Mr. Moore Bayley to Lord Randolph Churchill.

57 Colmore Row, Birmingham: March 22, 1884.

My Lord,—I am a Conservative and an elector of the borough of Birmingham, and as such hope at no distant period to render your lordship, as a Conservative candidate for this borough, whatever political service lies in my power.

But before committing myself further in the compact that arose when you were accepted as such Conservative candidate I should like to know, as would a considerable number of political friends, how much further your lordship’s views on the rights of contract proceed in the direction expressed in your speech in the House of Commons when you supported the second reading of Mr. Broadhurst’s Leaseholders (Facilities of Purchase of Fee Simple) Bill.

The enactments of the present Government have in many particulars so violated the rights of contract between subject and subject that I am sure your lordship will not consider my request for information unreasonable as to the extent you are willing to commit your supporters in the furtherance of such like principles.

I remain
Yours obediently,
J. Moore Bayley.

Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Moore Bayley.

2 Connaught Place, W.: March 24, 1884.

Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 22nd inst. In answer to your question as to my views on the rights of contract I beg to inform you that where it can be clearly shown that genuine freedom of contract exists I am quite averse to State interference, so long as the contract in question may be either moral or legal. I will never, however, be a party to wrong and injustice, however much the banner of freedom of contract may be waved for the purpose of scaring those who may wish to bring relief. The good of the State, in my opinion, stands far above freedom of contract; and when these two forces clash, the latter will have to submit. If you will study the course of legislation during the last fifty years, you will find that the Tory party have interfered with and restricted quite as largely freedom of contract as the Liberals have done. With respect to the two leading instances of interference with freedom of contract during the present Parliament, viz. the Irish Land Act and the Agricultural Holdings Act, the Duke of Richmond’s Agricultural Commission and the House of Lords must divide the responsibility for this legislation with Mr. Gladstone’s Government. The latter had it in their power to reject this legislation, and did not do so; the former laid down the principles on which it was founded.

In comparison with legislation of that kind the compulsory conversion of long leaseholds into freeholds in towns, full and ample compensation being paid to the freeholder, is, as I called it in my speech in the House of Commons, ‘a trifling matter.’

You will find the principle of this measure advocated in the British Quarterly Review five years ago (a very orthodox organ of Tory doctrine). You will find the principle again contained in the 65th section of the Conveyancing Law and Properties Act, passed by Lord Cairns in 1881. I may also add that Lord Cairns dealt a very severe blow at the rights of owners of freehold property when he gave to the courts of law power to protect leaseholders from forfeiture for breaches of covenant.

Under all these circumstances I am inclined to think that you will agree with me that all this outcry against the supporters of Mr. Broadhurst’s Bill—this gabble about Socialism, Communism, and Mr. George, &c.—is highly inconsistent and ridiculous, and betrays a prevalence of very deplorable and shocking ignorance as to the extent to which the rights of property can be tolerated, and the relation of the State thereto.

I remain
Yours faithfully,
Randolph S. Churchill.

Lord Randolph Churchill on Temperance.

Private.

2 Connaught Place, W.: November 29, 1888.

My dear Sir,—I am extremely obliged to you for your interesting letter, with a great deal of the contents of which I am disposed to concur.

I think it would not be difficult to find a good many Conservatives willing to make a considerable step towards a restrictive regulation of the sale of alcoholic liquor.

The party with which you are connected ought, however, in my opinion, to consider practically the question of compensation in some form or other to the retail trader. I exclude compensation to the brewers and distillers as an impracticable and impossible demand. The retail trader stands on a very different footing, and any glaring injustice towards him would alienate many who would otherwise join the Temperance movement.

One good result of buying up retail liquor interests by charges on the rates would be to give a permanence to any local decision in favour of largely diminishing the number of or even abolishing public-houses.

The community would be most indisposed, by any reversal of its Temperance policy, to run the risk of having again to face fresh compensation liabilities.

Caprice in popular decisions is a danger to be guarded against.

I shall continue from time to time to urge the importance of strong dealing with the Licensing Question. I only trust that your party will not take up the position of ‘everything or nothing,’ but, if good proposals are made, will accept them—reserving to themselves, of course, the right to continue their agitation for more.

We shall, however, not effect much against the publicans unless we act vigorously in the direction of better houses for the poor. As long as we allow such an immense portion of our population to live in pigsties, the warmth and false cheerfulness of the public-house will be largely sought after.

The two questions appear to me to be inseparable.

I shall always be very glad to talk over these matters with you should you feel disposed for conference.

I am
Yours very faithfully,
Randolph S. Churchill.

James Whyte, Esq.,
United Kingdom Alliance.

Lord Randolph Churchill on Home Rule.

2 Connaught Place, W.: February 10, 1891.

Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 4th inst.

I am not at all surprised to learn that you, in common with, I expect, the overwhelming majority of members of the English Home Rule party, find yourself puzzled, embarrassed and anxious in consequence of the recent very interesting disturbance of the harmony of the Irish Home Rule party.

I have always been of opinion that, however attractive Home Rule for Ireland might be in theory, it was an absolute impossibility to put Home Rule into a Bill. You might just as well try to square the circle.

The dispute between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell as to what took place at what you call ‘the notorious interview at Hawarden’ brings out this fact with exceeding clearness; and if you, and those who agree with you politically, insist upon shutting your eyes rather than contemplate a disagreeable truth, it will, I fear, be the sad fate of your party to waste years of time and strength in fruitless efforts to arrive at a solution of the hopeless problem ‘How to put Home Rule into a Bill.’

You ask me, in conclusion, for my opinion as to what would be the best policy for Ireland.

In reply I would refer you to several speeches which I have delivered and letters which I have written in recent years, in which I have declared my conviction that in a large, liberal, generous and courageous development of Local Government in Ireland on lines similar to those which have been so successfully followed in this country and in Scotland, will be found the best and the only prospect of political tranquillity for the Irish people.

I am
Yours faithfully,
Randolph S. Churchill.

John Ogilvy, Esq.

50 Grosvenor Square, W.: March 19, 1893.

My dear Sir,—In accordance with your wishes I write a few lines to you for the County Longford Meeting which is to be held to-morrow.

It is a pleasure to me to offer my congratulations to the Unionists of Longford on the energy and courage which they display in publicly demonstrating, among a population apparently hostile, their firm and tried attachment to the Parliamentary Union between Ireland and Great Britain and their determination to resist all efforts to sever that Union.

I used in the foregoing sentence the word ‘apparently’ for indeed I do not believe that the bulk of the farmers and peasant farmers of Ireland are by any means confident as to the blessings which are to flow from Home Rule. I hear from many quarters, some of them of great authority, that there is arising and spreading in the minds of the Irish agricultural population an anxious doubt as to what will be their position under an Irish Parliament and whether the taxes which that Parliament will be forced to levy on income or on land, will not be far more onerous and exhausting than the rents they formerly paid to the landlords.

They will remember and reflect that under an Irish Parliament not only will they be absolutely cut off, in times of difficulty and of depression and of failure of crops, from all the sources of relief which from the Imperial Parliament they can now confidently draw upon and be assisted by; but they will be in the hands of a Government which, from sheer financial exigencies, will be compelled to treat the Irish taxpayer with the utmost rigour and harshness, to lay upon him imposts heavier than he can bear, and to exact relentlessly the payment of those imposts to the last farthing and on the earliest day that they become due.

I think you may well impress upon the farmers and peasant farmers the perfect security of property which they now enjoy under the protection of the Imperial Parliament; the perfect freedom which they possess from oppression of any kind, either from heavy taxation or from the unjust exactions of a pauper Government and Parliament; the great advantages in respect of their rentals secured to them by the Imperial Parliament and the great facilities afforded for the easy purchase of their freeholds by its liberality, which opportunities under the Home Rule Parliament will, from the squalid poverty of its resources, become illusory and insecure and in time absorbed by the hopeless insolvency of the Irish Government.

These are the great truths and facts which the loyal minority in Irish counties can urge upon the farmers and the peasantry. The Irish people, in respect of their material interests, have always been bright and quick-witted; they will, with their ready imagination, quickly discern that though it may be pleasant and profitable to be represented in the Imperial Parliament by an independent and numerically powerful party who can extract from the British Exchequer and legislature no inconsiderable concessions to Irish wants, necessities and demands, it will be a widely different state of things when they (the Irish agricultural population) are handed over, body and soul, tied and bound and without appeal, to the uncontrolled domination of that ‘separate and independent’ party who—untrained in the art of just and economical government, eager to enjoy at any cost, and even only for a brief period, the profits of office and the delights of a reckless exercise of patronage and power—will have given over to their insatiable appetites the lives and properties of those who now exist and flourish, in tolerable prosperity and in perfect safety, by the cultivation of the Irish soil.

I have always been opposed to what is called ‘Home Rule’ more upon the grounds that to the Irish people themselves it must bring distress, poverty, misery and ruin, than on account of the dangers it will entail upon the British Empire, though those dangers are exceedingly great.

I trust that you may be able to continue with ardour and success the patriotic and excellent work among the Irish people which you inaugurate to-morrow; you may be sure that the full sympathy and genuine support of a vast majority of the English people will attend you in the struggle and you may be confident that the dark and menacing thunder-cloud that now impends over your country, almost turning Irish day into night, will soon be dissipated by the brightness of a recurring dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity for Ireland under the enlightened rule of a United Imperial Parliament.

Believe me to be
Most faithfully yours,
Randolph S. Churchill.

J. M. Wilson, Esq.