Winston Churchill

Though much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tennyson: Ulysses.

1892
Æt. 43

THE variations of English politics are continual, and at times so swift that those who influence them and are in turn influenced by them are hardly conscious of the pace they are travelling. As the general situation alters, the relations of its principal characters insensibly change. The doubtful or indifferent acquaintance of one year is the trusted comrade of the next. Combinations impossible in January are inevitable in June. Mortal offences are forgotten, if they are not forgiven; and as the ship moves forward into newer waters only a fading streak of froth lingers on the surface of the sea.

Lord Randolph Churchill returned from South Africa early in 1892, to find, so far as he was concerned, a better temper and complexion in public affairs than at any time since his resignation. The life of the Government was ebbing away; the appeal to country could not be long delayed; and although the Parnell disclosures had immensely strengthened the Unionist position, there was little in the record or character of the Administration to excite popular enthusiasm. The drag of six years of office made its effect felt, and the Grand Old Man seemed still to enjoy the unconquerable splendour of his powers. That feeling of closing up the ranks, usually the prelude to a General Election, was abroad in the party; and its chiefs, though he did not at first realise it, looked in amity, not unmingled with anxiety, to the erstwhile leader of Tory Democracy, who had done such great things with the electors in the past and might, for all they knew, exert even a greater influence in the future. His reappearance in the House of Commons in the first days of February created a stir, which his silent and reserved demeanour did not speedily allay. Alike in the lobbies and the newspapers the question was debated, ‘What is he going to do?’ And it must be admitted that his answer to the resolution in which the South Paddington Conservative Association inquired whether he proposed to stand, and if so whether he would support the general policy of the Conservative party, did not altogether remove the uncertainty which existed.

‘I would be obliged to you,’ he wrote to the Secretary of the Association (February 4, 1892), ‘if you would inform the Committee that, as at present advised, it is my intention in the event of a dissolution of Parliament to offer myself to the constituency for re-election and that in taking that course I should hope that I might rely upon the renewed support of the body which the Committee represent. It would further be my intention, in the event of my being re-elected as member of Parliament for the borough, to give to the Tory party the same support which I have given to it since the year 1874, when I first entered Parliament. Of the usefulness of that support it is not for me to judge; it is sufficient for me to say that my action in the future in the House of Commons would be in accordance, and consistent, with my action in the past.’

To FitzGibbon he wrote with greater plainness.

Penn House, Amersham: January 13, 1892.

It was too pleasant to get a sight of your handwriting again. My travel through South Africa was as nice an experience as anyone could have, and though I am very glad to get back I really enjoyed every hour of my journey. I think I find H. M. G. in a very weak and tottering state; their feelings towards myself more bitter and hostile than ever. But I imagine that, willy nilly, they will have to shake off or subdue their prejudices, for great troubles are before them. My information is that a large, influential and to some extent independent section of Tories kick awfully against Irish Local Government and do not mean to vote for it. This comes from a very knowledgeable member of the Government outside the Cabinet. If the Government proceed with their project they will either split or seriously dishearten the party, and to do either on the verge of a General Election would be suicidal. This is what they ought to do: They ought to say this Irish Local Government is far too large a question to be dealt with by a moribund Parliament; they ought to confess that there is not sufficient agreement among their supporters as to the nature and extent of such a measure, such as would favour the chances of successful legislation, and that they have determined to reserve the matter for a new Parliament, when the mind of the country upon their Irish administration has been fully ascertained. But I would not stop there. What is the great feature of the political situation in Ireland now? The resurrection in great force of priestly domination in political matters. Now I would cool the ardour of these potentates for Mr. G. by at once offering them the largest concessions on education—primary, intermediate, and University—which justice and generosity could admit of. I would not give them everything before the General Election, but I would give a good lot, and keep a good lot for the new Parliament. I do not think they could resist the bribe; and the soothing effect of such a policy on the Irish vote and attitude would be marked. Of course the concession would have to be very large—almost as large as what the Bishops have ever asked for—but preserving always intact Trinity College. It would assume the material shape of a money subsidy. What do you think of this? What is the frame of mind of the Bishops? What form and scope would you give to such a measure or measures as I suggest?

H. M. G. have no imagination or originality. The keystone of their policy has been to play against the life of Mr. G. This (not very noble, but still human) policy should, once taken up, be pursued remorselessly. To carry on the policy, the life of the Parliament should be prolonged into ‘93. How to do this? Introduce a measure dealing largely with the registration laws.

‘One man one vote’—a trifle—could be conceded; twelve months’ residence in lieu of eighteen established; paid officials for preparing register appointed in all constituencies. The new register could not be ready before the early spring of next year, and the convenient time for the election would be the summer or autumn. Now, my dear FitzGibbon, imagine the consternation, fury and utter paralysis of the Gladstonians if the Government were to make this complete volte-face—this tremendous surprise (all so logical and defensible as it is), the relief and joy of the Tories at getting rid of Local Government and at getting another year of life! Do not show this to anyone, unless it be to David Plunket, if he is with you—the Government are too fond of appropriating my ideas without acknowledgment—but write me all you think about it. I could write pages in support of it, but your own wily and Ulysses kind of mind will suggest to you all the wonderful elaboration of which it is susceptible.

And again in April:—

Politics attract me less and less and I successfully resist all invitations to take part in them, whether in Parliament or in the country. I really sincerely do not think that an offer of office would cause me the slightest emotion or drag me from my freedom and carelessness. However, that speculation is not likely to be put to the test. I have now a nice position—well with my constituents, well with my party—and am inclined to let well alone. I anticipate with amiable malice a Unionist defeat, and speculate on the nature of their struggles to resume power after that defeat. Balfour is doing very well, and has been much benefited by the senseless outcry raised against him by the Opposition.... Did you see my beautiful Latin letter to the [Trinity] College authorities, corrected and revised by Welldon of Harrow! It ought to have been published.

As the dissolution approached, overtures were made to him to contest several constituencies and he was pressed on all sides for his assistance. He declined everything. ‘It is not my intention,’ he wrote to one ardent Tory Democrat,[75] ‘to make any political speeches at the present time. Formerly I made many; but the labour was thankless and fruitless. Besides, I have not the smallest idea what the programme of our party now is.... From 1880 to 1886 I advocated on my own account a generally liberal and progressive policy, with the result that when I came into office I found that none of my colleagues were prepared to give to this policy the smallest genuine support; and that, office having been reached, promises to the people were to be forgotten or evaded. This experience I will never recommence; and it is for this reason that I decline, and must continue to decline, all invitations to take part in the platform exercises which precede the General Election.’ In Parliament he remained silent. He admired Mr. Balfour’s early essays in leading the House. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘the Tory party have got a leader whom they like.’ To one who told him that if he sat below the gangway he could soon overthrow the Government, he answered, ‘No, no; Arthur Balfour is too often nearly right.’

The only interventions in outside politics which he allowed himself were a speech on Metropolitan affairs during the London County Council election and a letter to Mr. Arnold White, the Liberal-Unionist candidate for Tyneside. This letter, however, outlines so boldly the scope and direction of his views that it deserves to be quoted.

He wrote:—

The Labour community is carrying on at the present day a very significant and instructive struggle. It has emancipated itself very largely from the mere mechanism of party politics; it realises that it now possesses political power to such an extent as to make it independent of either party in the State; and the struggle which it is now carrying on is less against Capital, less one of wages or division of profits, but rather one for the practical utilisation in its own interest of the great political power which it has acquired. The Labour interest is now seeking to do itself what the landed interest and the manufacturing capitalist interest did for themselves when each in turn commanded the disposition of State policy. Our land laws were framed by the landed interest for the advantage of the landed interest, and foreign policy was directed by that interest to the same end. Political power passed very considerably from the landed interest to the manufacturing capitalist interest, and our whole fiscal system was shaped by this latter power to its own advantage, foreign policy being also made to coincide. We are now come, or are coming fast, to a time when Labour laws will be made by the Labour interest for the advantage of Labour. The regulation of all the conditions of labour by the State, controlled and guided by the Labour vote, appears to be the ideal aimed at; and I think it extremely probable that a foreign policy which sought to extend by tariff over our Colonies and even over other friendly States, the area of profitable barter of produce will strongly commend itself to the mind of the Labour interest. Personally I can discern no cause for alarm in this prospect and I believe that on this point you and I are in perfect agreement. Labour in this modern movement has against it the prejudices of property, the resources of capital, and all the numerous forces—social, professional, and journalist—which those prejudices and resources can influence. It is our business as Tory politicians to uphold the Constitution. If under the Constitution as it now exists, and as we wish to see it preserved, the Labour interest finds that it can obtain its objects and secure its own advantage, then that interest will be reconciled to the Constitution, will find faith in it and will maintain it. But if it should unfortunately occur that the Constitutional party, to which you and I belong, are deaf to hear and slow to meet the demands of Labour, are stubborn in opposition to those demands and are persistent in the habit of ranging themselves in unreasoning and short-sighted support of all the present rights of property and capital, the result may be that the Labour interest may identify what it will take to be defects in the Constitutional party with the Constitution itself, and in a moment of indiscriminate impulse may use its power to sweep both away. This view of affairs, I submit, is worthy of attention at a time when it is a matter of life or death to the Constitutional party to enlist in the support of the Parliamentary Union of the United Kingdom a majority of the votes of the masses of Labour.

You tell me that you find the designation ‘Tory’ a great difficulty to you. I cannot see any good reason for this. After all, since the Revolution the designation ‘Tory’ has always possessed an essentially popular flavour, in contradistinction to the designation ‘Whig.’ It has not only a popular but a grand historical origin; it denotes great historical struggles, in many of which the Tory party have been found on the popular side. Lord Beaconsfield—who, if he was anything, was a man of the people and understood the popular significance of names and words—invariably made use of the word ‘Tory’ to characterise his party; and whatever the Tory party may be deemed to be at particular moments, I have always held, from the commencement of my political life, that, rightly understood and explained, it ought to be, and was intended to be, the party of broad ideas and of a truly liberal policy.

His interest in Labour questions was, indeed, growing steadily. When the Eight Hours Bill for Miners was discussed that year in the Commons, he addressed a long private letter to Mr. Balfour praying for its considerate treatment. ‘I humbly advise, but pressingly; in the debate let Gorst have a little Labour fling. Keep your hand tight over Matthews and, if you can see your way to it, make one of those interesting and amicable speeches which you can do so well, not exactly saying that your mind is open, but, to use a Gladstonianism, that it is not altogether absolutely closed. You can realise,’ he added quaintly, ‘how much importance I attach to the question when I tell you that I am actually coming up from Lincoln and missing three important races in which our horses run, to vote for the Bill. I do not think I would do this for the Monarchy, the Church, the House of Lords or the Union.’

The General Election came at that period, July, dear to the hearts of Tory organisers, when democracy is supposed to be under the soothing influence of summer weather, and before villadom has departed on its holidays. Lord Randolph took little part in it. He stood for South Paddington as a Conservative and an opponent of Home Rule. He let it be understood that if he was not interfered with by the Liberal party he would not speak outside the limits of his own constituency. This bargain seeming sufficiently good, in view of the fact that the seat was impregnable, no opposition was offered him. The only speech he found it necessary to make, and his election address, dealt almost entirely with the maintenance of the Union, though the latter also contained the following paragraph:—

‘My views as to the reforms in the public service which public safety and economy alike urgently call for, are, I think, well known to you; they have undergone no change, save that I hold them more strongly than ever. You are also, I imagine, not unaware of my desire to meet with all legitimate sympathy and good-will the newly-formed but very articulate and well-defined demands of the labouring classes.’

To FitzGibbon he wrote:—

I cannot manage to get over for the Trinity College festivities. I have a great and increasing horror of anything in the nature of speeches and functions. We are all over here awaiting in suspense the result of the elections.... I have refused many invitations to speak. I do not think the time at all propitious for anything in the shape of a manifesto such as you suggest. Besides which, I have no contest in this constituency; and as the Radicals are not annoying me I do not want to provoke them. Nor do I feel called upon to take any action which may be of the slightest use to a Government and a party which for five years has boycotted and slandered me....

The Paddington election proceeded smoothly to an unopposed return. Parliament met only to change an Administration and separate for the holidays.

This feeling of detachment was soon to be removed. The accession of Mr. Gladstone to power and the imminence of a Home Rule Bill was bound to unite in the most effective manner all sections of the Unionist party. Lord Randolph had, since his return from South Africa, accepted, though not without embarrassment, an invitation to dine with Lord Salisbury. ‘C’est le premier plat qui coÛte,’ wrote Wolff, who highly approved of the proceeding. Now Chamberlain sent a very friendly letter, and this was soon followed by a long and agreeable conference. The meetings which Lord Randolph had consented to address at Perth and Macclesfield in the autumn must have made his antagonism to the new Government plain; and only the sudden death of his brother the Duke of Marlborough, in November, which was a great shock to him, caused those arrangements to fall through; so that Parliament met in January, 1893, without his having formally joined himself to the official leaders of the Opposition.

With the opening of the Session and the beginning of the fight came full and complete reconciliation. He was urged to take his place again upon the Front Bench. ‘If it had ever occurred to me,’ wrote Mr. Balfour (January 30, 1893), ‘that you could sit anywhere but on our bench, I would have spoken about it to you last night. Everyone desires you should do so, and most of all yours ever, A. J. B.’ At the meeting of the Conservative party in the Carlton Club to consider the resistance to the Home Rule Bill, he kept himself in the background at some distance from Lord Salisbury. But after all the worthies had spoken, the assembly still found the proceedings incomplete and loud cries were raised from all parts of the room for ‘Churchill.’ At first there was no response, but so continuous and insistent was the demand that Lord Randolph eventually came forward and in a few simple words, which evoked remarkable enthusiasm, declared his willingness to serve, to the best of his ability, in the House of Commons under his friend and political chief, Mr. Balfour. He was henceforward invited to attend the private meetings of the Unionist leaders which were held at Devonshire House during the passage of the Irish Bill, and he took his share in framing the amendments and deciding upon the policy of the Opposition.

But now, when a new prospect was opening to his view, when he had been welcomed by the mass of the party, when he had returned to its inmost councils and ranged himself once again with his old friends and colleagues in whole-hearted support of a cause which he had long defended, a dark hand intervened. The great strain to which he had subjected himself during the struggle against Mr. Gladstone, the vexations and disappointments of later years and finally the severe physical exertions and exposure of South Africa had produced in a neurotic temperament and delicate constitution a very rare and ghastly disease. During the winter of ‘92 symptoms of vertigo, palpitation, and numbness of the hands made themselves felt, and his condition was already a cause of the deepest anxiety to his friends. But it was not till he rose on the occasion of the introduction of the Home Rule Bill that the political world realised how great was the change. It happened that the debate was unexpectedly delayed by a question of privilege. The suspense proved a strain greater than he could bear with composure and when he rose his nervousness was extreme, and more to be looked for in some novice presuming for the first time than in a Parliamentarian of near twenty years’ standing. He no longer dared to trust his memory: while the notes of his speech on the first Home Rule Bill had been written on a single sheet of paper, he now required eighteen. The House, crowded in every part to hear him, was shocked by his strangely altered appearance. It seemed incredible that this bald and bearded man with shaking hands and a white face drawn with pain and deeply marked with the lines of care and illness, and with a voice whose tremulous tones already betrayed the fatal difficulty of articulation, could be that same brilliant audacious leader who in the flush of exultant youth had marched irresistibly to power through the stormy days of 1886.

Yet the quality of his speech showed no signs of intellectual failing. Avoiding the network of details in which so many speakers had stumbled, he presented a broad intelligible picture. Lucid and original expression, close and careful reasoning, wealth of knowledge, quaint Randolphian witticisms—all were there. Although much of the charm and force of his manner was gone, his statement was considered by good and impartial judges to have been, with the exception of Mr. Chamberlain’s, the best speech delivered against the Bill.

And he was destined to have one last flicker of success. Once again was he to encounter, not unequally, his majestic antagonist; once again those he had been so proud to lead, were to sustain him with triumphant acclamation. Exactly a week after his reappearance he was entrusted with the conclusion of the debate on the Welsh Church Suspensory Bill. The trying circumstances of his first effort were no longer present and the feeling that he had broken the ice comforted him. His whole condition varied sensibly from day to day. This was his good day. The House seemed friendly to him; his spirits responded to its mood, and for the moment he seemed to recover all, or nearly all, of his former power. Anyone who will take the trouble to read in Hansard the intricate and sustained argument and the ready rejoinders of the speech will see that the vigour of his mind was unimpaired. Triumph came at the end. Putting aside his notes, he began a fierce and sparkling attack on Mr. Gladstone. It is the last quotation I shall make:—

‘What motive has influenced the right honourable gentleman and his colleagues to propose this measure to the House? It is not, as the member for Hertford said, "plunder." That is the local motive. The political motive is widely different. It is undoubtedly to secure votes for their Irish policy. On behalf of that Irish policy nothing must be spared—not even the Established Church in Wales. Votes! Votes! Votes! That is the cry of the right honourable gentleman, and that is the political morality which he preaches.

Votes at any cost, votes at any price. Refrain from nothing that can get you votes; adhere to nothing that can prevent your getting votes—the votes which alone can accomplish the political salvation of the Liberal party. I see before me,’ he continued, backed by the clamorous growing support of the great party from whom he had been so long estranged, ‘many distinguished gentlemen, as able as any that this country can produce, in the administration of public departments. But do you call that a Government? Whom do you govern? One day the Government is at the mercy of the Irish party; another day it is at the mercy of the Welsh party; and on a third day yet to come it will be in the power of the Scotch party. The Government is absolutely in the power of any of the three sections of its majority. It must concede when any section makes a demand. An English Government has never yet been conducted on such principles—better suited to a Whitechapel auction than to the conduct of our State.’

This characteristic attack produced an electrical effect upon Mr. Gladstone, and the years seemed to fall from his shoulders as he rose at once to reply. ‘I accept,’ he cried, ‘the monosyllabic invocation of the noble lord and I say "Vote, Vote, Vote" for both Welsh Disestablishment and Home Rule.’ And in the course of a rejoinder which, though brief, was inferior to few, if any, of his later speeches, he cast back the reproaches of the Opposition and roused and rallied the enthusiasm of his followers amid a storm of cheers and counter-cheers. The First Reading passed by a majority of 56 in an angry and excited House, and the members hurried home, saying that the days of the ‘eighties’ were come back and that Randolph was himself again.

FitzGibbon, who was increasingly his correspondent, kept him supplied with an inexhaustible stream of fact and fancy upon the Irish Bill, and Lord Randolph’s replies to his old friend constitute a sufficient account of his Parliamentary doings and domestic affairs:—

This is not the place to describe the stormy and protracted Session of 1893. The ruthless persistency of the Government; the stubborn resistance of the Conservative party; the inch-by-inch struggle in Committee; Chamberlain’s keen and unceasing attack from below the gangway; the venerable figure of the Prime Minister, erect and unflinching, at the table; the mutilated procedure of Parliament; and the rising storm of partisanship on both sides contribute to an account which seems to approach by sure gradations a violent climax. Lord Randolph has left a record, in the form of a private letter to the Speaker, of the explosion:—

Lord Randolph’s speech on the Welsh Church was his last Parliamentary success. Throughout the passage of the Home Rule Bill he held his place in the front rank of the Opposition and took a regular and not undistinguished part in the debates. In the Easter recess his speeches to large audiences at Liverpool and Perth commanded the attention of the country, and now, as in former years, he provided his party with an inexhaustible supply of catchwords and homely arguments. But the fire and force of his oratory were gone, never to return; and as the Session drew on, his difficulties of utterance and of memory increased, and the severe and unrelenting labour exhausted the remnants of his strength. Several times in the hot summer months he failed to hold the attention of the House and even sometimes to make himself understood. Once, indeed, the members grew impatient and the House was filled with restless murmurs. But his friends—some of them his most distinguished opponents—rallied to him, checked the interruptions, and tried perseveringly to make all look smooth and successful. And in these days it was observed that Mr. Gladstone would always be in his place to pay the greatest attention to his speeches and to reply elaborately to such arguments as he had advanced.

Lord Randolph Churchill was acutely conscious of his failing powers and the realisation roused him to immense exertions. A year before he had hardly cared for political affairs. Now he plunged desperately into the struggle. Others around him encountered the measures of a Liberal Administration. He faced a different foe. With the whole strength of his will he fought against the oncoming decay. He refused to accept defeat. He redoubled his labours. If five hours no longer sufficed for the preparation of a speech—he would take five days. If his memory played him false, it must be exercised the more. If the House of Commons was escaping from his grip, he would see whether the people would still hear him.

During the months of May and June he spoke at no fewer than ten important meetings—at Reading, Bolton, Macclesfield, Leicester, Carlisle, Pontefract, Boston and other big towns. Everywhere he was received by immense audiences and frequently he succeeded, as of old, in arousing their interest and enthusiasm. The fertility of his mind and the store of political knowledge and expression he had accumulated were astonishing. Almost every one of these speeches was reported verbatim in the Times newspaper. All were confined to the single subject of the Home Rule Bill and the circumstances that attended its passage. No repetition of argument or phrase can be detected in the entire series of speeches.

It was at this time that he looked towards Bradford. That city had even before the General Election invited him to contest its central division. His eye for a political country was as good as ever. To persuade a great commercial centre to change its party allegiance, to be returned at the election with three solid seats won for the Unionist cause, to entrench himself in the heart of Yorkshire was a plan most attractive to his nature; and had he lived, these objects would certainly have been accomplished; for all divisions of Bradford returned Unionist members to the Parliament of 1895 and that condition continues to this day. On May 26 he addressed a large meeting in the St. George’s Hall. His candidature was adopted with enthusiasm by the local Conservatives. Meetings were held, the organisation was improved, the Unionist press was strengthened and supported, and a new impulse was imparted to the Conservative movement throughout the whole district.

For the autumn of 1893 he prepared a further extensive campaign all over the country, and he convinced himself that it was still in his power to raise a great wave of democratic excitement that would shake the Government and establish his position before the world. In order to collect all his strength for this effort he withdrew before the end of the Session to Kissingen and Gastein and submitted himself to the strictest discipline that the doctors could advise. The quiet peaceful life, with its simple routine of baths, walks and long drives, when the afternoon sun cast the shade of the forest and the hills over half the valley, seemed for a time to restore his health: and he hastened to write glowing accounts to his mother of the improvement. But these appearances were illusory and, underneath, the process of dissolution went remorselessly forward.

One incident—not unworthy of record—diversified the weeks at Kissingen and lighted up the autumn of 1893.

This friendly conversation, proving mutually agreeable, was followed by an invitation to dinner with the Bismarck family. ‘We dined,’ so runs the account, ‘in the hall of an old Bishop’s palace, on the first floor, which a friend of the Prince owns and lends him every year. It was of large and fine proportion. At one end we assembled before dinner; at the other end the table was laid. The dinner was a regular old-fashioned German dinner, a little bourgeois (like the Berlin Court under the old Emperor), but everything was dignified as to the table—the food, the wine, the old servants—and, though very different to our ideas, had really un air noble. All this was greatly added to by the presence of the Prince, his impressive appearance, and the combination of respect and affection which all his family and those friends that were dining, showed him. His good spirits and excellent humour and his sustained support of the conversation—sometimes with Jennie, sometimes with me, sometimes with Herbert and his wife—can never be forgotten by anyone who saw it.’

Lord Randolph sat next to Prince Bismarck and was so occupied in observing him and the scene generally that he took but little part in the conversation. The picture was complete—the Princess, feeble and broken in health; Count Herbert and his wife; the famous black wolf-hounds which once upon a time frightened Gortschakoff so much; Bismarck himself, ‘speaking English very carefully and slowly, frequently pausing to get the right word, but always producing it, or something like it, in the end’; drinking a mixture of very old hock poured into a needle-glass of champagne—‘"the last bottle [of hock], a present from ——," a Grand Duke whose name I cannot remember’—at length arriving at his great pipe, prepared all ready for him by a venerable retainer, ‘stem two feet in length, curved mouthpiece, bowl long and large in china and standing up square with the stem, lighted by broad wooden safety-matches to prevent him burning his fingers; and all the time running on in talk brisk and light, always courtly and genial, never quite serious.’

‘I did not dare,’ declares Lord Randolph, ‘to drink this old hock, and only sipped it. The Prince, who was joking, said to Jennie that he was very sorry I had not drunk my share, as it would cause him to drink too much and he would be "half over the seas."’ Presently he wanted to know about Mr. Gladstone. He would be useful in putting to rights the disorders of German finance. Would the English people exchange him for General Caprivi? ‘I told him,’ writes Lord Randolph shamelessly, ‘that the English people would cheerfully give him Mr. Gladstone for nothing, but that he would find him an expensive present!’ So with chaff and good temper the evening passed away—pleasant, memorable, one of the last he was to know.

Lord Randolph returned from Germany none the better for his rest and plunged forthwith into an exhausting campaign. What experience can be more painful than for a man who enjoys the fullest intellectual vigour, and whose blood is quite unchilled by age, to feel the whole apparatus of expression slipping sensibly from him? He struggled against his fate desperately, and at first with intervals of profound depression. But, as the malady progressed, the inscrutable workings of Nature provided a mysterious anodyne. By a queer contradiction it is ordained that an all-embracing optimism should be one of the symptoms of this fell disease. The victim becomes continually less able to realise his condition. In the midst of failure he is cheered by an artificial consciousness of victory. While the days are swiftly ebbing, he builds large plans for the future; and a rosy glow of sunset conceals the approach of night. Therefore as Lord Randolph’s faculties were steadily impaired, his determination to persevere was inversely strengthened; and in spite of the advice and appeals of his family, by which he was deeply wounded, he carried out in its entirety the whole programme of speeches he had arranged. Huddersfield, Stalybridge, Bedford, Yarmouth, Dundee, Glasgow, Bradford and Camborne followed each other in quick succession in October and November. But the crowds who were drawn by the old glamour of his name, departed sorrowful and shuddering at the spectacle of a dying man, and those who loved him were consumed with embarrassment and grief. It is needless to dwell longer upon this.

He spent Christmas at Howth. The old circle of friends were gathered once more, and they saw with sadness that their hopes of his return to power, cherished for so many years, would never be fulfilled. When he came back to England for the beginning of the Session, the hounds were hard upon his track. But it was not till June that he consented to yield. The doctors ordered complete rest. ‘They told me,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘that I was to give up political life for a year. I did not agree directly, but said I would think it over. I returned next day and explained to them my plan [of a journey round the world]. Of this they fully approved.’ And now followed only a few dinners of farewell to good friends—who knew they would never see him again—and busy preparations for a long journey. He sailed, with his wife, for America on June 27 under a sentence of death, operative within twelve months; and he realised perfectly that his time was very short. But now Nature began mercifully to apply increasing doses of her own anÆsthetics, and for the space there was yet to travel he suffered less than those who watched him. Indeed, in an odd way he was positively happy in these last few months; for the changing scenes kept him from sombre reflections, and the increasing attention which he paid to details of all kinds occupied his mind. Nothing was too small to command his interest, and neither in America nor in Japan was ever seen so methodical a tourist. The light faded steadily. At intervals small blood-vessels would break in the brain, producing temporary coma, and leaving always a little less memory or faculty behind. His physical strength held out till he reached Burma, ‘which I annexed,’ and which he had earnestly desired to see. But when it failed, the change was sudden and complete. The journey was curtailed, and in the last days of 1894 he reached England as weak and helpless in mind and body as a little child. For a month, at his mother’s house, he lingered pitifully, until very early in the morning of January 24 the numbing fingers of paralysis laid that weary brain to rest.

The illness of Lord Randolph Churchill had been followed with attention throughout the country, and the tragic termination of his career evoked greater manifestations of sympathy than are accorded to many who have played a longer part in the world’s affairs. Politicians of all ranks and parties attended the service in Westminster Abbey. Large crowds assembled in the streets through which the funeral procession passed. The journey lay, by a strange coincidence, from Paddington to Woodstock. The London terminus was thronged with representatives of the Metropolitan constituency. Woodstock gathered around the churchyard at Bladon. Thither, too, came deputations of the Birmingham Tories and Irish friends. Over the landscape, brilliant with sunshine, snow had spread a glittering pall. He lies close by the tower of the village church, and the plain granite cross which marks the spot, can almost be discerned, across a mile of lawn and meadow, from the great house which was his childhood’s home, and whose sinister motto his varied fortunes had not ill-sustained. A statue is erected to his memory in Blenheim Chapel; and a bust by the same hand was set up in the House of Commons by private subscription among the members, and unveiled with a few simple and well-chosen words by his oldest and truest political comrade, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach.

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

The story of Lord Randolph Churchill’s life is complete in itself and needs no comment from the teller. That he was a great elemental force in British politics, that he was broken irrecoverably at the moment of maturity, should be evident from these pages. It is idle to speculate upon what his work and fortunes might have been, had he continued to lead the House of Commons and influence against its inclinations the Conservative party. It is certain only that the course of domestic policy in Finance, in Temperance and other social questions would have been widely deflected from that which has been in fact pursued. Most of all, perhaps, was Ireland a loser by his downfall; for more than any other Unionist of authority he understood the Irish people—their pride, their wants, their failings, their true inspiration. What would have happened to him, aye, and to others had he lived the ordinary span of men—after all, he was but forty-six—are questionings even more shadowy and unreal. How would he have regarded a naval and military expenditure of seventy millions in time of peace? What would he have thought of the later developments of those Imperialistic ideas, the rise of which he had powerfully, yet almost unconsciously, aided? What action would have been wrung from him by the stresses of the South African war? Would he, under the many riddles the future had reserved for such as he, have snapped the tie of sentiment that bound him to his party, resolved at last to ‘shake the yoke of inauspicious stars’; or would he by combining its Protectionist appetites with the gathering forces of labour have endeavoured to repeat as a Tory-Socialist in the new century the triumphs of the Tory-Democrat in the old?

For all its sense of incompleteness, of tragic interruption, his life presents a harmony and unity of purpose and view. Verbal consistency is of small value. Yet even his verbal consistency was not especially open to challenge. But the ‘climate of opinion’ in which he lived, the mood and intention with which he faced the swiftly changing problems of a stormy period, were never sensibly or erratically altered. The principles and convictions which he developed in the Parliament of 1874, and professed during the Parliament of 1880, were those, which guided him to the end. That the period was brief in which he swayed and almost dominated the Conservative party is not wonderful. The marvel is that he should ever have won to power in it at all. Only the peculiar conditions of the Parliament of 1880, in the House of Commons and out of doors, made his career, as I have described it, a possibility, and enabled him to attack a Liberal Government for oppression and war and to appeal to a Conservative party in the name of Peace, Retrenchment and Reform. Tory Democracy was necessarily a compromise (perilously near a paradox in the eye of a partisan) between widely different forces and ideas: ancient permanent institutions becoming the instruments of far-reaching social reforms: order conjoined with liberty; stability and yet progress; the Tory party and daring legislation! Yet narrow as was the path along which he moved, multitudes began to follow. Illogical and unsymmetrical as the idea might seem—an idea not even novel—it grew vital and true at his touch. At a time when Liberal formulas and Tory inertia seemed alike chill and comfortless, he warmed the heart of England and strangely stirred the imagination of her people.

He contained in his nature and in his policy all the elements necessary to ruin and success. If the principles he championed from 1880 to 1885 were the cause of his rise, they were also the cause of his fall. All his pledges he faithfully fulfilled. The Government changed. The vast preponderance of power in the State passed from one great party to the other. Lord Randolph Churchill remained exactly the same. He thought and said the same sort of things about foreign and domestic policy, about armaments and expenditure, about Ireland, about Egypt, while he was a Minister as he had done before. He continued to repeat them after he had left office for ever. The hopes he had raised among the people, the promises he had made, the great support and honour he had received from them, seemed to require of him strenuous exertions. And when all exertions had failed, he paid cheerfully the fullest and the only forfeit in his power.

Lord Randolph Churchill’s name will not be recorded upon the bead-roll of either party. The Conservatives, whose forces he so greatly strengthened, the Liberals, some of whose finest principles he notably sustained, must equally regard his life and work with mingled feelings. A politician’s character and position are measured in his day by party standards. When he is dead all that he achieved in the name of party, is at an end. The eulogies and censures of partisans are powerless to affect his ultimate reputation. The scales wherein he was weighed are broken. The years to come bring weights and measures of their own.

There is an England which stretches far beyond the well-drilled masses who are assembled by party machinery to salute with appropriate acclamation the utterances of their recognised fuglemen; an England of wise men who gaze without self-deception at the failings and follies of both political parties; of brave and earnest men who find in neither faction fair scope for the effort that is in them; of ‘poor men’ who increasingly doubt the sincerity of party philanthropy. It was to that England that Lord Randolph Churchill appealed; it was that England he so nearly won; it is by that England he will be justly judged.