreement with his
coUeagues in the matter of the Naval Estimates ; he could
not accept a policy of dominant naval power in Europe
without reference to any particular question of the day ^ ;
and such a policy had in effect been the outcome of the
naval defence agitations of the past few years. The
question of the efficiency of the navy had been raised in a
vague way, and efficiency cannot be determined without
a standard. No current events provided one. The only
thing that could provide it was an assertion of dominance
in Europe ; and to that assertion Mr Gladstone declined
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, iu. 496.
" Ihid. iii. 508.

346 LE BOURGEOIS EPATE [1894
to subscribe.^ This was enough to give him the parting
of the ways which otherwise, at a juncture of no favourable
presage for his colleagues, he would have been the last
man to see.
The whole overgrown session left the Liberals with but
one harvested sheaf — ^the Parish CouncUs BUl — and that
not perfect in their eyes ; the House of Lords had intro
duced alterations in it. But rather than lose this measure
also the Govemment accepted the alterations. They did
not affect the main structure of the BUl. The Urban
District CouncUs which it set up were the old urban
sanitary authorities renamed and made elective ; they
controlled matters of drainage, roads, infectious diseases
and lighting ; they had power to promote private BUls,
though the Local Government Board watched this power
jealously, and only permitted its exercise in cases in
which a Provisional Order could not be made ; and they
had the County CouncU's power of delegating work to
committees. The Rural District CouncUs were newer
authorities. The sharpest point of controversy in the
BUl was that providing that the Rural District councUlor
should represent his parish on the Board of Guardians.
As the rural district and the union were most frequently
identical in boundary this meant a popularly elected
Board of Guardians, and the electoral qualification was
lower than any ever yet known, no property stipulations
being attached to it. Hence the strength of that attack
upon the BUl which consisted in pointing out that the
electors of the new Guardians were very largely pro
spective, or at least possible, candidates for relief. Parish
CouncUs, which were the final subdivision of the new Local
Government, were given certain powers as to sanitation
and highways, without becoming statutory authorities
for these duties ; and they were also given powers, which
' He went so far as to speak in private of the Naval Estimates as
" mad and drunk.''

1894] LE BOURGEOIS EPATE 847
were to become more important later on, in regard to the
provision of allotments.
No other BUl of importance had survived. The Home
Rule BUl had been rejected by the House of Lords, the
Employers' LiabUity BIU so fundamentaUy changed that
the Govemment abandoned it. The Lords had insisted
on the retention of the clause permitting " contracting
out." But although meetings here and there might
show signs of indignation, the feelings of the country
were not strongly roused. Could Mr Gladstone have
roused them ? He felt that the time had come at any
rate for an attempt — that the virtual destruction of the
work of an exhausting session could be made " the right
moment for a searching appeal to public opinion." ^
From Biarritz he suggested dissolution to his colleagues,
but received a " hopelessly adverse reply." It must have
been a somewhat dreary state of mind which dictated the
reply ; and it gave, no doubt, a fresh impulse to Mr Glad
stone's inclinations towards retirement. Even amid all
the rumour and expectation of his retirement no one
recognised his farewell to Parliament. On 1st March he
spoke on the acceptance of the Lords' amendments to the
Parish Councils BUl, and when, "upright as ever, and
walking fast, with his despatch-box dangling from his
right hand," ^ he had passed behind the Speaker's chair,
members dispersed talking casually about the speech.
Only one or two men, as they left the precincts of
the House, were struck by the sudden thought that
they would probably never hear Mr Gladstone in Par
liament again. In two days members were talking about
that speech in new tones ; and those whose eyes had not
happened to follow Mr Gladstone on that day knew that
they had missed the historic sight of his final withdrawal
from the House he had entered sixty-one years before.
'Morley's Life of Gladstone, ui. 505.
» Mr G. W. E. RusseU's One Look Back.

348 LE BOURGEOIS EPATJBl [1894
On 3rd March he handed his resignation to the Queen.
Generations to whom his name conveys less of love, as
well as less of hatred, than it conveyed to his own time,
read with astonishment the account of that final interview.
It is from Mr Gladstone himself that we have it, in phrases
of the greatest dignity, untouched by injured feelings.^
At the first moment, indeed, the Queen showed apparent
emotion, but she promptly recovered herself, so completely
that she marked the close of over fifty years of public
service by thanking her aged minister for — " a service of
no great merit, in the matter of the Duke of Coburg " !
Otherwise there was " not one syllable on the past." He
had slipped quietly out of the House of Commons ; Queen
Victoria allowed him to slip quietly out of Windsor Castle.
He himself was thinking, finely enough, less of the past
than of the future. He knew how much might depend on
the appointment of his successor ; already the rumours
concerning him had given rise to some strong expressions
among Liberals as to the need, at such a moment of con
flict between the two Houses, of keeping the Premiership
In the House of Commons. Mr Gladstone, curious as it
may seem In view of his recent wish to dissolve on that
conflict, did not agree with this feeling. He intended, if
he were consulted, to advise the Queen to send for Lord
Spencer ; and although there is no established custom of
the Crovm asking advice in such matters, Mr Gladstone
might be pardoned for feeling that his unparalleled length
of service and his unique position with his party would
have rendered his advice in this case most valuable. It
was, indeed, unbelievable to the Liberal party that Mr
Gladstone was not consulted by the Queen. He had
opportunity to intimate to Sir Henry Ponsonby, the
Queen's private secretary, that he had " something serious
to say," if the Queen commanded him. She preferred to
take her own course, and on 6th March the Liberal party
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, ui. 513, 514s

1894] LE BOURGEOIS EPATE 349
found itself under the leadership not only of a peer, but
of a peer who was comparatively young, and had taken
no great part in recent struggles. The Queen had en
trusted the formation of the new Ministry to Lord
Rosebery. It must be noted that, if Mr Gladstone had
been consulted, the party would none the less have found
itself led by a peer. The truth was that, had a leader been
sought for in the Commons, the choice must necessarily
have faUen on Sir William Harcourt ; and his was a char
acter which many of his colleagues would have found
intolerably overbearing in a Prime Minister. He would
beyond doubt have found great difficulty in forming a
Cabinet. Lord Rosebery, on the other hand, had no
trouble in securing the co-operation of his colleagues;
they were loyal beyond what might have been expected.
But two days after the opening of the new session, which
took place on 1st March, the Government sustained a
defeat on the Address. Mr Labouchere, who led the
Radical feeling against the House of Lords, and scoffed
at the policy of carrying on Govemment and allowing the
Lords to " fUl the cup of iniquity " by rejecting more
measures, untU the country should find the situation too
much to bear, moved an amendment to the Address, pray
ing the Queen to end the power of the House of Lords to
deal drasticaUy with measures passed by the House of
Commons. A combination of Radicals and Irish members
with some other members carried this amendment by 147
votes to 145. It was not of course thought for a moment
that the new Government would resign on such a vote, but
it made at least an uneasy start. Then the Home Rule
odium, which Lord Rosebery had done his best to escape
by all means short of actuaUy repudiating Home Rule
(if indeed they were short of it), was revived by a
discussion of a proposal to send all Scottish BUls to
a Scottish Grand Committee, which was accompanied
immediately by a proposal from a young Welsh member,

350 LE BOURGEOIS EPATE [1894
Mr Lloyd George, for a simUar Grand Committee for
Wales. Fortunately Sir William Harcourt was able this year
to Introduce the Death Duties Budget which had been
postponed the year before ; and this measure was Radical
enough, in its imposts on large accumulations of property,
and accompanying extension of abatements of Income
Tax on the lower scales of incomes, to pull the party to
gether. The new duties were a tax on all property, real
or personal, settled or not settled, passing on the death
of any person dying after 1st August 1894 ; the tax
varied from £1 per cent, on estates over £100 but under
£500, up to £15 per cent, on estates over a mUlion sterling.
NaturaUy the proposal roused the sharpest opposition ;
the extreme criticism was that this doctrine amounted
to an assertion that the State had a right to what
property a man left behind him, and that the succes
sion to it of his heirs would be for the future only a matter
of indulgence. However, Sir William Harcourt managed
his BUl with patience and so much command of the House
that the BUl made admirable progress without any use
of severe forms of procedure, and was despatched by the
House of Commons in July. It included an enhanced
Beer Tax. There had been a deficit of two and a quarter
millions to meet (not a single European country, as it
happened, escaped a deficit this year) ^ ; and although
the new death duties would in time be very profitable
they were for the present somewhat counterbalanced by
the extension of Income Tax abatements ; and the Naval
Estimates were heavy. There was no great sympathy
with the brewers' outcry against the increased taxation of
beer ; but the Local Veto BUl was in existence, and the
extra sixpence a barrel was therefore regarded by its
victims less as a piece of taxation than as an act of
political warfare. '¦ See the Punch cartoon, 27th January 1894.

1894] LE BOURGEOIS EPATE 351
The Local Veto BUl was dropped later in the session.
It had had the disastrous effect of irritating moderate
people all over the country, and this, far more than the
active opposition of the licensed victualling trade, was the
cause of the Bill's extreme unpopularity. There was a
growing belief that the drinking habits of the country
were undergoing a profound modification from changes in
public opinion, which would be more effective and more
lasting than any reforms by legislation could be. Lord
Randolph ChurchUl, who had lately been devoting himself
to the licensing question, had found it thorny and un
fruitful. The Naval Estimates for which the Budget had to pro
vide showed the serious advance of three millions. That
tendency to pursue a policy of dominance in European
naval affairs with which Mr Gladstone had tried to con
tend, was given alike an impulse and a standard of effort
by the visit in this year of the Russian fleet to Toulon, in
demonstration of the treaty which had been negotiated
between France and Russia. The meeting of the two allied
fleets set comparisons going ; and the general overhauling
of our state of defence, which had occupied the minds of
anxious members of the public for months past, was
foUowed by discussions of whether Great Britain had or had
not a navy superior to the aUied fleets. From this year,
therefore, we may date the appearance of the " two-Power
standard " as a controlling consideration in naval policy.
MeanwhUe in another kind of rivalry some attempt was
being made to reform our system of secondary educa
tion ; the example of Germany and her growing mastery
in trading methods were perpetually being dinned into
the ears of the Government. A Royal Commission on
Secondary Education was appointed In March, notable, if
for nothing else, for the fact that it included three women
commissioners — ^Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mrs Henry
Sidgwick and Mrs Sophie Bryant. There was, however.

352 LE BOURGEOIS EPATE [1894
a strong feeling that if Gtermany afforded England a
warning of one kind, France offered a contrary one in
her Immense production of men educated to the level of
clerkdom and petty officialism. The National Union of
Teachers was asking itself whether any real elementary
education, beyond the acquisition of a cheap veneer, was
in existence. On the other hand, a man of such sober
stamp as the Duke of Devonshire, not at all likely to be
misled by superficial appearances, was telling a Lanca
shire audience in November that great changes in outlook
had already been wrought, and that working people had
now not only the education that enabled them to earn
money, but the far more valuable education that taught
them how to expend it. German influence was not
without its effect in higher spheres of education : in
this year Oxford at last established a " research degree,"
to be attained by a post-graduate course of study open to
those who were not members of the university. In May
Professor Henry Morley died. He had taken no small
share in the spreading of inexpensive culture, as distinct
from mere education, by editing the most successful series
current at the time of cheap reprints of the best English
literature and translations of foreign classics.
In AprU the long and difficult work of the Royal Com
mission on Labour Disputes came to an end with the
publication of its report. It was not a very vigorous
document. Even the much-discussed solution of diffi
culties by the establishment of industrial tribunals re
ceived but tentative support. The report pointed out
that the strength of trade unions varied so much that no
general system of tribunals could be proposed. More
over such bodies could only deal, in the opinion of the
commission, with Interpretation of existing conditions ;
voluntary arbitration boards alone could be useful where
a change of conditions was in question. The more direct
recommendations were, firstly, that the Board of Trade

1894] LE BOURGEOIS l^PATl^ 353
should be given more distinct powers for appointing
arbitrators : "if the same persons were frequently ap
pointed they would become arbitration experts, and might
then have some kind of permanent appointment " ; and,
secondly, that the Factory Acts should be more stringently
applied, with a view to driving out badly managed in
dustries dependent on cheap alien labour, which tended
to lower wages. The commission also suggested that a
better definition of " picketing " by trade unions was
necessary. A supplement to the report appeared later
in the form of some suggestions made by the Duke of
Devonshire and other members of the commission, to the
effect that associations both of employers and employed
should be given existence as statutory corporations, so
that either could be sued for breach of contract — ^a liability
which, whUe it would not prevent strikes, might check
hastiness in entering upon them. The question immedi
ately raised by this notion was whether the power to
enforce subscriptions from members, which a corporation
possesses, would be held by the trade unions to counter-
vaU the liabUity to be sued as unions for the torts of
members. A further supplement, being a separate report
on the conditions of agricultural labour, was only inter
esting in that it spoke of those conditions as much
improved, and the buying power of the rural labourer as
much advanced. The whole report was hardly one on
which action could be taken. No one was in a mood
for small tinkerings of the problem. On the one hand
the alarm about anarchism — a debate in January on the
report of the committee of inquiry into the Featherstone
riots kept alive the inclination to take panic-stricken views
of labour unrest — ^was hardening feeling against trade
unions, the congresses of which had for some years grown
more and more socialistic in tone. On the other side the
return from the old attitude of detachment from purely
political controversy, the revulsion towards the use of

354 LE BOURGEOIS EPATE [1894
parliamentary power, had grown so strong that socialist
leaders were announcing their intention to abandon strikes
in favour of an organised effort by political action to obtain
control of the means of production.^ The same spirit was
working in the unions ; the presidential address at the
Trade Union Congress in September turned on the idea
that " Legislate " was to become more and more the
watchword of the movement. Caught somewhat in a
tender spot by this new enthusiasm. Conservatives began
to remember uncomfortably that between the two political
parties the difference in regard to State interference was
one only of degree, not of principle ; and whUe this might
have mattered little so long as the interference was not at
the dictation of Labour, but was pure benevolence, Tories
felt it time to draw back when the new force proposed
to take a hand in the interference. Consequently even
Mr Chamberlain's programme, little as it really carried of
the true labour sentiment, was more brusquely treated
by his allies when he revived it this year than it had
been on its appearance in 1893.^ The freedom of the
year from serious strike troubles faded to reassure the
anxious bourgeois. The only strike of any note was one
of cabmen in London in the summer. It turned partly
on the now common objection of imionists to working
with non-unionists, but j^chiefly on a question of the
charges made by the cab-owners for the hire of cabs. The
strike lasted neariy a month, much to the inconvenience
of London at the height of its season ; and it ended in
the diminution of the masters' charges, balanced by the
men's abandonment of their objection to non-unionists
in the yards. A small incidental complaint of the men is
noteworthy as a sign of changing customs ; there were now,
they said, so many large Stores that ladies, when they went
» See, e.g., a letter by Mr Hyndman in The Times, i6th May
1894. » The Times, 17th October 1894.

1894] LE BOURGEOIS EPATE 355
shopping, had less need of cabs than they had in the old
days, when they were obliged to journey from shop to
shop. The Coal ConcUiation Board made its award, and
secured peace in that industry for a time by renewing the
two last 5 per cent, advances in wages until 1st January
1896 ; the men on their side showing less tendency to
take the uncompromising position that wages should not
depend upon, but govern, market prices.
The great event of the early summer, however, con
cerned none of these things, but was the Derby Day, when
Lord Rosebery won with Ladas. He was never secure
after that in his leadership of the Liberal party. His
achievement was one more of the shocks of the year to
an ultra-respectable public. Not a very great number,
perhaps, went with the National Anti-Gambling League
and its spokesman, Mr Hawke, in demanding that Lord
Rosebery should choose between the Premiership and the
Turf. But there were certainly many who felt that Turf
interests, if not actively harmful, were not a dignified trait
in the successor of Mr Gladstone ; many again who felt
that a party recently vocal against the gilded irresponsi-
bUities of the peers was oddly led to triumph at Epsom.
Add these mixed feelings to the prejudices and disaffection
under which Lord Rosebery entered on his Premiership,
and the result was enough disagreement in the party to
render it somewhat ineffective. The famous Budget
passed the House of Lords without a division ; it enjoyed
the traditional impunity of a Finance BUl in that House.
But the Evicted Tenants BUl, founded on the work of the
commission whose appointment had been one of the first
acts of the new Government in 1893, was thrown out ;
and went to help in the " fiUing of the cup." In effect the
Bill would have authorised an evicted tenant in Ireland to
regain his farm over the landlord's head by decree of the
Estates Commissioners, if the landlord had acted " un
reasonably " in the eviction. For a time Liberal concern

356 LE BOURGEOIS EPATE [1894
for Ireland occupied itself with the Royal Commission on
Financial Relations between Ireland and Great Britain,
which was designed to remove from the path of the next
Home Rule BiU a difficulty which had greatly impeded
the two Bdls of Mr Gladstone. A Registration Acceleration
Bill (which incidentally gave one more chance for the
Woman Suffragists to advance their claims) was dropped.
In spite of their apparent truculence, the House of Lords
chose this year to pass the principle of " betterment "
against which they had stood firm untU now. The com
mittee was composed of such peers as Lord Halsbury, Lord
Salisbury, Lord Egerton of Tatton, Lord Belper and Lord
Onslow ; it is evident that the principle must have made
considerable headway with the general public. This
removed the final difficulty in the completion of the Tower
Bridge, by making possible an adequate approach from
the south side; the bridge itself was finished and was
formally opened in June.
From time to time during 1894 South African affairs
came disturbingly into view. The British South Africa
Company had been engaged in war with the Matabele, and
the dual position of Mr CecU Rhodes, who was now Prime
Minister of Cape Colony as well as managing director of
the Chartered Company, was apt to lead to situations in
which he appeared to be using the authority of the one
office to advance the interests of the other. He had cast a
glamour over the British public ; his vigorous imagination
had made so vivid the idea of a British South Africa,
" which must ultimately mean the whole region south of
the Zambesi," ^ that it appeared as almost an established
national policy. Consequently when in the summer the
question of the status of British subjects in the
Transvaal was raised again, the Boers found themselves
addressed less as the independent nation which^they were
in their own eyes than as a population which was rather
1 The Times, 20th June 1894.

1894] LE BOURGEOIS ^PATE 357
obstinately delaying a general federation of South Africa.
A " Transvaal National Union " was set on foot, to demand
the franchise for all foreigners resident in the Transvaal ;
and its proceedings were strong enough to bring upon it
a temperate reminder from England that the grant of the
franchise must, by all international custom, deprive its
members of their previous nationality, a dilemma little
to their taste, since serious trouble had but just been
avoided this year by the abandonment of the Boer claim
to the right of " commandeering " alien residents. If
they ceased to be aliens, there would be no grounds for
refusing military service. The situation in the Transvaal
in general had been so much upset by the numbers of
immigrants in connection with the mines, and by the vast
wealth which those mines enabled a section of the foreign
population to wield, that President Kruger was requesting,
as yet without any aggressive tone, a revision of the con
stitution established by the Convention of London.
In the autumn the licensing sessions of the London
County Council produced more shocks for the re
spectable. The growth of the taste for music halls has
already been noted more than once. The placing of the
licensing authority for such halls in the hands of the
councU brought a new spirit of criticism to bear upon
them. The kind of human traffic which could be left
unanalysed — or at any rate was left unanalysed — among
the various elements that made up the attractions of the
old " gardens " of VauxhaU and Ranelagh and Cremorne
became somewhat too obvious in the more confined spaces
of a music hall. Moreover certain specific performances,
especiaUy in this year the presentations of "Living
Pictures " on the stage, once they had definitely shocked
some people, could hardly be passed over in sUence at
licensing sessions. But prudery is easily pushed into an
ugly and unpopular position, and, on the whole, public
opinion sided with the music halls ; the latter, too wise to

358 LE BOURGEOIS EPATE [1894
be defiant, moderated their customs enough to tide over
the attack of the champions of morality.
Another kind of alarm worried the middle class, in
respect to its pockets. In January the Manchester Ship
Canal was opened, but without any enthusiasm from
those who had subscribed the miUions sunk in its con
struction. Early hopes had been dashed by the great
discrepancy between the estimated and the actual cost
of the work ; and the enterprise was now felt to be
launched rather in faith than in hope. For the general
investing public, the South African booms, first in gold
mines, and secondly in chartered company projects, had
produced a very speculative market in which the com
pany promoter had gone to work. The consequence was
that, in a time not otherwise bad for trade, mUlions were
being lost every year ; the report of the Inspector-
General in Liquidation published this year showed that
in 1892 the public had lost no less than twenty-five
mUlions by investments in more or less fraudulent com
panies. The Board of Trade once more set up an inquiry
into company law.
Another activity of that Board marks the practical
development at last of an enterprise which we found
making several false starts in the early eighties. The
time had arrived for considering seriously the regula
tions which Government should apply to the establish
ment of electric traction on tramways ; and the Board of
Trade caUed various experts in consultation. Ten years
earlier the propulsion of trams by transmission of current
from overhead wires to motors on the car had been
successfidly achieved in Kansas City, U.S.A. Here was
the idea which obviated all the old difficulties, alike of
carrying stored power in cells and laying down " live "
raUs. But no example of its use occurred in England
untU November 1891, when the Roundhay Electric
Tramway at Leeds, five and a half mUes in length, was

1894] LE BOURGEOIS ^PATE 359
opened. It was owned by the corporation, but leased
to a company. Its success was now established, and
immense developments of the principle were so certain
that the Govemment regulations of this year set free
an abundant stream of enterprise. Municipalities which
already owned tramways set to work to convert them to
the new system ; and those which did not found a fresh
incentive to purchase the undertakings of private com
panies, since electricity now promised efficient, clean,
quiet and cheap traction. The London County Councd
at once advanced its purchase schemes energetically, and
they became prominent in municipal history, because the
councU based its terms of purchase on a calculation of
what it would have had to spend to construct the tramway,
a basis which was bitterly attacked as unfair to the com
panies. At the very last moment, so to speak, of tramway
development, one more invention of a different kind of
propulsion made its appearance. It is of less interest
as a belated tramway invention than as a sign of the
influence of the internal combustion motor. It was a
gas-driven tramcar, using engines of the Otto type,
exploding gas in the piston-cylinders by means of an
electric spark.
England was stiU watching helplessly the advance of
motor-car invention abroad. From her own roads such
cars were banned. The chief centre of activity was
France, where several firms were now showing what
astonishing power and force internal combustion engines
could produce. In this year a race of motor cars from
Paris to Rouen was organised, and the results gave a
great impetus to the industry.
In December, Robert Louis Stevenson died at the
height of a fame in England which, however much it may
have been intensified by the knowledge of his gaUant,
even gay, struggle against fatal Ulness, was genuine and
not sentimental. He brought the frank adventure-book

360 LE BOURGEOIS ifiPATfi [1894
back to the shelf from which, since the death of Mayne
Reid, it had been pushed down by the new analytical
school and reduced to the level of " books for boys," a
shelf which in January of this year suffered a loss in the
death of R. M. Ballantyne. Stevenson had the gift of
impressing romance upon the streets and the daily life of
a great modem city ; and had really prepared the ground
upon which Sherlock Holmes was at this time flourishing.
It was, however, rather to his known fight with mortal
disease than to intrinsic merit that his essays owed their
vogue ; they had the appeal of one who looks on at life.
At the same time, their self-conscious grace of style com
mended them to a middle class stUl a little conceited
about its newly acquired artistic appreciation. The year
witnessed also the death of the greatest, though the
obscurest, of the prophets of the new appreciation.
Walter Pater died on 30th July. He had exercised a
very great influence on many generations of Oxford
youth, and there could be no clearer symptom of the
general uneasiness of the bourgeois at the moment than
the guarded tone of The Times in its obituary notice of
him. " That his influence was always healthful," The
Times remarked,^ " we do not pretend to say." A school
of thought which had but recently enunciated the pro
position that a colour-sense was more important to the
development of the individual than a sense of right and
wrong, and was continually enunciating propositions of
a simUar kind, had appeared a positive devastation to the
respectable mind of the country. Pater's trae relation
to this school was as much misapprehended as Pusey's
relation had been to what the same kind of persons had
thought an earlier devastation emanating from Oxford.
Just as Pusey, remote, ascetic, severe, lived in pious
practices far from the extravagances of the Ritualist
movement, so Pater, equally remote, equally pious and
131st July 1894.

1894] LE BOURGEOIS ^PATE 361
equally stern in personal habit, looked as from a distant
height upon the curious twists given to his devoutly
passionate theory of an existence infinitely sensitive and
responsive. Yet, inasmuch as he was associated in the
popular mind with the extremes that were rampant at
the moment, it was a happy thing for him that he did not
live to see the year which was to follow.

CHAPTER XVII
1895: a RETURN to SAFE GROUND
FROM the various undercurrents which were
affecting the mind of the solid classes of the
country, as well as from its own shortcomings, the
Liberal Government now suffered. It had never been
firmly seated. It possessed a Gladstonian, and not a
generally Liberal, majority. It was genuinely in touch
with the Home Rule movement, but very imperfectly
in touch with advanced reforming feeling in Great Britain.
It did real disservice by producing a throw-back in the
growing readiness of the labour organisations to believe
in parliamentary action. Yet at the same time it had
a vague mUitancy which seemed to attach it to the
spirit of social change and upheaval, regarded by solid
minds with anxiety, and even with terror. It produced
sweeping measures ; its relations with the House of
Lords had aspects which lent themselves to charges of
promoting class hatred. Little though the Govemment
had been able to achieve, it stUl aroused nervousness ;
and its practical powerlessness under the House of Lords
was, so far from reassuring the nervous, a source of
uneasiness. The launching of projects which were
destined to no fulfilment seemed to threaten a dangerous
exasperation of Radicals and Socialists. The Socialists
and Radicals, on their side, irritated by the existence
in office of a party which, concentrating its idealism in
Mr Gladstone, had perforce shared his limitations, spoke
louder and louder in the effort to gain a hearing for
the new demands, an understanding of the new forces.
362

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 363
Mr Gladstone had never distinguished them from the
Liberalism which he was accustomed to find at his
command. One man who could recognise these things was Lord
Randolph ChurchUl. If his career had developed to the
full, the democratic feeling which reached its triumph in
1906 might have been earlier in the field. The damage done
to his career by the presence of new men on his side after
the Home Rule split was not solely, or even principally,
due to the fact that one of them was Mr Goschen. It
was much more due to the fact that one of them was
Mr Chamberlain. He brought into the alliance of Con
servatives and Unionists a kind of democratic feeling
which " blanketed " the much more real feeling of Lord
Randolph ChurchiU. Mr Chamberlain's Radicalism was
of that middle-class kind which, disturbing enough in
1880 to a party of landlords, had become by 1888 almost
Conservative in its distinction from the newly grown
popular demands. It was taken, so to speak, as a homoeo
pathic dose against Lord Randolph ChurchiU. He, more
true to his class than his fellows were, maintained the old
spirit of dislike of the manufacturers. The changes of ten
years had brought the landlord and the manufacturer
together behind his back. The aristocracy was in trade.
Scions of great houses acting as touts for business firms
provided material for Punch to satirise ; but the more
profound truth was that the vast extension of the limited
liabUity principle in trading, advertised as it had been
by Stock Exchange booms, had brought the aristocracy
as weU as the professional classes, and the upper middle
classes generally, into one large new division of the
population — the " absentee employer " class. Savings
and surplus income went no longer into Govemment
securities ; they went into industrial and trading stocks ;
and thus the labour question was no longer one between
workmen and a distinct class of masters of industry, but

364 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
between trade unions and the whole conglomerate mass
of investors, who were in effect absentee employers.
Hence Mr Chamberlain's idea of what was democratic
had become, since it was a manufacturer's idea, the
kind of sop which the propertied public could endure to
see administered ; whUe Lord Randolph Churchill's sense
of a duty to the workman belonged to the old landlord
spirit. Lord Randolph ChurchUl might have recovered
his ground ; but in the very years in which his rival was
advancing his health gave way. A certain wildness
crept into his too unrelated appearances in public, and
no one would believe "that he had outgrown the slashing
days of the Fourth Party. For some time now he had
ceased to be a force in political life, and on 24th January
in this year he died.
Parliament met dejectedly, with a taste of stale gun
powder on its tongue. During the winter, members of
the Govemment had tried to rouse some feeling in the
country against the House of Lords ; but no explosion
had followed, and the result was that when the Govern
ment was accused of staying in office for the sake of
office, knowing that the country was not with it, its
followers had httle choice but to accept this dispiriting
view. The Govemment's weakness increased the appear
ance of foolhardy violence in proposals that came before
Parliament. A London Valuation and Assessment BUl,
presented by the London County Council, altering the
whole law of assessment in order to provide a common
basis for imperial and local taxation, fell inevitably under
the ban of the Speaker, on the ground that such a drastic
change was not proper matter for a private Bill. It was
a belated offspring of certain ideas embodied in the
Newcastle programme ^ ; and so was the Plural Voting
BUl, introduced by the Government, providing that all
elections should take place on one day, and that no man
1 See p. 300.

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 365
should vote in more than one constituency. A private
member's BUl to put an end to nomination, by the Lord
Lieutenant to the Lord ChanceUor, of persons for appoint
ment as Justices of the Peace was another drastic pro
posal. It arose out of a controversy which had raged
somewhat hotly in 1893, the Tories accusing the Liberal
Lord ChanceUor of flagrant party spirit In such appoint
ments (he was said in Aprd 1893 to have appointed
four hundred and thirty-three borough magistrates, of
whom four hundred and one were Home Rulers), and the
Liberals had replied by complaining that, even so, it was
impossible to give their side a fair proportion on the
Bench. This was, however, hardly a fit matter for a weak
Liberal party to handle by legislation. The Local Veto
BiU StiU hung in the air, as did the Welsh Disestablishment
Bdl. A Factory BUl, the chief object of which was more
stringent inspection of factories employing women, and
stricter regulation of their hours, brought upon itself
criticism from two directions. Women Suffragists at
tacked it as likely to diminish the employment of women ;
and the Irish party attacked it because by including
laundries ^ it necessitated inspection of convent laundries ;
this in the end caused the Bdl to be dropped. This job
lot of BUls was accompanied by a simUar job lot of debates.
Unemployment had recurred with some severity, especiaUy
in the buUding trade and in agriculture. The new spread
of education was causing inquiries about the system of
appointments in the Civil Service, which stiU depended
upon nomination, and there was a debate on this subject.
A motion to keep out foreign prison-made goods, a
tentative scheme by the London County CouncU for
beginning the purchase of the Water Companies' under
takings in London, an attempt made by the Lancashire
members to have continuous High Court sittings in
1 A disastrous fire at a laundry in January had brought out the
fact that laundries were not under the Factory Acts.

366 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
Lancashire — all these took their turn and disappeared.
The last mentioned was a project not without consider
able support at this period. In 1892 there was a weighty
body of opinion in favour of a sweeping decentralisation
of High Court administration ; not only Manchester,
but Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds might,
it was thought, be given permanent sittings of High
Court judges. Another legal proposal in 1895 was for the
appointment of a Public Trustee. There had been some
serious defalcations by solicitors, and five at once were
struck off the rods in March. Both the Liberal Lord
Chancellor of the time and the Conservative Lord Chan
ceUor of the last Government were in favour of the
appointment of a Public Trustee. Two subjects which
had a hold on the general mind took no shape in Par
liament. One was elementary education, which was
becoming a very controversial matter between Voluntary
and Board schools ; and the other was old age pensions.
The committee on the latter ^ reported in AprU ; the
report was a complex production, including a majority
and a minority report, and a great number of individual
memoranda. The minority, headed by Mr Chamberlain,
wished to recommend a contributory system of old age
pensions ; the majority contented themselves with making
little more than a statement of the problem of the aged
poor, and recommending certain changes in the method
of administering out-relief.
The feebleness of the House of Commons, the public
knowledge of the Government's futdity, were not the only
reasons for the complete lack of interest in parliamentary
proceedings. Two affairs, each in its different way
serious enough, were distracting people's minds. In
April the world of solid respectable citizenship, which
had for years suffered in baffled rage the scorn and the
airy superiority of the aesthete and the artist, came to a
^ See p. 320.

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 367
grim, and for the time startling, revenge. Mr Oscar
Wilde, at the conclusion of an action for criminal libel
which he brought against Lord Queensberry, and lost,
was arrested on charges which the plain man took as
ample confirmation of the plain man's position — ^that no
one can make a jest of morality and respectabUity without
some flaw in his own morals. The case against Mr WUde
was, of course, no real indictment of sestheticism, but it
was the end of the aesthete as he had been felt for fifteen
years in social life. It was also lamentably the end of a
very brUliant writer. At the moment of Mr Wilde's arrest
two comedies by him were being played simultaneously in
London, and one of them. The Importance of Being Earnest,
had revealed in him a genius not only for clothing his
comedies in unfaUing wit, but for essentially comic
construction. In his assertion of the function of criticism,
and in his richly varied vocabulary, lay his chief artistic
claim. In his social gifts of wit and swiftness lay his
most lasting effects. The widespread modem capacity
for " taking things with a light hand," the distaste for
solemn attitudes and obvious statements, the easy
carrying of personal attainments, which formerly had
taken some generations of high breeding to produce,
may be largely traced to Oscar Wilde's influence. The
particular form of wit for which he was most famous,
the paradoxical epigram, was not exclusively his ;
Whistler was even more brilliant at producing it. But
its combination with genuinely social gifts, which Whistler
had not, makes Wilde's career the more interesting. He
bore a large part in a readjustment of values in life which
survived his own fall. The crash of the fad certainly
affected the whole spirit of this year. There were few
great houses in London where he was not known ; fewer
stdl where there was not among the younger generation
an aggressive, irresponsible intolerance which had some
relation, however vague, to his briUiant figure. Even

368 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
athleticism rejoiced at this date to dissociate itself from
anything that might have been in danger of easy approval
from an older generation, by being also aesthetic ; captains
of university football teams had been seen with long hair.
There was too much of real revolt in the movement to
allow the fate of one man to hold it lastingly in check ;
but a certain sUence, almost, if not quite, shamefaced,
settled for the moment on much of the social life of the
country, and this had its part in the obvious impulse,
when the General Election came, to retum to safe
" English " ground in every possible direction.
The other affair, which took much attention, especially
as the year drew on, was a heavy slump in South
African stocks and shares. The immense fortunes which
had been made in that country had rather upset London.
The diamond magnate and the gold magnate were buUd
ing palaces for themselves in the West End, and setting,
so to speak, a financial pace which took London's breath
away. Speculation increased enormously. Society rushed
to the new form of gambling ; women who had never
seen " the City " went off in hansoms after breakfast
to consult their brokers ; gUded youths in clubs of an
afternoon turned the evening papers at once to the list
of Stock Exchange quotations. Rich men with no other
passport into society were asked to dinner on the chance
that they might have good speculative tips to give.
What had caused a more acute run on South African
ventures was the shadiness at the moment of industrial
stocks. The misguided energies of the company pro
moter were referred to in a recent chapter.^ The
report of the Committee on Company Law, which was
published in August of this year, showed that the limited
liabUity capital in Great Britain in 1894 was no less than
£1,035,029,835, whUe in France similar capital was only
about £400,000,000, and in Germany £300,000,000. This
1 See p. 3S8,

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 369
comparison caused the committee to decide that it must
be careful not to disturb unnecessarUy the employment
of wealth, and to remember that prudence and business
like use of wealth could not be inculcated by law. It
therefore declined to recommend any of the drastic
provisions which had been suggested as to double regis
tration, or a compulsory reserve liability, and confimed
itself to recommendations as to disclosure of the ven
dor's name and his price, and as to statutory meetings.
But indeed recent events in the industrial market, and
some severe writing down of capital, were enough to
produce prudence for the moment in that market. The
consequent rush to the South African stocks was followed
by a serious slump, and what was nearly a panic on
the Stock Exchange. The situation was saved by the
intervention of some of the magnates, notably Mr
Barnato, who stepped in, and bought freely, just in time
to prevent a finally disastrous sagging of prices. There
was nothing wrong with the gold industry itself. On the
contrary, everything pointed to the Rand mines being
far more valuable than anyone had at first supposed.
A report made in 1893 had placed the value of the reefs
at £315,000,000, which meant that aU difficulties from
shortage of gold supply, and the prospect of a complete
revaluation of the world's currency, were removed for
at least a generation or two. The gold output of the
Rand in 1895 was between 150,000 and 200,000 oz. a
month. The slump therefore was not due to any failure
or overestimation of the wealth of the gold mines. It
turned out, before the year was past, to be the beginning
of trouble of a more threatening kind.
Parliament pursued its uninteresting way until the
third week in June. It passed with reluctance a vote
of £80,000 for a new Colonial possession, Uganda, which
the British East Africa Company had left, like a foundling,
on the doorstep of the Government. The Government
2A

370 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
had also recovered its reputation in the matter of Jabez
Balfour, the absconding head of the Liberator Society. ^
After two years of the most ingenious proceedings he
had at length been extradited by the Argentine Govern
ment, and was landed in England and brought up at Bow
Street early in May. From time tb time since the begin
ning of 1893 reports had reached home that his extra
dition was granted ; each time an appeal had followed, and
all sorts of delays had spun out the proceedings. The last
ingenuity had been the discovery that in the province of
Argentina, where he was living, there was a law that a
plaintiff with amonetary claim against anyperson possessed
the right to prevent that person from leaving the province ;
after the decision of the Supreme Court at Buenos Ayres
confirming the extradition order, a plaintiff had lodged
such a claim against Jabez Balfour. The matter came to
debate in the House of Commons in March 1895, and the
Government had some uncomfortable moments attempting
to defend its having allowed the man to leave the country
some months after the Liberator Society suspended
payment. But, after all, the last defence against extra
dition was a weak one ; payment of the claim broke it
down at once, and the fugitive was brought to justice.
He was sentenced in November to fourteen years' penal
servitude ; but the case turned on such intricacies of
financial operations, and the disaster to the poorer public,
. now largely repaired by the Relief Fund, was so far past,
that the final stages of the case excited little interest.
However, if the Government had faded to bring him to
justice, there would have been interest enough to turn
votes. There were not many places in England which
had not some instance of the effects of the Liberator
disaster. The Govemment took the first possible exit from its
position. The Army Estimates of the year were interest-
' See page 326.

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 371
ing, because at last the abolition of the post of Commander-
in-Chief, which many reformers had desired for years,
was in sight. A commission over which the Duke of
Devonshire, then stdl Lord Hartington, had presided in
1888, had reported in 1890 in favour of the abolition of
the post. But the difficulty in the way of carrying out
the report was that the Commander-in-Chief was the
Duke of Cambridge, and his royal blood, his venerable
but vigorous old age, and his undoubted services and
devotion to the army, made the task peculiarly delicate.
It had at last been managed, and the statement on the
Army Estimates of the year announced the fact. But no
one imagined the estimates to be so important that the
Government would go out on them. A division on
the supply of cordite in reserve was carried against the
Government by 132 to 125, and they resigned. The Welsh
Disestablishment Bdl, which was in committee at the
time, expired. Lord Salisbury took office, and formed
the first Government in which Liberal Unionists and
Conservatives coalesced. There was still lack of cordiality
on the Conservative side. Mr Chamberlain had cast a
vote for Welsh Disestablishment which rankled in Tory
minds, and there was some criticism of the number of posts
which had gone in the new Government to Unionists.
A more acute criticism, which might have been re
called ten years later, was made by Sir Henry Howorth,
who pleaded for fusion and not coalition on the ground
that the existence of separate organisations would leave
open a gulf which might widen. ^ In view of the important
part played in the Tariff Reform agitation by the existence
of separate electoral organisations for Conservatives and
Unionists, this plea appears singularly prescient. But in
1895 all that was required seemed to be provided by Mr
Chamberlain's announcement that he would not in the
new Parliament issue separate whips to his supporters.
1 Letter to The Times, 27th June 1895.-

372 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
The election was a disastrous one for the Liberals.
At its outset the chief line of attack upon them was the
revolutionary nature of their proposals ; and in spite of
the fact that in no one of the most frequently quoted
instances had they achieved any success. Home Rule,
Welsh Disestablishment, Local Veto, and the abolition
of the House of Lords made a sufficiently alarming list
for platform purposes. Early in the contest Mr Morley
was defeated at Newcastle and Sir WUliam Harcourt
at Derby ; Home Rule and Local Veto were the easUy
assigned causes in the respective cases. The Independent
Labour Party sustained blow after blow ; Mr Keir
Hardie was beaten, and so were Mr Hyndman and Dr
Pankhurst, and in fact almost all their candidates. Mr
John Burns just managed to retain his seat. By the end
of July the new Parliament was complete, with 411
Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, and only 259
Liberals and Irish Nationalists — a majority of 152. The
Liberal Unionist forces had risen again, and stood at 71.
The fall of the Independent Labour party was curious.
Trade Unionism certainly showed no weakening. One
of its most far-reaching demands — ^that of the eight-hours
day — ^had been strengthened by the results of practical
experiments made by two great firms, Mather & Piatt
in the engineering trade, and Brunner, Mond & Co. in the
chemical trade. The former made a year's experiment ;
the latter had just finished a six-years' experiment.
The former reported a fractional increase in the wages
bUl, balanced by a saving in wear and tear, lighting, etc.,
a marked diminution in the percentage of lost time, and
a healthier and keener body of workmen. The latter
reported that the slight increase at first in the wage bill
had disappeared, and that the effect on the sobriety,
regularity and health of the men was exceUent. The
Trade Union Congress of this year showed no real slacken
ing of the general Labour movement. The Seamen's

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 373
Union, damaged by violent and unsuccessful strikes,
had dropped in membership from 80,000 to 6000, but
the membership of the congress showed a decline of only
20,000. The congress passed resolutions in favour of
the nationalisation of land, minerals and raUways — by
specifying these sources of wealth. It was distinctly
reconsidering its general adherence to socialism — and of
the placing of docks under municipal authority. This
year, as it happened, had brought a curious tribute to
the lasting success of the men in the London Dock strike.
The secretary of the London Docks had written to the
papers to say that casual labour there had now sunk to
2 per cent, of the whole ; a new system was in operation
by which notices were posted every night, giving state
ments of the number of men that would be wanted for
work the next day. Trade Unionism had no reason in
the general outlook to feel weakened. At this time
even the National Union of Teachers was considering
joining the congress, and though no proposal came up for
discussion at its annual meeting, it was remarked that
the teachers showed the true Union bent in their objection
to any relaxation of the rules of entrance to the profession.
The explanation of the Labour doviTifall at the election
probably was that In the general futility of the Liberal
term of office the fresh tendency towards reliance upon
parliamentary action had received a check; and at the
same time the erratic and unimportant tendency to
violence had rendered the Labour programme liable to
misrepresentation. The organisation of women's labour was greatly for
warded in 1895 by the establishment of the National
Union of Women Workers. It was not in the technical
sense a trade union, and its relations to the various
branches and societies affiliated to it were left very loose.
But by providing a centre through which all information
as to women's labour, aU cases of hardship and under-

374 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
payment, aU local efforts of organisation and combination,
could be given a voice, it promoted enormously the
interests of labouring women. Those interests had
recently been officially recognised by the appointment
of a woman. Miss Collet, among the labour correspondents
of the Board of Trade. A report by her, published in this
year, showed that, contrary to the general opinion,
emplojonent of women in industry had not very largely
increased. In the census of 1881, 34-05 per cent, of girls
and women over ten years of age were returned as
occupied ; in that of 1891 the figures were 34*42 per cent.
The number of domestic servants had actually decreased ;
and in clerkships the numbers of women employed had
not advanced nearly so fast as the numbers of men.
The death of Professor Huxley occurred at the end of
June. The controversies with which his name had become
most commonly associated had ended some time before.
Already people had begun to see that the evolutionary
theory had its place in the intellectual world, but need
not drive out other phUosophies. In its early days the
theory was a sort of fetish. It had been just sufficiently
within the understanding of the ordinary mind to
be misused. Advanced as an hypothesis, it had been
taken by minds unaccustomed to the scientific uses of
hypothesis as almost a statement of fact. An age stUl
ringing with ecclesiastical and theological controversies
seized the new weapons ; and men " who were trying to
explain why the giraffe's neck grew long, found themselves
called upon to say how heaven and earth came out of
chaos." ^ What is astonishing to a later generation is
not only the eagerness with which the theory was used,
but the universal attention which was paid to the religious
controversy. Its later manifestations — ^the battle between
Professor Huxley and Dr Wace in the pages of The
Nineteenth Century, for instance — ^had perhaps shown
1 TAe Tm^s, ist July 1895;

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 375
signs of the shrinking of interest; and by the time of
Huxley's death such engagements would only have
appealed to a very restricted public.
In the summer, rather too late to be fully lionised,
a man came to London bringing with him an even more
adventurous atmosphere than that which had surrounded
Stanley five years before. He was Slatm Pasha, an
Austrian, who had been governor of the Soudanese
province of Darfur at the time of the Mahdist rising.
Taken prisoner by the Mahdi, he had spent eight months
in chains, and after that, eleven years always in the
circle of the Khalifa's bodyguard at Omdurman, the
city which the Khalifa had established for himself on
the opposite bank of the NUe from Khartoum. Slatin
Pasha had escaped at last, and his worn figure, bearing
the signs of his captivity, was the first breaking of the
sUence which since 1885 had encompassed the Soudan.
Here was a man who could tell the world the conditions
of the Khalifa's rule, who could give information as to
its extent, the provinces he yet held, and those, like
Darfur and Bahr-el-Ghazal, which he had abandoned.
To England generally Slatin was a personage of romance.
To the Government at home and the authorities in
Egypt he was much more ; and the idea of the reconquest
of the Soudan took a new vitality For the present,
however, the finances of Egypt seemed to be engaged.
The growing prosperity of the country had made prac
ticable the idea of a large scheme of irrigation, involving
the construction of a great barrage at Assouan ; this was
given the preference over mditary operations, and it was
announced that there was no immediate prospect of the
British Government consenting to a Soudan expedition.
This summer witnessed a renewal of that rivalry
between the great raUway lines to the North which had
been an excitement in 1888.^ This year the goal was
1 See;p. 235.

376 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
Aberdeen, instead of Edinburgh, and by 29th July
(the racing began on 1st July) the West Coast time
for the journey was ten hours and five minutes, and
the East Coast time ten hours and twenty-three minutes.
The normal time hitherto had been on the West Coast
route eleven hours, fifty minutes, and on the East Coast
route eleven hours, thirty-five minutes. For two months
the contest went on, untU by the end of August the West
Coast had actually cut its time down to eight hours,
thirty-two minutes, or little more than the best record
for the run to Edinburgh in the earlier race. This meant
an average speed over the whole 540 mUes of 63 mUes an
hour, and a maximum speed of 74 mUes an hour was
attained at some pomts. The best maximum of the East
Coast was 66-7 miles an hour. The race, of course, had
little relation to ordinary railway work ; it involved
cleared lines, and a dislocation of the usual traffic which
could not long be tolerated. But it was a glorious affair
for the onlooker, and it left behind it some acceleration
of journeying in the normal time-table. The speed was
the more notable in that by this time dining cars and
corridor coaches, with all their extra weight, were in
general use on the large Northern lines.
It is no insignificant proof of the change of feeling in
1895 that Trilby took the country by storm. Its author,
George du Maurier, used to express his bewUderment at
the vogue of the book ; and one who had been occupied,
as he had been for thirty years, in representing week by
week for the pages of Punch the passing foibles of the
English, may well have been astonished. What was
there, he might ask himself, in his gentle story to charm
a world which, when not sophisticated, was stUl strict,
even a little prim, in its outlook, and when not rich enough
to be absorbed in money, was chiefly absorbed in athletics ?
The main part of the secret was, no doubt, that the story
was genuinely charming; but some of its success may

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 377
also have been due to the time of its publication. On
the one hand, reaction against languid cleverness made
people ready to enjoy the youthful romance of du Maurier's
book. On the other hand, the relaxing of conventions,
the altered ideas of what was genuinely immoral, the
saner judgments, the greater personal freedom which,
with all its faults, the aesthetic movement had helped
to bring about, had the effect of giving entrance to the
book in a thousand homes where ten years earlier it
would not have been accepted. In this latter respect
Trilby is, however, only one sign (though perhaps the
most striking one) of a change of thought. In the other
respect, that of its reception by the sophisticated world,
it falls little short of a historical event. People who had
made so complete a surrender to a book entirely devoid
of pose or perverseness could hardly return to the old
superior attitudes. Trilby did, in fact, break down a
kind of angularity which aestheticism had been producing,
and people became less afraid of acknowledging that they
liked a book or a picture or a poem for no particular reason.
Both as a book and in dramatic form at the Haymarket
Theatre, Trilby was one of the great events of the year.
It was in general a time of somewhat mild flavours in
literature. A year or two earlier J. M. Barrie's Auld
Licht Idylls had set a fashion, of which other Scottish
writers were quick to take advantage. The sentimental
air of the " kail-yard school " blew over the libraries.
That school and Miss Marie Corelh divided at this period
the affections of the great middle class. Equally senti
mental was the taste of the moment for coon songs.
Miss May Yohe, at the summit of her fame, was singing
haunting melodies in a patch of limelight on the stage
of musical comedy ; and " Honey, my Honey," and
" Linger Longer Loo " were running in the heads of most
young men, and not a few young women.
The high-water mark of the passion for cycling was

378 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
surely reached in this year, when permission was given
for cyclists to ride in Hyde Park, though during the season
they were confined to the hours before ten o'clock in the
morning and after seven o'clock in the evening. Since
the old high bicycle had disappeared, and the new type
of cycle had made the pastime possible for women to
indulge in, the slightly ridiculous figure cut by the cyclist
had ceased to exist. The pneumatic tyre and a better
knowledge of gearing made the machine easy and com
fortable to ride ; arid as motor cars were not yet in use
it was also the most rapid means of road-traveUing.
Doctors took advantage of the craze in order to make
people take exercise. The result was that, in this year
and the next, cycling was not only the great Saturday
afternoon amusement of the worker, and the new resource
of people living in the country, but was also the fashion
in town. Mayfair abandoned its morning canter for a
few turns round the Park on a bicycle, and even went so
far afield as to Battersea Park, where the restriction
of hours did not exist; breakfasts in Battersea Park
became the new adventure. Meanwhile cycling had
equally captured the athlete, and long-distance races
and twenty-four-hour races were frequent.
The new Govemment settled itself quietly into place.
Mr Chamberlain, for whom rumour had proposed various
posts, including that of Secretary for War, had taken,
somewhat to the surprise of the country, the Colonial
Office, not hitherto a department in which reputations
were made. It was not long before he caused It to be
known that appointments under the Colonial Office were
no longer going to be at the easy disposal of patronage ^ ;
and a more compact co-operation between the different
portions of the Empire was aimed at in his circular
despatch to all colonial govemments, asking for dis
cussion of the possibUity of increasing their trade with
1 The Times, 12th November 1895=

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 379
the mother country. No tariff suggestion was made ;
the desire expressed was rather for more knowledge at
home of the needs of colonial traders and of the demands
which home manufacturers might be expected to meet.
For the rest the Government's policy, as announced to the
meeting of the National Union of Conservative Associa
tions, was firstly to set the supremacy of the British navy
beyond question, and secondly to alter the rating system,
so as to give some relief to agricultural interests. The
third place was allotted to educational proposals ; but
it was quite clear that this subject was going to be pressed
forward from various directions with a vigour which would
be ill satisfied with a third place. Early in the year a
committee appointed by the two Archbishops to inquire
into the condition of the voluntary schools had reported
upon the increasing difficulty of meeting the demands
of the education authorities in the matter of school
accommodation, and efficiency of the teaching staff, out
of vohmtarUy subscribed funds. As assistance from the
rates would necessarily carry with it some form of public
control of the schools, the committee agreed that the
Church should rather ask aid from the Imperial Govem
ment, in the form of a general maintenance grant.
Incidentally the committee remarked that the pressure
on elementary schools was growing, because the curri
culum was now so good that many parents, who could
afford to send their children elsewhere, were content
with an elementary school. Lord Salisbury had taken
an early opportunity of ranging himself on the side of the
Voluntary schools, expressing the belief that they would
outlast the Board schools ^ ; and the natural result was
that, when he returned to power, the Church school
authorities were ready to ply him with suggestions.
Already the situation was so acute that on the clerical
side the common way of regarding the School Board
' The Times, 22nd March 1895.

380 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
system was to speak of It as competition with Church
schools, and to think of it as unfair competition.^ The
report of the Commission on Secondary Education some
what turned attention from this particular question,
because it proved to be a very sweeping document. It
recommended the appointment of a Secretary of State
for Education, so as to give the work the fuU status of a
Cabinet office ; the setting-up of new local authorities,
to be drawn partly from the county and borough councUs,
and partly by co-optation from experts outside those
bodies ; and the endowing of these authorities with power
to impose a twopenny rate for secondary, as well as purely
technical, education, and power also to administer funds
for buUding and equipping schools. It was the report of
a commission appointed by a Liberal Govemment ; but the
Duke of Devonshire had taken the office of Lord President
of the CouncU in the new Govemment, which made him
responsible for national education ; and he had long ago
accepted a liberal view of what education should mean.
During the autumn the solid citizen had more than one
occasion to be thankful that he had restored to power a
solid Govemment. In October a labour dispute broke
out which seemed likely to rival in severity the greatest
strikes of recent years. It began with a demand among
the Clyde shipbuUding hands for an advance in wages.
There had been a reduction during recent bad times,
and, as the yards were now busy again, the men asked
for an advance of two shillings a week. The masters
admitted that business was better, but maintained that,
as they were stUl carrying out contracts at the low prices
of the bad times, they could not afford the advance.
The Clyde men did not immediately proceed to a strike,
but the Belfast men, who had joined in the demand, did
so. Thereupon the Clyde masters, no doubt convinced
that the strike was bound to spread, took the aggressive,
1 The Times, 21st November 1895.

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 381
and locked their men out in the third week in October.
For the remainder of the year the straggle continued, but
m the closing days of December a settlement appeared in
sight. At a conference in Glasgow the masters offered an
advance of one shiUing a week to commence in February,
and stipulated that these terms should be unchaUenged
by the men for six months after that date. Although
the men asked for the advance in January, and were
disinclined to bind themselves for more than four months,
the struggle seemed unlikely to continue.
A short passage of strained relations with Belgium in
October was less important for its cause than for its sequel.
An Englishman named Stokes, engaged in trading in
the Congo Free State, had been executed by a Belgian
official. Captain Lothaire. The accusation made against
Mr Stokes was of some evil-doing in his commerce with
the natives; the gravamen of the British complaint
was that, instead of allowing the accused man to exercise
his undoubted right of appeal to the tribunals of the
Congo State, Captain Lothaire had hanged him out of
hand. The British Government insisted that, besides
payment to the dead man's famUy of an indemnity of
150,000 francs, reparation should Include the bringing
of Captain Lothaire to trial. But what the incident
really brought upon the King of the Belgians was a sudden
sharpening of suspicion as to the whole administration of
the Congo territory. Hitherto there had been only a
vague idea that the administration was not prosperous ;
but the Stokes incident opened the way for those who
knew something of the actual nature of that administra
tion. As yet the atrocities of the rubber trade seem to
have been unknown ; but various articles published during
this controversy with the Belgian authorities expressed
grave distrust of the methods of the ivory trade. It was
the beginning of the long task of letting light into a very
dark place.

382 A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND [1895
Next, with some suddenness, a sharp tone began to
appear in reference to the Transvaal. This was the more
serious effect of the slump in gold-mining shares, which
had caused such nervousness in England. As long as
all went well at home, little attention was paid to the
complaints of the settlers in the Transvaal. But now,
remarkably coincident with the accession to power of the
Conservative Government, came a change of tone. The
Boers were reminded that complaints of insufficient police
protection, of total neglect of educational facUities, and
of general disregard of the interests of the Rand, could
not properly be set aside, when they proceeded from an
industry which provided nine-tenths of the revenues of
the State, and had, moreover, transformed that State
from a bankrupt community to a prosperous and thriving
one. A disposition in France to regard the agitation of
the Uitlanders' grievances as a preliminary to the usual
British acquisition of territory added fuel to the fire ;
and before the year ended, the situation was growing
tense. But even more suddenly a situation had arisen in quite
another quarter which far outweighed this in gravity.
A comparatively insignificant dispute with Venezuela,
as to the boundary line between that country and British
Guiana, was magnified into a threat of disastrous war
by a wholly unexpected pronouncement from President
Cleveland, to the effect that the United States claimed
the right to a predominant voice in any territorial dispute
on the American continent. " The Monroe Doctrine,"
on which the President's Message to Congress was based,
was thus introduced to an astonished and angry England.
The doctrine had been formulated by President Monroe
in 1823 for the protection of the young South American
republics against intervention, which at that time seemed
probable, by Roman Catholic powers in Europe. That it
should be thrust forward in the Venezuelan controversy

1895] A RETURN TO SAFE GROUND 383
amazed England ; and it was unfortunate, if absurd in a
connection of such gravity, that two sporting events of
this year had caused bad blood between Englishmen and
Americans. At Henley Regatta, in July, an eight from
Cornell University had been drawn against an eight of the
Leander Club. There was a high wind on the day of the
race, and, when the starter asked the crews if they were
ready, he faded to hear from the Leander boat the reply
that they were not ready. He started the race, and the
Cornell boat went off alone. This roused a furious dis
cussion, and the Cornell crew were roundly accused of un
sportsmanlike conduct in not waiting for their rivals, when
they saw them not ready for the start. In September Lord
Dunraven sent over another yacht to challenge for the
America Cup. He protested strongly against having to
start the race amid a crowd of excursion steamers, which
made the sading of a racing yacht not only difficult, but
risky ; and as no notice was taken of his protest he con
tented himself, when the third race came on, with formally
crossing the starting line, and then turning his yacht
immediately back. Of course such incidents as these
were as much indications of existing bad feeling as causes
of new irritation ; but the danger of them, when the
Venezuela difficulty arose, was that they had made
popular a sense of rancour and hostUity. Lord Salisbury
had given himself no sinecure when he returned, in his
new Government, to the control of the Foreign Office.
His presence there prevented any of that inflammation
of public opinion which might easUy at this juncture
have forced the diplomatic situation. Lord Salisbury con
tented himself with the knowledge that the approach of
a presidential election in the United States might account
for a good deal ; and set himself to producing a way of
escape for President Cleveland from a situation which
had probably become rather more serious than he had
intended it should be.

CHAPTER XVIII
1896: THE JAMESON RAID, AND MOTOR CARS
NEW YEAR'S DAY brought most astonishing
news. On 29th December a body of troops of the
British South Africa Company, under the command
of Dr Jameson, the Administrator of Mashonaland, had
crossed the frontier of the Transvaal, on the way. to give
armed support to the residents in Johannesburg, who had
been, it now appeared, banding themselves together against
the Boer rule. With but vague recollections of com
plaints of Boer tyranny, yet a lively sense that this was
no new quarrel, and that there were old sores between
the Boers and the English, England generally took the
news with some satisfaction ; it served the Boers right.
A letter was published, which had been sent from
Johannesburg to Dr Jameson, saying that the wives and
chUdren of Englishmen there were in danger, and armed
help must be despatched. There was no hesitation in
believing this, though it implied a state of things of which
no knowledge had yet become public. But at once it
appeared that something was wrong. Mr Chamberlain
from the Colonial Office instantly repudiated Dr Jameson
and his men, and he called on the British South Africa
Company to do the same. The High Commissioner in
Cape Colony ordered the instant return of the force.
On 3rd January it was announced that Dr Jameson had
received, and disregarded, these messages, had pursued
his course into the Transvaal, but, whUe bivouacking at
a little place named Krugersdorp, had been surrounded
by Boer commandos, and forced to surrender after a
384

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 385
brief attempt at fighting. The invasion had turned into
a raid. But how had it happened at aU, men asked themselves.
What had produced the explosion ? For certainly such
hazy ideas as the ordinary Englishman had acquired of
recent affairs in South Africa had not led him to suppose
that blows were about to be dealt. There was not much
satisfaction for the inquiring mind. It was clear that
the Boers regarded the growing power of the Rand with
dislike and suspicion, and their feelings led them into
treating its residents intolerantly. Their attitude was
dictated firstly by the belief that the English were deter
mined to fUeh their country, in order to make a compact
whole of British South African territory ; and secondly
by a confidence that they could frustrate any such schemes.
Their fear led them, on every agitation of the Uitlanders'
grievances, to take a stiffer attitude towards franchise
demands, which they met with increasing conditions as to
length of residence ; and towards complaints of insufficient
attention to the Rand's requirements, which they treated
as so many ingenious attempts to rouse feeling ti
England. Their confidence led them, on any sign of
British enterprise in South Africa, to strengthen every
resource they possessed and to improve their armaments.
Thus the progressive occupation by the British of
Bechuanaland, of the coast-line of Ziduland, of Mashona
land and Matabeleland, had been taken as so many
threats ; and the one outlet left to the Boers — that by
way of the Dutch railway to Lourengo Marques — ^grew
the more precious. The raUway became a weapon in
President Kruger's hands ; and when the traders of Cape
Colony, objecting to the freight prices charged in the
Transvaal, took to convoying their goods by waggon into
the country, the President closed the " drifts," or fords,
of the Vaal River. A perpetual succession of expansions
on the one side, and self-assertions on the other, had
2B

386 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
produced a situation in which neither side could move
without adding to the other side's preconceptions. That
the situation could have arisen with so little concurrent
knowledge In England was due in great part to the posi
tion occupied by Mr Cecil Rhodes. As Premier of Cape
Colony he was liable to the dissemination of such know
ledge of his policy as Blue Books afford. As director
of the British South Africa Company he had, so to
speak, an unsupervised range of action. He had a
power-supply affixed to the main outside the meter.
The news of the failure of Dr Jameson's attempt was
foUowed by an incident which embittered British feeling.
On 4th January it was announced that the German
Emperor had telegraphed to President Kruger, con-
gratidating him on repelling an armed force and main
taining the independence of his country. To the most
sober-minded in England this was an inflammatory
encouragement to the Boers to assert a liberty of
action which, however futUe the provisions of the Con
vention of 1884 may have been, was not officially accepted
by Great Britain. To less sober minds it was a provoca
tive crow from a jealous rival in Europe. LuckUy the
Government was able to announce before many days had
passed that President Kruger had waived his rights over
Dr Jameson and his captured force, and had handed them
over to Great Britain for trial. Leading members of the
Uitlander community in Johannesburg were arrested,
and remained in the Transvaal for trial. The British
Govemment had not swerved an inch in its policy of
repudiating the raid. Mr Rhodes was reported to have
remarked lugubriously that Dr Jameson had " upset the
apple-cart " ; and for the moment the whole episode
settled down into an armed truce.
This incident had thrown into the background the
threatened quarrel with the United States ; Lord Salisbury
had made soothing proposals for arbitration respecting

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 387
the Venezuelan boundary ; and the alarm died down so
rapidly that before the year was a fortnight old there was
already a suggestion that the occasion might be seized upon
to draft a general arbitration treaty between the two
countries. The shipbuilding strike was settled before the
end of January on the terms offered by the masters at the
Glasgow conference. 1 The national revenue was recover
ing itself so handsomely that there was good prospect of a
surplus for the Budget. On the whole the new Govern
ment entered on its first session with the confidence of
men who had risen not unsuccessfully to trying occasions.
The Opposition on their side foresaw the old familiar
wealcnesses to attack — ^the customary Tory embroilment
in complications abroad, the customary readiness to plunge
into little wars (an expedition had started for Ashanti to
bring to submission an unruly monarch) ; and as if to com
plete the case, there were again " Turkish atrocities " to
revive the Gladstonian spirit. Massacres of Armenians
were mounting to an appalling story. When Parliament
met there was no lack of promise of domestic legislation.
A new Irish Land Bill, an Education Bill, an Agricultural
Rating BiU, and measures dealing with light railways, with
friendly societies, with company law, and with Irish
education were in the Govemment's list. But if the
Ministry had had nothing but domestic legislation to
handle they would have had a singularly comfortless time ;
and to that extent the instincts of the Opposition were
just. In affairs abroad lay the Govemment's main interest.
The first work of the new Parliament was one more piece
of tinkering with its own procedure. Mr Balfour proposed
new rules for regulating Committee of Supply. This was
the part of a Govemment's work which had offered the best
target in the days of organised obstruction, because it
could not be dropped, as any other piece of business might
be. The worst effect of this was that supply had lost its
1 Seep. 381!

388 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
importance; criticism of estimates had become, not a
member's duty, but a suspect proceeding. Mr Balfour
set up a time-limit, with no pretence of applying it in
cases of urgency or obstraction, but as a normal method.
Certain days were allotted for supply, and on the nine
teenth day money votes not yet passed were to be
closured, and on the twentieth day the report stage was
to be taken under closure.
Before the end of February the principal offenders in the
. Jameson Raid were in England, and were brought up at
Bow Street. These were Dr Jameson, Sir John Willoughby,
and eleven others. The authorities, pursuing still their
policy of repudiation, took pains to prevent anything like
public demonstrations on the prisoners' behalf. The
steamer on which they came home was brought round to
the Thames, and in the lower reaches they were transferred
to a launch which landed them unnoticed at Waterloo
Pier. UntU they came into the police court there was no
chance of cheering them, but then the chance was taken,
in spite of severe strictures on the indecorousness of such
a display of feeling. The charge brought against the
prisoners was that of unlawfully fitting out a military
expedition against a friendly State. Now that the first
surprised feelings were over, and the momentary satis
faction of the transfer of the offenders to Great Britain had
cooled, a vigorous discussion of the terms of their surrender
arose — of the question whether the Johannesburgers had
been induced to lay down their arms by the threat that
the lives of Dr Jameson and the others depended on their
doing so, whether Dr Jameson's surrender had been un
conditional — and so on. It was not an important discussion
except for the soreness it revealed. Mr Chamberlain,
who had gained ground with even the extreme Tories by
obtaining the transfer of the prisoners to British justice,
had now to lose a httle. He feU into the mistake of
attempting a counter-stroke, and attempting it so publicly

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 389
that its faUure was bound to add to the general irritation.
Instead of taking clearly the position that the Raid had
rendered impossible for some time any official representa
tions of the Uitlanders' grievances, he wrote a despatch
to President Kruger, recapitulating the grievances, and
suggesting a plan of municipal government for Johannes
burg. It was not likely that in their suspicious temper
the Boers would take this as anything but one more covert
sapping of their rule ; and an invitation, also conveyed
in the despatch, to President Kruger himself to come to
England for a discussion of the position, was plainly ill-
timed. Mr Chamberlain published this despatch in England
before it was delivered to President Kruger, an obvious
breach of official good manners. There were advisers at
President Kruger's elbow clever enough to see this, if the
President himself did not. The reply was not only a
refusal of the invitation, and a putting aside of the sugges
tion, but also a rebuke. Ill-feeling had one more thing
to feed upon. What really forced the feeling in every
possible way was the question of the complicity of British
official authorities in the Raid. Coming as it did so soon
after the accession of the Conservatives and Unionists to
power, representing as desperate a situation In the Trans
vaal which the ordinary man had never regarded as acute,
the Raid seemed to throw a light, by some considered
sinister, on Mr Chamberlain's choice of office in the new
Ministry. He was the man about whose post there had
been most speculation. He had chosen one not hitherto
associated with great energy or scope for ambition ; and
within six months he was dealing with the matter which
was practically the only subject in the public mind. Late
in April it became known that certain cipher telegrams
which had fallen into the Boers' hands on the capture of
Dr Jameson were held by the Boers to establish the fact
that Mr Rhodes and Mr Beit (a mUlionaire of the Rand
mines) knew of the plans being made in Johannesburg for

390 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
the calling in of an armed force. If Mr Rhodes was
cognisant of the plot, was the Colonial Office wholly
ignorant ? And if it was, why was Mr Rhodes still Prime
Minister of Cape Colony ? Such doubts had their effect
on both sides. The Liberal demand was plain enough ;
there must be a full and drastic inquiry. The Tory
attitude could not be one of opposition to such a demand.
No mistakes could be afforded, and the Colonial Office must,
if possible, be absolved from complicity in such a fiasco.
A few weeks later Mr Rhodes resigned his Premiership,
but it was not until the end of the session that the Select
Committee on British South Africa was set up. Liberals
could not complain of their representation on it. It con
sisted of the Attorney-General (Sir Richard Webster), Mr
John Bigham, Mr Sydney Buxton, Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman, Mr Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Ex
chequer (Sir Michael Hicks Beach), Mr Alfred Cripps, Sir
William Hart Dyke, Mr John EUis, Sir William Harcourt,
Mr W. L. Jackson, Mr Henry Labouchere, Mr Wharton
and Mr George Wyndham. In moving the appointment
of the committee Mr Chamberlain stated that his policy
had been to allow time for the feelings of irritation both
among British and among Boers to subside, before re
viving in an inquiry the grounds of the irritation. He had
not succeeded, for whUe the Boers put the worst possible
construction on the delay, the British in South Africa
were becoming convinced that it was the intention of the
Transvaal to push home its strong position by declaring
entire independence. MeanwhUe the sentences on the
prisoners on either side were an indication of the feelings
aroused. Dr Jameson and the twelve others in England
were sentenced to short terms of imprisonment. Indeed,
it seemed to be likely that the jury would return a verdict
of acquittal, but the Lord Chief Justice, Lord RusseU of
KiUowen, summed up in such a way as to leave the
jury virtually no alternative. Colonel Frank Rhodes (a

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 391
brother of Mr Rhodes), Mr Phillips, Mr Farrer and Mr
Hammond, the leaders of the Johannesburg Uitlanders
who were tried in the Transvaal, were condemned to
death, the sentences being commuted immediately after
wards to heavy fines and two years' imprisonment.
However, if Mr Chamberlain meant that his pohcy was
to wait until merely popular feeling in England died dovm,
he was justified. The newspaper sensation barely lasted
into the early summer. Trade was reviving strongly, and
the quantity of money seeking investment was reflected
in the price of securities. Consols were up to 113, and
all gilt-edged securities were high with them. This was, of
course, partly due to the suspicion under which company-
promoting had fallen. The " guinea-pig " director had been
flagrantly in evidence for some years past. The Govem
ment introduced a Companies BUl, which went further
than the recommendations of the recent Committee on
Company Law ; it insisted on the filing of balance-sheets
for public inspection, and on a shareholding qualification
for directors. This may have restored confidence to some
extent ; but the search for investments would in any case
have revived speculation. Speculation had also become,
in the recent gold-mines boom, an amusement and a
possibility of profit, which people of leisure would not
easily drop. New material for it was at hand. Gas, after
all the fears expressed in the early days of electric light,
had held its ground as an illuminant, and was now even
gaining ground by the recent invention of the incandescent
mantle. Litigation in 1896 with regard to certain patents
brought the invention into prominence, so that it caught
the eye of the speculator. But a still more profitable field
was opening. The immense craze for cycling was swamp
ing the manufacturers with orders, and capital for de
veloping their capacities might well be called for. The
opportunity was seized, and during this year and the fol
lowing year cycle companies were a safe draw for money ;

392 JAMESON RAID -MOTOR CARS [1896
reconstructions of existing companies with very large
increases of capital were of weekly occurrence ; every
component part of a cycle seemed to offer a fresh oppor
tunity for the flotation of a company to make it. Capital
to the amount of something like eleven mUlions went
into cycling in 1896 alone ; the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre
Company took five millions. It was the new boom. No
one at the time thought of it as rather too late in the day
to be a safe one, though a warning might have been derived
from a paper read by Sir Douglas Fox before the British
Association this year, in which he spoke of motor cars as
offering an opening for engineering skill and invention even
more important than that offered by cycle-construction.
As yet these cars were only known to the general public
as an invention developed chiefly in France but not to be
taken very seriously. They were thought a noisy method
of locomotion, uncertain in control, somewhat ridiculous in
appearance, and terrifying to horses.
At the moment other scientific inventions were more in
the public eye. The theory of mechanical flight was already
liberating itself from the old belief that a lifting agent, such
as light gas, was an essential for passage through the air.
Mr Hiram Maxim was making experiments with lifting-
planes actuated by a light engine ; and Lilienthal and
Pilcher were in the midst of their experiments in gliding.
The work of Professor Langley, who had since 1887 been
investigating the behaviour of plane surfaces subjected to
resistance of the air, and had published elaborate tables
of mathematical calculations, was greatly assisting such
experiments. But the discovery most seized upon by
popular interest was that of the Rontgen rays. It needed
no scientific knowledge to see that this opened a new world
of possibUities, and was a fundamental disturbance of
ordinary conceptions of matter.
Parliament came early to the discovery that its long
and energetic programme was meeting with a rather un-

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 393
expected check. It had attacked a fine variety of subjects.
Some Bills have already been mentioned. Besides these
there was a Light Railways BiU, setting up a body of
commissioners for the consideration of local projects, and
authorising the Treasury to make loans, provided that not
less than half the capital required was subscribed by the
public, and that not more than a half of that was found by
local authorities. There had been a good deal of discussion
of light railways during 1894, the chief Idea being that they
would assist agriculturists to supply markets beyond their
immediate neighbourhood ; and the setting up of special
commissioners was intended to overcome the objection that
parliamentary costs were too high, and parliamentary re
quirements as to construction too severe, for such transport.
The Bill was, with the Agricultural Rating Bill, an attempt
to cure rural distresses, which not only damaged the
country districts, but also added to urban problems, by
causing rural labourers to invade the towns and augment
the congestion and unemployment there. The rating
proposal was that agricultural land should be assessed at
one-half its value, the deficiency being made up by a grant
from the Imperial Exchequer to the Local Taxation
Account. It brought a fresh complication into the already
confused system of rating, and was a piece of specialised
legislation not easy to defend. The Irish Land BUI, again,
had no easy progress. A large part of it was occupied with
a statutory fixing of rents (rendered necessary by the
passage of time since the Act of 1881, which only fixed
rents for fifteen years), and this was a repetition of pro
posals of which the Conservatives had complained strongly,
and which the House of Lords had rejected, in Mr Morley's
Bill of 1895. Tories could hardly like such a position ;
and they liked no better the proposals for Land Purchase,
designed to facilitate and quicken the working of the
Act of 1891, which had so far been largely a faUure.
Between the desire to have the Nationahsts on the side of

394 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
the Bill (as an effective answer to Home Rulers) and the
pressure of Irish landlords against conciliation of the
tenants, the Bill had stormy hours to weather. The
House of Lords introduced some strong amendments, but
ultimately surrendered to the House of Commons' refusal
to accept them, and the Bill became law.
In these rather strained conditions of Irish affairs, it was
inevitable that the report of the Royal Commission on
Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland
shoidd fall flat. It was published in September, the chair
man, Mr Childers, not living to see the publication. He
had died in January. The commission was of Liberal
appointment,^ and though the result might rather be
described as several reports than as one, there were some
points on which a majority of the commissioners were
agreed, as, for instance, that the two countries must be
regarded for financial purposes as separate entities, that
the burden of taxation imposed by the Act of Union was
too great, and that in such a period as that from 1853 to
1860 an unjustifiable weight of taxation had been placed
upon Ireland.^
But to retum to the session. Neither Agricultural
Rating nor Irish Land proved so difficult a subject as
the Education Bill. Proceeding largely on the Unes of the
recent commission's recommendations, the Bill set up the
county and borough councils as the education authority,
to work through special committees. Under the general
supervision of the Board of Education the new authorities
were to have charge of the inspection of schools, and entire
control of the parliamentary grant ; to develop technical
schools, and take over all local duties under the Technical
Instruction Act. Then came another piece of specialised
legislation. The volimtary schools were to receive an
* Seep. 356.
' For an interesting comment by Mr Gladstone on this point see
Morley's Life of Gladstone, i. 646.

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 395
additional Exchequer grant of four shiUings per child ;
and it was also provided that in any elementary school,
if " a reasonable number " of parents applied for separate
religious instraction for their chUdren, the managers must
allow effect to be given to this desire. From the very
start the Bill gave trouble. All the Liberal strength went
into denunciation of the special favours to Church schools,
and the implied destruction, by the provisions for separate
religious teaching, of the Cowper-Temple agreement. The
Irish party, it is true, were not with them ; as a party
mainly Roman Catholic, they never could take the un-
sectarian line in matters of education. But Liberals
knew that, however widely he had parted from them in
some directions, Mr Chamberlain could not be pleased
with this Bill ; and they shrewdly suspected that Sir John
Gorst, though officially responsible for it, had no great
love of it as a whole. They were therefore unwearying in
the proposal of amendments ; and the fact that, although
few amendments commanded the support of more than
a hundred and fifty members, five days were spent in
committee on the first two lines of the BiU, showed the
Liberal party that the Govemment felt their hold on
the BUl to be weak. Conservative supporters outside the
House were not well united on the matter ; they differed
as to drawing the extra grants from taxes or from rates,
and more seriously as to the amount of the grant. In the
end the BUl was dropped. Sir John Gorst was, more or
less accidentally, prominent in another debate of this year
which deserves mention. He had presided at the meeting
of a limited liability company, of which he was chairman ;
and occasion was taken to raise the question of the pro
priety of Cabinet Ministers holding directorships. During
the Liberal Ministry of 1892-1895 Mr Gladstone (on the
advice, it is said, of Lord Rosebery) had made it a rule
that members of his Cabinet should not hold directorships.
But that was a rather severe ideal, since even Cabinet

396 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
Ministers could not afford whoUy to abandon sources of
private income ; and for the present the rule was not
revived by Lord Salisbury. It remains to be added
that the session was not a success, and Mr Balfour
was taken to task for " airiness " and " inattention
to detail " in his conduct of the business of the House
of Commons. There was more than a hint that, if
he could not do the work successfully, it was quite
possible that Mr Chamberlain could. ^ Two minor matters
helped to make the Government rather less popular in the
country than it had been a year earlier : Mr Walter Long,
President of the Board of Agriculture, decided to make
permanent, and to enforce more strictly, the regulations for
the slaughter of imported cattle at the port of entry ;
and the muzzling of dogs was largely increased owing to
serious outbreaks of rabies in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
A matter of much greater moment, though its full
development was long delayed, was the appointment of
a Royal Commission on the Licensing Laws. We have
already seen a previous Conservative Government attempt
ing, though vainly, to respond to a certain force of moderate
ophaion which was uneasy about the position of the
licensed victualling trade in the community. ^ Under the
Liberal Government the extreme party of abolitionists
held the ground, with their policy of Local Veto. The
complete defeat of that policy now left room once more
for moderate opinion ; and the new government, com
mitted by the earlier attempts to taking some action,
appointed a Royal Commission. Its chairman was Lord
Peel, who had in the previous year resigned the Speaker
ship of the House of Commons. The Commission was
constituted on a new principle, three groups being deliber
ately chosen to represent the licensed trade, temperance
advocates, and men of open mind. Each group consisted
^ See the Punch cartoon, 4th July 1 896.
^ See pages 230 and 270.-

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 397
of eight men. The most prominent and capable members
of the Commission were Lord Peel and Lord Windsor
among the neutrals; the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Mr T. P. Whittaker and Mr W. S. Caine among the
temperance men ; and Mr North Buxton and Mr George
Younger among the representatives of the trade.
One decision the Govemment had taken at a time when
the excitement about the Jameson Raid obscured it from
the popularity it would have enjoyed. It was the decision
to permit an advance up the Nile for the reoccupation of
part of the Soudan. Events which brought forward the
possibility of an expedition have already been mentioned.^
The event which now caused the Government to reverse
its decision of the previous autumn was the crashing defeat
of Italian forces by Abyssinian troops at Adowa. In
the rearrangement of territory after the withdrawal of
Egyptian forces from the Soudan, Italy had acquired the
district of Massowah, on the Red Sea ; and her defeat
seemed likely to bring the dervishes down in an attempt
to occupy the whole province. The desire to assist Italy
by causing a diversion of dervish forces was given by the
Government as the second of the reasons for sanctioning
an expedition. The first was merely stated as " the advice
of the mUitary authorities in Egypt." It is more than
likely that a consideration of some weight in the giving of
that advice was a French advance in the Soudan by way of
Darfur, one of the provinces which the Khalifa had
abandoned. The resentful surprise in England when Cap
tain Marchand was found two years later at Fashoda, would
have been less bitter if more attention had been paid in
1896 to this move on the part of France. Sir Charles
DUke who, after six years' withdrawal, had returned to
the House of Commons at the election of 1892, as Member
for the Forest of Dean, spoke in the House of the French
advance, but no one else outside official circles appeared to
' See p. 375.-

398 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
attach any importance to it. In Egypt itself France took
the anticipated line of opposing and hampering the British
decision. For the purposes of the expedition it was pro
posed to allot a sum of half-a-mUlion from the Egyptian
Treasury. But access to Treasury accumulations could
only be granted by the authority of the International
Commissioners of the Debt. A majority of four to two
of commissioners agreed to the payment of the sum,
but the two dissentients, the French and the Russian
representatives, brought an action in the Mixed Tribunal
of First Instance at Cairo, and obtained a verdict
that the withholding of their consent was sufficient to
prevent the payment of the sum ; the verdict was upheld
on appeal. The British Government, desiring nothing
better, repaid at once into the Egyptian Treasury the
sum of £515,000, and also advanced a further sum of
£800,000 at 2| per cent, for the expedition. But for
the Franco-Russian intervention it would have been
difficult for Great Britain to undertake so thoroughly
the conduct of the affair. The expedition was com
manded by Sir Herbert Kitchener, who knew his ground.^
He had been continuously with the Egyptian army
for fourteen years, and since 1888 had been, first as
Adjutant-General and then as Sirdar, the maker of its
new qualities. Early in the expedition he laid his plans
to " blood " his men with a battle. The difficulty was
to make sure of a downright engagement with the
dervishes, but locating them at last, at Firket, he made
a masterly night march in two columns, which converged
with complete success upon the enemy. The dervishes
were routed with heavy loss, and the Egyptian forces
were put in heart to withstand a somewhat trying summer
of cholera, and of heavy storms, which damaged the railway
commimications. Nothing occurred to hinder Kitchener's
plans, and Dongola was occupied on 23rd September.
'See page 133.

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 399
The summer in England was abnormally hot and dry.
It was full of sporting interests, beginning with the
winning of the Derby by Persimmon, the Prince of Wales's
horse. It was the first time that the Prince had won the
Derby, and the popularity of the event was immense. The
dryness of the air favoured large scores in cricket, and a
reputation was made in this year which seemed likely to
rival in interest that of Dr W. G. Grace, who had achieved
in 1895 the feat of reaching his hundredth century in first-
class cricket. Prince Ranjitsinhji, a young Indian who
was in residence at Cambridge, shared with Dr Grace in
1896 the idolisation of cricket crowds. A less pleasant
incident of cricket was the heated debate aroused
by the action of the Cambridge eleven during the uni
versity match of this year, in bowling deliberate " no-
balls " for tactical reasons. All sorts of persons rushed
into the fray of deciding whether this was, or was not,
sportsmanlike. The affair itself mattered less than the
revelation which it produced of the place sport was
occupying in the national life. Observant philosophers
attributed this to the reign of commerce and machinery.
The individual, they said, withered at the counting-house
and the factory, but returned to his own stature at cricket
or cycling. Other philosophers discerned the new force
less in the active pursuit of sports than in the looking-on
of crowds. Facilities of transport, easier earnings, and
an easier inclination to spend them, combined with the
increasing distribution of cheap newspapers to make
sporting experts of even the most sluggish members of
the public.
The number of cheap newspapers had increased this
year by the addition of one that was soon to become by far
the most prominent of them aU. The Daily Mail was
first published in the spring of 1896. It was founded by
Mr Alfred Harmsworth, who had made a large fortune out
of a penny weekly paper. Answers. He now saw that there

400 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
was no reason whatever to suppose that only the Radical
working man wanted to have a daUy paper for a half
penny. He therefore offered a Conservative newspaper
for a halfpenny ; and, with that rehance upon the profits
of enormous sales which had made the success of the
penny weekly papers he promised his readers no less
adequate and no less distinguished foreign correspondence
than was published by the papers which cost a penny, or
even by the paper which cost threepence. They could
at the same time depend on no less keen a scent for the
exciting and the amusing than the existing halfpenny
papers had accustomed them to expect ; whde a general
Conservative tone would make the excitement a little
more reputable. It was, as events proved, the final word
in a cheap Press.
A grave result of the heat of the summer was a water
famine in the East End of London. Fortunately the
fears which it caused of a serious spread of disease were not
realised ; but the danger was no imaginary one, and the
mere inconvenience of the faUure of supply was great.
Naturally the incident revived the question of the purchase
of the water undertakings of London by the County
Council. The piecemeal system had come to a serious
breakdovm. But the probable cost of taking over the
various companies was put by some experts at no less
than thirty millions, and this was a daunting sum. The
County Council did deposit this year a Bill for the purpose.
The companies, however, were wise enough to profit by
the year's experience ; and they created a new system of
inter-communication between their various supplies, which
rendered an acute water famine in any single district much
less likely, and so removed a source of friction with the
public. In the absence of such friction they loiew that the
municipalisation of their undertakings was but a remote
possibUity. Some uneasiness was arising about the state
of local taxation all over the country. The general local

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 401
debt was put at over two hundred and two mUlions,
and only fifty-six mdhons of this sum were in directly
remunerative undertakings, such as gas and water
supply. Nor was it only the amount of debt which
was being criticised. The more penetrating comment
was that the incidence of local taxation had never been
properly worked out, and that there had been no at
tempt to redistribute the pressure of the swiftly growing
burden. At any rate, as the London County CouncU, in
its short career, had already amassed a debt of thirty-
eight and a half millions, the London Water Companies
had no great fear of compulsory purchase. The councd
had enough to do in defending its existing enterprises,
especially the Works Department, which was accused of
spending more than contractors would have asked for
its undertakings, and also of choosing the jobs which
would be most likely to tum out well financially, leaving
the others to the contractors.
During the summer there was a murder trial which has
to be mentioned for the quality rather than the extent of
the public interest in it. It was the trial of a woman
named Dyer for killing chUdren put out " to nurse " with
her. It drew attention to the horrors of baby-farming ;
and the general conscience was so much stirred that other
problems of slum childhood received more attention than
might otherwise have been given them. Poor Law
schools feU under the strong condemnation of a comnuttee
appointed to inquire into them, and it was decided that
the children should be placed under the new education
authorities, as soon as these were set up. An experiment
by the Chorlton Board of Guardians, in Lancashire — a
" model vUlage " for boarding-out woridiouse chUdren,
consisting of sixteen cottages accommodating nearly thr6e
hundred chUdren, with a swimming bath for their use, and
workshops for teaching carpentry, bootmaking and
plumbing — ^was started in September ; and other towns,
2C

402 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
such as Sheffield, made the same experiment in a less
costly way by taking houses in different parts of
the town, and placing pauper children in them. The
Dyer case had for the moment made the boarding-out of
chUdren rather unpopular. The case had nothing to do
with Poor Law chUdren, but it created an uneasiness about
placing children in any circumstances except those of
direct public control. Early in the following year a new
Poor Law Board, for superintending matters connected
with pauper chddren, was set up as a sub-department of
the Local Govemment Board.
When the autumn revived political interest, the Liberal
party had to choose a new leader. Lord Rosebery had
had enough in two years of leading a party which found
him light, and which he found preposterously heavy.
The course taken on his resignation showed how deep
was the disintegration of the Liberal party since the re
tirement of Mr Gladstone had removed the bond of personal
loyalty to him. At the time of his retirement the party
had been in office, and the choice of its next leader, being
the choice of a Prime Minister, had been the business of
the Crown, and not of the party. Now that the party
had to find a leader, the case was seen to be very different.
After these two years it would have been impossible to
propose a peer again, and so Lord Spencer missed finally
the chance, which most people thought should have been
his, beyond question, on Mr Gladstone's resignation. In
the Commons it was practically impossible to pass over
Sir WUliam Harcourt ; and yet it was only too well known
that he would not command even a decently unanimous
allegiance. In the end the real difficulty was shirked.
Sir Wdliam Harcourt was chosen leader of the party in
the House of Commons ; and refuge was taken from the
greater problem by the decision that the actual leader of
the party as a whole need not be chosen untU there was
a likelihood of the Liberals coming into power. The

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 403
controversy on the Government's proposals for education
showed no diminution of bitterness. A new line of
criticism suggested that there should be no attempt to
deal with elementary and technical education together.
The latter had been well handled under existing arrange
ments. A report of the Technical Education Board of
the London County CouncU, published in this year, is a
useful guide to the elaborate and successful scholarship
system which had grown up. The first stage was provided
by six hundred scholarships aUotted to elementary schools,
for boys and girls under thirteen years of age, whose parents
had incomes not exceeding £150. These insured free
education for two years at improved secondary or upper
schools, and a money payment of £20 a year. None of
these scholarships went to children of middle-class parents,
and 1"5 chUdren per thousand in the London area had made
this first step. The next was by intermediate scholarships
for boys and girls under sixteen years of age whose parents
had incomes not exceeding £450 a year. They ensured
free education up to the age of nineteen at public schools,
and a money payment of £20 or £30 a year. There were
thirty-five of these scholarships, and only five had gone to
chUdren whose parents' incomes were over £250 a year.
Lastly, there were senior scholarships, carrying free
education through a university course with a payment
of £60 a year. There were also a hundred exhibitions
tenable at evening art schools, and over three hundred
exhibitions for higher training in domestic economy.
This was an example of work now being done aU over the
country, work which in the north especially was trans
forming the lives and prospects of the intelligent workmen.
Curiously enough, it depressed the patient phUosopher
whose writings had their chief influence amongst these
very people. Mr Herbert Spencer finished in this year his
Synthetic Philosophy ; and admitted himself depressed by
the spread of sociahst views of the functions of the State.

404 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
Yet it was his doctrine which, more than anything else,
was sought after by the advanced working men ; and his
phUosophical speculations, never much esteemed by
academic teachers, had their real public in the people
whose opinions he disliked. In labour matters generaUy
the year was a quiet one. There were one or two strikes
for Trade Union principles, and at the end of the year the
case of Flood V. Jackson became famous. It was one in
which certain shipwrights engaged on ironwork were dis
charged on the complaint of the ironworkers, and brought
an action against the delegate of the Ironworkers' Union.
The jury held that the latter had acted maliciously ; and
the case was so difficult that the House of Lords, when the
appeal reached it, had to call in the aid of judges of the
High Court. In the end the original verdict was reversed,
and the union won the case. But there could be no
mistaking the reluctance with which this decision was
reached, or the growing dissatisfaction in a large part of
the community with regard to the apparently privileged
position of trade unions under the common law. An
effort towards genuine political recognition of trade
unions was made in this year by Lord James of Hereford,
who introduced a Bdl for the registration of conciliation
boards, and to give the Board of Trade a statutory power
of intervention in labour disputes. MeanwhUe the co
operation movement was in some difficulty. The ex
tension of its productive side had brought it to the
problem of fluctuation of demand, and of the locking-
up of capital, which was imposed by the necessity of
holding goods against a recovery of the market.
The year had a heavy death-roll of notable men.
It included some distinguished artists — ^Lord Leighton,
master of graceful and delicate opulence in painting
and in personality, and Sir John MUlais, one of
the pre-Raphaelite group, who had found his brush
not incapable of command of a popular style. The

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 405
death of these two men left academic art in England
singularly bare and lifeless in the face of the newer
generation of painters. Another artist who died this
year was George du Maurier ; he had brought Punch
into true relation with an altering social structure by
giving to satire of Society tricks and fads and changes of
view that prominence which Leech and Charles Keene had
given entirely to middle-class foibles. In October died
William Morris. His difficulty in associating himself
with the labour movement of the last eight or nine years
gave some colour to the criticism that his socialism was
rather a sentimental form of protest against the ascendancy
of the commercial spirit than a trae political conviction.
But the profound Influence he exercised was easy to
recognise ; and, though his own manufactures were too
costly to reach any but those of considerable means, his
gospel of design had already modified the taste of even
suburban furnishers. Archbishop Benson, while on a
visit to Mr Gladstone at Hawarden, died suddenly in a
pew in church. His one outstanding action, the trial of the
Bishop of Lincoln, was an error ; but he had otherwise
filled his throne with dignity and grace. He was apt to be
misled by picturesque possibUities, and in this year had
been engaged in the rather unwise movement to try to
obtain from the Vatican a recognition of Anglican orders
of priesthood. Some of the High Church leaders had
been persuaded that the attempt might meet with unex
pected success. The Papal Bull published in September
was a perfectly conclusive refusal of recognition ; and
Archbishop Benson had to content himself with giving the
English Church such consolation as might be found in the
fact that, as he put it, " InfallibUity had this time ventured
on giving its reasons." The appointment of his successor
revived for a moment ecclesiastical bitternesses. Dr
Temple, Bishop of London, was nominated. He had been
one of the authors of Essays and Reviews, and there were

406 JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS [1896
many who gravely questioned his orthodoxy. He had,
during his rule of the London see, shown in the matter of
the reredos at St Paul's an inclination to override doctrinal
controversies, and anxious Evangelicals believed that as
Archbishop he would still further damp down anti-
Ritualist feeling.
One of those extraordinary incidents in which London
delights, as revelations of the crude romance which can
lurk in a large city, occurred in October. It suddenly
became known that a Chinaman named Sun Yat Sen was
being imprisoned with a high hand in the house of the
Chinese Legation. He had in fact been ten days in durance
before he was able to communicate with friends, who took
the story at once to the Foreign Office. Lord Salisbury
represented to the legation that, whatever complaints it
might have against the man, it was impossible to acqui
esce in the bland kidnapping which had been practised.
The legation, shrugging its shoulders at the strange con
cerns of Western civUisation, released its captive. Little
was said of any charges against him ; it was only under
stood that it was obnoxious to the Chinese Govemment
that he should be at liberty, and the legation had calmly
taken steps, when an occasion offered itself, to end that
liberty. The 14th November of this year is an important date.
On that day the legal provisions, which enacted that every
mechanical locomotive on a highway must be preceded by
a man walking with a red flag to warn drivers of horse
vehicles, ceased to exist. They had been an absolute bar
to the use of motor cars in this country. That their re
moval would lead to anything like the amazing develop
ments which ensued no one suspected ; the agitation for
removal had made only the feeblest appearance in the
newspapers. The comparatively few people who ready
understood the potentialities of the new invention had
against them almost the whole of the world of wealth and

1896] JAMESON RAID— MOTOR CARS 407
influence. The very persons, who were in a few years to
make a complete surrender to motoring, took towards it
at this time much the same attitude as they had taken
earlier towards cycling. They abused the invasion of the
highways, they sneered at the smells and the noise and
the discomforts of the cars, they predicted death or
mutilation for the drivers of the machines. Those who,
having no horses and no aristocratic traditions, were not
inclined to be angry, were nearly as annoying in their
sniggering disbelief in the power of cars. Amid the
mingled chorus of abuse and jeers preparations were made
for a suitable demonstration, celebrating the end of the
red flag regulations. It was to take the form of a pro
cession of cars from London to Brighton. An enormous
concourse of people watched the start from a hotel in
Northumberland Avenue, and to the crowd's immense
gratification some of the cars failed to start at all. Others
broke down on the way. Yet enough performed the
journey to put an end to mere cavilling, and at the same
time the confidence of the people who really understood
the new invention was so firm and assured that from
that moment the progress of motor cars in England was
unchecked and rapid.

CHAPTER XIX
1897 : JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES
THE nation came to the celebration of the second
Jubilee in a different spirit from that in which it
approached the first. It may be said that Queen
Victoria was herself the centre of the loyal enthusiasm
of 1887, and that in 1897 the toast was rather " Our
Noble Selves." The display of mihtary contingents from
all over the world was far more elaborate than in 1887 ;
while the crowning glory of the second celebration was the
naval review at Spithead, the triumphant exhibition of the
massive results of the advanced naval policy of the pre
ceding years. The colonial representatives were also more
deliberately brought into the foreground. To make a
broad distinction, the JubUee of 1887 was royal, and the
affectionate participation of Europe in doing honour to a
revered sovereign was the keynote ; the Jubilee of 1897
was imperial, and the source of pride our vast territory
and our possessions in men and money.
The year began in a singularly bad spirit with the Welsh
slate quarry dispute. The quarrying system was a curious
one, which had hitherto given the men no small share in
the control. The quarries in question belonged to Lord
Penrhyn, but the custom of working them had been to sell
to contractors the right of removing the slate. Direct
relations between the workmen and the owner's manager
had, however, been maintained, by the existence of a men's
committee ; so that, in spite of the contracting system,
the men were in the last resort Lord Penrhyn's men. In
September of 1896 the men had complaints to make
408

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 409
against contractors, and had appealed for the establish
ment of a new system in the quarries. Lord Penrhyn did
not agree to this ; and, thinking it necessary to take some
forcible step to insist upon his attitude, he suspended
seventy-one of the men. In effect, as these were the men
who had been prominent in stating the workmen's case,
he suspended the committee. Later on he locked out the
whole body of quarrymen. The dispute became at once
extremely bitter. Lord Penrhyn refused to have any
thing more to do Avith a committee, and the men, whose
system was, after all, older than Trade Unionism, were
indignant at his adoption of the ordinary attitude of a
fighting employer, and his treatment of their committee
as if it involved a case of recognition of Trade Union
representation. The dispute had elements which made it
more of a deadlock than even the most obstinate of dis
putes had been hitherto. Firstly, Lord Penrhyn declined
flatly the offer of the Board of Trade to intervene ; secondly,
the quarrying was highly skilled work, and there could be
no cutting of the knot by importing labour ; thirdly, the
quarries suffered no injury from being left unworked (as
coal-mines, for instance, suffer), and therefore one power
ful inducement to settle the dispute was lacking. The
struggle was made the subject of debate in the House of
Commons early in the session, but no good came of the
discussion. Even those whose natural instinct in any
labour quarrel lay on the masters' side found it difficult
to defend Lord Penrhyn, and had to content themselves
with a general feeling that everyone concerned was be
having badly. ^ But the men's case was both skUfuUy
and inspiringly presented in England, and a relief fund
was organised, which enabled them to hold out far longer
than was expected.
Apart from this, the year at its beginning was of good
promise. British relations with France were believed to
' See, e.g.. The Times, 5th January 1897.

410 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
be improving. A terrible disaster to a great liner, the
Drummond Castle, off the coast of Brittany, had brought
into evidence the heroism of the Bretons ; and the result
had been a softening of international feeling. Even in
Egypt signs were perceived of the passing away of irrita
tion. The resentment aroused by the German Emperor's
telegram to President Kruger had subsided in the prudent
silence which he had since observed. Although there was
anxiety enough about the Transvaal in official quarters,
where Kruger's purchase of armaments and approaches
to certain European Powers were seen as an assertion of
independence, the public had in its easy way forgotten its
wrath ; and was suggesting that the Raid prisoners might
now be released, and the affair passed over. As for
Parliament, no doubt the Govemment would have learned
its lesson from the previous year, and would be wise
enough not to attempt too large or too disturbing a
programme. The new Education Bill certainly looked
lighter than its predecessor ; it was quite a short measure,
dealing only with the gift of State aid to the voluntary
schools. While maintaining the principle of drawing the
aid from the taxes, and not from the rates, the Govemment
met some of the criticism of its supporters in the previous
year by making the amount of the grant five shiUings
instead of four shillings. The Bill encountered none of
the trouble inside the Cabinet and the party with which
the BiU of 1896 had had to struggle, and it was passed.
So was the Law of Evidence Amendment BUl, by which
prisoners were allowed to give evidence on oath ; those
who expressed fear of great change being wrought in the
character of a trial were met with the answer, that in effect
the statements which prisoners were already free to make
had great weight with a jury, and it would be all to the
good that they should have the sanction and the restraint
of being made on oath. In other ways the criminal law
was at the time being reconsidered ; the movement for

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 411
a court of criminal appeal was revived — cases on the
capital charge, however, were proposed to be excluded
from the court's power — and a committee presided over
by Mr Asquith to inquire into prison administration re
ported in June. It found great changes for the better,
but expressed the wish for more elasticity, more variation
in the treatment of prisoners, amounting even to separate
prisons and systems for the habitual offender and the
more incidental criminal.
The great measure of the session, the Workmen's Com
pensation Bill, would have appeared to the onlooker quite
as full of danger as the Education Bill had been in the
previous year. It embodied a fairly drastic new principle.
Under the existing law a workman, in order to obtain
compensation for injuries caused during his employment,
had to prove that they were due to negligence on the part
of his employer or a fellow-workman, and had also to be
free himself of any charge of contributory negligence. By
the new Bill the whole range of accidents came under an
automatic system of compensation. It was only by a
modification introduced in committee that the employer
was allowed to set up a defence against claims. Com
pensation was placed, in case of death, at three years'
wages or £150, whichever was the larger, with a maximum
payment of £300 ; and in case of disablement, at a weekly
payment of half the wages the worker earned, with a
maximum of £1 a week. It was in many respects an
astonishing BiU . Hard as it was, for instance, that possible
cases of contributory negligence should be included, the
Government risked the hardships in order to keep the
BiU workable, and close the door against the more stulti
fying kinds of litigation. It was no wonder that Tories
asked themselves what they were coming to, nor that the
usual answer to the question was that they were being
swaUowed by Mr Chamberlain. For the present the BUl
was confined to workmen employed in raUways, factories.

412 JUBILEE POMPS ANT) VANITIES [1897
mines, quarries, engineering works, and docks. However,
this was a wide enough range to cause masters to speak
very strongly about the " charge on industry " ; and in the
broadest sense this was in fact the first time that industry,
and not the profits of industry, was made to bear a
statutory burden of responsibUity. The previous Em
ployers' LiabUity Acts had all proceeded upon the basis
of some tort for which employers could be sued, merely
enlarging the list of torts. But the Workmen's Com
pensation Act made the employer liable for compensation
for accidents which were inseparable from the employ
ment, and not necessarily due to any shortcoming either
in fellow-workmen or in machinery or plant. It gave
a proper occasion for raising again the problem of
lead-poisoning, phosphorus-poisoning in match-maldng,
diseases of the lungs from file-cutting, etc. Mr H. J.
Tennant, who had been secretary to the departmental
committee on lead-poisoning, and was chairman of a
simUar committee on dangerous trades, which was sitting
at this time, moved an instraction to include the victims
of various industrial diseases in the Compensation Bill.
But in view of the strong opposition which the Govern
ment had already to face on their own side, such an ex
tension was hardly to be accepted. After aU, the Bill
as it stood was an immense advance.
Not the least interesting incident of the session was
provided by an announcement which Mr Balfour made,
almost casually, in reply to a question as to a possible in
clusion of Ireland under the Agricultural Rating x\ct. Mr
Balfour answered that, as there were no county councUs
in Ireland, there was no such means as the Local Taxation
Exchequer Account provided in England for supplementing-
the remitted rates. But, he went on to say, a large pay
ment would be made by the Exchequer, not merely to put
agricultural rating in Ireland on the same footing as in
England, but to aUow for the landlord in Ireland not

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 413
being, as such, rated at aU. Thus the way would be
cleared, he added, for an Irish Local Govemment BiU
without fear of over-taxation of landlords. This was a
rather sweeping instalment of the " alternatives to Home
Rule," and the announcement called forth sharp criticism.
Mr Balfour, the Conservatives thought, had done enough
for Ireland in 1890. His Congested Districts Board had
worked energetically, and the principle involved in it was
more to the taste of Conservatives than was any form
of local government. Indeed, the principle was being
applied unofficially in Scotland to meet the crofters'
grievances. Home industries were being encouraged by
landlords and by committees of ladies all over Scotland,
who made a market in London and elsewhere for cottage
products, and so helped the crofters and cottars to earn
the living which their holdings had ceased to provide,
or had never provided. The year 1897 saw Harris tweeds
and homespuns becoming a craze in England, and house-
parties for shooting felt it a duty to be scented with a
mild flavour of peat-reek.
|.,,The retrospects of domestic affairs, indulged in as
the JubUee approached, are peculiarly interesting. The
previous Jubilee had produced a summing-up of the enor
mous advances in invention, means of communication,
and all the mechanism of modern life. On the present
occasion reflection was rather directed to changes in
habits, and points of view regarding social responsibilities.
Thus the change in the business world which was most
noted was the greatly increased value attached to statistics,
the advantage taken of information about the world's
markets, and in general the tendency to set up a common
stock of knowledge for the use of the trading intellect.
In internal government the new cult of pubhc health was
singled out for comment. It is not without significance that,
whereas the Prince of Wales had proposed to commemorate
the earlier JubUee by the foundation of the Imperial

414 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
Institute, he suggested as the memorial of the second
JubUee the establishment of the Hospital Fund for London
which still bears his name. We have already seen the
new cult at work in connection with the periodical alarms
of cholera or fever, and in the attitude towards Pasteur
and Koch. The feeling was strong that remedies, instead
of being the main point, were rather a confession of failure ;
and that the medical faculty was better occupied in pro
ducing healthy conditions than in waiting to deal with
disease when it appeared. The campaign against slums,
against adulteration of food, against over-pressure in
factories, against sweating, now included, in alliance with
those pioneers who assailed these things because they were
morally wrong, the new fighters who said that they were
stupid and suicidal, and gained thereby the ear of many
who would have stood aside from what they considered the
sentimentalities of the earlier efforts. Cleanliness and
the ideal of physical fitness were vital elements in the new
doctrine of efficiency ; and though the desire for fitness
was producing an exaggerated passion for exercise, in some
ranks of the community, it had vastly improved the
standards of amusement and occupation. It was easy
to see, and to deplore, the fact that the new spirit could
not consort with the dignities and the ceremoniousness of
other days. Rotten Row of a moming now was full of
tweed jackets and bowler hats ; and the cycling clubs that
streamed out of the large towns on a Saturday afternoon
gave vent to their high spirits in a manner which pro
foundly offended the country gentleman. Authority was
not what it had been ; but the collapse of some parts of its
structure had let light in upon regions where at one time
there had been darkness. The great advance of the
serviceableness of electric tramways was promising to
supply one of the solutions of slum problems, which had
found a place in the Housing Commission's recommenda
tions. Improvements in cheap locomotion might be used

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 415
to break up congested areas, by enabhng the workman to
live farther from his work ; and the opening of the Black-
wall Tunnel in this year — an undertaking by the London
County Council which not even its severest critics con
demned — ^led to the suggestion that the councU's greatest
service might weU be to increase the traffic facUities of
London. One retrospect made at this time, though not suggested
by the Jubilee, is of some historical interest. Sir Isaac
Pitman, the inventor of the most successful system of
shorthand, died early in the year ; and the occasion was
taken for the question whether the greater facility for pro
viding verbatim reports of speeches, which had been the
result of his invention, had tended to the clarifying of
politics. When the question was asked, there had not
been time to see that recent developments of the Press were
of a kind to nullify very largely Pitman's invention. The
halfpenny newspaper, necessarily smaller than the penny
paper, had not space to give to verbatim reports of speeches.
Moreover, the public to which it appealed did not, as a
whole, want to read entire speeches ; it wanted to be
given, as briefly as possible, enough of the tenor of the
speech to be able to talk about it. Therefore even if the
invention of shorthand had in the past done anything to
clarify politics, it was already too late to think of it as an
effective force. The halfpenny Press was to be increased,
before many years were over, by the lowering in price and
size of two of the penny moming papers, which had suffered
from the competition of the original halfpenny Press.
That competition was also to act in subtler ways by making
the people who stdl held to penny papers impatient of
long reports. Shorthand had a firm foothold in com
mercial life, and Pitman remained a great inventor ; but
for newspaper purposes his system had already seen its
best days.
Although the populace made this second JubUee much

416 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
more imperial in spirit than the first one, yet to the inner
circle by the throne it was more domestic. The Queen's
age now weighed heavUy upon her. She hardly ever
appeared in public ; and those whom she received in
audience noticed change creeping at last upon the venerable
figure. It had come rather suddenly. It was but three
years since Mr Gladstone, as Prime Minister, had seen her
frequently in audience, and yet, when he was received by
the Queen at Cimiez in the spring of this year he noticed
a great difference. " The Queen's manner," he wrote at
the time, " did not show the old and usual vitality " ; and,
remarking that the Queen's answers in conversation ap
peared to him to be very slight, he adds : "To speak
frankly, it seemed to me that the Queen's peculiar faculty
and habit of conversation had disappeared." ^ Queen
Victoria was now not far from eighty years of age, and such
ceremonies as those of 1887 were out of the question. In
place of the service of that year in Westminster Abbey
a less fatiguing form of thanksgiving was devised, which
spared her even descent from her carriage. The procession
went to St Paul's Cathedral ; and the service was held on
the great west steps, which were massed from top to
bottom with notabilities in uniform. In the centre the
rich copes of archbishops and bishops, and the white
surplices of the choir, climbed the slope from the point
¦at which the Queen's carriage was to stop. The glitter
of equerries, aides-de-camp, and the escort ffiled the level
semicircle facing the steps ; and the immense, glowing
picture was framed by tiers upon tiers of spectators in the
houses overlooking it. The crowd in the streets was not
quite what it had been in 1887. Observers noted that,
whde for three or four days vast numbers of people had
paraded the decorated route of the procession, there was
not on the moming of the procession that early rush for
places which had been so remarkable ten years before.
' Morley's Life of Gladstone, iii. 524.

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 417
There was certainly much of the flatness of a repetition.
Yet London and the whole country kept holiday to the
full. The Queen gallantly bore her share in the festivities,
and gave a garden-party at Buckingham Palace, which
was chiefly remembered as drawing off so many Members
of Parliament from their duties that the Govemment
suffered three successive defeats in the division lobbies.
But the great event of the JubUee celebrations was the
naval review. Assembled for it at Spithead were a
hundred and sixty-five warships, the fruit of ten years'
costly work — the navy of the new spirit. It was the Home
Fleet only, no ships having been recalled from foreign
stations. Next to the ships themselves, the presence of the
colonial representatives at the review was the centre of
interest. Mr Chamberlain had announced at the opening
of the session that the Prime Ministers of the self-governing
colonies had been invited to the Jubilee, not only to take
part in the celebrations, but also to confer with the Govern
ment on imperial questions. Their visit was made of
much greater importance than it had been in 1887. Mr
Chamberlain had struck a new note in his administration
of the Colonial Office, and the colonies were no longer
regarded as possessions making somewhat exacting de
mands upon the mother country's provision for defence,
but as sources of power and energy.^ The Colonial
Conference showed the new feeling in an absence of the
somewhat barren amiabdity of the proceedings of 1887.
Thus the discussion of naval affairs was accompanied by
a warning to Australia to beware of her inclination to
think of her contribution to imperial naval expenditure
as necessardy entitling her to a kind of private sentry-go
on her coasts. Mr Chamberlain appealed to the Premiers
to remember that legislation in the colonies against
immigrant coloured labour could not be made a local
question in an empire which had responsibUities to
1 Mr Chamberlain at the Colonial Institute, 31st March 1897;
2D

418 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
millions of coloured subjects. A resolution was passed at
the conference in favour of federation, wherever such a
movement was geographically possible ; and an offer by
Canada of a preferential tariff in favour of British trade
led to a complicated discussion of existing fiscal treaties
and most-favoured -nation clauses. The idea of a Customs
Union within the empire was never very far from Mr
Chamberlain's thoughts.
Just as the great days of the Jubilee came to an end,
there appeared in The Times ^ a poem which stirred the
nation to an extraordinary degree. Afire with the pride
of the spectacle of power and majesty, it struck a chord
which prolonged as nothing else could have done the
reverberations of the vibrating national spirit. It was
Mr Rudyard Kipling's Recessional. In that poem,
more than in any of the pomps of the Jubilee days,
history will see represented the spirit of this year. In
a nation which for a century had not had to fight for
its life, which had in that period grown so wealthy that
huge increases in its bdl for armaments were met with
little more than momentary murmurs, what was the true
range of patriotism ? In a community so accustomed to
security, so confident in its material resources of defence,
what was happening to the soul of the people ? To many
it seemed to be growing at once more assertive and less
determined, more demonstrative and less persistent, more
swiftly responsive but more easily diverted in attention.
Mr Kipling had made actual to the English populace
the daily round of far-distant wheels in the machine of
empire. He had created a consciousness of the curious
dullness, which familiarity with catch-words of rule pro
duced in the heart of empire — ^the routine response to
patriotic stimulus, which was ready no response at all.
He now struck this new consciousness a ringing blow.
With an insight brilliantly alert he gave to the pride of the
1 On 17th July i897<

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 419
moment exactly the right tum for the moment. On one
side of the modem mind, the dislike of ostentatious
superiority, the worship of fitness rather than superficial
appearances. Recessional went to the very heart of the
matter. To another side, the side of easy lip-patriotism,
it was a warning. To the people as a whole it em
phasised in the most remarkable way the feeling that
the displays of naval and military power were a fresh
start. A start for what end ? That, apparently, did
not matter. The point was that we were not, as in 1887,
to review achievements, and sun ourselves in them ; we
were to set our faces forward.
On the north-west frontier of India operations had
been undertaken against the warlike tribes inhabiting the
mountain regions between India and Afghanistan, and
were proving difficult and dangerous. The mountaineers,
though not at any point in the campaign a really large
force, made skilful use of the baffling nature of their
country, and the heroism of British and Indian troops
was severely tried. As the year advanced, temper
was rising again in South African affairs. In Aprd Sir
Alfred Milner, a young man who had hitherto been knovni
only for his work in connection with Lord Cromer's re-
establishment of the finances of Egypt, and as Chairman of
the Board of Inland Revenue, left England to succeed Sir
Hercules Robinson as High Commissioner of Cape Colony.
Such an appointment must obviously have special reasons ;
they were found by the general public in a belief that Sir
Alfred Milner went out as Mr Chamberlain's mouthpiece.
The nature of his instructions was guessed at when
Mr Chamberlain, at a dinner to Sir Alfred Mdner on his
departure, spoke of the hope of persuading the two white
races in South Africa to live together in goodwiU, but
also spoke with firmness of the Convention of London, and
of the British as " the paramount power in South Africa."
In July the report of the South Africa Committee, ap-

420 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
pointed to inquire into the Raid, was published. Mr CecU
Rhodes had been called as a witness ; Punch's cartoon that
week was of the shade of Warren Hastings meeting Mr
Rhodes at the committee-room door, and saying : " I
succeeded, and was impeached. You fad — and are caUed
as a witness ! " ^ The report laid the responsibUity for the
plans in South Africa, of which the Raid was the premature
revelation, on Mr Rhodes, Mr Beit and Mr Rutherfoord
Harris. It exonerated the High Commissioner and the
Colonial Office of any privity to what was going on, and in
that opinion the four principal Liberal members of the
committee, Sir William Harcourt, Sir Henry Cainpbell-
Bannerman, Mr John Ellis and Mr Sydney Buxton, agreed.
Mr Rhodes was by this time no longer either Premier of
Cape Colony or managing director of the British South
Africa Company. Men condoled with him ; those vast
schemes which had touched the Enghsh imagination
seemed to be driven into abeyance. The publication
of the report was followed within a few days by a
debate in the House of Commons. Certain telegrams
bearing upon Mr Rhodes's position had not been pro
duced. They were in the possession of Mr B. F. Hawksley,
solicitor to the British South Africa Company. He, when
in the witness chair, had declined to produce them ; and
before he was called, Mr Rhodes, who might have been
asked to insist upon their production, had returned to
South Africa. It was believed that the committee had
not full information before them without those tele
grams. Sir WUliam Harcourt and Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman, to whom attack upon this point had been
specially addressed by Mr Phihp Stanhope and Mr
Courtney, denied that there was any reason to suppose that
the telegrams would materially have altered the com
mittee's decision. Mr Chamberlain, free of the accusations
that by the unofficial medium of Miss Flora Shaw, a
* Punch, 6th February 1897;

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 421
special correspondent of The Times, he was secretly in
touch with Mr Rhodes, made his own vigorous defence of
the comnuttee. The feeling behind the attack was not
solely concerned with the committee. It was almost as
much an anxious suspicion that this clearing of reputations
was ready a clearing of the decks for action ; and that
if Mr Chamberlain and Mr Rhodes had not understood
one another before, they did so now. President Kxuger
had sent to the British Govemment a claim for a large
indemnity for the Raid. This " bdl for intellectual and
moral damage " became at once a joke in England ; but
it was a wry joke, and people grew more and more inclined
to say that, if President Kruger was determined not to let
the affair blow over, Mr Rhodes and his friends were not
to be deserted.
" Africa," said Lord Salisbury at the Guildhall banquet
this year, " was created to be the plague of the Foreign
Office." He was not thinking of the Transvaal, which
was the concern of another department. Central Africa,
which a few years earlier had laid Uganda upon the Govern
ment's shoulderi, was now offering a new burden in the
shape of Nigeria. The Royal Niger Company, owing to
the successes of Sir George Goldie in Nupe and Ilorin, was
now within range of the spheres of influence of other
European countries ; and it was therefore becoming im
possible to leave the affairs of their territory any longer
in private hands, capably though the company was being
administered. The massacre of an unarmed British ex
pedition near Benin City had called forth another small
war. French influence was extremely active in regions
bordering on the Niger, and the Foreign Office could not
regard its new tasks with complacency. At the same time
the charges against the administration of the Congo State
became more direct and articulate. The root of the matter
was laid bare m the argument that a country like the
Congo could not by legitimate means be made to produce

422 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
revenue, not only for the cost of administration, but for
enriching exalted persons in Belgium. The virtual closing
of the country to traders of other than Belgian nationahty
was suspicious, and some of the missionaries were giving
terrible accounts of the forcing of the rubber trade. The
trial of Dr Carl Peters in Berlin this year on charges of
excessive cruelty in German East Africa, for which he was
sentenced to be dismissed the service and to pay fines, was
disturbing the general conscience on the conditions of
European rule in Africa.
A curious incident of the year in England was a fresh
onslaught on betting, which threatened at one time to
have astonishing results. The Anti-Gambling League had
brought an extremely bold test case. Its secretary, Mr
Hawke, sued a bookmaker named Dunn, and in the result
three judges, including so notoriously sporting a judge
as Mr Justice Hawkins, held that Tattersall's ring was
a " place " within the meaning of the Act of 1853, which
made Ulegal resort to any place for the purpose of betting.
Dunn was merely walking about in the ring at Hurst Park
without any mark of his calling, and therefore the case
appeared to settle the whole question of the legality of
betting. If betting in the ring was illegal, would not
any place where a bet was made become a " place "
under the Act ? It must be said that a number of
sporting people were not sorry to see the attack upon pro
fessional bookmaking. It had spread from horse-racing
to football ; and seemed likely to provide a form of ex
citement which might in the end destroy interest in sport
and athletics, and reduce them to mere means for gambling.
Li a second case, Powell v. Kempton Park Racecourse
Company, the Lord Chief Justice, following the previous
decision, held that the plaintiff was entitled to an injunc
tion restraining the defendants from opening Tattersall's
enclosure ; and the company's defence, that they did not
open it for betting purposes and need not be held to know

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 423
what went on in it, was in vain. The situation promised
to become farcical, when the Court of Appeal (the case
reached that court in a month, which gives some measure
of the place of sport in English affairs) reversed the Lord
Chief Justice's decision. One Lord Justice in the Appeal
Court still held to it that every place where a bet was made
was a " place " within the Act, not shrinking from the
logical conclusion that this would render every private bet
illegal. The case was carried to the House of Lords, and
there went frnally against the Anti-Gambling League, by
a majority of eight to two of the law lords. The vexed
question of the meaning of the word " place " in the Act
of 1853 was settled by the House of Lords' judgment,
which ruled that the word must be held to apply to some
" house, room or office," or place of that kind, and could
not fairly be applied to a quarter of an acre of ground on a
racecourse. The Penrhyn quarry dispute lasted until nearly the end
of August. Helped by private collections all over the
country, and also by funds raised by Welsh choirs,
the men had held out for almost a year. In the
settlement which was reached at last they won the right
of combination in a minor degree, but Lord Penrhyn
carried his decision to allow no general quarry committee,
and to refuse to receive any complaints except from
individuals, or from a deputation of the particular class
of men professing a grievance — ^in a word, his refusal to
recognise the men as a body corporate. The men also
obtained the stoppage of the practice of sub-letting con
tracts, which had led to a sweating of wages. Meanwhde
a serious strike of engineers had broken out ; the London
men demanded an eight -hours day. The masters replied
by discharging 25 per cent, of their men ; and the masters
in the north-east of England and on the Clyde, in order to
stand by the London masters, discharged men in the same
proportion, with the intention of burdening the trade

424 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
union with out-of-work pay to a degree which would
prevent the union's resources being exclusively at the
service of the London men. Then the union called out
all its men in the trade, and by the beginning of July the
dispute, which had started in London in May, had reached
very grave proportions. Seventy thousand men were on
strike ; and the strike came at a time when the works were
full of orders ; electric tramways were spreading with great
rapidity, and there was a vast quantity of work to be done
in equipping them. The strike was a determined one ;
the trade union held out in a maimer which caused the
masters to assert that it must be using for strike pay
funds accumulated for other purposes, such as super
annuation pay. It was suggested also that, in order
to keep the fimds up, the union was winking at the retum
to work of some of its men. In December two proposals
for a settlement, reached by conference, were put to a
ballot of the men — ^the first that the masters' assertion of
unquestioned control of their works should be accepted,
and the second that there should be a provisional arrange
ment for a fifty-one-hours week, as approximating to the
men's demand. Mr John Bums (himself an engineer) and
other leaders of the strike introduced into the eight-hours-
day demand an offer to take only one meal-time in the day.
The proposals were rejected by an overwhelming majority
of the men, and the strike continued. There were
threatenings of strikes among the railwaymen and the
cotton employees as well, but these were fortunately
averted. Labour was concentrating its aims anew, after
its defeats at the pods two years previously. The Trade
Union Congress of 1897 put forward a very large pro
gramme, which included, in addition to the eight-hours day,
the taxation of ground values, the limitation of shop hours,
reform of the law of conspiracy, the abolition of child
labour under the age of fifteen and of night labour for all
persons under the age of eighteen, and a number of detaUed

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 425
matters of inspection and supervision of industry. The
nulder form of comment on this list was that it lacked
legislative definiteness ; but the social legislation of the
past years was producing a sharper comment to the effect
that Labour was acquiring a privileged position in the
community. The annual Labour report of the Board of
Trade spoke of general diminution of hours of work, and
general increase of wages, including even the agricultural
labourer. The case of the smaU employer was felt to be
growing hard ; but it was not perceived that the economic
changes, which had drawn so much accumulated capital
into manufacture, must necessarily alter the position of the
small employer. He could not regard his returns in the
same light as a man could, to whom they were but dividend
on money invested. However, some of the conferences
of Labour, such as those of the Miners, the Co-operative
Societies, the Friendly Societies, suggested the comforting
comment that Labour had more interests and more voices
than its most advanced spokesmen represented ; in the
multiplicity some safety for the employers was felt to be
implied. A suggestion was made, upon the publication in
July of a Home Office report on some dangerous trades —
the handling of horse-hair and rags, especially — ^that the
trade unions might do good by calling the attention of
workmen to the perils of carelessness in such trades, and
educating the men to attend to the precautions specified in
Home Office rales. But for the moment the unions could
hardly deal with more than their confficts with capital.
The year witnessed two notable events in the history
of art in England. The Tate GaUery was opened, and for
the first time the work of modern English painters, who
had led a genuinely indigenous movement, became an
acknowledged portion of the fabric of British art. In the
main the collection housed in the GaUery was, indeed, a
thoroughly official collection; the Royal Academy held
sway, and at once began the policy of using the GaUery as

426 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
a repository of works bought under the Chantrey Bequest.
Yet even this was not altogether a disadvantage ; the ac
cumulation in public of the fruits of a fund administered in
a spirit completely at variance with the most enlightened
and most informed views of the day was a demonstration
of the narrowness of the Academy's range. The other
event of the year was the passing of the famous Wallace
Collection into the possession of the nation. It had long
been known as one of the greatest collections in existence,
the main portion consisting of French furniture and
decorative objects, and French pictures and sculpture ;
there was also a choice collection of armour of all periods
and countries, Japanese, Indian and Arabian, as well as
European. The whole had been collected by Sir Richard
Wallace, who was supposed to be the natural son of the
fourth Marquis of Hertford, and so grandson of the
notorious Marquis, who was the original of Thackeray's
Lord Steyne and Disraeli's Lord Monmouth. For this
account of his parentage there is no known authority.
Sir Richard Wallace, who had been Lord Hertford's con
fidential secretary and adopted son, lived all his life in
Paris, modest and retiring, but known to connoisseurs as
perhaps the greatest collector of the age. At the time
of his death in 1890 there was some speculation as to
the future of the collection, which it was believed he had
destined for the British nation. But he died without
making a will, and his treasures passed absolutely to
Lady Wallace. In 1897 she died, and it was found that
she had done what he had been expected to do. After
some discussion as to the suitable housing of the coUection
the Govemment acquired Hertford House, in Manchester
Square ; and were thus able to display the wonderful things
in the tovim mansion of the famUy from which their
collector had derived his fortune.
One of the results of the conflict of opinion on the
assistance to be given to Voluntary schools was to bring

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 427
out the great elasticity with which the Education Acts were
now being administered. The strides made by technical
education have already been mentioned. It was basing
itself on the broadest view of its objects, and a report
pubhshed by the Technical Education Board of the London
County Council early this year lays down, as principles
of the Board's work, that the early stages of scientific
training must be purely educational, not technological, and
that the only lasting commercial value of technical instrac
tion was in its being given to well-educated nunds. The
same conclusions, though in a negative form, were really
inherent in the neat criticism made by The Times on the
proceedings of an Intemational Conference on Technical
Education, held in June. The criticism was that in this
country the quality of technical education in the upper
grades was not high enough, whde the quantity of it in
the lower grades was wasteful.^ The hope of those inter
ested in national education rested largely in the Higher
Grade Board Schools, institutions which had grown up
quietly under the Education Acts, though they had not
been contemplated by the framers of the Acts. There were
now sixty of them in Great Britain, fifty-five being under
School Board management. The lower classes in these
schools were taught on the lines of the upper standards
of a public elementary school ; the higher classes were
taught as an " organised science school " under the Science
and Art Department of the Board of Education. Such
instruction lasted for three years, and included science,
mathematics, drawing, manual training, English, and at
least one foreign language. AU the schools were large
ones, accommodating from five hundred to two thousand
children each, and all had been filled as soon as they were
opened, thus proving themselves the answer to a real
demand. They supphed what nothing else supphed, an
extension of elementary education, by which scholars of
1 The Times, 17th June 1897.

428 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
any merit could pass on without a break to opportunities
of mental equipment. The Science and Art Department
usually bore a considerable share of the expense of the
higher classes. But there was a hostde feeling among
ratepayers against the schools. True, in some cases it
died down after a few years' experience of the results;
but this was not a general rule. Moreover, there were
a very large number of small country grammar schools,
depending for their prosperity upon the fees paid by the
small tradesmen or the artisans, who liked their chUdren
to go to better institutions than the elementary schools.
These now found the higher grade schools good enough
for their purpose, and saved themselves grammar school
fees. The grammar schools consequently complained of
unfair competition, and found no insignificant body of
ratepayers ready to join in the charge that higher educa
tion could not be given by the Board schools without
misappropriation of rates.
The new spirit in the stamping out of disease by attacking
its direct and contributory causes was active this year, both
in matters of housing and of water-supply, owing to out
breaks of typhoid fever at Maidstone and King's Lynn; and
also in drastic orders for the muzzling of dogs. The Gk)vern-
ment pursued this latter policy in the face of grumbling,
which even amounted, it was thought, to a decrease of the
Unionist vote at some bye-elections. Respectable people,
who could see readily enough that the application of severe
sanitary regulations in poor quarters was wise, refused to
have severe regulations applied in another matter to
themselves. Yet the medical authorities, and Pasteur
himself, had asserted over and over again that in any
country a universal muzzling order, combined with
measures of quarantine for all imported dogs, would
entirely put an end to rabies. The Government now
took the bold course, and issued a universal muzzhng
order in Aprd. They could point, before the year was

1897] JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES 429
out, to notable proof of the value of their action. In 1895
there had been over the whole country 608 cases of rabies ;
in 1897 there were only 141. In London alone, where the
London County Council had already achieved some good
results, the cases in 1896 numbered 161, and in 1897 only
29. The previous application of a muzzling order to
Lancashire and Yorkshire ^ had reduced the number of
cases in those counties from 461 In 1895, to 39 in 1896.
Ten years later, as has been remarked earlier in this
volume, England had practically forgotten that^ such a
disease as rabies existed.
The summer of 1897 was the period of the famous rush
to the Klondyke goldfields. It had long been known that
gold was in those regions of the extreme North-West ^ ;
but the appalling difficulties of approach to the country —
access by the almost Arctic rivers and passes being only
possible for a few weeks during the summer — and the
miseries and privations of life there, when once the mines
were reached, had hitherto held back all but the stoutest
pioneers. But now the gold fever broke out, and terrors
could not stand against it. Men poured northward, some
by boat to the Klondyke River, others madly by the land
route through Western Canada. They died in hundreds,
the vast majority of men starting with no knowledge
whatever of the difficulties of the joumey or the
delays to be provided against. Death held the Chilcoot
Pass, as he had never held the most arid waste of Australia
in the days of the gold fever there.
Two events fiUed the newspapers just before Christmas.
One was the death of WiUiam Terriss, an extremely
popular actor of melodrama. He was stabbed as he was
entering the stage-door of the Adelphi Theatre, by a man
who had been disappointed in apphcations for charitable
relief. It was a strange thing that a man who had suffered
in his life so many fictitious violences, should meet his end
1 See page 396. ^ See page 56.

430 JUBILEE POMPS AND VANITIES [1897
by violence. The other event, whde in one sense treated
as comic, was not without serious effect upon the temper
of the country in intemational affairs. The German
Emperor had decided to send a squadron of warships to
China, where some German missionaries had been kUled.
Throughout the year there had been a somewhat un
dignified scramble for advantage in China on the part
of the European Powers, owing to the success of Japan in
forcing open Chinese markets to her trade by operations of
war. On the departure of the German squadron from
Kiel the Emperor charged his brother, Prince Henry of
Prussia, who was in command, to remember that he went
as " the mailed fist " of German authority. Prince
Henry replied in a like strain, to the effect that he would
inscribe his brother's augustness on his banners. England
was very ready to seize upon the ludicrous side of these
exchanges ; but the jesting sprang from the spirit of
suspicion with which Englishmen had regarded every act
of the young Emperor, since his accession to the throne.

CHAPTER XX
1898 : MOSTLY OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS
ENGLAND showed now a singular unconscious
ness of what was at hand ; the army estab
lishment was increased, the navy was strengthened
both in ships and in men ; and never had such increases
been made with less public concern, or less anxiety as to
the need for them.
In truth it was a year of lively interests quite dis
sociated from the main preoccupation of the Govemment.
Some of these interests were other people's business rather
than our own, but that did not prevent us from ex
pressing ourselves about them. In one instance our
expression of opinion undoubtedly did harm ; in another
it did good.
At the beginning of the year France was tom
asunder by the violent controversy which had arisen, a
few months earlier, as to the conviction of Captain Alfred
Dreyfus on a charge of selling French military secrets to
Germany. He had been condemned by court martial, and
was now a prisoner on Devil's Island, the French penal
settlement. Many notable Frenchmen found the convic
tion lying heavy on their consciences. Captain Dreyfus
was a Jew, and there was an uncomfortable fear that
Anti-Semite feeling had counted far too heavily in the
trial, if indeed it had not entirely dictated the proceed
ings. Those who believed in the accused's innocence
thought that the efforts to detect the criminal had
ended somewhat too readily when suspicion pointed to
an officer who was a Jew. The agitation in France rose
431

432 OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS [1898
in January to a dangerous height. One newspaper, Le
Siecle, published in full the text of the indictment against
Captain Dreyfus, which it could not have done unless the
agitation had some supporters in high place in the army.
Another newspaper, L'Aurore, published a tremendous
letter from M. Zola, the novelist, accusing the Govemment,
the judiciary, the police, the heads of the army, and other
national authorities of gross perversion of justice. A
new trial of Captain Dreyfus was demanded. On the
other side, Anti-Semite feeling allied itself with the passion
ate devotion of France to her army ; and all who ventured
to call in question a decision by an army tribunal on an
army case were assailed as traitors of the lowest kind.
English opinion, not at the moment disposed to take
the kindliest views of French affairs, plunged in to
support the champions of Dreyfus ; and when Colonel
Picquart, who had boldly taken the side of those demand
ing revision of the sentence, was placed in retirement,
English criticism grew louder. Profound ignorance of
the facts of the case, and of the procedure of the court
martial, did not prevent people in this country from
confidently expressing their views; and the objection
felt by French people to any reconsideration of an army
verdict found practically no sympathy here. M. Zola
was put on his trial in Paris for his assault upon the
various national institutions, and was sentenced to undergo
one year's imprisonment, and to pay a fine of 3000 francs.
At once people on this side of the Channel, who had no
good word to say for M. Zola as an author, found plenty
to say for him as a martyr. In French eyes the attitude
of Great Britain at this time must have been very offensive,
not so much because of its busybody interference, as
because of its contemptuous dismissal of French suscepti
bilities as to the honour of the army.
But at the height of this controversy a more starthng
event drew off British attention. The United States warship

1898] OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS 433
Maine was sunk by an explosion in Havana harbour ; and
swift as the news itself was the universal conclusion that
war between the United States and Spain would follow.
Those two countries had for some time been on bad terms.
Spain, comparatively poor, and no longer possessing
the strong arm of ancient days, had been straggling
against a revolution in Cuba, which, pitilessly repressed in
a sporadic way, remained vigorous and persistent. The
Cuban revolutionaries had enlisted the sympathy of the
United States ; but Spain, finding her task difficult
enough as it was, did not incline to reply amiably to
intervention by the Americans. The lives of American
citizens in Havana, the seat of the Spanish Govem
ment in Cuba, were considered to be in some
jeopardy when rioting took place there ; the cmiser
Maine was sent to anchor in the harbour for their pro
tection and their refuge in case of necessity. About this
time opinion in the United States was inflamed by the
publication of some unofficial letters written by the Spanish
Minister in Washington, in which he had commented in
undiplomatic language on the relations between the States
and the Cuban insurgents. When the news came of the
sinking of the Maine on 15th February there was probably
not an American in the whole of the States who did not
believe it to be the act of Spaniards — a deliberate and
dastardly act of hostility.
But before war actually broke out, a third shifting of
British interest occurred. The reconquest of the Soudan
was undertaken in good earnest. A year earlier, on 5th
Febraary 1897, Sir Michael Hicks Beach had announced
in the House of Commons the intention of the Govemment
to " give the final blow to the baleful power of the Khalifa."
The year had passed without any very spectacular move
ment. But the railway was pushed forward from Wady
Haifa towards Abu Hamed, a short cut avoiding the bend
of the Nile by Dongola, and on 7th August 1897 Abu Hamed
2e;

434 OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS [1898
was occupied after a sharp fight in which all the dervishes
engaged against the Egyptian troops were either kiUed or
made prisoners. So complete a defeat had its effects at
once. Berber was evacuated by the Khalifa's forces and
occupied by the Egyptians, the advance of the railway
to that point being immediately undertaken. The be
ginning of 1898 brought more exciting news. Kitchener
reported that the dervishes were advancing upon him
from Khartoum. He made ready for them, if they should
choose to be the attackers, and encamped in a strong
position between Berber and the junction of the river
Atbara with the Nile. The Emir Mahmoud brought
12,000 dervishes up to Nakheda, on the Atbara;
as he came no farther, Kitchener, not liking his im
mobility, sent out reconnaissances. Mahmoud was found
in a strong zariba in the bush, and Kitchene'r laid his plans
with caution. On 8th Aprd he attacked, and in forty
minutes Mahmoud himself was a prisoner, 2000 of his
men were dead, and the rest scattered to the desert
perils of privation and thirst. Machine guns, vastly
improved since the days of the earlier Soudan warfare,
accounted now, as later in the year, for the very large
numbers of the slain. News of this battle made real to
people at home the work of reconquest, and during the
summer British reinforcements were despatched to join
the forces under Kitchener's command.
A fortnight later war had formally broken out between
the United States and Spain. The States Senate recog
nised the independence of Cuba, the respective diplomatic
envoys were withdrawn, a squadron of the American fleet
sailed from Key West for Havana, and the whole energy of
the American nation went into pouring troops, regulars
and volunteers, southward to Florida for transhipment to
Cuba. At the same time another Spanish possession,
Manila, was attacked by a squadron which had been at
Hong-Kong. The war has a place in a history of the

1898] OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS 435
Enghsh people, because every phase of it was followed
with the keenest interest here. At times it was a some
what hilarious interest. We had not then had our own
experience of the uncertainties of bombardment with
modem long-range weapons and modem explosives ; so
that the occasional intimations from the Spanish side of
ludicrously smaU results of an apparently terrific bombard
ment (the mule of Matanzas, reported to be the only
casualty of a gun-fire of many hours, became quite famous)
were received with jesting. Moreover, though Admiral
Dewey succeeded in promptly destroying the Spanish
fleet in Manila harbour, the Spaniards showed every
sign of making a good fight elsewhere. Admiral
Cervera succeeded in navigating a fleet right across the
Atlantic and entering Santiago harbour, eluding all the
American warships that were scouring the sea to inter
cept him. No one thought the conflict a level one, but
this achievement somewhat restored the balance for the
moment. Home affairs presented very little of interest. Business
was good on the whole, and the Bankers' Clearing House
returns reached the highest total yet known. Gold imports
had become so large that, besides satisfying the require
ments of other countries, England was at last able to
increase materiaUy her own bullion reserve. It is no
diminution of these evidences of prosperity to find the
Stock Exchange rather less active. There were, as we
shall shortly see, reasons which checked speculation by
the general public. Save for a coal strike in South Wales
there was no serious trade dispute. In science no new
theory or new invention arose to catch the popular mind ;
but for those behind the scenes the advances made in
knowledge of the properties of the Hertzian waves, upon
which wireless telegraphy was founded, were considerable.
Mr W. H. Preece, chief of the engineering department
of the Post Office, and Dr Oliver Lodge were busy with

436 OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS [1898
experiments ; but the experiments which were already
making the name of Marconi famous were meeting with
more obvious success. Parliament met for a session to
which very little attention was paid. The Ministerial
party was again attacked by acute indigestion in assimi
lating Liberal Unionism. Lingering fragments of Mr
Chamberlain's Radicalism were discerned in a BiU de
signed to meet the unwavering hostdity of large numbers
of people to vaccination, by permitting parents to make
a declaration before a magistrate, expressing conscientious
objection to the method of inoculation. His influence,
again, was traced in the introduction of the Irish Local
Govemment BUl, which Mr Balfour had promised. Both
measures were attended with friction throughout their
course. But it was almost entirely parliamentary friction ;
and there was little controversy in the country on domestic
affairs. The Army Estimates showed an increase of
21,739 men in the establishment ; the Navy Estimates
reached almost twenty-four million pounds, and provided
for fresh construction of ships and for an increase of
6300 men. Most remarkable of all, a supplementary
naval vote of no less than eight miUions was passed practi
caUy without discussion during July. The spirit of the
Liberal party was at a deplorably low ebb. We have had
occasion to see that, even before Mr Gladstone's retire
ment, the party had had little unity save in devotion to
him. After his retirement the rifts opened rapidly.
Lord Rosebery's surrender of the leadership led only to
a momentary bridging of them ; and th'ey were now
opening again under Sir WUliam Harcourt. An advanced
section, joining hands with the Labour members, refused
to forgive the leaders for having missed the opportunity
in 1894 of trying conclusions with the House of Lords.
Another section, weary of the continuance of a Whig
tradition in leadership, clamoured for a leader of true
modem Radicalism. Yet another section, feeling the

1898] OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS 437
new Imperial spirit in the air, were of opinion that a narrow
and nagging temper was being displayed in perpetual
criticisms of Mr Chamberlain. The utter weakness of the
opposition caused by these divisions, was responsible
both for languor in Parliament and for lack of public
interest in politics.
On 19th May Mr Gladstone died. That was, indeed, no
occasion for the refreshment of party loyalty alone ; it was
by common consent a time of universal mourning and
national pride. The four years since Mr Gladstone's retire
ment, to him the means of a calm and dignified approach
to death, had given him back to the nation from the strife
of party. The British people rose to the height of that
noble appreciation of a life greatly lived which sounded
from all the world outside. From France, from Russia,
from the British colonies and the United States came
tributes of honour and respect ; from Italy, Greece and
Macedonia came expressions of a more profound sense of
loss and of a more intimate gratitude for the work of a
great lover of freedom. By a decision which had no pre
cedent in our history, and was a worthy acceptance by the
nation of the lofty sentiment of the civihsed world, Mr
Gladstone's body was laid in state in Westminster Hall,
and for two days multitudes of people of every rank ffied
past the bier.^ On 28th May the body was buried in
Westnoinster Abbey ; and, as the lying-in-state had been
the token of Mr Gladstone's place in the hearts of the
people, his funeral was the token of his place among
the rulers of the people. The Prince of Wales and the
Duke of York walked beside the coffin as pall-bearers ;
and other pall-bearers were the Prime Minister and the
leaders of the two parties in both Houses of Parliament,
Lord Rosebery, the Duke of Rutland, and Mr Gladstone's
friends, Lord Rendel and Mr Armitstead. Representatives
1 The police calculated that 250,000 people passed through the
HaU during the two days.

438 OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS [1898
of foreign sovereigns were present. The mighty mould
of the leader who had passed away was everywhere re
cognised. New problems were arising for his successors,
in an England that he hardly recognised. " I am thank
ful," he wrote after his retirement,^ " to have borne a great
part in the emancipating labours of the last sixty years,
but entirely uncertain how, had I now to begin my life,
I could face the very different problems of the next sixty
years. Of one thing I am, and always have been, con
vinced — ^it is not by the State that man can be regenerated
and the terrible woes of this darkened world effectually
dealt with." That was the voice of the past ; and yet at
the moment what voice had the future ? None, it would
seem, in the leaders of Liberalism, who, distracted and
divided among themselves, knew not what their party was,
nor where it stood. To some of those by the grave in the
Abbey it may wed have seemed that they were burying not
only a famous Liberal, but aU the Liberalism they knew.
The pace of the American attack in Cuba now quickened.
Transport difficulties and delays were to some extent
overcome ; and the fleet under Admiral Schley blockaded
Santiago harbour. Again an event occurred at home to
catch the wandering interest of newspaper readers. It
was announced with startling abruptness that Mr E. T.
Hooley had ffied his petition in bankruptcy. He was a
man who had risen almost as abruptly into prominence, a
promoter of companies extremely active during the boom
in the cycle manufacturing trade. He had reconstituted
and refloated several large firms, and had also placed upon
the investment market a good many mechanical inventions
connected with cycling. In the full flush of his career
he had bought large estates in the country, and made some
lavish public gifts. His suite of rooms in one of the big
London hotels was accustomed to witness daily levees of
1 To Mr G. W. E. RusseU. See Mr RusseU's One Look Back,
p. 265.

1898] OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS 439
financiers, brokers, large and smaU investors, journalists,
traders, inventors, cranks. Company-promoting, profit
able as it had been for years past, had never before reached
so picturesque a point, had never been such an obvious
and theatrical wielding of forces; the limited liability
system in England had never presented itself in so personal
a manifestation. The news of the bankruptcy was a
thunderbolt. It was the end of the cycle boom, and the
beginning of difficult times for companies overweighted
by a capital disproportionate to any requirements save
those of a boom. Fashion had already tired of its new
toy, and Battersea Park no longer glittered with expensive
machines. American manufacturers were sending over
by thousands machines of a lighter and less expensive
type than the English ; the competition in the home
market was cutting prices. Meanwhile France was com
manding the market for motor cars ; and the British
cycle firms, which might have taken up the new invention,
were caught in the tods of depression. The names of
various public men were bandied to and fro during the
bankraptcy proceedings in Mr Hooley's case ; and once
again company-promoting acquired a reputation which
checked even the most ardent speculator.
The war between the United States and Spain ended
in August. Early in July Admiral Cervera made a gallant
but desperate attempt to break through the blockade of
Santiago. His fleet steamed out of the harbour, and
turned along the coast. Within a few hours every ship
was destroyed or captured. Some were sunk, some ran
ashore blazing from stem to stem. Santiago surrendered
to the American land forces on 17th July, and on 12th
August peace negotiations were opened, which ended in
Spain's acquiescence in the independence of Cuba, and
the ceding of Manda to the United States.
E^The beginning of September brought news far more ex
citing to England. On the 2nd of that month the British

440 OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS [1898
and Egyptian forces had practically destroyed the Khalifa's
army at Omdurman, and on the 4th Kitchener had re-
occupied Khartoum. The flag again waved on those ruined
wads of the palace, its absence from which had been so tra
gically noted on that January moming in 1885. Great was
the pride in this assertion of British power and persistence ;
but not less strong an element in the enthusiasm with which
the news was received was the revelation of our possession
of a new soldier of the first rank. The battle of Omdurman
had been won by more than fighting ; and the interest
in the accounts of the battle was not greater than the
interest in all that could be told of the masterly organisa
tion, the practical care for troops, the sheer business
abdity with which Kitchener had brought his army to its
victory. True, it was known later that for a short time he
had been in a somewhat dangerous position ; and that, if
the Khalifa had had any officer of tactical ability, or any
renegade European adviser at his elbow. Kitchener's
communications might have been cut, and he would then
have been less able to choose the moment of attack in
confidence.! But there was no doubt that the movements
of the past two years had been masterly, exhaustively con
sidered, and above all made, so far as such movements
could be made, in all the security and material comfort
that forethought could provide for the troops. Lord
Kitchener of Khartoum, as he was at once made, became
a popular idol of a new kind. Men worshipped in him a
grim and relentless efficiency, a cool soldierliness. The ideal
of the dashing warrior gave place to the ideal of the " dead-
certainty warrior." There was, indeed, a severe complete
ness in the battle. Of 40,000 or 50,000 dervishes who had
met him before the walls of Omdurman, 11,000 were killed
and 16,000 wounded. The British and Egyptian forces
numbered only 22,000 men — ^less than the casualties alone
on the other side — and their losses were but three officers
' Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, ii. 94, footnote.

1898] OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS 441
and forty -three men kiUed, and twenty -one officers and
three hundred and twenty men wounded. The Khalifa
himself, with a band of his principal emirs and a broken
force of dervishes, escaped from the slaughter and wandered
for a year in the desert. Then on 24th November
1899 he too was swept into the iron completeness of the
work. One of Lord Kitchener's officers, who afterwards
succeeded him as Sirdar, Sir Francis Wingate, surprised
the flying, harried little army by rapid and skilful marches,
and brought it to bay. When that last fight was over the
Khalifa was found dead on the field, with every one of his
emirs dead, each on his prayer-mat, around their leader.
The total cost of the two years' campaign under the man
of marvellous organisation was no more than £2,354,000.
The reconquest of the Soudan had been saved, by a
mistake on the part of France and Russia, from being
hampered by intemational complications. ^ Could the
future government of it equally be saved ? Before this
question was asked the British and Egyptian flags were
hoisted side by side at Khartoum ; and though diplomat
ists might find no proper formula for a joint control by
Great Britain and Egypt, in which Great Britain was first,
and yet Egypt not quite second, the solution took that
form, and succeeded in spite of its resistance to formulation.
The most critical danger arose within a week of the battle
of Omdurman. The move made by the French towards
the Upper NUe, to which Sir Charles DUke with his usual
command of little-lcnown facts had tried to call attention
in 1896,2 .^yas made pubhc in a perilously sudden way by the
news that Lord Kitchener had started from Khartoum
up the Blue Nile, in consequence of information that a
French force was in possession of a place caUed Fashoda.
Temper rose sharply both in Great Britain and in France.
On this side of the Channel it was felt that an attempt was
being made to wrest from us, now that we had made the
1 See p. 398. ' See p. 397.

442 OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS [1898
Soudan a safe region again, some part of the regained
territory. On the other side it was felt that the British,
greedy for rule, were denying to a band of courageous
explorers the just rewards of their skill and endurance.
Lord Kitchener had the wisdom not to force action upon
the French officer. Captain Marchand, whom he found at
Fashoda. He merely established a British post there as
well, and returned to Khartoum. The fact that Captain
Marchand remained at Fashoda, the fact that the British
flag was at Fashoda, were just sufficient to put popular
opinion on either side in the right in its own view ; and two
months later, on 4th November, Lord Salisbury was able
to announce that the French had withdrawn from the
place. By that time Lord Kitchener was in England,
visiting the Queen at Balmoral, receiving a sword of honour
from the City of London, and showing to the enthusiastic
clamour of the populace an unmoved countenance, which
exactly suited the crowd's conception of him as the em
bodiment of " efficiency for its own sake." The French
nation, on its side, had enough to think about. An officer
of the army, Colonel Henry, had confessed to forging one
of three letters upon which the upholders of the Dreyfus
trial largely relied, and had then committed suicide. At
the beginning of October the Cour de Cassation obtained
the leave of the Govemment to undertake revision of the
trial ; and in this upheaval of its confidence the French
people found Fashoda but a minor incident.
Towards the end of the year Lord Salisbury fluttered
pubhc interest by appointing Mr George Curzon to be
Viceroy of India, with the title of Lord Curzon of Kedleston.
Mr Curzon's fame rested, so far as England at large was
concerned, less on his knowledge of the Far East, where he
had traveUed in curious countries on the north-west
frontier of India and in Persia, than on his reputation as
one of the most opinionated and positive young men that
Oxford had sent into public hfe. He had been Under-

1898] OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS 443
Secretary for India just before the dissolution of 1892, and
was Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the present
Govemment. He was not yet forty, and even in this year
of perpetual excitements his appointment to the Vice-
royalty was received with a gasp of astonishment.
Of South Africa little was heard in this year. The officers
concerned in the Jameson Raid, with the exception of Sir
John Willoughby and Colonel Rhodes, were restored to
their places in the British army ; and after the battle of
Omdurman, where Colonel Rhodes, who was acting as a
war correspondent, was wounded, he also was restored to
his rank. Mr Cecil Rhodes was re-elected a director of the
British South Africa Company. These events had their
meaning, but nothing at the moment pressed the meaning
home.

END OF VOLUME I

APPENDIX
GOVERNMENTS FEOM 1880 TO 1898
The following are lists of the principal members of the
Govemments foimed during the period covered by this
volume : —

MR GLADSTONE'S MINISTRY

William Ewart Gladstone
Earl of Rosebery
Earl of Selborne
Lord Carlingford
Hugh Culling Eardley Childers
Sir William Vernon Harcourt .
Earl Granville
Earl of Derby ....
Marquess of Hartington .
Earl of Kimberley .
Earl of Norths rook
Earl Spencer ....
George John Shaw-Lefevre
Joseph Chamberlain .
Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke,
Bart. .....
George Otto Trevelyan .
445

Prime Minister, First Lord of the
Treasury and Lord Privy Seal
Lord Privy Seal.
Lord High Chancellor.
Lord President of Council.
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Secretary of State, Home Depart
ment.
Secretar}' of State, Foreign Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, Colonial Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, War.
Secretary of State, India.
First Lord of Admiralty.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Postmaster-General. President of Board of Trade.
President, Local Government
Board.
Chancellor, Duchy of Lancaster.

446

APPENDIX

1885
MARQUESS OF SALISBURY'S MINISTRY

Marquess of Salisbury
Lord Halsbury
Viscount Cranbrook .
Earl of Harrowby
Sir Michael E. Hicks-Beach,
Bart. .....
Sir Richard Assheton Cross
Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley
William Henry Smith
Lord Randolph H. S. Churchill
Duke of Richmond and Gordon
Lord George Francis Hamilton
Earl of Iddesleigh .
Earl of Carnarvon .
Lord Ashbourne
Hon. Edward Stanhope
Henry Chaplin (not in Cabinet)

Prime Minister and Foreign Sec
retary.
Lord High Chancellor.
Lord President of Council.
Lord Privy Seal.
Chancellor of Exchequer.
Secretary of State, Home De
partment.
Secretary of State, Colonial Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, War.
Secretary of State, India.
Secretary for Scotland.
First Lord of Admiralty.
First Lord of Treasury.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
President of Board of Trade.
Chancellor, Duchy of Lancaster.

1886
MH GLADSTONE'S MINISTRY

William Ewart Gladstone
Lord Herschell
Earl Spencer ....
Sir William Vernon Harcourt .
Hugh Culling Eardley Childers
Earl of Rosebery
Earl Granville

Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Earl of Kimberley .
George Otto Trevelyan
Earl of Dalhousie (not
Cabinet)
Marquess of Ripon .
John Morley
Anthony James Mundella
Joseph Chamberlain
James Stansfeld (not in Cabinet)

'4

Prime Minister, First Lord of the
Treasury and Lord Privy Seal.
Lord High Chancellor.
Lord President of Council.
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Secretary of State, Home De
partment.
Secretary of State, Foreign Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, Colonial Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, War.
Secretary of State, India.
Secretary for Scotland
First Lord of Admircdty.
Chief Secretary for Ireland.
President of Board of Trade.
President, Local Government
Board.

APPENDIX

447

1886
MARQUESS OF SALISBURY'S MINISTRY

Marquess of Salisbury

Lord Halsbury
Viscount Cranbrook .
Lord Randolph H. S. Churchill
Henry Matthews, Q.C.
Earl of Iddesleigh .
Hon. Edward Stanhope
William Henry Smith
Viscount Cross ....
Arthur James Balfour
Lord George Francis Hamilton
Lord Ashbourne
Sir Michael E. Hicks-Beach,
Bart. ....
Lord Stanley of Preston
Lord John J. R. Manners

Prime Minister, First Lord of
the Treasury and Lord Privy
Seal.
Lord High Chancellor.
Lord President of Council.
Chancellor of Exchequer.
Secretary of State, Home De
partment.
Secretary of State, Foreign Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, Colonial Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, War.
Secretary of State, India.
Secretary for Scotland.
First Lord of Admiralty.
Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Chief Secretary for Ireland,:
President of Board of Trade.
Chancellor, Duchy of Lancaster.

1892
MR GLADSTONE'S MINISTRY

William Ewart Gladstone
Lord Herschell
Earl Kimberley
Sir William Vernon Harcourt
Herbert Henry Asquith, Q.C.
Earl of Rosebery
Marquess of Ripon .
Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Sir George Otto Trevelyan
Earl Spencer .
John Morley
Arnold Morley
Anthony John Mundella
Henry Hartley Fowler
James Bryce
George John Shaw-Lefevre
Arthur Herbert Dyke Acland.

Prime Minister, First Lord of the
Treasury and Lord Privy Seal.
Lord High Chancellor.
Lord President of Council.
Secretary of State, India.
Chancellor of Exchequer.
Secretary of State, Home De
partment.
Secretary of State, Foreign Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, Colonial Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, War.
Secretary for Scotland.
First Lord of the Admiralty.
Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Postmaster-General.President of Board of Trade.
President, Local Government
Board.
Chancellor, Duchy of Lancaster.
First Commissioner of Works.
Vice-President, Committee of
Council.

448

APPENTDIX

189s
MARQUESS OF SALISBURY'S MINISTRY

Marquess of Salisbury
Lord Halsbury
Duke of Devonshire
Viscount Cross ....
Sir Michael E. Hicks-Beach, Bt.
Sir Matthew White Ridley, Bt.
Joseph Chamberlain .
Marquess of Lansdowne .
Lord George Francis Hamilton
Lord Balfour of Burleigh
George Joachim Goschen .
Arthur James Balfour
Earl Cadogan ....
Lord Ashbourne
Charles Thomson Ritchie
Lord James, Q.C
Henry Chaplin ....
Walter Hume Long .
Aretas Akers-Douglas

Prime Minister and Foreign Sec
retary.
Lord High Chancellor.
Lord President of Council
Lord Privy Seal.
Chancellor of Exchequer.
Secretary of State, Home De
partment.
Secretary of State, Colomal Af
fairs.
Secretary of State, War.
Secretary of State, India.
Secretary for Scotland.
First Lord of Admiralty.
First Lord of Treasury.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
President of Board of Trade.
Chancellor, Duchy of Lancaster.
President, Local Government
Board.
President, Board of Agriculture.
President, Board of Works and
Public Buildings.