Gladstone: A Biography (89 page)

Queen Victoria was not at all pleased when she heard of these proceedings, ostensibly on the ground that Gladstone had omitted to give her prior notice of his stepping on to a foreign shore and
meeting her fellow sovereigns, but possibly also on the ground of simple jealousy that they had made so much fuss of him. He brushed off her complaints with a mixture of equanimity and restrained
irritation, and, fortified by Tennyson’s acceptance of a peerage, returned to London on 21 September in better spirits for an autumn of legislation preparation than in either of the two
previous years.

Between the end of September and Christmas Gladstone was in London almost as much as at Hawarden and held four or five Cabinets. Perhaps more important, however, was the fact that for once he
applied himself with foresight and persuasive skill to the conciliation of Hartington, whose continued presence in the government had become essential to the enactment of a Franchise Bill. And such
an enactment was in turn essential to determine whether the 1880 government would or would not stand as an administration with major reform to its credit. The 1884 Reform Bill, when eventually
enacted, increased the size of the electorate from three to five million. Absolutely it produced the biggest increase in the numbers entitled to vote of the three nineteenth-century franchise
measures, but it was not the biggest proportional increase. Ironically it was the ‘great Reform Bill’ of 1832 which did least from either point of view. In England
and Wales that bill added 217,000 to an electorate of 435,000. The 1867 bill, after Disraeli’s committee-stage lurch to democracy, nearly doubled an electorate which had over the previous
thirty-five years grown to a million. The 1884 bill, in comparison with these increases of just under 50 per cent and just under 90 per cent respectively, produced an overall growth of a little
less than 60 per cent. Its effect, however, was qualitative as well as quantitative. It extended the limited town democracy of 1867 to the countryside, which was more of a shock to the remains of
English feudalism than anything which had gone before, and the effect was magnified by the bill’s running-mate, a Redistribution of Seats Bill, giving the counties for the first time more
seats than the boroughs. The coal miners, who mostly lived in industrially scarred countryside rather than in towns, were also brought within the franchise, thereby opening the way to much the
largest group of working men representatives in Parliament.

Furthermore the effect of the bill on Ireland was more dramatic than its effect on Great Britain. Since 1829 the impact of Catholic emancipation had been deliberately reduced by keeping Ireland
on a more restricted franchise than England. When the 1884 reform ended this, it was therefore the redress of more than half a century of discrimination. As a result, like the release of a dam, it
had a greater relative effect. As against the overall 60 per cent increase there was in Ireland an addition of 230 per cent to the electorate. Gladstone and his supporters did this with their eyes
open and rather nobly. They apprehended that it would mean more than doubling the size of the Parnellite parliamentary party and also the virtual elimination of Liberal MPs (of whom there were
thirty-five in 1880) from Ireland. Both of these apprehensions proved justified. The latter consideration was expected to be more than outweighed by Liberal gains in Great Britain (which
supposition was never exactly put to the test in neutral circumstances, always an elusive electoral concept). The embracing of equality for Ireland was a good test of the traditional Whig hallmark
of accepting the inevitable with generosity and even enthusiasm. It was a pity that the confidence of the Whig rump, as represented by Hartington, was in the 1880s so low that they did so only
growlingly. Their predecessors, from Fox to Russell, had put up a better show.

With the 1884 bill the second Gladstone administration gave itself some claim to look the government of 1830 in the face. Without a
franchise bill it might have been
remembered for little more than invading Egypt, sending Gordon to his death and being dominated by, but not resolving, the Irish problem.

Gladstone’s strategy of holding back franchise reform until towards the end of the Parliament was rational. A substantial change in the size and nature of the electorate undermined the
validity of the House of Commons which carried it through. Once there was a new basis for an election it was difficult for long to avoid having one. It would hardly have been acceptable to carry
franchise reform in, say, 1881 and then to expect a House elected on a superseded basis to carry moral authority into 1884 and 1885. This would have been particularly so in relation to the
representation of Ireland, to the shape of which reform was expected to, and did, make a seismic difference. To enact a Reform Bill early would have been to throw away, like a bee which only had
one sting in it, the great Liberal majority of 1880.

But if such a strategy was rational it was also risky. By the start of the 1884 session the government, although barely four years old, was beginning to look fragile. It could not afford calmly
to sit out yet another of the periods of political foul weather which, partly because of sheer ill luck and partly because of its lack of inner coherence, had mostly been its lot. Dilke summed it
up by writing that ‘The Tory game is to delay the franchise bill until they have upset us upon Egypt. . . .’
²
One thing which would have
greatly increased the fragility would have been the defection of Hartington and of the faction in both Commons and Lords which looked to his lead. But Hartington had by this time lost all
enthusiasm for extending the franchise or indeed for any significant measure of reform.

He was not naturally illiberal. In his first twenty years in the House of Commons he had effectively propounded a number of advanced measures, and in the last phase of his political life as a
member of the Salisbury and Balfour Cabinets he was a focus of liberally inclined moderation compared with the clanging imperialism and harsh partisanship which Joseph Chamberlain had by then
adopted. But towards the mid-1880s he had come to feel unconfident, unhappy and bunkered in a Liberal Cabinet in which Chamberlain and Dilke made so much of the argumentative running. He was
reluctant to hand over to them the post-Gladstone future of the Liberal party, but he did not enjoy serving with them and he no longer felt that he could lead a party which struck a keynote of
‘constructive’ Radicalism. Harcourt had informed Dilke in January 1884 that if Gladstone went and Hartington took over as Prime
Minister he intended to compensate
for his own Whiggery by putting Dilke in the Foreign Office and Chamberlain at the Exchequer. That is exactly the sort of flattering gossip with which politicians when they are in a good mood like
to regale each other. Such principal lieutenants would however have been a nightmare for Hartington, and in fact by 1884 Harcourt himself had become at least as likely a successor to Gladstone as
Hartington (which was perhaps the reason why his mood was so benign).

This created an interesting new nexus between Gladstone and Hartington. The Prime Minister might upset Hartington with his intermittent adventurousness on Ireland and with his lack of dependable
imperial feeling abroad. But he had the great advantage that he was no more of a ‘constructive’ Radical (defined as one desiring increasingly to use the apparatus of the state to
redress social inequality) than was Hartington himself. When at the beginning of the following year (1885) Chamberlain launched the ‘unauthorized programme’ (his own Radical agenda
without blessing from leader or whips) and gave it a fierce cutting edge with the use of the memorable and provocative phrase ‘and what ransom will property pay?’, he ruffled the
feathers of Gladstone almost as much as he did those of Hartington. Furthermore, although Hartington was relatively undazzled by Gladstone, the GOM nonetheless had even for him the unique
venerability of being the Prime Minister under whom he had served his whole ministerial career. He was used to him. If Hartington, increasingly sceptical about his own ability to lead the new
Liberal party, was to continue in a Liberal government (which he half wanted to do), then he preferred that it should be under Gladstone rather than under anyone else. He did not want a franchise
bill and in particular he did not want one without a redistribution of constituencies. This was mainly because he saw the enfranchisement of agricultural labourers unaccompanied by redistribution
(to which the Tories were strongly attached) as leading straight to a disruptive conflict with the House of Lords. He was also dismayed by a scenario in which Gladstone got the franchise bill
through, used the achievement as a suitable moment for retirement and left him (Hartington) to deal with redistribution and see the Whig interest trampled upon by Dilke and Chamberlain.

Gladstone on the other hand wanted the franchise bill and judged that he could not get it through without Hartington. This was his view without foreseeing the Gordon débâcle.
Hartington played an inglorious part in this, but his withdrawal from the government would nonetheless
have made more dangerous Dilke’s perception of ‘the Tory plan
to upset us upon Egypt’. Gladstone was willing to countenance redistribution (although he never felt much enthusiasm for destroying old constituency patterns), but he had far too much
political sense to put it in the same bill with franchise enlargement. This would be to walk into a quagmire. He might as well try to cross the sands of Dee from Hawarden to the Wirral. The detail
would be immense. If the opposition could block franchise extension as well as redistribution they would have no incentive to get on with the latter. And Gladstone had had more than enough
experience of failed bills in the previous two sessions. There was no opportunity for compromise with Hartington here. The franchise measure had to be kept separate.

Gladstone was indeed half looking for a favourable plateau upon which to retire, and seemed likely to regard the achievement of the third Reform Act of the century, without regard to whether it
was accompanied by redistribution, as providing such a piece of level ground. Much of his own talk and apparent thoughts was directed to looking forward to the moment of release. And its early
arrival was the assumption of those closest to him. On 9 November 1883, for example, Edward Hamilton wrote: ‘Went this evening to Lord Mayor’s dinner. One thought it was any odds that
last year’s dinner would be Mr. G’s last; but here we are again. But this must be his final one.’
³
So Hartington’s fears
were not ill founded, and his reaction to them was sufficiently strong that in the first half of December the general ministerial assumption was that he would do a pre-emptive resignation before
the Queen’s Speech in February, fatal although such a Hartington withdrawal might prove to the government.

Fortunately, however, there was one possible avenue of compromise, and this was a postponement of the date of Gladstone’s retirement, an issue on which the GOM was always disposed to be
flexible. And so, just after Christmas, the knot was untied. Gladstone went to London on New Year’s Eve and had a two-and-a-half-hour
tête-à-tête
with Hartington, a
remarkably long-drawn-out occasion given Hartington’s taciturnity and Gladstone’s need to persuade and not just to harangue. However, it worked. Franchise reform would be the main
measure for 1884, redistribution for 1885, and Gladstone would remain in the leadership to see through the latter as well as the former. On this basis Hartington would also stay for the time being,
although by no means committing himself for the duration.

The franchise bill had a relatively easy Commons passage. Gladstone
moved its second reading on 28 February in a speech which the devoted but not always uncritical Hamilton
described as being unsurpassed ‘for lucidity of exposition, for lightness in touch, for beauty of arrangement, for wealth of language, and for vigour and power’.
⁴
What was of more interest, however, was Hamilton’s description of Gladstone’s 1880s approach – rather different from his earlier habits – to a
major parliamentary speech:

The result of the division which followed that debate was a solid majority of 340 to 210. There were then twelve committee nights, modest by some experiences of the time, with no serious upsets
or narrow shaves. What for many, particularly Hartington, was the most controversial corner, the equal treatment of Ireland, was rounded by the even more massive majority of 332 to 137.

On issues other than the Irish franchise Gladstone took a conservative, or it could be argued a non-diversionary, approach. He refused the enticements of proportional representation. And on
women’s suffrage, which at one stage threatened to run strongly, he employed overkill. He authorized his Chief Whip to tell Liberal MPs that if the votes-for-women amendment were carried the
bill would be dropped and the government would resign. Gladstone’s statement continued: ‘This does not imply any judgement on the merits of the proposal, but only on its introduction
into the Bill. I am myself not strongly opposed to every form and degree of the proposal, but I think that if put into the Bill it would give the House of Lords a case for “postponing”
it and I know not how to incur such a risk.’
⁶
Eventually the dreaded amendment was
defeated by a majority of over a
hundred, although with three members of the government (including Dilke from within the Cabinet) abstaining. On third reading on 26 June the opposition did not divide the House: true to the
tradition of 1867 the Conservatives were hesitant about recording themselves in direct hostility to franchise enlargement.