SIXTEEN months had passed, after Lord Randolph Churchill resigned, before he became involved in a serious and open difference with the Conservative Government. That he was separated from them by sentiment and conviction, not only upon various considerable questions of method, but upon the general character and temper of their policy, has been abundantly explained. But his misgivings were concealed from the public by his consistent defence of the Union, by an unaffected partisanship and by the lively attacks which he made upon the Opposition. It is true that the criticisms upon naval and military administration which had been a necessary feature of his crusade of economy had naturally won him little favour in Ministerial circles, and his open independence of the official leaders could not be welcomed by his party. But the details of departmental administration, though of immense practical importance, do not usually raise, and ought scarcely ever to raise, questions of confidence and loyalty. The efficient conduct of the services and the doctrines of public thrift are—formally, at least—included in the principles of both great political organisations. Except at rare intervals, they lie apart from the ordinary scope of Parliamentary conflict; and their discussion should never seriously divide political associates. But Ireland opened chasms of a very different kind.

When Sir Michael Hicks-Beach recovered his eyesight, Lord Salisbury was anxious for him to rejoin the Government and offered him—no other post being vacant—the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Beach, for whom office had few attractions, who was on many questions in full sympathy with Lord Randolph, and who was always bound to him by firm friendship, was in no hurry to accept. He proposed to Lord Randolph, as they walked down one day to the House together, that he should decline Lord Salisbury’s offer and that they should both sit together and work together for the rest of the Parliament. Lord Randolph would not, however, countenance this generous attempt to relieve the isolation of his position. He urged Sir Michael to join the Government. ‘They need you,’ he said, ‘and besides, I shall like to feel I have one friend there’ (February 1888).

During the whole of 1887 Lord Randolph had regularly supported his late colleagues. Any opinions he had expressed on the Budget and the Land Bill had been of a friendly nature and in the interests of those measures. He had joined in the debates of the House with the same tone and intention as he would have spoken in the Cabinet. No divergence of principle on a dominant issue had yet occurred. The Government had acted—however uninspiringly—in conformity with the main lines of the policy declared at the General Election. It was not until the year 1888 that the question of Irish Local Government and the Suakin operations provoked a definite and notorious disagreement. On both these matters Lord Randolph Churchill had made public declarations of the plainest character in Opposition or as Leader of the House of Commons, and to those pledges he adhered with a truly Quixotic disregard of his personal interests.

‘On this question of Local Government,’ Lord Randolph had stated in August 1886, speaking in the House of Commons in the name of the Conservative party, and with the full authority of the Cabinet as a whole, of the Prime Minister, of the Chief Secretary of the day, and of the leaders of the Liberal Unionists—‘the great sign-posts of our policy are equality, similarity and, if I may use such a word, simultaneity, as far as is practicable, in the development of a genuinely popular system of Local Government in the four countries which form the United Kingdom.’ The months had slipped away. A year and a half were gone. When Lord Randolph left the Government their good resolutions in respect of Ireland faded. Their pledges were long to remain unredeemed. The arguments appropriate to such occasions were employed: the circumstances had changed; the disaffection of the people was patent; the Irish were unfitted by character and history for popular institutions.

It was a Wednesday afternoon (April 25), and under the old rules of procedure the House rose at half-past five. A Nationalist member had moved the second reading of an Irish County Government Bill, roughly designed to merge boards of guardians, lunatic asylum boards and town commissioners in smaller towns into county councils. To this a reasoned amendment was moved, with the concurrence of the Government, by a private member from the Unionist benches, setting forth the inexpediency at that time of introducing any large constitutional change in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone spoke in support of the Bill, and Mr. Balfour made an airy reply, instancing the improper conduct of Irish local bodies and declaring that that country was not fit for any extension of Local Government. Something in his easy manner, thus dismissing unceremoniously—almost, as it seemed, unconsciously—solemn pledges elaborately given to the electorate at a time of choice, and renewed in Parliament after the decision, seems to have stirred Lord Randolph’s blood. He got up immediately the Chief Secretary finished. Speaking with much restraint, but with sufficient sharpness of manner to prevent him referring to his old comrade as a ‘right honourable friend,’ he reminded the Government and the swiftly-offended party of the declarations by which they were bound, and the authority upon which those declarations had been made.

‘All the circumstances,’ he said, ‘upon which the Chief Secretary has enlarged this afternoon, showing the defects which exist in the working of popular institutions in Ireland and the dangers that might be anticipated from their extension, were before the Government of Lord Salisbury at the time when they had to take a decision—a most momentous decision—upon this question.... The idea of the Government at that time was that a certain just extension, within reasonable limits, of Local Government in Ireland was to be looked upon as a remedy for the great evils which have been dwelt upon by the Chief Secretary.... I recollect that the pledges given by the Unionist party were large and liberal, were distinct and full, and that there was no reservation in those pledges with respect to all the defects pointed out this afternoon in the Irish character and in respect of Irish unfitness for Local Government—nothing of the kind. We pledged ourselves that we would at the very earliest opportunity extend to Ireland the same amount of Local Government which we might give to England and Scotland. I venture to say—and I do not care how much I am contradicted, or what the consequences may be—that that was the foundation of the Unionist party; and, more, that that is the only platform on which you can resist Repeal. If you are going to the English people, relying merely on the strength of your Executive power—if you are going to preach that the Irish must for an indefinite time be looked upon as an inferior community—unfit for the privileges which the English people enjoy—then I tell you that you may retain that position for a time, but only for a time, and that the time will probably be a short one.... The words I used in representing the Government at that table were that in approaching this momentous question of Local Government we should do so with similarity, equality and simultaneity. The time has gone by altogether for me to bear, and I will be content no longer to bear, solely the responsibility of those words; and I do not think that there would be a bon fide carrying-out of the policy I then announced if Ireland is not to have a measure of Local Government, until the state of order in that country is satisfactory to the Executive Government.’

Only a short time remained before the sitting must end. Chamberlain rose at once from the Front Opposition Bench and in a speech of four minutes said that he should vote with the Government on the understanding that measures of local reform for Ireland were simply delayed by pressure of business. Before the Leader of the House could add anything to the debate Mr. Parnell moved the Closure—the Irish desiring to obtain the division usual on such private members’ Bills—and the incident ended. But it left an estrangement behind.

The second quarrel did not arise till eight months later. In November 1888 the chronic skirmishing and raiding around Suakin developed into a regular blockade of that place, and the squalid, worthless, pestilential Red Sea port became again a bone of strife between brave men in the desert and wise men in the Senate. I do not need to remind the reader of the vehement attacks which Lord Randolph Churchill had made upon Mr. Gladstone’s Egyptian policy, or of the support and approval which those attacks had received from the Conservative party and the Conservative press. No part of those strictures had been more effective or more violent than that which referred to the operations around Suakin. They had not, as many people on both sides of politics had believed and freely stated, been impelled mainly by a factious desire to discredit and embarrass Mr. Gladstone’s Administration. That was, no doubt, an obvious contributory motive; but behind it lay a profound detestation of the purposeless bloodshed with which Soudan history, and especially Suakin history, had since 1883 been stained. ‘I do not hesitate to say,’ he declared in 1888, ‘that I hate the Soudan. The idea to me of risking the life of a single British soldier in that part of the world is inexpressibly repugnant.’ Whatever he might have thought at another time, when the finances of Egypt were restored and the Dervish fires had burnt low, of a methodical and scientific reconquest of the country, he was sincerely opposed in 1888, as in Mr. Gladstone’s day, to the policy known as ‘kill and retire.’ It seemed to him the highest unwisdom, whether from a political or military point of view, to despatch a single British battalion, swamped among four thousand Egyptian soldiers, with no other object, even if successful, than to fight a battle, decimate the hostile tribesmen and return. He recalled the small beginnings and the insufficient forces out of which great and far-reaching events in Zululand and in the Transvaal had sprung. And he did not lack, as was afterwards proved, the support of high authorities for his opinion. ‘I can assure you,’ telegraphed Lord Cromer (then Sir Evelyn Baring) to Lord Salisbury on December 6, ‘that, unless great care is taken, the Government may be dragged into another big Soudan business almost before they are aware of it’; and, again, ‘all sorts of arguments will probably be put forward about tranquillising the Soudan once and for all. I believe that these arguments are of very little value and that for the present the Soudan cannot be tranquillised without the re-occupation of Khartoum, which would require a large force.’[66]

On these subjects and in this tenor Lord Randolph delivered three speeches in the House of Commons, which were, as may be easily imagined, met with unstinted resentment by his party. He spoke first on December 1, a general debate on the vote for embassies and foreign missions having been raised by Mr. Morley; and three days later he moved the adjournment of the House. This step created extravagant surprise and anger. He rose, as the newspapers took care to point out, to make his motion absolutely alone on the Government side of the House. He was supported by the whole Opposition. He spoke—as, indeed, throughout the Parliament of 1886—with gravity and moderation, and made a quiet, earnest appeal to the House to prevent the renewal of the Soudan warfare. His motion for the adjournment was unexpected, and the Government were for some time, during the debate that followed, in a minority. At a quarter-past six, however, when the division was taken, they secured a majority of forty-two, although a half-dozen Conservatives—among whom Mr. Hanbury was probably the best-known—voted against them.

Loud and long was the expression of Ministerial wrath. ‘In order to discredit his views,’ wrote Jennings, in his preface to Lord Randolph Churchill’s speeches, ‘it was necessary to bring into play those formidable weapons of misrepresentation which can never be used with greater effect than when they are directed by persons who have the entire machinery of a great party at their command.’ He was accused forthwith of having laid a plot with the Opposition to destroy the Government on a snap division; and the ‘treachery’ and ‘ingratitude’ of such conduct were for some days a popular and fertile theme. He was even forced to defend himself in public from such imputations. His reply was explicit: ‘(1) If I had desired,’ he wrote to an inquiring person, ‘to snatch a surprise division on the motion for the adjournment of the House, which I made on Tuesday last with regard to Suakin, I should not have occupied fifty minutes of the time of the House with my own speech. (2) If I had desired by the aid of the Opposition to defeat the Government, I should not have selected an evening when the supporters of the Government, under the pressure of a five-line whip, were likely to be present in great numbers in order to take part in a division on an Irish vote which had been arranged to come off before the dinner-hour. (3) The fact of the matter is that the case against the Suakin expedition is so strong, and the line taken with respect to similar expeditions by the Tories when they were in Opposition was so marked, that I felt very confident of receiving appreciable support from the ranks of the Ministerialists. For that reason I welcomed every circumstance which was likely to bring together a full House.’

It is not suggested that Lord Randolph Churchill was unwilling to defeat the Government by his motion. Its object was to prevent the proposed action in the Soudan. That object could only have been attained by an adverse vote in the House of Commons. Whether such a vote would have involved the resignation of Ministers is uncertain. The pretence that a simple motion for adjournment, necessarily unaccompanied by any substantive censure of policy, should directly involve a change of Government is a modern abuse of Parliamentary practice. But even had the fate of the Government turned on the division—as, of course, they declared it would—conscientious conviction in an urgent matter of life and death would have fully justified Lord Randolph in the course he took. His action was reasonable, consistent and fair. Whether he was right on the merits of the question or as to its importance in relation to the general political situation, must be judged by others.

The Government profited both by the counsels which were offered them and by the result of their final decision. The British force despatched to Suakin was reinforced. The scope of the warfare was rigidly confined. Nothing that might prove extensive or entangling was permitted and, on the other hand, the limited operation was in itself completely successful. On December 21 an engagement was fought outside Suakin. The Dervishes were routed with heavy slaughter and driven away into the desert, whence—as it luckily happened—they did not subsequently choose to return in numbers sufficient to cause anxiety to the garrison or seriously disturb the peace of the Red Sea Littoral.

The speeches of Lord Randolph Churchill in Parliament during the years from 1887 to 1890 were the best in manner and command he ever made. He stood alone, surrounded by enemies who were once his supporters, and faced by opponents whose plaudits he did not desire; but if he had still been Leader of the House he could not have been more at his ease and more sure of himself. His style was serious enough to suit the dullest; and yet point after point was made with a clearness and rhetorical force to which the dullest could not be insensible. His voice penetrated everywhere without apparent effort. Every tone was full of meaning. He was sparing of gesture and cared little for oratorical ornament. He was always heard with profound attention by the House, with obvious anxiety by the Government, and usually in silence by the Conservative party.

The influence which he exerted upon the course of affairs outside the ordinary divisions of party was palpable and noteworthy. With the full consent of the Government he moved (February 16, 1888) the Address to the Crown, which being assented to unanimously by the House, called into being the Royal Commission upon the alleged corruption and improprieties of the Metropolitan Board of Works. When a member of Parliament had been guilty of a libel upon the Speaker, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who with formidable authority of manner, and complete mastery of Parliamentary practice, persuaded, and indeed compelled, the House to resolve his suspension for an entire month (July 20, 1888). One hot summer afternoon (June 27, 1888) he appeared unexpectedly in his place and practically laughed the Channel Tunnel Bill—supported though it was by Mr. Gladstone and many prominent Tories—out of the House of Commons. Sir Edward Watkin, the promoter, had explained a device by which a Minister of State by touching a button could in an instant blow up the entrance to the tunnel. ‘Imagine,’ exclaimed Lord Randolph, drawing an airy finger along the Treasury bench—‘Imagine a Cabinet Council sitting in the War Office around the button. Fancy the present Cabinet gathered together to decide who should touch the button and when it should be touched.’ He had intended to add, ‘Fancy the right honourable member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) rising at length in his place with the words "I move that the button be now touched,"’ but the laughter from all parties which this diverting picture had already excited led him to forget the climax he had contemplated. The Bill was rejected by 307 to 165. Few private members, divorced alike from office and from the official Opposition, have in modern times been able by their unaided personal force so powerfully to sway the opinion of Parliament.

And now must be related an incident which, though not in itself of historical importance, created a great hubbub at the time and involved an open political dispute and severance between Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Chamberlain. Although Lord Randolph was comfortably settled in Paddington and enjoyed the luxury of a safe seat, he always hankered after Birmingham. Contact with a democratic electorate in a centre of active political thought was always personally very alluring to him; and it is singular that he never achieved his ambition of representing a popular constituency. But if these were general predilections, Birmingham offered attractions of its own. His association with the Birmingham Tories during the fighting days of 1884 and 1885 had formed ties of mutual regard and comradeship which proved strong enough—in the case of those who had come into personal touch with him, at any rate—to stand all the strains of the lean and melancholy years that followed. No amount of party disapprobation, of pressure from headquarters, of newspaper abuse, affected the faithfulness of those with whom he had fought side by side. They scorned every suggestion that he was ‘disloyal’ to the party. They held by him through thick and thin. In spite of the frowns of party leaders, and sometimes of real divergences of opinion, the controlling forces in the Midland Conservative Club were always unswerving in his support; and the last time he ever appeared on a public platform was in the Birmingham Town Hall.

There were, moreover, obvious reasons why, in the early part of 1889, Lord Randolph should have wished to be sustained by the vote of a great constituency. He was out of joint with his party. He was almost alone in the House of Commons. All the orthodox and official forces in the Conservative party were hostile to him. He had taken an independent course on various important questions, and that course had twice been directly opposed to Lord Salisbury’s Government. There was asserted to be a definite compact between the local Conservative leaders in Birmingham and the Liberal Unionists that, in the event of a vacancy in the Central Division, Lord Randolph Churchill was to be invited by both wings of the Unionist party to stand. This agreement was personal to Lord Randolph and particular to Birmingham, and quite independent of any general arrangement respecting Conservative and Liberal-Unionist seats; and a clear understanding to this effect existed between Lord Randolph and Mr. Chamberlain. There was, therefore, no doubt that if a vacancy occurred Lord Randolph had a right to stand and to look for the support of both sections of the party. If he did not stand himself, then only the nomination of a candidate would rest properly with the Liberal Unionists. It was admitted that in such a contest he would be victorious by a majority of two or three thousand votes; and his friends believed, almost without exception, that such a victory, involving as it did a popular endorsement of all that he had done since he left the Cabinet, must enormously raise his prestige in Parliament and the country.

All through the year 1888 Mr. Bright lay desperately ill. At the end of May Mr. Chamberlain, who had just returned from his American trip, and who was still on most friendly terms with Lord Randolph, wrote to tell him that he feared the end was approaching, to ask what Lord Randolph would do, and to promise him support should he decide to stand. Lord Randolph replied (May 30, 1888): ‘I hope Mr. Bright will get better. The news this morning is more favourable. In the event of a vacancy occurring, I should not leave Paddington unless it was the strong and unanimous wish of the Tories and of your party combined, and unless they were of opinion that there was real danger of the seat being lost if I did not stand. I do not imagine, however, that these two conditions are likely to arise. The seat is a Liberal-Unionist seat and that party has a clear right to put forward one of their own number, and to receive a full measure of Tory support.’ These communications were on both sides informal. They did not in any way affect the compact. They were merely assurances as to what the writers would do personally under the compact as it existed, if the issue were raised at that time. The issue was not raised. Mr. Bright rallied and survived almost for another year. When he died, on March 27, 1889, quite a different situation had been created. Lord Randolph Churchill ardently desired to stand. Mr. Chamberlain was vehement to prevent him. The dispute that followed is not in its essence difficult to understand. A definite agreement exists between two friends. They agree as friends to interpret it in a particular manner. They cease to be friends as regards politics. They wish to interpret it in another manner; and they quote one another’s friendly assurances as if they were an integral part of the agreement itself. Neither is legally bound; both are morally embarrassed. In the present case the complexity of the dispute was aggravated by all sorts of conflicting statements and promises made at different times by the local leaders. Into these it is not necessary to enter.

Lord Randolph Churchill’s right to stand was, of course, incontestable. Compact or no compact, his claim upon the Liberal-Unionist vote was strong. He had polled 4,216 Conservative votes against Mr. Bright himself in that very constituency. He had only been defeated by 773. The Conservative organisation was unanimous in his favour. He was ‘idolised’ (this is the word that is used most frequently in contemporary accounts) by the rank and file. They outnumbered by three or four to one the Liberal Unionists in the division. Their votes had contributed four-fifths of the poll of all the Liberal-Unionist members in the city. Lord Randolph had himself been the principal agent by which the return of these gentlemen had been secured. On the day after the vacancy was declared the Birmingham Daily Post, the official Liberal-Unionist organ, published an article supporting his candidature and giving the Conservatives reason to believe that it would be accepted by both parties; nor did Mr. Chamberlain himself deny that if Lord Randolph came forward it would be his duty to support him. The only question was: Should he come forward?

No sooner was Mr. Bright dead than the Birmingham Conservatives appealed to Lord Randolph. All his friends and well-wishers pressed him to stand. Mr. Jennings was insistent. FitzGibbon urged him to ‘chuck another big town’ at the ‘old gang.’ ‘It would be like the Paris elections to Boulanger,’ said others. Colonel North, with the blunt decision of a business man, telegraphed to him from Santiago: ‘Be sure contest Birmingham.’ Faithful supporters offered to place their seats at his disposal in case of accidents. Lord Randolph does not seem to have anticipated any opposition from Mr. Chamberlain; yet it should have been sufficiently evident that Mr. Chamberlain’s interests and inclinations were not likely to be served by the establishment of ‘Two kings in Brentford.’ So long as they were allies working in concert, it might be—perhaps it must be—endured. Now that they were separated and pursuing independent, and even divergent, courses the idea was intolerable. No difficulty or dispute was, however, apprehended. On April 2, when the writ was moved, Lord Randolph Churchill had every reason to suppose that complete unanimity prevailed. A deputation of Birmingham Tories waited on him at the House of Commons on that day with a hearty invitation. It seemed that his election was secured, and that a giant majority was certain.

And here I leave the account to Mr. Jennings:—

The deputation were not alone in their disgust. Mr. Jennings was so vexed by what he conceived to be the weak and capricious abandonment of a cherished plan that for several days he could hardly bring himself to discuss it with Lord Randolph. His other friends were puzzled and discouraged. They ridiculed the impartiality of the committee of three. Chamberlain was an interested party, with a perfectly open and declared wish to prevent Lord Randolph standing. Hartington as leader of the Liberal Unionists could not act against the interests of his own followers. Beach, though a staunch friend, was a member of the Government. No wonder they had been able to come so promptly to a decision. To Lord Randolph himself the result was a cruel disappointment. He was isolated. He had few loyal followers and many powerful enemies. He could ill afford to surrender such advantages as he possessed. The others were armed with all the resources of a vast confederacy. Of his little he gave freely. In their prosperity and power they accepted the sacrifice as a matter of course. Mr. Chamberlain, it is true, was careful to say publicly[67] that Lord Randolph’s action was ‘in loyal accord with the arrangements made with the Conservative leaders, including himself, in 1886,’ and to emphasise his ‘honourable determination not to break the national compact of which he was a chief party in 1886.’ But the Times, then in the closest agreement with the governing forces of the Conservative party, though admitting that Lord Randolph had acted ‘with thorough loyalty to the great cause that unites us all,’ permitted itself (April 6) to observe that ‘if the Birmingham Conservatives had any right to be aggrieved at the loss of their pet candidate it was to him, and to no one else, that they ought to address their complaints.’

The dispute was continued passionately at Birmingham. Mr. John Albert Bright was duly brought forward as the Liberal-Unionist candidate for the Central Division. The Conservative leaders there—Rowlands, Sawyer, Satchell-Hopkins, Moore Bayley—utterly refused to support him. They were local men, and against them were arrayed the whole authority of their party chiefs and the force and influence of a great national politician. But they had fought hard battles before, and although they thought themselves deserted by Lord Randolph Churchill they faced the situation with obstinacy. They declared that the Liberal Unionists had broken faith with them and that Mr. Chamberlain had intrigued and used unfair pressure to prevent Lord Randolph from standing. Their determination not to support Mr. J. A. Bright was endorsed by their followers. For several days it seemed as if the Gladstonian candidate, Mr. Phipson Beale, would carry the seat.

So critical was the position that Mr. Balfour was hurried down to restore peace. A crowded meeting was held, at which Mr. Rowlands was bold enough to say that the Birmingham Conservatives were not prepared to bow down to anything that might be settled in London, and the more vigorous members of the Midland Conservative Club shouted ‘No surrender!’ Mr. Balfour was at his best. He dwelt upon Lord Randolph’s refusal to stand—‘he had absolutely declined to do so.’ There was almost a suggestion that the speaker doubted the wisdom of that decision—but there it was! He then asserted the unimpeachable right of the local Conservatives to choose their own candidate. He deprecated strongly the interference of London politicians in local matters. But he urged them, in the free exercise of their discretion, utterly uninfluenced by such interference, to oppose the return of a Gladstonian. He carried the meeting with him. The local leaders were divided. Some acquiesced; some stood aside for a time. The part Mr. Rowlands had played had been too bold and prominent for retreat or pardon. Birmingham politics are bitter. Notwithstanding that every Conservative organisation in the city passed resolutions urging him to retain his leadership, he resigned his offices and withdrew altogether from public life. He should be remembered for having carried out the arrangement of 1886, whereby the Conservatives gave their full support to the Radical Unionists, ‘asking for no return, making no boast or taunt,’ on which arrangement Mr. Chamberlain’s second empire in Birmingham was ultimately established; and also for his firmness and courage amid peculiar and uncertain circumstances. Mr. John Albert Bright was elected by a large majority, practically the whole Conservative party having voted in his support.

Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, like practical people, said nothing until the election was over and their candidate was returned. Then he addressed a letter to the Birmingham papers challenging the local Conservatives to make good their charges of bad faith and intrigue. ‘I am perfectly ready,’ he wrote, ‘to accept full responsibility for the advice which, in common with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Lord Hartington, was tendered to Lord Randolph Churchill when he asked our opinions. I had no right and no wish to conceal my view that Lord Randolph Churchill’s candidature might possibly be unsuccessful, and would certainly be regarded with disfavour by Liberal Unionists in all parts of the country, as taking from the party one of the comparatively few seats held by them in 1886. While, however, I maintained this opinion, I expressed my readiness to do all in my power to promote his return if he should finally decide to come forward.’ To the challenge to produce proofs of a broken compact the Conservatives replied with vigour and volubility. A whole page of the Birmingham Gazette was occupied with their statements, which appear to have been both explicit and complete. But as the dispute turned largely on the exact terms of the ‘understanding,’ whether those terms constituted a ‘compact,’ and how far this compact, if it existed, was modified by a general compact relating to Liberal-Unionist seats throughout the country, and as both parties relied mainly on their recollection of conversations which had taken place at intervals during the preceding year, no definite issue could be reached. But the Birmingham Conservatives were provoked anew by the triumphant resolution passed by the Liberal Unionists affirming that the recent election had proved their ‘preponderance of power’ in the Central Division, and the quarrel was protracted with the rancour of civil war and the amenities of political discussion in Birmingham.

These proceedings, which were reported very fully throughout the country, forced Lord Randolph Churchill to publish on April 23 a detailed statement in the form of a letter to Mr. Chamberlain. After dealing at length with the questions of the compact he continued:—

There the matter ends so far as this account is concerned; for it is not necessary to follow the long and vexatious discussions by which, after years had passed, the representation of the Edgbaston Division in lieu of the Central Division was ultimately conceded to the Conservative party. Lord Randolph’s decision has been exposed to various criticisms, but the explanation is not obscure. He looked back with pride to the great compact of 1886. He could not bear to take action which would be misrepresented as hostile to the fundamental basis of the Unionist alliance; and he knew well that the forces for influencing public opinion against him were strong enough, whatever the actual rights and wrongs of the Birmingham dispute, to create that impression. This reasoning may have been sufficient; but it does not cover the fact of his submitting his claims to the arbitrament of such a committee. Whatever the circumstances, he himself should have decided. The responsibility was his alone; and although it might be prudent to receive the counsels of Lord Hartington and of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and to hear Mr. Chamberlain’s opinion, he should have informed them, and not they him, of the decision that was finally taken.

It should be said that Lord Randolph Churchill never considered that Mr. Chamberlain had treated him with any want of candour in this affair. He did not think he had been generous in action or in victory. But he recognised that a natural divergence had opened between them and, this, although acute, was confined to political and public limits and did not extend to personal relations. To the end of his life he was accustomed to say that their only quarrel was over the Aston Riots; and they met, though less frequently, on courteous terms. The blow was a bitter one to Lord Randolph. His enforced desertion of his Birmingham friends cut him to the quick. As he came out of the Whips’ room, where he had given his answer to the deputation, a friend noticed upon his face the shadow of that drawn and ghastly look with which it was in a few years to be stamped.

So considerable an interval elapsed after the Suakin debates before Lord Randolph Churchill again addressed the House of Commons that he provoked a laugh by drolly asking ‘the indulgence usually accorded to a new member.’ The session of 1889 had almost reached its close without the question of making the necessary provision by Parliamentary grant for the children of the Prince of Wales having been debated. When he rose (July 26), in succession to Mr. Bradlaugh, from his accustomed seat immediately behind the Treasury Bench, the Conservative members seemed in some doubt as to his intention, and he was greeted by only a very faint cheer. But his first words made his position manifest: ‘I have always held an opinion, amounting to absolute conviction, as to the indisputable right of the Crown to apply to Parliament to make provision for the Royal Family and to rely upon the liberality of Parliament in respect of such applications.’ Then followed one of the most happy speeches he ever achieved. The argument, which was elaborate and precise, was concerned largely with figures and precedents showing the small cost of the British Monarchy compared with other forms of Government, and the conduct of the reigning Sovereign with respect to claims upon Parliament in comparison with some of her later predecessors. The constitutional doctrine involved and the mode of presenting such a case to a popular assembly are worthy of the attention of politicians; but the whole was enlivened and adorned by a sustained sparkle of what in those days had come to be called ‘Randolphian humour,’ which kept the rapidly assembled House in continued laughter and applause. When, for instance, he referred to Mr. Mundella as having ‘addressed his constituents in Paradise—Square,’ with just the slightest pause after ‘Paradise,’ the whole House collapsed; and Mr. Gladstone, whose sense of humour was somewhat uneven, is said to have laughed more than at any other jest he had ever heard in Parliament.

The effect of this speech, which occupied more than an hour, was to produce for the moment a complete reconciliation between Lord Randolph and his party. All about him as he sat down was a stir of enthusiasm. The Treasury Bench turned a row of delighted faces towards him. Among his papers I find a bundle of letters, full of gratitude and praise, written from the House by Conservative members while the impression was strong in their minds. But Lord Randolph Churchill knew he had that to say two days later in the Midlands which would speedily dissipate such transient and uncourted approbation.

On successive evenings at Walsall and Birmingham he outlined an extensive, yet not unpractical, programme of domestic legislation, dealing especially with land and housing, and with temperance. A single extract will show how far his mind had travelled from those serene pastures where the Government lambs were nourished:—

The next day he spoke at Birmingham. Ireland was his principal theme. For the first time on this subject since he resigned he unburdened his mind without restraint. He showed how much he hated the harsh and ill-tempered opinions then so powerful. He advocated two great measures by which the Conservative party might with wisdom and propriety assuage the bitter discontent of the Irish people—Local Government and land purchase. He even named the sum of money for which the credit of the United Kingdom might be pledged to create a peasant proprietary. ‘Something like one hundred millions,’ he said; and the audience gasped suspiciously. What folly to think the Conservative party would touch such measures! And yet they have passed them into law!

Surely the reader will linger on the wit and wisdom of this concluding passage, remembering always how great a price in influence and personal fortunes the speaker willingly paid for the privilege of telling the truth:—

These two speeches in the Midlands, especially the first, at Walsall, were a terrible rock of offence. The landlords, the brewers and the opponents of land purchase were incensed and alarmed. ‘They are all up in arms against you,’ wrote Jennings sadly from the House of Commons. ‘The speech on the Royal Grants did you so much good with the party, and now ... the Conservatives say you are nothing better than a Socialist, and the Radicals are, for a wonder, equally hostile. They are all agreed in denouncing you. The wind is due east, I must admit, and very keen and biting.’

‘I am sorry to have to tell you,’ wrote a Conservative member who had been pressing Lord Randolph to visit his constituency, ‘that the local Fathers in * * * think that in the interests of the party it would be undesirable to hold a meeting there, and that you would not meet with a good reception from our own people. All of them expressed the opinion that they could not afford to offend the brewers and publicans, who have done so much for us in the past, and that any scheme proposing a loan of money to Ireland to buy out Irish landlords was most unpopular and regarded as Gladstonianism pure and simple.’

In Birmingham especially a bad impression was created, and Lord Randolph’s influence, already terribly injured by his refusal to stand, was further weakened. It need scarcely be said that Mr. Chamberlain was much shocked by the open profession of doctrines so advanced in constituencies which bordered on his own, and on the first convenient occasion he felt it his duty to administer a suitable rebuke:—

All this was especially edifying, pronounced as it was within four years of the ‘Unauthorised Programme.’ But Lord Randolph was not, as some who wrote to him seemed to suppose, trying to ingratiate himself with the House of Commons Tories, or seeking to win re-entry to the Cabinet. ‘I decline,’ he said sardonically, ‘to enter into competition with Mr. Chamberlain for the smiles of Hatfield.’ He understood perfectly what reception the ruling class in the Conservative party would accord to his democratic ideas. The worthy Conservative gentlemen who had pressed their congratulations upon him after his speech on the Royal Grants could hardly restrain their indignation now. Finding themselves at one time in complete agreement with him, and at another in vehement dissent, they assumed, not unnaturally, that he was unbalanced and insincere. Yet these speeches, variously greeted as they were, arose from the same logical and coherent system of political thought to which, rightly or wrongly, he had always adhered through good and evil fortune. The principal speeches which he made in 1889 almost covered, and were designed to cover, the whole field of ‘Tory Democracy.’ In justifying the Royal Grants he had affirmed that loyalty to the Crown which every true Tory Democrat must be prepared to practise and sustain. At Walsall and Birmingham he urged that energetic sympathy with practical social reform and indifference to selfish class instincts which alone can convince democracy that time-honoured institutions are not merely safeguards, but may be made effective instruments of progress. In Wales during the autumn he championed the Established Church. In Scotland later in the year he defended the Union. Something was, however, still wanting to complete his political faith. It remained to assert the sanctity of those constitutional barriers by which liberty and justice are secured. That omission the near future was to repair.