Part 11

LORD SALISBURY: ... The great result which I hope from the brilliant debates that have taken place is that the conviction will be carried home to the British people that there is no middle term between government at Westminster and independent and entirely separate government at Dublin. If you do not have a Government in some form or other issuing from the centre you must have absolute separation. Now I ask you to look at what separation means. It means the cutting off from the British Islands of a province tied to them by the hand of Nature. It is hard to find a parallel instance in the contemporary world, because the tendency of events has been in the opposite direction. In every country you find that consolidation, and not severance, has been the object which statesmen have pursued. But there is one exception. There is a State in Europe which has had very often to hear the word "autonomy," which has had more than once to grant Home Rule, and to see separation following Home Rule. The State I have referred to is Turkey. Let anyone who thinks that separation is consistent with the strength and prosperity of the country look to its effect, its repeated effect, when applied to a country of which he can judge more impartially.... Turkey is a decaying Empire; England, I hope, is not. But I frankly admit that this is not the only reason which urges me. The point that the Government have consistently ignored is that Ireland is not occupied by a homogeneous and united people. In proportions which are variously stated, which some people state as four-fifths to one-fifth, but which I should be more inclined to state as two-thirds to one-third, the Irish people are deeply divided, divided not only by creed, which may extend into both camps, but divided by history and by a long series of animosities, which the conflicts that have lasted during centuries have created. I confess that it seems to me that Whiteboy Associations, and Moonlight Associations, and Riband Associations, and murder committed at night and in the open day, and a constant disregard to all the rights of property--these things make me doubt the angelic character which has been attributed to the Irish peasantry. I do not for a moment maintain that they are in their nature worse than other people. But I say there are circumstances attaching to Ireland--circumstances derived from history that is past and gone through many generations--which make it impossible for us to believe that, if liberty, entire liberty, were suddenly given to them, they would be able to forget the animosities of centuries and to treat those who are placed in their power for the first time with perfect justice and equity. You must not imagine that with a wave of a wand by any Minister, however powerful, the effects of centuries of conflict and exasperation will be wiped away.... My belief is that the future government of Ireland does not involve any unmanageable difficulty. We want a wise, firm, continuous administration of the law. We want a steady policy. But you must support it, or it will not take place. There has been a great contest between England and the discontented portion of the Irish people. It is a contest that has lasted through many generations past, through many vicissitudes, and now you are asked to submit to a measure which is placed before you, and to end that contest by a complete and ignominious surrender. It is not a surrender marked by the mere ordinary circumstances of ignominy. It is a painful thing for a great nation to lose a battle and have to acknowledge defeat. It is a painful thing if defeat involves loss of territory, and the nation has to be content with a restricted Empire. But these things do not represent the depth of infamy to which you will descend. There is something worse than all this, and that is when defeat is marked by the necessity of abandoning to your enemies those whom you have called upon to defend you, and who have risked their all on your behalf. That is an infamy below which it is impossible to go; that is an infamy to which you are asked to submit yourselves now. Your enemies in every part of the world will be looking on what you do with exultation. Your friends, your supporters, your partisans, will view it with shame, with confusion, and with dismay in every quarter of the globe.

MR. GLADSTONE'S APPEAL (1886).

=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 295, col. 649. Second reading of the Home Rule Bill, June 7th.

Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper even than hers. You have been asked to-night to abide by the traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find if you can a single voice, a single book, in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No; they are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history, and what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our relation with Ireland conform to the other traditions of our country. So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, sir, is her prayer. Think, I beseech you; think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.

LIBERAL UNIONISM (1886).

=Source.=--_The Times_, May 17.

The Conservative leaders will do well to say plainly that they will not attack any Liberal seats held by representatives who have voted against the Home Rule Bill, whatever prospect there may have otherwise been of displacing the sitting members, or whatever provocation may have been given in former contests. By this course Conservatives can insure the return, with very few exceptions, of all the Liberal members who have declared against the Bill. It is open to them to assail the seats held by Gladstonian Liberals, and on the principle of conjoint action they will be entitled, in assailing those seats, and in defending those they at present occupy, to the support of all Liberal Unionists.

THE UNEMPLOYED RIOTS (1886).

=Source.=--_The Times_, February 9.

There is serious work before the new Home Secretary and his working-man colleague, Mr. Broadhurst. Yesterday there occurred the most alarming and destructive riot that has taken place in London for many years, or perhaps we may say the most destructive that has taken place within living memory. The destruction of the Hyde Park railings in 1866 was in some respects a more threatening affair, as being the work of a bigger mob; but that, unlike the present business, was not accompanied by the wholesale destruction of property and the looting of shops. Yesterday a mob some thousands strong marched along Pall Mall, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly to Hyde Park, then broke into several sections, and returned by South Audley Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street, and other routes, smashing windows, wrecking private carriages, and robbing jewellers' and other shops, utterly unchecked by the police, and leaving only one or two of their number in the hands of the authorities.... The occasion of all this lamentable affair was the great meeting of the unemployed which took place in Trafalgar Square. As our readers are aware, this meeting was but the culmination of many attempts that have been made lately to attract public attention to what is a very real difficulty and hardship. At last the time came for the men to gather in Trafalgar Square. But unfortunately there was not that perfect harmony in their proceedings which might have been desired. Some groups were simply unemployed labourers, come in all honesty of purpose to hear what could be said for them, and their chances of finding work. Some were fair-traders, anxious to impress on the Government that foreign bounties and other tariff enormities were at the root of the mischief. But with these moderately pacific bodies were the more dangerous element brought into the meeting by Messrs. Hyndman, Burns, and Champion. The Revolutionary Social Democrats were there, with the express object of breaking up the meeting called by Mr. Kenny and his friends, and of "preventing people being made the tools of the paid agitators who were working in the interests of the Fair Trade League." It cannot be too clearly understood that it was to the proceedings of these men--of Mr. Burns and Mr. Hyndman and their colleagues--that all the subsequent destruction was due.... Already on several occasions the fanatic Hyndman has done his best to break the peace, from the time when, a year or two ago, he told the crowd on the Thames Embankment that their principle should be a life for a life--the life of a Minister for that of every working-man who starved--down to the time when at the Holborn Town Hall he offered to head "the Revolution." Burns is as vehement, and his voice carries further. He yesterday told the mob that "the next time they met it would be to go and sack the bakers' shops in the West of London," and that "they had better die fighting than starving." He and his red flag led the mob yesterday in their march.

BIMETALLISM AND LABOUR DISPUTES (1886).

=Source.=--_The Times_, February 19.

_Extract from a Letter by Lord Grey._

Some portion of public attention ought to be given to a subject of very pressing importance--that of the "scarcity of gold." The share which the enhancement of the value of gold has probably had in producing these disastrous strikes seems not to have attracted sufficient notice. The fall of prices from the growing scarcity of gold has necessarily made the same wages for labour really higher than they formerly were, while at the same time this fall of prices has diminished the total return from labour and capital employed in production.... Probably this has not been sufficiently well understood by either masters or men, but the masters have practically felt that they could no longer afford to pay the same money wages they used to do, while the men have not understood the necessity for such a reduction. What I would propose is that £1 notes, payable in silver bullion, should be issued, but only in exchange for the same bullion after a certain fixed amount of them had been sent into circulation. But this bullion I should propose to give or receive in exchange for notes, not at any fixed price for silver, but at the market price of the metal, which should be published weekly in the _Gazette_. By this arrangement it will be perceived that silver would be largely used as an instrument for carrying on the business of exchange, without incurring the inconvenience which seems to be inseparable from the scheme of the bimetallists, who would establish by law a fixed price for silver and for gold. As the cost of producing these metals is liable to variation, I cannot understand how the bimetallists can expect that fixing their comparative prices by law could prevent that which could at the moment be most cheaply produced from driving the other out of circulation, since all who had to pay money would naturally make use of the cheapest money they could get.

PASTEUR AND HYDROPHOBIA (1886).

=Source.=--_The Times_, January 8.

_Extract from an Article on "Science in 1885."_

We may here refer to the momentous work of M. Pasteur in connection with hydrophobia. That he has discovered a remedy for one of the most terrible afflictions to which humanity is liable it would probably be premature to say; but that he has taken every precaution against self-deception must be admitted, and so far as he has gone it is difficult to discredit his results.

THE FINAL HOME RULE RUPTURE (1886).

=Source.=--Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii., pp. 364-368. (Macmillans.)

As it happened, all this [Randolph Churchill's resignation of the Exchequer, and Goschen's appointment] gave a shake to both of the Unionist wings. The ominous clouds of coercion were sailing slowly but discernibly along the horizon, and this made men in the Unionist camp still more restless and uneasy. Mr. Chamberlain, on the very day of the announcement of the Churchill resignation, had made a speech that was taken to hold out an olive-branch to his old friends. Sir William Harcourt ... thought the break-up of a great political combination to be so immense an evil as to call for almost any sacrifices to prevent it. He instantly wrote to Birmingham to express his desire to co-operate in reunion, and in the course of a few days five members of the original Liberal Cabinet of 1886 met at his house in what is known as the Round Table Conference (Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Herschell, Sir George Trevelyan, and myself).... Mr. Gladstone gave the Round Table his blessing, his "general idea being that he had better meddle as little as possible with the Conference, and retain a free hand." Lord Hartington would neither join the Conference nor deny that he thought it premature.... On the other side, both English Liberals and Irish Nationalists were equally uneasy lest the unity of the party should be bought by the sacrifice of fundamentals.... Mr. Parnell, though alive to the truth that when people go into a conference it usually means that they are willing to give up something, was thoroughly awake to the satisfactory significance of the Birmingham overtures.

Things at the Round Table for some time went smoothly enough. Mr. Chamberlain gradually advanced the whole length. He publicly committed himself to the expediency of establishing some kind of legislative authority in Dublin in accordance with Mr. Gladstone's principle, with a preference, in his own mind, for a plan on the lines of Canada. This he followed up, also in public, by the admission that of course the Irish legislature must be allowed to organize their own form of executive government, either by an imitation on a small scale of all that goes on at Westminster and Whitehall, or in whatever other shape they might think proper.... Then the surface became mysteriously ruffled. Language was used by some of the plenipotentiaries in public, of which each side in turn complained as inconsistent with conciliatory negotiations in private. At last, on the very day on which the provisional result of the Conference was laid before Mr. Gladstone, there appeared in a print called _The Baptist_ an article from Mr. Chamberlain containing an ardent plea for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, but warning the Welshmen that they and the Scotch crofters, and the English labourers--thirty-two millions of people--must all go without much-needed legislation because three millions were disloyal, while nearly six hundred members of Parliament would be reduced to forced inactivity because some eighty delegates, representing the policy and receiving the pay of the Chicago Convention, were determined to obstruct all business until their demands were conceded. Men naturally asked what was the use of continuing a discussion when one party to it was attacking in this peremptory fashion the very persons and the policy that in private he was supposed to accept. Mr. Gladstone showed no implacability ... he said ... "I am inclined to think we can hardly do more now.... We are quite willing that the subject should stand over for resumption at a convenient season."

The resumption never happened. Two or three weeks later Mr. Chamberlain announced that he did not intend to return to the Round Table. No other serious and formal attempt was ever made on either side to prevent the Liberal Unionists from hardening into a separate species. When they became accomplices in coercion they cut off the chances of reunion.

THE COMING OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION (1887).

=Source.=--_The Times_, March 17.

Lord Hartington made a striking speech last night to the Polytechnic Young Men's Christian Institute. In the presence of such an audience a text was perhaps needed, and he took as his text some remarks made by Professor Huxley, who lately pointed out the instructive likeness between warfare and industry. If we are well advised--and Lord Hartington has no misgivings on the subject--in spending freely to protect ourselves against aggression, it is equally our duty to be not niggardly in providing industrial education, and diffusing scientific knowledge. It is the condition of industrial supremacy, and it is not an unattainable condition. A Watt or even an Edison is born, not made. But the knowledge of drawing, mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry, and other sciences or arts, which aid the artisan in his daily work, may be imparted, and on the spread of such knowledge may depend the continuance of industrial supremacy. Great commanders cannot be called into being; but in the main it depends on the rank and file of the army of industry whether its battles are lost or won. How is the work to be accomplished? In answer to this question Lord Hartington let fall one or two remarks which, though not offering a complete solution, are, if we mistake not, likely to be fruitful in consequences. The State, he is satisfied, cannot do all or much; and he is struck with the inability of purely voluntary efforts to meet the demand. He finds the necessary assistance, if anywhere, in our municipal institutions. "I hope the time is not far distant when our town councils or local governing bodies will establish in every considerable centre industrial and technical schools, suitable to the wants of the district, and supported out of local funds." The institutions which now imperfectly do the work of diffusing technical instruction "are playing the same part in relation to technical and industrial education that was played by the voluntary schools in relation to elementary education." This points to a national system of technical education; it is the largest and clearest conception of the subject which any public man of importance has put forth.

THE FIRST "GUILLOTINE" CLOSURE (1887).

=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 315, col. 1674, June 10.

Ordered: That at ten o'clock p.m. on Friday, the 17th day of June, if the Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) Bill be not previously reported from the Committee of the whole House, the Chairman shall put forthwith the Question or Questions on any amendment or motion already proposed from the Chair. He shall next proceed and successively put forthwith the Question that any clause then under consideration, and each remaining clause in the Bill, stand part of the Bill, unless progress be moved as hereinafter provided. After the clauses are disposed of, he shall forthwith report the Bill, as amended, to the House.

From and after the passing of this Order, no motion that the Chairman do leave the Chair, or do report progress, shall be allowed, unless moved by one of the members in charge of the Bill, and the Question on such motion shall be put forthwith.

If progress be reported on 17th June the Chairman shall put this Order in force in any subsequent sitting of the Committee.

JUBILEE RETROSPECTS (1887).

I.

=Source.=--An article by Mr. Gladstone in _The Nineteenth Century_, vol. xxi., p. 1.

The Prophet of the new Locksley Hall records against us many sad, and even shameful, defaults. They are not to be denied, and the list might probably be lengthened. The youngest among us will not see the day in which new social problems will have ceased to spring up as from the depths, and vex even the most successful solvers of the old; or in which this proud and great English nation will not have cause, in all its ranks and orders, to bow its head before the Judge Eternal, and humbly to confess to forgotten duties, or wasted and neglected opportunities. It is well to be reminded, and in tones such as make the deaf man hear, of city children who "soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime"; of maidens cast by thousands on the street; of the sempstress scrimped of her daily bread; of dwellings miserably crowded; of fever as the result. But take first the city child as he is described. For one such child now there were ten, perhaps twenty, fifty years back. A very large, and a still increasing proportion of these children have been brought under the regular teaching and discipline of the school. Take the maidens who are now, as they were then, cast by thousands on the streets. But then, if one among them were stricken with penitence, and sought for a place in which to hide her head, she found it only in the pomp of paid institutions, and in a help well meant, no doubt, yet carrying little of what was most essential, sympathetic discrimination, and mild, nay even tender care. Within the half-century a new chapter has opened. Faith and love have gone forth into the field. Specimens of womankind, sometimes the very best and highest, have not deemed this quest of souls beneath them. Scrimping of wages, no doubt, there is and was. But the fair wage of to-day is far higher than it was then, and the unfair wage is assumably not lower. Miserable and crowded dwellings, again, and fever as their result, both then and now. But legislation has in the interval made its attempts in earnest; and if this was with awkward and ungainly hand, private munificence or enterprise is dotting our city areas with worthy dwellings. Above all, have we not to record in this behalf martyred lives, such as those of Denison and Toynbee? Or shall we refuse honourable mention to not less devoted lives, happily still retained, of such persons as Miss Octavia Hill? With all this there has happily grown up not only a vast general extension of benevolent and missionary means, but a great parochial machinery of domestic visitation, charged with comfort and blessing to the needy, and spread over so wide a circle, that what was formerly an exception may now with some confidence be said to be the rule. If insufficiencies have come to be more keenly felt, is that because they are greater, or because there is a bolder and better trained disposition to feel them?...