IT is no part of my task to examine the proceedings of the Special Commission, nor to supply a narrative of that long-drawn and embittered controversy known as ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ Those are matters of history, and even such allusion to their course and character as might have been required for the coherency of this story seems unnecessary in view of an account recently given to the world by Mr. Morley,[68] combining the vivid and picturesque character which only an eye-witness can command, with that brevity in regard to general questions indispensable to biography. I am concerned only to pick out Lord Randolph Churchill’s part and to trace the steps which led him to an utter breach with the Government and quarrel with the Conservative party; and this can be done mainly in his own words.

The letter involving Mr. Parnell in complicity with the Phoenix Park murders was printed in facsimile in the Times of April 18, 1887, and was doubtless intended to be a spur to the Unionist party on the day of the introduction of the Coercion Bill. That same night Mr. Parnell declared it to be a forgery. His denial was received with incredulity by the Ministerialists and he was at once asked why he did not take action for libel. His reasons for not doing so were apparently that he and his advisers had no confidence that their case would be considered without prejudice by a Middlesex jury, and that if a favourable verdict were obtained in Ireland similar English suspicions would deprive it of moral effect. No action being taken by Mr. Parnell, a motion was made by a private member for a Select Committee of Inquiry. This was debated on May 5, and the Select Committee was refused by the Government. Lord Randolph, who on this occasion, as on various other questions of privilege, was consulted by Mr. Smith, supported the Government decision, and warmly defended the Leader of the House from attacks which were made upon him. Although the murder charges against Mr. Parnell were repeated in various forms at partisan meetings, and even received countenance from several of the Conservative Ministers, the whole matter lapsed so far as Parliament was concerned, and would never have been resuscitated but for the perversity of chance.

An action for libel against the Times was instituted in November 1887 by an Irishman who had sat in the late Parliament as a follower of Mr. Parnell and who felt himself damaged by the various allegations contained in the series of letters headed ‘Parnellism and Crime.’ This suit was tried before Lord Coleridge in July 1888. The Times happened to be defended by Sir Richard Webster, the principal law officer of the Crown—acting, however, as he explained, to his own satisfaction, purely professionally and not as a member of the Government. In the course of the trial the Attorney-General repeated during three days the general charges and allegations of the Times articles, and produced a further batch of incriminating letters alleged to be signed by the Irish leader. On this the Parliamentary case was reopened, and Parnell himself demanded a Select Committee of Inquiry. The Government, as before, refused the Committee, but—to general astonishment—they now proceeded to offer, and finally to insist upon, a Commission of three judges with statutory power to inquire not merely into the specific matter of the letters, but rovingly into the whole of the charges and allegations of the Times, whether against members of Parliament or ‘other persons.’ The necessary Bill was introduced on July 16.

Lord Randolph Churchill was dismayed by this unexpected departure. He felt it his duty to protest from the very beginning against such procedure. Yet he did not wish to embarrass the Government or to hamper them in their Irish policy. Instead of speaking in the debates upon the Bill, he drew up on the day of its introduction a memorandum which he sent to Mr. Smith, and which is at once a convenient narrative of the case and perhaps the most powerful statement he ever penned. If it were necessary to base his reputation for political wisdom upon a single document, I should select this.

Nearly two years had passed since these words were written. During all that time Lord Randolph Churchill kept silence. The Government persevered in their courses. The Bill for the Special Commission was driven swiftly through the House of Commons by guillotine closure. The Judges slowly unravelled the vast tangle of evidence and ethics which had been thrust upon them. Not until the fiftieth sitting of the court was the letter reached which was the reason for the whole proceeding. Then there was an acceleration. In two days a wretched man was proved a forger. In five days he was dead. The only charge that gave birth to the Commission perished by the pistol-shot that destroyed Pigott. The other allegations, melancholy and voluminous as they were, useful as they may have been for political controversy, revealed only the bitterness of the national and racial struggle; and expressed in the language of the victorious party a condemnation of methods of political warfare, more or less lawless, certainly deplorable, but essentially characteristic of revolutionary movements, open or veiled.

The report of the Commission came before the House of Commons on March 3, 1890. In spite of every effort to broaden the issue and to escape from narrow and definite charges of murder, which had been disproved, to general charges of lawlessness and disloyalty which required no proof, the impression produced in the country was adverse to the Government. The party orator dilated on the heinous conduct of the Irish members. The plain man stopped short at Pigott. Ministers had stained the cause of the Union by unconstitutional action and had allowed others to stain it by felony. Lord Randolph’s private letters reveal from time to time the abhorrence with which he regarded the whole transaction. The by-elections attested the opinion of the public. There was too much truth in Parnell’s savage accusation:[69] ‘You wanted to use this question of the forged letters as a political engine. You did not care whether they were forged or not. You saw that it was impossible for us under the circumstances, or for anybody under the circumstances, to prove that they were forgeries. It was a very good question for you to win elections with.... It was also a suitable engine to enable you to obtain an inquiry into a much wider field and very different matters, an inquiry which you never would have got apart from these infamous productions.’

The feeling that some reparation was due to men against whom a charge of complicity in murder had been falsely preferred and who had been pursued by such unwonted means, was by no means confined to the Opposition. But the Government were resolved to brazen it out; and the party machine, local and national, held firm. The speech of the Conservative leader was grudging and unsympathetic; and Mr. Gladstone’s condemnation and appeal rang through a responsive House. The debate on his amendment ebbed and flowed through four Parliamentary days, and from the division by which it was terminated fourteen Unionists, including Lord Randolph, abstained. Meanwhile, on March 7, Mr. Jennings—with the concurrence, as was generally known, of Lord Randolph Churchill—had given notice of the following amendment: ‘And, further, this House deems it to be its duty to record its condemnation of the conduct of those who are responsible for the accusations of complicity in murder brought against members of this House, discovered to be based mainly on forged letters, and declared by the Special Commission to be false.’ Such a notice, coming from the Unionist benches and believed to have the support of Lord Randolph Churchill, of course attracted general attention. He himself was, however, in the greatest perplexity. Party feeling ran high. It is when the attack is grave and damaging, when there is fullest justification for censure, when manifestly Ministers are wrong, that those who adhere to them through thick and thin, are most impatient of reproach. He knew well that by speaking he would greatly injure himself in the eyes of his party. And yet could he honourably keep silent? He regretted that he had encouraged Jennings to put his amendment down. He asked him to withdraw it. But Mr. Jennings refused. It was not until Mr. Gladstone’s amendment had been disposed of on the fourth day of the discussion that he made up his mind to speak, when the House should meet at the next sitting (March 11). By custom, though not by rule, the Speaker would have called upon the movers of other amendments, once that stage of debate has begun. But Lord Randolph, after much consideration, decided that he had better say what he had to say upon the main question, neither interfering with, nor being limited by, Mr. Jennings’s amendment or others that stood before it; and technically he was within his right, if the Speaker should call on him.

He was heard by the House in a strained unusual silence, which seemed to react upon him; for he spoke with strange slowness, deliberation and absence of passion—like a judge deciding on a point of law, and without any of the lightness and humour of old Opposition days. He examined the question frigidly and with severity—how the Government had discarded the ordinary tribunals of the land; how they had instituted a special tribunal wherein the functions of judge and jury were cumulated upon three individuals; how the persons implicated had had no voice in the constitution of that tribunal; how they were in part the political opponents of the Government of the day; and how one result had been to levy upon both parties to the action a heavy pecuniary fine. All these things were described in the same even, passionless voice, and heard by the House with undiminished attention and by the Ministerial supporters with growing resentment. Presently came a pause. He asked those about him for a glass of water. Not a man moved. Fancying he had not been heard, he asked again: and so bitter was party passion that even this small courtesy was refused. At length, seeing how the matter stood, Mr. Baumann, a young Conservative member from below the Gangway, went out for some. As he returned, the Irish—always so quick to perceive a small personal incident—greeted him with a half-sympathetic, half-ironical cheer, and Lord Randolph, taking the glass from his hand, said solemnly and elaborately in a penetrating undertone: ‘I hope this will not compromise you with your party.’

At length he began to speak louder. ‘The procedure which we are called upon to stamp with our approval to-night is a procedure which would undoubtedly have been gladly resorted to by the Tudors and their judges. It is procedure of an arbitrary and tyrannical character, used against individuals who are political opponents of the Government of the day—procedure such as Parliament has for generations and centuries struggled against and resisted—procedure such as we had hoped, in these happy days, Parliament had triumphantly overcome. It is procedure such as would have startled even Lord Eldon; it is procedure such as Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham would have protested against; it is procedure which, if that great lawyer Earl Cairns had been alive, the Tory party would never have carried. But a Nemesis awaits a Government that adopts unconstitutional methods. What,’ he asked, ‘has been the result of this uprootal of constitutional practice? What has been the one result?’ Then in a fierce whisper, hissing through the House, ‘Pigott!’—then in an outburst of uncontrollable passion and disgust—‘a man, a thing, a reptile, a monster—Pigott!’—and then again, with a phrase at which the House shuddered,[70] ‘Pigott! Pigott! Pigott!’

Let us return to Hansard. ‘Why do I bring these things before the House? [An honourable member laughed derisively.] Ah! yes; I know there are lots of high-minded and generous members, who not long ago were my friends, who are ready to impute—and much more likely to impute than openly assert—that I am animated by every evil motive. I bring these matters before the House of Commons because I apprehend the time—which I trust may be remote, but which I sometimes fear may be nigh—when the party which vaunts itself as the constitutional party may, by the vicissitudes of fortune, find itself in a position of inferiority similar to that which it occupied in 1832—when the rights of the minority may be trampled upon and overridden, when the views of the minority may be stifled, and when individual political opponents may be proceeded against as you have proceeded against your political opponents.’

He then explained how that these were no new views of his, that they had not been formed in consequence of the results of the trial—‘as those who are always ready to form a most unfavourable opinion of me have said’—but that two years before, when the Bill for the Special Commission was before Parliament, he had embodied them in a document which he had ‘respectfully laid before the First Lord of the Treasury.’ ‘There was a time,’ he said at the end, ‘not very long ago, when my words had some weight with honourable gentlemen on this side of the House; and in recalling that time I will add—I cannot refrain from the remark—that the prospects of the party were brighter than they are now. When I had the honour, the memorable honour, of counselling them, the Unionist majority was more than a hundred. It has now fallen to about seventy. If there are any lingering memories on these benches of those days—when, I think, our fortunes were better—it is by those memories I would appeal to the Conservative party to give a fair and impartial and unprejudiced consideration to the counsels which I now lay before them. But if my words are to fall on deaf ears—if the counsels I most honestly submit are to be spurned and scorned, then I declare that I look forward to the day when a future Parliament shall expunge from the Journals of this House the record of this melancholy proceeding; and in taking such action—inspired, I trust, not by party passion, party vindictiveness or party rancour, but acting on constitutional grounds, and on those alone—it will administer to its predecessor a deserved and wholesome rebuke for having outraged and violated constitutional liberty and will establish a signpost full of warning and guidance to Parliaments yet unborn.’

He sat down very much exhausted—for his health was already weakening—by the strain to which he had been put. He had never spoken with more consciousness of right, never with less regard to his own interests and scarcely ever with greater effect. Deep down in the heart of the old-fashioned Tory, however unreflecting, there lurks a wholesome respect for the ancient forms and safeguards of the English Constitution and a recognition of the fact that some day they may be found of great consequence and use. Moreover, the case was black and overwhelming. But a formidable champion was at hand to succour and shield the Ministry; and it was Chamberlain who rose from the Front Opposition Bench to reply on behalf of the Government. His speech was couched in a friendly and respectful tone—not unmindful, perhaps, of an old compact as to the asperities of political warfare—but in every part it made clear the breach which now existed between these former allies, and the bonds which were steadily strengthening between this Radical leader and his Conservative friends.

To all this Mr. Jennings had listened with impatience and resentment. His amendment had not, it seemed, been merely deserted by Lord Randolph Churchill; it had been compromised. The opportunity for moving it was irretrievably spoiled. The consequence that had attached to it, was gone. The crowded house was melting. No man about to address a critical assembly on a matter which he considers important, resolved to do his very best by his argument and braced against the expected disapprobation of his own friends, can be free from nervous tension; and the better the speaker, the greater the strain. At such a moment small things do not always appear small and grave decisions are not always taken on serious grounds. Mr. Jennings had been several times disappointed in Lord Randolph. He had failed to carry him forward into a Fair Trade campaign. He had been bitterly discouraged by the Birmingham surrender. He had watched with mortification the decline of Lord Randolph’s popularity. He had disapproved of the Radicalism of the later speeches. And now, on the top of all the rest, came this sharp collision. He took it as an act of mortal treachery and insult. In that flood of anger the comradeship of four stormy years was swept away as if it had been a feather. While Mr. Chamberlain was replying he leaned over the bench and told Lord Randolph shortly that after such a speech he would not move his amendment, and would tell the House why. Lord Randolph, who had been absorbed by his own struggle, was amazed at his fierce manner, and realised for the first time that he had caused deep offence. He wished at once to put it right. But Jennings would not answer. He had made up his mind. Two pencil notes, written on slips torn from the order paper, were put into his hands. He read them, folded them, put them carefully away, and they have drifted here, like the wreckage tossed up on the shore long after a ship has foundered. ‘I hope you will reflect before making any public attack upon me. It would be a thousand pities to set all the malicious tongues wagging, when later you will understand what my position was.’ And again—probably after Jennings had spoken—‘How can you so wilfully misunderstand my action and so foolishly give way to temper in dealing with grave political matters?’

As soon as Mr. Chamberlain had finished, Mr. Jennings rose, and struck as hard as he could. ‘He had not been prepared for the tone and manner of the speech of his noble friend.’ The delivery of a speech so hostile ‘to the Government’ had considerably embarrassed him. ‘It is said,’ he proceeded in his cold, measured way, ‘that I derive my opinions from my noble friend, but occasionally, and at intervals, I am capable of forming opinions of my own, and such an interval has occurred now.’ ‘The noble lord has a genius for surprises: sometimes he surprises his opponents; sometimes he takes his best friends unawares.’ Finally, he declined to move his amendment, as a means of dissociating himself from any attempt ‘to stab his party in the back.’ During this speech the occupants of the Treasury Bench took, as may be imagined, no pains to conceal their satisfaction. In a very brief personal explanation Lord Randolph Churchill declared that his own speech had been made without reference to any of the amendments on the paper, solely because it was pertinent to the main question rather than to any amendment. Mr. Caine, who was then on the verge of returning to the Liberal party, moved the dropped amendment without comment. Almost alone among Conservative members, Lord Randolph supported it, as he had promised and always intended, in the division lobby, and it was rejected by a majority of sixty-two.

The outcry raised against Lord Randolph Churchill for his speech and vote was immediate and astonishing. The entire Conservative press denounced him as a traitor, and he was deluged with abuse. The Standard declared that he had no further right to be regarded as a member of the Unionist party. ‘The utter failure of his career points a moral of peculiar significance. Seldom has it been possible to give a more convincing proof of the fact that the man who is ready to sacrifice principle to personal ambition will not only lose the esteem of the worthiest among his fellow-countrymen, but will even fail in the object to which he is willing to surrender his convictions.’ But more important even than such pronouncements was the feeling in the country. The meeting which he was to have addressed at Colchester was cancelled ‘owing to the illness of Lord Brooke.’ The Chairman of his Association in Paddington resigned; the various clubs in the borough passed strong resolutions in condemnation of their member, and a meeting of the Council was convened for the 17th to consider his conduct. Opinion in Birmingham was very hostile. Even the Midland Conservative Club met together to pass a vote of censure.

Lord Randolph Churchill met these manifestations with composure not unmingled with scorn. To the resolution of the Paddington Council he replied in a letter described by the much-shocked Times as ‘characteristically pert and saucy,’ and dated from the Jockey Club Rooms at Newmarket. ‘I have no reason to suppose,’ he wrote, ‘that the Council are in error in committing themselves to the opinion that my action is "entirely out of harmony" with the views of the Conservative electors of the division; but I remark with satisfaction that the Council, with a prudence which I cannot too highly or respectfully commend, have abstained from expressing any opinion as to whether my action was right or wrong.’ If they wished him to take the opinion of the electors on the question they knew the steps which were necessary, but meanwhile he reminded them that the Council was not the Association and still less the constituency of South Paddington.

On the same morning of this meeting in Paddington Lord Randolph published in the Morning Post—which almost alone among Metropolitan newspapers remained well disposed towards him—the memorandum which he had written nearly two years before. The memorandum, he explained, had been intended to be ‘a strong but friendly protest against the measure.’ The speech of the previous Tuesday was intended, so far as lay in his power, to prevent such a measure being ever proposed by a Government again. This document had a marked and decided effect upon public opinion. Seldom had a political prophet been so completely vindicated by the event. It was now proved that two years before the exposure of Pigott he had warned the Government of the discredit in which the Special Commission would involve them and had described beforehand in exact detail many of the evil consequences by which they were now overtaken.

All of a sudden party indignation began to subside, and that keen sense of justice never far removed from the English mind reasserted itself. The journalists and the wirepullers had laboured to excess and the inevitable reaction followed. Numbers of plain people began to write to the newspapers to protest against the attacks made upon one who had been so greatly concerned with famous Conservative victories. At Birmingham the Old Guard—Rowlands, Sawyer, and Moore-Bayley—contrived to parry the vote of censure by a simple resolution of confidence in the Government, which the rest, when it came to the point, were content to accept. Mr. Fardell resumed the Chairmanship of the Paddington Council, and that body received their member’s reply without further comment or action. So that Lord Randolph was enabled, without more hindrance, to pursue his own path in his own way.

But while he cared little for the displeasure of political associates and nothing at all for the party outburst, there was one breach which caused him regret. Louis Jennings had been for the past four years an intimate friend and a close and valuable ally. He had become a friend at a time when others were falling away and after Lord Randolph had given up the power to help and reward good service. He had adhered to his leader with constancy, through much unpopularity and ridicule, and at the cost of his own political future—such as it might have been. Whatever cause he may have had for complaint, he had certainly repaid the injury to the utmost of his power. Nothing could be more disparaging to Lord Randolph Churchill personally or more prejudicial to the opinions he had expressed than that he and they should be publicly repudiated by the one man who of all others had stood by him until now. The political world found it difficult to believe that the tone of a speech apart from its tenor, a dispute about an amendment, or the accident of debate, could in themselves be a complete explanation of a sudden severance between such close political associates. Jennings volunteered no further information on the subject; and Lord Randolph Churchill to persistent inquiries merely replied: ‘I was not aware, and could not be aware, that my speech would cause Mr. Jennings to withdraw his amendment, and I am altogether unable to understand his reasons for this action. I had told him that I would vote for his amendment and speak in favour of it, and, as a matter of fact, I did so. Mr. Jennings has acquired the reputation of being a man of reason, ability and sense, and his actions are presumably guided by those qualities. That being so, any further examination of his action against me last Tuesday does not particularly attract me.’

Mr. Jennings left, however, among his private papers a statement carefully prepared while the episode was fresh in his mind. I am content to place this upon record exactly as it was written.[71]

The breach was never repaired. Lord Randolph Churchill would gladly have made friends, and took pains to let the fact be known to Mr. Jennings. But no communication, written or spoken, ever passed between them again. Whether from an enduring sense of wrong, or from vain regrets at such a miserable ending to four years of loyalty and labour, Mr. Jennings continued in antagonism, and from time to time employed his dexterous pen in sharp and sarcastic attack. There is an air of musty tragedy about old letters. Week after week, in packet after packet, since 1886, Jennings’s neat handwriting recurs. Suddenly his letters stop, just as the Gorst letters had stopped five years before. He passes out of this story—was soon, indeed, to pass out of all stories men can tell. On that exciting night in March Lord Randolph Churchill had only five years to live. But Mr. Jennings had less than three. He took little further part in politics. He was returned for Stockport again at the General Election; but almost at once he declared that he must retire from public life. An internal malady had afflicted him, and he died somewhat suddenly on February 9, 1893, aged fifty-six years. The circumstances of his quarrel with Lord Randolph Churchill, no matter whether his anger was deserved or not, or on which side the balance of misunderstanding may have lain, cannot exclude from this account a full acknowledgment of his loyal, industrious and fearless comradeship. He suffered the vexations and disappointments which must always harass those who fight for lost causes and falling men.

The strange and memorable episode of the Parnell Commission lies at the present in a twilight. It has drifted out of the fierce and uncertain glare of political controversy. It is not yet illumined by the calm lamp of the historian. Those whose influence initiated or sustained the policy seem abundantly vindicated by events. Their action was ratified by Parliament and never seriously impugned by the nation. Whatever injury resulted at the time to the cause of the Union—and no doubt the injury was grave—was more than healed by the unexpected proceedings in the Divorce Courts at the end of the year. If it be true, as some may think, that the conduct of Irish affairs by the Conservative Cabinet of ‘86 enabled Mr. Gladstone to advance the flag of Home Rule again at the head of a Parliamentary majority, it is also true that this second onslaught encountered a not less stubborn resistance and ended in an even more decisive and lasting success. Those who were responsible have no apparent cause to regret the course they took. Those who, on the other hand, opposed it, from whatever motive, were brushed aside, and could never persuade the public of their case. And yet such a strange place is England that there is scarcely anyone, from the Ministers who bear the burden, to the Times newspaper—left, through the policy of the Government it supported, loyal and indignant, with a quarter of a million to pay—who will not to-day confess, and even declare, that these proceedings were a grand and cardinal blunder from beginning to end; that an Executive has no business to thrust itself into disputes which the parties concerned may settle in the courts, and no right to erect special machinery for the examination of charges perfectly within the knowledge and scope of the law. So that if these things are affirmed while the light is dim, while even the dust of conflict has not altogether subsided, we may be hopeful of the judgment which history will pronounce.

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In these later years Lord Randolph Churchill was drawn increasingly towards a Collectivist view of domestic politics. Almost every speech which he made from 1889 to 1891 gives evidence of the steady development of his opinions. His interest in the problems of the labouring classes grew warmer and keener as time passed. He spoke his mind without the smallest regard to the susceptibilities of his party, or to his own influence and position; and he favoured or accepted doctrines and tendencies before which Liberals recoiled and even the most stalwart Radicals paused embarrassed. He urged the House of Commons to examine the demand for a general eight hours’ day ‘with a total absence of anything like dogmatism.’ He replied with some asperity to Mr. Bradlaugh, whose outspoken condemnation of the State regulation of the hours of adult labour had evoked delighted cheers from the Conservative party. He often wondered, he said, whether Mr. Bradlaugh or Mr. Chamberlain would be the first to take a seat on the Treasury Bench. He was sceptical, in the face of Income Tax and Revenue Returns, about ‘the narrow margin of profit’ remaining to capital. His answer to a deputation of miners who waited in succession on him and Mr. Gladstone to urge the enforcement of an eight hours’ day in the coal trade was accepted by them as far more favourable to their desires than anything that fell from the Liberal leader. He voted for the principle of the payment of members of Parliament. He took a leading part in the movement to provide North-West London with a polytechnic institution—‘a university for labour,’ as he described it. ‘An Englishman,’ he said, ‘possesses over Europeans one immeasurable and inestimable advantage. Out of the life of every German, every Frenchman, every Italian, every Austrian, every Russian, the respective Governments of those countries take three years for compulsory military service. If you estimate those three years at eight hours per day for six days a week, you will find that out of the life of every European in those nations no fewer than 7,500 hours are taken by the Governments of those countries for compulsory military service, during which time the individual so deprived is, for the purposes of contributing to the wealth of the community as a whole by his labour, as idle and useless and unprofitable as if he had never been born. But in our free and happy country, where the freedom of existence has practically no reasonable limits and where only a very minute portion of the population voluntarily embraces a military career, every man who lives to the age of twenty-three or twenty-four, possesses as an advantage over the inhabitants of foreign countries an extra capital of at least 7,500 hours. That immeasurable superiority, if properly taken advantage of by the provision of adequate educational institutions, is what should enable us to put aside alarm as to foreign competition.’ His Licensing Bill, which he introduced on April 29, 1890, in the last great speech he ever made to the House of Commons, while it affirmed the justice of compensation, asserted for the first time in Parliament the principle of popular control over the issue of licences.

All these questions trench too closely upon current politics to be conveniently examined here. But it is not difficult to understand why his opinions did not win Lord Randolph Churchill the support of every section of the Conservative party. And yet all the while, in spite of his public declarations—obstinately repeated—there continued in the Tory ranks a steady and at times a powerful pressure to bring him back to the Government. Session after session had been scrambled through in dispiriting fashion. The mismanagement of Parliamentary business, the failure of important legislative projects, the abiding discredit of the Pigott forgery, the lack of any life or fire or inspiration in the conduct of affairs, sank the Conservative party and the Unionist alliance lower and lower in public estimation.

By June 1890 Lord Salisbury’s Administration was in the utmost peril. The Government majority upon a decisive division fell to four.[72] Their licensing proposals were ignominiously withdrawn. Their attempt to carry business over to an autumn session failed. And in these hard times many Conservatives who disagreed altogether with Lord Randolph Churchill’s views felt that his return to a commanding place was a necessary condition, if the waning fortunes of their party were to be retrieved. Ministers of importance approached Lord Salisbury. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach urged him not to allow the object of excluding Lord Randolph Churchill to prejudice the interests of the Unionist cause. Tory papers wrote favourable articles. Tory worthies met together in the Conservative Club under the presidency of Sir Algernon Borthwick, to entertain the ‘prodigal son.’ ‘Randolph must return’ was everywhere the whisper and the word. But Lord Salisbury was firm. Nothing would induce him to divide his authority again. And having regard to all the circumstances which have been related, he was, from his own point of view, unquestionably right. He knew well that Lord Randolph Churchill had altered no whit, had retracted nothing; and that, if he rejoined the Ministry, he would labour as of old, without stint or pause, with riper gifts of knowledge and experience and under conditions more favourable perhaps than in 1886, to guide and to deflect the policy of a Conservative Government into democratic and progressive paths. Better a party or a personal defeat; better a Parliamentary collapse; better even an Imperial disaster!

Fortune favours the brave. The courage and tenacity of the Prime Minister received an unexpected relief. The downfall of Parnell was at hand. Her Majesty’s Government regained in the Divorce Court the credit they had lost before the Special Commission. The ranks of the English Home Rule party, lately so exultant, were broken in dismay; and Nationalist Ireland, hitherto united under one controlling hand, was distracted by enduring and ferocious feuds. This peculiar episode may have settled decisively the fate of the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. It also terminated for ever, without hope or expectation of renewal, the protracted conflict between the New Tories and the Old.

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Meanwhile outside the House of Commons and the forbidding circles of politics Lord Randolph was developing during these years new interests and amusements. Excitement in one form or another always attracted him, and after his resignation he sought it on the Turf. In partnership with Lord Dunraven he soon acquired a number of horses, to whose training and running he paid the closest attention. He became a shrewd judge of ‘form.’ In handicaps especially, his forecasts were so often fulfilled that he acquired quite a reputation among his sporting friends. On the morning of a race meeting he would sit for hours pencilling upon the card, by the aid of Ruff’s Guide, calculations which led very often to conclusions that were right and still more often to conclusions that were nearly right. Under his eye Sherwood’s stable became successful and for two years at least stood high in the winning lists. His footsteps fell upon some odd streaks of luck. While he was away fishing in Norway, in the summer of 1889, his mare the Abbesse de Jouarre won the Oaks at odds of twenty to one. At Doncaster, the year before, he dreamed he saw a number hoisted. On consulting his card the next day he found that only one horse running had so high a number. Inquiries led to the belief that this horse had a much better chance than the odds at which it stood suggested. Lord Randolph backed it heavily and won a considerable sum. Against the advice of his trainer he insisted on running the Abbesse de Jouarre for the Manchester Cup in 1889, and her victory constituted perhaps his most fortunate speculation. Of other horses which he owned or leased it is not necessary to speak, but during the years 1887 to 1891 Lord Randolph’s colours—‘chocolate, pink sleeves and cap’—were often to the fore.

Standing, as he did, apart from the ordinary groupings of party, he cultivated during these years pleasant relations with politicians of every shade. At his sister Lady Tweedmouth’s house he met Mr. Gladstone more frequently than he had ever done before. Lord Randolph treated the illustrious old man with the utmost deference, and each appears to have derived much satisfaction from the other’s society. ‘He was the most courtly man I ever met,’ observed Mr. Gladstone in later years to Mr. Morley. At one dinner at Brook House Mr. Gladstone had talked with great vivacity and freedom and held everyone breathless. ‘And that,’ said Lord Randolph to a Liberal-Unionist friend, as they walked out of the room together, ‘that is the man you have left? How could you have done it?’

His own society was eagerly sought by his friends; for he had much treasure to give as a companion, if only he were in the giving vein. The gay and reckless brilliancy of his conversation fascinated all who came within its range. He would talk and argue with entire freedom on every subject. He loved to defend daring paradoxes; and when forced to exert himself he would produce arguments so original and ingenious that the listeners were delighted, even if they were unconvinced. He sometimes amused himself by saying things on purpose to shock ponderous people, and in painting himself extravagantly in the darkest hues, so that they departed grieved to think there was so much wickedness left in the world. He excelled in all kinds of chaff and conversational sword-play—from sombre irony to schoolboy fun. When he wanted to persuade people to do any particular thing, he took enormous pains, seeming to touch by instinct all the feelings and reasons which moved or disturbed them, and very often he coaxed or compelled them to his wishes. On the other hand, he did not care how rude he was to those who wearied or irritated him, and he would toss and gore fools with true Johnsonian vigour and zest. In this abrupt and impulsive way he hurt the feelings of some harmless people and disquieted a good many more; but if he were sorry afterwards, as he very often was, he could nearly always make amends by a word or a smile or some little courtesy, and the sun shone out all the brighter for the storm. Although in his later years the nervous irritability of his nature became extreme, he steadily enlarged the circle of his private friends, and those who had known him long were increasingly attached to him. Not without justice could they apply to him Addison’s well-known lines:—

Lord Randolph was wont to pass much of the autumn and winter abroad and each year he pushed his travels further afield and remained a longer time. In August of 1888 he had visited Tarbes—the constituency which returned his friend the Marquis de Breteuil to the French Chamber—and here spent some placid agreeable weeks of fine weather amid splendid mountains, while his companion conciliated the principal electors by intercourse and entertainment. Of the attractions of Tarbes and its neighbourhood—better known, perhaps, to French and Spanish visitors than to the English tourist—it would be superfluous to write, for they were set forth by the local newspaper in a passage whose hospitable extravagance I shall venture to quote:—

Now in 1890 he would go to Egypt, where with two old friends he had leased a dahabeah on the Nile. His letters to his wife, from which I make a few extracts, describe the even progress of the journey.

enlarge-image
Lady Randolph Churchill. From a drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A.
Lady Randolph Churchill.
From a drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A.

To Sir Henry James, who wrote him accounts of the strange developments at Westminster, he framed a more elaborate reply than was usual with him in private correspondence:—

It is instructive to notice that Lord Randolph’s conduct during the years that followed his resignation will bear a far more exacting scrutiny than the years of his good fortune. Differing as he did on many questions from the Government, separated from them by the personal dislike or distrust with which he was regarded, he had nevertheless given them, so far as he conscientiously could, a loyal and regular support. He had never spoken against them except when compelled by opinions plainly declared in former years, or moved by deep feeling; and then he had always practised a moderation in tone and language foreign to his disposition. He had done nothing to embarrass them or hamper them. He had never made a personal attack on any of his late colleagues, nor can I discover any unkind or acrimonious word used about them. From time to time he had tried to influence their policy in directions which he believed the public interest and their own equally required; but these occasions had been rare and he had usually been right. Although the object of much abuse and even hatred from his old friends, he nourished no thoughts of permanent separation. ‘Born and bred,’ he wrote in 1891, ‘in the Conservative party, I could never join the ranks of their opponents.’ ‘I have always been,’ he told his constituents (February 22, 1891), ‘more or less of an independent member. From the year 1874, when I entered Parliament, to the year 1880—during the time of Lord Beaconsfield’s Government—I felt it my duty on more than one occasion to vote and speak against that powerful Government, and at times when in certain circles in London even to whisper a doubt as to its wisdom was considered almost treasonable. From 1880 to 1885 I pursued a course in Parliament of the greatest freedom and independence. More than once I went my own way, not caring much whether anyone followed; but I hardly think there are those who will assert that my action from 1880 to 1885 did injury to the Tory party. I have been unable even of late years to divest myself of my independent character. Lord Melbourne—or was it Lord Palmerston?—once characterised an independent member of Parliament as a member who could not be depended upon. Well, this much is certain. If I am called upon to support a reactionary and antiquated policy, then I am not to be depended upon. If I am called upon to approve illiberal or sham legislation, then I am not to be depended upon. If I am called upon to support an aggressive policy or a policy of large expenditure, then I am not to be depended upon. But if I am called upon to abide by pledges I have given on any platform or in any published letter or to support the political principles I have advocated, since I entered Parliament, then I can confidently point out to you my past career as a proof that I am to be depended upon—more, perhaps, than any devoted partisan of the present Government.’

These were the best years of his intellectual power—a short summer when his mind was most fertile and his judgment ripe and prescient. Almost alone and unsupported he had by sheer personal force and persuasive speech commanded respect and procured important decisions. Grave or gay, in attack, defence, or exposition, on all sorts of subjects and in all sorts of humours, the House of Commons had delighted to hear him; and what he said in Parliament or out of doors, whether about politics or other matters, was received and examined with national attention. But let it be observed that Lord Randolph Churchill was beaten, whatever he did, when he played the national game; and was victorious, whatever he did, while he played the party game. No question of ‘taste’ or ‘patriotism’ was raised when what he said, however outrageous, suited his party. No claim of truth counted when what he said, however incontrovertible, was awkward for his party. Yet almost fiercely he asserted his loyalty to the Unionist cause.

‘It was not difficult for me to notice,’ he wrote in 1891, in a letter to his constituents, never published, ‘that after power was assured to the Tory leaders for some years by the General Election of 1886, it was their intention to stand on the old ways of Toryism in respect to Ireland, foreign policy and expenditure. Then I went away from them. On three occasions since during the last long five years have I gone against them: (1) When they threatened to recommence the policy of military expenditure in the Soudan; (2) when in 1888 the present Leader of the House of Commons, then Chief Secretary, ridiculed and denounced in the House the demand of the Irish members for Local Self-government; (3) when in 1890 I declared against the iniquitous and infamous policy of the Parnell Commission. With these three exceptions I often supported the Government by speech and vote in Parliament; I even spoke and voted in favour of their Coercion Bill in 1887, though I was much startled and disquieted afterwards by the manner of its administration; and in 1887, 1888, and 1889 I addressed large public meetings in their support. For the rest of the time, when I disagreed and doubted—as was often the case—I stood aloof and held my peace; and you must well remember that on more than one occasion in past sessions this strong Government and party managed to get themselves into the sorest straits, and that opportunities were offered of paying off some old scores which, if personal considerations had influenced me, I should not have neglected and which, I expect, not many politicians would have allowed to pass by. Bear this in mind, I pray you, in common justice when you hear me freely accused—as I have often been, and shall be again—of disloyalty to the Tory or the Unionist party; contrast the line of action I have followed with action followed in former Parliaments towards former Governments by former out-going Ministers; and I call upon you to acquit me fully of any charge of disloyalty.’

It had been proved to utter conviction in those barren years that ‘ten men armed can subdue one man in his shirt.’ One friend after another had fallen away from Lord Randolph. The hostility of the Prime Minister and the tireless machine-like detraction of the party press had not been without effect. His Parliamentary position was one of complete isolation and his popularity in the country had declined. Others—scarcely heard of in the days of battle—were now bearing the burden of the Unionist cause, and the public eye was fixed upon a stout-hearted bookseller whose perseverance as Leader was making of his repeated failures a curious but undoubted success, and upon an Irish Secretary whose reputation was every day enhanced by the taunts and revilings he provoked from his opponents. The Minister who seemed so powerful in 1886, the people’s favourite, the necessary Parliamentarian, the central link of the Unionist alliance, certainly its most redoubtable champion, stood outside all political combinations, actual or potential. The Government of such a sickly infancy was grown up into a strong, if not a healthy manhood. The sunrise of wealth and extending comfort which in every nation lighted up the last quarter of the nineteenth century was strengthening by an unseen yet irresistible process the forces upon which Conservatism depends; and the millstone of Home Rule bowed and strangled the Liberals. There was neither need nor place for a leader of Tory Democracy.

All this was perfectly appreciated by Lord Randolph Churchill, and his detached contented mood and habit of thought were carefully and laboriously assumed and fortified by every trick of mental discipline he knew. A studied disdain of the course of public events, the influence of movement and of changing scenes, the delights of summer-lands, books, friends and mild Egyptian cigarettes—all were to him the incidents of an elaborate art. But the characters of valetudinarian, pleasure-seeker, traveller, sportsman, failed to satisfy, and served scarcely to distract. Always at hand, though forbidden his mind, lurked the hopes and the schemes, once so real, now turned to shadows: and the thought—never quite to be chased away—of that multitude of working people he knew so well, who had trusted him as their champion; who were still ready, if they knew how, to do him honour; but for whom—though their problems were still unsolved, uncared for, or cared for only as counters in the game of politics—it was beyond his power to do the smallest service. And although the great river, gliding impassively along by the sands of the desert and the temples of forsaken faiths, might seem to smile at fretful aspirations, the reproach and disappointment silently consumed him.

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

Further and further afield! After the session of 1890 Lord Randolph Churchill abandoned the House of Commons. He attended seldom; he never spoke. In the summer of 1891 he sailed for South Africa in quest of sport and gold—and peace. A journey to Mashonaland was in those days an enterprise of some difficulty; nor, indeed, before the overthrow of the Matabele power, devoid of risk. Elaborate arrangements were required to conduct even a small party in comfort through these untrodden fields. The command of the miniature expedition was entrusted to Major Giles, a traveller well acquainted with the country. As killing game was a necessity as well as an amusement, one of the best hunters in South Africa, Hans Lee, was included in the party; and Mr. Perkins, a mining engineer of the highest eminence, was engaged to search for gold.

The interest with which Lord Randolph was regarded by the public had survived his popularity and all these preparations excited general curiosity and afforded fertile themes for comment and satire. He was persuaded to write a long series of letters for the Daily Graphic by the extraordinary offer of a hundred pounds for each letter. Every incident of his journey, even the most trivial, especially the most personal that could be discovered, was telegraphed to England by assiduous reporters and discussed with genial malice by the Conservative newspapers. He was burlesqued on the Gaiety stage with a wit so pointed that the song was stopped by the intervention of the Lord Chamberlain. While paragraphs, lampoons and caricatures exhibited him daily to the ridicule of his countrymen; while the delegates of the National Union hooted his name at their annual conference; and while the chiefs of the Tories complacently admired the fulness of their triumph, the ex-Minister plunged into vast solitudes. Across the veldt by bush and kloof and kopje, through the drifts of flooded rivers, by mining camps and frontier posts into magnificent wildernesses toiled the tiny caravan. A gust of bracing air and rough exertion breaks in upon the artificial ventilation of the House of Commons. The crowded benches, with the yellow light streaming down upon them from the ceiling, recede into the distance. Waggons creak and jolt along stony tracks, camp-fires twinkle in the waste, antelope gallop over spacious pastures, lions roar beneath the stars——

All this has been described by Lord Randolph Churchill himself in the book in which his published letters were finally compiled.[74] I will not tell a twice-told tale. It was not perhaps surprising that a relentless criticism should have denied to these productions all title to literary merit. Their commercial value consisted mainly in the personality of the writer; and that personality was the object of powerful and widespread prejudice. The extravagant price paid for them was an incitement to every sharp pen less generously rewarded. The letters themselves make no pretence to elegance. Here and there a touch of quaint humour, a caustic or jingling phrase, or a rhetorical passage—but for the most part they tell a plain story of sport and travel, as such stories have often been told before.

One extract shall suffice:—

Mashonaland yielded no golden results to the practised eye of Mr. Perkins; and it was not until the expedition had returned to Johannesburg that he unfolded his novel theory of deep levels. At this time the outcrop of the Great Banket reef was the only gold area which was being worked. Mr. Perkins observed the slant at which the strata emerged from the upper soil. He calculated accordingly. He advised the purchase of farms and properties along the south side of the ridge. By striking down directly into the earth the Great Banket reef would again be overtaken—richer perhaps than ever before. Lord Randolph Churchill must have stood at this time very close to an almost immeasurable fortune. Such a vital thought could not, however, remain secret—was already occurring to other minds. But the investments which he made were not inconsiderable or ill-judged, and were sold at his death for upwards of 70,000l.

While such business and adventure occupied his mind the leadership of the House of Commons fell vacant. Mr. Smith’s heavy task was at an end. For two sessions he had struggled against ever-increasing physical distresses. Hour after hour he had sat on his Bench with his rug across his knees—a pathetic and not unheroic figure. Night after night he had risen in his place to discharge in singularly bad speeches his duty—as he would have phrased it—to ‘Queen and country.’ Now he was gone, and Lord Salisbury made haste to appoint Mr. Balfour in his stead. His selection was almost universally applauded.