GREAT expectations were entertained of the Parliament of 1880 by the Liberal members who assembled at Westminster after the election. Indeed, the position of their party was one of immense strength and advantage. The Government enjoyed the support of a majority in the House of Commons who outnumbered the Conservatives and the Irish combined by more than 50 votes and amounted for practical purposes to between 100 and 130. In the House of Lords they could count upon the wealth and talents of the great Whig houses, the influence of the Cavendishes and the Russells, the experience of Lord Granville, and the eloquence of the Duke of Argyll. They were led by the finest Parliamentarian of this or any other age, whose incomparable powers had won him an almost superstitious veneration; and around him were gathered a band of men of distinguished ability, well known to the country, practised in public affairs and yielding ready subordination to the genius of their chief. Upon the Treasury Bench were seated statesmen like Mr. Bright, Mr. Forster, and Lord Hartington. Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain represented the growing Radicalism and the future hope of their party. And when the view was extended from the walls of Parliament to the larger arena of the electorate no less powerful resources were displayed. The tendency of the day was strongly progressive. The ability and authority of the Press—whether Metropolitan, provincial, or local—were ranged in overwhelming preponderance upon the Liberal side. Scotland and London, almost all the great cities, nearly every centre of active political thought—Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Bristol—sent their representatives in vast majority to uphold the new Administration; and a Reform Bill promised an almost equal advantage in the counties. Many active and vigilant societies and a multitude of political clubs stimulated the energies of the rank and file; and the whole was bound together and directed to a common end by a formidable and opulent organisation.

The position of the Conservative party, upon the other hand, was weak and miserable in the extreme. The sympathies and the intellect of the nation were estranged. Lord Beaconsfield, the only man who could touch the imagination of the people, was withdrawn from the popular assembly. Many of the Tory strongholds—family boroughs and the like—were threatened by approaching Redistribution. The Front Opposition Bench, cumbered with the ancient and dreary wreckage of the late Administration, was utterly unequal to the Government in eloquence or authority. The attendance of Conservative members, as in all dispirited Oppositions, was slack and fitful.

Outmatched in debate, outnumbered in division, the party was pervaded by a profound feeling of gloom. They had nothing to give to their followers, nothing to promise to the people: no Garters for Dukes, no peerages for wealth, no baronetcies or knighthoods or trinkets for stalwarts. Although the new spirit created by Disraeli—Imperium abroad, Libertas at home—still lived in the Tory party, it had been profoundly discouraged by the results of the election; and many of those who swayed Conservative counsels could think of no plan of action except an obstinate but apathetic resistance to change. Jeered at as ‘the stupid party,’ haunted by profound distrust of an ever-growing democracy, conscious that the march of ideas was leaving them behind, these desponding counsellors could discern in the future no sign of returning fortune and seemed to find the sole function of the Conservative minority in delaying and restricting the movements of the age by means of electoral inequalities, by Parliamentary procedure, and through the prejudices of interest and of class.

What political prophet or philosopher, surveying the triumphant Liberal array, would have predicted that this Parliament, from which so much was hoped, would be indeed the most disastrous and even fatal period in their party history? Or who could have foreseen that these dejected Conservatives in scarcely five years, with the growing assent of an immense electorate, would advance to the enjoyment of twenty years of power? It needed a penetrating eye to discover the method, and a bold heart first to stem and finally to turn the tide. Who would have thought of breaking up the solid phalanx of Liberalism by driving in a wedge between the Radicals and the Whigs; or dreamt of using the Irish to overthrow the great apostle of reconciliation between peoples; and who without the audacity of genius would have dared to force the Conservative party to base the foundations of their authority with confidence upon the very masses they dreaded and to teach those masses to venerate and guard the institutions they had formerly despised?

The Liberal majority, who had arrived at Westminster in such excellent spirits after their victory at the polls, were enabled quite early in the session to take part in a Government defeat. The electors of Northampton, which was in those days reputed the most Radical town in England, had returned Mr. Bradlaugh as one of their representatives. Charles Bradlaugh came to the House of Commons by strange paths of thought and action. Forty-seven years before he had been born in a religious family, the son of a very poor solicitor’s clerk. For a time he was a teacher in an Evangelical Sunday-school; but he began to ask many questions about his faith and its foundations, which appear to have been indifferently answered by a clergyman to whom he applied. Later he was a Chartist, and spoke often at open-air meetings, at first on the Christian side; but after a public disputation with an anti-Christian opponent he became a declared atheist and found shelter for a while in an anti-Christian family. Harassed by poverty he enlisted in the East India Company’s army, was exchanged into the British Service, served with credit several years in the 7th Dragoon Guards, and bought his discharge with a legacy that had come to him from an aunt. Next he was an office-boy to a solicitor, whence he rose soon to manage the common law department of the firm. These harsh and varied experiences had inflamed his mind against many established institutions, human and divine. As a bold and effective platform speaker, or under the pseudonym of ‘Iconoclast,’ he was accustomed to set forth what occurred to him against Christianity, the Bible, and the House of Brunswick, to the severe displeasure of the more prosperous or more contented classes in the nation. In the year 1877 he intruded upon still more dangerous ground and made himself responsible for the republication of a pamphlet about over-population, its evils and its remedies and other Malthusian topics, which, being among the most tremendous of natural problems, have long been judged unfit for public discussion. The pamphlet is said to have attained a sale of 180,000 copies, and the publisher was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, from which he only escaped through the timely discovery of some legal flaw. Mr. Bradlaugh’s struggles against authority, penury, and obloquy were now to be transferred to a more brightly-lighted stage.

On May 3, 1880, Charles Bradlaugh presented himself at the table of the House of Commons and claimed to affirm instead of taking the oath. The Speaker, whom he had acquainted with his intention some days earlier, decided on his own responsibility to leave the question to the decision of the House, and Lord Frederick Cavendish, representing the Government in the absence of Ministers—whose seats had been vacated by taking office—moved accordingly for a Select Committee of Inquiry. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Leader of the Opposition, being as it appears personally willing to substitute an affirmation for the oath, seconded the motion. When the House met again (May 5) Sir Henry Wolff gave notice that he would oppose the reference to a committee; and when it was nominated he moved (May 11) ‘the previous question,’ on the ground that to proceed to general business before the Queen’s Speech had announced to members the reasons for which Parliament was summoned would be to invade the Royal Prerogative. He was supported by Mr. Gorst, the member for Chatham. A debate ensued, in the course of which some prominent Conservatives deprecated Sir Henry Wolff’s motion, and several of the Conservative leaders abstained from the division in which it was defeated by 171 to 74. But the question had already begun to excite attention. The delay was fatal to its settlement. If Mr. Bradlaugh had been content to take the oath unostentatiously among a crowd of members at the beginning of the session, it is almost certain that no question would have been raised. He chose instead in the most public manner to cast down a challenge. It was eagerly accepted. From the caprice that prompted one private member to stir a smouldering fire and the chance interposition of another who happened to observe him arose a protracted and ferocious controversy, which, in Mr. Morley’s words, ‘went on as long as the Parliament, clouded the radiance of the party triumph, threw the new Government at once into a minority and dimmed the ascendency of the great Minister.’

By a majority of one the committee decided against Mr. Bradlaugh’s claim to affirm. He thereupon wrote to the newspapers that he considered it his duty to accept the mandate of his constituents and that if to do so he had to submit to a form less solemn than the affirmation, so much the worse for those who forced him to repeat words which were to him sounds conveying no clear and definite meaning. Having by this, as he no doubt supposed, settled the matter to the extreme discomfiture of his opponents, he repaired to the House on May 21—the third day of its meeting for regular business—resolved to take the oath in the usual form. But in the meantime Sir Henry Wolff had not been idle. With the assistance of Mr. Grantham—now one of His Majesty’s Judges—he had studied the legal aspect of the question and had drafted a resolution. He had consulted with his friends and in particular with the young member for Woodstock, with whom he had struck up a friendly acquaintance in the last Parliament and of whose talents he had formed a high opinion. Mr. Bradlaugh’s letter had, moreover, produced an astonishing effect. The House—almost irrespective of party—was profoundly offended and even outraged by his words and by the action he intended. Anger flamed in the Lobbies. Ministers were justly apprehensive of the difficulties that might arise if the question of Mr. Bradlaugh’s right to take the oath was held to be one for the determination of the House. They held a council in the Speaker’s Library, and proposed to meet the hostile motion, which was now certain when Mr. Bradlaugh should present himself, by moving ‘the previous question.’ But the Whips reported that the feeling in the House was ‘uncontrollable.’ The Liberal majority could not be relied on to support ‘the previous question’ and the Prime Minister was forced to content himself with proposing a new committee to search for precedents.

When the hour came, Mr. Bradlaugh advanced to the table to take the oath. Thereupon Sir Henry Wolff sprang up and objected to its being administered to him. Mr. Dillwyn, a Liberal member, intervened, submitting that it was out of order to question the right of any member to take the oath; but the Speaker, adhering to the intention he had expressed in private, ruled—although in very doubting language—in favour of Sir Henry Wolff. The Speaker directed the member for Northampton to withdraw while Sir Henry Wolff explained his reasons. These were, in short, that Mr. Bradlaugh’s declared opinions upon religion and Royalty necessarily rendered any oath of allegiance that he might take meaningless in form and valueless in fact.

The Prime Minister made an effort to narrow the issue to the simple judicial question of whether a duly elected member could be prevented by the House from fulfilling his statutory obligations and he proposed his Select Committee. The debate which followed was long, serious, and savage. Two views, both held with intensity, prevailed about the man: first, that he was a blatant contumacious atheist who made a living by blasphemy, republicanism, and indecent literature, and sought in Parliamentary honours a fresh advertisement for his hateful trade; and, secondly, that he was a martyr gone wrong, whose zeal and convictions—honest, albeit pernicious—had caused him to suffer in private prospects and public life. The unfavourable view predominated in the House and was adopted with vehemence by the Conservative party. There was a third view—that the House of Commons was no judge of such matters, that it had received no evidence but common report, and even so had no business to exclude members because of their opinions. But such arguments, although urged by orators like Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, found little acceptance. Extracts were read from ‘The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick’ and ‘The Fruits of Philosophy.’ Mr. Bradlaugh’s declaration that an oath was to him an idle and meaningless ceremony was repeated over and over again. Was the House to connive at an act of blasphemy? Mr. Gibson from the Front Opposition Bench, taking the Bible in his hands from the table on which it lay, read out impressively the solemn words which were to be mockingly invoked. Mr. F. H. O’Donnell, a militant Irish Catholic, spoke in unmeasured abhorrence of the Bradlaugh doctrines, which he said would degrade human love and human wedlock to something lower than union of beast with beast. The speech of Mr. Walter of the Times, which, although favouring the appointment of a Select Committee, declared that Mr. Bradlaugh could not be permitted to go through the form of taking the oath, was regarded as representing an important element of moderate Liberal opinion.

Partisanship was not slow to perceive its opportunity. Sir Stafford Northcote and the whole Conservative party made haste to support Sir Henry Wolff. Opposition speakers sought to identify the Liberal party and Mr. Gladstone himself with the member for Northampton. He had been their candidate, he was now their comrade. The division, according to one gentleman, would be between those who were on the side of atheism, disloyalty, and immorality and those who were not. Amid such fury many very wise and worthy exhortations to preserve a judicial spirit were overwhelmed. Lord Randolph Churchill resumed the debate on May 24. For the first time he addressed a crowded House and was supported by the cheers of a great party. There was in his character a strong element of religious feeling. He spoke with a kind of half-restrained passion which commanded attention. He opposed the appointment of a committee. The matter was simple. Let it be decided by what Lord Beaconsfield had called ‘the unerring instinct of the House of Commons.’ Like others who had spoken, he quoted from the Bradlaugh writings. He stood at the corner seat of the third bench below the gangway and when he had finished reading the extract beginning ‘I loathe these small German breast-bestarred wanderers,’ he cast ‘The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick’ upon the floor and stamped upon it, to the surprise of the assembly. Although this was his first entry into the dispute, he seems at once to have been accepted as a principal. Henceforward, upon the Bradlaugh question, he took his natural place as a leader and before two years had passed he was credited by the public with having begun the whole controversy.

Sir Henry Wolff’s motion was rejected in favour of the Ministerial amendment proposing a committee by 214-289. There was another dispute on May 28 over the names of the committee, Lord Randolph being ironically or mischievously anxious that Nonconformists should be more numerous on it. Mr. Gladstone, in reply, concerned himself almost entirely with the arguments of Lord Randolph and Sir Henry Wolff. The committee was appointed. Its search for precedents was barren. It reported that Mr. Bradlaugh could not take the oath, but recommended that he should be allowed to affirm at his own risk, in order that the matter might be settled in the Courts. The Government accepted the view of the committee. On June 21, therefore, Mr. Labouchere moved that his colleague be permitted to affirm. Sir Hardinge Giffard, in the name of the Conservative party, met this by an amendment which declared that Mr. Bradlaugh should not be permitted either to affirm or swear. After two days’ debate (June 21 and 22) the first great division of the new Parliament was taken. Mr. Labouchere’s motion, although supported by the whole Ministry, was rejected by 275 votes to 230 and Sir Hardinge Giffard’s amendment was adopted in its stead. In the clamorous excitement which followed the declaration of the numbers some have discovered the joy of the Tory party at their first revenge for Midlothian.

The account of this episode need not be pursued in detail. How Mr. Bradlaugh presented himself the next day and claimed to swear; how the Prime Minister, his solution having been rejected, refused his guidance to the House; how the Speaker called upon Mr. Bradlaugh to withdraw; how he resisted; how he was heard at the Bar; how he was expelled; how he was committed to the Clock Tower upon the motion of the Leader of the Opposition; how action was taken against him in the Courts for sitting and voting without statutory qualification, are upon record. How he was unseated and re-elected, and in what manner he finally took the oath, must presently be described. The Bradlaugh case was inexhaustible in scenes and sensations. It recurred almost month after month throughout the Parliament, and whenever it occupied the stage the Government was powerless; the leadership of the House was abandoned by its first and greatest member; the overwhelming majority of the Midlothian campaign became divided and untrustworthy. The credit of the Ministry was injured in Parliament and in the country the Liberal party and its leaders were, not unsuccessfully, represented as the champions of Bradlaugh and his abominated doctrines.

The Fourth Party grew out of the Bradlaugh incident. To Wolff belonged the merit of discovery. The others in coming to his aid had learned the value of co-operation. They had seized an opportunity while regular leaders hesitated. They had helped each other to use it with determination. The whole party had in the end been glad to follow their lead and great and admitted advantage had ensued. They resolved forthwith to make permanent that comradeship which had proved so happy on occasion. Three of them already sat on the Front Bench below the gangway, and during the early days of the session Lord Randolph abandoned his perch on the back benches and came forward to sit with them. An old and respected member of the Conservative party had been accustomed to sit in the corner seat. In a few weeks he departed to serener quarters, saying to Sir Henry Wolff, ‘This is getting too hot for me’; and Lord Randolph thenceforward was regarded as the rightful owner of that coveted place. The compact which bound the ‘Fourth Party,’ as they were soon called by general consent, was simple and elastic. No questions of policy or leadership arose. Each was free to act in perfect independence; but it was agreed that, whenever one of them was attacked, the others should defend him. Upon these conditions was created a Parliamentary group which proved, in proportion to its numbers, the most formidable and effective force for the purposes of Opposition in the history of the House of Commons.

The four men who had thus come together were, each in his own way, remarkable. The first mention of Sir Henry Wolff in Lord Randolph’s letters occurs in 1879. ‘I am dining to-night at the Garrick with Sir Henry Wolff and a large party of M.P.’s.’ Then again, a few months later, ‘Wolff and I are going to London together in order that the questions of the leadership of the party may be complicated by our presence.’ When the Parliament of 1880 assembled they seem to have become already fairly intimate friends. Sir Henry Wolff, the son of a distinguished traveller and scholar whose name in the early ’forties was respected in many countries outside his own, had entered Parliament as member for Christchurch in 1874, and had already, by his knowledge of foreign affairs and diplomatic methods, gained a reputation in the House of Commons. He was now member for Portsmouth. He was fifteen years older than Lord Randolph and possessed a large and varied fund of experience and information. Shrewd, suave, witty, and imperturbable, versed in Parliamentary procedure, fertile in schemes, clever at managing people, a master of smoothly-turned sentences and plausible debating points, a ready speaker, an industrious politician, old enough to compel respectful treatment from the House, young enough to love fighting and manoeuvres for their own sake, Sir Henry Wolff was, at the beginning of 1880, just the kind of man to make a Ministry uncomfortable. If he contributed notably to the strength of the Fourth Party in public, he added still more to the gaiety of its secret councils. He rallied generously to the chaff in which Lord Randolph always delighted, and the comradeship which grew between them was abiding. No cloud darkened, no conflict of interests or opinions disturbed it. Of the intimate relations between these four allies, the friendship of Lord Randolph and Sir Henry Wolff was the only one to survive unimpaired the vicissitudes of political life.

Mr. Gorst possessed temper and talents of a different kind. His mood was serious, his ability distinguished, his industry enormous. His career in the past had been more noteworthy than that of any of his companions. He was a rapidly rising lawyer. He had sat in Parliament as early as 1866. He had been entrusted with the reorganisation of the Conservative party machinery after the defeat of 1868, and Mr. Disraeli always regarded the victory of 1874 as largely due to his arrangements, and treated him with special favour and confidence. He probably knew more about politics, public and secret, than all his three colleagues together, and his knowledge of law proved on repeated occasions of inestimable value to the rest. In conjunction with Lord Randolph Churchill his abilities became doubly effective. A few years later Sir Henry James publicly complained, in a Standing Committee, of such an alliance. It was, he said, a poacher’s combination—a pointer to find game and a greyhound to run it down.

The career of the remaining member of the Fourth Party is not yet complete. Mr. Arthur Balfour in 1880 was an affable and rather idle young gentleman, who had delicately toyed with philosophy and diplomacy, was earnest in the cause of popular concerts, and brought to the House of Commons something of Lord Melbourne’s air of languid and well-bred indifference. How he came at all to be drawn into that circle of fierce energy which radiated from Lord Randolph Churchill was a puzzle to those who knew him best. In the early days of the Fourth Party no one—certainly not his comrades—regarded him as a serious politician. Lord Randolph, who delighted in nicknames, used to call him ‘Postlethwaite,’ and made him the object of much harmless and friendly chaff. In private life he already exercised that personal charm and fascination which in later years were curiously to deflect the course of great events. But he seemed so lacking in energy, so entirely devoid of anything like ambition, so slenderly and uncertainly attached to politics at all, that his friends feared he would withdraw altogether, and none recognised or imagined in this amiable, easy-going member for a family borough the calculating, tenacious, and unwearying Minister who was destined through so many years to control the House of Commons and shape the policy of the State.

The Employers’ Liability Bill afforded the new confederacy a wide and fertile field for their exertions. The law, as it had been formed by judicial decisions, was, according to modern ideas, strangely harsh upon the workman. The employer was liable for any injury done to third parties by the negligence of his servants but not for injuries done by one servant to another. If, for instance, there occurred at his mills an explosion which killed and wounded both outsiders and his own workmen, the employer might be sued for damages in respect of person or property by the outsiders or their representatives, but injured fellow-workmen had no legal claim because they were in what was called ‘common employment.’ Complaint against this anomaly had been loud and long. Two extreme remedies were proposed by the respective interests. On the one hand, the employers desired to be free from all liability for injuries done, except by themselves personally; on the other, the workmen demanded the abolition of the doctrine of ‘common employment’ and an assertion of the consequent liability of the employer to all alike. A Bill had been introduced in the preceding Parliament by Mr. Brassey, a private member, which proposed a middle course. It sought to extend the liability of the employer by nullifying the plea of ‘common employment’ whenever the injury was caused by a defect in the machinery, by the negligence of an authorised superintendent, or as the result of obedience to the employer’s rules or bye-laws. When the new Ministers assumed office the session was already advanced; and under a hasty necessity for providing a certain legislative pabulum for the activities of Parliament, the Government adopted, with very scanty examination, Mr. Brassey’s Bill. The complications in which this plan involved them were numerous. It had not originated in the great departments of the State and was, both in principle and drafting, an amateurish suggestion which might, indeed, sound very plausible and accommodating; but which had not been clearly thought out in a scientific spirit with the advantages of official information. No division was taken upon the second reading; but the debate aroused the Ministers in charge of the measure to the consciousness that they were committed to a confused and ill-considered proposal. It was necessary to move that the Bill should be re-committed, and before it reappeared it was almost entirely rewritten. Its general character as a compromise was, however, preserved.

The Fourth Party held deep council as to their policy upon this measure. They saw that a Bill had practically been thrown to the House to be moulded into shape by debate. They resolved to address themselves conscientiously to the task of perfecting the crude conceptions of the Government. But they resolved further the direction in which their influence should be exerted. The manufacturers and capitalists, who in those days were numerous and influential in the Liberal party, were already greatly perturbed at the extent to which their liability was to be increased, and the Government was constrained to listen to their grumbles. Sitting immediately behind Ministers, Sir Henry Mather Jackson groaned forth his anxieties. Not so the Fourth Party. They approached the question with open minds, as independent persons who desired only to do right between man and man and cared nothing for the sordid interests involved. Whereas Ministers had expected that Tory opposition would naturally take the form of a defence of the employers’ position, the Fourth Party proceeded to criticise the measure entirely in the interests of the working class. This secured them two advantages, which it may be presumed they desired equally. First, it was in accordance with the spirit of Lord Beaconsfield’s progressive Toryism and would really benefit the labouring people, for whose sake the Bill was designed. Secondly, nothing could be more embarrassing to a Liberal Government than Conservative opposition on the grounds that the Bill did not go far enough. ‘Be thorough,’ exclaimed these Tories to the Government. ‘Fulfil your election pledges. If you intend to deal with industrial questions let it be in an honest and courageous spirit.’ The Government was gravely disconcerted. They found themselves between two fires. Below the gangway the Radicals stirred uneasily at such unanswerable argument; and behind the Treasury Bench the wealthiest supporters of the party were gnashing their teeth at such reckless proposals.

Whenever the subject came before the House the four friends were in their places. There was not a single sitting from which they were absent, or a single clause which they did not amend, or seek to amend. It is, moreover, true that many important alterations in the scope and detail of the measure were conceded to their insistence and that many of their proposals, though rejected by the Government of 1880, have now become the law of the land. The unforeseen complexity of the measure afforded an indefinite scope to their ingenious minds. All sorts of hard cases were propounded, to which the Government could find no satisfactory reply. An employer was to be liable for accidents which occurred through his defective plant or stock. Did this include animate as well as inanimate things? The Ministers in charge had not made up their minds. They had contemplated in the word ‘stock’ a stack of timber or bricks which might fall and cause injury through negligent stacking. They were now invited to consider the case of live-stock. Lord Randolph said that a farmer might have a horse which he knew perfectly well had a disease of the foot and was liable to come down at any moment. Would the workman riding home from plough and injured by the fall be secured compensation under the Bill? ‘No,’ replied the law officers, ‘for the disease of the foot would not be due to the negligence of the employer.’ ‘But suppose,’ asked Mr. Balfour, ‘the employer had thrown down the horse and broken his knees, and that on a subsequent occasion, in consequence of the horse having been thrown down by his carelessness, his servant was thrown and broke his arm, what then?’ And it then appeared there might be liability.

And what was a defect in ‘stock’? The bricks or timber might be stacked so as to cause injury and yet be themselves most excellent materials. The defect was not in them but in the person who stacked them. Someone recollected that the rays of the sun had ignited lucifer matches lying in a shop window, which in turn set fire to gunpowder and produced a serious explosion. Where was the defect? If anywhere, it was in the glass which had concentrated the rays of the sun. Amid such questionings and the utter confusion to which they led, Mr. Dodson and his friends passed many uncomfortable hours. Lord Randolph and Mr. Gorst were very profuse in regrets for the slow progress of the Bill. But when the Government themselves did not understand their own measure it was necessary to be very careful indeed—and, after all, there was plenty of time; better sit till November than scamp public duties and pass slovenly or unworkable legislation.

Another dilemma was supplied by the case of domestic servants. Mr. Balfour and Lord Randolph together protested against their exclusion from the benefits of the Act—‘merely because they had no votes.’ ‘What is the special characteristic of footmen or chambermaids,’ asked the latter, ‘which disentitles them to compensation?’ No answer could be discovered except that the risks of such persons were not great. Lord Randolph suggested the case of the man who worked both in the house and in the stable: injured in the house, he received no compensation, injured in the stable, it was his right. How could it be contended that domestic servants ran no risks? ‘Suppose,’ inquired the member for Woodstock, in a speech which caused keen irritation to the Ministers and almost equal amusement to the House, ‘an explosion of gas. An employer comes home late at night. He does not, perhaps, altogether know what he is doing. He blows out the gas. An explosion results, and the servant is seriously injured; ought he not to receive compensation?’ ‘And what of lifts?’ chimed in Mr. Gorst. There were lifts in hotels as well as in factories. Suppose through some defect in the machinery of the lift a servant at a hotel was injured, why was his claim to compensation less good than that of the workman injured through a similar defect in a similar lift in a factory? To the reproach that zeal for the working classes was a new-found virtue in the Tory party and had not been apparent in the conduct of the late Government, Mr. Balfour replied tartly that the late Government had not been formed from members below the gangway, and that if it had the claims of the working classes would no doubt have been met.

So through all the sultry days of August the discussion went forward tirelessly. But it should not be supposed that these objections of detail were advanced frivolously with no general purpose behind them. Lord Randolph had, early in the debates, denounced the doctrine of ‘common employment’; and on the third reading Mr. Gorst moved the re-committal of the Bill in the name of the Fourth Party, on account of its multifold inequities and anomalies, and urged the recognition of some simple general principle which would equally govern the rights of all classes of outsiders, or workmen or servants, whether in factories, private or Government employ, whether in or out of doors. This conclusion is one which modern legislation has already largely secured and which its progress must ultimately achieve.

As with the Employers’ Liability Bill, so with Hares and Rabbits, and so with Burials, though the task of perfecting these two latter measures seems principally to have been discharged by Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry Wolff. At every point the Fourth Party were armed with facts and arguments; on every question they had a plan, in all difficulties they sustained each other. The Government were repeatedly exhorted to spare no labour for the public weal. Legislation of an important character, they were reminded, could not be passed in haste, or without proper intervals for reflection on the part of those who were responsible for it. Whenever the Government and their partisans showed signs of impatience—and, judging by the interruptions which are sprinkled in the columns of ‘Hansard,’ this was not infrequent—a motion, or the threat of a motion, to report progress or to adjourn was found an admirable weapon to employ; while all the time the House as a whole was kept in subjection and often in good-humour, by the excellent quality of the speeches, the wit by which they were adorned, the fertility of resource which distinguished them and the reality of the arguments advanced.

Not content with discharging—however conscientiously—the functions of criticism, the Fourth Party aspired to legislate constructively. With the object of encouraging private thrift and ready-money transactions, Lord Randolph introduced in 1881 a Small Debts Bill which sought to make debts of under one hundred pounds irrecoverable after one year from the date of their being contracted. Sir Henry Wolff carried a measure satirically described by Sir William Harcourt as the ‘Bournemouth Reform Bill,’ which enabled the inhabitants of seaside resorts to let their houses for short periods without impairing their voting qualification. In every Parliamentary incident, great or small, the four allies were prominent, if not supreme. The question of erecting a monument in Westminster Abbey to the Prince Imperial of France, killed in the Zulu War, produced differences in the Government, and from the division by which the proposal was rejected several Ministers abstained by withdrawing to the two small rooms behind the Chair which are used for the minor consultations of colleagues or opponents. Sir Henry Wolff at once raised a debate upon this alleged impropriety and, although Sir Stafford Northcote deprecated his action, a long wrangle followed, from which the Government emerged with ruffled plumes. When Mr. Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, by an absurd mistake got himself elected for a second constituency without having previously applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who drew attention to the irregularity; and as the procedure of the House rendered it difficult to debate the matter without some artful device, he himself moved for a new writ for the borough of Chester, while Mr. Gorst—by collusion, as Mr. Gladstone unwarrantably asserted—gave notice of an amendment which would have brought the discussion within the bounds of order.

Nothing could excel the industry of the Fourth Party in Supply. They presented themselves nightly as the vigilant guardians of the public purse. No item of expenditure was too small to be criticised; no economy too petty to be cherished. ‘If,’ said Lord Randolph Churchill, with a paternal look at Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues, ‘the late Tory Government had been more attentive to the principles involved in paltry matters of expenditure, they might still be sitting on the Treasury Bench.’ On one warm evening when the bulk of the Conservative party was scattered on its holidays—in pursuit of grouse according to tradition, indulging their wives and families at the seaside according to fact—and when the weary Ministerialists gasped amid the parching streets of London, Lord Randolph Churchill subjected to the most minute examination the grants-in-aid accorded to various learned societies. He inquired about the Meteorological Office and canvassed the value of weather reports. He compared the weather forecasts of Greenwich with those of America. Satisfied upon this, he turned to the Academy of Music and raised further important points for the Minister, Lord Frederick Cavendish, to explain. When the diplomatic vote was taken, Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry Wolff were at hand with stores of knowledge and that keen thirst for information which is only to be gained by personal experience. With only seventeen men to go into the Lobby with them, the Fourth Party were formidable and feared. Nothing could provoke them to anger or to levity. Their dignity and politeness were undisturbed by charges of obstruction. They desired only to further public business and to aid the Government in their responsible duties; and they moved to report progress lest ill-temper should result from the natural impatience of weaker and less conscientious legislators. Under these inflictions the Liberal party groaned and its champions grunted.[8]

It was inevitable that disagreements should spring up between the official leaders on the Front Opposition Bench and the active group below the gangway. At first, to the amusement of the House and later somewhat to its irritation, the Fourth Party claimed to be totally distinct from and independent of all existing parties. ‘There are two great parties in the State,’ said a member one night. Mr. Parnell: ‘Three.’ Lord Randolph Churchill: ‘Four.’ (Laughter.) Fortified by this assumption, the Fourth Party moved whatever amendments and took whatever course seemed good to them, upon any and every question. As they did not consult their leaders, it often happened that differences arose about their tactics. And when, as we have seen, the influence of these free-lances was so often employed in making Liberal Bills more Radical, it was not surprising that the old Tories and ex-Ministers began to view their busy allies with apprehension.

The leader of the Conservative party in the House of Commons was an old and distinguished man. Sir Stafford Northcote had held high office, first as Secretary of State for India, afterwards as Chancellor of the Exchequer, under Disraeli in 1867 and in 1874. He had led the Commons upon Mr. Disraeli’s retirement to the House of Lords. Upon finance he enjoyed a reputation second only to that of Mr. Gladstone. He is said to have possessed the common virtues in special excellence. Although Mr. Gladstone, with that marvellous power great men acquire of looking at things only from their own point of view, described him as ‘not strong enough to convince his party that they were wrong,’ he also spoke of him as admirable in good-temper, self-sacrifice, quickness, sound knowledge, and general integrity. This eulogy was not undeserved at Mr. Gladstone’s hands. Sir Stafford Northcote had in ancient Corn Law days, when Peel was the honoured leader of the Conservative party, been private secretary to Mr. Gladstone at the Board of Trade. The reverence in which he held his former chief was undiminished by the passage of years, and his natural amiability of character led him to express it and display it on many suitable and unsuitable occasions. But the virtues of Sir Stafford Northcote were not those most needed in the stormy times amid which he closed his long career.

‘His gentle disposition and good intentions,’ said Lord Randolph long afterwards, ‘would have saved anyone from attack except a leader of Opposition.’ The very qualities which endeared him to his friends and family and won him the compliments of his opponents, disheartened, irritated, and paralysed his followers in the House of Commons. The deference which he delighted to show to the Prime Minister, offended a party which had just struggled back, smarting and reduced, from a crushing electoral disaster. His lack of enterprising vigour was from the first session of the new Parliament painfully apparent even to his most faithful friends—and all of those who sat below the gangway were not his friends. His speeches were tame and ineffective. When party rancour festered to hate, when crisis at home followed hot on crisis abroad, the mild expostulations with which Sir Stafford was accustomed to conclude the debates, disappointed his followers. The Opposition, always hopelessly outmatched in their official spokesman, were never more plainly at a disadvantage than when their leader undertook to encounter Mr. Gladstone. Sir Stafford Northcote’s character was estimable, his talents were distinguished, his experience had been long; but scarcely any Parliamentary chief has been more unequal to the particular work he had to do. And yet though his strength failed year by year and extraordinary physical disabilities oppressed him with increasing severity, his fingers, nerveless for aught else, closed tenaciously upon the reins of power. Unfit for any serious exertion or important business even in private life, he was willing—not, indeed, from any selfish or sordid motive, but from a high sense of public duty—to fill the most arduous offices of State. In a condition when, as a doctor, lawyer, or business man, he would have been unable properly to discharge his duties, he was prepared to form Governments, to grapple with Mr. Gladstone at the head of a great majority, and to guide the Conservative party through the fiercest political tumult of a hundred years. Heedless of the warnings of Nature and blind to the plainest teaching of fact, he struggled gallantly forward until he died in harness beneath burdens he was utterly unable either to relinquish or sustain.

The Fourth Party were soon openly antagonistic to Sir Stafford Northcote and took no especial pains to conceal their feeling. In private they invariably called him ‘the Goat.’ This was at first a personal allusion to his beard, but it was afterwards more generally applied to all Conservatives who were thought to be ‘weak-kneed.’ They found themselves hampered in their conflicts with Mr. Gladstone by those who should have led the onset. They viewed the line of ex-Ministers on the Front Bench with those feelings of impatience which are natural to able men who see, or think they see, great opportunities of warfare cast away by persons much less able. They suspected Sir Stafford himself of being anxious to form a coalition with the Whigs; and, although they carefully preserved in public an air of elaborate politeness towards their leader, their true disposition was not in doubt.

Their opinions were held by many others in the Conservative party before the session of 1880 was ended; and, as always happens under such circumstances, there grew up a counter-faction in Sir Stafford Northcote’s support. This was the beginning of strife. It would be profitless to attempt to trace the petty differences upon which mutual dislike was founded. But by the time the recess drew near disagreements were rife. The Fourth Party decided openly to condemn the want of energy and foresight which marked the leadership of the Opposition. The opportunity presented itself at a party meeting held in the Carlton Club on August 20. The plan was drawn up by the four colleagues in convivial conclave at the Garrick Club. It was arranged that Mr. Balfour should, in the name of his colleagues, indicate the failure of Sir Stafford Northcote to lead the party in the House of Commons to the satisfaction of its more active adherents. In pursuance of this Mr. Balfour made a very clever speech, in which he contrived to deliver a most damaging criticism of Sir Stafford Northcote’s methods without actually mentioning his name or using any discourteous phrase. He obtained a considerable measure of assent from the meeting.

On the same day Mr. Balfour, by arrangement with his three friends, attacked the Government for their conduct of public business. His indictment had been carefully drawn up by the four partners, and involved a comprehensive survey of the whole session. He complained that the attempt of Ministers to cram too much into a limited time had resulted in general confusion and in the most improper invasion of private members’ rights, and he moved that it was inexpedient that ‘important measures should be brought under the consideration of the House at a period of the session when it is impossible that they should receive adequate discussion.’ Mr. Gladstone was absent through illness and Lord Hartington undertook to reply to these reproaches. He read out to the House some figures, which had been prepared, of the activities of the Fourth Party during the four months since the dissolution. From this it appeared that Mr. Gorst had spoken one hundred and five times, and had asked eighteen questions; that Sir Henry Wolff had made sixty-eight speeches and had asked thirty-four questions; and that Lord Randolph Churchill had made seventy-four speeches and had asked twenty-one questions. This statement caused much amusement; and after Sir Stafford Northcote had defended the Conservatives at length from the general charge of obstruction which had been urged on behalf of the Government, Lord Randolph rose to vindicate the honour of the Fourth Party. He had prepared himself for this not unexpected duty by a careful study of an article written by Mr. Gladstone when in Opposition in 1879, justifying or at any rate excusing obstruction. Some of the quotations were very effective. ‘The public,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone, ‘has lately heard much on the subject of obstruction in the House of Commons.... But to prolong debate even by persistent iteration on legislative measures is not necessarily an outrage, an offence, or even an indiscretion. For in some cases it is only by the use of this instrument that a small minority with strong views can draw adequate attention to those views.... There are abundant instances in which obstruction of this kind has led to the removal of perilous or objectionable matter from legislative measures, and thus to the avoidance of great public evils.’ Lord Randolph proceeded to read a sentence which seemed to have been specially conceived in advance to protect the Fourth Party. ‘Now, if a great party may obstruct, it is hazardous to award narrower limits to the small one; for it is precisely in the class of cases where the party is small and the conviction strong that the best instances of warrantable obstruction may be found.’ Lord Randolph declared that these passages would be the charter of himself and ‘those who acted with him.’ He deplored the absence from the House of the Prime Minister and pleaded that, acting upon the sanction of his great Parliamentary experience, the Fourth Party ought to have escaped Lord Hartington’s rebuke. He ended by exhorting the Government to cultivate ‘the magic of patience.’

The last appearance of the Fourth Party in the session of 1880 was upon the third reading of the Appropriation Bill, which was not reached till September 4. Notwithstanding the heat of the season and the exhaustion of the House, the member for Woodstock and his friends preserved an air of unrelenting vigilance. Lord Randolph Churchill moved an amendment dwelling on the gravity of the defeat at Maiwand, which he sought to prove, by an elaborate argument based upon the Blue Books, to have been ‘mainly attributable to want of foresight, of military knowledge and of caution on the part of the Indian Executive.’ His criticisms drew from Lord Hartington a reasonable and weighty reply. Both Sir Henry Wolff and Mr. Balfour spoke at later stages in the debate, and thus the session reached its close. ‘The rise of a small body of Conservative free-lances below the gangway,’ said the Times (September 7), in its review of the session, ‘of whom Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Gorst are the chiefs, is a curious incident, and has originated the half-serious nickname of the "Fourth Party."’

Such were the circumstances attending the rise of the Fourth Party in the beginning of the new Parliament. It must be admitted that Mr. Gladstone was at once their most powerful antagonist and their mainstay. His quick eye discerned very early in the session the menace that was growing below the gangway, and he hastened to respond to the challenge. Perhaps, if he had not been a great and famous Parliamentarian, he would have tried to treat with disdain the arguments of unproved or youthful opponents. He would have left the House during their speeches or, ignoring their criticisms altogether, have contented himself with replying only to the ex-officials on the Front Bench. But his nature prompted him to meet the strongest opposition from whatever quarter it might be offered. His generous care for the life and vigour of the House of Commons drew from him a frank recognition of talent wherever or however displayed. He had his favourites on both sides of the House, and he rallied with measureless good-temper and all his most formidable and glittering weapons of debate to the attacks of the Fourth Party and especially of their leader. Often and often he riddled them and crushed them and pulverised them or reasoned with them patiently or cast them aside with a stern rebuke; and as often they returned by other paths unwearied to the attack.

The Prime Minister was indeed on various occasions the innocent cause of delaying his own legislation. He was always delighted to expound obscure or difficult questions for the benefit of friends or opponents. Of this amiable weakness Lord Randolph and his friends took, we may be sure, the fullest advantage whenever the pace of Government business seemed to be undesirably rapid. In his most insinuating manner the member for Woodstock—‘Woodcock,’ it was irreverently called on one occasion—would rise in his place and request the Prime Minister to explain some clause or subsection of a Bill to the Committee. Mr. Gladstone would invariably respond to this invitation with evident alacrity and frequently at considerable length. The wealth of fact and argument with which in a single unpremeditated speech he often enriched the debate served lesser mortals with new ideas. When these were exhausted, Mr. Gorst would get up and thank the Prime Minister for his lucid exposition, which he would say had made everything perfectly intelligible to him, with the exception of one point, upon which he would be most grateful to receive further information. When Mr. Gladstone had made a second lengthy speech upon this, it was Sir Henry Wolff’s turn to state how clear all had been made to his comprehension also—with a single exception. ‘If you speak again,’ growled Sir William Harcourt, a sterner partisan, on one celebrated occasion to his chief, ‘we shall be here till morning.’ But it should not be supposed from this account that Mr. Gladstone lost by his invariable practice of giving his best to the House. Although now and then his opponents may have snatched some trifling advantage from the superabundance of his strength, no qualities but his own could have surmounted the amazing perplexities of the ‘80 Parliament or have guided the Liberal party through its perils. So long as his light lasted the House of Commons lived, and amid the fiercest passions and even scenes of violence preserved its hold upon the sympathies and the imagination of the whole world; and at his death it sank at once, perhaps for ever, in public esteem.

The proceedings and progress of the Fourth Party in the House of Commons did not escape the attention of Lord Beaconsfield and that great man regarded them from the first with high approval. Sir Henry Wolff had already consulted him upon the Bradlaugh controversy. He had known Lord Randolph since Oxford days. He was on friendly terms with all the four friends; but it was Mr. Gorst with whom his relations were most intimate. He took a keen interest in all their Parliamentary manoeuvres. He liked to feel himself in touch with the new men and especially with the young men whom the Parliament was bringing into notice and, so far from frowning on their independence, he encouraged them with advice and approbation. He did not often revisit the House of Commons after his elevation to the peerage; but one of these rare excursions was for the purpose of watching the Fourth Party at work and to hear Lord Randolph speak. He made particular inquiries as to what was thought of the Fourth Party in Ministerial circles. In the early spring of 1881, immediately before the commencement of his last illness, he met Sir Henry James at a dinner given by Sir William Harcourt. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think of Randolph?’ Sir Henry James praised his Parliamentary instincts and aptitude. ‘Ah, yes, you are quite right,’ rejoined Lord Beaconsfield, ‘when they come in they will have to give him anything he chooses to ask for and in a very short time they will have to take anything he chooses to give them.’ During the autumn Lord Beaconsfield invited Mr. Gorst to visit him at Hughenden, and talked to him with much freedom about the policy and influence of the Fourth Party, about Ireland and the general political situation.

‘Lord B.,’ wrote Gorst to Lord Randolph Churchill (November 9), ‘was in his talk anything but Goaty: he generally expressed great confidence in us, thought we had a brilliant future before us, and promised to help and advise us as much as he could. I can in a letter only state dogmatically what the oracle said, without giving all his arguments:—

Mr. Gorst was not the only member of the Fourth Party who was encouraged by the Tory leader. ‘Lord Beaconsfield,’ writes Sir Henry Wolff, ‘whom I had known nearly from my childhood, having asked me to call, I went in the autumn of 1880 to the house in Curzon Street where he was then living and where the next year he died. We discussed the situation and I explained how the action of the Conservative party was crippled by the over-caution—not to say indecision—of Sir Stafford Northcote, which led him constantly to throw us over. He replied almost word for word as follows:—

‘When Mr. Gladstone announced his withdrawal from public life I fully believed his statement, which was confirmed to me from special sources in which I placed the most implicit reliance. I thought that when he was gone Northcote would be able to cope with anyone likely to assume the lead on the other side, and I wanted rest. I now much regret having retired from the House of Commons, as Mr. Gladstone, contrary to my firm persuasion, returned. I fully appreciate your feelings and those of your friends; but you must stick to Northcote. He represents the respectability of the party. I wholly sympathise with you all, because I never was respectable myself. In my time the respectability of the party was represented by * * * a horrid man; but I had to do as well as I could; you must do the same. Don’t on any account break with Northcote; but defer to him as often as you can. Whenever it becomes too difficult you can come to me and I will try to arrange matters. Meanwhile I will speak to him.’

The countenance and kindness thus shown to a rebellious group by so great a man as Lord Beaconsfield filled the hearts of the Fourth Party with a sense of elation. They reflected with satisfaction upon the events of the session. With astonishing rapidity they had risen to a position of influence in Parliament; their action attracted every day an increasing interest from the public. They commanded the serious attention of the Conservative party and enjoyed the favour of its famous leader. Ministers and ex-Ministers eyed them with equal apprehension. Older members were inquisitive about their plans. They looked forward to the brightest future. Yet there were already gathering clouds. Jealousies in a numerous troop had followed closely on success. Their own contemporaries in the party were quick to resent the formation of a clique and still more the prominence which was accorded to it. The great Tory newspapers laboured assiduously to ignore their existence and, when compelled, alluded to their proceedings only with a sneer. The life and soul of the Tory Opposition, they were freely represented as hostile to its interests. Sir Stafford Northcote seems from the beginning to have scented danger. ‘I am inclined to think,’ he wrote complacently to Gorst, as soon as Parliament had risen (September 15, 1880), ‘that the Fourth Party has done enough for its fame, and that it will be the wiser course for its members now quietly to take their places in the main body, where they will have work enough and to spare.’ Gorst, in reply, descanted on the advantages of combination. Each member of the Fourth Party felt stronger for the support and wiser for the counsel of his friends; and he assured Sir Stafford that together they would form a weapon of political warfare which could not fail to be formidable ‘in his hands.’

Thus Mr. Gorst to his leader. But the next day a new plan presented itself to him and this he imparted half in fun to his friends. It was in effect that Sir Stafford’s proposition should be solemnly embraced, that the Fourth Party should after mature deliberation, at his request, give up the idea—which they had never seriously entertained—of a separate party and ‘take their places in the main body,’ by sitting immediately behind their leader on the second bench above the gangway. From this new position, adopted at Sir Stafford’s special desire, Mr. Gorst thought that the conduct of the Opposition could be much more effectively directed than from below the gangway and that its leader would very soon fall completely under the control of the masterful men behind him. Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Henry Wolff both scouted this proposal and supplied a number of reasons against it. Sir Henry Wolff was greatly perturbed at the idea of relinquishing ground which seemed to give the right to treat with party leaders, as he described it, de puissance À puissance; and he pointed to Sir Stafford’s anxiety as a proof of the advantages of independence. Mr. Balfour’s argument was single, substantial, and conclusive. The length of his legs made it indispensable to his comfort that he should sit upon a Front Bench and nothing would induce him to change his quarters. So the matter was settled accordingly; but it is curious that in after-years Lord Randolph used often to relate this story as an instance of Mr. Gorst’s Parliamentary knowledge and shrewdness and would frankly admit that if his advice had been followed all legitimate objects might have been attained without the friction and disturbance that ensued.

The Fourth Party had other friends beside Lord Beaconsfield.

While opinions were thus divided it was not unnatural that Lord Randolph and his friends should wish to give some public demonstration of their influence and to show that they were not without friends in high places. Mr. Balfour became their ambassador and Lord Salisbury, probably after consultation with Lord Beaconsfield, accepted an invitation to address a meeting at Woodstock. Just outside the Woodstock gate of Blenheim Park the road passes through a considerable courtyard, surrounded on every side by lofty walls and pierced only by the gateway. A temporary roof of tarpaulins erected over this converted the highway into a spacious hall; and here on November 30, 1880, Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill first appeared together in political association. The meeting attracted much notice in the country and the attitude of the Tory leaders in the House of Lords towards the independent group which had so severely hustled their colleagues in the House of Commons was, of course, the subject of much comment and speculation. This delicate topic was, however, handled with dexterous caution by the principal speakers. Lord Randolph Churchill, who took the chair, enlarged upon the loyalty of himself and his friends to Lord Beaconsfield but avoided all mention of Sir Stafford Northcote’s name. Lord Salisbury, on his part, was careful to pay an ample tribute to the ‘sagacious guidance’ of Sir Stafford early in his speech and then he proceeded to praise the energy and ability of the member for Woodstock. The meaning of the demonstration was variously interpreted by the newspapers. The Liberal organs regarded it as a further proof of the growing power of the Fourth Party. The Conservative papers believed, or affected to believe, that the rebellious partnership was now dissolved and that the erring friends had been welcomed back to the party fold. ‘It appears,’ said the Times, ‘that Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Henry Wolff are not bent on forming a new party with the assistance of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Gorst.’

The correspondence of the Fourth Party is extensive and would be highly diverting to anyone who knew the Conservative side of the House of Commons in the early ‘eighties. Lord Randolph’s private letters do not lend themselves to publication as readily as those of some other eminent persons. They are spontaneous and scrappy. They deal with the little ordinary commonplaces of the writer’s life. They reflect his mood at the moment. They are full of personal allusions which would be pointless without names and much too pointed with them. He abominated priggishness in all its forms. No one ever wrote to his friends with less regard to ceremony or with more unaffected frankness. Any piece of gossip, any quaint conceit or joke or piece of solemn drollery, any sharp judgment that occurred to him, went upon the paper without an after-thought. Every passing shadow or gleam of sunlight which fell upon him marked his pages with strong contrasts of feeling often extravagantly and recklessly expressed. Nevertheless his correspondence with Sir Henry Wolff has an air of gay and generous friendship, strong with an attractiveness of its own. But there runs through it a recurring sense of weariness and of disgust at politics, which seems to have alternated with his periods of great exertion even during these most merry and successful years of his life.

He delighted in receiving Wolff’s letters at all times: ‘The only fault I find with them is that they are too short; I should like several volumes.’ ‘Your letters are to me like a glass of the best champagne—exhilarating and stimulating.’ ‘You have such an entrancing style, even when writing about the simplest matters, that one recognises at once the statesman and the man of letters.’ ‘It is only your versatile and brilliant genius which could produce such lively correspondence in the dull season.’ He paints his own oratorical achievements in glowing colours: ‘I had a most warm welcome at Oldham. The meeting numbered some six hundred—all working men. I spoke for fifty-five minutes—quite entrancing (my speech). What would you have given to have heard it!!! I will, however, declaim it to you when we meet. Fair Trade and taxing the foreigner went down like butter. How the latter is to be done I don’t know....’ (September 10, 1881.)

And a few weeks later: ‘Well! Hull was a triumph. I never had such a success with a large audience. Every point told surprisingly. In my second speech my reference to your successful contest with Bradlaugh provoked the greatest enthusiasm. I was received yesterday at the Carlton À bras ouverts. I see the Radical provincial press is beside itself with indignation’ (November 3, 1881). ‘I received the Glasgow invitation—most politely worded it is, and I have accepted it. I only hope it may turn out well, and that you are not trying me au dessus de mes forces. It seems a presumptuous thing to go and preach to a lot of Scotchmen on home politics, which they probably understand much better than I do. However, de l’audace, &c.’ (October 24, 1882.)

When Lord Randolph was abroad—as he often was for his health, or in 1883 during his retirement after his father’s death—Wolff kept him informed about political things. These did not always allure him. ‘All your news,’ he wrote in January, 1882, from Monte Carlo, ‘about your conversation with various distinguished people concerning myself is very pleasant reading, but my disinclination to return to England for the meeting of Parliament grows stronger every day and I seem to have lost all interest in things political. I am happy in Capua, and the thought of once more engaging with Goats and Gibsons et hoc genus omne makes me sick. Old * * * came and bored me yesterday for more than an hour, and I had a providential escape from * * * the other day; and yet it is this class of individual of whom the great Tory party is mainly composed. I think I shall copy Gladstone and take to reading Dante and Homer—after,’ he adds prudently, ‘I have got through one or two French novels I have by me.’

He always followed his friend’s doings with attention. ‘I have just risen,’ he writes July 31, 1883, ‘in a state of singular emotion after perusing your Demosthenic oration at Portsmouth’; and again, ‘I wonder how things are going to-night. I dare say you are delivering a telling speech. (It is the dinner hour, 8.30 P.M.!) How I wish I was there to listen and cheer!’ And again (August 17, 1883): ‘You appear to have been sustaining the whole weight of Opposition. I hope you mean to take a good holiday when it is all over. I am quite clear that W. E. G. has been very much bothered by your Suez Canal questions.’ At another time he counsels reserve: ‘I read with interest both your speeches at Banbury and at Portsmouth, and think that they were as good as the occasion admitted of or demanded. At the same time I wish I could convince you of what Chief Justice Morris calls "the energy of silence." ... Gorst and I took a walk on Sunday on Hampstead Heath. I have never been there before. There is a capital inn there called "Jack Straw’s Castle," where Gorst and I agreed the Fourth Party ought to go for Saturday and Sunday during the Session to recruit their strength’ (October 2, 1882). He was bitterly offended by the opposition which on various grounds—partly, no doubt, to annoy him—was threatened against his brother’s candidature for the Carlton Club. ‘I am more vexed,’ he wrote from Gastein, ‘than I can tell you about this business of Blandford and the Carlton Club. I wrote to Dyke before starting, particularly enjoining on him the necessity of making no move unless the consent of the committee was assured. And now how can anyone occupy a more unpleasant position than Blandford does? He has publicly changed his politics, to please me more than for any other reason, and owing to H. Chaplin’s action his overtures to the Conservatives are spurned.... H. Chaplin and Baron de Worms together will soon make the Tory party too hot to hold me. I shall certainly take my name off the Carlton when I return to town, and a very little would make me consummate H. C.’s and B. de W.’s joy by retiring altogether from the party and Parliament. They do not know how easy it would be to get rid of me. I am sick of politics, which only play the dickens with one’s health, and are a dreadful tie. I think the party occupies a worse position now than it did in 1880. But its leading members are so purblind, so given over to the most utter infatuation, that I believe they are of opinion that the country would replace them in power. I only trust, for the sake of the country, that they are as mistaken as I believe them to be.’ (August 8, 1883.)

Here is the account of a most famous event of which Gastein was the scene:—

‘You will be glad to hear that the Emperor of Germany had the honour of being introduced to me on Saturday last at a tea-party at Count Lehndorff’s. This Count, I must tell you, is a Prussian who owns the bicoque which I am inhabiting with my suite. He waited on us on Saturday afternoon, and with almost Oriental deference begged that we would honour the Emperor by meeting him. I write all this, lest you should see garbled accounts in the newspapers. The Emperor, I must admit, was very guarded in his conversation, which was confined to asking me how long I had been here and whether I had come for my health. I imitated his reserve. My wife, however, sat by him at tea, and had much conversation, which, I have ascertained, was confined to the most frivolous topics. I have reason to believe, though it is humiliating to confess it, that the fame of the Fourth Party has not yet reached the ears of this despot. I must say he is a very fine old fellow, and the Germans seem really to love him. There were several other Prussians and Austrians present; but I was rather bored on the whole and so was my wife. They wanted us to go the next night, when they had arranged some tableaux for the old boy; but I sent an excuse on the ground that I was in deep mourning. We did not come here to kowtow to monarchs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘I have just been reading a book on cribbage and I find that in all the games we have played together we have played wrong. The non-dealer at the commencement has the right to mark three holes as compensation for his not having the crib. This you have never allowed me to do. Please therefore send me, by return of post, a cheque for 25l., being the amount you have unjustly and illegally taken from me.’ (November 14, 1883.)

Sometimes his letters take a graver tone:—

And here is a rebuke:—

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL SIR HENRY WOLFF MR. BALFOUR. MR. GORST.
enlarge-image
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL SIR HENRY WOLFF MR. BALFOUR. MR. GORST. THE FOURTH PARTY. Reproduced from Leslie Ward’s Cartoon, December 1st, 1880, by permission of the proprietors of "Vanity Fair."
THE FOURTH PARTY.
Reproduced from Leslie Ward’s Cartoon, December 1st, 1880, by permission of the proprietors of "Vanity Fair."

Lord Randolph’s correspondence with Sir Henry Wolff has carried the reader somewhat in advance of the regular course of the narrative. His letters in 1883 and 1884 belong to a region of more serious disputes than those with which this chapter deals. The swift unravelling of events was to bring varied fortunes and many adventures to the four friends who now delighted to ‘act together.’ They were to play a decisive part in great affairs. Yet it is probable that the early sessions of their comradeship were the joyous days of the Fourth Party. ‘Politics,’ wrote Lady Randolph, ‘seemed more like a game of chess than the life-and-death struggle it was so soon to become for some of them.’ Plots and ambuscades prepared with severe impartiality, amid fun and laughter, against both Front Benches; stormy battles in the House; generous comradeship and glorious discomfiture of foes; miniature Cabinet Councils; toy whitebait dinners, filled the years with merry excitement. One single enormous sofa could contain the whole party—leaders and followers—at once. They were cartooned together in Vanity Fair—Lord Randolph speaking from his famous corner seat, the others and Mr. Balfour (who travelled from Scotland in order to be painted) sprawling on the Bench beside him. Dinner with the Fourth Party was regarded as a rare distinction and justly restricted in its scope. Their political action was not always the result of long premeditation. ‘On one occasion,’ writes Sir Henry Wolff, ‘Balfour gave a dinner at his house, to which he invited the Fourth Party and some other members of Parliament, amongst them Sir R. Cross and Mr. Pell. Someone at length said, "We must return to the House on account of the Bill," of which I do not remember the subject. Randolph said, "We will all go and all speak." Cabs were sent for, and the one I drove in was a few minutes later than his. When I arrived at the House he was already speaking.’ Sometimes their fiercest opponents, Sir William Harcourt or Sir Charles Dilke, shared their board; though not, it is presumed, their secrets. Nay, Mr. Chamberlain himself was invited, though this greatly shocked the Duke of Marlborough, who did not understand how his son could cultivate social relations with a person of such pernicious opinions, and was quite sure House of Commons traditions must have greatly changed since he succeeded. One member of the Government, mentioning to the Liberal Whips that he was dining with the Fourth Party, was told that ‘so long as he kept those four fellows away he could stay any length of time he liked.’ Lord Randolph’s house, in St. James’s Place, was next door to Sir Stafford Northcote’s; but luckily the walls were thick; and here we see the Fourth Party gathered in festive council round the dining-room table, amid the haze of countless cigarettes. Wolff has discovered some new intrigue among the ‘Goats’ or the Radicals or the Parnellites. Gorst has a plan for meeting it. Their leader examines it all with a gay and brilliant vivacity which made his companionship precious to those to whom it was frankly given; and in the background, rather silent, ready enough with chaff and counsel, but difficult to rouse to action, sits Arthur Balfour, dreamily revolving longer calculations of his own.

Here, then, for the present we may leave them and their leader, happy in the enjoyment of active and pugnacious irresponsibility, tasting the first pleasures of success and fame and displacing with the haughty assertions of youthful ardour the tame acceptances of age. It is time to turn to those grave events which marched in crowded and uninterrupted procession from almost every quarter of the Queen’s dominions, to the embarrassment and perplexity of her Ministers.