Part 8

“After seeing you, I met Lord Cairns at the Colonial Office. He offered me terms.... I asked him whether, in his opinion, he, the Archbishop, and I could carry anything we agreed upon. He said, ‘Yes, certainly.’ After seeing you, I met Lord Cairns a second time in his room in the House of Lords. I asked, as a preliminary to giving any opinion on his amendments, how he proposed to deal with the preamble. He said, ‘To leave it as amended by the Lords.’ I then proposed the words which were afterwards adopted in the 68th clause. He was at first taken aback, but admitted that he had personally no objection to them.... We agreed upon the commutation clause if the 7 and the 5 per cent. were lumped together. On the curates’ clause we could come to no agreement. He proposed to see Lord Salisbury and the Archbishop, and to meet again at four at the Colonial Office. He spoke with fairness as to the difficulty of his position, and the risk he ran with his own party. I again saw you, and asked the Irish Attorney-General to be present at the last interview. I stated to him in Lord Cairns’ presence how far we agreed, and expressed my regret that on the last point--the curates--our difference was irreconcilable. Lord Cairns said he hoped not, and proceeded to argue strongly in favour of his proposal. He at last, however, at 4.30, compromised the matter by accepting five years instead of one. I shook his hand, which was trembling with nervousness. We discussed the form of announcing the arrangement to the House. We at once agreed it was better to tell the whole truth, and soon settled that it would be better for its success that he should announce the details. I was afterwards apprehensive that this latter arrangement might be disadvantageous to us, but nothing could be better or fairer than his statement.”

“The news was brought to me on my sofa,” Mr. Gladstone says, “and between five and six o’clock I was enabled to telegraph to the Queen. My telegram was followed up by a letter at 7 p.m., which announced that the arrangement had been accepted by the House of Lords, and that a general satisfaction prevailed.”

To the Queen he wrote (July 22):

“Mr. Gladstone is at a loss to account for the great change in the tone and views of the Opposition since Sunday and Monday and even Tuesday last, but on this topic it is needless to enter. As to the principal matters, the basis of the arrangement on the side of the Government is much the same as was intended when Mr. Gladstone had the honour of an audience at Windsor on Saturday; but various minor concessions have been added. Mr. Gladstone does not doubt that, if the majority of the House of Lords should accede to the advice of Lord Cairns, the Government will be able to induce the House of Commons to agree on the conditions proposed. Mr. Gladstone would in vain strive to express to your Majesty the relief, thankfulness, and satisfaction with which he contemplates not only the probable passing of what many believe to be a beneficent and necessary measure, but the undoubted and signal blessing of an escape from a formidable constitutional conflict.”

THE IRISH LAND BILL (1870).

=Source.=--Morley’s _Life of Gladstone_, vol. ii., pp. 293, 294. (Macmillan and Co.)

Public opinion was ripening. The _Times_ made a contribution of the first importance to the discussion, in a series of letters from a correspondent, that almost for the first time brought the facts of Irish land before the general public. A pamphlet from Mill, then at the height of his influence, upon both writers and readers, startled them by the daring proposition, that the only plan was to buy out the landlords. The whole host of Whig economists and lawyers fell heavily upon him in consequence. The new voters showed that they were not afraid of new ideas. It was not until January 25 that peril was at an end inside the Government.

_January 25, 1870._--Cabinet. The great difficulties of the Irish Land Bill THERE are now over. Thank God!

_February 7._--With the Prince of Wales 3¼–4¼ explaining to him the Land Bill and other matters. He has certainly much natural intelligence.

_February 15._--Introduced the Irish Land Bill in a speech of 3¼ hours. Well received by the House at large.

The policy of the Bill as tersely explained by Mr. Gladstone in a letter to Manning was “to prevent the landlord from using the terrible weapon of undue and unjust eviction by so framing the handle that it shall cut his hands with the sharp edge of pecuniary damages. The man evicted without any fault, and suffering the usual loss by it, will receive whatever the custom of the country gives, and where there is no custom, according to a scale, besides whatever he can claim for permanent buildings or reclamation of land. Wanton eviction will, as I hope, be extinguished by provisions like these. And if they extinguish wanton eviction, they will also extinguish those demands for _unjust_ augmentations of rent, which are only formidable to the occupier, because the power of wanton or arbitrary eviction is behind them.” What seems so simple, and what was so necessary, marked in truth a vast revolutionary stride. It transferred to the tenant a portion of the absolute ownership, and gave him something like an estate in his holding. The statute contained a whole code of minor provisions, including the extension of Mr. Bright’s clauses for peasant proprietorship in the Church Act; but this transfer was what gave the Act its place in solid legal form. The second reading was carried by 442 to 11, the minority being composed of eight Irish members of advanced type and three English Tories. The Bill was at no point fought high by the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli moved an amendment, limiting compensation to unexhausted improvements. The Government majority fell to 76, “a result to be expected,” Mr. Gladstone reports, “considering the natural leanings of English and Scotch members to discount in Ireland what they would not apply in Great Britain. They are not very familiar with land tenures.” One fact of much significance he notes in these historic proceedings. “Disraeli,” he writes to the Duke of Argyll (April 21, 1870), “has not spoken one word against valuation of rents or perpetuity of tenure.” It was from the House of his friends that danger came.

_April 4._--H. of C. Spoke on Disraeli’s amendment. A majority of 76, but the navigation is at present extremely critical.

_April 7._--H. of C. A most ominous day from end to end. Early in the evening I gave a review of the state of the Bill, and later another menace of overturn if the motion of Mr. W. Fowler [a Liberal banker] should be carried. We had a majority of only 32.

To Lord Russell he writes (April 12):

“I am in the hurry-scurry of preparation for a run into the country, but I must not omit to thank you for your kind and welcome letter. We have had a most anxious time in regard to the Irish Land Bill. The fear that our Land Bill may cross the water creates a sensitive state of mind among all Tories, many Whigs, and a few Radicals.”

Phillimore records a visit in these critical days:

_April 8._--Gladstone looked worn and fagged. Very affectionate and confidential, Gladstone feels keenly the want of support in debate. Bright ill. Lowe no moral weight. “I feel when I have spoken, that I have not a shot in my locker.”

As a very accomplished journalist of the day wrote, there was something almost painful in the strange phenomenon of a Prime Minister fighting as it were all but single-handed the details of his own great measure through the ambuscades and charges of a numerous and restless enemy--and of an enemy determined apparently to fritter away the principle of the measure under the pretence of modifying its details. “No Prime Minister has ever attempted any task like it--a task involving the most elaborate departmental readiness, in addition to the general duties and fatigues of a Prime Minister, and that too in a session when questions are showered like hail upon the Treasury bench.”[A] Then the Government put on pressure and the majority sprang up to eighty.

The debate in the Commons lasted over three and a half months; or about a fortnight longer than had been taken by the Church Bill. The third reading was carried without a division. In the Lords the Bill was read a second time without a division. Few persons clearly foresaw that it was the first step of a vast transfer of property, and that in a few years it would become customary for Ministers of the Crown to base all their legislation on the doctrine that Irish land is not an undivided ownership, but a simple partnership.[B]

[A] _Spectator._

[B] Lecky, _Democracy and Liberty_, vol. i., p. 165.

EDUCATION BILL: THE COWPER-TEMPLE CLAUSE (1870).

=Source.=--_Life of the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, M.P._, by T. Wemyss Reid, vol. i., pp. 501–503. (Chapman and Hall, 1888.)

The fate of the Bill was still in suspense. No one could be quite sure that Mr. Gladstone intended to press forward with it during that session. Mr. Gladstone himself held strongly to the Bill in the shape in which it had first been introduced; but he had been startled and alarmed by the rising of the Liberal party against it, and he did not appear to share the robust self-confidence with which Mr. Forster faced the formidable flank attacks that were being delivered upon the Government from the benches below the gangway. On June 12 Mr. Forster submitted to Mr. Gladstone a Memorandum on the subject of the measure and the rival amendments which had been proposed by the representatives of the different sections of their own party.

“The first question which suggests itself,” said Mr. Forster in this Memorandum, “is, Why listen to either of their amendments? Why not stick to our Bill as it stands? Our proposal that the majority should have what religious teaching it pleases, while the minority is protected, is logical and impartial in theory, and would work well in practice. Can we not, then, carry it? Yes, with the help of the Opposition; but I fear a majority of our side of the House would vote against it. All the Radicals--not merely men like Fawcett, but earnest supporters of the Bill like Mundella--all the Dissenters from Baines to Richards, would find themselves forced to oppose us, and they would be followed, or rather led, into the lobby by the Whigs, by Sir George Grey and Whitbread; and all our best friends, like Brand, would beg us to prevent a division which would break up the party.”

Clearly Mr. Forster, when he penned this Memorandum, had no liking for the idea of carrying the Bill by means of the votes of the Opposition and against those of his party. After discussing the various amendments, he declared himself in favour of one proposed by Mr. Cowper-Temple, which was virtually identical with his own suggestion to Lord Ripon in the letter of May 18. By this amendment it was ordered that no catechism or religious formulary distinctive of any particular denomination should be taught in the public schools.

“It may be said,” continued Mr. Forster in his Memorandum, “that this plan is unjust inasmuch as it does not give the majority which prefers catechisms the same chance as the majority which does not, and it is insufficient because it still leaves the Boards free to quarrel as to whether they will have the Scriptural teaching or purely secular, or the quasi-secular schools suggested by Richards. To the last objection the sole reply, and to my mind the sufficient reply, is that this plan will be acceptable to a large majority in the House and in the country, because by excluding the Catechism it silences the rallying-cries of controversy and limits the range for dispute; and because it binds, by Act of Parliament, to have none of the theoretical character teaching which would naturally be given by the schoolmaster to young children in a common school, but to which the local bodies wish to be guided by Parliament.

“With regard to the majorities which decidedly prefer catechisms, especially the Catholics, I think we can and should meet their case. I confess I cannot but think this would have been easier to do if we had framed the Bill in accordance with my original Memorandum, and, prescribing Bible lessons as a rule, had then made allowance for exceptional localities, desiring either purely secular or distinctive schools.”

On June 16 the debate on the Bill was at last resumed, and Mr. Gladstone then made a statement which in substance was merely an amplification of Mr. Forster’s suggestion.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR (1870).

=Source.=--Morley’s _Life of Gladstone_, vol. ii., p. 341. (Macmillan and Co., 1903.)

LETTER FROM MR. GLADSTONE TO JOHN BRIGHT (AUGUST 1, 1870).

Although some members of the Cabinet were inclined on the outbreak of this most miserable war to make military preparations, others, Lord Granville and I among them, by no means shared that disposition, nor I think was the feeling of Parliament that way inclined. But the publication of the Treaty has altered all this, and has thrown upon us the necessity either of doing something fresh to secure Belgium, or else of saying that under no circumstances would we take any step to secure her from absorption. This publication [text of a projected agreement between the French and Prussian Governments] has wholly altered the feeling of the House of Commons, and no Government could at this moment venture to give utterance to such an intention about Belgium. But neither do we think it would be right, even if it were safe, to announce that we would in any case stand by with folded arms and see actions done which would amount to a total extinction of public right in Europe.

MR. LOWE’S BUDGET: THE MATCH-TAX (1871).

=Source.=--_The Illustrated London News_, April 22, 1871.

On Thursday the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his usual financial statement. It appeared that the deficiency this year amounted to £2,800,000, and the right hon. gentleman proposes to meet it by increasing the probate and legacy duty; in the first degree from 1 to 2 per cent.; in the second degree from 3 to 3½ per cent., and in the third degree from 3½ to 5 per cent., estimating the gain to the revenue of about £1,000,000. He also proposed to equalise the duties payable on testate and intestate property, making it in all 2 per cent. He next proposed to put a halfpenny stamp on each box of lucifer matches containing not more than one hundred, and a penny on each box of vesta matches containing not more than one hundred. By the former he expected to gain £550,000, and £300,000 by the latter. This, he estimated, would reduce his deficit to £1,950,000, and that he proposed to make up by increasing the income-tax from £1 13s. 4d. to £2 4s. per cent., which he calculated would make up the remaining deficit.

OPPOSITION TO THE MATCH-TAX.

=Source.=--_The Illustrated London News_, April 29, 1871.

A numerous gathering of persons employed in the manufacture of matches was held on Sunday afternoon in Victoria Park, at which a resolution was unanimously passed condemning Mr. Lowe’s proposed impost in strong terms. According to one of the speakers, the daily bread of 15,000 persons in the east of London depends upon the trade in matches. Several thousand persons engaged in the match trade on Monday assembled in the Bow Road, and having formed a procession, set out to march to the House of Commons, there to present a petition against the threatened duty on matches. At a short distance from its starting-point the procession was broken up by the police, but the people managed in some degree to re-form their ranks, and, after many difficulties (more especially in their progress along the Thames Embankment), they arrived at the Houses of Parliament. This, however, was not accomplished without another collision with the police, in which one or two arrests were made. One party of the processionists even succeeded in making their way into Westminster Hall, but they were speedily removed.

PURCHASE IN THE ARMY ABOLISHED BY ROYAL WARRANT (1871).

=Source.=--_The Illustrated London News_, July 22, 1871.

On Thursday (July 20) Sir George Grey asked the Government whether that House, having sanctioned their proposal for the indemnification of officers on the abolition of purchase in the Army, they intend to take measures to prevent the future violation of the law involved in the continued payment of over-regulation prices for commissions. Mr. Gladstone made a long reply, in the course of which he stated that, after consideration, the Government had resolved to advise Her Majesty to take the decisive step of cancelling the warrant under which purchase was legal. That advice had been accepted and acted upon by Her Majesty, and a new warrant had now been framed in terms conformable to the law, so that it was his duty to announce, on the part of the Government, that at present purchase in the Army no longer existed. (Loud and continued cheers.)

When he said that purchase no longer existed, he was reminded by his right hon. friend (Mr. Cardwell) to explain that it did not mean that it was extinguished from the present moment, but a day had been named--November 1 of the present year--from and after which there could be no purchase or sale of commissions in the British Army. Although the amendment of the Duke of Richmond had been carried in the House of Lords [155 for the amendment, which was against the second reading, 130 against], he was advised that that would not prevent the Bill from being proceeded with; and it would now remain to be seen how the House of Lords would act under the circumstances which he had stated, and whether, purchase being abolished, they would go on with the other portions of the Bill.

In conclusion, he begged to say that, come what might, under all circumstances the Government would use the best means in their power, mindful of the honourable pledges they had given, to secure at the hands of Parliament just and liberal terms for the officers.

Mr. Disraeli entered his protest against the course the Prime Minister had taken, and said that Minister was most unwise, who, being baffled in passing an important measure through one House of the Legislature, took upon himself the responsibility and danger of advising the Queen to exercise her prerogative and set the opinion of that House at defiance.

THE FIRST AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY (1871).

=Source.=--_The Illustrated London News_, August 19, 1871.

The first statute holiday of the first Monday in August, under the Bank Holidays Act, was very generally observed on the 7th; and another year this holiday will probably be still more general. The name of Sir John Lubbock and the first Monday in August will henceforth be associated with pleasant recollections in the minds of the clerks of the bankers, brokers, merchants, and traders of the city. At all events, the principal employers of labour in the City, many in the east and a few in the west, took advantage of the provision contained in the new Act, and closed their establishments. The Government offices in the City remained open, but all the warehouses and offices of public companies, the Royal Exchange and Lloyd’s, and nearly all the retail shops in Cannon Street, the Poultry, and Cornhill, were closed. The holiday having been wisely fixed for Monday, a large number of those for whose benefit the measure was more especially passed were able to leave town on Saturday afternoon, and thus to secure two clear days in the country. But still many thousands thronged to the railway stations in the morning. Notwithstanding this exodus of pleasure-seekers, the principal exhibitions and places of amusement had fully the average number of visitors....

In the east end of the town many of the manufactories were closed, and several of the great capitalists, who give their workmen an annual “treat,” engaged fields in which the workmen, with their wives and families, were entertained and amused with outdoor sports. By rail and by river more than 10,000 Oddfellows of the North London District of the Manchester Unity went down to the North Woolwich Gardens to take part in a fête held for the benefit of the widows and orphans of deceased members. On Monday night the great thoroughfares in the City leading from the railways--especially at Ludgate Hill, the Bank, and Gracechurch Street--were filled with holiday folks “homeward bound.” Several schools gave a whole holiday to the pupils, and children of all ages formed part of most of the groups. Not a tipsy or ill-conducted person could be seen. The day had been glorious, and the sum of happiness and social and domestic enjoyment evidently conferred by this first Bank Holiday in August testifies to the wisdom of the Legislature.

BIBLE READING IN SCHOOLS (1871).

=Source.=--_Life of Thomas Henry Huxley_, by his Son, vol. ii., pp. 342, 343. (Macmillan and Co., 1900.)

At the first meeting of the Education Committee of the London School Board, Mr. W. H. Smith, M.P., proposed, and Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., seconded a resolution in favour of religious teaching. “That in the schools provided by the Board, the Bible shall be read, and there shall be given therefrom such explanations and such instruction in the principles of religion and morality as are suited to the capacities of children,” with certain provisos. Several antagonistic amendments were proposed; but Professor Huxley gave his support to Mr. Smith’s resolutions, which, however, he thought might “be trimmed and amended in a way that the Rev. Dr. Angus had suggested. His speech, defining his own position, was a very remarkable one. He said it was assumed in the public mind that this question of religious instruction was a little family quarrel between the different sects of Protestantism on the one hand, and the old Catholic Church on the other. Side by side with this much shivered and splintered Protestantism of theirs, and with the united fabric of the Catholic Church (not so strong temporally as she used to be, otherwise he might not have been addressing them at that moment), there was a third party growing up into very considerable and daily increasing significance, which had nothing to do with either of those great parties, and which was pushing its own way independent of them, having its own religion and morality, which rested in no way whatever on the foundations of the other two.” He thought that “the action of the Board should be guided and influenced very much by the consideration of this third great aspect of things,” which he called the scientific aspect, for want of a better name. “It had been very justly said that they had a great mass of low, half-instructed population which owed what little redemption from ignorance and barbarism it possessed mainly to the efforts of the clergy of the different denominations. Any system of gaining the attention of these people to these matters must be a system connected with, or not too rudely divorced from, their own system of belief. He wanted regulations, not in accordance with what he himself thought was right, but in the direction in which thought was moving.” He wanted an elastic system that did not oppose any obstacle to the free play of the public mind. Huxley voted against all the proposed amendments, and in favour of Mr. Smith’s motion. There were only three who voted against it; while the three Roman Catholic members refrained from voting. This basis of religious instruction, practically unaltered, has remained the law of the Board ever since.

There was a controversy in the papers between Professor Huxley and the Rev. W. H. Freemantle as to the nature of the explanation of the Bible lessons. Huxley maintained that it should be purely grammatical, geographical, and historical in its nature; Freemantle that it should include some species of distinct religious teaching, but not of a denominational character.