CHAPTER XVIII

GLADSTONE PRIME MINISTER

Opposition to Gladstone—‘The most Thorough Radical Member in the House’—Growing Dissatisfaction with the Government—The Irish Universities Bill—Helping to Defeat his own Party.

[Sidenote: Gladstone and Fawcett.]

In the new Parliament Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time. Fawcett had much appreciation of his leader’s wonderful powers, of his ability as a financier, of his sincerity as a reformer, and of his right to the support of the Liberal party.

But the ramifications, subtleties and luminosities of Gladstone’s marvellous intellect and culture were a closed book to Fawcett’s downright, strong, unimaginative and limited mind, limited in a sense by its very excellencies, its honesties, its insistence on the real, the well proved, his willingness to consider the workable problem only, rejecting all inquiries which savoured of the visionary, the philosophic, or the purely æsthetic. Whatever Fawcett’s mind was willing to dally with or to assimilate must have the qualities of serviceableness and a certain homespun simplicity. Culture for its own sake, the higher flights of the imagination, and struggles to pierce the veil of the unknown seemed to him a sentimental waste of good time which could better be spent on real work or good play.

[Sidenote: A Difference in Temperaments.]

The great flights which Gladstone’s intellect revelled in, his delight in ancient as well as in the most recent philosophy, seemed as amusing and unnecessary to Fawcett as it was to him profitless and extravagant.

In their entirely divergent points of view we must recognise the cause of much of the later incompatibility of these two temperaments which really never understood each other, and had not the power to meet on a truly common footing.

[Sidenote: The Bills of 1869.]

In the session of 1869 they struck fire more than once. The Bill for removing Religious Tests at the Universities did not satisfy Fawcett, and he also much disapproved of the financial arrangements in the Bill for disestablishing the Irish Church. The Education Bill pleased him as little. The phrase ‘We must educate our masters’ represented the feeling of many in regard to the newly enfranchised labour. To them education was a desperate safeguard against a necessary evil. To Fawcett it was the beautiful and logical outcome of a simple act of justice. The Education Bill of 1870 was hampered by conflicting religious difficulties, and the resultant law was a compromise little to Fawcett’s liking.

Fawcett’s position in Parliament had now become strong and unique. A contemporary writes of him as ‘the most thorough Radical now in the House.’ He was regarded as a leader of the extreme party.

[Sidenote: A Radical of the Radicals.]

As a critic of the Government he was ruthless and reckless, like a mighty woodman hacking mercilessly at ill-grown timber. There was ample reason for his dissatisfaction, as he emphatically proved to a crowded meeting at Brighton.

He began by telling a story to which he often referred. Some old-fashioned Liberal had told him that after two hours’ reflection he and his friends had been unable to answer the question, what there was for the Liberal party to do. Fawcett said that he had enlightened his friend in the course of a short stroll, and he now proceeded to enlighten his constituents. He began by insisting upon the shortcomings of the previous sessions. The Irish Church had been disestablished, but at the cost of a bribe of £7,000,000. The praise bestowed upon the Education Act was, as often happened, one more proof that it was ‘a feeble and timorous compromise.’ Time had been wasted in ’squabbling over a paltry religious difficulty,’ which had been handed over to the local authorities instead of finally settled by Parliament. The University Tests had been only half settled. The Ballot Bill was a good measure, yet it left the most serious difficulty of election expenses inadequately treated. ‘We had therefore still to make up leeway; but above all we had to introduce new ideas.’ In this last sentence he emphasised the paralysis of progress which had so long crippled the advance of England. New cures, new methods, new energy, were what this young politician had craved from the first of his co-workers.

[Sidenote: New Ideas.]

Full of life and enthusiasm, the blind youth abounded in plans to make the world happier and saner. It should have no rest till his thoughts had become beneficient law. He prodded those sedate Whiggish gentlemen who formed so large a part of the Liberal majority on the importance of a fair minority representation. He cried out that there must be ‘no more hereditary legislation, and that the House of Lords needed reform.’ He held before them abuses connected with the Poor Laws, and the horrible fact that in England one in every twenty of their fellows was then a pauper.

[Sidenote: Being disagreeable.]

The party whips and organisers used to say that whatever was proposed, Fawcett would say something disagreeable. Fawcett did, in fact, say the ‘most disagreeable’ thing pretty often, because nothing can be so disagreeable as an opposition based upon the very principle of which the party claims a special monopoly.

Fawcett’s increasing dissatisfaction with the Government was strongly set forth in an article in the _Fortnightly Review_ of 1871 ‘On the Present Position of the Government.’

It was a vigorous criticism of the ministry. While giving them credit for what they had done, he contended that the reforms that had been attempted were but half-heartedly done, and had not met the evils they were supposed to overcome. He mentioned many of the questions we have already referred to, but he also spoke of two others that will be discussed more fully in later chapters. He complained that the Government had done its utmost to promote the enclosure of English commons, and that Indian Finance had been dismissed by the Cabinet with fifteen minutes’ discussion.

He forestalled the rejoinder that the Government was not to be expected to satisfy the extreme Radicals, by claiming that it did not even keep up with the main body of its supporters. It was enormously pleased with itself when it, ‘after much curious twisting, and many a dubious halt, decided to accept a principle which, years before, had been endorsed at a hundred provincial meetings.’

He felt that while Government could have kept the enthusiasm of its supporters by following out a simple, strong policy, it had injured itself and disgusted them, not by going too far, but by shilly-shallying, compromising, and equivocating. This frankness hurt Fawcett’s position with the strong supporters of the Government, and he was looked on as its enemy, so that the Government Whips did not even send him the usual notices.

[Sidenote: The Irish University Bill.]

Then came the last great battle of that Parliament, in which Fawcett was to play so dramatic a part. Trinity College, Dublin, was a Protestant university financed by the State. Liberals were eager to remove the religious tests which prevented Catholics from enjoying the emoluments of the college. This proposal had Fawcett’s enthusiastic sympathy. His standpoint in dealing with these questions can best be shown by a comment he once made on Mill’s book on _Liberty_.

‘As I was reading Mill’s _Liberty_—perhaps the greatest work of our greatest living writer—as I read his noble, I might almost say his holy ideas, I thought to myself, if every one in my country could and would do his work, how infinitely happier would the nation be! How much less desirous should we be to wrangle about petty religious differences! How much less of the energy of the nation would be wasted in contemptible quarrels about creeds and formularies; and how much more powerful should we be as a nation to achieve works of good, when, as this work would teach us to be, we were firmly bound together by the bonds of a wise toleration.’

Fawcett resented any narrow sectarian rules, and, though never irreligious, was out of sympathy with ceremonial and dogmatic detail.

He himself really lived according to the creed that ‘the world was his country, and to do good his religion.’ He had probably little true understanding of the depth of feeling that can be aroused by differences of creed and church. All men were alike to him, the Catholic, the Jew, or the Agnostic; and for Ireland as well as for England he fought for absolute equality of privilege for all.

Even in his first Parliament, Fawcett had urged the removal of religious tests in Dublin, and had continued to do so in the various sessions that followed. His friend, Professor Cairnes, and he would discuss the matter. Fawcett studied it very thoroughly and pressed this reform incessantly. At last in 1873, when he had again brought in a Bill for abolishing tests and for certain other changes, he agreed to withdraw it in favour of a Government Bill if this latter should seem to him sufficiently satisfactory.

[Sidenote: Gladstone’s Speech.]

The Government measure was introduced by Gladstone in a speech so persuasive that Fawcett said that ‘if the decision could have taken place whilst the House was still under its spell, the Bill would have been almost unanimously carried.’ But, after a careful examination, Fawcett found it impossible to give it his support. He was, however, much moved by Gladstone’s speech, and afterwards congratulated him most heartily on his eloquence. Gladstone’s eagle eye glanced at him with a slight air of reproach as he replied, ‘I could have wished that it had proved more persuasive, sir.’

The scheme of the Bill was very complicated. The various colleges in Ireland, Catholic and Protestant, were to be combined into one university. Instruction in subjects likely to be controversial was to be limited to the colleges themselves. These subjects were theology, moral philosophy, and modern history. On these the university Professors were not to lecture, nor was the university to examine in them. ‘Gagging clauses’ Fawcett called these, and made against them the ablest speech of his life. He lifted the debate out of the level plain of Parliamentary commonplace, and almost savagely closed with the weak arguments of his antagonists, and vanquished them. He contended that the proposed regulations would make ‘the treatment of all subjects, even political economy, for example, hopeless’ and would seem a Government sanction of any criticism advanced by any religious authority. The separate colleges, each with their separate religious control, would perpetuate and deepen the bitter religious quarrels from which Ireland had suffered so long.

When Fawcett felt that it was his mission to drive home an idea, so that it would penetrate and permeate unforgettably the minds of his auditors, he set out deliberately to pierce like a steel drill the rock of opposition. His relentless facts bored a hole in the wall of antagonism, which he then tried to fill with the dynamite of action. When embittered and roused to righteous anger, his words were like blows. Often his enemies gave in from sheer weariness, because their reasons were too black and blue to fight his logic any longer.

[Sidenote: Fawcett’s Bill passed.]

Opposition seemed only to feed his triple flame of courage, resourcefulness, and energy. The ministers received but lukewarm support, and were unable to withstand Fawcett’s onslaught. The Bill was defeated in division, and immediately Fawcett brought in his own measure. The Government agreed to support it if all changes but those abolishing religious tests were omitted. Fawcett consented, and at last, after many years struggle, his Bill became law.

This defeat of the Ministry by some of its own supporters was one of the main causes which brought about its fall. Fawcett had dared that courageous thing, to wreck his own party rather than consent to a Bill of which he disapproved. He did more, for Gladstone retired from the leadership shortly after this, and largely because of the weak support of members of his own party. It says well for both that the two men worked together later on several occasions.

Fawcett was never a party man in the sense of submitting his judgment to the policy of his leaders; but he kept their respect, for his honesty could not be questioned, and when he turned and rent his own party, it was because he felt it lacked that Liberalism for which it stood. The fact that his action was likely to stand in the way of his chance of office was a consideration which it would never occur to him to entertain. He desired office, but as a better means of serving the people; if office could not mean that to him, it meant nothing.

SAVING THE PEOPLE’S PLAYGROUNDS

‘Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to the iron string. God will not have His work made manifest by cowards.’—EMERSON.