Dilke (16 page)

Later in 1879 there was a sharp and public quarrel between Hartington and Chamberlain, which in Dilke's view substantially damaged Hartington's position and destroyed the possibility of his retaining the leadership. Dilke, who was not directly involved, supported Chamberlain, but with a little less enthusiasm than might have been anticipated. It was a House of Commons quarrel on the committee stage of the Army Bill. Chamberlain, who had surprisingly strong views against corporal punishment—he had been horrified a few weeks earlier to discover that his son Austen had been beaten at Rugby—was trying to secure the abolition of flogging as a military punishment. Hartington was not opposed to this. Indeed, Henry James, whom Dilke described as the leader's “right-hand man,” had encouraged the radicals to make as much as they could of the issue. But when the Government accused them of obstruction, Hartington, strolling casually into the House late on the night of July 7th, decided to throw
his weight behind the Treasury bench. Chamberlain was deeply angered. “It is rather inconvenient that we should have so little of the presence of the noble Lord, lately the leader of the Opposition, but now the leader of a section only,” he announced with frigid bitterness; and a quarrel began which could only be ended by an apology from Hartington. But this apology, which was forthcoming, could not put matters back where they had been before.

“Never absent, always ready
To take up the burning question
Of the hour and make a motion:
Be it Cyprus, be it Zulu,
He can speak for hours about it
From his place below the gangway.
No Blue Book avails to fright him:
He's the stomach of an ostrich
For the hardest facts and figures,
And assimilates despatches
In the most surprising fashion.”

“Later in the month,” Dilke wrote, “the Whigs, or men above the gangway, showed great anger at the completeness of Hartington's surrender to us, which, indeed, meant more than the immediate conquest, for it involved the ultimate supersession of Hartington by Gladstone. Harcourt, James and Adam (the Chief Whip), in giving Chamberlain the victory, by insisting that Hartington should yield, were considering the constituencies, not the House. As regarded the House, the popularity of stamping upon us would have been great. There was strong Whig dislike of our activity, and strong radical personal hatred among ourselves. If Chamberlain were to have fought Hartington on any question on which he had not the Liberal constituencies with him, he would have got the worst of it; but then he was too wise to stir on any question on which he could not at least carry all the active elements of the party in large towns. The anti-Chamberlain set went to work to get up a banquet for Hartington, and were very cross with me when I told them that I was certain that the Whips would not let Hartington accept the banquet unless they obtained Chamberlain's signature to the requisition. It, of course, turned out as I expected. Some twenty men said they would not sign unless Chamberlain did so, and he was then begged to sign, and, when he did, at once deprived the manifestation of all significance. It was all rather small and mean, but when one went to the root of the matter, one saw that the whole difficulty sprang from the fact that the Whigs had now no principles.”
³⁸

These events not only strengthened the position of Gladstone as against Hartington—a process which was carried further in the autumn by the tumultuous success of the former's first Midlothian campaign. They also gave a relative fillip to Chamberlain as against Dilke. The latter still had much more of a general parliamentary reputation. His range of knowledge and of contacts was much wider. He was more consulted by his leaders, and he had behind him House of Commons triumphs such as Chamberlain had never then enjoyed. But it was Chamberlain who, as the spokesman of the radical caucuses throughout the Midlands and the North, had brought to heel the Whig leader of the Liberal party. His achievement was certainly not without significance.

Nevertheless, Dilke was not disposed to feel either jealous or dissatisfied with himself. He was rather less given to jealousy than most politicians, although when in 1880 he went so far as to tell Harcourt: “I believe I am the only English politician who is not jealous,” the latter received the statement with understandable scepticism. “We all think that of ourselves,” he replied.
³⁹
Nor was Dilke ever inclined to self-dissatisfaction. But even if he had been, the winter of 1879-80 was not the time for it.

When the Liberals came back to power Dilke's place in the new administration seemed assured, and any strengthening of Chamberlain's position appeared likely, so long as they worked in combination, to improve rather than weaken his own. Nor was a change likely to be long delayed. The Beaconsfield Government was manifestly moving towards its end. The Prime Minister was ill and tired. The leadership in the Commons was ineffective. The diplomatic victories of 1878 were looking a little tarnished. There was a rising tide of economic discontent. And the innovation of a politician of Gladstone's stature stumping round the country was proving highly popular with the new electorate. There was some surprise when Beaconsfield decided to meet Parliament, for the Government's seventh session, at the beginning of February. It was not to be a long session. Encouraged by the
false gleam of a chance Conservative victory at the Southwark by-election in the first week of March, the Prime Minister decided to go to the country. The dissolution was announced on March 8th, with most of the polls to be declared in the first week of April.

On April 2nd Dilke was returned for Chelsea. He was top of the poll, but his new electoral partner, J. E. B. Firth, Q.C., was only a few hundred votes behind him; they both had comfortable leads over their Conservative opponents.
^[1]
Dilke's fears about the safety of the seat had proved quite unfounded—at least in such a year of Liberal triumph as 1880. On April 5th, when Gladstone was elected for Midlothian, it was already clear that there was to be a big majority against the Government. When the results were complete they gave 349 seats to the Liberals, 243 to the Conservatives, and 60 to the Irish Nationalists. Mr. Gladstone returned to Hawarden, ruminating “on the great hand of God, so evidently displayed.”

Chamberlain, in Birmingham, ruminated on the great hand of the Caucus, which had also been in evidence and which he was determined to display. He wrote privately to Gladstone calling attention to the victories in the boroughs which had been achieved by the National Liberal machine, and publicly to
The Times
to stress the same point. And
The Times
responded by describing him as “the Carnot of the moment.” Encouraged by the results and by this and similar tributes to his part in achieving them, Chamberlain raised his sights. Earlier in the year he had entertained Harcourt at Birmingham, had been beguiled by the latter's wit and flattery, and had been willing to contemplate the acceptance of what a Whig Government
might be disposed to offer him. Now, after the first results, he thought that he might take his place, not as an individual, but as one of the leaders of a recognised wing of the party. In this spirit he wrote to Dilke on Sunday, April 4th, offering the conclusion between them of a firm political treaty. The letter is sufficiently important to be given in full:

Southbourne, Augustus Road, Birmingham

My dear Dilke:

I find the same fault with your letters that the Scotch laird found with the Dictionary—“the stories are varra pretty but they are unco short!”

The time has come when we must have a full frank explanation. What I should like—what I hope for with you—is a thorough offensive and defensive alliance and in this case our position will be immensely strong. I am prepared to refuse all offices until and unless
both of us are satisfied
.

Can you accept this position with perfect satisfaction? If you think I am asking more than I can give I rely on your saying so—and in this case you may depend on my loyalty and friendship. I shall support your claims cordially and just as warmly as if I personally were interested. But my own feeling is that if you are stronger than I am in the House, my influence is greater than yours out of it—and, therefore, that, together, we are much more powerful than separated; - and that, in a short time—if not now—we may make our own terms.

To join a Government as subordinate members—to be silenced and to have no real influence on the policy—would be fatal to both of us. If we both remain outside, any Government will have to reckon with us and on the whole this would be the position which on many grounds I should prefer. I am ready to make all allowances for the difficulties in the way of giving to both of us the only kind of place which it would be worth our while to accept. If these are insuperable, I will give a hearty support to
any Government which is thoroughly liberal in its measures; but I am not
going to
play the part of a radical minnow among Whig Tritons.

The victory which has just been won is the victory of the radicals—Gladstone and the Caucus have triumphed all along the line, and it is the strong, definite, decided policy which has commended itself and not the halting half-hearted arm-chair business.
The Times
sees this and said it yesterday—the country feels it—and we should be mad to efface ourselves and disappoint the expectations of our strongest supporters.

You will see that my proposed condition is—both of us to be satisfied.

As to what
ought to
satisfy us, if you agree to the principle, we will consult when the time comes, but my present impression is—all or nothing.
Tout arrive à qui sait attendre
. Write me fully your views and tell me whether and when you will pay me a visit.

Yours ever,
J. Chamberlain
¹

On the evening of the day on which this letter was written Dilke dined with Harcourt He found him still inclined to Hartington rather than Gladstone as Prime Minister, but otherwise in a cynically radical mood. “I found his ambition to be to worry out Lord Selborne with Radical measures to which he would be unable to assent, and then to succeed him as Lord Chancellor,” Dilke noted. “He asked me what I should like,” he added, “and I told him that I did not expect to be offered a great post, but that if there were any such chance the Navy was the only one that I should like.”
²

The next morning Dilke received Chamberlain's letter, and replied, on the same day, in the following terms:

My dear Chamberlain:

When I'm in London and you don't want to risk your letters being opened by Kennedy (Dilke's secretary)—you can write to the Reform Club. I generally go there each day. (I opened yours myself this morning.) I leave for
Toulon on Wednesday night. I shall stay there for about a fortnight. I quite agree generally to the position that we should continue to work together and that each should see that the other is satisfied. My first enquiry when I hear anything will be—what about you? I also think that we are far more powerful together than separated and that we are in a position to make our own terms. I am convinced that the county franchise must be done at once and that makes it difficult for Lowe and Goschen to remain in. If Lord G(ranville) is Premier his personal affection will make him cling to Lowe, and if they keep Lowe—I don't see how they can offer the Cabinet at once to both of us. If Hartington is Premier—I don't see why they should not offer the Cabinet to
both
of us. The real difficulty will arise if they offer the Cabinet to one of us, and high office outside it with a promise of the first vacancy in it to the other. I call this a difficulty because I agree that neither of us would like to be responsible for a policy in which he had no voice. When a strong land Bill is brought in Lord Selborne must resign. The same difficulty stands in the way of Lord Derby and the Duke of Argyll, so it seems to me that they want us both, either now, or very soon. So much for the personal matter. For the political—I think we shall have no difficulties of principle in the first Session. They will only begin in November.

Ever yours,
Charles W. Dilke
³

Garvin, Chamberlain's biographer, has summed up this letter as pouring water into Chamberlain's wine and amounting to a rejection of his offer. Dilke, Garvin believed, had been seduced by Harcourt's blandishments, set store by his own ability to move with ease “in what was still called the highest Whig society,” and wished to try his hand at securing entry to the Cabinet without worrying too much about the provincial radical. Furthermore, in Garvin's view, Dilke's decision to go to his house near Toulon, and not to Birmingham, underlined his slight to Chamberlain.
⁴

Dilke himself states clearly that he had a difference of opinion with Chamberlain at this stage. “In other words,” he wrote later in a comment upon the correspondence, “Chamberlain's view was that we should insist on both being in the Cabinet. My own view was that we should insist on one being in the Cabinet, and the other having a place of influence, giving him the opportunity of frequent speech in the House of Commons. . . .”
⁵
But there was no necessary slight to Chamberlain in such a view; and Dilke's persistence in his plans to go to Toulon, whatever else it indicated, certainly showed no desire to exercise his entrée into “the highest Whig society” during the crucial period of speculation about the shape of the Cabinet.

Where Dilke's judgment was curiously at fault—and where Harcourt may well have been to blame—was in discounting the return of Gladstone to the lead. Admittedly the Queen was bitterly opposed to such an eventuality. On April 4th she had written to her private secretary that “she would sooner
abdicate
than send for or have anything to do with that
half-mad firebrand
who would soon ruin everything and be a
Dictator
.” But the electorate had spoken equally clearly in Gladstone's favour; and in such a situation the constituencies were already more powerful than the sovereign. She conducted a strong rearguard action, but it was a battle against the inevitable. On April 22nd, the day after Lord Beaconsfield's unhurried resignation, she sent for Hartington and requested him to form a government. He at once suggested Gladstone, but the Queen forced him to attempt the task, at least to the extent of formally enquiring of Gladstone whether he would be prepared to accept a subordinate position. Gladstone replied that he would not, and when Hartington and Granville jointly took this intelligence back to the Queen (who added considerably to the inconvenience of these negotiations by remaining at Windsor), sweetening it with the suggestion that Gladstone would be unlikely to bear the strain of office for long, she accepted her defeat. The new Prime Minister kissed hands on April 24th, and immediately demonstrated a view of his strength somewhat different from that of his colleagues by
announcing that he intended to be his own Chancellor of the Exchequer.