THE DUKE OF ARGYLL,in rising to call the attention of the House to the circumstances attending the recent change of Administration, and to the effect of them on the political prospects of the country, said: My Lords, I shall not waste the time of the House by offering any elaborate apology for the Notice upon which I now rise to speak. It appears to me very humbly that some such Notice was due from some one. It is now almost exactly a month since that vote took place in the House of Commons which led to the dissolution of the late Administration. My Lords, during a great part of that month we were without a Government, and at the present moment we are still in the rapids of a great political crisis. My Lords, not only is that true, but it may almost be said that we are but in the beginnings of these rapids. To the month which has now elapsed there will be added no less than four months before there can be any great Constitutional settlement of the questions which have been raised. This is a great public evil. In foreign affairs it is not possible that the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury), with all the strength of his mind and character, should speak as the Foreign Minister and the Head of the English Government ought to speak—as expressing the determination and the power of the British Parliament. In domestic affairs there are also great evils to be borne. There is no guidance of public opinion. At home, when everybody is appealing to a new constituency everybody is free, without the guidance of the Government. Everybody is free to bid for the applause and support of particular sections of the community, and there is no unity ill the action of Party, which usually guides our public counsels. My Lords, I say that these are great public evils. In the Ministerial explanations which have taken place has there been any satisfactory explanation given of this state of things? It is impossible not to feel that under the existing state of things, when there is a sort of compact between the two Parties that nothing 247 shall be mentioned that would raise contention, and nothing said which would enlighten the people upon the condition of public affairs, the noble Marquess has made a short statement of foreign policy marked by great moderation and great dignity, but also, if he will allow mo to say so, by great and necessary reserve. Contrast this condition of Parliamentary discussion with the discussion out-of-doors. There is a truce within the walls of Parliament—there is no truce outside its walls. There is a most bitter Party spirit already abroad, and in the contest on which we are about to enter every appeal will be made to the ignorance, and, if possible, to the prejudices, of the new electors by both sides of politicians. Is that a right condition of things? Is it right that both Houses of Parliament, by a sort of implicit compact between the two Front Benches in the two Chambers, should be precluded from discussing one of the greatest political crises that has ever happened in the country? I hope that your Lordships will not think that I wish to introduce into this House the heated language and the partizan statements of the platform. Far be it from me to do so. But is there no medium between total silence upon the greatest questions that will affect the political future of this country and the partizan utterances to which I have alluded? I venture to think that in addressing your Lordships' House on this question I need not use partizan language. I wish to speak with perfect freedom in the interests of the country, and I hope I may be able to do so without giving unnecessary offence. It will be in your Lordships' recollection that in the first Ministerial Statement by the noble Marquess opposite he spoke somewhat in a tone of apology to his own supporters, chiefly explaining why it was he had taken Office without receiving those formal assurances which at first he thought necessary to his position. In commenting upon that speech the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition in this House said, practically, to the noble Marquess—"You have no need of using a tone of apology." That is to say, that no apology was needed from the late Leader of the Opposition for assuming Office when he had upset the late Government; it was his duty to take Office. I am not now quoting the exact words; I am 248 quoting the substance of the good-humoured banter, of which he is so great a master, and under which he sometimes contrives to insinuate the most important truths. Now, I venture to think that my noble Friend did not thoroughly realize the circumstances of the case. This is not a case where the Leader of an Opposition upset the Government in the usual course of Party warfare—it was upset by an accidental Vote, carried by a combination of the fractions of the House of Commons, largely aided by extensive abstentions on the part of the supporters of Her Majesty's late Government. I venture to doubt the Constitutional doctrine that, under such circumstances, the Leader of the principal division of the majority of the House of Commons is necessarily bound to take Office. I object to it on a great Constitutional principle that, if this doctrine were once admitted, it would make the normal majority practically dictators to the country. For instance, take the case of a Budget. Supposing there were any objectionable proposition in it—I am far from saying that that is the case in the present instance, I am only supposing a case—if the principle to which I have referred were admitted, then no combination of Parties would venture to dispute the Budget for fear that, if it were rejected, one of them would be forced to take Office. Therefore, I maintain that, under the circumstances in which that division took place, it was not absolutely incumbent upon the noble Marquess to take Office, and I think that his doing so was an act of great public courage. I cannot conceive that any public man in his position would have accepted Office, except under a high sense of public duty. Now, I pass to a more important matter. There has been very little explanation given to us by those in Office, and absolutely none has been given to us by those who went out of Office. Now, they are the principal occasions of this great political crisis. My Lords, I cannot help wondering, when I see the great political transformation which has taken place, and which is typified by the change of sides in both Houses. How is it that the great Administration of Mr. Gladstone, which came into Office with a majority ranging from 100 to 130, the most powerful Administration in numbers that has ever succeeded to 249 power in this country in ray recollection, and, I believe, the most powerful in point of numbers for many years before—how is it that that Administration came to such sudden grief, how has it gone upon the rock, and how has it compelled the Leaders of a comparatively small minority in Parliament to assume the responsibility of Office? That is a question which, I think, we have a right to look into, and which, in my opinion, is full of interest and instruction. Of course, I know that there were incidental causes at work, as I believe there must always be when any Government has been in Office for four or five years. They accumulate gradually and insensibly against it. Discontent, falsified expectations, disappointed wants gradually sap and undermine the popularity of such a Government. That, no doubt, is one of the causes which effected it. Then, again, there is the Irish vote, which is always an uncertain element in political affairs. But none of these causes can account for the great and sudden crash that has taken place. The cause of that crash I believe to be this— that there has been for a long time a waning confidence in the Leaders of the Liberal Party, due to a growing persuasion that they were not united, and that the policy which they pursued was a policy of compromise not completely fitting into the opinions of any one fraction of the Government. It is my wish tonight to point out the public evidences we have upon this subject; and before I do so, allow mo to say that I will never believe in those newspaper paragraphs about splits in the Cabinet, which are so common in this country. My own experience leads me to believe that those rumours are generally wholly false, and that even when they have a ground of foundation they are greatly misrepresented. I do not go on such evidence as that. When one comes to me and says they have heard of splits in the Cabinet, I reply that I do not believe them, for nobody could know them to be true unless there was a want of honour in the Cabinet itself, and it is extremely improbable that that should be so. My Lords, I set aside all those rumours. But it has been an open secret; and I could not help observing that in certain newspapers paragraphs appeared on this subject which subsequent events proved to have been well informed. I do not 250 know that it ever happened to such a great extent in any other Cabinet than the late Cabinet; but I only observed what everybody had observed. Then there is the evidence, however superficial, that during the last month it even struck me that in the streets, or at a party, or a garden party, if you saw any man coming along with a particularly elastic step, and a most joyful frame of countenance, ten to one that on coming closer you would find that it was a Member of the late happy Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone. They always seemed to say to themselves—and I am told that some of them said it in so many words—"We have got out of the mess; and not only that, but we have put the Tories into it." But I turn from these external evidences; and, by-the-bye, my noble Friend the Leader of the Opposition, in the speech he made the other day in answer to the noble Marquess, used what I thought was a very significant expression, for he mentioned that the Sovereign had invited Mr. Gladstone to resume the great Office he had so long held; and the answer to that, if I recollect the expression of my noble Friend aright, was that if Mr. Gladstone found that no other Government could be formed he would not desert his Sovereign, but would try to reconstitute the Government, although he would not even then promise Her Majesty that there would be smooth water. This expression appeared to imply that there were serious differences of opinion between the Leaders of the Liberal Party. But I turn from these slight indications of the evidence which we have in public, and will speak first of foreign policy. I wish to assure my noble Friend who leads on this side of the House that I do not, either in fact or in intention, reflect upon him. Nothing has happened—I say it seriously—which shakes the confidence I have long had in the eminent, I should say the pre-eminent, qualifications of my noble Friend for the great Office which he has so long held. I know the breadth of his views, the dispassionate nature of his judgment, his great knowledge of men, and his great tact in dealing with them; but I have never assumed or believed that, in conducting the foreign policy of the late Government, the noble Earl has ever been anything else than the mouthpiece of a compromise arrived 251 at in a disunited Cabinet of which he was a Member. Now, my Lords, having expressed my personal confidence in so far as my noble Friend is concerned, I wish to direct the attention of the House to the fact that the first great blow which the late Government received was with regard to their policy in the Soudan. The House of Commons, by a majority smaller than the number of the Cabinet Members — namely, 14—consented to pass a verdict not of approval, but negatively of refusing to approve of their policy. A Government, which at the commencement of their career was supported by a majority of certainly above 100, to escape defeat by a number smaller than their own Cabinet, can hardly be said to have quite escaped a Vote of Want of Confidence. We have had the confession of, I think, not less than three Members of the Cabinet that, in consequence of that Vote, the Government considered the question of resigning. Now, as to the Soudan, I am not going to discuss the merits of the question; but I have never for a moment doubted that the long delay which took place in the release of General Gordon could not possibly have taken place unless there were great divisions in the Cabinet on the subject of Egyptian policy. It is incredible that so great a man sent out by the Government on whatever condition could have been left for so many months without a determination to send immediate relief—it is impossible that such a transaction could have taken place except with the most serious differences of opinion upon a question which deeply affected the honour of the country. I do not know whether your Lordships noticed in the journal of General Gordon, which has recently been published, a very curious fact. In the midst of the tremendous dangers and difficulties by which he was surrounded he never lost his presence of mind or lightness of spirit, and I am very much struck at the jocular manner in which he expresses himself. This is the paragraph to which I refer as describing the policy which I have attempted to sketch. General Gordon had received a message from Cairo desiring him to give particulars of his exact position, and when he wished the Relief Expedition to arrive; and then he puts down these words— 252
Now, I really think if Egerton was to turn over the 'archives' (a delicious word) of his office, he would see that we had been in difficulties for provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the hank, having seen his friend in a river already bobbed down two or three times, hails, I say, old fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the lifebuoy. I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is a pity to throw you the lifebuoy until you are really in extremis, and I want to know exactly, for I am a man brought up in a school of exactitude.That is a sample of the humorous language in which he tells of what took place; and I confess, having regard to these facts, we have proof that there must have been great differences of opinion among the Leaders of the Liberal Party. It was that conviction, depend upon it, which led to the Vote of the House of Commons, and it is the thing which in the country has damaged the late Government more than anything else. For myself, I object to their policy on deeper grounds. It so happened that I was the first Member of this House to take up what has since become one of the Liberal principles, and that is the protection of the interests of the Native population. I took it up when the late Lord Derby was at the head of foreign affairs, and long before the question had become a popular cry of the Liberal Party; and some noble Lords will remember that when I brought forward a Motion in this House with reference to the insurrection in Crete I got no support from your Lordships. I remember very well that one of the Peers who got up to oppose me, and who took an opposite view of the duties of the English nation, was my noble Friend who lately presided at the India Office (the Earl of Kimberley). I now pass to another matter of immense importance, of which I have the clearest evidence of a want of united purpose— I refer to the condition of our naval defences. If there is one thing in the politics of this country for which the Government ought to be responsible it was the sufficiency of our naval defences. They should not allow this matter to be interfered with by any external authority whatever. It is for them to make up their own minds whether the Navy of Great Britain is sufficient for the duties it has to perform, and by their calculation they ought to abide against all comers. I do not blame my noble Friend the late First Lord of 253 the Admiralty, for he must have differed from all the First Lords I have ever known if he would not have been delighted to have a larger sum to spend on his own Department. I have never known them to reduce their Estimates, and I never know one who would not be glad to have a larger sum; but all I can say is that the present First Lord of the Admiralty, who has to see that the Navy is adequate for the defence of the country and the exigencies of the Public Service, is placed in a very awkward position indeed. In the month of November there was a great agitation, incited by anonymous articles in The Pall Mall Gazette. They produced an immense effect, and I confess I read them with complete and absolute incredulity. I did not believe that the Navy was as represented; but I made some private inquiries from naval friends, and they told me, for the first time, that they had serious misgivings that the truth was so. Still, I can say this with the utmost sincerity—that if a Vote had been challenged by the Opposition, and my noble Friend (the Earl of Northbrook) had asked me to support his Estimates, I should have voted for them through thick and thin. The Executive Government is responsible, and ought not to be run in upon by any Parliamentary Party or by others outside; and it does shake one's confidence very much in the sufficiency and the unity of the Government to find this ground was departed from. I was never more astonished than when my noble Friend gave way to that agitation, and proposed that no less than £5,000,000 should be added to the Naval Estimates to strengthen the defences and make the Navy more efficient. I cannot describe the effect that had on my own mind. I said to myself I know the tenacity of purpose with which the defences of the country are always regarded, and I know that it could not have been broken down without long and anxious debate; and here we have it proved that there must have been great disunion among the Leaders. Greater questions do not arise than with regard to our foreign policy and our naval supremacy; but I turn from them to perhaps a still more fundamental question—namely, that of finance. It so happened that I first became a Colleague of my right hon. Friend Mr. Gladstone in the Government of Lord 254 Aberdeen. When that Government was formed there was a great financial agitation in the country over what was called the differentiation or graduation of the Income Tax. A noble Friend opposite will recollect it well. I remember hearing Lord Aberdeen say that unless the Government gave way on that point, probably before many months were over the Government would cease to exist. As a more intellectual exercise I was interested in it at the time. Well, the Cabinet met. Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he had to face the difficulty in the House of Commons, and he faced it there in a speech which was one of the greatest triumphs of his financial genius. He resisted the breaking down of the Income Tax; he resisted its graduation; he resisted its differentiation, and from that day to this, when the question arose in the House of Commons, he said he would be no party to the breaking down of the Income Tax, that great instrument of finance. But now one of the most prominent Members of the Government, the President of the Board of Trade, goes out into the country and makes a great speech in which the graduation of the Income Tax is definitely laid down as the platform for the future guidance of the Liberal Party. What are we to think, we Members of the Liberal Party, who have been brought up in the school of Mr. Gladstone, who, at least as regards finance, have looked to him as a great prophet and a great teacher—what are we to think when we see Mr. Gladstone allowing one of his principal Colleagues to go about teaching the country in direct opposition to the doctrine which he has laid down with all his energy and all his genius? It shakes, and it ought to shake, confidence in the Liberal Party, and in its unity and consistency. It is all very well for the Members of the late Cabinet to say, as they have repeatedly said—"Oh, we are not responsible for our Colleagues' speeches in the country." Within certain limits that is true. Beyond those limits it is not true. But when I see leading Members of the Government—and young men who are likely to succeed, more or less, to some share or other of the Leadership of the Party—going about instructing the people to throw aside doctrines most sacred to the intellectual convictions of the 255 Head of the Party, it is a gross breach of usage. I now come to the case of Ireland. I am not going to trouble the House with my own opinions. I wish to stick to my case as far as I can, which is the public evidence we have or have had of disunion in the late Government. It was the duty of the Government, knowing that the Crimes Act was going to expire, to make up their mind whether they would renew it in whole or in part. In this connection we have had some curious prognostications which have come true. It was openly stated that there were great differences in the minds of Members of the Government upon this subject. There may, there must be, differences of opinion on such a question in the Cabinet; but the Cabinet is at least bound to make up its mind one way or another, and speak with no uncertain voice. Well, far on in the Session it is announced by my right hon. Friend at the head of the then Government that a new Act would be proposed, not, he said, what is commonly called coercive, and which, he thought, was improperly so-called. I entirely agree that an Act which is called coercive very often ought not to have that title given to it. I am entirely in favour of the cry of "No coercion;" but then, my Lords, on the condition that there is no coercion from below as well as no coercion from above. Let every Irishman be free to exercise his own talents, to invest his own money as it suits his own interest to do so according to law. Show me a state of things in which there is no coercion from below, in which it is in the power of any Irishman to take a farm which has been "Boycotted" without danger of injury to himself; show me a state of things in which that coercion does not exist, and I will say with all my heart—"Let us have no coercion from above." I understood my right hon. Friend Mr. Gladstone to have come to this conclusion—that in order to prevent coercion from below, in order to secure the liberties of the Irish people in their individual capacity, and to save them from the tyranny of secret societies, it was necessary for the late Government to renew some portion at least of the late Coercion Act. No doubt if the late Government had been in Office now they would have been bound to go on with their proposals in that direction. A few 256 days afterwards my right hon. Friend, then at the head of the Government, also announced that he intended to bring in a Bill to render saleable, if possible, the land belonging to the Irish landlords. The best-informed persons affect to think that this would not have been tolerated by some portion of the Liberal Party; but I cannot conceive what connection there is between the two subjects. In my opinion, it is the first duty of the Government of this country to try, if they can, to relieve from absolute unsaleability the land of Ireland. It is not merely in the interests of the landowners, but in the permanent interests of the Irish people, that they should do it. There is no civilized country in the world except Ireland where the ownership of land is unsaleable, and not only is that proposition true, but it is true farther that in proportion to the welfare and civilization of a people the sale-ability of land increases and its price increases; and I say it is a standing reproach to you and to your land legislation and your Administration that the saleability of land has been destroyed in Ireland. My Lords, when I left the late Government I said that it would be so—I told you your Bill was not merely giving tenant right to the tenant, not merely reforming the ownership of land, but that it was destroying the ownership. It has destroyed all that in which the ownership of land consists; and I maintain that to a very large extent, if not entirely, as the result of the Irish Land Act you have passed, the ownership of land has become a damnosa hare-ditas for which no man who is in his senses in Ireland will give sixpence. It is one of the duties of the Government to try and remove that state of things; but immediately Mr. Gladstone gave Notice of his intention to bring in a Bill for the purpose, we had an intimation in the Press that it would be a subject of serious difficulty. Directly the fall of the late Government took place, we witnessed the spectacle of the Members of the late Administration going into the country, making speeches, and declaring against any form and degree of coercion, but keeping entire silence as to the justice of the proposals for restoring the saleability of land. I contend, my Lords, that we have evidence by the course of public affairs, by the course of the public 257 speeches of the late Government, that the Leaders of the Liberal Party must have been deeply divided upon a question of the highest and the most vital character. I am not going to detain the House with a long list of other minor incidents which lead up to the same conclusion. I think I have said sufficient to prove my case, and that your Lordships will agree that we who have generally supported the late Government have been forced into a most awkward position, feeling that we did not know where we were driven, or under whose guidance we were conducted. My Lords, I have referred to our foreign policy, I have mentioned the naval supremacy of the country, and finance in its most fundamental principles. I have also alluded to the question of law and order in Ireland, and to the restoration of land value in that country. But there is yet another subject with regard to the merits of which I never felt quite sure that they were united. That is in regard to the merits of a very old document called "The Decalogue." Not many months ago a Member of the then Government was going about the country proclaiming the doctrine that property must be held to ransom. It may have been that the expression was an accidental slip of the tongue, an unlucky metaphor; but the present times and the circumstances of our country at the present moment are such as, in my opinion, should have induced a Minister of the Crown to be more circumspect in the language he employed. Having now shown, my Lords, what are our reasons for thinking that we served those who were disunited, I wish to direct the attention of the House to what our present prospects are under the circumstances of the present political crisis. The very Leaders of whom I have been speaking now turn round and say to their followers—"There must be no disunion." A speech was lately delivered in Edinburgh by my noble Friend (the Earl of Rosebery), who recently joined the late Government, of whose rising abilities I may say that, as a Scotchman and a Scotch Peer, I am sincerely proud. I hope my noble Friend will discover that a man in his position, with his great abilities, may hold to certain definite opinions and influence public opinion with regard to them, and that far on in summers I shall not see he may be 258 among the most distinguished Leaders of the Liberal Party. Looking at my noble Friend's speech in Edinburgh I found this singular passage, in which he insists on the necessity of compromise. He says—We all have to sacrifice points very dear to us. I venture to say that no one can realize that absolutely and completely until they have formed a Member of a Cabinet…though there must be constant compromise on lesser matters going on in a Cabinet, yet it manages to preserve a united face.Not a united heart or mind, but a united face. It so happened that my noble Friend made one or two speeches some months before he joined the Government with which I, for one, to a large extent agree. I was sincerely rejoiced when I saw that my noble Friend had entered the Cabinet, because I thought it might tend to reinforce that element in it with which I have the greatest sympathy. I am sure he has been able to exercise the influence his abilities command: but I looked with astonishment at the end of his speech in Edinburgh. He had explained the principles upon which a man must learn to deal with the difficulties in which he is placed; but I was astonished to find him ending with a solemn denunciation against breaking the unity of the Liberal Party. The expressions my noble Friend used were very solemn. He said—"Lot no man dare to lay his sacrilegious hand on the sacred ark of Liberal unify." I confess when I read this paragraph I did not quite know how to express my own feelings. An anecdote came to my mind which seemed to relieve me to a certain extent. It was an anecdote of a great Italian musician who for the first time heard the Highland bagpipes, when he exclaimed—"Voila, voila! J'aime cela — c'est atroce." I do not know where my noble Friend has placed the ark of the covenant of Liberal unity. He may have carried it into the Cabinet along with him, or he may have packed it up and sent it off to Dalmeny; but I have no confidence that such a sacred ark ever existed in the Cabinet which my noble Friend joined, and I have something more than confidence that if it did it was touched by unholy hands indeed. I think my noble Friend joined the Cabinet at a very unfortunate moment. I joined a Cabinet at another moment which was of immense interest, for, as I 259 said, it was the Coalition Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen. There were immense historical differences between the different Members at that day. It represented and included men who individually, and through their Predecessors, had sat opposite to each other for generations; and yet I will tell my noble Friend, as my experience of a Cabinet divided in this sense, that during the whole time I was a Member of it, there never was one division that ran parallel to the old Party lines; we discussed every question of Party policy with the most perfect freedom; but I never saw anything in the shape or the nature of differences of opinion running in the old Party directions. I will tell my noble Friend another thing. We had no fear that the decision of the Cabinet would be run into and invaded in the public speeches of one of our own Colleagues— trying to force the hands of the Government. When that Cabinet fell, it fell from an act which was in the nature of a personal difference; it fell because Lord John Russell, almost borne to the ground by grief and vexation on account of the calamities which were happening to our troops in the Crimea, lost, as I think, his sense for the moment of public duty, and declared against his Colleagues in the House of Commons that he could not resist Parliamentary investigation. But I can tell my noble Friend that there was no act of Lord John Russell's life which ever was so severely or so justly censured as that which brought down the Cabinet of that day. My noble Friend, in his speech at Edinburgh, said that we are to have united faces. Well, we may have united faces, but we have not a united policy. I decline to follow Cabinets who cannot make up their minds. I am ready to stand under an umbrella with anybody; but I decline to follow Cabinets which cannot make up their minds on the most fundamental questions of the day. I say distinctly that it would be infinitely better to go back to the customs and habits of the last century, when Members of the same Administration openly spoke and voted against each other, and when, in truth, the responsibility of Cabinets had not yet become firmly rooted in the Constitution of the country, than to revert to the more personal references to which my noble Friend invites us. I cannot help 260 feeling, after all that has taken place, that this talk about united faces and this call to unity under the same Leaders whom we know to have been disunited, and to have brought the foreign policy of England into most serious jeopardy because of that disunion—to call upon us to unite under the same Leaders without due guarantees would hardly be an honourable policy towards the people of this country. If this goes on, we shall, indeed, have descended to a lower standard of political honour, and to a lower level of public opinion. I have very little further with which to trouble the House. I rejoice to think that there are large common grounds upon which men of many Parties may unite. For instance, I maintain that in the whole region of what may be called social reform we are just as likely to be well served at the present moment by the Conservative Party as by any other. My Lords, the social reforms of this last century have not been due mainly to the Liberal Party. They have been due mainly to the influence, character, and perseverance of one man—Lord Shaftesbury—whose early proclivities were not with the Liberal, but rather with the Conservative Party. At all events, these great reforms have not been carried by Liberal votes, but have been effected by the weight of conviction forcing itself upon almost all Parties in this country. With regard to fiscal legislation, Mr. Gladstone has been the great Leader in our fiscal legislation; and where did he learn the principles which he has carried out to so great a development? He learnt them in the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel, and I have myself heard him say that they knew little about it when they began their great work. The repeal of the Corn Laws and the necessity of revising our financial system led to the necessity of seriously considering the whole tariff. But there his great reforms began, and it is due to the development of his great genius that those great measures have been carried which will ever make his name illustrious. I have, therefore, no dismay on account of the accession for a time of the Conservative Party to power in this country—no dismay whatever. I do not know what may be the development of that rather mysterious left wing which is called Tory Democracy. Like certain wings on our side, they 261 are regarded as dark horses. I hope that the noble Marquess will, if he succeeds in establishing his power, keep a firm hold upon them. But beyond that I do not know that we have anything to fear, because I believe that the Conservative Party will address themselves to such social reforms as are needed in this country with quite as anxious a desire as any other Party could do at the present moment. With regard to the future, I could not help observing that my noble Friend, in his speech, attempted a dangerous experiment — namely, a definition of what Liberalism is. I dissent from such a definition as he gave. He said that Liberalism meant always being at the head of any national movement—always a little ahead and never behind. Now, there is such a thing as a nation advancing into a bog as well as a nation advancing in the right path. I maintain that we are as genuine Liberals who keep our heads and hearts open to every experience of the past and every suggestion of the present which may tend to improve the happiness of the great body of the people. Well, I maintain that while we hold this tendency and disposition, which is the core and essence of Liberal policy, we are not the less bound to maintain and uphold certain great principles of immemorial right, and to assert our political rights in the development and application of these principles. My Lords, I see at the present moment deep differences in these respects between various Members of the Liberal Party; and I should be betraying my duty as a Member of this House if, in deference to any personal authority whatever, however high, I concealed from your Lordships and the country the intense anxiety which I feel with regard to the direction which may be taken in the future by the Liberal Party. We who are called Moderate Liberals have a system of doctrines to maintain. We are not actuated by personal antipathies. My noble Friend, in his speech at Edinburgh, said that a great many opponents of the late Government had no other qualities than bilious spite and bilious hatred against a particular politician. I suppose we can read between the lines. I would venture to suggest to my noble Friend that the next time he stands under the same umbrella with some of his late 262 Colleagues he should look at the evidence which they have given of a bilious hatred shown towards their political opponents. My Lords, it is not long ago since, in company with one or two of my noble Friends whom I see near me, and with Lord Ripon, whom I do not see present, I ventured to join a society the object of which was to purchase plots of land and to re-sell them to small owners with a view to see whether it was possible under favourable conditions to establish small ownership in land. Our society had hardly been brought forward when a friend who stands under the noble Lord's umbrella immediately proceeded to denounce the society. Why? Because it was patronized by one or two members of a great landowning class, one-half of his Colleagues belonging to that class, and my noble Friend himself belonging to it. I would recommend my noble Friend, the next time he gives advice about bilious hatred, to tell his political friends that there is nothing in the world so thoroughly alien or so injurious as this dislike or hatred of any particular class of men. What would be said of any of us if we condemned a society because it contained two or three manufacturers if the subject of it related to manufactures? We landowners know something of the value of land; and I should have thought that five or six great landowners, Lord Ripon among them, would of all classes in the community be most fit to conduct this interesting experiment. Who can doubt that this speech was influenced entirely by spite of the most narrow and most illiberal kind? I see a disposition to impugn some of the doctrines which we have held most tenaciously, and of which in our Constitution we are most proud. It has been hitherto the great object of the Liberal Party to make individual freedom as wide as possible and as secure as possible. It is a tendency of many of the new so-called Liberals—I call them reactionary Liberals—to make individual freedom as narrow and as restricted as possible. Take another matter. As I have learned during the last 30 years, there is no item in the Liberal creed which was more popular than that the ownership of land should not be limited. The abolition of limited ownership was the popular cry upon all hustings in my 263 early days; and thoughtful men have been over and over again urging the policy of still further abolishing limited ownership. But the endeavour of the reactionary Liberals is to make every landowner ship as limited as possible, and bound with limitations which are absolutely fatal to the outlay of capital. I will not give my assent or give any support to united faces among men who are so deeply divided. There is another subject upon which I should be glad to say a word before I sit down. We hear a great deal now about local government. It is a stick which both Parties wish to pick up to beat the dog with. Each Party wishes to lay hold of it as a means of opposing its enemies in the political arena. The noble Marquess at the head of the Government has said very truly that that is a subject on which the Liberals have no patent monopoly, no right of exclusive possession. The noble Marquess is quite correct. Municipal government, as hitherto understood in England, is an institution of which we have all been proud. We are accustomed at Mayors' dinners in England, and at Provosts' dinners in Scotland, to praise municipal government. We all agree in that. But let this House beware, and let every individual politician who cares for the future of his country beware of the stratagem which lies before us—of confounding popular government in the form of municipal institutions with projects resembling the restoration of the Heptarchy. There are various things which the Liberal Party wish to see done and to get done. They know that these things will never be done by the Imperial Parliament, with its Imperial traditions of individual freedom; they wish to hand these great powers over persons and over property to local and provincial assemblies—to what my noble Friend called local politicians. Let us all beware of this. Municipal government, my Lords, is one thing; an agglomeration of small independent States and small Principalities, governed by Mayors and Provosts, is another; and it is not the acme of freedom which one should desire to see established in England. My Lords, I have troubled the House at great length, and I could not have said what I have felt it my duty to say without giving chapter and verse in proof of that which. I advanced. I venture to say to the 264 country, and to all Parties in the country, in the great appeal which is about to be made to a new constituency, do not go in for "united faces," but go in for great Constitutional principles—to choose, if they can, independent men, not to be humbugged by the cry of unity where there is the deepest division on the fundamental principles of human government—to choose, if they can, in-dependent men of independent character. My Lords, what we want is men, not sheep—we want men who have studied these great questions, and who hold independent opinions in regard to them, and who will stand to them upon the hustings, where I am bound to say I have generally observed that men of this character are more respected than men who go down on their hands and knees and grovel with their heads in the dust before the sovereign mob, promising to do whatever it may bid them. We want, my Lords, in the words of the Poet Laureate, menWho never sold a truth to serve the hour,Nor paltered with Eternal God for power.These are the men whom all the nations, and especially our own nation, want. Happy is the nation that hath its quiver full of them. They will be able to speak with their enemies in the gate.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERYMy Lords, I think that no one who has listened to the eloquent, discursive, and didactic discourse to which we have just been treated could have had the slightest idea of the topics which were going to be dealt with from the Notice which the noble Duke was kind enough to place upon the Paper. It has been my fate to bring before your Lordships on a former occasion a Motion for a reform of the proceedings of this House; and therefore no one can be better aware than myself of the extreme occasional irregularity of those proceedings. But certainly I was not aware that it was usual, or desirable, or consistent with that high political experience with a little of the fruits of which we have just been favoured, that the noble Duke, who has belonged to so many Administrations, and has written the epitaph of at least one of them, when he has occasion to write an epitaph on a late Cabinet, should have come down to call attention to the circumstances attending the recent change of Administration, and to the 265 effect of them on the political prospects of the country. I ask whether any Member of your Lordships' House, however experienced or however acute he may he, could have had the least inkling from that Notice of the nature of the matters contained in that most fruitful and profitable discourse '? But, least of all, your Lordships, had I the faintest idea that a speech of mine, delivered, perhaps, at a casual moment, but at all events not remembered by me so well as by the noble Duke, was to form the main theme of his interesting oration. It would, therefore, of course, be impossible for me, without any previous warning or notice of the wide political range of the noble Duke's remarks, to follow him in a speech worthy of the occasion. But he began, if I recollect aright, with an ample apology for the course he was going to take, and I must say that I think that apology was not altogether without necessity. What was the part which the noble Duke undertook to play on this occasion? He undertook to play the part—he will excuse me for saying so—of a sort of Cassandra of the Cross Benches, warning the Liberal Party against itself, warning the late Government of the consequences of its action, and appealing to the one infallible prophet since whose secession from it that Government had languished and perished. I need not tell the noble Duke who that prophet was. When ho left the late Government everything began to go wrong from that moment; his former Colleagues began to wander and go astray; and it was, I suppose, with the object of showing how far they had wandered into error that ho devoted that part of his discourse which was not occupied with criticism of myself to an exhaustive criticism of the speeches of a late Colleague of mine. My Lords, there may be no harm in a Minister who has left a Cabinet writing the epitaph of that Cabinet on the earliest opportunity; but in the ample apology that he made for his speech the noble Duke said it was absolutely necessary that that epitaph should be written at once. He will forgive me if I say that I do not see the necessity of it. I believe that the noble Duke has attempted to do what was attempted in a famous University not unknown to your Lordships—the famous University of Laputa, where a learned Professor sought to 266 extract sunbeams from cucumbers. The noble Duke has, in a similar way, tried to extract high moral sentiments from a perfectly ordinary situation. The late Government, being defeated by their opponents in the other House, felt it incumbent on them to resign; and I do not suppose they would have retained the respect of a single person in the country if they had taken any other course. After all, what is Constitutional government? It means that the House of Commons has the right of expressing an opinion on the conduct of the Government, and that the Government has to yield to that expression of opinion. The House of Commons, on an issue deliberately chosen by their opponents, on a field of battle carefully planned, thought fit to place the late Government in a minority. No one can complain of that. They took the course which they thought right. But Mr. Gladstone and his Colleagues resigned, and the noble Marquess opposite and his Friends formed a new Government. What is there in all this to provoke these fulminatory utterances, these terrible thunderbolts of debate, from the noble Duke? The situation is one which has been seen often even in my lifetime, and more often still in that of the noble Duke. There may be something unusual to the noble Duke's mind in a Conservative Government holding Office without a majority in the House of Commons. Well, in my lifetime Conservative Governments have hold place four times, and only on one occasion with a majority. There can, therefore, be nothing very abnormal in a situation that has occurred three times in that period. Nor do I quite see anything to call for this intervention of the noble Duke at the moment of our downfall, whatever may have been the mistakes or misfortunes of the late Government, of which he was once a Member. The noble Duke went into a fragmentary allusion to the question of subject-races in the East. I confess, my Lords, that I fail to see what connection that had with the rest of his speech, or with the main basis of his argument. He then went into some cloudy narrative as to the question of the Navy Estimates. My noble Friend the late First Lord of the Admiralty will be able to deal with that matter. But when the country had awakened to the serious position of 267 affairs in Central Asia, Egypt, and elsewhere, there was nothing unusual in its attention being called to the question of its naval strength; and surely it would be worse than futile for a Liberal Government to have refused to listen to the appeal that was made to it on that subject. My noble Friend the late First Lord of the Admiralty thought it his duty to respond to that appeal, and he asked for £5,000,000; and I do not see that there was anything connected with that proposal which indicated the disunion in the Liberal Cabinet of which the noble Duke has spoken. Then the noble Duke turned to the lamentable state of affairs which has existed in Ireland. He said that our great condemnation was that land was not saleable in Ireland. I do not suppose that anybody will consider that the state of Ireland is satisfactory. [Laughter.] We are now beginning a reign of peace and concord in Ireland under a Conservative Government, and that may be what has inspired the merriment of noble Lords opposite. As regards the question of Ireland, that, of course, must be a standing difficulty. We should not be able to deal with that difficulty by simply abstract arguments such as were contained in the speech of the noble Duke. What has happened in Ireland is this. There has been a great agrarian agitation, and that has been met by legislation of a drastic, vast, and far-reaching kind. We must wait for the effects of that legislation, and see exactly what the next step may be; but it was in the contemplation of the late Government to take that step. We cannot say whether it would have been successful or not; but we may yet have some opportunity of dealing with Ireland, and then we shall know whether or not we have been successful. But, my Lords, I come to that part of the speech of the noble Duke which concerns myself. The noble Duke dealt with me in a manner for which I must thank him very warmly. He has not only paid me a high compliment, but the much greater indirect compliment of having seemed almost to have learned my speech by heart. He said my language was solemn—and he made that a great reproach—in dealing with the question of Liberal unity. In order to show us what Liberal unity ought to be, he appealed to the example—I confess I was 268 staggered for a moment by it—of the Aberdeen Administration. He said that if the noble Lord wished to know what Liberal unity should be, let him recall to his mind the example of the Aberdeen Ministry. My Lords, it has been my advantage to know a good deal of the Aberdeen Administration from reading documents which are not all published; and I confess I felt as if I had turned a stone when I heard the noble Duke cite the Aberdeen Administration as an example of unity of the Liberal Party. I speak with hesitation of that Administration in the presence of two Members of it; but I always understood that it was always at sixes and sevens, and that it fell, as the noble Duke remembers, not by a chance explosion, but by a somewhat deliberate explosion fired by one of its Members at the most critical moment of its existence. Then the noble Duke asked how there could be Liberal unity when Mr. Chamberlain goes about making speeches which show very great variations from the doctrines of the Liberal Party. I do not think it a fair thing for the noble Duke to gather into his quiver all the chance utterances, or all the deliberate utterances—I will give him the benefit of the word—of a Minister during the last two or three years, and to come down without previous warning and pour them in confusion on an overwhelmed House. I am not concerned to defend Mr. Chamberlain's speeches. Mr. Chamberlain is perfectly able to defend himself, and I cannot say whether the utterances attributed to him are authentic or not. The right hon. Gentleman said things about the ransom of property; but he subsequently explained that utterance, and said he meant that property had its duties as well as its rights. [A laugh.] Noble Lords opposite laugh; but I believe that is a maxim which was never laughed at in either House of Parliament before. I am very grateful to the noble Lord opposite for giving us so new a sensation. If Mr. Chamberlain meant those violent measures of spoliation which noble Lords opposite seemed to imagine, he must be a very self-denying politician, for he is a man of large fortune; and if he is prepared to divide it in the way insinuated by the noble Duke, he must be a very self-sacrificing politician. But, as I said before, I am not concerned to defend 269 the utterances of Mr. Chamberlain. I consider it somewhat of an advantage that he is not here to-day, because he would have answered the noble Duke. But the noble Duke, whose remarks on the subject of Mr. Chamberlain I now leave, warned me against bilious rancour in political controversy. Ho said political jaundice was a thing to be avoided, and ho gave warning; and one striking example was the way in which lie dealt with Mr. Chamberlain. From the beginning of his speech to the end was one of the most striking examples of the peculiar form of political jaundice against which he warned me. I do not know that I have anything more to say on my particular part of the discussion raised by the noble Duke. I quite admit that there are variations in the speeches delivered by different Members of the Liberal Party; but I should be very grateful to the noble Duke if he will tell me if they ever professed to speak with one utterance, one trumpet, and one tone. There have always been sections in the Liberal Party; the Radical section, the Left Centre, and the Whig section; and there have been a section of seers who belong to no particular section, but who equally rebuke and chastise them all. But even in these circumstances it has never been found difficult to conduct the government of the country. That has never been rendered impossible because one Member of the Party went faster or slower than another. The noble Duke rebukes me very much for saying that my definition of Liberalism was "movement with and in front of national movements." Well, my Lords, I am quite willing to adhere to that definition. I do not mean fortuitous or occasional, or temporary national movements, but great national movements which are unmistakable, and which, if we do not place ourselves in front of them or move with them, will move over us. What are we to say just now, when we are in the midst of a new and great democratic wave? Are we to put ourselves out of harmony with it, even if it were desirable to do so? We find ourselves face to face with a great democratic constituency. It has been passed by the agreement of both sides of the House. Is it possible, under these circumstances, to do anything but accept my definition of Liberal unity? Take the example 270 of noble Lords opposite. A month ago were they so violently in favour of doing without special legislation in Ireland? And yet the noble Duke addresses all his protests to the Liberal Party. Has he no candid words to say to the other side? Are all his condemnations reserved for his own Party and the family circle in which ho moves? It does seem a little hard that in the language of rebuke so freely administered to us not a single syllable has been addressed to noble Lords opposite. They know, at any rate, if the noble Duke does not, that it is necessary to move with national movements. As he does not, let me say without presumption that the umbrella of Liberal unity, of which he, as well as myself, has spoken, will not be found in his custody; and, if I may say so without undue retort, I fear that wherever the ark of Liberal unity may be found it will not be at Inverary.
§ LORD TRUROsaid, that the Liberal Party consisted of a number of men who entertained Radical opinions, and of a large number who belonged to what was originally called the Whig Party, and who objected to those extreme opinions. The utterances of a Member of the late Government at Birmingham were pronounced by himself to be his own private opinions, and to be distinct from those which he had urged in the Cabinet. It was not unnatural that a large number of the moderate section of the Liberal Party should be indignant at his taking so unusual a course. There was no doubt whatever that to a large part of the moderate Liberal Party the formation of the late Government did not give satisfaction; and he very much doubted whether, if another Liberal Government were formed on the same standard, it would receive that amount of earnest moderate Liberal support which previous Liberal Governments had enjoyed. It was perfectly clear that it was intended to have in the late Cabinet not only men of moderate Liberal views, but men of extreme Radical opinions. Prom the Government point of view it was a success, as it returned a Minister to power with an overwhelming majority. But it was always an evil to have a Government with an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. There should be a sufficient majority to leave no doubt as to the sentiments of the country; but when they had a Ministry supported by 271 an overwhelming majority, there could he no doubt that a feeling of apprehension was created in the country that the Government would have power to silence the minority, and pass measures to which a great section of the people were hostile. A feeble Opposition was a very great calamity, and never had that been so strongly illustrated as in recent circumstances, when there was no doubt that the Opposition had not that strength and did not show that amount of vigour which enabled it any way whatever to control the acts and measures of the Liberal Party. He could not but hope the Members of the late Government would take a lesson from their Predecessors in Opposition. He could not agree with the noble Duke in lamenting the fall of the late Administration. It was, he believed, a great advantage to the country that there should be a lull before the General Election, in order that people might have an opportunity of considering the past. The present interregnum would afford a breathing space, which, he trusted, would be utilized in such a way that men of knowledge and experience, and not men of fiery opinions, would be returned at the approaching elections.