The life of Henry Labouchere

By Algar Thorold

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Title: The life of Henry Labouchere

Author: Algar Labouchere Thorold

Release date: February 23, 2025 [eBook #75377]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF HENRY LABOUCHERE ***







[Frontispiece: Henry Labouchere]



  THE LIFE OF

  HENRY LABOUCHERE


  BY

  ALGAR LABOUCHERE THOROLD

  AUTHOR OF
  "SIX MASTERS IN DISILLUSION," ETC.



  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1913




  COPYRIGHT, 1913
  BY
  ALGAR LABOUCHERE THOROLD


  The Knickerbocker Press, New York




  To
  MY COUSIN
  MARY DOROTHEA
  (MARCHESA DI RUDINI)
  IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY DAYS AT
  VILLA CRISTINA


_Oct. 15, 1913._




{v}

PREFACE

It would be unfair both to the reader and to the subject of this
memoir to let this book go forth without a word of introduction.  The
lot of Henry Labouchere, who was born in the reign of William IV. and
lived to see George V. on the throne, was cast during a period of
European development as important, perhaps, as any that modern
history records.  For certainly the most significant, if not the most
salient, fact in the history of modern Europe is that democratisation
of England which, in spite of many set-backs and obstacles, has at
length been, in principle at all events, definitely achieved.  To-day
we are all democrats, Tories and Radicals alike.  In that process,
the full significance of which has still to unfold itself, Mr.
Labouchere played a striking and original part.  It was not always a
successful one, but it was always played honestly, daringly, and,
above all, characteristically.  Although a convinced, and in spite of
himself, if one may say so, even an enthusiastic Radical, no
politician was ever less of a party man.  His loyalty was given to
principles, not men, and some of his bitterest attacks both in
Parliament and in the press were reserved for Radical Ministries
that, according to his lights, were untrue to their profession.  He
was also, what is not so common in politics, a thoroughly
disinterested man.  He sought neither office nor honour.
Circumstances placed him beyond the need of money, and just as no
personal feelings could ever blind him to political shortcomings in
his leaders, so the strongest and most vehemently expressed
disapproval of his opponents {vi} frequently went with a marked
attachment to their persons, and the strange thing is that he
succeeded in convincing both sides of the House of the genuineness of
this emotionally disinterested attitude.

The opinions of Englishmen are rarely disinterested, and it should
never be forgotten that Henry Labouchere was, in fact, a Frenchman.
French by birth, he remained, to the day of his death, French in his
method of formation of opinion, in his outlook on life, in the
peculiar quality of his wit.  It was this that enabled, or rather
obliged, him to take that curiously detached view of English ideals
which was at times so disconcerting even to those who thought that
they understood him.  Ideals, he held, were only entitled to respect
when translated into material currency.  "How much £ s. d. does he
believe in what he says?" he would ask concerning some fervid
prophet.  And if convinced that the requisite materialisation had
occurred, he would accept the prophet as one more strange and amusing
phenomenon in a strange and amusing universe.  It would have never
occurred to him that because the prophet was sincere he was right.
That was a matter for reason.  He once observed to me, in his
whimsical way, of a colleague, that the mere denial of the existence
of God did not entitle a man's opinion to be taken without scrutiny
on matters of greater importance.  No "mere" Englishman could have
said that.  That essential foreignness rendered him hard of
comprehension even to those who sympathised with his aims.  For
instance, he was a Radical, as sincere and convinced a Radical as the
late Mr. Stead, but in a very different way.  His Radicalism was
based on Reason.  It represented Reason applied to that particular
department of human affairs called Politics, and so applied, one may
add, in spite of the irrationality of most of the men called Radical
politicians.  English Radicalism, on the other hand, rests mainly on
humanitarian sentimentalism.  The _religion du clocher_ of feudal
England has been largely replaced by a rival cult, the {vii}
hysterical excesses of which found in him a scathing critic.  He did
not resent the hereditary principle in government because it was
unjust, but because it was absurd, and when he fought some concrete
instance of injustice, as he was constantly doing, the emotional
aspect of the case made little, if any, appeal to him.  He disliked
injustice on rational and, as it were, æsthetic grounds.  He had no
passionate love of virtue, public or private; he thought it, on the
whole, a sound investment, but then even sound investments sometimes
go wrong.  In his personal outlook on things he was as completely
non-religious as a man could be.  He was not anti-religious.  He
fully recognised the utility of religious belief in others, perhaps
even in society at large, and he based this recognition not so much
on the hardness of men's hearts as on the thickness of their heads.
But personally he, Henry Labouchere, took no interest whatever in the
matter.  In philosophy he was a strict agnostic, owning Hume, for
whom he had the greatest admiration, and the Kant of the _Critique of
Pure Reason_, as his masters.  And he was remarkably well read in the
works of those philosophers.

He was constitutionally suspicious of strong feelings or enthusiasm
of any kind.  All sensible people smoked, he used to say, in order to
protect themselves against such disturbing factors.  He loathed every
kind of humbug.  He did not, however, disdain it as a weapon.  During
the General Election of 1905 the Tories made a party cry of Tariff
Reform; he calmly observed one day, throwing down his paper: "Well,
of course I think we are right, but whether we are or not, we've got
all the bunkum on our side."

In his personal relations with others he was very sociable and
courteous, retaining even in old age the fine manners of an earlier
generation.  He was immensely kind-hearted, and suffered fools, if
not gladly, at least with politeness and equanimity.  His love for
children is well known.  There was nothing he enjoyed more than
giving children's parties, {viii} and on these occasions would take
any amount of personal trouble to ensure the pleasure of his little
friends.  My earliest recollection of him is, as a child of eight or
so, sitting on his knee drinking in the most fascinating and horrible
tales of the Siege of Paris, which he would tell me by the hour.  And
almost my last recollection is of his interest in a Christmas tree
prepared for my own children on the very day on which he took to his
bed for the last time.

These traits make up a character more familiar in France than
elsewhere.  In his political ideas he resembled Clémenceau more
nearly than any English statesman, and in general habit of mind he
was a direct descendant of Voltaire.  In character he was more like
Fontenelle.  He had Fontenelle's moral scepticism, his personal
confidence in reason qualified by his distrust of most people's
reasoning powers, and his profound sense of the dangers of
enthusiasm.  People called him a cynic; and, if that somewhat vague
term denotes one who attempts to discount the emotional factor in
judgment, who endeavours to see the bare facts in as dry and
objective a light as possible, a cynic he was.  But he was a
kind-hearted, even an affectionate cynic.  It was not easy to win his
regard, but, if you succeeded in winning it, you were sure of it.
His own feelings he never expressed; this was not because he had
none, but because of the exaggerated _pudeur_ which he felt on the
subject of the emotions.  There was something both ridiculous and
indecent to his mind in even the most restrained exhibition of
affection.  Briefly, he may be said to have worn a fig-leaf over his
heart.

A word or two as to the method and scope of this book.  In order to
give a full and detailed account of the whole of Labouchere's career,
it would have been necessary to write at least a dozen volumes; some
sort of selection imposed itself.  I have endeavoured to concentrate
my own (and I hope my readers') attention on Labouchere himself.
There is a danger which lurks for the biographer of a public man lest
the environment of his hero--the narrative of the events {ix} in
which he played a part--should hang too loosely to his figure.  There
is also the danger that the frame, so to speak, should not be given
its due value in the portrait.  In order to appreciate the part
played in public affairs by an individual, it is necessary to
understand what is going on.  As this book has been written for the
general public, I have felt it desirable to retell certain episodes
in modern politics, in which Mr. Labouchere played an important part,
in greater detail than would have been necessary had I been writing
for politicians.  In such retelling I claim no originality.  I have
followed standard authorities, and the point of view of my narrative
has been, to a great extent, that of Mr. Labouchere himself,
although, when I have come to the conclusion that that point of view
was mistaken, I have not hesitated to say so.  In this way I hope
that the reader may be enabled to see the inevitability of much of
Labouchere's political action, which at the time, looked at
piecemeal, may have appeared gratuitously mischievous.

I feel I ought to call the reader's attention to the fact that if Mr.
Labouchere's many-sided life is considered as a whole, his political
proceedings represent but a small part of his activity.  He had lived
an average lifetime before he seriously took up political work, and
genuine as his principles undoubtedly were, still politics were never
really more to him than a means of self-expression and, it must be
said, amusement.  He loved watching the spectacle of life, and he
came to find in the game of politics a sort of concentrated version
of life as a whole.  This feeling, the strongest perhaps that he
possessed, combined with a passion to enter as an effective cause
into the spectacle he loved, was responsible for his political
incarnation.  And he had a certain half-perverse, half-childish love
of mischief which he was not always at pains to restrain, and which
found in the intrigues of parties and groups abundant scope for
exercise.  It could not have found so much scope elsewhere, and was
the motive power of much of his political action, particularly
towards {x} the end of his time in Parliament.  After his retirement
indeed, when politics had literally become nothing but a game to him,
he would watch the cards as they fell with complete detachment from
party views: "I wish I was entering politics now as a young Tory
blood," was a frequent comment on public events during his last years.

Of course, he had his own way of putting things, which was not that
of other people, and this brings me to the part in life as to which
both friends and foes are agreed that he achieved complete success.
Whatever else he was or was not, everybody is agreed that he was the
greatest English wit since Sheridan.  His gently modulated voice had
a good deal to do with his conversational success, and the bland
quiet manner with which the most startling remarks would be
accompanied gave them weight, if not point.  Still, even in cold
print many of his sayings and appreciations will live as long as men
laugh from intellectual motives.  "I do not mind Mr. Gladstone always
having an ace up his sleeve, but I do object to his always saying
that Providence put it there," is a dictum which will not soon be
forgotten.  That observation, gently drawled out one evening in the
lobby of the House of Commons, is a specimen of hundreds.  I am
persuaded that originally he had no intention of being witty, but
supposed his quips and paradoxes to represent the bare facts
expressed with the greatest economy of language.  It is certain that
no one was more surprised than he at the entertainment people found
in the _Letters of a Besieged Resident_.  He soon discovered his
reputation for wit and deliberately made use of it, both as a shield
and as a weapon of defence.  It also served another purpose.  There
was a strong tendency to indolence in him that was gratified by his
success in turning off awkward or puzzling questions with some witty
or irrelevant remark.  If this analysis is correct, it throws light
on the nature of his wit, which consisted largely in a naïve and
shameless revelation of the _Secret de Polichinelle_.  For he said
what every one thought but didn't {xi} dare say.  The originality of
his mind really consisted in the complete absence in his case of
those conventional superstructures which imprison most of us.  When
he replied to some one who asked him if he liked Mme. X----, "Oh yes,
I like her well enough, but I shouldn't mind if she dropped down dead
in front of me on the carpet," he was only saying what many of us
think but would never dream of saying even to ourselves of some of
our friends.

It is a commonplace of moralists to say that human nature is full of
contradictions.  A subtler critic of man than the mere moralist would
add that much of men's time is spent in smoothing out, or, at all
events, conciliating, these contradictions.  We choose a possible
type of humanity--Aristotle, or some other Greek, gave an exhaustive
list of them--and see ourselves in the part we have selected.
According to our imaginative power and our strength of will we
succeed more or less in playing that part at least for social
purposes.  Years pass and the mask grows to the face, as in the case
of Mr. Beerbohm's _Happy Hypocrite_, and our friends and
acquaintances cease in time to distinguish between our pose and our
character.  But there are moments when the mask cracks and close
observers have their surprises.

Mr. Labouchere gave up early in life any consecutive attempt to make
himself appear different to his real nature.  A fragment of an early
diary which I have utilised does indeed discuss the possibilities of
success to the writer, and criticises, in scathing terms,
achievements up-to-date.  But this document, interesting and amusing
as it is, is itself but a piece of boyish introspectiveness.  In
point of fact he was a terribly sincere person, partly from pride and
partly from indolence.  Had he been willing to condescend to
insincerity, he would have been too lazy to do so for long.  Here,
then, was an additional stumbling-block.  It is easy enough to
understand a pose, or even a succession of poses, but a person who
says neither more nor less than exactly what he means, {xii} and
means exactly what he says, not because he thinks he ought to do so,
or wishes to be understood as doing so, but because so, and not
otherwise, his nature spontaneously expresses itself, is, in our
present social state, almost unintelligible.  What saved him under
these circumstances from becoming a "prophet" was the pliability of
intelligence that enabled him to understand other people and the
sense of humour that enabled him to enjoy them.

I have selected from the voluminous correspondence put at my disposal
only those letters which throw most light on Mr. Labouchere's state
of mind and the part he played in political events with which he was
connected.

I have to thank my many relatives and friends who have allowed me to
make use of their letters from Mr. Labouchere, and also my cousin, M.
Georges Labouchère, for communicating the result of his researches on
the life of my great-grandfather.  Among old friends of Mr.
Labouchere, who have given me personal reminiscences of him, I have
especially to thank Mrs. Emily Crawford, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Lord
Welby, Sir Audley Gosling, and Mr. Robert Bennett, the editor of
_Truth_, whose help has been invaluable in the narrative of Mr.
Labouchere's founding of _Truth_ and of its subsequent fortunes.
Most of all, my thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Hart Davies, without
whose constant sympathy and assistance this biography could not have
been written.

  ALGAR L. THOROLD.

  12 CATHERINE STREET, WESTMINSTER.
  August 15, 1913.




{xiii}

CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

THE LABOUCHERE FAMILY

The Huguenots of Orthez--Youth of Pierre-César--Exile--The Dutch
counting-house--A double ruff and a bid for a bride--Napoleon and
peace--Fouché--The French agent---Ouvrard--The wrath of Cæsar--The
French loan--Residence in England--Lord Taunton--Mr. John Labouchere


CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

(1831-1853)

Birth of Henry Labouchere--Early education--His first _mot_--Eton
days--The young pugilist--The toper--Views on fagging--Trinity
College, Cambridge--Insubordination--Suspension--His defence--He
lives at a London tavern--Severe judgment of himself--Travels with a
bear-leader--Wiesbaden--Voyage to Mexico--Gambling and good
resolutions--Letter to his tutor


CHAPTER III

TRAVELS AND DIPLOMACY

(1853-1864)

Travels in Mexico--In love--The Chippeway Indians--In New York--His
American sympathies--His views on American education--On American
diplomats--On American girls--Becomes attaché at Washington--Mr.
Crampton--Gambling again--The Irish patriot--Views on diplomatic
negotiations--At Munich--Stockholm--Frankfort--Bismarck at
Frankfort--Similarity of their opinions {xiv} about diplomacy--His
popularity at Frankfort--Petersburg--In love again--His opinion of
Russians--Anecdotes--Dresden--Economical family at Marburg--Republic
of Parana--Revolution in Florence--Constantinople--His stories about
Lord Dalling--Close of diplomatic career--Mrs. Crawford's estimate of
his character and remarks on his diplomatic career--_Memoir of Henry
Labouchere_, by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt


CHAPTER IV

PARLIAMENTARY AMBITIONS

(1866-1869)

Why men enter Parliament--New Windsor--His agreement with Sir Henry
Hoare--Imprudent choice of agents--Election--Is unseated on
petition--Repartee before Special Commission--His line of defence in
the _Times_--Another letter on the subject--His maiden
Speech--Reminiscences of the Windsor election--Anecdote about Lord
Taunton--Becomes member for Middlesex--His speeches in the
House--General Election of 1868--Lord George Hamilton--His quarrel
with Lord Enfield--The _Times_ on the quarrel--Nomination of
candidates--Conservative rowdies--the poll--Dignified speech--Absurd
reminiscence--Henry Irving at Brentford--General Election of 1874--Is
defeated at Nottingham


CHAPTER V

JOURNALISM AND THE STAGE

(1864-1880)

His connection with the _Daily News_--He buys a share--Manager of the
Queen's Theatre--_Time and the Hour_--_Dearer than
Life_--Contretemps--Financial loss--Poor opinion of artists--A
Bohemian--His knowledge of London--Edmund Yates tells how he came on
the staff of the _World_--His city articles--Trial of Abbott at the
Guild Hall--A calculator--Labouchere and Grenville Murray--He leaves
the staff of the _World_--Journey with Mr. Bellew--Adventure with
Dumas père--With Dumas fils--His visit to Newgate--Sensations as a
man about to be hanged--Remarks about the Claimant--Immense
popularity of _Truth_--The Lying Club in Co. Durham

{xv}

CHAPTER VI

THE BESIEGED RESIDENT

(September, 1870-February, 1871)

He replaces Mr. Crawford as correspondent--Mrs. Crawford's
impressions of him--Chaos at the Post Office--Immediate events
leading up to the siege--His account of how the news of Sedan was
received in Paris--The Prussians at Versailles--How he got his
letters to London--Ennui--Letter to his mother--Theatrical behaviour
of the Parisians--Further letters to his mother--His wardrobe--His
hat--The _Gaulois_--New Year's address to the Prussians--His opinion
of French journalists--His estimate of General Trochu--Meals during
the siege--Castor and Pollux--Another letter to his mother--The leg
of mutton and the sentimental Prussian soldier--His departure from
Paris--How he behaved when under fire


CHAPTER VII

LABOUCHERE AND BRADLAUGH

The General Election of 1880--The "Radical" colleague--A faithful
constituency--Mr. Bradlaugh and the oath--A House divided against
itself--Labouchere's views on religion--His support of
Bradlaugh--Unscrupulous use of the _affaire_ Bradlaugh by the
Opposition--Victory of Mr. Bradlaugh--His upright character and final
popularity in the House--Mr. Gladstone's tribute--Mr. Labouchere on
his colleague--The parallel of Wilkes


CHAPTER VIII

LABOUCHERE AND IRELAND

(1880-1883)

Ireland in 1880--The Land League--Outrages--Lord Cowper and Mr.
Forster demand suppression of Habeas Corpus--Mr. Gladstone's
hesitation--He yields under threat of Lord Cowper's
resignation--Introduction by Forster of Bills for the Protection of
Life and Property in Ireland, January, 1881--Labouchere's Irish
views--Not at first a Home Ruler--Labouchere criticises Forster's
measure in the House--The arrest of Parnell--His liberation--The
"understanding" with Mr. Gladstone--Murder of Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Mr. Burke--Renewed coercion opposed by Mr.
Labouchere--He negotiates between the Government and Irish {xvi}
leaders in order to modify the Coercion Bill--Correspondence with Mr.
Chamberlain--Interviews with Mr. Parnell--Identity of his Irish
policy with that of Mr. Chamberlain


CHAPTER IX

LABOUCHERE AND MR. GLADSTONE'S EGYPTIAN POLICY

Mr. Gladstone and Egypt--A legacy from Disraeli--Cyprus and the
Berlin Congress--The "Comedy of the Liars"--The Anglo-French
Condominium--Ismail--Nubar and Sir Rivers Wilson--Sir Evelyn
Baring--Deposition of Ismail--Khedive Tewfik--Revolt--Arabi
Pasha--Mr. Wilfrid Blunt--Labouchere and Egypt--Labouchere drops his
burden of Egyptian bonds--A letter to Sir Charles Dilke--Labouchere
and military occupation--The Egyptian Government and the debt--The
champions of Arabi--Speeches in the House--The Soudan--General
Gordon--Correspondence between Labouchere and Chamberlain; between
Labouchere and Mr. Blunt--Letters from Arabi to Mr. Labouchere--A
later letter to Mr. Blunt


CHAPTER X

HENRY LABOUCHERE'S RADICALISM

Labouchere's political attitude--His faith in Chamberlain--Despair at
Chamberlain's secession--His article in the _Fortnightly_, 1884--The
Radical creed--The House of Lords and the Crown--The Church--The Land
Laws--The Royal Family--Female suffrage--Whigs more to be detested
than Tories


CHAPTER XI

IN OPPOSITION

(June, 1885-December, 1885)

Sir Henry Lucy on Labouchere--"The friendly broker"--Lord Salisbury's
First Administration--Irish and Tories--Labouchere, Healy, and
Chamberlain--The General Election--The Midlothian manifesto--A letter
from Mr. Davitt--From Mr. Parnell and Lord Randolph
Churchill--Letters from Mr. Healy--Labouchere's letter to the _Times_
about Home Rule--Correspondence between Mr. Labouchere and Mr.
Chamberlain

{xvii}

CHAPTER XII

THE SPLIT IN THE LIBERAL PARTY

Legislators in correspondence--Further letters from Mr. Chamberlain
and Mr. Healy--Resignation of Mr. Chamberlain--Labouchere's efforts
to reconcile Mr. Chamberlain with the Cabinet--His disappointment


CHAPTER XIII

SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BALFOUR's COERCION POLICY

Lord Salisbury's Second Administration--The new Coercion
Bill--"Parnellism and Crime"--The facsimile letter--Mr. Healy on the
condition of Ireland--Radical demonstration in Hyde Park--Mr.
Labouchere on a waggon--He goes to Michelstown--The famous
meeting--He describes the meeting in the House--Lord Randolph
Churchill's criticism--_Truth_ on the Michelstown murders--More
incriminating letters--Mr. Labouchere enters the lists--The Parnell
Commission--Correspondence with Pigott--First
interview--Correspondence with Irishmen in America--Letter from
Patrick Egan--Letters from Parnell--Pigott and the Attorney-General


CHAPTER XIV

COLLAPSE OF PIGOTT

Lord Russell's cross-examination of Pigott--The disappearance of
Pigott--His confession to Mr. Labouchere--Mr. Lewis returns the
confession--The Commission hears from Pigott--He sends the
confession, under cover, to Mr. Shannon--The confession read out in
court--Mr. Labouchere in the witness-box--Mr. Sala describes the
scene at 24 Grosvenor Gardens--Pigott's end--Mr. Labouchere's
compassion for his orphans--Letter from Dr. Walsh--Mr. Labouchere and
Primrose dames--Trying to hoax Labby


CHAPTER XV

MR. LABOUCHERE NOT INCLUDED IN THE CABINET

Speeches on the Triple Alliance--He is not in the Cabinet--Queen
Victoria's objection to the editor of _Truth_--Mr. Gladstone's
correspondence with Mr. Labouchere--The indignation of
Northampton--Mr. Labouchere's desire to be appointed Ambassador at
Washington--Another disappointment for him


{xviii}

CHAPTER XVI

THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA

The Jameson Raid and the South African War--Mr. Labouchere on the
Jameson Raid Commission


CHAPTER XVII

LABOUCHERE AND SOCIALISM

Mr. Labouchere on Socialism--Discussion with Mr. Hyndman


CHAPTER XVIII

MR. LABOUCHERE AS A JOURNALIST

Mr. Labouchere as Journalist and Litigant--Narrative of _Truth_


CHAPTER XIX

THE CLOSING YEARS

Retirement from Parliament--Farewell to Electors--Some
correspondence--Last days


INDEX




{xix}

ILLUSTRATIONS


RIGHT HON. HENRY LABOUCHERE, P.C. ... Frontispiece

From a photograph by Messrs. Brogi of Florence, taken in 1905 at
Villa Cristina, Florence.

FACSIMILE LETTER SENT BY BALLOON POST




THE LIFE OF

HENRY LABOUCHERE




{1}

THE LIFE OF LABOUCHERE


CHAPTER I

THE LABOUCHERE FAMILY

Some forty miles south of Bayonne, on the right bank of the Gave,
lies the little town of Orthez, the ancient capital of Béarn.  Famous
for the obstinacy of its resistance to the apostolic spirit of Louis
XIV. and the excellence of its manufactured cloth, Orthez was further
distinguished during the Wars of Religion by the possession of a
Protestant university founded by Jeanne d'Albret in which Theodore
Beza was professor.  In 1664, the most Christian King sent his
intendant Foucault to deal with the nest of heretics.  Foucault did
not waste time in theological subtleties, but gave the inhabitants
twenty days in which to conform under penalty of a dragonnade.  They
did so unanimously, but there still remain more Protestants in Orthez
than in any other town of Béarn.

Among the cloth merchants of Orthez none were more distinguished than
the Labouchères.  According to the Frères Haag, the compilers of _La
France Protestante_, their name should be Barrier de Labouchère, the
patronymic which they came to adopt being in reality the name of a
property in the possession of the family.  The earliest known
ancestor of the Labouchères seems to have been a {2} certain Jean
Guyon Barrier, who married in 1621 one Catherine de la Broue.

Pierre-César, the founder of the British branch of the family and the
grandfather of the subject of this memoir, was born at The Hague in
1772.  He was the second son of Matthieu Labouchère and
Marie-Madeleine Molière.  His father, who, in consequence of the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had been sent to England for his
education, had subsequently settled in Holland.  Pierre-César was
sent at the age of thirteen to learn his uncle Pierre's business at
Nantes,[1] where he remained until 1790, at which date he entered the
house of Hope at Amsterdam as French clerk.  In this humble position
he laid the foundations of the great fortune and financial career
which were to be his.  The rise of the young French clerk was rapid.
In six years he was a partner in the house of Hope and had married
Dorothy, sister of Alexander Baring, who had become a partner in the
Dutch firm at the same time as his French brother-in-law.  The
well-known story of the clever ruse by which Pierre-César won the
hand of his bride and also his partnership in the house of Hope was
told to the present writer some twenty years ago by the Rev.
Alexander Baring[2] as follows:

Pierre-César was sent by Mr. John Hope to England to see Sir Francis
Baring on some business, and fell in love with Sir Francis's third
daughter Dorothy.  Before leaving England he asked Sir Francis to
permit him to become engaged to his daughter.  Sir Francis refused.
Pierre-César then said: "Would it make any difference to your
decision if you knew that Mr. Hope was about to take me into
partnership?"  Sir Francis unhesitatingly admitted that {3} it would.
Pierre-César then went back to Holland and suggested to Mr. Hope that
he might be taken into partnership.  On Mr. Hope discouraging the
idea, he said: "Would it make any difference to your decision if you
knew that I was engaged to the daughter of Sir Francis Baring?"  Mr.
Hope replied, "Certainly."  Whereupon the wily clerk said: "Well, I
am engaged to Miss Dorothy Baring."  That very day he was able to
write to Sir Francis announcing the news of his admission to
partnership in the house of Hope, and in the same letter he claimed
the hand of his bride.[3]

The following picture of Pierre-César by a contemporary is
interesting.  The writer was Vincent Nolte, for many years a clerk in
the house of Hope at Amsterdam.  "Mr. Labouchère was at that time but
twenty-two, yet ere long assumed the highly respectable position of
head of the firm, the first in the world, and studied the manners of
a French courtier previous to the Revolution: these he soon made so
thoroughly his own, that they seemed to be a part of his own nature.
He made a point of distinguishing himself in everything he undertook
by a certain perfection, and carried this feeling so far that, on
account of the untractable lack of elasticity of his body and a want
of ear for music which nature had denied him, he for eighteen years
deemed it necessary to take dancing-lessons, because he saw that
others surpassed him in the graceful accomplishment.  It was almost
painful to see him dance.  The old school required, in the French
quadrille, some _entrechats_ and one or two pirouettes, and the delay
they occasioned him always threw him out of time.  I have often seen
the old gentleman, already more than fifty, return from a quadrille
covered with perspiration.  Properly speaking, he had no refined
education, understood but very {4} little of the fine arts, and,
notwithstanding his shrewdness and quickness of perception, possessed
no natural powers of wit, and consequently was all the more eager to
steal the humour of other people.  He once repeated to myself as a
witty remark of his own to one of his clerks, the celebrated answer
of De Sartines, a former chief of the French police, to one of his
subordinates who asked for an increase of pay in the following words:
'You do not give me enough--still I must live!'  The reply he got
was: 'I do not perceive the necessity of that!'  Now, so hard-hearted
a response was altogether foreign to Mr. Labouchère's disposition, as
he was a man of most excellent and generous feeling.  He had,
assuredly, without intention, fallen into the singular habit of
speaking his mother-tongue--the French--with an almost English
intonation, and English with a strong French accent.  But he was most
of all remarkable for the chivalric idea of honour in mercantile
transactions, which he constantly evinced, and which I never, during
my whole life, met with elsewhere, in the same degree, however
numerous may have been the high-minded and honourable merchants with
whom I have been thrown in contact.  He fully possessed what the
French call _des idées chevaleresques_."[4]

In 1800 Pierre-César re-established himself for a time in England,
whither Hope's had been temporarily transferred after the invasion of
Holland by Pichegru.  A few years later he became involved in an
interesting and delicate political negotiation.

In April, 1810, Napoleon, whose marriage with Marie Louise had filled
him with peaceful aspirations, surveyed the world that he had
conquered and decided that, for the moment, he had conquered enough.
To consolidate his empire and his dependencies, peace was necessary.
The only obstacle to peace was England--England who had never bowed
before his eagles and only grudgingly admitted his {5} existence.
Negotiation with England was imperative, but how to negotiate, and by
what means?  What had he to offer Mr. Pitt?  A substantial argument
presented itself in the condition of Holland.  Louis Buonaparte had
disappointed his autocratic brother as an allied sovereign, and it
was the Emperor's intention to remove him from the Dutch throne and
unite the whole of the Netherlands to the Empire.  This course could
not fail to be disagreeable to the English, who would then be flanked
by the French on two sides.  So it occurred to Napoleon that, by
leaving Holland her independence, he would be giving England a
substantial _quid pro quo_ for the withdrawal of British troops from
the Peninsula.  Evidently, however, he could not himself directly
open negotiations.  Not only would such action lower his prestige,
but it was doubtful whether those infernal islanders would consent to
treat with him.  The negotiations had to be opened by way of Holland.
King Louis' Government must not appear in it.  There were prudent men
of affairs there who could be trusted with the delicate task.  Louis
was delighted with the idea.  He would retain his estate as an
independent sovereign, the commerce of Europe would once more
circulate freely to the replenishment of his subjects' coffers, and
his terrible brother's ambitions would be effectively circumscribed.

Fouché, who, unknown to the Emperor, had already sent a private agent
to London to discuss with the British Cabinet possible conditions of
peace, entered enthusiastically into the project and designated
Pierre-César as in every way the most suitable person to be entrusted
with the affair.  His position in the world of business as a partner
of Hope in Amsterdam and of Baring in London was of the highest, and
his father-in-law, Sir Francis Baring, who had been one of the
principal directors of "John Company," was an intimate friend of
Wellesley, the English Foreign Secretary, with whom he had spent some
time in India.

Labouchère was to present himself informally to Wellesley, {6} not as
an envoy of the King of Holland and still less as the mouthpiece of
Napoleon, but in the names of Roell, Van Der Heim, and Mollerus,
three Dutch statesmen who professed to have been initiated by their
King into all the secrets of the French Cabinet.  He was to explain
to the English Foreign Secretary that the marriage of Napoleon had
altered his position and had caused him to desire the peace of Europe
as a necessary condition of the consolidation of his Empire, and
that, in order to induce the English Government to abandon
hostilities, he was prepared to forego his intention of uniting
Holland to his dominions.  The Dutch Cabinet, aware of the Emperor's
views, had hastened to open informal communications in order at one
stroke to secure the peace of Europe and to retain the independence
of their country.  All having been arranged, Labouchère crossed from
Brielle to Yarmouth and posted to London on his secret mission.

As a matter of fact the moment was not well chosen for its success.
After the retirement, on the Catholic question, of Grenville and
Grey, who had continued the Fox-Pitt coalition, the old Duke of
Portland, who had been Home Secretary in Mr. Pitt's first Government,
became Prime Minister.  He maintained his power with difficulty:
Canning and Castlereagh, respectively Home Secretary and Foreign
Minister, quarrelled, left the Cabinet in order to fight a duel, and
did not return to it.  Lord Chatham did not survive the results of
the expedition to Walcheren, and shortly afterwards Portland himself
died.  Mr. Perceval and Lord Wellesley were the most important
persons left in the Cabinet.  Perceval, who had been Portland's
Chancellor of the Exchequer, kissed hands as Prime Minister on
December 2, 1809, and Wellesley took the place of Bathurst as Foreign
Secretary.  Perceval was a clever lawyer and a bitter and prejudiced
Tory; Wellesley's hereditary politics were qualified by suave
manners, an enlightened spirit, and an unusual talent for clear and
eloquent statement.  Less passionate than Perceval, he had not the
Prime Minister's influence {7} with the party, but he enjoyed an
immense reputation in the country which was daily increased by the
news of his brother's gallant deeds at the front.  The position of
the Government, in spite of their parliamentary majority, was not
very strong.  They held their power by that most uncertain
tenure--success in arms.

The opposition, led by Grenville and Grey, rejoiced in the avowed
favour of the Prince of Wales, whom an accident, such was the state
of the King's health, might any day call to the regency, and even to
the throne.  The Prince had openly declared himself against the war,
and the leaders of the opposition argued forcibly, in and out of
season, against its continuance.  The militarism of the country was
not, however, to be checked in this way.  The news of one victory
outweighed much argument.  But news was not always of victories.
Forty thousand English troops had been forced to retire before
Antwerp, with a loss of fifteen thousand from death and disease.
This calamity more than balanced the victory of Talavera.  Perceval
stuck to his war policy with blind and furious determination.  He no
doubt felt that his one chance of retaining office was to do so.
Wellesley, on the other hand, in spite of the glory won by his family
through the war, was open to reason on the subject.  He had already
received politely Captain Fagan, a high officer in Condé's army, whom
Fouché had sent over on his own responsibility to feel the way toward
conditions of peace.  He had received him politely, but had answered
him evasively to the effect that the King's Government was by no
means bent on continuing the war at _all_ costs, but would gladly
entertain proposals of peace if they were advanced by responsible,
fully accredited agents and were compatible with the honour of the
two nations.  Labouchère was unable to get anything more definite out
of him.  But Wellesley, reserved with the French agent, opened
himself more fully to his old friend Sir Francis Baring.  To him he
explained that no member of the Cabinet believed in Napoleon's good
{8} faith.  He personally saw nothing in Labouchère's mission but a
trap laid for English public opinion by the supreme adventurer, and
judged that nothing was to be gained by playing into his hand.
Moreover, the Government would never abandon Spain to Joseph or
Sicily to Murat, and would in no circumstances consent to the loss of
Malta.  The fullest preliminary assurances on these points were the
_sine qua non_ of any successful negotiation.

Sir Francis Baring, who was a sagacious man, communicated this
conversation, together with his personal comments thereon, to
Labouchère.  It was evident, he said, that England had grown
accustomed to the war, and would not abandon it except under the
stress of a reverse impossible to predict, and that the nation would
never lose all they had fought for in the Peninsula by yielding Spain
to a Buonaparte prince.  He suggested, without any official
authority, an arrangement which, leaving Malta to England, would give
Naples to Murat, Sicily to the Neapolitan Bourbons, and would restore
Spain to Ferdinand, save for the provinces on the French side of the
Ebro, which might be given to Napoleon as an indemnity for the
expenses of the war.  Convinced that nothing further was to be
obtained in London, Labouchère returned to Holland and sent to King
Louis at Paris the meagre results of his mission.  Unfortunately,
Napoleon was as well accustomed to war as England.  As soon as he had
received Labouchère's reply, he gave up the notion of using Holland
as a weapon against England and determined to settle his affairs with
his brother independently of the general situation.  Nevertheless, he
did not wish to entirely let fall the indirect relations on which
Labouchère had entered with the English Cabinet, and sent him a reply
to be transmitted through Sir Francis Baring to Lord Wellesley.  The
Emperor's reply was perhaps more statesmanlike than might have been
expected.  If England was accustomed to the war, the French were even
more in their element on the battlefield.  France was victorious,
rich, prosperous, obliged, {9} no doubt, to pay a high price for
sugar and coffee, but not reduced to the point of doing without those
luxuries.  She could support the situation for a long time yet.  If,
in these conditions, he thought of peace, it was because in the new
position created by his marriage with an Austrian archduchess he was
anxious to terminate the struggle between the old order and the new.
As for the kingdoms he had created, it was not to be thought that he
would sacrifice any of them.  Never would he dethrone his brothers
Joseph, Murat, Louis, and Jerome.  But the destinies of Portugal and
Sicily were still in suspense; these two countries, Hanover, the
Hanseatic cities, and the Spanish colonies might still be dealt with.
In any case, it might be possible to mitigate the horrors of war.  He
had been obliged to reply by the decrees of Berlin and Milan to the
orders-in-council issued by the British Cabinet, and the sea had been
converted into a stage for violence of every description.  This state
of things was perhaps more dangerous for England than for France,
since an Anglo-American war might easily result.  If the English
Government agreed with these appreciations they had but to relax
their laws of blockade.  France would follow suit, Holland and the
Hanseatic towns would retain their independence, the sea would be
opened to neutrals, the war would lose some of its bitterness, and,
possibly, in time a complete understanding between the two nations
might be reached.  Such was Napoleon's, on the whole, judicious
reply, and on these terms, and on these terms only, was Labouchère
authorised to make any further attempts at negotiation.

But Napoleon counted without Fouché.  That brilliant and unscrupulous
person, who had been recently raised to the important Ministry of
Police with the title of Duc d'Otrante, was a peace fanatic.  In
every day that the war continued he saw danger to the Empire.  The
failure of the Labouchère mission, in which he no doubt felt his
self-love wounded, since he had himself indicated the envoy,
disappointed him profoundly.  He determined to bring about {10} peace
himself, and relied on his success to justify himself in the
Emperor's eyes.  It would have been a dangerous thing to do under any
government: it was a piece of insanity under a master so absolute, so
vigilant, as Napoleon.  He accordingly sent one Ouvrard to Amsterdam
to urge Labouchère to reopen negotiations with the British Cabinet on
conditions much more favourable to England than the Emperor had made.
Labouchère naturally thought that Fouché once more represented
Napoleon, and recommenced negotiations on a basis much more
satisfactory to English policy.  The basis was different indeed.
According to Ouvrard, the Emperor would modify his views on Sicily,
Spain, the Spanish colonies, Portugal, and Holland; he was earnestly
desirous of peace, and he shared the hostility of the British Cabinet
to the Americans.  In order to give Labouchère more credit with
Wellesley, Fouché offered to give up to him a mysterious personage
called Baron Kolli, an English police agent, who had been visiting
Valencay to arrange the escape of Ferdinand.  Kolli had been arrested
by the French troops who had charge of the imprisoned King.  The
arrest had been considered an important event by the Cabinet of St.
Cloud.  To all this Ouvrard added a good deal of his own, and
Labouchère could not do otherwise than believe what he was told.
Accordingly he reopened negotiations by letter with Wellesley.[5]

In the following month, Napoleon, who was making one of his tours of
personal inspection in the Netherlands, discussed the Labouchère
negotiations with his brother Louis at Antwerp.  By a curious chance
he had caught sight on his journey of Ouvrard, who was on his way
from Amsterdam to Paris.  The Emperor's promptness of mind had at
once suggested to him that Ouvrard, who enjoyed the favour of Fouché
and had business relations with Labouchère, was probably mixing
himself up in what did not concern him, {11} perhaps giving advice
which was not wanted, or trying to float some speculation on the
probabilities of peace.  With the presentiment of his genius he at
once forbade Labouchère to have any relations with Ouvrard and
ordered him to send immediately all the correspondence that had been
exchanged between Amsterdam and London to the King.  Labouchère at
once communicated all his own letters and those he had received from
London.

The blow fell on June 2 at St. Cloud, where the Emperor, the day
after his return from Holland, convoked a Council of Ministers to
meet him.  Fouché, in charge of the most important portfolio of the
imperial Cabinet, was naturally present.  Napoleon turned and rent
him.  What was Ouvrard doing in Holland?  Had Fouché sent him there?
Was he or was he not an accomplice of this preposterous intrigue?
Fouché, surprised and upset by this sudden and unexpected attack,
could find nothing better to say than that Ouvrard was a busybody who
was always mixing himself up in other people's business and that it
was wiser to pay no attention to anything he might say.  The astute
personage must indeed have been upset to attempt to "pay" Napoleon
with such words.  Ouvrard and his papers were at once seized, the
mission being entrusted not to Fouché, who as Minister of the Police
would naturally have received such an order, but to Sazary, an
aide-de-camp whom the Emperor had made Duc de Rovigo and in whom he
had complete confidence.  Ouvrard's papers revealed at once the
extent to which the intrigue had been pushed and of Fouché's
complicity.  The next day Fouché was dismissed from the Ministry of
Police, where he was succeeded by Rovigo, and appointed Governor of
Rome.  When Napoleon had anything to do he did it quickly.

He did not rest there, however.  He was determined to get to the _fin
fond_ of these singular negotiations.  Ouvrard, kept in prison, was
constantly examined, and Labouchère was summoned to Paris and ordered
to bring all the papers {12} still in his hands.  It appeared, from a
comparison of these with those already seized, that Labouchère had
acted in perfectly good faith, and the whole responsibility rested
with Fouché and Ouvrard.  Fouché's disgrace was complete.  As soon as
the Emperor discovered the episode of the Fagan mission he turned
once more on the luckless minister and demanded all the papers
relative to that affair.  Fouché replied that they were of no
importance and that he had burned them.  Napoleon, on hearing this,
gave way to one of his appalling exhibitions of rage, took away from
Fouché the governorship of Rome, and exiled him to Aix in Provence.
So ended this curious affair in which Pierre-César Labouchère had
served his country faithfully and intelligently to the extent which
circumstances permitted.  Some years later he was to serve his
country perhaps more signally, and certainly more effectively.

When in 1817 France was beginning the task of reconstruction, the
principal difficulty in the way of the ministers of Louis XVIII. was
the very serious financial situation.  By the treaty of November 20
of the preceding year, the country was pledged to pay to foreigners
no less than seven hundred million francs in money in the course of
five years, with an additional sum of a hundred and thirty million
for the pay of the 150,000 foreign troops which occupied the country.
There were also numerous debts, both at home and abroad, the payment
of which had been guaranteed by the treaties of 1814 and 1815.  The
ordinary revenue was useless to meet such heavy charges, and
extraordinary taxation, in the state of the country, would have spelt
ruin.  It was necessary to have recourse to credit.  But how to
obtain a loan?  France was not in a state which could inspire
financiers with much confidence.  In these circumstances Messrs.
Labouchère and Baring once more placed themselves at the service of
the French Government.  They purchased nearly twenty-seven million
francs' worth of government five per cent. _rente_, and thus restored
French {13} credit.  Their action was, no doubt, not purely
disinterested, as they bought the _rente_ at an average price of
56.50 and obtained an interest of nine per cent. on their money.
Still, the difficulty of the moment was to find anybody to do it at
any price.[6]  A private journal of the period, kept by the husband
of a niece of Sir Francis Baring, consequently a first cousin by
marriage of Mme. Pierre-César Labouchère, gives the following account
of the transaction:[7] "The 'Alliance Loan' of the Barings at Paris
in 1816 probably doubled his (Pierre-César's) fortune, and he soon
after quitted business, and settled altogether in England, living at
Hylands, a property he bought in Essex, and in Hamilton Place, where
his home was frequented by many distinguished people and
diplomatists."

Two sons were born to Pierre-César and Dorothy Labouchère.  The
elder, Henry, was born in 1798, and made for himself a social and
political career of decided distinction, as a Whig of the old school,
a certain primness and conventionality of character enabling him to
perform the part successfully in private as in public life.  He took
a first-class in classics at Oxford, and in 1832 found himself a Lord
of the Admiralty.  He became subsequently Vice-President of the Board
of Trade, Under-Secretary to the Colonies, President of the Board of
Trade, Chief Secretary of Ireland, Secretary of State for the
Colonies, and was raised to the peerage in 1859, when he assumed the
title of Baron Taunton, choosing the name of the borough he had
represented in Parliament for thirty years.  It was at Taunton in
1835 that he opposed and defeated Dizzy by a majority of a hundred
and seventy, when, on his appointment as Master of the Mint under
Lord Melbourne, he offered himself to his constituents for
re-election.  His primness and {14} conventionality found on this
occasion an admirable foil in the manner and appearance of his
opponent, who was "very showily attired in a bottle-green frock coat,
a waistcoat of the most extravagant pattern, the front of which was
almost covered with glittering chains, and in fancy pattern
pantaloons."  The judicious electors of Taunton preferred Mr.
Labouchere's more solid qualities.

Lord Taunton died very suddenly on July 13, 1869.  He was twice
married, first to Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Baring,[8] and
secondly to Lady Mary Howard, a daughter of Lord Carlisle.  He left
no sons.  Consequently the bulk of his fortune descended to his
brother John Labouchere's eldest son Henry, the future member for
Northampton and editor of _Truth_.

The younger Henry Labouchere's earliest recollections carried him
back to his childish visits to his grandfather in Hamilton Place,
where Prince Talleyrand, then Ambassador to the Court of St. James
(1830-34), was a frequent visitor.  "I have always taken a special
interest in Talleyrand," he wrote when he was sixty, "because he gave
me when a child a very gorgeous box of dominoes."[9]

The elder Henry Labouchere does not seem at first sight to have
shared any traits with his nephew and namesake.  The only point on
which they may be said to have agreed was their love for America.
Lord Taunton as a young man travelled much in the United States with
Lord Derby, and he had important business interests there as well as
in South America, arising out of the commercial enterprises of the
{15} house of Hope.  He acquired in the course of his travels a
strong liking for American institutions and a genuine affection for
the American people, a feeling which, as we shall see, was shared by
his nephew.

Mr. John Labouchere predeceased Lord Taunton by six years, and it was
often presumed by persons who knew the family but slightly that the
younger Henry Labouchere was the son of Lord Taunton, which mistake
gave the young wit the opportunity of making one of his best-known
repartees.  On one occasion a gentleman, to whom Henry was introduced
for the first time, opened the conversation by remarking: "I have
just heard your father make an admirable speech in the House of
Lords."  "The House of Lords!" replied Mr. Labouchere, assuming an
air of intense interest, "well, I always _have_ wondered where my
father went to when he died."



[1] Presumably Uncle Pierre had conformed and stuck to it.

[2] The portraits of Pierre-César Labouchère and Dorothy his wife,
now in my possession, were then at Farnham Castle, and Mr. Baring was
visiting my father, the then Bishop of Winchester, when he related to
me this anecdote of my great-grandparents.

[3] The story is confirmed by the Hon. Francis Henry Baring.  Mr. F.
H. Baring was told it by the late Thomas Charles Baring, M.P., the
son of the Bishop of Durham.  Mr. T. C. Baring was for many years a
partner in Baring Bros., where he probably heard the story.  Sir
Henry Lucy, in his _More Passages by the Way_, mentions that Mr.
Labouchere himself believed the story to be true.

[4] Vincent Nolte, _Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres_.  American
translation, 1854.

[5] Thiers, _Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire_; Louis Madelin,
_Fouché_.  See also _Times_, March 16, 1811, for the English account.

[6] _Histoire de Mon Temps: Mémoires du Chancelier Pasquier_,
publiées par le Duc d'Audriffet-Pasquier, 1789-1830.

[7] The journal was written by Mr. T. L. Mallet, who married Lucy,
daughter of Charles Baring.  I am indebted for the extract to Lord
Northbrook.

[8] Yet another link between the Laboucheres and the Barings was
forged by the marriage, in 1837, of Lady Taunton's sister, Emily
Baring, to Mrs. John Labouchere's brother, the Rev. William Maxwell
Du Pre.  His sister, Caroline Du Pre, became the wife of the Rev.
Spenser Thornton, who was a grandson of Godfrey Thornton by Jane his
wife, a daughter of an influential director of the French hospital,
Stephen Peter Godin, whose family note-book was published in the
January number of the _Genealogist_ (_The Labouchère Pedigree_, by
Henry Wagner, F.S.A., 1913).

[9] _Truth_, March 19, 1891.




{16}

CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

(1831-1853)

John Peter Labouchere,[1] the younger son of Pierre-César Labouchère,
was a partner in the firm of Hope at Amsterdam, and, later, a partner
in the bank of Williams, Deacon, Thornton, and Labouchere.  He
married Mary Louisa Du Pre,[2] second daughter of Mr. James Du Pre of
Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire, and granddaughter of Sir William
Maxwell of Monteith, by whom he had a family of three sons and six
daughters, of whom one son and four daughters are still living.  He
was the owner of Broome Hall in Surrey, and his town house was at 16
Portland Place.  He was an extremely religious man and well known for
his charitable and philanthropic labours.  At one period his elder
brother, Lord Taunton, then Mr. Henry Labouchere, also had a house in
Portland Place, and he used to relate that he was constantly pestered
by persons confusing him with his brother the banker, who called to
ask for his help and patronage with regard to various evangelical
enterprises.  It was his habit to reply to them: "You have made a
mistake, sir; the good Mr. Labouchere lives at No. 16."

Henry Du Pre, the eldest son of John Labouchere, was born at 16
Portland Place on November 9, 1831.  His {17} education, had he been
a docile pupil, would, according to his father's wishes, have been
that of a conventional English boy with some reasonable expectations
of a fine career in the financial or the diplomatic world, into
either of which he had an easy _entrée_ through the influence of the
Labouchere family.  But he displayed, at the very beginning of his
career, a curious and original character, which did not seem to
follow easily any of the known paths of learning marked out for the
youth of his period.  The earliest repartee recorded of him was made
to the headmaster of the private school to which he was sent at the
age of six.  Before breakfast, the morning after his arrival, the new
boys were placed in a row, and asked whether they had all washed
their teeth.  One by one they answered in the affirmative, until came
the turn of Henry.  "No," he answered firmly.  "And pray why not?"
wound up the master indignantly, after a long lecture on the enormity
of the crime of neglecting the cleanliness of the teeth.  "Because I
haven't got any," smiled Henry suddenly.  He was just at the stage of
changing his baby teeth, and his toothless gums were displayed for
the full benefit of the discomfited moralist.[3]  Nearly fifty years
later Labouchere published the following account of his school-days:

"When I was a boy I was sent to a school which was kept by one of the
most ill-conditioned ruffians that ever wielded a cane.  He used to
suffer from lumbago (this was my only consolation), and would crawl
on his hands and knees into the schoolroom; then he would rear up and
commence caning a few boys, merely, I truly believe, from a notion
that the exercise would be beneficial to his muscles.  The man was
ignorant, brutal, mean, and cruel, and yet his school somehow had a
reputation as an excellent one--mainly, I suspect, because he had the
effrontery to charge a high price for the privilege of being at
it."[4]

{18}

He went to Eton in the September of 1844, and was entered at the
house of Edward Balston, who afterwards became headmaster.  Dr.
Hawtrey, whose classical teaching has been described as "more
picturesque than useful," was headmaster during the three years and a
half that Henry Labouchere was at the school.  The boy seems to have
been a fairly idle scholar, and nothing remarkable in the way of a
sportsman.  He was exceedingly small for his age and, in consequence,
a light weight, so that he was much in request on summer afternoons
as a "cox."  Among his contemporaries at Eton were the late Lord
Avebury, the late Sir George Tryon, Lord Roberts, the late Sir Arthur
Blackwood, Sir Algernon West, and Lord Welby.  Lord Welby recollects
that he had, even in his Eton days, the dry, cynical manner and
original mode of verbal expression which, later on, marked him out
from his fellows.

Labouchere fell under a suspicion of bullying whilst at Balston's,
and the consequences he was forced to undergo are interesting as
illustrative of the Eton justice of the forties.  He was in the fifth
form, and the elder boys of his house summoned the captain of the
lower boys, one Barton, who was a good deal bigger than Labouchere,
to fight him in the house.  Barton had no quarrel on his own account
with Labouchere--it was a case of representative justice.  The fight
was arranged to take place in one of the rooms after tea, it being
the uncomfortable practice in those days always to fight after a
meal.  Labouchere and Barton punched away at each other for an hour
or so, until the big boys went down to supper, when they were allowed
to rest.  After the elders had supped, the fight was renewed until
Labouchere succumbed.  However, it was generally allowed that he had
made a good show before a bigger man than himself.  The next day the
eyes of the combatants were bunged up, their noses swollen to bottle
size, and their complexions coloured bright blue and green with
bruises.  They could not go into school.  Balston was obliged to take
notice of what had {19} happened, which he did with well-simulated
indignation, and, when they were able to return to school, reported
them to Hawtrey, who "swished" them both.[5]

Another contemporary of Mr. Labouchere's at Eton, the late Frederick
Morton Eden, related a story about him at a dinner given to him some
years ago, as the senior "Old Etonian," in the School Hall of the
College.  Whilst the old chapel was being restored, a temporary
chapel of wood and iron was run up.  The corrugated iron roof made
the heat intolerable during the summer months, so Labouchere hit upon
a plan to put a stop to the nuisance of "chapel in the shanty."  One
boy was to pretend to faint and four others were to carry him out.  A
fifth was to follow bearing the hats of the performers.  The plan
worked admirably.  The service was brought to a temporary stop and
the boys, as soon as they were outside, scampered merrily off and
procured some agreeable refreshment.  The repetition of this comedy,
of course, aroused the suspicion of the masters, but nevertheless,
like many of Labouchere's intrigues in later life, it produced
eventually the desired effect.  There was no more chapel during the
hot weather until the restoration of the old chapel was complete.

A reminiscence of his Eton days that Mr. Labouchere was fond of
relating has already found its way into print, but will bear
repetition, as all may not have read it.  One day, his store of
pocket-money being at high-water mark, he conceived the notion of
doing the man about town for an hour or two; so, having dressed
himself with scrupulous care, he sallied forth, and, entering the
best hotel in the place, engaged a private room, and in a lordly
manner ordered a bowl of punch.  The waiter stared but brought the
liquor, and went away.  The boy, having tasted it, found it horrible.
He promptly poured it into the lower compartment {20} of an antique
oak sideboard.  He waited a little to see whether it would run out on
to the carpet.  Luckily the drawer was watertight, and Labouchere
rang the bell again and proudly ordered from the amazed waiter a
second bowl of punch.  He poured this also into the oak sideboard,
and in a few minutes rang for the bill, tipped the waiter
majestically, and swaggered out of the hotel, quite satisfied that he
had won the admiration and respect of the whole staff.

After the Christmas half of 1847, Labouchere left Eton.  He was then
in his seventeenth year, and, before going to the university, it was
thought advisable to place him for a year or two with a private tutor.

It is interesting, before we leave Labouchere's Etonian career, to
record his views on fagging, that venerable institution, which is
generally considered by Englishmen to have contributed so largely
towards their superiority to the rest of mankind.  "When I was at
Eton," he wrote, "fags thought that all was fair in regard to their
masters.  I had a master who used to send me every morning to a
farmhouse to get him cream for his breakfast.  On my return I
invariably added a trifle of my milk to the cream and thickened my
milk with an infusion of my master's cream.  Thus, by the light of
that revenge, which Lord Bacon calls a 'rude sense of justice,' I
anticipated the watering process which has been practised by so many
public companies.  Sometimes he would have jugged hare.  These
occasions were my grand opportunity, and, unknown to him, I used to
pour out into my own slop basin a portion of the savoury mess, and
conceal the deficit by an addition of pure water.  Fagging in fact,
is productive of more evil to the fag than the fagger.  The former
learns all the tricks and dodges of the slave."[6]

Labouchere's matured judgment of Dr. Hawtrey was expressed as follows:


Dr. Hawtrey was the headmaster when I was at Eton.  He was {21} an
amiable and kindly man and a fine gentleman.  He probably flogged
about twenty boys every day, on an average.  He did it with exquisite
politeness, and, except on rare occasions, the whole thing was a
farce.  Four cuts were the ordinary application, and ten cuts were
never exceeded.  The proceedings took place in public, and any boy
who had a taste for the thing might be a spectator.  If the victim
flinched there was a howl of execration.  Far from objecting to this,
the doctor approved of it.  I remember once that a boy fell on his
knees, and implored him to spare him.  "I shall not condescend to
flog you, but I leave you to your young friends," said the doctor.  I
happened to be one of the young friends, and I remember aiding in
kicking the boy round the quadrangle for about half an hour.[7]


The reflections of boys on the education to which they have been
subjected are remarkably interesting, because they are so exceedingly
rare.  We have Rousseau's criticism of his upbringing, but it was
penned when youth was behind, and it is tinged with an affectation of
intellectual detachment and middle-aged self-consciousness which robs
it of the spontaneity which would be its only recommendation.  St.
Augustine, when he wrote his confessions, knew far too much to be
able to write with simple sincerity of his foolish youth.
Labouchere's early note-books, unlike these masterpieces, possess the
uncommon value of being youth's judgments upon youth, written with
all the hardy ingenuousness of a clever boy, who was, besides being
clever, extremely young for his age.[8]  About the period of his life
which has been described Labouchere wrote, at the age of twenty-one:
"I will give ... an outline of my life, and the different courses
that led to my discovery of early wisdom.  I went through the usual
numbers of schools, by which I learnt that an English education, for
the time and money that it consumes, is the worst that the world has
yet produced.  One {22} clergyman alone of all my masters knew how to
teach.  His conduct was perfectly arbitrary, and he gave no reason
for it--while, in the several branches of learning, his pupils either
made rapid progress or left his house.  My acquaintance with him was
of short duration.  He insisted on my teaching in an infant school on
Sunday, or leaving his house--and I foolishly preferred the latter.
I was then too young to go to college, so I was transferred to a
clergyman in Norfolk, the very antipodes of my former master.  Here I
amused myself, and was flattered for a year or two, and then went to
the university."

In February, 1850, he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge.  His
tutor was Mr. Cooper.  In his note-book describing the university
period of his career Labouchere wrote: "My father sent me to college,
where, instead of improving my mind (for manners, I own, must be bad
to be improved by such a place), I diligently attended the
race-course at Newmarket.  I had a general idea that here (at the
university) I should astonish the world by my talents--I attended no
lectures, as I considered myself too clever to undergo the drudgery.
I considered myself--on what grounds God knows--an orator and a poet.
I went to the Debating Society and commenced a speech in favour of
the regicides, but, to my astonishment, entirely broke down.  To my
equal astonishment, upon writing the first line of a prize poem, I
found it impossible to find a second.  To become known in the
university was my ambition--my short cuts to fame had failed--it
never entered my head to apply myself really to study, so, in default
of a better method, I resolved to distinguish myself by my bets on
horse-races.  I diligently attended every meeting at Newmarket and
spent the evenings in a tavern, where the sporting students and
sporting tradesmen assembled to gamble.  At the end of two years I
had lost about £6000, and I owed to most of my sporting friends....
Upon a dispute with the College authorities my degree was deferred
for two years, and I left the University."

{23}

So many incorrect versions of Labouchere's dispute with the
university have been given in various newspaper biographical notices
at different times that a short account of what actually did happen
will not be out of place here.

A court was held on April 2, 1852, at King's Lodge, to hear a
complaint brought by the proproctor, Mr. Barnard Smith, against Henry
Labouchere for having sent to various university officers a printed
paper, signed by himself, imputing unfair conduct to Mr. Barnard
Smith towards himself whilst in the Senate House during an
examination.

What happened at the Senate House is best told in Labouchere's own
words.  I quote the printed letter which he sent to the university
officers, and which was the cause of his leaving Cambridge before he
took his degree.


The undersigned went into the Senate House for the previous
Examination on Monday last, and had not been there long before he was
painfully surprised by the suspicions of one of the proproctors, the
Rev. Mr. Barnard Smith of St. Peter's College.  This gentleman, from
the beginning of the Examination, continued to watch the undersigned
in so marked a manner as not only to be noticed by himself but by
other members of the University, under examination, who sat near him.
The undersigned felt much distressed at this special surveillance.
He had done nothing to deserve suspicion of being likely to resort to
any unworthy practices in the Senate House, and the knowledge that he
was thus subject to what he felt to be little short of a direct
personal insult hindered his giving undivided attention to the
examination questions which he had to answer.

Notwithstanding this discouragement, the undersigned sent in his
answers, which he has since been assured by one of the Examiners were
satisfactory....

On the day following (Tuesday), having nearly answered all the
questions, the undersigned was stopped by the Rev. Mr. B. S. and
charged with mal-practices in the Examination, of which he was not
guilty.

HENRY LABOUCHERE.


After a short inquiry, during which it was ascertained {24} that
Labouchere had been guilty of writing the above letter, the court
delivered the following sentence: "The court being of opinion that
the charge has been fully proved, and that the conduct of Mr.
Labouchere has been highly reprehensible and injurious to the
character and discipline of the University, sentences Henry
Labouchere to be admonished and suspended from his degree for two
years."  In the course of the inquiry, Labouchere defended himself
with great ability, though unsuccessfully.

I give his defence verbatim, as the detail with which he gave it is
the best possible account of the circumstances which led up to his
insubordinate act:


The whole business seems so indefinite that it is almost impossible
to offer a defence.  I am convened before the Vice-Chancellor for
sending a printed notice to the Examiners and for bringing a charge
against Mr. Barnard Smith.  But what my copying or not copying in the
Senate House has to do with it, it is difficult to say.  But, as my
copying has been brought forward and is supposed to bear on the
subject, I am happy to have an opportunity of disproving it.  Mr.
Fenwick, on being asked, brought forward 3 charges why I was sent out
of the Senate House: first, for having a paper concealed which I
refused to give to the Examiners; secondly, for asserting that the
paper had nothing to do with the Examination; and thirdly, for owning
that it had.  Mr. Fenwick (who it appears had the direction of the
case) made no further charge.  Mr. Barnard Smith now brings an
entirely different charge, which is that I slipped a piece of paper
into my pocket, and that he imagines he saw me do so.  Why he didn't
stop me at the time he does not say.  Now all the Examiners who had
been examined here to-day, except Mr. Latham, say that from my
general conduct I was suspected of copying on Monday.  Mr. Fenwick,
however, is more particular, and says that my position excited
suspicion.  Mr. Woollaston says that I did not appear to be occupied
with the Examination.  So that what my general conduct was is
explained.  Having partly finished 10 questions in the Scripture
history, I, more as a rest than anything else, wrote a note to a
friend asking him how he {25} had got on, and mentioned that I had
just given a long answer to the 10th question: I added, "I suppose
the Shunamite woman was the person whose son was struck with the
sun."  While reading this note to myself, I saw Mr. Barnard Smith
coming towards me; upon which I threw it away as far as possible; and
upon his asserting that he had seen a paper in my hands I said that
he had, but that I had no crib, nor had I in any way copied, that it
was a note having nothing to do with the Examination.  Not being in
the habit of having my word questioned I saw no reason for producing
it.  Mr. Barnard Smith, however, thought differently; and, as the
Examiners agreed with him, upon demanding its production I said that
I had thrown it away, and it was probably somewhere on the ground.
Having looked close by and not perceived it, I told Mr. Fenwick that
I didn't see it.  Mr. Fenwick, on this, ordered me to look for it, in
a manner so offensive, that I took no further trouble about the
matter.  I then told the Examiners that, if they wished to know what
was in the note, there was a question about the Shunamite woman, and
told them I had just finished the answer to that question.  I then
gave up my papers and left the Senate House.  The inference I believe
drawn from the last two charges is that I told a lie.  Upon this
point any person may form his own opinion.  I am asked whether I had
a paper.  The paper is by that time thrown away.  I answered that I
had.  Had I denied it there would have been no evidence, and the
matter would probably have dropped.

According to the Examiner I had first said the paper had nothing to
do with the Examination, and then, finding that the paper is not
produced, tell them that the paper had to do with the Examination.  I
simply stated what it contained and should not have told a lie
against myself.  The fact was, not seeing the paper, and considering
that Mr. Fenwick had ordered me to look for it in rather an offensive
way, I told them what it contained.  I had finished the Examination
question at the time, and the question in the note was not put in
with any desire to know whether it was right or wrong.  I simply put
in that I supposed it was right more for something to say than for
anything else.  But I certainly did not consider it had anything to
do with the Examination in the way which Mr. Barnard Smith meant.
{26} With respect to Mr. Barnard Smith's impression that I slipped a
piece of paper into my pocket, I wish that he had said so at the
time, that I might have disproved it.  I can only say now that there
is a sufficient internal evidence in my answers to show that I didn't
obtain assistance from any notes, as I had a general knowledge of the
subject, and confined myself to general facts.  After having been
dismissed from the Senate House, and having, in vain, challenged an
investigation before the Vice-Chancellor, as I understood the
Examiners openly asserted that I had told a lie, I sent a circular to
them denying the charge.  I did this, lest at any time hereafter,
such an action should be brought to my charge, and also that it had
been unrefuted.  I have now denied the charge, and for their
individual opinion I care little.


The court asked, at this point, if Mr. Labouchere deliberately wished
these words to be recorded: he said "Yes" and then went on with his
defence:


But, as in their office of Examiners they had unjustly asserted that
I told a lie, I did my duty in openly denying it.  I mean to say that
I sent this circular to the Examiners in their public capacity and
not as private individuals.  I sent it to justify myself from a
charge which I consider unjust, and upon which I could not obtain an
investigation.


The immediate reflection that presents itself to the mind of any one
who knew Labouchere well and who studies his defence is that it is
curious that it should have been over a Scripture History paper that
he was suspected of cribbing, for, thanks to his early evangelical
training and his innate love of his Bible, Labouchere was almost
phenomenally proficient in Scripture knowledge.  He quoted the Bible,
and rarely incorrectly, on every occasion--in his parliamentary
speeches, in his journalistic articles, and in private
conversation--and he could, invariably, if questioned, give chapter
and verse for the verification of his quotation.

Two anecdotes have frequently been given in the press about
Labouchere's alleged cribbing at Cambridge.  I never {27} heard him
relate them himself, and they are probably legends of the kind that
are born in the journalist's brain whilst he is racking it for copy
in the shape of anecdotic detail.  The first is that his academic
career terminated abruptly because he had made a bet with another
undergraduate that he would crib in his Little Go examination without
being caught, and that when caught he accused the examiner of being
in collusion with the other party to the bet.  The other is that
during the examination he was observed to be frequently looking at
something concealed beneath a sheet of blotting-paper.  On being
asked to produce it, Labouchere refused.  But, when obliged to do so,
it was found that the concealed object was the photograph of a
popular variety artiste, whose bright eyes, he asserted, stimulated
him to persevere in his academic efforts.

There are, of course, any number of popular anecdotes of Labouchere's
university days.  A good one is the following.  On one occasion,
having taken French leave to London, he was unexpectedly confronted
one morning in the Strand by his father, who looked extremely annoyed
to see the youth there, when he imagined him to be occupied with his
studies.  Henry's wits as usual were on the alert.  He returned his
father's cold greeting with a surprised stare.  "I beg your pardon,
sir," he said, "I think you have made a mistake.  I have not the
honour of your acquaintance."  He pushed by and was lost in the
crowd.  Rapidly consulting his watch, he found he could, by running,
just catch a train for Cambridge.  He did so, and what he had
foreseen happened.  Mr. Labouchere, senior, after having accomplished
the business he was about, took the next train for Cambridge.  On
reaching the university he was ushered into his son's study, where he
found him absorbed in work.  He made no reference to his rencontre in
the Strand, being persuaded that it must have been a hallucination.

Another story relates how he used to go about in a very ragged gown.
One day the Master of Trinity, Whewell, {28} came across him and
said, "Is that a proper academic costume, Mr. Labouchere?"  "Really,
sir, I must refer you to my tailor," was the reply.

Labouchere continues in his note-book to describe, with naïve
minuteness of detail, his search for wisdom after he left the
university.  "With great liberality," he wrote, "my father paid my
debts, and advised my return home.  My family ... was religious, and,
finding my father's house dull, I had accustomed myself to live at a
tavern in Covent Garden....  After remaining there for two or three
weeks, I used to return home, and leave it indefinite from where I
had come.  Until my leaving College and the payment of my debts by my
father, I had kept up an appearance of respectability at home.  Now,
however, I threw off all restraint, and openly lived at my tavern for
about two months, during which I lost several hundred pounds at hells
and casinos."

The tavern which Labouchere frequented at this period was far from
being the haunt of vice which, with the gloomy sternness of
moralising youth, he wished to depict it.  It was a species of night
club, known as Evans', and was the resort of all literary and
artistic London.  It constantly figures in Thackeray's novels and
other books of the period as a place of Bohemian rendezvous and the
scene of a good deal of rough-and-tumble jollity.  The house, of
which it formed the cellar, had once been the home of Sir Kenelm
Digby.  Above the tavern, or "Cave of Harmony" as Thackeray called
it, was the hotel in which Labouchere had his rooms.  In later years,
that is to say in the later fifties and early sixties, the popularity
of this place of conviviality increased so much that it was found
necessary to pull down the little room where Labouchere used to
listen every night to the singing of more or less rowdy songs, and
build on its site a vast concert-room, with an annexe, consisting of
a comfortable hall, hung with theatrical portraits, where
conversation could be carried on.  There was a private {29}
supper-room in the grill, and this annexe became a popular resort for
men about town.  Some of the smartest talk in London was to be heard
at Evans', for it numbered among its patrons such wits as Douglas
Jerrold, Thackeray, Lionel Lawson, Edmund Yates, Augustus Sala,
Serjeant Ballantine, John Leech, Serjeant Murphy--and Henry
Labouchere.  The presiding spirit of the establishment was a great
friend of Labouchere's.  He acted as head waiter and was known as
Paddy Green.  He had commenced his career as a chorus-singer at the
Adelphi Theatre, and had won for himself in all classes of society an
immense popularity on account of his courtesy and unfailing
good-humour.  The prosperity of Evans' only waned when the modern
music-halls, where women formed the larger part of the audience,
became the fashion.[9]

From the superior point of view of the maturity of twenty-one,
Labouchere was inclined to survey, with an eye of undue severity, the
follies he committed at the age of nineteen.  He wrote: "Whenever I
entered into conversation with any person, I introduced the subject
of gambling, and boasted of sums I had lost, which I appeared to
consider, instead of a disgrace, a subject on which I might justly
pride myself.  During this period I believe I had a general wish to
elevate myself to some higher position, as, while passing my days and
nights in profligacy, my chief study was Dr. Johnson's _Life_ and
Lord Chesterfield's _Letters to his Son_."  And again: "Inflated with
conceit I imagined myself equal to cope with all mankind.  In society
I was awkward, and therefore sought the society of my inferiors,
while I endeavoured to delude myself with the notion that I was a
species of socialist and that all men were equal.  Conversation,
properly so-called, I had none.  I could argue any subject, but not
converse--my manners were boorish--I had never learnt to dance, so I
seldom entered a ball-room, or if {30} there, I pretended to despise
the amusement, as I never owned myself incapable of anything.  If I
entered a drawing-room, I either held myself aloof from the company,
or I argued some subject by the hour with my neighbour.  In fact, in
manners I was an _outré_ specimen of an uncultivated English young
man--the most detestable yahoo in creation."

He continues: "From my tavern I was again rescued by my father, who
sent me abroad under the guidance of a species of Mentor, who was,
unfortunately, totally unfitted for his task.  Three days after
leaving England we arrived at Wiesbaden, where there are public
gaming tables.  Here I felt myself at home, and the first day gained
about £150.  My Mentor, who was going to the hotel, offered to carry
the money I had won, and give it back to me the next day.  The next
morning, however, on my asking for it, he refused to return it unless
I promised not to play while at Wiesbaden.  After my father had so
often paid large sums for me, in gratitude I ought to have yielded.
This, however, I refused to do, but remained two months at Wiesbaden,
while my Mentor continued his travels.  At last it was agreed that I
should meet him at Paris, and there receive my money, where, I need
not add, in a few days it was spent."

Some of Mr. Labouchere's most interesting articles in _Truth_ in
after years were the ones he was in the habit of writing, when he was
on his summer holiday, describing the various resorts he visited, and
he was always eager to recall reminiscences of his boyhood when he
found himself at a place he had passed through in his youth.  He
wrote from Wiesbaden in 1890:


German watering-places are dull places now that the gambling at them
has been abolished, and even those who did not play at their tables
have discovered this.  I am at Wiesbaden.  When a jade repents of her
ways and takes to propriety, she is little given to overdo
respectability.  So it is with this and other examples of roulette
and _trente et quarante_.  The respectability of the Wiesbaden of
to-day is positively oppressive.  Its devotion {31} weighs upon the
spirit.  I remember being here nearly forty years ago.  I was then a
lad travelling on the continent with a bear-leader to enlarge my
experience.  The bear-leader and I never could quite agree what spot
would prove the most improving.  He wished to study still nature, I
wished to study human nature.  So, like Abram and Lot, we generally
separated.  He betook himself to the Carpathian Mountains, I
sojourned here.  Wiesbaden was then cosmopolitan.  The tag-rag and
bobtail of all nations resorted to it, and, if all of them were not
quite _sans reproche_, they were all pleasant enough in their way.
There was a vague notion that, somewhere or other, there were waters,
but, where precisely they were, and what they cured, very few knew.
The Kursaal was the centre of attraction, with its roulette and its
_trente et quarante_.[10]


From Paris, Labouchere and his tutor returned to England, and, after
a month passed at Broome Hall with occasional visits to his beloved
Evans', it was arranged that he should make a trip to South America,
where his family had had for many years very important commercial
interests and could give him some respectable introductions.  He
noted his impressions of his journey and arrival in America in the
most approved early Victorian guide-book manner, but, in spite of an
apparent effort to be, at the same time, both stilted and elegant in
style, his natural originality peeps out here and there:

"On the 2nd of November, 1852, in the steam packet _Orinoco_, I set
sail, or rather set steam, from England.  For the first ten days I
remained in bed in all the agonies of seasickness.  Some persons,
particularly poets, find some pleasure in a voyage, but I confess the
_nil nisi pontus et aer_ is to me the most distasteful sight in
creation, especially when the _pontus_ is rough.  The passengers were
chiefly Spaniards to Havana and Germans who were going to 'improve
their prospects'--how I have no idea, but, from the appearance of the
gentlemen, they might have done so {32} without becoming
millionaires.  At nine we breakfasted, at twelve lunched, at four
dined, and at seven tea'd.  The rest of the day was passed on deck.
Through storm and sunshine the majority of the foreigners played at
bull, a species of marine quoits.  The ladies always knitted, and the
English read Dickens' _Household Words_.  In the evening there was
dancing.  There was an unfortunate devil of a mulatto on board who
offended the prejudices of the planters by dancing with the white
ladies.  'Why,' they said, 'that fellow ought to be put up to auction
unless anybody owns him.'  In eating and these interesting diversions
the day passed.  The only incident that enlivened the voyage was,
that one night the Germans had an immense bowl of punch brewed (I
wish I had the recipe of that said punch, for a better brew I never
tasted) and sang sentimental songs.  One German went round and
informed the English they were going to drink to _die_ King of
England, and, amid immense applause, they bawled out 'Gott save _die_
Queen.'  As the punch got to their heads the songs became more
sentimental.  A Bonn student seized the bowl, and wished to drink it
to the Fatherland, when another, who saw no reason why the Bonn
gentleman should consecrate the whole to his patriotism, knocked him
down.  This was the signal for a general row.  Some were sick, some
sang, while a little Jew, who, before, I had considered a steward,
enlivened the scene by dancing about in his night-shirt.  On coming
up the next morning I found the Bonn student offering generally to
fight a duel with any person who asserted he had misbehaved himself.
As no one was valorous enough to do so, the student retired into
'bull.'  At St. Thomas we changed steamers and almost died of heat.
The mulatto turned out very smart, which excited the ire of one of
the planters, who said, 'Look at that fellow with a new coat, he
ought to be diving about naked for half-pence in the water.'
Decency, however, forbade the mulatto taking the kindly meant advice.
Ten days after leaving St. Thomas we arrived at Vera Cruz.  I ought
to {33} have felt some sort of enthusiasm on first seeing America,
but a mosquito had stung me in the eye, so that I saw it under
difficulties; indeed, a person must possess a large amount of
enthusiasm to be aroused into any outward display by the sandbanks
and plaguish-looking shore of Vera Cruz.  I had a letter to a
merchant, who most hospitably entertained me at his house, where I
spent two days bathing my eye in hot water.  On the third day, in
company with some friends, we left for Mexico in the diligence.  In a
European town we should have created some excitement marching to the
coach office, each armed with guns, swords, and revolvers _ad
libitum_.  Here, however, no one even stopped to look at our martial
appearance.  At the diligence office we had a preliminary taste of
the pleasure of travelling in Mexico--travellers are only allowed 25
lbs. of luggage, and as every person's portmanteau weighed twice as
much, the clerk refused to allow any to go.  While my companions were
haranguing inside I slipped my portmanteau, which was far the
largest, under the coachman's seat, and a dollar into his hand.
During the journey I was looked upon as a villain by my
fellow-passengers, because each thought that, if I had not existed,
their traps would have taken the place of mine.  Their position was
certainly uncomfortable--their sole luggage was in their hands,
consisting chiefly, as it appeared to me, of tooth-brushes which they
had taken out of their trunks.  It was four in the evening when we
started.  For several leagues the carriage was pulled along a railway
by mules.  This comfortable method of travelling soon came to an end,
and, with it, all signs of a road; we were jolted along a miserable
path full of ruts, in part paved, or rather unpaved, by the Americans
during their invasion, to make the road impassable.  Little did they
know the Mexicans, as this highroad from the chief seaport to the
capital has never been repaired to the present time.  Alison has
given a glowing description of the beauties of the scenery between
Vera Cruz and Mexico; it might have been Paradise, but, in that
infernal {34} diligence, knocking my head every minute against the
top, and holding on by both hands to the window, I was in no mood to
enjoy the scenery.  Fresh from Europe, I certainly was astonished at
the luxuriant tropical jungle, filled with parrots and humming-birds
instead of sparrows.  While my eyes drank in this new scene, my nose
drank in a succession of pole-cats.  It is a journey of three days
between Vera Cruz and Mexico.  The first day and night is passed in a
tropical heat, after which commences the ascent to the Grand Plateau
of Mexico.  A rose smells as sweet under another name, and, as it
would be difficult to a European to pronounce the names, I do not
much regret forgetting where we stopped the first night; the second
was passed at Puebla di los Angelos, a town remarkable for its
superstition during the rule of the Aztecs, and equally remarkable at
present for its intolerance.  When the cathedral was building, two
angels came down every night and doubled the work done during the
daytime by the mortal masons.  The cathedral is the most beautiful in
the country; every other house is a monastery and a church.  At four
we started again and jolted until three.  Next morning, even under
these difficulties, I could not help admiring the scenery.  The only
three snowy peaks in Mexico were all distinctly visible, while the
road wound through mountains rising perpendicularly from the plain.
One we passed is called after Cortes' wife, and exactly resembles in
its outlines a giant asleep.  At the close of the third day we
reached Mexico.

"When the city was in the midst of a lake and approached by causeways
it might have excited the admiration of Cortes and his army.  In the
midst of a dry swamp it failed to excite mine.  The advance of Cortes
from the shore to the capital was wonderful, but I really think it
was to be preferred to the diligence and unpaved road.  All
sufferings have an end, and mine ended in the diligence hotel.  I had
imagined, from travellers' accounts, that I should be lucky if I got
a corner in a barn with half a dozen mules, but I found myself
sleeping {35} in a comfortable room and dining at a table d'hôte in a
most distressingly civilised manner."

Labouchere does not think it necessary to his dignified narrative to
mention the fact that his tutor accompanied him on this journey, but,
upon a reference to his note-book, we find that the long-suffering
Mentor formed one of the party.  Labouchere is no less severe upon
himself and his iniquities in America than he was in England.  He
wrote:

"We landed at Vera Cruz and proceeded to Mexico.  In two months I
lost all my money and £250 besides at cards.  To induce my Mentor to
pay this sum I retired to a neighbouring town and stated my intention
to remain there until he provided the money.  Here, in the _bena
caliente_, in a small inn, with no companion but the innkeeper, I
remained for a month.  Here I reconsidered my life and determined to
commence afresh.  I asked myself upon what ground I rested my title
to differ from the common race of fools.  Was I clever?  A scholar?
I had read a little.  On most subjects I was ignorant--in society I
could argue, but not converse.  With a lady, with a duenna, with
every person in whose society I found myself, I introduced my sole
subject--gambling.  I told everybody that I had recently lost £6000,
which I imagined raised me in their opinion.  I could not dance, and
I shunned society.  I was conceited, and I was unwilling to confess
my ignorance of anything.  I was an abominable and useless liar, as I
was fond of relating adventures of myself that had really never taken
place.  I was ready to make acquaintance with every person who spoke
to me.  Of music, drawing, and all the lighter arts I knew absolutely
nothing.  I was one thing and one alone--a gambler--on that subject I
could be eloquent; but I felt that I could not consider myself
superior to the generality of mankind on this ground alone.  In
playing even I failed, because, though I theoretically discovered
systems by which I was likely to win, yet, in practice, I could
command myself so little that upon a slight loss I left all to
chance."

{36}

The last entry in his note-book was made by Labouchere in the
seclusion of this little inn at Quotla di Amalpas, and it ends
abruptly.  Perhaps it was interrupted by the arrival of the Mentor,
after his receipt of the letter, the draft of which is given further
on.

"In my inn at Quotla di Amalpas I determined on reaching the States
to entirely give up gambling.  A gambler requires to possess the
greatest command over himself, in which I entirely failed.  To be
very reserved--a reserved person is always supposed to be wiser than
his neighbours.  To be engaged in as many intrigues as is possible
with ladies--nothing forms character so much as intrigues of this
description--_probatum est_.  To learn with a good countenance to pay
delicate compliments and to...."

In the flap of his note-book is the draft of the letter to his tutor,
referred to above, which must be quoted, as it is so extremely
characteristic of the man whose letters were ever, to the very end of
his life, the most frankly illuminative documents as to the state of
mind through which he might be passing.  Incidentally, also, it
cannot fail to suggest to the reader a gleam of compassion for the
problems and trials which must have been the lot of its recipient.
Here it is:


QUOTLA DI AMALPAS.

DEAR SIR,--I have just come back from Cuernava, where I rode over the
worst road even in Mexico.  Pray do not trouble yourself to exercise
your forbearance, or make excuses, as I can assure you they are not
wanted.  If you find the slightest pleasure or amusement in writing
to innkeepers not to give me money, write to every one in the
country, but do not give yourself the trouble to tell me you have
done so, as it is a matter of unimportance to me.  My stopping in
Mexico cannot now be helped, as I certainly shall not leave before
getting some money, and I must then go to England to pay it.  I had
intended not to gamble in America, because of having to pay a double
interest--but man proposes and God disposes.  As R---- says, I made
up a {37} story to avoid paying him.  I could not at present leave my
gambling debts unpaid, or he would be believed.  I shall borrow some
money here, and send to England (not to my father) for some to pay
it, and then go to England to pay it when it becomes due.  It is a
pity having to go back as I should have liked to see a little more of
America, but what is done is done, and cannot be helped.--Yours truly,

HENRY Du PRE LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--I have been offered a place as croupier at a Monté bank, so I
shall not starve.



[1] Born Aug. 14, 1799; died Jan. 29, 1863.

[2] Died April 29, 1874.

[3] I am indebted to Mrs. Hillyer, Mr. Labouchere's eldest sister,
for the above anecdote.

[4] _Truth_, May 28, 1885.

[5] I am indebted to Lord Welby for the above anecdote.  He heard it
from the late Lord Bristol, who was Labouchere's fag at Eton, and
also from the late Mr. Anthony Hammond.

[6] _Truth_, Aug. 8, 1877.

[7] _Truth_, Jan. 31, 1889.

[8] The note-books from which the quotations in this chapter have
been taken are in the possession of the Rev. John Labouchere of
Sculthorpe Rectory, Fakenham.

[9] Edmund Yates, _Recollections and Experiences_; Serjeant
Ballantine, _Experiences of a Barrister's Life_.

[10] _Truth_, Sept. 4, 1890.




{38}

CHAPTER III

TRAVELS AND DIPLOMACY

(1853-1864)

Whether the Mentor resigned his job in despair about the time his
pupil was making prudent resolutions in the seclusion of the little
inn at Quotla di Amalpas, or whether it was decided by the parental
authority that Labouchere might as well continue his search for
wisdom in Mexico by himself, is not certain; but it would seem that,
just about three months after his landing at Vera Cruz, he parted
company with all his English friends, and, with a surprisingly small
sum for such an adventure in his pocket, rode off, and wandered for
eighteen months all over the country.  Then he returned to the
capital, and fell in love with a lady of the circus.  The published
legends belonging to this period of his career are legion.  The
authority for them appears to be almost always Mr. Joseph Hatton, who
was the first writer to produce a biographical sketch of the editor
of _Truth_.  He wrote it for _Harper's Magazine_, where it formed
part of a series which, in 1882, was published in England under the
title of _Journalistic London_.  According to Hatton, Labouchere gave
him certain details of his past in an interview which took place at
his house in Queen Anne's Gate, so that Hatton's evidence, in so far
as _viva voce_ reminiscences are reliable, is unimpeachable.[1]

{39}

Labouchere told him that he travelled with the troupe to which the
lady he admired belonged, and got the job of doorkeeper.  The circus
was a popular one, but the crowds who flocked to it were not all in a
position to pay their entrance with hard cash, so that he was
authorised by the proprietors to accept payment in kind--usually
consisting of oranges or small measures of maize.  A very similar
story is related about him as occurring a year or two later when he
was attaché at Washington, and is corroborated for me by Sir Audley
Gosling, to whom Labouchere related it one day in his house in Old
Palace Yard.  Sir Audley noticed hanging on the wall a large
playbill, and asked what it was.

"It's a funny story," replied Labouchere; "I will tell you about it.
When attaché at Washington I was in the habit of attending almost
nightly a circus, standing often at the artistes' entrance to the
ring.  The proprietor had often scowled at me, and one night asked me
what I meant by trespassing on sacred ground.  I told him I had
formed an honourable attachment for one of his ladies, and simply
stood in the passage to kiss the hem of her robe as she passed by.
'Get out of this, you d--d loafer,' he said.  And I got out.  A few
months later I pointed out to my chief notices in the New York press
of a certain American sparkling wine called, after the district where
it was grown, 'Kitawber.'  I told him I thought a report should be
made on this new vintage, and volunteered to draw up a report for the
Foreign Office.  He seemed surprised by my assiduity and very unusual
zeal (for I never did a stroke of work), and said: 'By all means
go--that is a capital idea of yours.'  The truth was my circus had
removed to Kitawber and with it my fair lady of the _haute école_, so
thither I proceeded.  I presented myself to the proprietor, my rude
friend, and told him I wished for an engagement with his troupe
without salary.  He asked me what my line was, and I told him
standing jumps.  Some obstacles were placed in the ring, over which I
jumped with great success, and my name {40} figures on the playbill
you see hanging there as the 'Bounding Buck of Babylon.'  I wore pink
tights, with a fillet round my head.  My adorable one said I looked a
dear."

It is more probable that these two stories are different versions of
one and the same adventure than that he twice followed a travelling
circus.  No doubt, in recounting the tale, he confused the chronology.

It would appear that the well-known story of his six months'
residence among the Chippeway Indians, usually related as an incident
occurring in the off moments of his diplomatic career, really took
place towards the end of 1853.  Joseph Hatton, without mentioning any
dates, relates it as follows: "By and by he tired of this occupation
(_i.e._ travelling with the circus), and went to the United States.
He found himself at St. Paul, which was then only a cluster of
houses.  Here he met a party of Chippeway Indians going back to their
homes.  He went with them and lived with them for six months, hunting
buffalo, joining in their work and sports, playing cards for wampum
necklaces, and living what to Joaquin Miller would have been a poem
in so many stanzas, but which, to the more prosaic Englishman, was
just seeing life and passing away the time."  More than half a
century later, when Mr. Labouchere was living at Pope's villa, he
invited all the Indian chiefs and their families, who were at that
time taking part in Buffalo Bill's Show called "The Wild West," to
spend a Sunday with him at Twickenham.  They accepted the invitation,
and arrived betimes in the morning.  Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, who was a
visitor at the villa on the occasion, gives a graphic account of Mr.
Labouchere's recognition, in the person of one of the Chippeways, of
the son of one of the nomadic friends of his early youth.  She goes
on to tell the story of Mr. Labouchere's adventures with the Indians,
as she had often heard him tell it.


Nearly sixty years ago, [she says], Henry Labouchere, then an
adventurous lad, made a journey in the west of America.  {41}
Minneapolis was at that time called St. Anthony's Palls, and while he
was there a far-seeing young chemist begged him to buy the land on
which Minneapolis stands--it was to be sold for a very small sum, now
it is worth many millions.  He travelled still farther west with the
Chippeways, who were going to their hunting fields.  The great chief,
Hole in Heaven, was very friendly with him, and he camped in one of
their wigwams for six weeks, the sister of the chief being assigned
to wait upon him.  She cooked game to perfection, roasting wild birds
in clay and larger game before a fire.  The game in those days was
very plentiful and tame, not having found out man to be their natural
enemy.  Sometimes prairie chickens came near enough to be knocked on
the head, and great herds of buffalos still ranged the plains.  The
Indians often killed a buffalo, but Mr. Labouchere was not lucky
enough to get one for himself.  He saw an Indian war-dance, but
discreetly, from a slit in the door of his wigwam, as Hole in Heaven
said that, friendly as they were, at this sacred rite a white face
might infuriate them even to the use of the tomahawk.  Mr. Labouchere
lingered among these American gentlemen until the last steamer had
departed from Fond du Lac, so he was obliged to travel in a canoe
until he reached the eastern end of the lake.[2]


After his experiences in the Wild West, Labouchere made New York his
quarters for some time, and occupied himself with a careful study of
the institutions, political and otherwise, of the American nation,
for which he acquired at this period of his life a profound and
lasting admiration.  In 1883 he was writing to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain
on the subject of Radical policy, and he said in the course of his
letter: "I was caught young and sent to America; there I imbibed the
political views of the country, so that my Radicalism is not a joke,
but perfectly earnest.  My opinions of most of the institutions of
this country is that of Americans--that they are utterly absurd and
ridiculous."[3]  He constantly throughout his career drew upon his
youthful reminiscences of {42} America to point a moral or draw a
comparison, almost invariably favourable to the transatlantic people.
In a famous article which he wrote in 1884, to demonstrate to the
public the wide divergency existing at that time between Whig and
Radical principles, while discussing the financial relations of the
Crown with the country, he said:


The President of the United States regards himself as generously
treated with a salary of £10,000 per annum.  We give half this sum to
a nobleman who condescends to walk before the Chief of the State on
ceremonial occasions with a coloured stick in his hand; and we spend
more than five times this sum in keeping a yacht in commission and
repair on which our sovereign steps two or three times in twenty
years!


In the same article he compared the English system of education with
the American:


If M * * * * wishes to learn what our schools ought to be, let him go
to the State of Illinois.  A child there enters school at the age of
six.  Each school is divided into ten grades; at the end of each year
there is an examination, and a child goes up one or more grades
according to his proficiency.  A lad going through all the grades
acquires an excellent liberal education; if he passes through the
"high school" he is, by a very long degree, the educational superior
of the majority of our youths who have spent years at Eton or at
Harrow.  All this does not cost his parents one cent.  Rich and poor
alike send their children to the public schools, and thus all class
prejudice is early stamped out of the American breast.  Another
advantage of these schools is that boys and girls are taught
together.  The girls thus learn early how to take care of themselves,
and the boys' manners are softened.  When grown up, boys and girls
are not kept apart as though they were each other's natural enemies,
nor are there any ill effects from their associating together.  If
some marry, the relations of those who do not are those of brothers
and sisters.  The Duke of Wellington is reported to have said that
Waterloo was won in the Eton playing fields.  Not only was the Union
maintained in many battlefields, but America has become the most
forward nation {43} in the world owing to her schools.  How pitiably
small and narrow does our school system appear in comparison with
theirs!  Why cannot we do what has been done in America?  Why?
Because the land is too full of men ... ignorant, servile, and aware
that their only chance of succeeding in life is to perpetuate class
distinctions, and to deprive the vast majority of their
fellow-citizens of the possibility of competing with them by
depriving them of the blessings of any real education.  Which would
be to the greater advantage of the country, a Church Establishment
such as ours, or a school establishment such as that of Illinois?
What Radical entertains a doubt?  If so, why do not we at once
substitute the one for the other?[4]


In his letters to the _Daily News_ during the autumn and winter of
1870 and 1871, he wrote from Paris commenting on the behaviour of the
English and American officials of the Diplomatic Corps who remained
in Paris during the siege.  "Diplomats," he wrote on September 28th,
"are little better than old women when they have to act in an
emergency.  Were it not for Mr. Washburne, who was brought up in the
rough-and-ready life of the Far West, instead of serving an
apprenticeship in Courts and Government offices, those who are still
here would be perfectly helpless.  They come to him at all moments,
and although he cannot speak French, for all practical purposes, he
is worth more than all his colleagues put together."  In another
letter he gives an amusing picture of the worried English chargé
d'affaires, immersed in official trivialities: "A singular
remonstrance has been received at the British Embassy.  In the Rue de
Chaillot resides a celebrated English courtesan, called Cora Pearl,
and above her house floats the English flag.  The inhabitants of the
street request the Ambassador of England, 'a country, the purity and
decency of whose manners is well known,' to cause this bit of
bunting, which is a scandal in their eyes, to be hauled down.  I left
Mr. Wodehouse consulting the text-writers upon international law, in
order to discover a precedent for {44} the case."  It contrasts
sharply enough with the glimpse he gives his readers of the American
Embassy.  "I passed the afternoon," he wrote on November 15th,
"greedily devouring the news at the American Legation.  It was a
curious sight--the Chancellerie was crowded with people engaged in
the same occupation.  There were several French journalists, opening
their eyes very wide, under the impression that this would enable
them to understand English.  A Secretary of Legation was sitting at a
table giving audiences to unnumbered ladies who wished to know how
they could leave Paris; or, if this was impossible, how they could
draw on their bankers in New York.  Mr. Washburne walked about
cheerily shaking every one by the hand, and telling them to make
themselves at home.  How different American diplomatists are to the
prim old women who represent us abroad, with a staff of half a dozen
dandies helping each other to do nothing, who have been taught to
regard all who are not of the craft as their natural enemies."  Yet
another quotation from Labouchere's journalistic correspondence,
illustrating his predilection for things American: "The ambulance
which is considered the best is the American.  The wounded are under
canvas, the tents are not cold, and yet the ventilation is admirable.
The American surgeons are far more skilful in the treatment of
gunshot wounds than their French colleagues.  Instead of amputation
they practise resection of the bone.  It is the dream of every French
soldier, if he is wounded, to be taken to this ambulance.  They seem
to be under the impression that, even if their legs are shot off, the
skill of the Esculapii of the United States will make them grow
again.  Be this as it may, a person might be worse off than stretched
on a bed with a slight wound under the tents of the Far West.  The
French have a notion that, go where you may, to the top of a pyramid
or to the top of Mont Blanc, you are sure to meet an Englishman
reading a newspaper; in my experience of the world, the American girl
is far more inevitable than the Britisher; and, of course, under the
stars {45} and stripes which wave over the American tents, she is to
be found, tending the sick, and, when there is nothing more to be got
for them, patiently reading to them or playing at cards with them.  I
have a great weakness for the American girl; she always puts her
heart in what she is about.  When she flirts she does it
conscientiously, and when she nurses a most uninviting-looking
Zouave, or Franc-tireur, she does it equally conscientiously;
besides, as a rule, she is pretty, a gift of nature which I am very
far from undervaluing."

To resume our narrative.  At home the parental and avuncular
authorities had been at work, puzzling as to what career would best
suit the young searcher for wisdom, the irrepressible Eton blood--the
baby of the preparatory school, who, without his milk teeth, was able
to confound the ruffians of the cane and their assistants--the
undaunted enemy of university dons and pedagogues.  Finally, it was
decided that the diplomatic service would be, at any rate for a time,
the best safety-valve for the inquisitive youth.  Henry Labouchere
was on one of his unconventional tours in his beloved Wild West when
he heard of his first diplomatic appointment.  He was appointed
attaché at Washington on July 16, 1854.

Mr. Crampton had been Minister at Washington since 1852, and, at the
time of Labouchere taking up his duties at the Legation, Lord Elgin,
then Governor of Canada, was on a special mission to Washington.  Mr.
Crampton had not succeeded in making himself at all agreeable to the
American statesmen, and during the Crimean War he had nearly caused a
rupture between Great Britain and the United States over the question
of recruiting.  The exigencies of war had brought about the
reprehensible practice of raising various foreign corps and pressing
them--or crimping them--into the British service.  Crampton very
actively forwarded the schemes of his Government by encouraging the
recruiting of soldiers within the territories of the United States.
It was not, however, until 1856 that the President {46} of the United
States came to a determination to discontinue official intercourse
with him on account of the recruiting question.  This necessitated
his removal from Washington, and the feeling against him in the
United States was so strong that diplomatic relations were not
renewed with Great Britain for more than six months.[5]  There is no
evidence of any kind to support the statements that have appeared
from time to time in the press, to the effect that Henry Labouchere
was involved in the crimping business.  During the time he spent at
Washington he seems to have been an assiduous worker--to which the
number of despatches in his handwriting preserved in the archives of
the Record Office bear witness.

He related in _Truth_, some years later, how his energy received a
check at the very outset of his career.  "When I joined the
diplomatic service," he said, "I was sent as attaché to a legation
where a cynic was the minister.  New brooms sweep clean.  Every
morning I appeared, eager to be employed, a sort of besom tied up in
red tape.  Said the cynic to me: 'If you fancy that you are likely to
get on in the service by hard work, you will soon discover your
error; far better will it be for you if you can prove that some
relation of yours is the sixteenth cousin of the porter at the
Foreign Office.'  It was not long before I discovered that the cynic
was right."

It was the fate of Henry Labouchere, wherever he went, to create an
atmosphere of unconventionality, which formed a fitting background
for the numberless stories which seem still to collect and grow round
his name as time goes on.  During one of Mr. Crampton's absences from
the Legation, he had an opportunity of exercising the official
reserve and {47} discretion for which the English diplomats have
always been so famous.  An American citizen called one morning to see
Mr. Crampton.  "I want to see the boss," he said.  "You can't--he is
out," replied Labouchere.  "But you can see me."  "You are no good,"
replied the American.  "I must see the boss.  I'll wait."  "Very
well," calmly said the attaché, and went on with his letter-writing.
The visitor sat down and waited for a considerable time.  At last he
said: "I've been fooling round here two hours; has the chief come in
yet?"--"No; you will see him drive up to the front door when he
returns."--"How long do you reckon he will be before he comes?"
"Well," said Labouchere, "he went to Canada yesterday; I should say
he'll be here in about six weeks."

In spite of all his good resolutions Labouchere was still a gambler,
and once found himself in what might have been an awkward scrape
owing to this propensity.  All who knew him at all intimately must
often have heard him tell the following episode, which I will relate
as nearly as possible in his own words: "While I was attaché at
Washington I was sent by the minister to look after some Irish
patriots at Boston.  I took up my residence at a small hotel, and
wrote down an imaginary name in the hotel book as mine.  In the
evening I went to a gambling establishment, where I lost all the
money I had with me except half a dollar.  Then I went to bed,
satisfied with my prowess.  The next morning the bailiffs seized on
the hotel for debt, and all the guests were requested to pay their
bills and to take away their luggage.  I could not pay mine, and so I
could not take away my luggage.  All that I could do was to write to
Washington for a remittance, and to wait two days for its arrival.
The first day I walked about, and spent my half dollar on food.  It
was summer, so I slept on a bench on the common, and in the morning
went to the bay to wash myself.  I felt independent of all the cares
and troubles of civilisation.  But I had nothing with which to buy
myself a breakfast.  {48} I grew hungry and, towards evening, more
hungry still, so much so that I entered a restaurant and ordered
dinner, without any clear idea how I was to pay for it, except by
leaving my coat in pledge.  In those days Boston restaurants were
mostly in cellars, and there was a bar near the door, where the
proprietor sat to receive payment.  As I ate my dinner I observed
that all the waiters, who were Irishmen, were continually staring at
me, and evidently speaking of me to each other.  A guilty conscience
made me think that this was because I had an impecunious look, and
that they were discussing whether my clothes would cover my bill.  At
last one of them approached me, and said: "I beg your pardon, sir;
are you the patriot Meagher?"  Now this patriot was a gentleman who
had aided Smith O'Brien in his Irish rising, had been sent to
Australia, and had escaped thence to the United States.  It was my
business to look after patriots, so I put my finger before my lips,
and said: "Hush!" while I cast up my eyes to the ceiling as though I
saw a vision of Erin beckoning to me.  It was felt at once that I was
Meagher.  The choicest viands were placed before me, and most
excellent wine.  When I had done justice to all the good things I
approached the bar and asked boldly for my bill.  The proprietor,
also an Irishman said: "From a man like you, who has suffered in the
good cause, I can take no money; allow a brother patriot to shake you
by the hand."  I allowed him.  I further allowed all the waiters to
shake hands with me, and stalked forth with the stern, resolved, but
somewhat condescendingly dismal air which I have seen assumed by
patriots in exile.  Again I slept on the common, again I washed in
the bay.  Then I went to the post office, found a letter for me from
Washington with some money in it, and breakfasted."

Another anecdote Labouchere was fond of recalling about his
Washington days was the following: Having planned a little holiday
excursion, he found at the Chancellerie a letter awaiting him,
addressed in the well-known handwriting of his {49} chief.  Shrewdly
suspecting that the instructions it contained would render his
holiday impossible, he put the letter unopened in his coat-tail
pocket, and carried out with great satisfaction to himself his
holiday intentions.  Then he opened his letter, and found that his
suspicions of its contents had been very well founded.  He wrote a
nice letter of apology to his chief, beginning, "Your letter has
followed me here," which was, after all, nothing but the simple truth!

"It is a funny thing," Labouchere would often say, speaking of
treaties and diplomatic negotiations in general, "to notice on what
small matters success or the reverse is dependent"; and he would then
relate how, when he was attaché at Washington, he went down with the
British Minister to a small inn at Virginia to meet Mr. Marcy, the
Secretary of State for the United States, for the purpose of
discussing a reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States.
Mr. Marcy, in general the most genial and agreeable of men, was as
cross as a bear, and would agree to nothing.  Labouchere asked the
secretary to tell him, in confidence, what was the matter with his
chief.  The secretary replied: "He is not getting his rubber of
whist."  After that the British Minister proposed a rubber of whist
every night, which he invariably lost.  Mr. Marcy was immensely
pleased at beating the Britishers at, what he called "their own
game," and his good humour returned.  "Every morning," Labouchere
related, "when the details of the treaty were being discussed, we had
our revenge, and scored a few points for Canada."

Labouchere was transferred to the Legation at Munich in December,
1855.  "Old King Louis was then alive," he wrote thirty years later,
"although he had been deposed for making a fool of himself over Lola
Montes.  I used frequently to meet him in the streets, when he always
stopped me to ask how Queen Victoria was.  I had at last respectfully
to tell him that Her Majesty was not in the habit of writing to me
every day respecting her health."


{50}

From Munich he went to Stockholm in 1857.  I cannot resist quoting in
full his account of the duel he fought while at Stockholm with the
Austrian chargé d'affaires, it is so extremely characteristic of him
both in spirit and style.

At Stockholm "I found favour with my superiors for the curious reason
that I challenged an Austrian chargé d'affaires.  Never was there a
more absurd affair.  There was an Englishman who had been challenged
by a Swede, whom he declined to fight.  A few days later the
Englishman went with my Minister to a box in the theatre.  The next
day at a club the Austrian chargé d'affaires said before me and
others that Englishmen had odd ideas of honour, and more particularly
English Ministers.  I replied that Englishmen were not so silly as to
fight duels, and that the English Minister was not a dishonourable
man for appearing in a theatre with his countrymen.  As it was
generally felt that I ought to challenge this Austrian, I 'put myself
in the hands' of the French and Prussian Ministers.  A few hours
later my seconds came to me.  I expected that they were going to tell
me that the Austrian had apologised.  Not at all.  With a cheerful
smile they observed: 'It is arranged for to-morrow morning--pistols.'
At seven o'clock A.M. they reappeared.  Their countenances were
downcast.  'I have lost the mould for the bullets of my duelling
pistols,' observed the Prussian, 'and we have had to borrow a pair of
pistols, for whose accuracy of aim I cannot vouch.'  This inwardly
rejoiced me, but, of course, I pretended to share in the regret of my
seconds.  We sat down to an early breakfast.  'You are young, I am
old,' said the Frenchman; 'would that I could take your place.'  I
wished it as sincerely as he did, but I tried to assume an air of
rather liking my position, and I grinned a ghastly grin.  Then we
started for the park.  The opposition had not arrived; but there was
a surgeon, who had been kindly requested to attend by my sympathising
friends.  'An accident may happen,' observed the Prussian; 'do you
wish to confide to me any dispositions that you may {51} desire to be
carried out after----?' and he sighed in a horribly suggestive
manner.  'No,' I said; I had nothing particular to confide; and as I
looked at the surgeon I thought what an idiot I was to make myself
the target for an Austrian to aim at, in order to establish the
principle that Englishmen have a perfect right to decline to fight
duels.  There was a want of logic about the entire proceeding that
went to my heart.  To be killed is bad enough, but to be killed
paradoxically is still worse.  Soon the Austrian and his seconds
appeared.  I never felt more dismal in my life.  The Austrian stood
apart; I stood apart.  The surgeon already eyed me as a 'subject.'
The seconds consulted; then the Frenchman stepped out twelve paces.
He had very short legs, and they seemed to me shorter than ever.
After this came the loading of the pistols.  Sometimes, I thought,
seconds do not put in the bullets; this comforted me, but only for a
moment, for the bullets were rammed down with cheerful energy.  By
this time we had been placed facing each other.  A pistol was given
to each of us.  'I am to give the signal,' said the Prussian; 'I
shall count one, two, three, and then at the word fire, you will both
fire.  Gentlemen, are you ready?'  We both nodded.  'One, two, three,
fire!' and both our pistols went off.  No harm had been done.  I felt
considerably relieved when to my horror the Frenchman stepped up to
me, and said: 'I think that I ought to demand a second shot for you,
but mind, if nothing occurs again, I shall not allow a third shot.'
'Ye--es,' I said; so we had a second shot, with the same result.
Knowing that my Frenchman was a man of his word, I felt now that I
might at no risk to myself display my valour, so I demanded a third
shot.  The seconds consulted together; for a moment I feared that
they were going to grant my request, and I was greatly relieved when
they informed me that they considered that two shots were amply
sufficient.  I was delighted, but I pretended to be most unhappy, and
religiously kept up the farce of being an aggrieved person."[6]

{52}

He was at Frankfort and St. Petersburg between November, 1858, and
the summer of 1860.  While he was at Frankfort he made the
acquaintance of Bismarck, who was the Prussian representative at the
restored Diet of Frankfort.  Labouchere had a constitutional dislike
of the German people, with the exception of the great Chancellor.  He
wrote some years later: "The only Prussian I ever knew who was an
agreeable man was Bismarck.  All others with whom I have been
thrown--and I have lived for years in Germany--were proud as
Scotchmen, cold as New Englanders, and touchy as only Prussians can
be.  I once had a friend among them.  His name was Buckenbrock.  I
inadvertently called him Butterbrod.  We have never spoken since!"
Bismarck was an eminently social person, fond of drinking and
smoking, and many a time did Labouchere listen to his jovial
loud-toned talk in the cafés at Frankfort.  "Bismarck," he wrote in
later life, "used to pass entire nights drinking beer in a garden
overlooking the Main.  In the morning after a night passed in
beer-drinking he would write his despatches, then issue forth on a
white horse for a ride, and on his return, attend the Diet, of which
he was a member."[7]  It is interesting to note how very similar were
the judgments of these two exceedingly different characters upon the
subject of diplomacy and its aspects of absurdity and pomposity.
Bismarck wrote from Frankfort: "Frankfort is hideously tiresome.  The
people here worry themselves about the merest rubbish, and these
diplomatists with their pompous peddling already appear to me a good
deal more ridiculous than a member of the second chamber in all the
pride of his lofty station.  Unless external accidents should accrue,
... I know exactly how much we shall effect in one, two, or five
years from the present time, and will engage to do it all myself
within four-and-twenty hours, if the others will only be truthful and
sensible throughout one single day.  I never doubted that, one and
all, these gentlemen prepared their {53} dishes _à l'eau_, but such
thin, mawkish water soup as this, devoid of the least symptom of
richness, positively astounds me.  Send me your village schoolmaster
or road inspector, clean washed and combed; they will make just as
good diplomatists as these."[8]  Of diplomatic literature Bismarck
observed: "For the most part it is nothing but paper and ink.  If you
wanted to utilise it for historical purposes, you could not get
anything worth having out of it.  I believe it is the rule to allow
historians to consult the F. O. Archives at the expiration of thirty
years (after date of despatches, etc.).  They might be permitted to
examine them much sooner, for the despatches and letters, when they
contain any information at all, are quite unintelligible to those
unacquainted with the persons and relations treated of in them."[9]
Labouchere wrote in 1889: "If all Foreign Office telegrams were
published, they would be curious reading.  Years ago I was an attaché
at Stockholm.  The present Queen, then Duchess of Ostrogotha, had a
baby, and a telegram came from the Foreign Office desiring that Her
Majesty's congratulations should be offered, and that she should be
informed how the mother and child were.  The Minister was away, so
off I went to the Palace to convey the message and to inquire about
the health of the pair.  A solemn gentleman received me.  I informed
him of my orders, and requested him to say what I was to reply.  "Her
Royal Highness," he replied, "is as well as can be expected, but His
Royal Highness is suffering a little internally, and it is thought
that this is due to the milk of the wet nurse having been slightly
sour yesterday evening."  I telegraphed this to the Foreign
Office."[10]

In a speech he made in the House of Commons,[4] protesting against a
sum of nearly £50,000 being voted for the salaries and expenses of
the department for Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, Mr. Labouchere said, {54} referring in particular to Foreign
Office messengers, that very often these gentlemen were sent abroad,
at a very large cost to the country, for no practical object
whatever.  They went on a certain route, and the business was made up
for them as they went.  He had had the honour to serve at one time
under Sir Henry Bulwer at Constantinople.  Now Sir Henry Bulwer was
always ill; and on one occasion he remembered making a calculation
that a box of pills Sir Henry was anxious to obtain, and which was
sent out by a Foreign Office messenger, cost the country from £200 to
£300.  Probably the pills did Sir Henry good, and pills were much
more useful than a good deal of the stuff sent out by the Foreign
Office.  He went on to tell the House that he had himself been in the
diplomatic service for ten years, and he had spent a great deal of
his time in ciphering and deciphering telegrams, and that he could
not remember half a dozen of them that any man, woman, or child in
the whole world would have taken any trouble to decipher for any
information that could have been derived from them.

Labouchere used always to say that, while he was attaché at
Frankfort, he spent most of his time at Wiesbaden, Homburg, or Baden,
because he found the Diet of the German Confederation "rather a dull
sort of affair."  He managed, however, to make a great many very
staunch friends at this period of his life.  One of these was the old
Duchess of Cambridge.  He was a frequent visitor at the Schloss of
Ruppenheim, which was the summer meeting-place of the main stock and
branches of the Hesses.  The old Duchess made a great fuss over him,
for he could speak the German of Hanover so well that she could
understand his banter and enjoy it.  His popularity at Frankfort,
according to his own account, rested on a very simple basis.  Great
Britain was represented at the Diet by Sir Alexander Malet, one of
the most popular chiefs to be found in the Service.  "But I was even
more appreciated than my chief," he would relate, "and this is why.
Sometimes there was a ball at the {55} Court, which we were expected
to attend.  At my first ball supper I found myself next to a grandee,
gorgeous in stars and ribbons.  The servant came to pour out
champagne.  I shook my head, for I detest champagne.  The grandee
nudged me, and said, 'Let him pour it out.'  This I did, and he
explained to me that our host never gave his guests more than one
glass, 'So you see, if I drink yours, I shall have two.'  After this
there used to be quite a struggle to sit near me at Court suppers."

Yet another ridiculous reminiscence of the Court of Darmstadt, dating
from his attaché days at Frankfort.  Sir Alexander Malet was fond of
whist, and it was felt, said Labouchere, that an English diplomatist
could not be expected to play the game for less than florin points.
Such stakes, however, the fortune of no Darmstadt nobleman could
stand.  A sort of joint purse was therefore formed, which was
entrusted to the three best players of the grand-ducal Court, and
these champions encountered the Englishman.  "It was amusing,"
Labouchere would relate, "to watch the anxiety depicted on all
countenances: when the Minister won all was gloom; when he lost,
counts and countesses, barons and baronesses, skipped about in high
glee, like the hills of the Psalmist."

Bismarck was Ambassador at St. Petersburg during the year that
Labouchere was there as attaché in 1860, so it is very probable that
he continued to imbibe wisdom from listening to the conversation of
the great German, for whose powers of statecraft he always expressed
the warmest admiration.  The following amusing episode occurred
during his year at St. Petersburg.  He was in love with the wife of
one of the gentlemen about the Court.  So was a tall, smart young
Frenchman.  Labouchere was desperately jealous of his rival, but
could think of no means of outwitting him.  At a Court function they
were both standing near the object of their admiration, the Frenchman
making, it seemed to Labouchere, marked advances in the lady's
favour.  {56} However he was soon called away for some reason or
another.  Labouchere, in his eagerness to seize the opportunity and
advance his own suit, inadvertently tipped his cup of black coffee
over the lady's magnificent yellow satin train.  He was in despair,
but, seeing that she had not yet perceived the tragedy, he slipped
the cup and saucer into his tail-coat pocket, and then, with an air
of commiseration, drew her attention to the ruined gown.  "Who did
it?" she exclaimed furiously.  Labouchere put his finger to his lips,
at the same time looking significantly at the form of his rival, at
that moment disappearing through the doorway.  "I know who did it,"
he said, "but wild horses would not induce me to tell you."  Of
course, the lady had followed the direction of his glance.  She
exclaimed: "That ruffian, I will never speak to him again as long as
I live!"  History does not relate how the adventure proceeded for the
handsome Frenchman's rival.

Labouchere did not think much of the Russians.  He used to say that
they were like monkeys, eager to copy the manners of civilised
Europe, but that the copy they succeeded in producing was a daub and
not a picture, because they always exaggerated their originals.  When
they were polite, they were too polite; when they were copying
Frenchmen, they were too much like dancing masters; and when they
were copying Englishmen they were too much like grooms.  He had an
amusing account to give of a visit he once paid to a Russian country
house.  "Card-playing, eating and drinking--and more especially the
latter," he related--"went on all day and nearly all night.  I never
could understand where my bedroom was, for the excellent reason, as I
at length discovered, that I hadn't one.  At a late hour I saw
several of the guests heaping up in corners cushions which they had
taken from sofas, to serve as beds, so I followed their example.
When I woke up in the morning I could not see any apparatus to wash
in, so I filled a china bowl with water, and, having dried myself
with a tablecloth which I found in an adjoining room, I dressed."  He
{57} gave a charming thumb-nail sketch of a Russian drawing-room, à
propos of a visit of Mr. Augustus Lumley to the Russian capital.  Mr.
Lumley was a famous cotillon leader.  "I was at St. Petersburg when
Mr. Lumley arrived on a visit.  He was solemnly introduced to the
Russian leader of cotillons, who is invariably an officer of
distinction, as a colleague.  It was like the meeting between two
famous generals, and reminded me of the pictures of Wellington and
Blücher on the field of Waterloo.  It took place at a ball, and the
Russian, with chivalrous courtesy, offered to surrender to his
English colleague the direction of the cotillon."

The Emperor of Russia[12] once stood beside Henry Labouchere whilst
he was playing at écarté to watch his game.  The occasion was a ball
given by the Empress to the Emperor on his birthday.  Labouchere and
his adversary were both at four, and it was Labouchere's deal.
"Now," said the Emperor, "let us see whether you can turn up the
king."  Labouchere dealt, and then held out the turn-up card,
observing: "Your orders have been obeyed, sir."  The Emperor asked
him, as often as a dozen times subsequently, how he had managed it,
and never could be persuaded that it was a mere coincidence, and that
the young attaché had taken the chance of the card being a king.  It
was a trifling example of the luck, or its reverse, that seemed to be
for ever crossing and recrossing Labouchere's path, in spite of his
own belief in nothing but the logical sequence of events.

A popular anecdote of his Petersburg days is the following: A fussy
German nobleman pushed his way into the Chancellerie, where
Labouchere was working, asking to see the Ambassador.  "Please take a
chair," said the secretary; "he will be here soon."  "But, young
man," blustered the German, "do you know who I am?"  And he poured
out a string of imposing titles.  Labouchere looked up in
well-simulated awe.  "Pray take two chairs," he remarked quietly, and
went on writing.

{58}

When Khalil Pasha was recalled from being Ambassador in Paris,
Labouchere published the following reminiscence of his year in the
Russian capital: "Khalil Pasha once saved me from a heavy loss, and
that is why I take an interest in him.  He, a Russian, and I sat down
one evening to have a quiet rubber.  The Russians have a hideous
device of playing with what they call a zero; that is to say, a zero
is added to all winnings and losses, so that 10 stands for 100, etc.
When Khalil and the Russians had won their dummies, I found to my
horror that, with the zero, I had lost about £4000.  Then it came to
my turn to take dummy.  I had won a game, and we were playing for the
odd trick in the last game.  If I failed to win it I should lose
about £8000.  Only two cards remained in hand.  I had marked up six
tricks and my opponents five.  Khalil had the lead; he had the best
trump and a thirteenth card.  The only other trump was in the hands
of the dummy.  He had, therefore, only to play his trump and then the
thirteenth card to win the rubber, when he let drop the latter card,
for his fingers were of a very 'thumby' description.  Before he could
take it up I pushed the dummy's trump on it and claimed the trick.
The Russian howled, Khalil howled; they said this was very sharp
practice.  I replied that whist is essentially a game of sharp
practice, and that I was acting in accordance with the rules.  The
lookers-on were appealed to, and, of course, gave it in my favour.
Thus did I make, or rather save, £8000 against Russia and Turkey in
alliance, through the fault of the Turk; and it seems to me that the
poor Ottoman, now that he is at war (1877) with his ally of the
card-table, is losing the game, much as Khalil lost his game of whist
to me.  To have good cards is one thing, to know how to make use of
them quite another."[13]

Labouchere used to tell a good story of how he got at the secrets of
the Russian Government.  His laundress was a handsome woman, and
having made friends with her on {59} other than professional grounds,
she happened to mention that her husband was a compositor in the
government printing office.  The minutes of the Cabinet councils were
printed in French, of which the printers, of course, understood
nothing.  Labouchere persuaded her, for a consideration, to obtain
from her husband the loose sheets from which the minutes had been
printed.  They were brought to him by the faithful woman every week,
concealed among his starched shirts and collars.  As soon as Lord
John Russell discovered the source of the interesting information
that reached him from Petersburg, he put a stop to the simple
intrigue.  Labouchere would always wind up his narrative of this
episode with the words: "For what reason, I wonder, did Russell
imagine, diplomacy was invented?"

After Petersburg, Dresden was Labouchere's next appointment.  He had
previously assiduously studied the German language, in which, being a
born linguist, he was remarkably proficient.  He had been for a time
to Marburg to reside in a German family for the purpose of acquiring
conversational fluency.  All through his life one of his fads
consisted in working out on how small an income an economical family
might live in comfort, and he used frequently to commend the
management of means practised in the bourgeois family at Marburg
where he boarded.  It consisted of a mother, two daughters, a father,
and an elementary maid-of-all-work.  The daughters did the housework
alternately.  The daughter, whose turn it was to be the young lady,
used to dress herself gorgeously every afternoon and evening,
receiving visitors or paying calls.  She would play Chopin and
Beethoven on the pianoforte, and make herself an exceedingly
agreeable social personage.  The following week she would retire to
the domestic regions and be an excellent servant, while her sister
took her turn as _femme du monde_.  Occasionally the whole family,
including Labouchere, would be invited to a party.  It was the custom
on such occasions for both the daughters to be "young {60} ladies."
The maid-of-all-work would accompany them to the neighbour's house
whither they had been bidden, carrying their suppers in paper
bags--for the hospitality proffered at Marburg was intellectual, not
material.  All the guests brought similar paper bags, and at the
conclusion of the repast the remains of the various meals were
carefully collected by their respective owners, and carried home to
figure at the next day's _mittagessen_.  Labouchere used often to
assert that the evening parties at Marburg were the most delightful
and amusing ones he ever attended.  While there he frequented the
hospital, and attended the lectures given for the instruction of the
medical students.  He was always fond of developing extraordinary
theories on the subject of medical science, more remarkable for their
originality than for their probable ultimate utility.  The authority
upon which these theories would be based was invariably that of the
lecturer at the Marburg Hospital.  Even as late as 1905, Mr.
Labouchere still remembered his medical student days.  He wrote to
one of his sisters in that year on the occasion of her son becoming a
doctor: "A doctor is a good profession.  I learnt doctoring at
Marburg in order to learn German.  I rather liked it, and have vainly
offered to doctor people gratis since then, but no one seems
inclined."

Between his diplomatic appointments at Frankfort and Petersburg,
Labouchere spent several months at Florence, and he described in
_Truth_ how it was that he came to have a year's free time on his
hands: "Once did I get the better of the Foreign Office.  I was on
leave in Italy when I received a notification that Her Majesty had
kindly thought fit to appoint me Secretary of Legation to the
Republic of Parana.  I had never heard of this republic.  After
diligent inquiry, I learnt that Parana was a sort of Federal town on
the River Plate, but that a few months previously the republic of
that name had shared the fate of the Kilkenny cats.  So I remained in
Italy, and comfortably drew my salary like a bishop of a see _in
partibus infidelium_.  A year later came a {61} despatch couched in
language more remarkable for its strength than its civility, asking
me what I meant by not proceeding to my post.  I replied that I had
passed the twelve months in making diligent inquiries respecting the
whereabouts of the Republic of Parana, hitherto without success, but
if his lordship would kindly inform me where it was, I need hardly
say that I would hasten there!"[14]

While in Florence Labouchere witnessed the revolution which deposed
the Grand Duke and provided Tuscany with a provisional government of
her own choice, preparatory to the union of all the Italian States
under the King of Sardinia.  He was a personal friend of Mr.
(afterwards Sir) James Hudson, the English Minister at Turin, whose
Nationalist sympathies, like Labouchere's, were well known, and he
was an invaluable reporter to the Liberals in Turin of the news of
the struggle for liberty in Tuscany.  On the morning of the
revolution, after the Grand Duke and his family had left the Pitti
Palace, he, with many of his revolutionary friends, entered the
forsaken home of Austrian royalty, and had the astuteness to procure
on the spot what was left of the famous Metternich Johannisberger for
the newly founded _Unione_ Club, of which he was a member.  He had an
amusing story to tell about the flight of the grand-ducal family from
the City of Flowers, which is best repeated in his own words, as he
used to relate it to his Florentine friends after he had returned to
end his days in the place which he had loved so well in his youth.
"The news was brought back here by some of the people who had seen
them off the premises, that, on the road to Bologna, they all got out
and stopped an hour or two at an inn, where they all sat in a row
crying.  After this had gone on for some time, it was discovered that
the whole party had forgotten their pocket-handkerchiefs.
Fortunately the Grand Duchess had on a white petticoat with very
ample frills, so she went round to each of the grand-ducal family in
turn, and wiped their {62} eyes and noses for them in the frills of
her petticoat.  And then she did the same for the ladies and
gentlemen in waiting."

"Do I think that incident really is true?" he would reply to his
incredulous audience, "probably not.  But from what I know of
royalties in general, and from what I remember about the grand-ducal
family of Tuscany in particular, I think that it is exceedingly
probable that they would start out on an expedition of that kind
without a pocket-handkerchief between them."[15]  His personal
reminiscences of Victor Emmanuel II. and of Cavour were of the
raciest description and would enthral his hearers by the hour, told
as only he could tell them, with all the decorative touches of local
colour and local dialect.

He was also very fond of telling a story about an outrageous
compliment he paid to a lady belonging to the Court of the Grand
Duchess, which, if true, showed that at least one of the resolutions
he had made in the inn at Quotla di Amalpas had been carried into
successful practice: "The Grand Duchess of Tuscany had a venerable
maid of honour above seventy years of age.  She had piercing black
eyes, and looked like an old postchaise, painted up and with new
lamps.  'How old do you think I am?' she once asked me, with a
simpering smile that caused my blood to run cold.  I hesitated, and
then said 'Twenty.'  'Flatterer,' she replied, tapping me with her
fan, 'I am twenty-five.'

Having become third secretary in November, 1862, Labouchere was
appointed to Constantinople.  He wrote in _Truth_ nearly thirty years
later: "I was once Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople and I
passed my time reading up Lord Stratford's despatches before and
during the Crimean War.  No one could have recognised them as the
originals from which Mr. Kinglake drew his material for a narrative
of the Ambassador's diplomatic action.  The fact was that Lord
Stratford was one of the most detestable of the human race.  {63} He
was arrogant, resentful, and spiteful.  He hated the Emperor Nicholas
because he had declined to receive him as Ambassador to Russia, and
the Crimean War was his revenge.  In every way he endeavoured to
envenom the quarrel and to make war certain.  His power at
Constantinople was enormous.  This was because, whilst the
Ambassadors of other Powers changed, his stay there seemed eternal.
A Grand Vizier, or a Minister of Foreign Affairs, knew that, if he
offended the English Ambassador, he would never cease plotting to
drive him out, and to keep him out of power.  He therefore thought it
better to keep on good terms with him and to submit to his arrogance.
But Lord Stratford never used his power for good.  It was enough for
him to get the Sultan to publish a decree.  This he would send home
as evidence of good government.  He never, however, explained that
the decree, when published, remained a dead letter.  When Sir Henry
Bulwer (Lord Dalling) was sent as Commissioner to the Principalities,
he passed a considerable time (as indeed was necessary) at
Constantinople.  Lord Stratford knew that Sir Henry wanted to replace
him, and he feared that he would succeed in doing so.  His rage and
indignation were therefore unbounded.  One day the Ambassador and the
Commissioner were together at the Embassy.  'I know,' said the
Ambassador, 'that you are trying to get my place,' and he shook his
fist in the face of Sir Henry, who mildly surveyed him and shrugged
his shoulders."

Sir Horace Rumbold writes charmingly of Henry Labouchere at
Constantinople in 1863.  "In August," he says, "the torrid heat drove
me to seek for a while the cool breezes of the Bosphorus, and I then,
for the first time, became acquainted with the wonders of
Constantinople.  Here I found at the Embassy Edward Herbert and got
to know that remarkable, _original_, and most talented and
kind-hearted of would-be cynics, Henry Labouchere."[16]  Later on, in
the same volume of reminiscences, he gives another picture of {64}
the young secretary, whose diplomatic career was, however, soon to
come to a close.  "The Pisani dynasty were still masters of the
situation when I arrived.  Under the, in many ways, unfortunate
tenure of the Embassy by Sir Henry Bulwer, Alexander Pisani, best
known as the 'Count,' who was simply the Keeper of the Archives, had
been made head of the Diplomatic Chancellerie of the Embassy, to the
intense disgust of successive secretaries properly belonging to the
Service.  Pisani, it was said, had extorted this abnormal appointment
from his chief by threatening to resign and write his memoirs.  Henry
Labouchere, among others, greatly resented the arrangement.  Some
years before, he had a passage of arms with the 'Count,' who had
reproved him, so to speak, officially for absenting himself for the
day from the Chancery on some occasion, without applying to him for
leave to do so.  The ridiculous affair was referred to Sir Henry
Bulwer, and gave my friend Labby a charming opportunity of describing
the 'Count' in a formal letter to the Ambassador.  'It seems to me,'
he wrote, 'a singular dispensation that places a Greek nobleman of
Venetian extraction, who profited by the advantages of a Pera
education, in authority over a body of English Gentlemen.'"

Mr. Labouchere was always very amusing on the subject of his chief at
Constantinople.  He said that Lord Balling could not understand the
value of money.  He was so generous that he was always in financial
difficulties.  At one time the Embassy was reduced to such straits
that there was no money to buy any decent wine.  The difficulty was
met in the following manner: At official dinners the grand-looking
_maître d'hôtel_ would solemnly say before pouring out the wine,
"Château Lafitte '48," or "La Rose '52," and so on, all through
dinner.  As a matter of fact, the wine had really come from the
neighbouring Greek isles, and had been doctored with an infusion of
prunes to tone down the flavour of tar, which is inseparable from
these insular vintages.  Lord Dalling himself was so anxious to
please that he would {65} quaff glass after glass of the horrible
beverage, swallowing numberless pills the while as an antidote.

There are many versions of the incident with which Labouchere chose
to conclude his relations with the Diplomatic Service.  The Foreign
Office records of the date are not yet available, but I am indebted
to Sir Audley Gosling for his recollections of the affair as it
happened.  In the summer of 1864, Labouchere found himself at
Baden-Baden, enjoying the relaxation of a little gambling after his
strenuous work in the service of his country.  While there he
received from Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, the usual
stereotyped announcement of his promotion in the Diplomatic Service.
It ran: "I have to inform you that Her Majesty has, on my
recommendation, been pleased to promote you to be a Second Secretary
in the Diplomatic Service to reside at Buenos Ayres."

Labouchere is said to have replied as follows: "I have the honour to
acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's despatch, informing me of
my promotion as Second Secretary to Her Majesty's Legation at Buenos
Ayres.  I beg to state that, if residing at Baden-Baden I can fulfil
those duties, I shall be pleased to accept the appointment."  As this
was the second joke he had played on Lord Russell, he was politely
told that there was no further use for his services.[17]

A successful "system" is not an essential part of the educational
equipment of a diplomat, but it may on occasion be a very useful
extra to his other accomplishments.  Mr. Labouchere found it so.  "I
used at one time," he said, "to take the waters every year at
Homburg, and I invariably paid the expenses of my trip out of my
winnings at the gambling-tables.  It may have been luck, or it may
have been system; but I give my system for what it is worth.  I {66}
used to write the following figures on a piece of paper: 3, 4, 5, 6,
7.  My stake was always the top and bottom figure added together.  If
I won, I scratched out these figures; if I lost, I wrote down the
stake at the bottom of the figures, and I went on playing until all
the figures on my piece of paper were erased.  Thus my first stake
(and I played indifferently on red or black) would be ten.  If I won
it, I scratched out three and seven.  My next stake would be ten
again, as four and six make ten.  If I lost it, I wrote down ten at
the bottom of my list of figures, and played fourteen, being the
addition of the first and last figure on the list, viz. fourteen.
The basis of the 'system' was this.  Before reaching the maximum, I
could play a series of even chances for about two hours, and if
during these two hours I won one quarter as many times as the bank,
plus five, all my figures were erased.  During these two hours an
even chance would be produced two hundred times.  If, therefore, I
won fifty-five times, and the bank won one hundred and forty-five
times, I was the winner of twenty-five napoleons, florins, or
whatever was my unit.  Now let any one produce an even chance by
tossing up a coin and always crying 'heads,' he will find that he may
go on until Doomsday before the 'tails' exceed the 'heads,' or the
'heads' exceed the 'tails,' by ninety-five.  I found this system in a
letter from Condorcet to a friend, which I read in a book that I
purchased at a stall on the 'Quai' at Paris.  It may have been, as I
have said, only luck; but all I can say is, that whenever I played it
I invariably won."

One of Mr. Labouchere's oldest friends, Mrs. Crawford, recently wrote
to me a letter in which she made the following lucid remarks about
his career in the Diplomatic Service: "I was acquainted," she says,
"with many of his diplomatic comrades, and they often spoke of him in
chat with me.  Some were friendly, some were not.  He had a very
unguarded tongue, and discharged his shafts of satire, irony, humour
in all directions, and every arrow that hit made an {67} enemy.  I,
mentally, used to take this into account in judging of their
judgments, and the habit, which does not exist in England, of
searching for mitigating circumstances helped me to make a fair and
true estimate of his complex nature.  I think he rather enjoyed, but
_passagèrement_, being thought a Richard III., an Iago--an inveterate
gambler.  I soon came to the conclusion that this was partly due to a
reaction against the idolatrous attitude of the English middle class
and religious people towards Victoria and Albert, for it was
shockingly fulsome--and the Queen early showed hostility towards him.
His uncle, Lord Taunton, reflected her known sentiments, and so did
Lord Clarendon.  He was wrong, very wrong, to have treated the vile
crime of Grenville Murray, and committed too in an Office capacity,
as a thing of no consequence and the stumble made by an exceedingly
clever man--a too great rarity in the British Consular Service.  I
have some recollection that she was furious with the Prince of Wales,
who had not the virtue, in his early years at any rate, of reticence
in speaking, for, on the authority of Mr. Labouchere, taking
Grenville Murray's part against the Foreign Office in her presence.
This, however, was only one of the reasons of her fixed hostility...."

The crime to which Mrs. Crawford refers as having been committed by
Grenville Murray in an official capacity was that of forwarding
private news to the _Morning Post_ (to which paper he was secretly
acting as correspondent) in the Foreign Office bag from Vienna, where
he was an attaché in 1852, under Lord Westmorland.  Mr. Labouchere
declared in _Truth_ that Lord Palmerston, having a private grudge
against Prince Schwarzenberg, the Prime Minister of Austria, and
wishing for special information about him to reach the British
public, had come to a private understanding with Grenville Murray
that his journalistic correspondence would be winked at.
Unfortunately the "copy" fell into the hands of Lord Westmorland, who
demanded from Lord {68} Palmerston the instant dismissal of Murray.
Murray was not dismissed, but in a year's time was transferred to
Constantinople, where Lord Stratford de Redcliffe reigned supreme.
He had, of course, heard from Lord Westmorland about Murray's
journalistic indiscretions, and hated him accordingly.  Murray
retorted by holding up his chief to every sort of ridicule to the
English magazine-reading public; for he was a clever writer, and
contributed largely to _Household Words_, then under the editorship
of Charles Dickens.  The Foreign Office soon thought it necessary to
remove him, and he was appointed to the consul-generalship of Odessa.
At Odessa the consul was just as unpopular as the attaché had been at
Vienna and Constantinople.  The defence of Grenville Murray, to which
Mrs. Crawford refers, was probably founded upon facts contained in
the following passage of an "Anecdotal Photograph" of Lord Derby,
published by Mr. Labouchere in an early number of _Truth_:


When Lord Derby was at the head of the Foreign Office, he left all
the appointments in the Diplomatic Service to the permanent
officials, and, owing to this pococurantism, he did an act of
injustice to one of the most brilliant _littérateurs_ of the day.
The gentleman in question had a consulship in the East.  An able and
brilliant man, he was naturally a _persona ingrata_ to the high
priests of red tape, and between them and him there was perpetual
war, which at length culminated in a determination to remove him _per
fas_ or _per nefas_ from the service.  Certain charges were
accordingly brought against this gentleman, who was put on his
defence.  The accused, who was then in London, applied for copies of
certain papers from the archives of the Foreign Office which he
considered essential to his complete exculpation.  The officials at
first declined to grant them, but, after a long correspondence,
admitted the justice of the claim.  The papers were sent accordingly,
together with two separate letters, both bearing the same date.  One
announced that the documents had been forwarded, the other that Lord
Derby had made up his mind on the whole case, and his decision was in
these words: "I have accordingly advised the Queen to cancel your
{69} commission as ----, and it is hereby cancelled accordingly."
The recipient of this interesting epistle was at first inclined to
treat it as a bad joke, but soon found that it was an authentic
fact.[18]


I have the great good fortune also to have received from Mr. Wilfrid
Blunt a brief memoir of Mr. Labouchere, which commences in his early
diplomatic days, and though it carries us on almost to the end of his
life, I think that its publication here will enable those readers who
did not know Mr. Labouchere personally to get a sincere impression of
the whole of his career, which cannot fail to be of assistance to
them in elucidating his curious original personality from the maze of
dates and details which are the inevitable appendages of a
comprehensive biography.  Mr. Blunt writes as follows:


Feb. 13, 1913.

My acquaintance with Henry Labouchere dates, if I remember rightly,
from the early spring of 1861.  We were both then in the Diplomatic
Service, and though not actually employed together, I had just
succeeded him as unpaid attaché at the Frankfort Legation, and found
him still lingering there when I came to take up my not very onerous
duties that year under our chief, Sir Alexander Malet, Edward Malet's
father.  Labouchere's attraction to Frankfort was not Frankfort
itself, but its close neighbourhood to Hombourg, where the
gambling-tables still flourished, and where he spent nearly all his
time.  By rights he ought to have been at St. Petersburg, but
pretended that he could not afford to travel to his new post except
on foot, and so was staying on waiting to have his expenses paid by
Government.  His life at that time was an avowedly disreputable one,
the society of Hombourg being what it was; and he was looked upon by
the more strait-laced ladies of the Corps Diplomatique as something
of a pariah.  There was a good deal of talk about him, opinions being
divided as to whether he was more knave or fool, greenhorn or knowing
fellow, all which amused him greatly.  He was in reality the
good-hearted {70} cynic the world has since acknowledged him to be,
with a keen appreciation of the _comédie humaine_, a contempt for
aristocratic shams, and a philosopher's taste for low society.

I have a coloured caricature I made of him of that date, 1861, in
which he is represented as undergoing a conversion to respectability
at the hands of Countess d'Usedom, the Olympia of the Bismarck
memoirs, and wife of the Prussian Ambassador, with her two Scotch
nieces in the preposterous crinoline dresses of the time.  He figures
in it as a round-faced young man with highly coloured cheeks, and an
air of mock modesty which is very characteristic.  It is labelled
"The Deformed Transformed."

Later, I used to see him pretty frequently in London at the St.
James' Club, of which we were both members.  He was already beginning
to be a recognised wit, and a central figure among talkers in the
smoking-room.  But I remember old Paddy Green of Evans' still
maintaining that he was for all that a simple-minded fellow, made to
be the prey of rogues.  It was as such that he had known him some
years before when Labouchere first appeared in London life and took
up his quarters at Evans' Hotel in Covent Garden.  The good Irishman
had dolorous stories of the way in which his protégé had then been
fleeced.  "Poor Labouchere, poor Labouchere," he used to say, in his
paternally emotional voice; "a good young man, but always his own
worst enemy."  His own worst enemy he certainly often was.  I
remember his coming into the Club one evening, it must have been in
1865, when he had just been elected M.P. for Windsor, and boasting to
all of us who would listen to him, with every detail, how he had
bribed the free and intelligent electors of the Royal Borough, an
imprudence which caused him the misfortune of his being unseated
immediately afterwards on petition.

Of the years that followed, when he was making his name as a
journalist, and his fortune on the Stock Exchange, I have nothing
particular to record.  I came once more into close connection with
him in 1882, at the time of the trial of Arabi at Cairo after
Tel-el-Kebir.  Labouchere, during the early months of the year, had
been among those Radicals who in the House of Commons had followed
Chamberlain and Dilke in pressing intervention in Egypt on the
Foreign Office, and he made no {71} secret of the reason--he was a
holder of Egyptian Bonds.  The bombardment of Alexandria and the
massacre of Tel-el-Kebir, with the revelations which followed of the
intrigues which had caused the war, proved, however, too much for his
political conscience, which was really sound, and having unloaded his
Egyptian stock, which had gone up to higher prices (for he was not a
man to neglect a Stock Exchange opportunity), he frankly repented of
his sin, and from that time onwards did his best to repair the wrong
to Egypt he had joined in doing.  He subscribed handsomely to the
"Arabi Defence Fund," was always ready to ask questions in the House,
and did not scruple to reproach the Grand Old Man with his lapses at
Cairo and in the Soudan from his Midlothian principles.  In this
connection I saw much of him from 1883 to 1885, years during which
Egypt occupied so large a share of public attention, and always found
him interested in the Egyptian cause and helpful.

He was living then in Queen Anne's Gate, and I was pretty sure to
find him in the morning, and often stayed to lunch with him and his
wife.  He was uniformly gay and pleasant and ready to give news.  No
one ever was more generous in sharing his political knowledge with
his friends, and I could count on him to tell me the true and exact
truth of what was going on in the directions that interested me,
without regard to the rules of secrecy so many public men affect.  Of
his wit too he was copiously lavish, as only those are who have it in
supreme abundance, giving of his very best to a single listener as
freely as to a larger audience.  This, I always think, is the test of
genius in the department of brilliant talking, and no one ever shone
there more conspicuously than he did.  His worldly wisdom was
wonderful.  Nor was it confined to things at home, the House of
Commons, and the intrigue of Downing Street.  He was really the only
English Radical, with Dilke, who had an accurate acquaintance with
affairs abroad, and he had his Europe at his finger-ends.  He would
have made an admirable ambassador, where any difficult matters had to
be carried through, and he ought certainly to have been given the
Embassy he so much desired at Washington.  It was always his
ambition, even stronger I think than that of holding Cabinet Office,
to go back to his old diplomatic profession and give serious proof of
his capacity in a service {72} where, as a young man, he had played
the fool.  The Foreign Office would have found itself the stronger
for his help.

Our sympathy, which had begun about Egypt, was carried on, I am glad
to remember, during the years of stress which followed, also to
Ireland; and from first to last my experience of his political action
has been that of a man courageously consistent in his love of
liberty, his hatred of tyranny, and his contempt of the insincerities
of public life.  He was never taken in by the false arguments with
which politicians conceal their treacheries, and he was never himself
a betrayer.  If my testimony can be of any service to his memory as
an honest man, I freely give it.

The last time I saw him was in the summer of 1902, when he came down
with his wife and daughter to spend a week-end, July 12th to 14th,
with me and my wife in Sussex.  He had resolved to pass the rest of
his days at Florence, and it was a farewell visit that he paid us.
He had just bought Michael Angelo's Villa, and talked much about it
and his design, philistine that he was, of turning it inside out,
fitting it with electric light, and otherwise bedevilling it with
modern improvements, uprooting the old trees in the _podere_ and
planting new ones.  On matters of this sort he was a terrible
barbarian, and took delight in playing the vandal with places and
things which the rest of the world held in reverence.  "Old Michael,"
he explained, "knew nothing about the comforts of a modern
establishment, and it was time that he should learn them."  Apart
from this little _méchanceté_, he proved himself a most delectable
companion, giving us a true feast of wit and wisdom the whole Sunday
through.  Sibyl, Lady Queensberry, was of our party, and Colonel Bill
Gordon, General Gordon's nephew, with whom he had much talk about
Khartoum and Egypt.  Gordon was a good talker on his own subjects,
and they got on well together, sitting up till half-past one the
first night, telling story after story.  Among them, I remember,
Labouchere gave us accounts of his adventures in Mexico, and also of
a ride he had taken from Damascus to Palmyra with Lady Ellenborough
and her Bedouin husband, Sheykh Mijwel el Mizrab, with reminiscences
of the early days we had spent together in the Diplomatic Service,
his gambling acquaintances at Hombourg, and his duel in Sweden.  He
was especially interested in this visit to the Weald of Sussex, and
in {73} his having passed in the train almost within sight of Broome
Hall, under Leith Hill, where he had lived as a boy.  He had not been
that way since, he said.  The second evening he was less brilliant,
as Hilaire Belloc had joined our party, a rival talker to whom he
left the monopoly of our entertainment.  But it was an altogether
pleasant two days that we passed together.  I am glad to have the
recollection of them.  Alas, they were the last we were to see of
him, for he left England soon afterwards, and we never met again.



[1] Joseph Hatton, _Journalistic London_.

[2] Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, _I, Myself_.

[3] For the rest of this interesting letter see Chapter X.

[4] "Radical and Whigs," _Fortnightly Review_, Feb. 1, 1884.

[5] It is interesting to note that Mr. Crampton's proceedings in
America did not stand in his way, so far as promotion in the service
was concerned.  He was appointed Envoy-Extraordinary at Hanover
almost immediately; Lord Palmerston insisted upon his being made a
K.C.B., and he became Ambassador at St. Petersburg in 1858.
(_Dictionary of National Biography_.)

[6] _Truth_, May 23, 1878.

[7] _Truth_, Feb.  8, 1877.

[8] Busch, _Our Chancellor_.

[9] _Ibid._

[10] _Truth_, May 23, 1889.

[11] _Hansard_, July 14, 1884.

[12] Alexander II.

[13] _Truth_, July 16, 1877.

[14] _Truth_, May 23, 1878.

[15] _Florence Herald_, Dec. 28, 1909.

[16] Rumbold, _Recollections of a Diplomatist_, vol. ii.

[17] The letter, signed by Lord Russell, appointing Henry Labouchere
Second Secretary is dated February 3, 1863, so that the one, referred
to by Sir Audley Gosling, appointing him to Buenos Ayres, must have
been of later date.  The latter is not in my possession.

[18] _Truth_, Nov.  20, 1879.




{74}

CHAPTER IV

PARLIAMENTARY AMBITIONS

(1866-1869)

Being asked on some occasion, "Why do men enter Parliament?" Mr.
Labouchere replied: "Some of them enter Parliament because they have
been local Bulls of Bashan, and consider that in the localities where
they have roared, and pawed the ground, they will be even more
important than heretofore; some because they want to be peers,
baronets, and knights; some because they have a fad to air; some
because they want to have a try at climbing the greasy pole of
office; some because they have heard that the House of Commons is the
best club in London; some because they delude themselves that they
are orators; some for want of anything better to do; some because
they want to make a bit out of company promoting; and some because
they have a vague notion that they are going to benefit their country
by their devotion to legislative business."  He frankly confessed,
however, that none of the above considerations had influenced him in
his own decision to enter upon a parliamentary life.  Curiosity had
been his inducement in the first place, and secondly, a conviction
that the House would benefit considerably from contact with so sound
a Radical as himself.

In the autumn of the year that he left the Diplomatic Service, it was
suggested to Mr. Labouchere by several {75} friends that he should
come forward as a candidate in the next General Election for the
borough of New Windsor.  There was already another Liberal in the
field--Mr. Flower of Stratford-on-Avon.  Labouchere decided to confer
with him on the subject.  They met, accordingly, at the Reform Club,
Labouchere having been previously warned by the Town Clerk of
Windsor, Mr. Darvill, to act quite independently of Flower, as he was
in the hands of agents, in whom the leading men of the place had
little confidence.  Mr. Labouchere describes in his own words the
upshot of the interview: "We met at the Reform Club, in the presence
of Mr. Grant (one of Flower's agents) and Mr. Darvill, junior.  As,
however, both of us evidently thought that only one Liberal could be
returned at Windsor, and as each of us intended to be that Liberal,
we separated without coming to any arrangement to act together."[1]

Labouchere then went abroad, returning to England in January for a
fortnight, during which time he gave a dinner at Windsor, held a
public meeting, and identified himself as much as it was possible to
do, in so short a time, with the local interests of the borough.  In
May, 1865, Mr. Flower retired from the candidature, because he felt
that his agents, Grant and Dunn, had compromised him by corrupt
practices.  As these gentlemen had hired as many as twenty public
houses for committee rooms, a number ludicrously out of proportion to
the size of the constituency, he acted wisely in doing so.  He
informed Labouchere of his decision.  Mr. Darvill also wrote,
recommending Labouchere to return to England, and if he really
intended to stand for Windsor, to take some steps for insuring his
return by appointing agents, and taking the usual preliminary
precautions.

To continue the narrative in Mr. Labouchere's own words: "Sir Henry
Hoare, a day or two after my return to England, called upon me to
tell me that he had been in communication with Mr. Darvill, and that
as Mr. Darvill {76} had told me he thought that, if two Liberal
candidates acted firmly together, both might be returned, he came to
propose to me to make common cause with him.  The next day we called
together on Mr. Durrant, a London solicitor, who had acted for Sir
Henry Hoare, and we begged him to go down to Windsor, and after
seeing the principal Liberals, to report to us the state of affairs.
This he did.  He told us Mr. Flower had engaged twenty committee
rooms--a number which was clearly too great, and he recommended us to
take on nine of them.  We sent him down to Windsor again to arrange
about the committee rooms and about taking on agents, and he, in
conjunction with Mr. Last, retained the usual Liberal agents, who
were the same as had been engaged by Mr. Flower.  It was distinctly
understood at the same time, that we only took on nine committee
rooms.  Mr. Flower, after, I believe, a long correspondence with Mr.
Cleave, agreed to pay for the eleven committee rooms which he had
engaged.  Sir Henry Hoare and I were both returned as members for
Windsor."

It was an unfortunate action, however, on the part of the two Liberal
candidates to make use of the same agents who had compromised Mr.
Flower, and it cost them their seats.  The election took place in
November, 1865, and the result of the poll was as follows:

  Sir Henry Hoare            324 votes
  Mr. Labouchere             323   "
  Mr. Vansittart (Cons.)     291   "
  Col. Vyse (Cons.)          261   "


On April 26, 1866, the chairman of a select committee,[2] appointed
to try the merits of the petition against the return {77} of Sir
Henry Hoare and Mr. Labouchere for the borough of New Windsor, on the
grounds that it was obtained by means of bribery, treating, and undue
influence, announced that the committee had arrived at the following
determination:

"That Sir Henry Ainslie Hoare is not duly elected a burgess to serve
in the present parliament for the borough of New Windsor.  That Henry
Labouchere, Esq., is not duly elected to serve in the present
parliament for the borough of New Windsor.  That Sir Henry Ainslie
Hoare is, by his agents, guilty of bribery.  That it has been proved
that various acts of bribery have been committed by the agents of the
sitting members by the engagement of an excessive number of public
houses in which it was proved that none of the legitimate business of
the election was transacted, and for which sums varying from £10 to
£20 were paid.  That it has not been proved that such acts were
committed with the knowledge or consent of the said Sir Henry Hoare
and the said Henry Labouchere, Esq.  That the committee have no
reason to believe that bribery and corruption extensively prevailed
at the last election for the borough of New Windsor."

The committee had sat for six days before the above decision was
arrived at, and many were the entertaining encounters between the
defendants' counsel, the great Mr. Serjeant Ballantine, and the
witnesses for the petitioners.  One of the latter explained that he
had voted for the Conservatives because Mr. Vansittart was a "very
nice old man."  Under cross-examination it was elicited with
difficulty that Mr. Vansittart had not given his wife and daughter
each a new dress.  Being further pressed, he announced that he could
prove it.  "How?" questioned the counsel.  "I haven't got no wife nor
no daughter," complained the witness.  A charge of presenting a silk
gown to the wife of one of the electors was preferred against Henry
Labouchere.  He did not deny having done so.  "The lady in question,"
he explained, "was extremely good-looking, and I have {78} frequently
noticed that a present of finery is a simple way to win the female
heart.  I regret that, in the particular case, I was unsuccessful,
but, good God, you do not insinuate for a moment, do you, that I
intended her husband to know anything about the affair?"

The line of defence taken up by Labouchere will easily be seen by
reading the letter he sent to the _Times_ the day after the committee
had reached their decision.  I give it in full, with the exception of
some sentences that have already been quoted:


ALBANY, April 26.

SIR,--In an article to-day on the recent decision of the Election
Committees, you allude to the case of Windsor.

As your observations tend to lead those who read them to form the
conclusion that my late constituents are somewhat corrupt, in justice
to them, I should feel obliged to you to allow me to say a few words
in their defence.  It may be useful to future candidates to know on
what grounds Sir Henry Hoare and I have been unseated....

We were petitioned against on the usual charges of bribery and
intimidation.  To the charges of direct bribery and indirectly
bribing by the promise of work we replied, I believe, to the
satisfaction of the Committee.  The case of the petitioners rested
upon the charge that we had engaged too many committee rooms.

The Committee unseated us because: "It had been proved that acts of
bribery had been committed by the engagement, by the agents of the
sitting members, of an excessive number of public houses, in which it
was proved that none of the legitimate business of the election was
transacted, and for which sums varying from £10 to £20 were paid.
That it has not been proved that such acts were committed with the
knowledge or consent of the said Sir Henry Hoare and the said Henry
Labouchere."

Now this decision must have been come to on the supposition that Sir
Henry Hoare and I were responsible for the eleven committee rooms,
paid for by Mr. Flower, because we both swore that the nine committee
rooms were taken with "knowledge and consent."  The Committee
consequently must have concluded either that Mr. Flower, Mr. Durrant,
Sir H. Hoare, and myself {79} were guilty of perjury in swearing that
the payment by Mr. Flower was _bona fide_, or that Sir H. Hoare and
I, in taking on agents in May, became responsible for what these
agents had done in the interests of a third party during the winter.

Our case rested on the fact that "none of the legitimate business of
the election" was transacted in Mr. Flower's public houses, and that
if a bill with the words "Committee Rooms" was hung over any room in
Mr. Flower's public houses it was because the publicans considered
they would advertise their own political principles by showing that
they had been engaged by a Liberal candidate who had retired.  Every
one knows that, if an electioneering bill over a public house is an
advertisement for a candidate, it is also an advertisement for the
public house, and that publicans like it to be supposed that they
belong to one or other of the parties during a contested election.
As a matter of fact some of Mr. Flower's publicans did not vote for
me.

I may then fairly state that my late colleague and I were unseated
because one of our agents had been concerned, months before he became
our agent, in taking public houses in undue numbers for Mr. Flower.

Now, sir, I would venture to call the attention of the Legislature to
the new and strange principle of jurisprudence on which the decision
of the Windsor Election Committee has been based.  I do so in the
interests of all candidates, for, as far as I am concerned, I have
unfortunately no appeal against the decision.

It is sufficiently difficult to prevent over zealous committee men
and agents from compromising their candidate during the election;
but, if he is to be retrospectively responsible for all their
previous acts, I venture to say that no candidate can expect to hold
his seat against a petition.  Were the retrospective responsibility
introduced into the procedure of courts of law no man would be safe.
I might, sir, to-morrow have the advantage of making your
acquaintance.  Some days later I might take a servant whom you had
formerly employed.  Ought I to be hung if it were subsequently shown
that you and the servant had murdered some one last January in
London, while I was in Italy?

Were I still a member of the Legislature, I should myself point out
the necessity of a reform in the composition of election {80}
committees.  As an elector of Westminster, I shall, through my
representative, Capt. Grosvenor, present a petition to the House of
Commons praying that some alteration be made in the present system,
and that a properly qualified judge be added to every committee to
explain the elementary principles of jurisprudence to
well-intentioned gentlemen who know nothing about them.[3]--I am,
Sir, Your obedient servant,

H. LABOUCHERE.


A number of extremely interesting letters appeared in the _Times_, on
the subject of the New Windsor Election Petition, one other, only, of
which I shall quote, as it puts the case for Mr. Labouchere and his
colleagues in a perfectly clear light.  It runs as follows:


SIR,--My name having prominently appeared in the proceeding before
the Election Committee in this case, and in communications made to
you by Sir Henry Hoare and Mr. Labouchere, complaining of the
decision of the committee, I trust you will not refuse me an
opportunity of corroborating their statements.  I may say, as a
prelude, that the agents had the most distinct directions to do
nothing in contradiction of the statutes relating to the election of
members to serve in Parliament, and I proved, in evidence, my written
instructions to that effect.

Sir Henry Hoare and Mr. Labouchere, being aware that Mr. Flower had
retired by reason of his belief that he had been compromised by his
agents, were most anxious to avoid becoming in any way identified
with their proceedings; and, as regards the public houses, which had
been taken on his behalf, the late members entirely repudiated, both
personally, and through me, having anything whatever to do with them.

No one had authority to hire committee rooms but Mr. Last, the head
agent at Windsor, and no complaint is made in the Committee's Report
in respect of the nine houses engaged by him.  Not a shilling has, to
my knowledge or belief, been paid, or promised on account, of what I
may, for brevity, call "Mr. Flower's public houses"; so that, in
fact, these houses were {81} neither hired by, paid for, nor used by
the late members or their agents.

The unseating, therefore, of the late members for New Windsor upon
the grounds stated in the Report of the Committee is, I venture to
suggest, unprecedented in the annals of election petitions, and
affords just ground for complaint, and for giving, in future cases
some appeal, where there may be a similar miscarriage of
justice.[4]--I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

G. J. DURRANT.


Henry Labouchere made his maiden speech during the six months that he
was member for New Windsor.  It was upon an uninteresting and
complicated subject--namely, the inadequacy of our Neutrality Law to
enable us to fulfil our international obligations towards foreign
countries.  The debate, begun in February, continued well into the
March of 1866.  Labouchere made his speech on the 22nd of February.
During the course of it he said that, having passed ten years in the
Diplomatic Service, he had given some consideration to the subject of
International Law, which had led him to believe that, from defects
and inefficiency, our Neutrality Law was fraught not only with future
danger to ourselves, but was calculated to prevent us from acting
justly towards our Allies.  He quoted, in support of his argument,
the relations of England with the United States of America, the
sympathy of America with Fenianism, and our loss of commerce with
America.[5]  On March 7 he voted in favour of the Church Rates
Abolition Bill, which was read for the second time on that day and
committed.

Of course he was very funny on the subject of the election at New
Windsor.  He was fond of relating how it was that he first became an
M.P.  "I had to kiss the babies," he said, "pay compliments to their
mothers, and explain the beauties of Liberalism to their fathers, who
never could be got to say how they would vote.  On the day of the
election everything {82} turned upon half a dozen votes.  I remember
one Tory went out to fish in a punt, and the boatman who accompanied
him was induced to keep him well out in the middle of the river,
until the polling hour had passed.  Another aged and decrepid Tory
was kept in the house by having cabs run at him whenever he tried to
issue from his door.  Finally the Liberals won the day.  On this the
Tories petitioned.  The committee decided that there had been no
bribery, but unseated my colleague and myself because they thought
that we had hired an excessive number of committee rooms."

And again: "One man at this election amused me.  He hung about
outside my committee room, and whenever he saw me he wrung my hand.
On my first interview with this patriot, he informed me that, at an
early hour of the morning, he had personated Dr. Cumming, and had
voted for me as that divine.  Each time I saw him during the day, he
said that he had been personating some one, and always a clergyman.
I remonstrated with him but uselessly."

The playwright, Herman Merivale, tells an anecdote about Henry
Labouchere, in connection with the Windsor election, which it is very
probable he heard from the whilom member himself.  "Lord Taunton,"
writes Merivale, "uncle and precursor of our more famous Labby, is
fabled to have lived in a general state of alarm at the strange
proclivities of that unchastened heir, who has furnished the world
with more amusing stories of a curious humour than any public man of
his time.  It is said that when Lord Taunton heard that his nephew
contemplated public life, and proposed to stand for one of the county
divisions in the district, he was much pleased at such a sign of
grace, and asked if he could do anything for him.  'Really I think
not,' replied the younger Henry, 'but I don't know.  If you would put
on your peer's robes, and walk arm-in-arm with me down the High
Street of Windsor, it might have a good effect."[6]

Another opportunity soon occurred for Labouchere to {83} re-enter the
House of Commons.  On the death of Mr. Robert Hanbury, one of the
members for Middlesex, he presented himself to the electors, and was
returned without opposition, on April 16, 1867.  An extract from his
address to the electors, dated March 29, is not without interest, as
in it he unblushingly gives expression to the democratic principles
to which he remained so faithful throughout his career.  "Should you
do me the honour," he said, "to return me to Parliament, it would be
my first duty to co-operate with those who desire to effect the
passage of an honest and straightforward measure of reform--such a
measure as would prove to the large body of artisans and working men,
whom I hold to be entitled to the franchise, that the House of
Commons is not afraid of the people, nor averse to the free extension
of political privileges, nor disposed to deny to the intelligent
operatives a share in the government of the country to whose burdens
they are called upon to contribute.  If the Reform Bill proposed by
the Tory Ministry is not capable of adaptation to such an end, I
should not hesitate to give my adherence to any cause which may seem
the most calculated to attain the desired object."[7]

While he was member for Middlesex, Labouchere was assiduous in his
parliamentary duties.  He spoke frequently and to the point, on such
subjects as the "Expenses of Voters,"[8] on "the Sale of Liquor on
Sundays Bill"[9] (a characteristically amusing speech), on "Licences"
(Brewers'),[10] on the "Military Knights of Windsor attending
Church,"[11] on "Appeals in the House of Lords."[12]  He objected to
a vote to complete the sum of £2135 for building new Embassy houses
in Madrid and Paris,[13] and offered some practical suggestions as to
the building (or buying) of new Embassy buildings at Therapia.[14]

{84}

In short, he was an active and useful member.  The speeches which
have been most frequently quoted are the ones which he made on May
14, protesting against a vote of £137,524, for the upkeep of the
Royal Parks and Pleasure Grounds,[15] and his two speeches on the
Public Schools Bill.[16]  In the former he asserted that it was
unjust and quite illogical to prohibit the entrance of cabs into Hyde
Park.  Most of his friends, he announced, were not in a position to
keep their own carriages, yet they passionately longed to drive about
in the haunts of fashion.  He himself suffered cruelly under the same
longing and disability, and such an exclusion, he explained, was
quite incompatible with the spirit of Liberalism.  He referred to the
regulations concerning the public parks of Vienna and Paris to show
that the prejudice against hired vehicles was entirely British and
snobbish.

On another occasion, Mr. Lowe had moved a clause to the effect that
boys educated at public schools should be examined once a year, by an
Inspector of Education, in simple reading, writing, and arithmetic,
and that a report as to their attainments should be laid before
Parliament.

On this Labouchere made an excellent speech.  In the course of it, he
said that he hoped Mr. Lowe's clause would be pressed to a division,
because it was evident that most pupils at public schools did not
know as much as an average charity boy.  Complaint had been made that
the whole time of public school boys was taken up by the study of
Latin and Greek, but, as a matter of fact, they learned very little
of these languages.  An ordinarily educated German could converse
with a foreigner in Latin, if the two had no other language in
common, but how many Englishmen carried from a public school
sufficient Latin to do this?  He confessed that he himself, although
he might be able to translate some half a dozen words of Latin, was
wholly unable to translate a sentence of Greek, although he had
studied those languages for years at a public school.  He complained
that this {85} ignorance was the fault of a system, and the
misfortune of those who were obliged to undergo it.

Mr. Labouchere used to relate the following reminiscence of the days
when he was member for Middlesex: "It is a curious fact--such is the
irony of fate--that these dues (the Middlesex Coal Dues) were once
prolonged owing to me.  About twenty years ago, I was member for
Middlesex.  A Bill was brought forward to prolong the dues in order
to borrow the money for certain Metropolitan improvements.  Now the
dues are collected from the inhabitants, not only of the metropolis,
but of all Middlesex.  My constituents wanted the bridges over the
Thames and the Lea, beyond the Metropolitan area, to be freed.  So I
persistently opposed the Bill by much talking, by amendments, and
other such devices (for although blocking had not been invented,
obstruction was even then not without its resources).  This led to
negotiation, and it was finally agreed that the prolongation should
be for a still longer period than was proposed by the Bill, in order
that money should also be borrowed to free the bridges."[17]

Lord Derby's administration, under which Labouchere had become one of
the Liberal members for Middlesex, was succeeded by the first
administration of Mr. Disraeli.  In December, 1868, the General
Election took place, by which Mr. Gladstone, in his turn, was put,
for the first time, at the head of Queen Victoria's Government.  Mr.
Labouchere presented himself for re-election at Middlesex in
November.  It was at first thought that both the sitting members,
himself and Lord Enfield, would have a quiet "walk-over."  The
Conservatives, however, were determined to put forward at least one
candidate, and they selected Lord George Hamilton, the third son of
the Duke of Abercorn.

On November 2, both Henry Labouchere and Lord Enfield issued their
addresses, Lord Enfield appealing to his electors on grounds no more
vital than that he had {86} represented Middlesex in Parliament for
the last eleven years, and Mr. Labouchere because he frankly avowed
himself in favour of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in
Ireland as being likely to strengthen the establishment of the Church
of England in the sister isle, and, to quote verbatim from his
speech: "I shall," he said, "oppose the proposal which was made last
year by the Government of Mr. Disraeli to endow a Roman Catholic
university.  While I respect the sincere convictions of my Roman
Catholic countrymen and desire that their religious convictions
should not subject them either to civil or political
disqualification, I do not think that their Church or their
educational establishments should have any portion of the revenues
now enjoyed by the established Church."  He went on to say: "Since a
Conservative Government has been in power the public departments have
vied with each other in extravagance.  The efforts of private members
in which I have joined have proved ineffectual to check the waste.
The sooner Mr. Gladstone is in office the better for the
taxpayer."[18]

The two Liberal candidates made public speeches to their electors on
the same day that they issued their addresses.  Labouchere made his
in the British Schools at Brentford, and the points on which he
argued were the disestablishment of the Irish Church and the waste of
public money.  The selection of Lord George Hamilton as the
Conservative candidate gave him an opportunity of making some
extremely annoying remarks.  He referred to him as "a young gentleman
who had lately joined the army--an unfledged ensign who was getting
on with the goose step and preparing himself for the onerous duties
connected with the Horse Guards," and other taunting remarks of a
similar nature.

The embryo M.P., on November 9, stung to madness by Labouchere's
witticisms, boldly announced himself as his opponent in particular.
He hotly denied that his father had received annually for many years
a large sum of money from {87} the State and then had been made a
duke for his kindness in having accepted it.  The Conservative
meeting at which the young guardsman spoke would have been a decided
political success had it not been for the zeal of the gentleman who
seconded the vote of confidence.  He remarked that, ever since the
day when King John had signed the Magna Charta, the people of this
country had been indebted to the aristocracy for all the liberties
enjoyed in the Empire.  Storms of groans and hisses met his
well-meant remark, and though the vote of confidence was passed, the
show of hands was manifestly against it.[19]

But the real interest of the election was centred in the personal
quarrel between the Liberal candidates, which resulted in a Tory
being returned for Middlesex.  They appeared each to be possessed
with an ungovernable hatred for the other, which was extremely
prejudicial to their cause.  The occasion of their public rupture was
a dispute over the selection of electioneering agents, and by
November 12 the attitude of the belligerents had become so extremely
abusive that an important conference of Liberals from all parts of
Middlesex had to be convened to consider the disunited state of their
interest, more especially as it related to the relative bearing of
the candidates towards each other.

Whereupon Labouchere and Enfield each addressed a public meeting and
gave their separate versions of the quarrel.  The delight of the
Tories was excessive, and they did all they could to foment the
affair.  The _Times_ rose to unaccustomed heights of irony in a
leading article occasioned by the following not exactly conciliatory
letter addressed by Labouchere to its editor:


SIR,--In the interests of the party Lord Enfield and I would do well
to adjourn the discussion of all personal differences until after the
Election.  Lord Enfield had distinctly refused to unite before those
differences arose; our discussion therefore has nothing to do with
our political disunion.

{88}

The constituency wish our union, I wish it too--but personal
relations need not be renewed.  Lord Enfield considers himself and
Lord George Hamilton to be what he is pleased to call "scions of a
noble stock."  I am a man of the middle class.  He considers himself
my superior.  Let us agree to differ on this point.--Yours truly,

HENRY LABOUCHERE.


"It is fortunate," remarked the _Times_, "that the Liberal majority
bids fair to be a large one, for otherwise the future historians of
Great Britain might have a somewhat undignified episode to narrate in
the electioneering contest of 1868, between the two great parties of
the State.  If the Liberals and the Conservatives happened to be
running each other so closely that one seat more or less might
determine the policy of the new Parliament, the Middlesex election
would probably have an odd part to play in British annals.  Every
reader of Liberal imagination can easily conjure up for himself a
picture of the calamities that might, under evil stars, overtake this
country if the Liberals found themselves not strong enough to carry
out their present programme, and the Irish Church were left still
standing, with Ireland, as the natural result of so much anxious and
fruitless agitation, more discontented than ever.  Let him then
suppose that all these imagined misfortunes had to be borne in
consequence of his party having lost a seat for Middlesex, because
Lord Enfield objects 'on personal grounds' to Mr. Labouchere!  Lord
Chesterfield has told us that great events are really due to much
smaller causes than historians, with a duly jealous regard for the
dignity of their profession, dare admit.  The Liberal majority in the
next Parliament might, if it so happened, be lost and the programme
of national policy at a critical moment reversed because Mr.
Labouchere has called Lord Enfield 'a sneak,' and Lord Enfield
objects to Mr. Labouchere's want of blue blood!  We doubt whether
Gibbon himself could give the proper professional air of historical
dignity to such an episode {89} in the decline and fall of Great
Britain as this.  According to the first report of this squabble we
read, Lord Enfield distinctly refused to meet Mr. Labouchere, while
Mr. Labouchere, after showing that he had hitherto all along
conducted himself as a very model of meekness, bearing endless snubs
and rebuffs from his haughty adversary for the public good, suddenly
turned round and insisted that he would 'fight single-handed' without
any reference to his brother Liberal.  It appears that, if the
Liberals work properly, the Conservative candidate, despite all the
advantages of high birth and impetuous youth, ought to be beaten, but
that otherwise he has a chance of success.  It would be too bad if a
Liberal seat were thus endangered, and we trust Lord Enfield will
accept Mr. Labouchere's compromise, and console himself by reflecting
that he can still object as strenuously as ever to his plebeian
adversary in private."[20]

Lord Enfield protested angrily in the next day's _Times_ against the
accusation of having referred to himself as a "scion of a noble
house," and, oddly enough, his letter appeared just below one sent to
the paper by the Committee of the Reform Club:


THE REFORM CLUB, _Monday Evening_.

The Committee of the Reform Club having, in consequence of the
suggestions which have been made to them, taken into consideration
the differences between Lord Enfield and myself, and having expressed
an opinion that it is due to Lord Enfield that I should withdraw
certain offensive expressions which I used concerning him, and that I
should now express my regret for having used them, and, as I am now
informed by the Committee that they have ascertained from Lord
Enfield that he had no intention of doubting my word, as I imagined
he did, on the occasion I referred to, I have no hesitation in at
once acting on the advice of the Committee.

H. LABOUCHERE.


{90}

A patch was thus temporarily placed over the breach, for the benefit
of the public, but the electors of Middlesex had no delusions on the
subject.

The meeting for the nomination of candidates at Brentford was a rowdy
affair, the proceedings being of a most disorderly nature.  The
re-election of Lord Enfield was proposed and the proposition was
received with groans and hisses.  Then Labouchere's re-election was
proposed.  At that point the disorder became uncontrollable.  The
interruption had commenced with the appearance of a band of roughs,
wearing the Conservative card in their hats, who began to hoot and
groan at the Liberal speakers.  After this had gone on for a few
minutes, another band, not quite so numerous, but of the same low
class, poured into the square, bearing the Liberal cards on their
hats.  The two rival factions severally hooted the speaker on the
opposite side.  The roughs who were first in the field (the
Conservatives had engaged a band of a hundred roughs, seven of whom
were known to be prize-fighters) then began to hustle the others, and
had nearly borne them out of the square, when the police made a
charge upon them, but without using their staves, and for a moment
restored order.  The same disorderly conduct was, however, renewed
and several fights took place under the eyes of the sheriffs.  The
crowd swayed to and fro, and the din and uproar was so continuous and
incessant that the rest of the proceedings had to be carried on in
dumb show.  When the sheriff called for a show of hands for Lord
Enfield every hand on the right of a line drawn from the centre of
the hustings was held up.  For Mr. Labouchere about the same number
seemed to go up.  For Lord George Hamilton all the hands on the left
of the line went up.  The numbers seemed pretty nearly divided.  It
at first appeared that Mr. Labouchere had the show of hands, and the
sheriffs had, it was believed, decided, or were about to decide, in
his favour, when it was pointed out to them that many Conservatives
had held up their hands for Lord Enfield, while, on the other hand,
all the {91} Liberals had held up both their hands for Mr.
Labouchere.  The sheriffs, after consultation, accordingly declared
that the show of hands was in favour of Lord Enfield and Lord George
Hamilton.

The election took place on November 24, and the result of the poll
was as follows:

  Lord George Hamilton     7638 votes
  Lord Enfield             6387   "
  Mr. Labouchere           6297   "


Before the declaration of the poll, two cabs with placards of "Plump
for Enfield" were seen in the streets, which were followed by others
bearing "Plump for Labouchere."  This was believed to have been a
ruse of the enemy, but there were some who thought it was a joke of
Labouchere's.  He however vehemently denied any knowledge of it.
There was huge excitement at the official declaration of the poll.
Henry Labouchere, "the real Liberal candidate," as he was called, had
been met by his friends at Kew Bridge, who had accompanied him to the
meeting.  He was evidently the favourite,[21] and the populace took
out his horses and insisted upon dragging his carriage through the
town.  Enfield was hissed and hooted.  Labouchere made a dignified
speech, in which he referred to the practical disenfranchisement of
Middlesex, by its election of a Conservative and a Liberal, and he
insisted strongly and ably upon the necessity of organisation in all
electioneering work.

Mr. Labouchere published the following absurd reminiscence of this
election in an early number of _Truth_: "A candidate knows very
little of the details of his election, but, so far as I could make
out, dead men played a very important part, on both sides, in this
contest between Lord George and me.  No sooner were the booths open
than men long {92} removed from party strife rose from their graves,
and hurriedly voted either for him or for me."[22]

An amusing episode of the Middlesex election of 1868 was the mistake
which the supporters of Mr. Labouchere made in mistaking Mr. Henry
Irving for their defeated candidate.  Mr. Labouchere himself related
the story some sixteen years later, when there was a report current
that the famous actor was about to offer himself as a parliamentary
candidate.  "Irving did once appear upon the hustings," he said, "and
it was in this wise.  I was the defeated candidate at a Middlesex
election.  Those were the days of hustings and displays, and it was
the fashion for each candidate to go down to Brentford in a carriage
and four to thank his supporters.  On the morning of the day when I
had to perform this function, Irving called upon me, and I invited
him to accompany me.  Down we drove.  I made an inaudible speech to a
mob, and we re-entered our carriage to return to London.  In a large
constituency like Middlesex, few know the candidates by sight.
Irving felt it his duty to assume a _mine de circonstance_.  He
folded his arms, pressed his hat over his brows, and was every inch
the baffled politician--defeated, sad, but yet sternly resigned to
his fate.  In this character he was so impressive that the crowd came
to the conclusion that he was the defeated candidate.  So woebegone,
and so solemnly dignified, did he look that they were overcome with
emotion, and, to show their sympathy, they took the horses out of the
carriage and dragged it back to London.  When they left us, I got up
to thank them, but this did not dispel the illusion.  'Poor fellow,'
I heard them say, as they watched Irving, 'his feelings are too much
for him,' and they patted him, shook hands with him, and thanked
him."[23]

A _Times_ leader of November 30 made the following comments on the
Middlesex election: "In Middlesex, the minority has been allowed not
only a representative, but a {93} place at the head of the poll, by
the selection of two Liberal candidates, almost avowedly in
competition, and with some unexplained circumstance of personal
antagonism.  Though it is likely enough many of the votes have been
split between the two successful candidates, it is evident on the
face of the return that a better selected pair of Liberal candidates
might have carried both seats.  Few persons will quarrel with a
result which gives one of the most important minorities in the
kingdom a voice in Parliament, but the result is a fluke rather than
the consequence of a sound intention or of a wise provision of law."

At the General Election of 1874, Mr. Labouchere made another attempt
to enter the House of Commons.  He first offered himself at
Southwark, but, as he was one of six Liberal candidates, he withdrew,
and presented himself for election at Nottingham.  At Nottingham also
there was a superfluity of Liberal candidates, but two of these, Mr.
Labouchere and Mr. Laycock, would probably have got in, had it not
been for the determined antagonism of Mr. Heath, the Labour
candidate, to Mr. Labouchere.  It was also asserted by the leading
Liberals of the place that the seats were lost, because Mr.
Labouchere's advanced Radicalism scandalised the Liberal supporters.
Be that as it may, the result of the election was that two
Conservatives were returned for Nottingham.  Mr. Labouchere was as
usual philosophical upon the subject of his unsuccessful election:
"When one is in," he said, "one wants to be out, and when one is out,
one wants to be in.  La Bruyère says that no married people ever pass
a week without wishing, at least once, that they were unmarried, and
so I suspect it is with most M.P.'s."

There were many amusing stories about Mr. Labouchere current at this
time.  One of the best that appeared in the Nottingham papers during
the election was the following: "He went to a fancy dress ball in
London, wearing diplomatic uniform, and on presenting himself at the
door, he was refused admission by a policeman.  'Why?' said {94} Mr.
Labouchere.  'Because no one is allowed here in a diplomatic
uniform,' said the 'bobby.'  'Confound your impudence,' growled the
ex-member for Middlesex, 'I will go in.'  'Not in diplomatic dress,
no one's to pass here in diplomatic togs,' repeated Mr. Bluebottle;
'my order is to watch this door for that special purpose.'  'What's
your name, scoundrel?' yelled the financial editor of the _World_;
'my name is Labouchere, and I will enter.'  'And mine,' rejoined the
amateur policeman, 'is Lionel Brough.'  They walked upstairs
arm-in-arm together."



[1] _Times_, April 27, 1866.

[2] The committee was composed as follows: Mr. John Tomlinson Hibbert
(Chairman), Mr. Robert Dalglish, Mr. Arthur Wellesley Peel, Hon.
Fredk. Stanley, and Major Waterhouse.  It sat for six days.  The
counsel for the petitioners were: Mr. W. H. Cooke, Q.C., Mr.
Matthews, and Mr. Campbell Bruce.  For the defendants: Mr. Serjeant
Ballantine and Mr. Biron.

[3] _Times_, April 27, 1866.

[4] _Times_, April 27, 1866.

[5] _Hansard_, vol. 181, s. 3.

[6] Herman Merivale, _Bar, Stage, and Platform_.

[7] _Times_, April 2, 1867.

[8] _Times_, July 5, 1867.

[9] _Times_, March 19, 1868.

[10] _Times_, March 25, 1868.

[11] _Times_, June 24, 1868.

[12] _Times_, May 29, 1868.

[13] _Times_, May 1, 1868.

[14] _Times_, April 21, 1868.

[15] _Times_, May 15, 1868.

[16] _Times_, June 17 and 24, 1868.

[17] _Truth_, November 25, 1886.

[18] _Times_, November 3, 1868.

[19] _Times_, November 10, 1868.

[20] _Times_, November 14, 1868.

[21] _Times_, November 27, 1868.

[22] _Truth_, April, 1878.

[23] _Truth_, April 24, 1884.




{95}

CHAPTER V

JOURNALISM AND THE STAGE

(1864-1880)

After he had been unseated for Windsor, Mr. Labouchere went abroad
for some months, most of which time he spent at Nice.  He also went
to Florence, and was at Homburg, in 1868, just before the General
Election.  His connection with journalism began at this period, as he
sent frequent letters to the _Daily News_, both from Nice and
Florence.  These were always remarkable for their pithiness and wit,
although he had by no means developed the style which he brought to
perfection two years later as "The Besieged Resident," and which made
his fame as a journalist.  In 1868, he became part proprietor of the
_Daily News_, which it was decided to issue for the future as a penny
paper.[1]  Sir John Robinson thus describes the syndicate of which
Mr. Labouchere became a member: "The proprietors of the _Daily News_,
a small syndicate which never exceeded ten men, were a mixed body,
hardly any two of whom had anything in common.  The supreme control
in the ultimate resort rested with three of them, Mr. Henry
Oppenheim, the well-known financier, with politics of no very decided
kind; Mr. Arnold Morley, a Right Honourable, an ex-party Whip, {96}
and a typical ministerial Liberal; and Mr. Labouchere, the Radical,
financier, freelance.  Others had but a small holding, and
practically did not count, save as regards any moral influence they
might bring to bear on their colleagues at Board meetings."[2]

The new editor selected for the penny _Daily News_ was Mr. Frank
Hill, but the paper was run at a loss until the winter of 1870, when
the special war news published in its columns caused the circulation
to increase in one week from 50,000 to 150,000.  Mr. Robinson, its
far-seeing manager, attributed the success of the paper, at this
period, first, to the excellence of his correspondents, and secondly,
to his having insisted upon having the whole of his news telegraphed
to London, instead of being transmitted by the post.  The number of
the correspondents on the staff of the _Daily News_ during the war
was seventeen, of which the chief was Mr. Archibald Forbes, who may
be rightly described as a prince among journalists.  Henry Labouchere
too had the main _heureuse_ where newspapers were concerned.  His
Paris letters were eagerly read all over the civilised world, the
excitement and interest created by them being even more vehement in
America than in London.  The fortune of the _Daily News_ was made,[3]
and from then onwards for many years the great organ of Liberalism
grew and flourished.  When Mr. Labouchere sold his share[4] in 1895
he did so at a large profit.  As I shall not have occasion to return
again to Mr. Labouchere's financial connection with the _Daily News_,
{97} I shall give in this place an account Mr. Lionel Robinson
recently wrote to me of the transaction: "So many contradictory
statements have been put forward in the press with reference to the
late Mr. Labouchere's pecuniary interest in the _Daily News_, that
you may not be unwilling to find space for the recollections of one
who heard at the time, and subsequently, various versions of the
story.  My own impression, derived from personal intercourse, is that
some time about 1868 or a little later, Mr. Labouchere purchased a
quarter share in the newspaper for about £14,000, and further, that
the vendor was Mr. Henry Rawson of Manchester.  I do not pretend to
know what were the annual profits of the paper, beyond the fact that
they increased enormously during the twenty years dating from the
Austro-Prussian War and its subsequent developments.  It was,
therefore, not surprising that when Mr. Labouchere decided to sell
his share in the paper it should have commanded a high price.  I have
heard it, from a certain distance of time from the event, placed as
high as £92,000, but my personal recollection is that the sum
mentioned by Mr. Labouchere was £62,000 or thereabouts."

In one of Mr. Labouchere's letters from Nice to the _Daily News_ he
gave a characteristic account of some of his compatriots abroad.  The
following quotation from it will show the reader that, if he had not
yet acquired the style of his later work, the spirit of it was very
active--the spirit which made him hate mediocrity and
pretentiousness: "Here, as in almost every foreign watering-place,
there is a colony of English Bohemians, who live among themselves,
give each other tea parties and such mild festivities, frequent
charity and other public balls, abuse each other and every one else,
pet the English clergyman or denounce his doctrines, worry their
Consul with every kind of complaint and requirement, and keep up a
gallant and hopeless struggle to penetrate into foreign society.  As
most of them only speak their own language, as the men, who, no
doubt, have many {98} solid virtues, are devoid of the art of
pleasing in a mixed society, and the women, pillars as they are of
virtue, have little of the Siren about them, foreign society does not
respond to their advances."[5]

Labouchere was not so successful over his speculation in theatre
property.  In the October of 1867, Messrs. Telbin and Moore did up
the New Queen's Theatre, formerly St. Martin's Hall, in Long Acre,
and it was opened under the management of Mr. Alfred Wigan, one of
the most accomplished comedians of the day.  Mr. Alfred Wigan had a
mysterious partner in management, and Herman Merivale, who had
written a most successful farce, as the curtain raiser for the new
theatre, gives a charming little account of his discovery of the
identity of the mysterious personage.  Alfred Wigan soon wanted some
melodrama for the theatre, and Merivale wrote a play.  Wigan told him
that he must submit it to his partner.  "Two or three days
afterwards," writes Merivale, "I was sent in fear and trembling to
the manager's room at the Queen's, to meet the mysterious partner.  I
was introduced, and, sitting at the table with a cigarette in his
mouth, I saw Labouchere.  'Good Lord!' he said, 'are _you_ the
eminent author?'  'Heavens!' quoth I, 'are _you_ the mysterious
partner?'

"Both of us had carefully concealed our hidden sin at the dinner
party.[6]  What struck me most was a small array of bills of the new
play hung all round, each printed with a different title, that the
mysterious partner might see which looked best.  It was, at all
events, bold expenditure.  _Time and the Hour_ was the title that the
authors[7] had hit upon; and Labouchere decided that it should be
chosen.  'It's a splendid title, I think,' he said.  'Delighted that
you {99} say so,' was my flattered answer.  'It really is, you know.
Do for any play whatever that ever was written.'"[8]

_Time and the Hour_, as it turned out, was, in its way, a kind of
curiosity.  For the cast comprised, besides Wigan himself, a whole
bouquet of coming managers, some of whom were at the beginning of
their professional careers.  There were J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough,
John Clayton, and Charles Wyndham.  Other plays acted at the Queen's
Theatre under Mr. Labouchere's management were Tom Taylor's _Twixt
Axe and Crown_, and H. J. Byron's _Dearer than Life_.  In the former
the lovely Mrs. Wybert Rousby flashed for the first time in her full
beauty on the London stage, and in the latter the cast included Henry
Irving, J. L. Toole, John Clayton, Lionel Brough, and Charles
Wyndham, and last, but most important of all, as Lucy, that clever
artist and fascinating personality, Henrietta Hodson, who afterwards
became Mrs. Labouchere.  Another star at the Queen's Theatre, during
the first year of Mr. Labouchere's management, was Ellen Terry.  She
thus describes herself playing there in the _Double Marriage_.  "As
Rose de Beaurepaire," she writes, "I wore a white muslin Directoire
dress and looked absurdly young.  There was one curtain which used to
convulse Wyndham.  He had a line, 'Whose child is this?' and there
was I looking a mere child myself, and with a bad cold in my head
too, answering: 'It's _bine_!'  The very thought of it used to send
us off into fits of laughter."[9]

A contemporary picture of Mr. Labouchere at this time is given by Mr.
George Augustus Sala, in his _Life and Adventures_.  Mr. Labouchere
had begged Sala to write him a play, full of exciting situations.
"An appointment was made with him," said Sala, "to meet Halliday
(another dramatic author) and myself at ten o'clock one evening at
the Queen's Theatre.  He was then one of the members for the County
of Middlesex.  He struck me as being in all respects a {100}
remarkable man, full of varied knowledge, full withal of humorous
anecdotes, and with a mother wit very pleasant to listen to.  His
conversation was to me additionally interesting, because, when I was
in Mexico, I had gone over most of the ground which he had travelled."

The first numbers of _Truth_ abound with news of the Queen's Theatre,
and the unvarnished accounts Mr. Labouchere gave of the contretemps
that occurred during his management, and the strange, unexpected
things that happened, possibly contributed to the lack of
consideration he experienced as a theatrical manager.  Here is part
of an article devoted to the art of the stage, published during the
first year of _Truth_: "The play on which I lost most was an
adaptation of _The Last Days of Pompeii_.  Everything went wrong in
this piece.  I wanted to have--after the manner of the
ancients--acrobats dancing on the tight rope over the heads of the
guests at a feast.  The guests, however, absolutely declined to be
danced over.  Only one acrobat made his appearance.  A rope was
stretched for him, behind the revellers, and I trusted to stage
illusion for the rest.  The acrobat was a stout negro.  Instead of
lightly tripping it upon his rope, he moved about like an elephant,
and finally fell off his rope, like a stricken buffalo.  In the
second act the head of a statue was to fall off, and to crush Mr.
Ryder, who was a magician.  There was a man inside the statue, whose
mission was to push over its head.  With folded arms and stern air,
Mr. Ryder gazed at the statue, awaiting the portentous event that was
to crush him to the earth, notwithstanding the mystic power that he
wielded.  The head remained firm on its neck.  The man inside had
solaced himself with so much beer, that he was drunk and incapable,
and Mr. Ryder had, much to the amazement of the audience, to knock
down the head that was to crush him.  In the third act the stage
represented a Roman amphitheatre.  In the midst of a gorgeously
dressed crowd sat Mr. Ryder.  'Bring forth the lion!' he said.  The
audience thrilled at the idea {101} of a real lion being marched on
to the stage.  Now I had no lion, and I had discarded the idea of
putting a lion skin on a donkey.  An attendant therefore walked in
and said, 'Sir, the lion will not come.'  Those of the audience who
were not hissing, roared with laughter.  The last act was to
represent the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.
The mountain had only been painted just in time for the 'first
night.'  I had never seen it.  What was my horror when the curtain
rose upon a temple with a sort of large sugar loaf behind it.  At
first I could not imagine what was the meaning of this sugar loaf.
But when it proceeded to emit crackers I found that it was
_Vesuvius_!"[10]

Sometimes he let the theatre, and on that subject he was almost
pathetic: "Whenever this theatre is to let," he wrote, "I am
complimented by numerous persons with proposals which prove that I am
regarded by them as the most credulous and confiding of human
beings--hardly indeed a human being, but a simple, convenient lamb
... nothing that I can do convinces them that I am not a lamb covered
with nice long wool and eager to be shorn.  On these occasions I
remember that the tempering of the wind to the shorn lamb is, after
all, but a poetical figure, and therefore I take care to meet the
tempest with a fleece on my back."[11]  He had not a high opinion of
dramatic artists, as men of business.  "I confess," he said, "that
for my own part I have never understood the meaning of high art in
its dignified aspect.  I never, in the course of my existence, came
across one of its votaries--painter, sculptor, author, or
architect--who was ready to sacrifice one farthing of his own at its
shrine.  I once was the owner of a theatre, and I was perpetually at
war with authors and actors who wanted me to ruin myself on the altar
of high art, but I soon found that this was a term which they used
for their own fads.  Once I produced a play by Charles Reade.  It was
a failure, and on the first night I was sitting with him in a box.
'They {102} seem to be hissing, Mr. Reade,' I said.  'What of that?'
he replied; 'if you want to please such a public as this, you should
not come to me for a play.'"[12]  He had an amusing story too to
relate of how he rode roughshod over Tom Taylor's artistic prejudices
by insisting upon a chemical fire being lit upon the stage at his
production of the latter's _Joan of Arc_, in the flames of which the
heroine (Mrs. Rousby) was to perish realistically, instead of being
wafted to Heaven in the arms of angels, as the author had planned she
should be.  But the story of his theatre-management days that he was
fondest of telling was in connection with the late Sir Henry Irving.
The latter, at a big banquet he gave to a party of his friends, was
relating some of the events of his professional career.  "And to
think, Labby," he said, turning to his old friend, "that I was once
receiving five pounds a week from you!"  "Three pounds, Henry, my
boy," retorted Labouchere quickly, "only three."

He professed the greatest contempt, and considering the financial
failure of his management of the Queen's Theatre, perhaps naturally
so, for those stingy votaries of pleasure who were always cadging him
for orders for his theatre.  "Theirs," he said, "is the meanest, most
sneaky and contemptible form of beggary."  But he got the better of
one of these beggars.  One day his tailor asked him for an order.  He
sent it to him, but the next morning he sent the tailor an "order"
entitling the bearer to a new suit of clothes.  The tailor, realising
the tit for tat, sensibly complied with the request, but ever
afterwards bought his tickets for the "Queen's" in the conventional
manner.  Another set of persons who encountered his righteous wrath
in his theatre days were the would-be dramatic authors.  He described
how hundreds of worthless plays were sent him, resembling, in their
incoherence and lack of perspective, the crude pencil drawings of
infants.  He gave in _Truth_ the opening of one of them, further than
which, he explained, he did not read: {103} "The broad Mississippi is
seen rolling its turbid flood towards the ocean, and carrying with it
the debris of a village.  Steamers come and go on its surface.  On a
frail raft a man and a woman are crossing the river.  Enter the
negroes from a plantation monotonously singing."[13]

He attributed the failure of his own adaptation of Sardou's _La
Patrie_ to the narrow powers of appreciation possessed by Londoners.
"They fancy," he wrote, "that no drama or melodrama can be good,
which does not conform to certain rules.  The heroine must be the
purest and the best of her sex; she must engage in a struggle with
adverse circumstances, and with bad men; and she must emerge, in the
last act, triumphant.  The audience, in fact, must leave the theatre,
not only pleased with her acting, but with her.  Now, the heroine of
_Fatherland_ is Dolores, and the plot turns upon her betrayal of her
husband.  This was fatal to the success of the play, but it is an
open question whether it ought to have been fatal to it.
Conventionalism is the bane of advance in art."

All things considered, it was not surprising that Mr. Labouchere's
proprietorship of the Queen's Theatre was a financial failure.
Joseph Hatton gives a curious description of the way in which Mr.
Labouchere managed the business, the facts of which he got from the
same personal interview already quoted: "Sometimes he brought out
plays himself.  He generally lost by them, but now and then had a
success.  Occasionally in the preparations for a new production he
would go abroad.  When particularly wanted by the management, he
could not be found.  The work went on, however, all the same, and so
did the loss.  Once he was advised to cram the house for a week with
orders, so that nobody could get in.  The traditional 'Full' was
posted at all the entrances.  He did this on condition that, after a
week, every one should be compelled to pay.  When the second week
came the house was empty.  Then the actors complained.  {104} They
could not act to empty benches.  'Why don't you draw?' was
Labouchere's reply to their grievance.  'Draw! confound it!  Why
don't you draw?'  He announced Shakespearean revivals, proposing to
produce one new play of the bard's in splendid style every year.
Notices were put up at all the entrances, inviting the audiences to
vote on the piece.  For a long time he worked up quite an excitement
by posting up the result of the voting.  'This was a capital idea; it
increased the number who paid at the door immensely.'  Nevertheless
the Queen's did not prove a success, and it has lately been converted
into a co-operative store."[14]

At every period of his life, Mr. Labouchere displayed all the
happiest characteristics of the Bohemian, or, what comes to the same
thing, the instincts of the real aristocrat.  He was comfortably at
home in whatever social milieu he happened to find himself--a camp of
nomadic Indians, a Court ball, a rowdy hustings, the manager's room
of a London theatre, the _vie intime_ of a royal country house, or
the bourgeois domesticity of a thrifty German home--and he was
welcomed and appreciated in every one of them--except by the prigs
and the bores.

He knew his London well.  "I have lived in London many years.  I have
known the seamy side of London life for far more than a quarter of a
century, and am familiar with every detail of the 'old days' as they
are called.  I can compare the present with the past, decency with
disgust, order with license, and remember the time when we supped in
a cellar under the Portico, where the Pall Mall restaurant now
stands, when the Haymarket cafés were open as long as customers
patronised them.  I can recall the nights when Panton Street and
Jermyn Street were lined with watchmen and confederates, and
admittance was only gained to certain favoured meeting-places by
giving a sign, or peeping through a slit in the door or guichet....
I have seen a Chancellor {105} and a Cabinet Minister watching with
amused gaze a scene, which was at least decorous on the surface, at
the Argyll Rooms in Windmill Street, and, listening to excellent
music, I have sat unnoticed up in the corner of the old Holborn
Casino, where the Holborn restaurant now stands.  I have seen some
wild scenes at the Foley Street rooms (Mott's) in the early hours of
the morning, and hideous scenes at 222 Piccadilly--the 'Pic' as it
was then called--since pulled down and destroyed for the now palatial
Criterion.  In the warm summer nights I have driven down to Cremorne,
and wandered there till the daylight, in lilac and purple, came out
above the tall trees and put out the yellow glare of the gas.  I have
even condescended to the decorous dissipation of Caldwell's dancing
rooms, beloved by milliners, and now turned into a National School.
I have been an eye-witness of the ups and downs of London life, and
the so-called humours of the West End.  I have observed the contest
between common-sense and prudery, between the men of liberal mind and
those determined to make the vicious virtuous by Act of Parliament.
I have lived through the changes of licensing rules and closing
hours, and seen one place of amusement after another shut up and
confiscated--the decorous tarred with the same brush as the dirty.
Cremorne and the Holborn Casino bombarded equally with Mott's and the
Piccadilly Saloon,..." he wrote in the course of an article, which
ended with one of the most powerful indictments of British virtue
ever published,[15] and it was during the sixteen years that elapsed
between his departure from the Diplomatic Service and his entrance to
the House as the "Christian" member for Northampton that he acquired
most of his vast experimental knowledge of the artistic and vagabond
side of human nature about town.

He was close upon fifty when he entered upon his serious
Parliamentary life, which was, as all who knew him well are {106}
aware, but a phase, though an important one, in his extraordinarily
varied career.  Three episodes stand out with clearness, apart from
his abortive electioneering experiences already described, in the
years between 1864 and his first Northampton election--his residence
in Paris throughout the siege, his connection with the _World_, as
its financial editor, and his founding of his own weekly publication,
_Truth_.  The first of these is described in a separate chapter, and
so, with equal necessity, is the third.  For an account of how he
came to be on the staff of the World we must go to the
_Recollections_ of the late Mr. Edmund Yates himself, who relates
that, previous to launching the first number of his journal upon the
public, he had issued a very original prospectus.  "I had also sent a
prospectus to Mr. Henry Labouchere," he continued, "with whom I had a
slight acquaintance, and whose services as a literary freelance
might, I thought, be utilised.  Some days after, I saw Mr. Labouchere
on the Cup Day at Ascot, seated on the box of a coach.  I asked him
if he had heard from me, and he said, 'Oh, yes,' adding that he
'thought the prospectus very funny.'  'But,' I said, 'will you help
us in carrying it out--will you be one of us?'  'You don't mean to
say,' he replied, 'that you actually mean to start a paper of the
kind set forth?'  I told him most assuredly we did, and that we
wanted his assistance.  He laughed more than ever, and said he would
let me know about it.  A few days after, I heard from him, proposing
to write a series of city articles, which he actually commenced in
the second number."

Labouchere's preliminary article in the _World_[16] was extremely
droll.  It began as follows: "Some years ago, Mr. John F. Walker,
having derived a considerable fortune from cheating at cards in
Mississippi steamboats, determined to enjoy his well-earned gains in
his native city of New York, and purchased an excellent house in that
metropolis.  In order to add to his income he advertised that he was
a {107} 'reformed gambler,' and, for a consideration, would instruct
novices in all the tricks of his trade.  Mr. Walker was universally
esteemed by his fellow-citizens, and died last year, greatly
regretted by a numerous body of friends and admirers.  In casting
about for the city editor for our journal, we have fallen upon a
gentleman, who, by promoting rotten companies, puffing worthless
stock, and other disreputable, but strictly legal, devices, has
earned a modest competence.  He resides in a villa at Clapham, he
attends church every Sunday with exemplary regularity, and is the
centre of a most respectable circle of friends; many of his old
associates still keep up their acquaintance with him, and therefore
he is in a position to know all that passes in the city.  This
reformed speculator we have engaged to write our city article."

The staff of writers selected by Mr. Yates for the first year of the
_World_ was a singularly efficient one.  It comprised, besides Mr.
Labouchere, Mr. T. H. S. Escott, Dr. Birkbeck Hill, Lord Winchelsea
(who contributed articles on racing and turf matters), M. Camilla
Barrère, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mr. F. I. Scudamore, Mr. Archibald Forbes,
and Mr. Henry Lucy (who commenced, in the eighth number, his series
of Parliamentary Sketches, "Under the Clock").  But, in spite of the
excellent writers engaged on its production, the _World_ did not sell
well.  Again it was the _main heureuse_ of Henry Labouchere that gave
the necessary push to make the new weekly go.  Mr. Yates writes as
follows: "Mr. Labouchere was dealing with City matters in a way which
they had never been dealt with before, and ruthlessly attacking and
denouncing Mr. Sampson, the city editor of the _Times_, whose
position and virtue had hitherto been considered impregnable.  All
these features ... received due appreciation from our provincial
_confrères_, and the 'trade,' but, as yet, they seemed to have made
no impression on the public.  We were in the desperate condition of
having a good article to sell without the power of making that fact
known.  At last, and just in the nick of time, we obtained the
requisite {108} public notice, and without paying anything for it.  A
stockbroker, a member of the Stock Exchange, who conceived himself
likely to be attacked for certain practices by Mr. Labouchere in the
city article, threatened to horsewhip that gentleman, should such
observations appear, and Mr. Labouchere had the would-be assailant
brought before the Lord Mayor for threatening to commit a breach of
the peace.  The case was really a trivial one, and it was settled by
the defendant being bound over in sureties for good behaviour.  But
it had been argued at full length, each side being represented by
eminent lawyers; Mr. Thesiger, Q.C., appeared for the defendant and
Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Lewis for Mr. Labouchere.  A great deal
was said about the _World_, and its determination to purge Capel
Court of all engaged in iniquitous dealings.  All that was said was
reported at length in the daily papers.  The effect was
instantaneous; the circulation rose at once, and the next week showed
a very large increase of advertisements."

The case, as Mr. Yates says, was a trivial one, but remarkable for
Mr. Labouchere's irresistibly funny way of giving evidence.  It was
tried on October 14, 1874, at the Guild Hall, and in answer to the
Lord Mayor, he gave the most absurd account of the assault as it
occurred:

"'I said to him (Mr. Abbott): "I presume that if you were attacked in
a newspaper unfairly, you would bring an action for libel, and if you
won it you would get heavy damages."  He replied: "I should not go
into Court; I know what newspapers want; they always want to go into
Court, it is a fine advertisement for them.  I should horsewhip the
man."  "Well," I said, "under the circumstances, the observation is a
personal one, and I reply to you, in the words of Dr. Johnson, 'I
shall not be deterred from unmasking a scoundrel by the menaces of a
ruffian.'"  He then said he presumed I meant this for him, or
something of that sort.  I said, "Well, it looks like it.  You were
just now talking about horsewhipping; why don't you begin?"'

{109}

"_Mr. Thesiger_: 'In that tone of voice?'

"'Very much like that,' drawled on Mr. Labouchere.  'He then stared
at me, and I repeated: "Well, why don't you begin?"  I don't know
what his object was, but he rolled himself about and threw up his
hands.  I presume he intended to frighten me by an exhibition of what
he imagined to be a pugilistic attitude more than anything else.  I
again said: "Why do you not begin?"  He then hit me a blow."

"Have you any fear of Mr. Abbott?" asked Mr. Lewis, later on in the
proceedings.  "Well, no," replied Mr. Labouchere.  "When I was at
Spezia, I used to bathe a good deal in the Gulf and there were a
quantity of porpoises--"  But what Mr. Abbott's behaviour had to with
porpoises, was never revealed to the Court, for, in spite of the
hisses of the audience, who wanted to hear the end of Mr.
Labouchere's story, Mr. Thesiger interrupted, saying sharply: "This
is really making a farce of a Court of Justice."

"I am a calculator, not a speculator," was one of Labouchere's
retorts to Mr. Thesiger.  "A distinction," said Mr. Thesiger, when
summing up for his client, "that Mr. Labouchere will be able to
explain to his own satisfaction, but perhaps not to that of other
people."

Mr. Grenville Murray was another able writer on the staff of the
_World_, and was for some time Mr. Yates's partner in the
proprietorship of the paper, but the partnership was dissolved
because Mr. Yates disapproved of Murray's repeated attacks upon Lord
Derby.  It would have been well if Mr. Labouchere had been as prudent
as Mr. Yates.  When Mr. Labouchere started _Truth_, he persuaded Mr.
Grenville Murray to write some of his "Queer Stories," and it was one
of these that brought upon the editor of _Truth_ the wrath, never to
be assuaged, of a very important personage.  Mr. Labouchere told me
once that, by some accident, he never saw the "Queer Story" in
question, until it had actually appeared in print.  Had he done so,
he should never have {110} permitted its publication.  Reference had
already been made to Mr. Labouchere's somewhat imprudent championship
of the ex-Consul of Odessa, but, when it was asserted in a much-read
weekly that Mr. Labouchere was the proprietor of the Queen's
_Messenger_,[17] he was obliged to send the following letter to the
_Times_:


2 BOLTON STREET, July 5, 1869.

SIR,--Having been informed that the proprietorship of the _Queen's
Messenger_ has been attributed to me by a weekly newspaper, I shall
be much obliged to you to allow me a space in your columns to deny
the statement.  I have not, and never had, directly or indirectly,
anything to do with the _Queen's Messenger_.

HENRY LABOUCHERE.


An old member of the staff of the _World_, in a recently published
article commenting upon certain unintentional misstatements of a
definite nature that had appeared from time to time in the press in
connection with the two gifted editors respectively of the _World_
and _Truth_, said, after dealing with one relating to Mr.
Labouchere's supposed partnership with Mr. Yates: "Equally contrary
to fact is the statement, even more generally made and accepted, that
Mr. Labouchere severed his connection with the _World_, and founded
_Truth_, as the sequel of personal differences between himself and
his sometime editor.  No such personal differences occurred at any
period; and, though Yates would have been more than human if he had
rejoiced at the decision of a particularly able member of his staff
to leave him, in order to start another journal, planned on parallel
lines and appealing to the same {111} public, he was far too shrewd a
man of the world to show any sense of grievance or resentment.  It
happened that the news of Mr. Labouchere's project first reached his
editor's ears through the medium of a third person; and on being
challenged by Yates, as to the truth of the rumour, the imperturbable
'Labby' characteristically replied that he had decided for the future
to have a pair of boots of his own with which to do his own kicking.
Rivals, in a journalistic sense, as they thenceforth necessarily
became, the friendly personal relations between the two were
maintained to the last, and the weekly mutual corrections of 'Henry'
by 'Edmund' and vice versa, which caused so much diversion to the
readers of both papers, were conducted at all times in an entirely
amicable spirit."[18]

Mr. Montesquieu Bellew, another journalist of that time, was an
_intime_ of Mr. Labouchere's.  On the occasion of Mr. Bellew's son
choosing the stage as his profession, Mr. Labouchere took the
opportunity of writing in _Truth_ a racy article, in which he related
the whole story of his friendship and travels in company with this
most unconventional parson.  They must indeed have been a queer pair,
and it is interesting to imagine the effect they must have produced
together at the various _tables d'hôte_ and social functions they
attended on their journey.  They became acquainted in this wise.  Mr.
Labouchere was idling one day on the steps of his hotel at Venice,
when he noticed a gentleman paying his bill and tipping the porters
preparatory to taking his departure.  His carriage was waiting for
him at the door.  "Where are you going?" said Mr. Labouchere, on the
impulse of the moment.  "To the Holy Land," replied the stranger.
"Wait five minutes," replied Labouchere, "and I will come with you."
He flew to his room and flung his clothes into his portmanteau and
joined Mr. Bellew, who was waiting for him.  He did not, however,
discover the identity of his travelling companion until they reached
Jerusalem, although he knew that he was {112} a clergyman, because
every night before retiring to rest Mr. Bellew pressed a manuscript
sermon into his hand, for "night-reading."  At Jerusalem, Mr. Bellew
broke to him that, his bishop being in the place, he should probably
be asked to preach in the English Church.  Labouchere took this as a
hint that Mr. Bellew would like him to be present, so he made his
plans accordingly.  Finding out at what precise moment of the service
the sermon would begin, he marched into the church with great
impressiveness, at the head of a large band of Arabs and others, whom
he had bribed to accompany him.  This, he explained afterwards to
Bellew, was to create in the bishop's mind the impression that Bellew
was such a prodigy of piety that even the inhabitants of the country
places of Syria had heard of his fame and were come in flocks to gaze
upon him.  The bishop's annoyance on the occasion he assured Bellew
was entirely due to his jealousy of his more popular _confrère_.
They quarrelled on the journey.  Bellew pointed out to Labouchere a
small stream.  "That," he said, "is the source of the Jordan."
Labouchere pointed out another stream, declaring that that and that
alone was the source of the Jordan.  They argued the matter hotly,
but Labouchere was not aware how deeply Bellew had taken the affair
to heart, until he found himself in bed that night with no manuscript
sermon under his pillow.  But Bellew was a Christian and a man of
tact.  The next day in the course of their wanderings, they came upon
another minute trickle of water.  "That," said Bellew, with a note of
conciliation in his voice, "is the source of the Jordan; we were both
in the wrong yesterday."  "Of course it is," assented Labouchere;
"how in the world we came to make such a mistake I can't imagine."
From Jerusalem they went on to the Dead Sea.  Bellew had
picturesque-looking long white hair, which he would comb and arrange
before a looking-glass that accompanied him on all his travels.  This
looking-glass got upon Labouchere's nerves, so one day "I got hold of
it," he related, "and sent it to join Sodom and Gomorrah beneath the
{113} gloomy waters that stretched out beneath us.  The next night,
we pitched our tent in the desert.  Dire was the confusion on rising.
The looking-glass could not be found.  I held my tongue respecting
its fate.  Probably some day or another some eminent explorer, poking
about the bottom of the Dead Sea, will fish up this looking-glass,
and we shall have archæologists divided in opinion, one half proving
that it belonged to a lady of Sodom and the other half that it was
the property of a gentleman of Gomorrah.  Bellew was equal to the
occasion.  He managed to arrange his hair by looking into the back of
a dessert spoon."[19]  Mr. Bellew contributed a most interesting
account of his journey to the East in the first number of _Temple
Bar_ called "Over Babylon to Baalbeck."[20]  He does not, however,
mention in it his travelling companion, nor any of the incidents
referred to by Mr. Labouchere in his account of the same journey.
Mr. Bellew subsequently joined the Church of Rome, and died in 1874.
On one of Mr. Labouchere's frequent visits to Italy, he met Dumas
_père_, with whom he had an amusing adventure.  Strolling into a
restaurant at Genoa for breakfast, he perceived Dumas at another
table, and, seated by his side, a very pretty girl, dressed like a
Circassian boy, young enough to be Dumas's granddaughter.  To
continue the story in his own words: "Dumas told me that they had
just landed from a yacht and were spending the day in Genoa.  He
introduced the girl to me as Emile.  After luncheon he proposed that
we should all take a carriage, and go and see a show villa in the
neighbourhood.  When we reached the villa, we were told that it was
not open to the public on that day.  'Inform your master,' said Dumas
to the servant, 'that Alexandre Dumas is at his door.'  The servant
returned, and told us that we could enter.  We were ushered into a
dining-room, presenting a typically Italian domestic scene.  The
father and mother of the family were present, and several well-grown
boys and girls.  Dumas was somewhat taken aback for a {114} moment,
but introduced Emile and me vaguely as '_mes enfants_.'  As we were
asked to sit down to coffee we made ourselves at home.  Afterwards
the owner showed us his garden.  He and Dumas walked first.  Emile
and I wandered about hand-in-hand to denote our brotherly and
sisterly affection.  The Circassian was in a playful mood, and told
me that Dumas was of a jealous disposition, which grandfathers
sometimes are.  He had one eye on the beauties of the garden and the
other on his children.  'What are you doing?' said Dumas.  I replied
that I was embracing my sister.  As he could not well object to this,
for once, I think, I got the better of the lady's eminent
grandfather."  He had a story too of the younger Dumas.  Labouchere
was at the wedding of Mlle. Maria Dumas, and her brother, on coming
to the sacristy with all the family friends for the signature of the
register, looked at the document for a minute, as if perusing it
carefully, and then said with mock gravity, "The accused have nothing
further to add for their defence?  Be it so!"  And then he signed.

Mr. Labouchere's curiosity at this period of his life was insatiable.
He wanted to know what it felt like to be a criminal about to be
hanged.  So, having procured an invitation to see all over Newgate,
he carried out his experiment, and described his sensations in the
columns of the _Daily News_.  After giving a vivid account of the
prison and some of its inmates, he wrote the following realistic
lines: "And now we were led through a long stone passage open to the
sky.  This was the Newgate graveyard.  Beneath each flag is the
corpse of a murderer, and on the walls opposite are their initials,
which have been cut by the warders to guide them through this
murderous labyrinth.  At the other end of the passage is the
execution yard.  The scaffold is put up the night before an
execution, in a corner close by the door through which the condemned
prisoner issues.  The court is surrounded by high gloomy walls, and
looks like the ante-chamber of Hades.  I asked the warder whether in
his opinion murderers {115} preferred being executed in public or
private.  He opined the former.  'The crowd keeps them up,' he said.
'They are not so firm, now it takes place in private.'  I understand
this feeling.  If I were going to be hanged myself I should like the
ceremony to take place _coram populo_.  I should feel myself already
dead in that dreary yard; and I should prefer, I imagine, after weeks
or months of prison life, to have one more look at the world, even
though that world were a howling mob, before quitting it for ever.

"We passed through the chapel and were shown the chair on which the
prisoners condemned to death are perched--in obedience to what seems
to me a barbarous custom--to hear their last sermon, and then we
entered the 'Press Room.'  It is a room of moderate size with plain
deal tables, benches, and cupboards.  One of these latter the warder
opened, and showed us Jack Sheppard's chains, and other interesting
relics, which are as religiously preserved as though they had
belonged to saints.  A leather sort of harness was also brought out.
It consisted of two belts with straps attached to the lower one for
the wrists.  This is the murderer's last dress, and with it round him
he walks to the scaffold.  I tried it on, and when my hands were
buckled to my side, I pictured to myself my sensations if I had been
waiting to fall into the procession to the neighbouring yard.  I
heard my funeral bell toll; I saw the ordinary by my side; the
warders telling me that my time was up; Calcraft bustling about eager
to begin.  So strong was the impression that I hastened to get out of
the prison, and was not fully convinced that I was not going to be
hanged until I found myself in the midst of a crowd in Fleet Street,
who, for reasons best known to themselves, were cheering the
'Claimant,' who was issuing from a shop, while a chimney sweep who
was passing by was welcomed as Bogle, being mistaken for that dusky
retainer."[21]

With reference to the "Claimant," Mr. George Augustus {116} Sala has
a curious story to relate about him and Mr. Labouchere, who, of
course, took the greatest interest in the famous trial.  "I saw a
great deal of the Claimant during 1872," says Mr. Sala, "and I
remember once dining with him and the late Mr. Serjeant Ballantine at
the house of Mr. Labouchere, who then resided in Bolton Street,
Piccadilly.  The senior member for Northampton had, upon occasion, a
curious way of putting things; and over the walnuts and the wine--of
which our host was not a partaker--he startled us all by coolly
asking his obese guest, 'Are you Arthur Orton?'  'Good Heavens, Mr.
Labouchere,' exclaimed the stout litigant, 'what do you mean?'  'Oh,
nothing in particular,' quoth Mr. Labouchere; 'help yourself to some
more claret.'"[22]

Mr. Labouchere however afterwards was quite convinced that the
Claimant was not Orton.  When the latter was released from penal
servitude in 1884, he published the following reminiscence:

"It is a curious fact that during his trial the London papers sold
more copies than during the Franco-Prussian War, or any other recent
eventful epoch.  I confess that it never was proved absolutely to my
mind that he was Arthur Orton; on the other hand, whilst there was
the strongest presumption that he was, he entirely failed to make out
that he was Sir Roger Tichborne.  I remember once during the trial,
in company with Mr. G. A. Sala, passing an evening with the 'stout
nobleman' at his hotel in Jermyn Street.  We found him very pleasant,
and he told us many tales of his existence in Australia.  He
certainly had a wonderful command over his features.  On that last
day of the civil trial, the room at the hotel was filled with
adherents, many of whom were Tichborne bondholders.  Suddenly the
Claimant walked in.  He leant against the mantelpiece, took his cigar
out of his mouth, and announced the fatal news.  Great was the
excitement, great was the despair and {117} the indignation.  But the
Claimant calmly smoked on, apparently the only person in the room who
had no sort of interest in the matter."[23]

Soon after Mr. Labouchere's founding of _Truth_, he became involved
in several lawsuits, the most famous of which, at this period, was
the one which indirectly led to his expulsion from the Beefsteak
Club.  He invariably commented with great wit and asperity upon his
enemies, frustrated and otherwise, in the columns of his paper, and
there is no doubt that its enormous popularity depended in large
degree upon the fearlessness and unconventionality with which he
attacked all persons of high degree and low, guilty of injustice,
bullying, _snobisme_, or wilfully ignorant prejudice, who, for long,
had been silently endured by their weaker brethren, for no other
reason than because there had never before been a--Labby.

Sometimes he was accused by an envious press of being a liar.  The
title he had chosen for his paper possibly provoked the criticism.
He was rather sensitive on the subject, and expressed a certain
amount of annoyance whenever the well-known ditty of Sir Henry
Bridges, "Labby in our Abbey," which was published in M. A. P., was
mentioned.[24]  In _Truth_ he once produced what may be called an
apposite alibi when confronted by the accusation.  Some correspondent
had referred rather pointedly to the existence of Lying Clubs in the
last century.  "There is no occasion to go back to the last century
to prove the existence of Lying Clubs," {118} he wrote.  "When I was
at Bishop-Auckland in County Durham, a few years ago, I found a Lying
Club existing and flourishing.  There were different grades of
proficiency.  If a man could not lie at all, he was expelled.  If he
lied rather badly, he was given another trial.  I never knew any one
expelled.  I was blackballed."



[1] _The Daily News_ was the first Liberal daily paper to be
published in London and at first cost fivepence.  It was afterwards
reduced to threepence.

[2] Sir John Robinson, _Fifty Years of Fleet Street_.

[3] It was humorously said at the period that Mr. Robinson (the
Manager of the _Daily News_) and Count Bismarck were the only persons
who had gained by the war, and that only the former deserved to do so.

[4] Mr. Labouchere gave the following reasons for severing his
connection with the _Daily News_.  "On Mr. Gladstone's withdrawal
from public life," he wrote in _Truth_, "the party, or rather a
majority of the officialdom of the party became tainted with
Birmingham imperialism.  My convictions did not allow me to be
connected with a newspaper which supported a clique of intriguers
that had captured the Liberal ship, and that accepted blindly these
intriguers as the representatives of Liberalism in regard to our
foreign policy."

[5] _Daily News_, Feb. 8, 1869.

[6] Merivale and Labouchere had recently met at a dinner party at the
house of the former's father.

[7] Merivale had collaborated with Palgrave Simpson in the
construction of the play.

[8] Herman Merivale, _Bar, Stage, and Platform_.

[9] Ellen Terry, _The Story of my Life_.

[10] _Truth_, August 16, 1877.

[11] _Ibid._, June 12, 1877.

[12] _Truth_, Nov.  12, 1887.

[13] _Truth_, November 8, 1877.

[14] Joseph Hatton, _Journalistic London_.

[15] "The Ghastly Gaymarket," _Truth_, Dec. 8, 1881.

[16] _The World_, July 15, 1874.

[17] Mr. Grenville Murray, who was the editor of the _Queen's
Messenger_, was assaulted by Lord Carrington on account of an article
he wrote about the latter's father, and out of the case which Mr.
Grenville Murray brought against Lord Carrington arose Mr. Murray's
prosecution for perjury, which resulted in his departure from
England.  He died in Paris in 1881.  It was at the time of the
scandal aroused by the article for which Lord Carrington assaulted
Grenville Murray, that Mr. Labouchere was accused of being the
proprietor of the paper.

[18] _The World_, Jan. 23, 1912.

[19] _Truth_, October 11, 1877.

[20] _Temple Bar_, December 1, 1860.

[21] _Daily News_, February 19, 1872.

[22] G. A. Sala, _Life and Adventures_.

[23] _Truth_, October 23, 1884.

[24] The first and last verses are as follows:

  Of all the boys that are so smart
    There's none like crafty Labby;
  He learns the secret of each heart,
    And lives near our Abbey;
  There is no lawyer in the land
    That's half as sharp as Labby;
  He is a demon in the art
    And guileless as a babby!

  The ministers and members all
    Make game of truthful Labby,
  Though but for him it's said they'd be
    A sleepy set and flabby;
  And when their seven long years are out,
    They hope to bury Labby;
  Ah then how peacefully he'll lie,
    But not in our Abbey!




{119}

CHAPTER VI

THE BESIEGED RESIDENT

(Sept., 1870-Feb., 1871)

Mr. Labouchere was a famous raconteur and of the reminiscences he
loved to recount there was no more riveting a series than the one
relating his experiences as a journalist during the siege of Paris.
According to the _Times_[1] nothing that he ever achieved in
journalism or literature excelled or perhaps equalled the letters of
a "Besieged Resident," which he sent from Paris to the _Daily News_,
in the autumn and winter of 1870 and 1871.  The correspondent of the
_Daily News_ in Paris at that period was the late Mr. George Morland
Crawford, who had occupied the position since 1851.  Mr. Crawford had
already made Mr. Labouchere's acquaintance in the early sixties, when
the latter was an attaché at Frankfort, and they had met again later
on at Homburg.  It had been the intention of Mr. Crawford to remain
at his post in Paris, when an unexpected offer from Henry Labouchere
to replace him temporarily caused him to alter his plans.

Mrs. Crawford has given a graphic account[2] of how Labouchere took
her husband's place as correspondent.  He had been in Paris with the
exception of some excursions into the country for several weeks, and
had invited {120} Mr. Crawford to dine with him at Durand's on the
night of September 17.  The party was to have included Aurélien
Scholl, celebrated then as a wit, Got of the Comédie Française, Dr.
Alan Herbert, and Mr. Frank Lawley.  However, the uncertainty of
immediate events and the general rush of departure from the capital
obliged Labouchere to put off his party.  He went at about six
o'clock to the Café du Vaudeville to find Mr. Crawford--first to tell
him that the dinner was countermanded, and then to propose to take
his place as correspondent in Paris, whilst he, Mr. Crawford, should
go to Tours.  Mrs. Crawford happened to be with her husband at the
café, and she thus describes the impression Labouchere made upon her:

"Labby looked a young man on this, to me, memorable evening, but, at
the close of the siege, frightened Odo Russell by looking almost an
old one.  Before my husband, who was writing, introduced us he began
to talk to me and I could not make him out, but at once enjoyed his
company.  He had a very pleasing and intelligent face, I thought
spoke a little like an American (he had been escorting a party of
American young ladies to Rouen), had high caste manners, but with
naturalness, and much that was the reverse of that affectation of
owlish wisdom or cordial dodgery then rife in the diplomatic world.
I saw that he was somebody, both on his own account, and from
education, and thought that he might be some Don brought up in
England, who had made himself the president of a South American
Republic."

As soon as Mr. Crawford had finished his writing, Labouchere broached
the subject of the _Daily News_.  He said: "A fancy seized me, as
Sheffield (of the British Embassy) told me you had sent your little
children to England, and your wife had resolved to stay through the
siege and give you what help she can.  It is to take your place as
correspondent of the _Daily News_, and to send you into the
provinces.  As I am a proprietor of the paper, Robinson won't object
to this arrangement.  It would be an excellent thing {121} for my
heirs were I to stop a bullet or die of starvation, but were anything
of the sort to befall you it would be calamitous for you and yours.
You need not leave me the six weeks' provisions which Sheffield told
me you laid in, but can give them to poor neighbours.  I can always
get as much fresh mutton as I want from the porter of the British
Embassy, who has orders to this effect.  There is a flock of ewes and
wethers on the grounds there, to browse on the grass and eat the hay
laid in for the horses of Lord Lyons, before he had directions from
Granville to go to Tours to watch events there.  The only person at
the Embassy is the porter.  We two will have more mutton than we can
eat even if the siege lasts long.  The porter knows how to grow
potatoes and mushrooms in an empty cellar, so that we two shall have
not only meat but dainties to vary the dishes.  I have arranged to
have rooms at the Grand Hotel, so you see I shall be in clover."

Mrs. Crawford, who did not the least believe he was in earnest,
protested that she was not at all afraid of remaining in Paris, but
Labouchere persisted in his persuasions.

"If you were at all affected," he replied, "I should say, 'Don't be
theatrical.'  Instead of that I shall say, 'Don't be like Lot's
wife.'"  Then he took out his watch and explained that the last train
to leave Paris between then and the end of the siege would start from
the Gare St. Lazare that night at 9.40.  "I advise you to go home at
once," he went on, "and pack up what clothes you can for your
temporary residence at the seat of the delegate government at Tours.
Lyons will be glad to have you near him, for, as you can understand,
he knows nothing personally of those friends of yours whom the
Revolution has brought to the top."

Mrs. Crawford lost no more time in discussion, and hurried off to
make her preparations in order to catch the last train by which she
and her husband could get out of Paris.  The 9.40 train did not leave
St. Lazare that day before {122} midnight, and such was its weight of
passengers and baggage that no fewer than three engines had to be
coupled on.

The next day Mr. Labouchere sent his first letter to London, in his
capacity of Paris correspondent to the _Daily News_.  The mails
continued to leave Paris regularly for another three days, but the
chaos that prevailed in the post-office did not inspire the citizens
who entrusted their correspondence to its tender care with overmuch
confidence.

"Everybody was in military uniform," writes Labouchere, "everybody
was shrugging his shoulders, and everybody was in the condition of a
London policeman, were he to see himself marched off to prison by a
street sweeper.  That the Prussians should have taken the Emperor
prisoner and have vanquished the French armies, had of course
astonished these French bureaucrats, but that they should have
ventured to interfere with postmen had perfectly dumbfounded them."
Having disposed of his letter as best he might, Labouchere passed
through the courtyard to try his luck with a telegram.  There he saw
postmen seated on the boxes of carts, with no horses before them.  It
was their hour to carry out the letters, and thus mechanically they
fulfilled their duty.  It is in touches such as these that the writer
makes the scenes of the winter months of '70 and '71 live before the
eyes of his readers.  Were the ridiculous episodes he relates visible
to others besides himself, or were his journalistic abilities so
acutely developed that nothing significant, however minute, could
escape his eager scrutiny?  It is not easy to say, but the fact
remains that he gave the world at that time, in astonishingly amusing
letters, vivid pictures of bureaucracy startled into ludicrous
attitudes of unaccustomed enterprise, of gilt and tinsel patriotism
ineffectually trying to replace the paper courage[3] of Imperial
{123} France--of an irresponsible populace brought face to face with
a catastrophe which they imagined to be impossible up till within the
last ten days of the siege.

The Parisians had undoubtedly a good excuse for the poor figure they
were obliged to cut before Europe in the January of 1871.  Events,
which every one, except their ex-Emperor and his government, had
predicted as inevitable, had followed one another with a disastrous
rapidity, leaving them, after each one, _bouches béantes_, incapable
of deciding whether the most appropriate gesture to express their
attitude would be one of applause, of hisses, or of weeping.

Only six months had elapsed since the afternoon of the Emperor's
reception, at St. Cloud, of the members of the Senate, when M. Rouher
had said, during the course of his address, in words that, to-day,
sound as if they must have been meant to be ironical: "Your Majesty
has occupied the last four years in perfecting the armament and
organisation of the army," and since the King of Prussia and the
Sovereigns of South Germany had ordered the mobilisation of their
armies.  Six months!  But what a six months of bloodshed and fury, of
humiliation and defeat.

The Emperor left St. Cloud for the seat of war on July 28th, and went
straight to Metz, where a Council of War was held on August 4, with
Marshals Macmahon and Bazaine in attendance.  That very day the Crown
Prince of Prussia fell upon a portion of Macmahon's army corps at
Weissenburg, and all but destroyed it, killing its general, Abel
Douay, and taking 800 prisoners.  The next day a similar fate
overtook another corps, commanded by {124} Macmahon himself on the
hills above Wörth, when 6000 men were killed or taken prisoner, and
no less than thirty pieces of artillery with six mitrailleuses were
captured.  Whilst the latter engagement was actually in progress
General Froissard's army corps, which was holding the heights above
Saarbrück, was driven back in confusion and with great loss upon Metz.

The news of these events fell upon the ears of startled Europe on
August 8.  A fiasco, so hurried and hopeless, had not been
contemplated.  At first a false report had reached Paris of a grand
victory won by Macmahon, who was supposed to have captured the Crown
Prince of Prussia with all his army.  The enthusiastic excitement had
been unbounded.  Gradually the truth was borne in upon the unhappy
people, and a hopeless reaction was the natural result.  Napoleon's
apologetic telegrams from Metz did not cheer his subjects; even the
fourth of a series of five containing these words, _Tout pent se
rétablir_, brought little hope to their hearts, for it was impossible
not to be aware of the fact that, although the war was but three
weeks old, the Prussian invasion of France was going successfully and
steadily forward.

But France was still an Empire, and, on the morning of August 7, the
Empress-Regent presided over a ministerial council at 5 o'clock in
the morning, and convoked the chambers, who met on the 9th, when the
Ollivier Ministry resigned.  The department of the Seine was declared
in a state of siege, and a permanent council of the Ministry was
established at the Tuileries.  The Ollivier Ministry was replaced, by
one under Count Palikao.

It was still possible for news of the French defeats at the seat of
war to reach the capital.  Bazaine's unsuccessful movement of retreat
from Metz to Verdun on August 15, followed by the bloody battle of
Gravelotte, resulting in his enforced retirement into the entrenched
camp of Metz, spread further consternation among the Imperial
Ministers {125} at home, and preparations for a siege began in
earnest.  General Trochu was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the
forces in Paris on August 17.

Sedan was fought on the first of September, and on the second, the
Emperor of the French sent his sword to the King of Prussia, who
thereupon appointed him a residence as a prisoner of war.  Two days
later the advance guard of the Prussian army at Sedan set out for
Paris.

It is to the columns of the _Daily News_,[4] that we must turn for
the most authentic account of the way in which Paris took the news of
Sedan.  Although Labouchere was not yet the official correspondent
from Paris, he nevertheless sent letters to Fleet Street dealing with
matters connected with the crisis, which were published above the
signature of a "Parisian Resident."

"The news of the Emperor's capture," he writes on September 4,
"reached the foreign embassies here at ten yesterday morning.  At
about 8 o'clock it began to be rumoured that the Emperor and
Macmahon's army had surrendered.  I saw a crowd of about 2000 men
going down the Boulevard, and shouting '_La déchéance_.'  I took the
arm of a patriot, and we all went together to the Louvre to interview
General Trochu.  He came out after we had shouted for him about
half-an-hour, and a deputation had gone in to him.  There was a dead
silence as soon as he appeared, so what he said could be distinctly
heard.  He told us that the news of the capture of the Emperor was
true, and that as for arms he could not give more than he had, and he
regretted to say that the millions on paper were not forthcoming."

In the course of the next twenty-four hours a bloodless revolution
was accomplished in Paris.  On Sunday afternoon Labouchere got into a
carriage and drove about the city, noting everything he saw.  "The
weather was {126} beautiful," he wrote; "it was one of the most
glorious early September days ever seen.  I drove slowly along the
quay parallel with the Orangerie of the Tuileries before the Palace.
The Tuileries gardens were full of people.  I learned that, in the
morning, orders had been given to close the gates, but that,
half-an-hour before I passed, the people had forced them open, and
that neither the troops nor the people made any resistance.  My
coachman, who, I dare say, was an Imperialist yesterday, but was a
very strong Republican to-day, pointed out to me several groups of
people bearing red flags.  I told him that the tricolour, betokening
the presence of the Empress, still floated from the central tower of
the Tuileries.  While I was speaking, and at exactly twenty minutes
past three, I saw that flag taken down.  That is an event in a man's
life not to be forgotten.  Crossing over the Pont de Solferino to the
Quai d'Orsay, I witnessed an extraordinary sight indeed.  From the
windows of those great barracks, formerly peopled with troops, every
man of whom was supposed to be ready to die for his Emperor, I saw
soldiers smiling, waving handkerchiefs, and responding to the cries
of '_Vive la République_.'  Nay, strangers fell on each other's necks
and kissed each other with 'effusion.'  In the neighbourhood of the
Pont Neuf, I saw people on the tops of ladders busily pulling down
the Emperor's bust, which the late loyalty of the people had induced
them to stick about in all possible and impossible places.  I saw the
busts carried in mock procession to the parapets of the Pont Neuf and
thrown into the Seine, clapping of hands and hearty laughter greeting
the splash which the graven image of the mighty monarch made in the
water.  I went as far as the Hôtel de Ville, and found it in
possession of his Majesty the Sovereign People.  Blouses were in
every one of M. Haussmann's balconies.  How they got there I do not
know.  I presume that M. Chevreau did not invite them.  But they got
in somehow without violence.  The great square in front of the Hôtel
de Ville was full of the National Guards, {127} most of them without
uniform.  They carried the butts of their muskets in the air, in
token that they were fraternising with the people.  The most perfect
good humour prevailed.  Portraits of the Emperor and Empress, which
many of your readers must have seen in the Hôtel de Ville ballrooms,
were thrown out of the window and the people trod and danced on the
canvas.  On leaving the Hôtel de Ville I saw, in the Avenue Victoria,
M. Henri Rochefort,[5] let out of prison as a logical sequence of
events but half-an-hour before.  He was on a triumphal car, and wore
a scarlet scarf.  He was escorted by an immense mob, crying, '_Vive
Rochefort_!'  He looked in far better health than I expected to see
him after his long imprisonment, and his countenance beamed with
delight.  He had seen his desire on his enemy."

[Illustration: Facsimile of a "Pigeon-post" letter sent by Henry
Labouchere to his mother during the siege of Paris.]

At four o'clock on the same day the Republic was proclaimed at the
Hôtel de Ville, with a provisional Government composed of the
following members: MM. Gambetta, Jules Favre, Pelletan, Rochefort,
Jules Ferry, Jules Simon, and Ernest Picard.  Kératry was appointed
Prefect of the Police and Arago the Mayor of Paris.

Meanwhile the Prussians came nearer and nearer.  On the 10th, they
entered Laon, and General Hame, who was in command, surrendered the
citadel in order to save the city.  On that day the Republican
Government issued an order to all owners of provisions and forage in
the neighbourhood to move their goods into the capital.  On the 18th
the Crown Prince and the third army were at Chaumes, and two days
later the long march of the Prussians was ended.  The Crown Prince
took up his headquarters at Versailles.  The _Daily News_
correspondent, Archibald Forbes, who had accompanied the third army
from Wörth to Sedan, and from Sedan to Paris, informed Fleet Street
that: "The fortune of war has brought the Prussians to the Hampton
Court of the French capital--has placed them at the very gates of
{128} Paris.  I need say no further word to make the situation more
striking.  Here are the dark blue uniforms and the spiked helmets in
the stately avenues of Versailles.  The barracks of the Imperial
Guard give ample quarters to King William's soldiery, and there have
been found immense stores of hay and oats which will make the
Prussian horses fat, if only rest enough be given them for feeding."

From that day until the end of the siege no regular mail went out of
Paris.  Balloons and pigeons carried the news of the imprisoned
inhabitants into the provinces and beyond the seas.  Sometimes a
letter would be successfully fixed between the double soles of a
crafty man's boots,[6] who would, on some pretext or another, succeed
in making his way through the Prussian lines, or a note would be
rolled up into a ball and be concealed in a pot of pomade and so
proceed in unctuous quiet on its way out of the prison into the open.
Henry Labouchere, some twenty-five years later, described how he
managed to get his letters to the _Daily News_.[7]

"More of my letters reached their destination, I believe, than those
of other correspondents.  The reason was this.  The correspondents
waited on Jules Favre, and asked him to afford them facilities for
sending their letters.  He kindly said that he would, and told us
that whenever a balloon started we might give them, made up in a
parcel, to the man in charge, who would make it his business to
transmit them {129} to their destination so soon as the balloon
touched land outside.  There was a complacent smile on his
countenance when we gratefully accepted this offer that led me to
suspect that, whatever might happen to the letters, they were not
likely to reach the newspaper offices to which they were addressed,
unless they lauded everything.  So, instead of falling a victim to
this confidence trick, I placed my letters under cover to a friend in
London, and put them into a post-box, calculating that, as each
balloon took out about twenty thousand letters, those posted in the
ordinary way would not be opened."

The letters, posted as Labouchere described above, were written on
tissue paper and addressed to Miss Henrietta Hodson.  She,
immediately on receipt of the manuscript, carried it to Fleet Street,
where it was rightly considered copy of the very first order.

Labouchere, as soon as the siege had really begun, tried in vain to
induce General Trochu to allow him to accompany him on his rides to
the ramparts of the city, pointing out that the newspaper
correspondents were always allowed to accompany the Prussian staffs.
Trochu would not hear of the scheme, and explained that he himself
had been within an inch of being shot because he had had the
impudence to say that he was the Governor of Paris.

"From Trochu," writes Labouchere, on September 25, "I went to pay a
few calls.  I found every one engaged in measuring the distance from
the Prussian batteries to his particular house.  One friend I found
seated in a cellar with a quantity of mattresses over it, to make it
bomb-proof.  He emerged from his subterraneous Patmos to talk to me,
ordered his servant to pile on a few more mattresses, and then
retreated.  Anything so dull as existence here it is difficult to
imagine.  Before the day is out one gets sick and tired of the one
single topic of conversation.  We are like the people at Cremorne
waiting for the fireworks to begin; and I really do believe that if
this continues much longer, the {130} most cowardly will welcome the
bombs as a relief from the oppressive _ennui_."

A letter to his mother,[8] dated September 26, gives the following
account of his life in Paris: "I wrote a day or two ago by balloon,
but probably my letter is in the moon.  A man is going to try and get
through the lines with this, and a letter to the _Daily News_.  We
are all right here.  The Prussians fire at the forts, but as yet they
have not bombarded the town.  Provisions are already very dear.  It
is rather dull--in fact a little bombarding would be a relief to our
_ennui_.  Everybody is swaggering about in uniform.  I went round the
inner barricades a day or two ago with the citizen Rochefort."

A few days later he wrote to the _Daily News_: "The presence of the
Prussians at the gates, and the sound of the cannon, have at last
sobered this frivolous people.  Frenchmen indeed cannot live without
exaggeration, and for the last twenty-four hours they have taken to
walking about as if they were guests at their own funerals.  It is
hardly in their line to play the _justum et tenacem_ of Horace.
Always acting, they are now acting the part of Spartans.  It is
somewhat amusing to see the stern gloom on the face of patriots one
meets, who were singing and shouting a few days ago--more
particularly as it is by no means difficult to distinguish beneath
this outward gloom a certain keen relish, founded upon the feeling
that the part is being well played."

On the evening of the same day Labouchere took his strolls abroad,
and came to the Avenue de L'Impératrice, where he found a large crowd
gazing upon the Fort of Mont Valérien.  This fort, from being the
strongest for defence, was particularly beloved by the Parisians.
"They love it as a sailor loves his ship," writes Labouchere.  He
witnessed the following incident: "If I were near enough," said a
young {131} girl, "I would kiss it."  "Let me carry your kiss to it,"
responded a Mobile, and the pair embraced, amid the cheers of the
people around them.

The question of domestic economy had not yet become a pressing one,
as far as the "besieged resident" was concerned.  He was lodged _au
quatrième_ at the Grand Hotel, and wrote during the first week of the
siege: "I presume if the siege lasts long enough, dogs, rats, and
cats will be tariffed.  I have got a thousand francs with me.  It is
impossible to draw upon England; consequently, I see a moment coming
when, unless rats are reasonable, I shall not be able to afford
myself the luxury of one oftener than once a week."  And a fortnight
later he writes: "My landlord presents me every week with my bill.
The ceremony seems to please him, and does me no harm.  I have pasted
upon my mantelpiece the decree of the Government adjourning payment
of rent, and the right to read and re-read this document is all that
he will get from me until the end of the siege.  Yesterday I ordered
myself a warm suit of clothes; I chose a tailor with a German name,
so I feel convinced he will not venture to ask for payment under the
present circumstances, and if he does he will not get it.  If my
funds run out before the siege is over, I shall have at least the
pleasure to think that this has not been caused by improvidence."

He wrote to his mother on October 10, as follows: "I send this by
balloon.  The smaller the letter, the more chance it has to go.  We
are all thriving in here, though we have heard absolutely nothing
from the outside world for a fortnight.  I don't know if my letters
to the _Daily News_ arrive.  Yesterday, I could only get sheeps'
trotters and pickled cauliflower for dinner.  We boast awfully of
what we are going to do, but, as yet, all our sorties have been
driven back, and our forts stun our ears by firing upon stray rabbits
and Uhlans.  If ever my letters to the _Daily News_ do not arrive and
come back here, I shall be shot, but I don't think that they will.  I
am convinced that the {132} provisions will soon give out.  We go
about saying that we cannot be beaten, because we have made a 'pact
with death.'"

And again on the 21st: "We are getting on very well here.  Nothing
has come in since the commencement of the siege, and no one can get
out.  They say there are provisions to last until February, so we
shall have a dose of our own society.  About one sixth of the town is
now commanded by the Prussian batteries, but we don't know whether
they will fire or not.  I am living very well on horse and cat--the
latter excellent--like rabbit, only better.  Our people brag very
much, but do little more.  The Ultras are going ahead--they have
taken now to denouncing crucifixes, which they call ridiculous
nudities--a mayor has had them all removed--he then announced that no
marriages were to take place in his _arrondissement_--marriage being
an insult upon honourable citizens who did not approve of this relic
of superstition.  This was a little too much, so he was removed, and
we are now free to marry or not according to our tastes.  I am the
intimate friend of Louis Blanc, so no one touches me."

One of the most curious things about these letters by balloon was the
irregularity in their delivery.  It was not merely that one balloon
reached friendly or neutral territory in safety, while another did
not.  Of half a dozen letters coming by the same balloon, two would
be delivered, say, on the 6th of the month, one on the 10th, two on
the 15th, and the last on the 20th.  This greatly puzzled the
recipients at the time.  The explanation turned out to be that the
bag containing the first letter had been sent off immediately the
aeronaut descended, whereas the others underwent a variety of
adventures.  Frequently a balloon fell at or near a place of German
occupation.  The aeronaut would come down at a run, hurry off with
one bag, and give the others to friendly peasants, who secreted them
until an opportunity occurred for getting them safely to the nearest
post-town.  Usually the letters came in beautiful order, {133}
without a speck upon them to show an unusual mode of transit.  One
batch, however, had to be fished out of the sea, off the Cornish
coast.  In one case a letter was delivered in wonderfully quick time.
Dispatched from Paris on a Monday night, it was delivered in London
on the following evening.[9]

Apparently his "made in Germany" suit did not wear as well as might
have been expected, for it was only December when he described his
wardrobe as follows:

"My pea-jacket is torn and threadbare, my trousers are frayed at the
bottom, and of many colours--like Joseph's coat.  As for my linen, I
will only say that the washer-women have struck work, as they have no
fuel.  I believe my shirt was once white, but I am not sure.  I
invested a few weeks ago in a pair of cheap boots.  They are my
torment.  They have split in various places, and I wear a pair of
gaiters--purple, like those of a respectable ecclesiastic--to cover
the rents.  I bought them on the Boulevard, and at the same stall I
bought a bright blue handkerchief which was going cheap; this I wear
round my neck.  My upper man resembles that of a dog-stealer, my
lower man that of a bishop.  My buttons are turning my hair grey.
When I had more than one change of raiment these appendages remained
in their places, now they drop off as though I were a moulting fowl.
I have to pin myself together elaborately, and whenever I want to get
anything out of my pocket, I have cautiously to unpin myself, with
the dread of falling to pieces before my eyes."

In another place Labouchere describes his head-dress, which was quite
eccentric enough to fit in with the rest of his travesty: "I have
bought myself a sugar-loaf hat of the first Republic, and am
consequently regarded with deference.  'The style is the man,' said
Buffon; had he lived here now he would rather have said, 'The hat is
the man.'  An English doctor who goes about in a regulation
chimney-pot has {134} already been arrested twenty-seven times.  I,
thanks to my revolutionary hat, have not been arrested once.  I have
only to glance from under its brim at any one for him to quail."

The extracts which Labouchere copied from the newspapers for the
benefit of his London readers are extremely amusing, and give, as no
other method of narration could have done, a good idea of the spirit
which the leaders of the people thought fit to try and promulgate
amongst the Parisians.  One morning, for instance, he learned that
"Moltke is dead, that the Crown Prince is dying of a fever, that
Bismarck is anxious to negotiate but is prevented by the obstinacy of
the King, that three hundred Prussians from the Polish provinces have
come over to our side, that the Bavarian and Würtemberg troops are in
a state of incipient rebellion.  From the fact that the Prussian
outposts have withdrawn to a greater distance from the forts, it is
probable that they despair of success, and in a few days will raise
the siege.  Most of the newspapers make merry over the faults in
grammar in a letter which has been discovered from the Empress to the
Emperor, although I doubt whether there is one Frenchman in the world
who could write Spanish as well as the Empress does French."

The New Year's address to the Prussians, published in the _Gaulois_,
is a masterpiece of journalistic invective, and the relish with which
the besieged resident copied it for the benefit of his London readers
may well be imagined:

"You Prussian beggars, you Prussian scoundrels, you bandits and you
Vandals, you have taken everything from us; you have ruined us; you
are starving us; you are bombarding us; and we have a right to hate
you with a royal hatred.  Well, perhaps one day we might have
forgiven you your rapine and your murders; our towns that you have
sacked; your heavy yokes; your infamous treasons.  The French race is
so light of heart, so kindly, that we might perhaps in time have
forgotten our resentments.  What we {135} never shall forget will be
this New Year's Day, which we have been forced to pass without news
from our families.  You, at least, have had letters from your
Gretchers, astounding letters, very likely, in which the melancholy
blondes with blue eyes make a wonderful literary salad, composed of
sour kraut, berlin wool, forget-me-nots, pillage, bombardment, pure
love, and transcendental philosophy.  But you like all this just as
you like jam with your mutton.  You have what pleases you.  Your ugly
faces receive kisses by the post.  But you kill our pigeons, you
intercept our letters, you shoot at our balloons with your absurd
_fusils de rempart_, and you burst out into a heavy German grin when
you get hold of one of our bags, which are carrying to those we love
our vows, our hopes, our remembrances, our regrets, our hearts."  And
so on.

Labouchere had not a high opinion of French journalism during the
investment.  "A French journalist," he says, "even when he is not
obliged to do so, generally invents his facts, and then reasons upon
them with wonderful ingenuity.  One would think that just at present
a Parisian would do well to keep his breath to cool his own porridge.
Such, however, is not his opinion.  He thinks that he has a mission
to guide and instruct the world, and this mission he manfully fulfils
in defiance of Prussians and Prussian cannons.  It is true, that he
knows rather less of foreign countries than an intelligent Japanese
Daimio may be supposed to know of Tipperary, but, by some curious law
of nature, the less he knows of a subject, the more strongly does he
feel impelled to write about it.  I read a very clever article this
morning pointing out that if we are not on our guard, our Empire in
India will come to an end by a Russian fleet attacking it from the
Caspian Sea.  When one thinks how very easy it would have been for
the author not to have written about the Caspian Sea, one is at once
surprised and grateful to him for having called our attention to the
danger which menaces us in that quarter of the globe."

{136}

His estimate of General Trochu was, on the whole, the fairest that
was made at the period.  During the earliest days of the siege it was
supposed that Trochu had a plan, and, on being questioned about it,
he admitted that he had.  He went on to say that he guaranteed its
success, but that he should reveal it to no one, until the right
moment--in fact, he had deposited it for safety with his notary,
Maître Duclos, who, in the event of his being killed, would produce
it.  As time wore on and no plan was forthcoming from the General, it
became very evident that it could have been nothing more elaborate
than a determination to capitulate as soon as Paris was starved out.
When the siege was nearly five weeks old Labouchere wrote:

"Every day this siege lasts, convinces me that Gen. Trochu is not the
right man in the right place.  He writes long-winded letters, utters
Spartan aphorisms, and complains of his colleagues, his generals, and
his troops.  The confidence which is felt in him is rapidly
diminishing.  He is a good, respectable man, without a grain of
genius, or of that fierce, indomitable energy which sometimes
replaces it.  He would make a good minister of war in quiet times,
but he is about as fit to command in the present emergency as Mr.
Cardwell[10] would be.  His two principal military subordinates,
Vinoy and Ducrot, are excellent Generals of division, but nothing
more.  As for his civilian colleagues they are one and all hardly
more practical than Professor Fawcett.  Each has some crotchet of his
own, each likes to dogmatise and to speechify, and each considers the
others to be idiots, and has a small following of his own, which
regards him as a species of divinity.  They are philosophers,
orators, and legists, but they are neither practical men nor
statesmen."  And when the siege was over he summed up the case for
Trochu thus: "What will be the verdict of history on the defence?
Who knows!  On the one hand, the Parisians have kept a powerful army
at bay for longer than was expected; on the {137} other hand, every
sortie that they have made has been unsuccessful--every attempt to
arrest the approach of the besiegers has failed.  Passively and
inertly they have allowed their store of provisions to grow less and
less, until they have been forced to capitulate, without their
defences having been stormed, or the cannon silenced.  The General
complains of his soldiers, the soldiers complain of their General;
and on both sides there is cause of complaint.  Trochu is not a
Todleben.  His best friends describe him as a weak sort of military
Hamlet, wise of speech, but weak and hesitating in action--making
plans and then criticising them, instead of accomplishing them.  As a
commander his task was a difficult one; when the siege commenced he
had no army; when the army was formed it was encompassed by
earthworks and redoubts so strong that even better soldiers would
have failed to carry them.  As a statesman, he never was master of
the situation.  He followed rather than led public opinion.  Success
is the criterion of ability in this country, and poor Trochu is as
politically dead as though he never had lived."

As time wore on the question of meals in the besieged city naturally
became one of absorbing moment.  "I went," says Labouchere, on
December 21, "to see what was going on in the house of a friend of
mine, in the Avenue de L'Impératrice, who has left Paris.  The
servant who was in charge told me that up there they had not been
able to obtain bread for three days, and that the last time he had
presented his ticket, he had been given about half an inch of cheese.
'How do you live then?' I asked.  After looking mysteriously round to
see that no one was watching us, he took me down into the cellar, and
pointed to some meat in a barrel.  'It is half a horse,' he said, in
the tone of a man who is showing some one the corpse of his murdered
victim.  'A neighbouring coachman killed him, and we salted him down,
and divided him.'  Then he opened a closet in which sat a huge cat.
'I am fattening her up for Christmas day; {138} we mean to serve her
up, surrounded with mice like sausages,' he observed."  On January 6
Labouchere notes: "Yesterday I had a slice of Pollux for dinner.
Pollux and his brother Castor are two elephants, which have been
killed.  It was tough, coarse, and oily, and I do not recommend
English families to eat elephant as long as they can get beef or
mutton.  Many of the restaurants are closed, owing to want of fuel.
They are recommended to use lamps; but although French cooks can do
wonders with very poor materials, when they are called upon to cook
an elephant with a spirit lamp the thing is almost beyond their
ingenuity.  Castor and Pollux's trunks sold for forty-five francs a
pound; the other parts of the interesting twins fetched about ten
francs a pound."

He wrote to his mother on January 8[11]: "Here we still are.  For the
last few days the Prussians have taken to throwing shells into the
town, which makes things more lively.  I do not think it can last
much longer.  It is awfully cold, for all the wood is freshly cut and
will not burn.  The washerwomen have struck as they have no fuel, so
we all wear very dirty shirts.  I am in a great fright of my money
giving out, as none is to be got here.  My dress is seedy--in fact
falling to pieces.  I think I have eaten now of every animal which
Noah had in his ark.[12]  Since the bombardment the cannon makes a
great noise.  All night it is as if doors were slamming.  Outside the
walls it is rather pretty to see the batteries exchanging shots.  We
have heard nothing from England since September, except from scraps
of paper picked out of dead Prussians' pockets."  Labouchere was
always ready to recall to his memory for conversational purposes the
strange food he ate during the siege {139} of Paris.  Donkey
apparently was his favourite dish.  This is what he said on the
subject:

"A donkey is infinitely better eating than beef or mutton, indeed I
do not know any meat which is better.  This was so soon discovered by
the French, during the siege of Paris, that donkey meat was about
five times the price of horse meat.  At Voisin's there was almost
every day a joint of cold donkey for breakfast, and it was greatly
preferred to anything else.  Let any one who doubts the excellence of
cold donkey slay one of these weak-minded animals, cook him, and eat
him."  Rats he did not appreciate so much: "The objection to them is
that when cooked their flesh is gritty.  This objection is, however,
somewhat Epicurean, for, except for this grittiness, they are a
wholesome and excellent article of food.  I am surprised that there
is not a society for the promotion of eating rats.  Why should not
prisoners be fed with these nourishing and prolific little animals?"

His account of how he got a leg of mutton into Paris after the
capitulation, when, in spite of the siege being raised, the
difficulties of procuring food were almost as insurmountable as
before, was one of his most amusing _contes_.  He rode out to
Versailles,[13] where he procured the longed-for joint, but, when he
started on his return journey, a sentinel of Versailles refused to
allow the meat to leave the town, and actually took it away from him.
Desperately he decided to appeal to the better side of the Prussian's
nature, and explained to him that he was in love, indeed, that to
love was the fate of all mortals.  The warrior sighed and pensively
assented: Labouchere judged that he was most likely thinking of his
distant Gretchen, and shamelessly followed up his advantage: "My lady
love is in Paris," {140} he proceeded pathetically, "long have I
sighed in vain.  I am taking her now a leg of mutton--on this leg
hangs all my hope of bliss--if I present myself to her with this
token of my devotion she may yield to my suit.  Oh, full of feeling,
beloved of beauteous women, German warrior, can you refuse me?"  Of
course the sentinel yielded, and the correspondent, who, needless to
say, had no lady love in the capital, bore it off in triumph.  He
enjoyed it for dinner that evening in company with Mr. Frank Lawley
and Mr. Denis Bingham, in whose journal for that day occurs the
following entry:

"On their return from Versailles together, Labouchere and Lawley
brought me a leg of mutton.  And what a treat it was for our small
household and dear neighbours!  And an Italian lady brought us a
large loaf of white bread, and we feasted and were merry, and
measured our girths, and promised ourselves that we would soon get
into condition again, for we were lamentably pulled down."[14]

On February 10, Labouchere took his departure from Paris, feeling, as
he said, much as Daniel must have done on emerging from the den of
lions.  Baron Rothschild procured for him a pass which enabled him to
take the Amiens train at the goods station within the walls of the
city, instead of driving, as those who were less fortunate were
obliged to do, to Gonesse.  The train was drawn up before a shed in
the midst of oceans of mud.  It consisted of one passenger carriage,
and of a long series of empty bullock vans.  He entered one of the
latter as the passenger van was already crowded.  At Breteuil the
train waited for above an hour, and Labouchere, impatient of the
delay, perceiving a Prussian train puffing up, managed to induce an
official to allow him to get into the luggage van, by which means he
was able to proceed on his way to the destination.  "Having started
from Paris as a bullock, I reached Amiens at twelve o'clock as a
carpet-bag," was the way he described his journey.

{141}

At Abbeville the train passed out of the Prussian lines into the
French, and Calais was reached at 7 P.M.  "Right glad" was the Paris
correspondent, to use his own words, to "eat a Calais supper and to
sleep on a Calais bed."[15]

In his last letter to the _Daily News_ during the war, Mr. Labouchere
lodged one other Parthian shot in the city whose hospitality he had
been enjoying: "I took my departure from Paris," he wrote, "leaving
without any very poignant regret, its inhabitants wending their way
to the electoral 'urns,' the many revolving in their minds how France
and Paris are to manage to pay the little bill which their creditor
outside is making up against them; the few--the very few--determined
to die rather than yield, sitting in the cafés on the boulevard,
which is to be, I presume, their last ditch."

In one of his earliest numbers of _Truth_, Mr. Labouchere gave a
characteristic account of how he behaved under fire.  It is worth
quoting as illustrative of the naïve frankness with which he always
described those instinctive little actions of human nature which more
sophisticated persons usually pretend never occur.  "I was at some of
the engagements during the Franco-Prussian War.  The first time that
I was under fire, I felt that every shell whizzing through the air
would infallibly blow me up.  Being a non-combatant, in an
unconcerned sort of way, as if I had business to attend to elsewhere,
I effected a strategical movement to the rear.  But, as no shell had
blown me up, I came to the conclusion that no shell would blow me up,
and accepted afterwards as a natural state of things which did not
concern me, the fact that these missiles occasionally blew up other
people."



[1] _Times_, January 17, 1912.

[2] _Truth_, January 24, 1912.

[3] The Emperor's plan of campaign was to mass 150,000 men at Metz;
100,000 at Strassburg, and 50,000 at the Camp at Châlons.  It was
then his intention to unite the armies at Metz and Strassburg, and to
cross the Rhine at Maxau, to force the States of South Germany to
observe neutrality.  He would then have pushed on to encounter the
Prussians.  But the army at Metz, instead of 150,000 men, only
mustered 100,000; that of Strassburg only 40,000 instead of 100,000;
whilst the corps of Marshal Canrobert had still one division at
Paris, and another at Soissons; his artillery as well as his cavalry
were not ready.  Further no army corps was even yet completely
furnished with the equipments necessary for taking the
field.--_Campagne de 1870; des Causes qui ont amené la Capitulation
de Sedan_.  Par un Officier attaché à l'État Major-Général.
Bruxelles.

[4] Quotations in this chapter not otherwise specified have been
taken from the columns of the _Daily News_, August, 1870-January,
1871.

[5] He had been undergoing a term of imprisonment for certain
articles written in the _Marseillaise_.

[6] I quote a few lines--the only legible ones--from a letter,
addressed to his mother, which Labouchere sent out of Paris, fastened
between the double sole of a man's boot.  It looks as if the bearer
must have waded through water, and the marks of the cobbler's nails
are visible all over it.  "November 6, 1870.  This goes out in a
citizen's boot.  If he is caught, he will be shot, which is his
affair--only you will not get it.  The position is utterly hopeless.
We shall be bombarded in a week.  This hotel has two hundred wounded
in it.  I got into the Hôtel de Ville on Monday with the mob.  Such a
scene.  I have got a pass from General Vinoy, so I get a good view of
all the military operations....  I do not know if my letters to the
D. N. arrive...."

[7] J. M'Carthy and Sir J. Robinson, The Daily News Jubilee.  _A
Retrospect of Fifty Years of the Queen's Reign_.

[8] Mrs. Labouchere had been a widow since 1863, and was now living
at Oakdene, near Dorking.

[9] Robinson.  _Fifty Years of Fleet Street_.

[10] Secretary of War in Mr. Gladstone's first Ministry.

[11] This letter did not reach London, E. C., from whence it was
posted to Dorking, until Jan. 19.

[12] Captain Bingham notes in his diary for Dec. 4 that Henry
Labouchere, Frank Lawley, Lewis Wingfield, and Quested Lynch dined
with him, and that they partook of moufflon, a kind of wild sheep
which inhabits Corsica.--_Recollections of Paris_, Capt. Hon. D.
Bingham.

[13] "As soon as the armistice was signed, several of the English
correspondents managed to get to Versailles.  The first thing that
Labouchere did on arriving there was to plunge his head into a pail
of milk, and he was with difficulty weaned."--_Recollections of
Paris_, Capt. Hon. D. Bingham.

[14] Capt. Hon. D. Bingham.  _Recollections of Paris_.

[15] The following gentlemen of the press were in Paris during the
siege: Charles Austen of the _Times_, Frank Lawley of the _Daily
Telegraph_, Henry Labouchere of the _Daily News_, Thomas Gibson
Bowles of the _Morning Post_, J. Augustus O'Shea of the _Standard_,
Capt. Bingham, who sent letters to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and Mr.
Dallas, who wrote both for the _Times_ and the _Daily News_.




{142}

CHAPTER VII

LABOUCHERE AND BRADLAUGH

(1880-1881)

At the general election of 1880, Mr. Labouchere found in the electors
of Northampton a constituency which was to remain faithful to him
throughout his political career.  He was described in the local press
as the "nominee of the moderate Liberals," though, as he explained in
the columns of _Truth_, a moderate Liberal at Northampton was a
Radical any where else.  The "Radical" candidate was that upright and
greatly persecuted man, Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, who merited far more
than Mr. Labouchere the title of the "religious member for
Northampton."[1]  It has often been pointed out that the difference
between religious and irreligious people does not lie so much in
opinion as in temperament.  Labouchere had an essentially irreligious
nature, he was a born _impie_, as the French say: Mr. Bradlaugh had
the soul of a Covenanter.  As far as speculative religious opinions
were concerned, they practically coincided, while, in the general
lines of political opinion, they were quite at one.  Both were strong
Radicals and strong anti-socialists.

Northampton was in 1880 one of the most promising Radical
constituencies.[2]  The Radical element had for {143} many years been
very numerous among the population, but unfortunately the majority of
the workers had no vote.  The Household Suffrage Act of 1868 remedied
this state of things to some extent.  The work of the Freehold Land
Society developed the scope of the remedy.  This most practical
expression of democratic ideals, by making freeholders of workmen,
raised the numbers of the electorate from 6829 in 1874 to 8189 in
1880; of these 2500 had never voted before, and to a man were
Radicals.  When Mr. Labouchere was introduced as Liberal candidate he
at once decided to make common cause with Mr. Bradlaugh, and his
manifesto to the electors, published on March 27, was craftily worded
so as to appeal with simple directness to those modern sons of St.
Crispin, "the communistic cobblers of Northampton."  It ran as
follows: "Having already sat in Parliament as a Liberal member for
Middlesex, it is needless for me to say that I am an opponent of the
Imperialism which, under the leadership of the Earl of Beaconsfield,
has become the policy of the Conservative Government.  This
new-fangled political creed consists in swagger abroad and inaction
at home.  Its results are that we have made ourselves the patrons of
one of the vilest governments that ever burdened the earth; that we
have joined with the oppressors against the oppressed; that we have
acquired a pestiferous and less than worthless land in the
Mediterranean; that we have annexed the territory of some harmless
Dutch republicans against their will; that we have expended above six
millions in catching a savage, who had as much right to his freedom
as we have, and that we have butchered Afghans for the crime of
defending their country against an unjust invasion....  For my part,
I am anxious to see Parliament again controlling the executive, and a
majority of members returned who will radically revise the laws
regarding land, so as to encourage its tenure by the many instead of
its absorption by the few, who will render farmers independent of the
caprices of the landlords, who will emancipate {144} the agricultural
labourers by securing to them their natural right to vote."  He went
on to express in strong terms his desire for the disestablishment and
disendowment of the Church of England.[3]  In a speech which he made
on the same day as the publication of his manifesto, in the Wesleyan
Chapel, in the Wellingborough Road, he said that he had been asked a
little while ago whether he was a member of the Church of England,
and he had replied that he had been brought up in the Church of
England, and, if he had to register his religion, he should register
it as a member of the Church of England.  But, if he had been asked
what his religion was, he should have said the question was one
between his God and his conscience, and it was no business of any
one's in Northampton, because he stood upon the distinct issue that,
whatever the religious opinions of a candidate might be, they were
sending him to Parliament to perform certain political duties, and if
his political views were in accordance with theirs, religion had
nothing to do with it.[4]

The borough had previously returned two Tory members, Mr. Phipps, a
local brewer, and Mr. Merewether, a lawyer.  They were not themselves
very formidable opponents to the Radical joint candidature.  The
clergy and the press urged the theological motive, as well as his
greatly misunderstood views on Malthusianism against Bradlaugh.  On
the Sunday before the election the Vicar of St. Giles intimated that
"to those noble men who loved Christ more than party, Jesus would
say, 'Well done.'"  But, in spite of nearly 2000 years of
Christianity, heaven has not yet learned to bless the weaker cause,
and on the election day, the figures stood--Labouchere (L.), 4518,
Bradlaugh (R.), 3827, Phipps (C.), 3125, Merewether (C.), 2826.  When
the news of the poll was brought to Mr. Labouchere, who was smoking
his cigarette in the coffee room of the hotel where he was staying,
his only comment was a quiet chuckle, and the remark, "Oh, they've
swallowed Bradlaugh, after all, have they?"

{145}

Great was the fury in the Conservative camp.  "The bellowing
blasphemer of Northampton," as Mr. Bradlaugh was amiably called by
the _Sheffield Telegraph_, had to meet the full blast of popular
prejudice, which was exploited to the utmost by his political
opponents.

The Tories were soon to have more than popular prejudice to exploit.
On May 3, Mr. Bradlaugh, before taking his seat in the House of
Commons, handed to Sir Thomas Erskine May, the Clerk of the House,
the following statement:


_To_

THE RIGHT HONBLE. THE SPEAKER.

I, the undersigned, Charles Bradlaugh, beg respectfully to claim to
be allowed to affirm as a person for the time being by law permitted
to make a solemn affirmation or declaration, instead of taking an
oath.


On being invited by the Speaker (Sir Henry Brand) to make a statement
to the House with regard to his claim, he replied:


Mr. Speaker, I have only now to submit that the Parliamentary Oaths
Act, 1866, gives the right to affirm to every person for the time
being permitted to make affirmation.  I am such a person; and under
the Evidence Amendment Act, 1869, and the Evidence Amendment Act,
1870, I have repeatedly for nine years past affirmed in the highest
courts of jurisdiction in this realm.  I am ready to make the
declaration or affirmation of allegiance.


It might have been thought that the principle of Mr. Bradlaugh's
position needed only to be stated to be accepted by men of honourable
feeling and average intelligence.  After all, as Mr. Labouchere, in
course of conversation on this very point, once remarked to me: "a
statement is either true or false, and expletives cannot affect it."
The legal precedents, invoked, although they did not actually mention
{146} the parliamentary oath, had been considered sufficient by the
last Liberal law officers.  Sir Henry Brand, however, had "grave
doubts," and desired to refer the claim to the House's judgment.
Lord Frederick Cavendish, on behalf of the Treasury Bench, seconded
by Sir Stafford Northcote, the leader of the Opposition, moved that
the point be referred to a Select Committee.  Lord Percy and Mr.
David Onslow attempted in vain to adjourn the debate.

On May 10, Lord Richard Grosvenor, the Government Whip, announced the
names of the proposed Committee: Mr. Whitbread, Sir J. Holker, Mr.
John Bright, Lord Henry Lennox, Mr. W. H. Massey, Mr. Staveley Hill,
Sir Henry Jackson, Sir Henry James (the Attorney-General), Mr. Farrer
Herschell (the Solicitor-General), Sir G. Goldney, Mr. Grantham, Mr.
Pemberton, Mr. Watkin Williams, Mr. Spencer Walpole, Mr. Hopwood, Mr.
Beresford Hope, Major Nolan, Mr. Chaplin, and Mr. Serjeant Simon.  In
spite of the fact that the actual motion was not to come on till the
next day, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff endeavoured at once to raise a
debate on the legitimacy of the Committee, and the next day succeeded
in doing so.  The debate was characterised by "great violence and
recklessness," but the Government succeeded in getting their
Committee appointed by a majority of seventy-four.  The report of the
Committee was presented on May 20.  Eight members were in favour of
Mr. Bradlaugh's right to affirm, and eight members against: Mr.
Spencer Walpole, the Chairman, took the responsibility of giving his
casting vote for the Noes.  All the Noes with the exception of Mr.
Hopwood were Conservatives, the rest of the Liberals voting on the
affirmative side.  Bradlaugh now claimed the right to take the oath,
as the right to affirm was denied him.

There has been so much misunderstanding of Bradlaugh's position on
this point that it may be well to explain exactly what it was that he
did claim.  In a statement of his case subsequently published in his
paper, _The National Reformer_, {147} on May 30, 1889, Mr. Bradlaugh
used the following words: "My duty to my constituents is to fulfil
the mandate they have given me, and if, to do this, I have to submit
to a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have
reverently made, so much the worse for those who force me to repeat
words which I have scores of times declared are to me sounds
conveying no clear and definite meaning.  I am sorry for the earnest
believers who see words sacred to them used as a meaningless addendum
to a promise, but I cannot permit their less sincere co-religionists
to use an idle form, in order to prevent me from doing my duty to
those who have chosen me to speak for them in Parliament.  _I shall,
taking the oath, regard myself, as bound, not by the letter of its
words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed
had I been permitted to use it_.  So soon as I am able, I shall take
such steps as may be consistent with parliamentary business to put an
end to the present doubtful and unfortunate state of the law and
practice on oaths and affirmations."

The words italicised indicate very clearly the spirit in which Mr.
Bradlaugh proposed to take the oath.  To do so, was, as he conceived,
the only way, since the adverse decision of the Committee on his
claim to affirm, by which he could qualify himself for the
performance of his duty to his constituents.  It was in no sense
intended as an insult to those to whom the oath had a distinct and
positive religious value, or as a defiance of the dignity or orders
of the House.  This document was dated May 30, the day on which the
report of the Committee was issued, and on the following day, Mr.
Bradlaugh presented himself to take the oath and his seat.

Sir Henry Drummond Wolff at once rose and objected to the
administration of the oath, and, on the Speaker's allowing his
objection, proceeded to make a remarkable speech.  For flippancy of
tone and sheer ineptitude of argument, not to speak of the crass and
brutal quality of {148} the prejudice which inspired it, this
deliverance possesses an unenviable pre-eminence among the many
absurdities uttered by honourable members during the Bradlaugh
parliamentary struggle.  Wolff's argument rested on two grounds, both
palpably false, while the second was entirely irrelevant to the point
at issue.  He maintained that Atheists who had made affirmations in
courts of law (as Mr. Bradlaugh had done) thereby admitted that an
oath "would not be binding on their conscience," and, furthermore,
that Bradlaugh had stated, in his "Impeachment of the House of
Brunswick," that "Parliament has the undoubted right to withhold the
crown from Albert Edward, Prince of Wales."  Sir Henry "could not see
how a gentleman professing the views set forth in that work could
take the oath of allegiance."  He went on to say: "What we have now
before us is the distinct negation of anything like perpetual
morality or conscience, or the existence of God.  And, as I believe
that a person holding these views cannot be allowed to take the oath
in this House, I beg to move my resolution."  Mr. R. N. Forster
seconded.  Mr. Gladstone at once rose and, while refraining from
expressing any personal opinion, suggested reference to a Select
Committee.  Sir Henry James supported the Prime Minister's amendment.
Mr. Labouchere, speaking as the colleague of the honourable member in
the representation of Northampton, said that he thought it right to
state that his honourable friend was selected by the majority of the
constituents solely on account of his political views.  They did not
occupy themselves with his religious convictions, because they were
under the impression that they were giving him political, rather than
theological, functions to fulfil in that House.  A proposal had been
made by the Prime Minister that this matter should be referred to a
Select Committee.  It certainly did appear to him (Mr. Labouchere)
somewhat strange that a member who had been duly elected should be
told that he could not take his seat because he was forbidden to make
an affirmation on {149} account of his not being a Quaker or a
Moravian, and because he was forbidden from taking the oath on
account of certain speculative religious opinions, which he had
professed.  But that appeared to be the view of many gentlemen on the
other side of the House, and he should be perfectly ready to discuss
that view; but, as the Prime Minister had very rightly said, the
matter was a judicial one, and it would be far better, in his humble
opinion, that it should be referred to a Committee of the House to
look at it in its judicial aspect rather than that there should be an
acrimonious theological discussion in that House.  When, however, it
was referred to a Committee, he thought that he had a right to ask,
in the name of his constituents, that that Committee should decide it
as soon as possible.  Should the Committee decide that the honourable
gentleman was not to be allowed to take the oath, it would then
become, if not his duty, the duty of some other honourable gentleman
to bring in a bill to enable his colleague to make an affirmation in
order that his constituents might enjoy the right which the
constitution gave them of being represented by two members in that
House.

Lord Percy drily observed that he was sorry for the electors of
Northampton if they were deprived of the services of one of their
representatives, because the honourable gentleman was recommended to
them by his honourable colleague, whose religious opinions were well
known, and, after an eloquent speech from Mr. Bright, who recommended
"the statesmanlike and judicious course which has been suggested to
us by the First Minister of the Crown," the debate was adjourned.

On the resumption of the debate the next day, the wildest remarks
were made by Mr. Bradlaugh's opponents.  Dr. Lyons proposed the
solution that "Northampton should send us a God-fearing if not a
God-loving man."  Mr. Warton argued that "the man who does not fear
God cannot honour the King," and Mr. Callan scoffed at Mr. Bright's
tribute of respect to Mr. Bradlaugh's sense of honour and {150}
conscience, "language," he said, "that should not be used with
reference to an infidel blasphemer."  After the din caused by this
_ex parte_ criticism had subsided, the still small voice of Mr.
Labouchere was heard mildly asking whether the honourable member was
in order in referring to his colleague as an infidel blasphemer, and
the Speaker having ruled the phrase out of order, Mr. Callan withdrew
it.  He was, however, an ardent polemist, and added that he was sure
that Mr. Labouchere, in spite of his support of Mr. Bradlaugh, "would
prefer in this House his old acquaintance Lambri Pasha to the
gentleman who was the subject of the debate."  And so the foolish
wrangle went on, recalling the historian's account of the
Œcumenical Council.  It is true that the amateur theologians of
Westminster stopped short of pulling each other's beards.  Their zeal
had not quite the professional note of that of the Fathers at Ephesus.

After two days of this sort of thing, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff's
motion was rejected by 289 votes to 219, and a second Select
Committee of twenty-three was appointed.  The members were: the
Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, Messrs. Bright, Chaplin,
Childers, Sir Richard Cross, Mr. Gibson, Sir Gabriel Goldney, Mr.
Grantham, Mr. Staveley Hill, Sir John Holker, Mr. Beresford Hope, Mr.
Hopwood, Sir Henry Jackson, Lord Henry Lennox, Mr. Massey, Major
Nolan, Messrs. Pemberton, Simon, Trevelyan, Walpole, Whitbread, and
Watkin Williams.

The Committee reported that Bradlaugh by simply stating (though in
answer to official question) that he had repeatedly affirmed under
certain Acts in courts of law, had brought it to the notice of the
House that he was a person as to whom judges had satisfied themselves
that an oath was not binding on his conscience; that, under the
circumstances, an oath taken by him would not be an oath within the
true meaning of the statutes; and that the House therefore could, and
ought, to prevent him from going through the form.  The Committee
further suggested that he should be allowed {151} to affirm with a
view to his right to do so being tested by legal action, pointing to
the nearly equal balance of votes in the former Committee as a reason
for desiring a decisive legal solution.

On June 21, Mr. Labouchere moved "that Mr. Bradlaugh, member for the
borough of Northampton, be admitted to make an affirmation or
declaration instead of the oath required by law."  This speech was
one of the best he ever made in the House.  It was an admirable piece
of argument and an excellent piece of literature, solidly reasoned
and witty; "it is contrary to, it is repugnant to, the feelings of
all men of tolerant minds that any gentleman should be hindered from
performing civil functions in this world on account of speculative
opinions about another"--was a terse summing up of the situation
worthy of Gibbon.  His main argument was that the Parliamentary Oaths
Act of 1866 gave to all persons, legally entitled to affirm in the
law courts, the right to affirm in Parliament.  He further pointed
out that the refusal to allow Bradlaugh to affirm would be to turn
him into a martyr.  Mr. Bright again made a fine speech in which he
said, amid ironical cheers from the Opposition, that he pretended to
no conscience and honour superior to the conscience of Mr. Bradlaugh.
Mr. Gladstone also spoke cogently in favour of Mr. Labouchere's
motion.  It was, however, lost by a majority of 45, of whom 5 were
English Liberals and 31 Irish Home Rulers.

On June 23, Mr. Bradlaugh again presented himself at the table of the
House.  The Speaker called on him to withdraw, in accordance with the
vote of the night before.  Mr. Labouchere then moved that "Mr.
Bradlaugh be now heard at the Bar of the House," following which
motion Mr. Bradlaugh made an eloquent and dignified defence of his
position.  A confused debate followed, and Mr. Labouchere moved that
"Yesterday's decision be rescinded," withdrawing his motion, however,
on an appeal from Mr. Gladstone.  The Speaker then recalled Bradlaugh
to the table, {152} and informed him that the House had nothing to
say to him beyond once more calling upon him to withdraw.  Bradlaugh
replied: "I beg respectfully to insist on my right as a duly elected
member for Northampton.  I ask you to have the oath administered to
me in order that I may take my seat, and I respectfully refuse to
withdraw."  After a second admonition from the Speaker, to which
Bradlaugh replied, "With respect I do refuse to obey the orders of
the House, which are against the law," the House was appealed to "to
give authority to the Chair to compel execution of its orders."  Mr.
Gladstone, although called upon, did not rise.  He appeared to be
absorbed in deep thought, and, with his gaze fixed on a vague
distance, just above the heads of the belligerent theologians, he
meditatively twirled his thumbs.  Northcote hesitatingly moved,
"though I am not quite sure what the terms of the motion should be,
that Mr. Speaker do take the necessary steps for requiring and
enforcing the withdrawal of the honourable member for Northampton."
The Speaker explained that the motion should simply be "that the
honourable member do now withdraw."  On a division being taken, 326
voted in favour of the motion and only 38 against.  On the Speaker
renewing his order, Mr. Bradlaugh answered: "With submission to you,
Sir, the order of the House is against the law, and I respectfully
refuse to obey it."  The Sergeant-at-Arms was now called, and
touching him on the shoulder, requested him to withdraw.  Mr.
Bradlaugh said: "I will submit to the Sergeant-at-Arms removing me
below the Bar, but I shall immediately return to the table," and did
so, saying as he returned toward the table, "I claim my right as a
member of this House."  This little ceremony was repeated twice, the
House being in an uproar.  High above the din, Mr. Bradlaugh's voice
could be heard shouting: "I claim my right as a member of this House.
I admit the right of the House to imprison me, but I admit no right
on the part of the House to exclude me, and I refuse to be excluded."
He was again led to {153} the Bar by the Sergeant-at-Arms to await
the House's action.

Mr. Bradlaugh had, no doubt not unintentionally, indicated to his
enemies the only line they could take.  It was his tactic, and a wise
one, to force the House into the extreme measure of physical force.
To do so was a fair retort from a Rationalist to his opponents.
Northcote, complaining again of Mr. Gladstone's inaction, proceeded
to move that "Mr. Bradlaugh, having defied the authority of the
House, be taken into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms."  Mr.
Labouchere at once rose and said that he would not oppose the
resolution, although he thought it a somewhat strange thing that a
citizen of this country should be sent to prison for doing what
eminent legal gentlemen on his side and an eminent legal gentleman on
the other side of the House said he had a perfect right to do.  He
was interrupted by cries of "No, No!"  He continued that he did not
know whether honourable members opposite meant to say that the
honourable and learned gentleman, the late Attorney-General, was not
an eminent legal authority on such a point.  That was the view taken
by that honourable and learned gentleman.  It seemed a somewhat hard
thing that any one should be put into prison for doing what a general
consensus of legal opinion in that House held to be his duty and his
right.  But, as the Prime Minister had stated, it was useless to
oppose the motion, because Mr. Bradlaugh had come into conflict with
a resolution of the House, whether that resolution were right or
wrong.  He, regretting as he did the necessity that had been forced
upon the House, did not think he should be serving any good purpose
in opposing the resolution, or in asking the House to go into a vote
on this question.  He believed himself that the sending of Mr.
Bradlaugh into custody would be the first step towards his becoming a
recognised member of the House.  It is interesting to note that Mr.
Parnell also spoke in favour of Mr. Bradlaugh, and said that, if
Irish members voted for his imprisonment, {154} they would be going
contrary to the feeling of their country.  On a division being taken
there were 274 Ayes to 7 Noes, and Mr. Bradlaugh was removed in the
custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms to the Clock Tower.

The imprisonment was rather an insult than an injury.  The prisoner
received his friends freely and openly, and proceeded to the business
of fighting his battle in the country from his "cell."  A cry of
indignation, which must have greatly surprised the Tories, went up
all over England, and, on the next day, Northcote, at the urgent
advice, it is said, of Lord Beaconsfield, moved for Bradlaugh's
immediate and unconditional release.  On Sir Stafford making his
motion, Mr. Labouchere pointed out to the House, "in order that there
may be no misconception in the matter," that Mr. Bradlaugh would
immediately on his release "return to the House and do what the Prime
Minister, the colleagues of the Prime Minister, the present
Attorney-General and the late Attorney-General, say he has an
absolute legal right to do."  The motion was nevertheless agreed to,
and Mr. Bradlaugh was released.

The next day, June 25, Mr. Labouchere gave notice that he should move
on the following Tuesday that the resolution of the House, which had
resulted in Mr. Bradlaugh's imprisonment, should be read and
rescinded.  He also asked for special facilities from the Government
on that day for bringing the matter before the House.  Mr. Gladstone,
whilst reserving his answer as to the particular form of proceeding,
agreed that "it was certainly requisite and necessary that the
subject of Mr. Bradlaugh's right should be considered," and promised
facilities for the day mentioned by Mr. Labouchere.  On the Monday,
however, Mr. Gladstone himself informed the House that the Government
had framed the following resolution, which they intended to submit:
"That every person returned as a member of this House, who may claim
to be a person for the time being by law permitted to make a solemn
affirmation or {155} declaration instead of taking an oath, shall,
henceforth (notwithstanding so much of the resolution adopted by this
House on the 22d of June last, as relates to affirmation), be
permitted without question to make and subscribe a solemn affirmation
in the form prescribed by the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, as
altered by the Promissory Oaths Act, 1868, subject to any liability
by Statute; and, secondly, that this resolution be a standing Order
of this House."  The Prime Minister then expressed the hope that, as
the question would be raised in what the Government considered the
most convenient manner, Mr. Labouchere would not consider it
necessary to proceed with any motion on the following day.  Mr.
Labouchere withdrew his resolution "after the very satisfactory
Notice, which has just been given by the Prime Minister."

The next day, when Mr. Gladstone made his motion, Sir John Gorst
opposed it, on the technical ground that it was a breach of the Rule
of the House, which laid down that, if a question had been considered
by the House and a definite judgment pronounced, the same, or what
was substantially the same, question could not be put again to the
House during the same session.  This contention was, however,
overruled by the Speaker, and, on a division being taken, the Prime
Minister's resolution was accepted by a majority of 54, the Ayes
numbering 303 and the Noes 249.  Bradlaugh was now free to affirm at
his own legal risk, and he did so the next day, thus bringing to a
conclusion the first movement of this ironic symphony.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Labouchere's great speech of June 21
contributed powerfully to this result.  Apart from the speeches of
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, and indeed Mr. Bradlaugh's own fine
speech at the Bar of the House on June 23, it was the only attempt
made to present the constitutional and legal aspects of Bradlaugh's
case in their true light.  The subject was one that appealed very
strongly to Mr. Labouchere.  In personal agreement {156} with the
views which it was sought to penalise in the person of Mr. Bradlaugh
(although it would have been alien to his temperament to have
enrolled himself as a partisan of those views), his attack on Mr.
Bradlaugh's enemies acquired weight and energy from the love of
individual liberty that was at the bottom of his character, and his
detestation, on that, as on every other occasion of his public life,
of oppression and prejudice.

The prejudice aroused by Bradlaugh's entrance into the House of
Commons was slow to disperse.  Numerous petitions for his exclusion
from Parliament were signed, in some cases, _en bloc_, by
Sunday-school children.  The varieties of English Protestantism were
all zealous in the good cause, and Cardinal Manning, who wrote a
violent article in the _Nineteenth Century_ on the subject, succeeded
in presenting a monster petition from English and exiled Irish Roman
Catholics.  There were, however, some notable exceptions among those
who represented the religious principle.  Several clergymen of the
Church of England and not a few Non-conformist ministers wrote to the
papers on his behalf.  Newman refused to sign the petition, on
constitutional grounds, and the "Home Government Association of
Glasgow" sent to Bradlaugh a resolution stating "that this meeting of
Irish Roman Catholics ... most emphatically condemns the spirit of
domination and intolerance arrayed against you, and views with
astonishment and indignation the cowardly acquiescence and, in a few
instances, active support, on the part of a large majority of the
Irish Home Rule members to the policy of oppression exercised against
you."  Such voices were, however, few and far between; in the House
itself the Opposition could not resist the temptation of such a
weapon against the Government.  It was good policy, as Lord Henry
Lennox said, in a moment of expansion, "to put that damned Bradlaugh
on them."  Mr. Labouchere held an unswerving course in support of his
colleague.  Temperamentally, as has been said, he did not {157}
sympathise with Mr. Bradlaugh's attitude.  He did not share Mr.
Bradlaugh's view of the importance of transcendental opinions of any
shade, and his wider experience of life and human nature led him to
gauge more truly perhaps, certainly very differently, the value in
the social scheme of other people's religious belief.  He would never
himself have raised the question raised by Mr. Bradlaugh, but he was
wise enough to realise that, once it was raised, there was only one
way of settling it.  In the course of his long life, he championed
many a victim of oppression and prejudice, but it may be doubted
whether his championship ever showed to greater advantage, was ever
more firmly based on those wide views of justice which underlie
genuine political sagacity, and distinguish the true statesman from
the mere politician, than in the case of Mr. Bradlaugh's
parliamentary struggle.

The venue of that struggle was shortly transferred to the law courts.
Bradlaugh had affirmed and taken his seat at his own legal risk.
During the five months in which Parliament sat between July, 1880,
and March, 1881, he was one of the most assiduous and energetic
members of the House.  On March 7, the action of one Clarke _v._
Bradlaugh came on the Court of Queen's Bench before Mr. Justice
Matthew.  On the 11th the judge delivered his judgment, which was
against the defendant.  He said that the Parliamentary Oaths Act,
cited in his favour by Bradlaugh, only permitted affirmation to
persons holding religious beliefs.  On judgment being delivered
against him, Bradlaugh applied for a stay of execution of costs, with
view to an appeal, which was granted, the judge consenting to stay
his verdict for the opinion of the Court of Appeal to be taken.  The
appeal was heard on March 30 by Lord Justices Bramwell, Lush, and
Baggallay, but their decision was again adverse to the defendant.
The point taken was not, as Mr. Labouchere had argued before the
House, the actual grammatical meaning of the wording of the Act, but
{158} the intention of the framers of the Act.  Their Lordships held
that it had only been intended to emancipate persons possessed of
positive religious beliefs rendering the taking of an oath repugnant
to their consciences.  This rendered the second seat for Northampton
vacant.  On April 1 Mr. Labouchere, in the course of moving for a new
writ for the borough of Northampton, said that a decision had now
been given against Bradlaugh by three judges, and, in all
probability, the House of Lords would decide against him.  He was
authorised by Mr. Bradlaugh to say that he fully accepted the law as
laid down by the Court of Appeal, and that it was not fair that
Northampton should have one member only--the election might be got
over by the Easter holidays, and honourable and right honourable
gentlemen would have an opportunity of considering what course they
would take should Mr. Bradlaugh be re-elected.  The writ was issued,
and Mr. Bradlaugh was, as Mr. Labouchere had predicted, re-elected on
April 9.  Mr. Labouchere made a speech at Northampton, before the
election, in defence of his colleague, the interest of which was
wider than that of the Bradlaugh controversy on account of one
statement in it.  He described his leave-taking of Mr. Gladstone, on
his departure from London, in these words: "And, men of Northampton,
that grand old man said to me, as he patted me on the shoulder,
'Henry my boy, bring him back, bring him back!'"  I think Mr.
Labouchere's autobiographical Muse used a poetic license here.  It is
certainly difficult to imagine Mr. Gladstone patting the member for
Northampton on the back, and calling him "Henry, my boy."  The
success of this allusion to the Prime Minister, however, was
enormous, and the name stuck.  Mr. Gladstone was the "Grand Old Man"
for the rest of his life.

As every one knows, Bradlaugh again was not allowed to take his seat.
That his attitude caused embarrassment to the Liberal party cannot be
denied.  At the end of June, he wrote to Mr. Labouchere on the
subject of forcing another {159} contest in the House, and Mr.
Labouchere forwarded his letter to Mr. Chamberlain with the following
comments:


10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, July 2, 1881.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Please look at enclosed letter.  If you think it
of any use, show it to Mr. Gladstone.  I send it to you in order that
you may see what are, I take it, the genuine intentions of Bradlaugh.
I had written to him to suggest that he should go up to the table and
take the oath at the end of the Session, and I offered if he liked to
do so on the last day of the Session to talk on until the Black Rod
appeared, or, if he preferred to do so before, I said that Government
always had a majority during the last week or two, and that,
probably, if a division were taken upon expulsion, he would win it.

Yesterday I received a letter from the Executive Committee of the
Liberal and Radical Caucus at Northampton, telling me that Bradlaugh
had sent to call a public meeting next Wednesday, and asking me to
come down to meet the Committee on that day to advise with them what
to do, as Bradlaugh has asked for a resolution to be passed, in the
nature of a mandate ordering him to take his seat.  I have written
urging delay, but, of course, in this matter I have to carry out the
wishes of the constituency, as the question regards them.

Whilst Bradlaugh exaggerates his strength, his opponents
underestimate it.  He can bring together a mob, with a vast number of
fanatics in it, ready for anything, and he contends that he is
illegally hindered from taking his seat, and therefore may oppose
physical force to physical force.

From what I gather, from many Members of Parliament, they are very
anxious that the matter should be settled this Session, because they
think that its being kept open will do the Party great harm.

Why cannot the Bill[5] be brought in after the Land Bill?  It has but
one clause, and if our side speak very briefly, the Conservatives
cannot go on talking for ever on so simple a matter.  Moreover, there
are a good many Conservatives who have told me that they are not
against the Bill.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

{160}

Mr. Gladstone discouraged Bradlaugh from resorting to any more
militant methods just then, and intimated that it would be useless to
bring in the Oaths Bill, as they proposed to close the session early
in August, and they could not hope to carry any strongly
controversial measure after the Land Bill.

This book is not a life of Bradlaugh, and it is enough to have noted
here the first phase of the ignoble struggle.  As is well known,
Bradlaugh returned to the House, and following Mr. Labouchere's
suggestion, administered the oath to himself.  A sordid fight ensued
on the attempt to remove him forcibly, in which no merely formal
violence was offered.  His clothes were torn off his back and,
although a man of unusual physical strength, he fainted in the
_mêlée_.  Bradlaugh, in that Parliament, was never allowed to
discharge his duty as a member.  Once more re-elected by the
constituency in the General Election of 1885, the Speaker would
suffer no intervention, and he took the oath and his seat, and in
1888, in spite of a Conservative majority, secured the passing of an
Affirmation Bill.  Finally, in 1891, when Mr. Bradlaugh was lying on
his death-bed, after a brief parliamentary career that had won for
him the respect of all parties, the resolution of January 22, 1881,
that had been passed amid "such ecstatic transports," was expunged
from the records of the House.  I cannot refrain from quoting the
fine tribute paid to his memory and excellent summing up of the case
as bearing on the real crux of the situation, made by Mr. Gladstone,
a few days later, in the course of introducing his Religious
Disabilities Removal Bill on February 4:


A distinguished man and an admirable member of this House was laid
yesterday in his mother earth.  He was the subject of a long
controversy in this House, the beginning of which we recollect and
the ending of which we recollect.  We remember with what zeal it was
prosecuted; we remember how summarily {161} it was dropped; we
remember also what reparation has been done within the last few days
to the distinguished man who was the immediate object of that
controversy.  But does anybody who hears me believe that the
controversy so prosecuted and so abandoned was beneficial to the
Christian Religion?


Throughout that controversy, his fellow-member for Northampton was
his loyal colleague both in the country and the House.  In season and
out of season Mr. Labouchere spoke, moved, and agitated until the
victory, to which his advocacy was so important a contribution, was
won, and, after Bradlaugh's death in 1891, he published the following
paragraphs in the pages of _Truth_, bearing witness to the nobility
of Bradlaugh's character:


Mr. Bradlaugh was a man of herculean physical strength, but of great
nervous susceptibility.  I believe that he never entirely recovered
from the rough usage which he met with when he sought to force his
way into the House of Commons.  Last year he had a serious illness.
He recovered, but he came out of it a broken man.  He would not,
however, admit this, and he struggled on in the House of Commons, at
public meetings, and at his desk, with the sad result that we all
know.

Never was a man less understood.  I never knew any one with a
stronger sense of public decorum or with a deeper respect for law.
When he asked leave to affirm in the House of Commons it was said by
some that he was seeking notoriety; by others, that he wished to defy
the law.  What led to it was this: I was sitting by his side when the
Parliament of 1881 met, and he said to me, "I shall ask to be allowed
to affirm, as with my views this would be more decorous than for me
to take the oath."  I replied, "Are you sure that you legally can
affirm?"  "Yes," he answered; "I have looked closely into the matter
and I am satisfied of my legal right."  His attempt to affirm was,
therefore, solely due to a desire to respect the feelings of others,
and to the conviction that the law allowed him to do so.

Mr. Bradlaugh was my colleague for ten years.  During all these years
our relations, political and personal, were always of the most
cordial character.  He was in private life a thoroughly {162} true
and amiable man, whilst in public life he was ever ready to sacrifice
popularity to his convictions of what was right.  He was, as is
known, an atheist, but his standard of duty was a very high one, and
he lived up to it.  His life was an example to Christians, for he
abounded in every Christian virtue.  This the House of Commons came
at last to recognise.  I do not think that there is a single member
more popular or more respected than he was on both sides.  Often and
often Conservatives have, in a friendly way, said to me: "What a much
better man your colleague is than you are!"  And I heartily agreed
with them.

Regarding money, he was more than disinterested.  So that he had
enough to pay for his food, his clothes, and for his modest lodging
in St. John's Wood, he never seemed to trouble himself as to ways and
means.  In one part of his life he had been led into some sort of
commercial enterprise which did not succeed, and the failure resulted
in his owing a considerable sum.  He called his creditors together,
told them that he had nothing, but if they would agree to wait he
would pay them twenty shillings in the pound.  They trusted him.  He
went to America, made the money by lecturing; returned, called them
together, and fulfilled his promise.  His lodgings in St. John's Wood
were over a music shop.  They consisted of one or two bedrooms and of
a large room, with deal shelves round it for his books, an old bureau
where he wrote, and a few chairs and tables.  He had a great
affection for his books, and the only time I ever saw him disquieted
about money matters was when he feared that he might have to give
them up, owing to some bankruptcy proceedings that were threatened,
in consequence of one of his numerous actions on the oath question.


In an article, published in the _Northampton Echo_ just after the
death of Mr. Labouchere, that able writer, Mr. C. A. McCurdy,
comments thus on the first Radical members for Northampton:


What a strangely assorted pair Northampton's two members were in
those days!  Bradlaugh, a giant in stature as in intellect,
Boanergian in his oratory, tremendous in the strength of it, sweeping
away opposition by the force of its torrent--Labouchere, {163} with
his slight figure, his quiet, sardonic manner, wielding a rapier
which was sometimes even more deadly than the battle-axe and
broadsword of his colleague.  His aristocratic connections and his
wealth accentuated the clear and strong outline of his Radicalism.
His disregard of convention, his simplicity, his courage, his
irrepressible gaiety and wit, the audacity of his envenomed personal
assaults, the passionless quality of it all, the cynic's pose--all
this, combined with his encyclopædic knowledge and the sureness of
his aim in controversy, made him the idol of Northampton Radicals.
How they laughed at his solemn assumption of moderation and
orthodoxy!  But how sure they were of his earnestness and conviction!
And how proud of his easy triumphs in the battles of the wits, of his
courage and resource in the conflicts of Parliament and the political
fame which he, working loyally with Bradlaugh, helped to win for
Northampton![6]


It is impossible before leaving the subject of Mr. Bradlaugh's
struggle for liberty of conscience, not to recall the very similar
episode of Wilkes' fight with the House of Commons a little more than
a hundred years earlier.  Mr. Labouchere, speaking in the House on
the occasion of Bradlaugh's presenting himself to take the oath,
after his re-election in 1884, pointed out that behind his colleague
stood the people of England.  He continued: "I do not say this from
any feeling of regard or affection for Mr. Bradlaugh.  as an
individual; assume if you like that Mr. Bradlaugh is, the vilest of
men [Mr. Warton, Hear, hear!], as was stated by Mr. Wilkes, 'in
attacking the rights of the vilest of men you have attacked the
rights of the most noble of mankind.'"[7] Bradlaugh established the
principle that legislative rights are wholly independent of religious
belief, and that what Drummond Wolff called "the distinct negation of
anything like perpetual morality or conscience and the existence of
God," does not affect a man's capacity for the exercise of his
political rights.

{164}

This means that the modern state is non-theistic, and that our
civilisation, of which the state is the political expression, is
based on those positive social needs of man to which theological
problems, however interesting in themselves, are irrelevant.  Thus,
in Bradlaugh's victory, to the winning of which Mr. Labouchere so
powerfully contributed, one of the most important principles of 1789
was definitely ratified by the representatives of the people, the
Lords, spiritual and temporal, and the sovereign of this country.

A truly momentous event, the importance of which it would be hard to
overestimate.  For it means that God has ceased to exist in England
as a political entity.  In like manner, the action of Wilkes, in
severely criticising the Speech from the Throne in the _North Briton_
for April 23, 1762, and condemning the Ministers who were responsible
for its production, raised, and settled for ever in England the
question of the political position of the sovereign.  In both cases
the man who dared to raise such points was pursued rancorously and
unfairly by the partisans of officialdom, in both cases the utmost
force of law and order arrayed against him failed.  The enemies of
Wilkes and Bradlaugh failed, because the stars in their courses
fought against them--because the time had gone by when kings could
rule as well as reign, or when the qualification of religious belief
was necessary for the full rights of citizenship.



[1] The late Lord Randolph Churchill once referred in the House of
Commons to Mr. Labouchere (greatly to his delight) by this title.

[2] I have followed in this chapter the admirable account of
Bradlaugh's parliamentary struggle given by Mr. J. M. Robertson,
M.P., in the second part of Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's _Charles
Bradlaugh: Life and Work_.

[3] _Northampton Mercury_, March 27, 1880.

[4] _Ibid._

[5] The Oaths Bill.

[6] _Northampton Echo_, January 17, 1912.

[7] _Hansard_, February 11, 1884, vol. 284.




{165}

CHAPTER VIII

LABOUCHERE AND IRELAND

1881-1883

When Lord Cowper, the Irish Viceroy, under the influence of the Chief
Secretary, Mr. Forster, represented to Mr. Gladstone in the early
autumn of 1880 the necessity of coercive measures for the government
of Ireland, he found the Prime Minister profoundly opposed to
departure from the ordinary law.  The Viceroy was pressed to suspend
the Habeas Corpus Act by every agent, every landlord, every
magistrate in the country.  The number of outrages against life and
property had increased _pari passu_ with the number of evictions.
The Land League, which had been formed, under the presidency of
Parnell, the preceding year, had taken up the cause of the evicted
tenants and, by establishing the elaborate system of persecution,
named after its first victim, Lord Mayo's English agent, Captain
Boycott, rendered it almost impossible to let farms from which a
tenant had been evicted.  When, on September 25, Lord Mountmorres, a
poor man with a small estate, who could really not afford to reduce
his rents, was murdered, such was the popular detestation of the
murdered man that the owner of the nearest house refused shelter to
the corpse, no hearse could be obtained to convey it to the grave,
and the family had to fly to England.  The maiming of cattle, a {166}
method of reprisal constantly adopted by evicted tenants, further
contributed to inflame English opinion, both in and out of Ireland,
against the Nationalist party, who were held responsible by the man
in the street for everything that was going on.  Mr. Bright was still
more opposed than Mr. Gladstone to the repeal of the Habeas Corpus,
and so was Mr. Chamberlain, who had joined the Government as
President of the Board of Trade.  Before giving way to Mr. Forster,
the Cabinet determined to use the ordinary methods of law, and
prosecuted the heads of the Land League for "conspiring to prevent
the payment of rent, resist the process of eviction, and obstruct the
letting of surrendered farms."  The public announcement of the
prosecution in no way intimidated the Land League.  The prosecution,
although announced on November 3, did not, on account of legal
delays, begin until after Christmas.  Disorder at once became more
rampant and outrages more frequent.  On November 23, Cowper wrote
again to Mr. Gladstone, threatening his resignation in the following
January, if he were not given fuller powers.  On December 12, he made
his last appeal, urging that Parliament should be immediately
summoned.  Mr. Gladstone yielded the very day before the trial of the
Land League began in Dublin, and summoned Parliament for January 6,
1881.

On the first night of the session Mr. Forster gave notice of the
introduction of Bills for the protection of life and property in
Ireland.  But the Irish members had taken the phrase in the Queen's
Speech that "additional powers are required by the Irish Government
for the protection of life and property," as a declaration of war,
and commenced the policy of obstruction of which they were afterwards
to make so powerful a weapon.  They succeeded in protracting the
debate on the Address for eleven days.

Forster's case was a very simple one.  The Land League was supreme,
and its power must be crippled.  This could only be done by extending
the range of the executive.  With {167} the suspension of Habeas
Corpus the authors of the outrages, who were known to the police,
could be arrested and the course of justice would not be interfered
with by corrupt evidence.  It was the point of view of the official
responsible for public order, that and nothing more.  Mr. Parnell's
view pierced the surface facts of the case.  The League did nothing
but organise and express the public opinion of Ireland.  The
Government's policy was simply one of coercion, that is, of violence.
Although it was admitted that wrongs were endured, the Government's
policy did not include any method of redressing those wrongs.
Eviction of tenants who could not possibly pay their rent through no
fault of their own was palpable injustice.  Let that injustice be put
an end to, and outrages would soon cease.  It was clearly the duty of
the representatives of Ireland to put every difficulty in the way of
the passing of such a measure as the Chief Secretary's.

At this stage of his career Mr. Labouchere was not a Home Ruler.  In
his first speech to his electors at Northampton,[1] he had said: "I
really have not understood myself what Home Rule means.  I should be
exceedingly sorry to see the Union between Great Britain and Ireland
done away with.  I think it is absolutely necessary for the
well-being of both countries, but I am myself in favour of as much
local government, not only in Ireland, but in all parts of England as
possible."  He was voicing the views of Mr. Chamberlain, whose
trumpet from the beginning had set forth no uncertain sound, for the
member for Birmingham was then, and remained, unalterably opposed to
the separation of the two kingdoms, and to the institution of an
Independent Parliament in Dublin.

On January 27, Forster's Bill for the Protection of Life and Property
in Ireland having been introduced three days previously, Mr.
Labouchere, speaking in favour of an amendment introduced in his name
to the effect "that no Bill for {168} the Protection of Life and
Property in Ireland will be satisfactory which does not include
protection to the tenant in cases where it can be shown, to the
satisfaction of a Court of Justice, that the tenant's rent is
excessive or that he is unable, owing to temporary circumstances, to
pay it," said that, while he was a genuine supporter of the Prime
Minister, he did not intend to rain down blessings on that
gentleman's head that evening.  He found himself occupying a singular
position.  He was returned there as a Radical by a very advanced
constituency, and, to his surprise, he found himself almost alone
with his colleague as an advocate of Conservatism in the real, though
not in the party, sense of the word.  He was there to defend the
Habeas Corpus.  He was ready to admit that Englishmen had many
virtues, but they were somewhat intolerant, and they were curiously
intolerant when any country under their rule ventured to have the
same virtues as themselves.  There was nothing they valued so highly
as self-government, and yet, when Ireland asked for self-government
in local matters, they regarded the demand as something monstrous and
intolerable.  The Chief Secretary had urged that the Bill must be
passed as quickly as possible on account of outrages!  He must
remember that there were such things as standing orders, and that
honourable gentlemen opposite would be able to delay the Bill for a
considerable time....  It was taking a really too Arcadian view of
human nature to suppose that honourable gentlemen opposite would not
use--or even misuse--every standing order of the House to prevent the
passing of such a Bill.  The right honourable gentleman seemed to
have thought, in pleading urgency, that the Irish members would act
like the "dilly, dilly ducks" which came to be killed when they were
called.  The reports of the outrages had come from magistrates most
of whom were landowners, and from police constables; and they knew in
England how to judge of constables' evidence.  (Oh! oh!)  He quoted a
return.  "Injured persons were Margaret Lydon, Patrick Whalem, and
{169} Bridget Whalem.  It appeared that: A dispute arose about the
possession of a small plot of ground, and John Lydon assaulted the
injured persons.  Yet, in the very next case, John Lydon appeared as
the injured person, because he was assaulted as the time of the above
dispute by his own wife.  This was obviously a little domestic
difference between a husband and his spouse, yet it was converted
into two separate outrages.  As regarded cattle maiming, it was no
new thing.  Dean Swift jeered at his countrymen on the subject.  'Did
they, like Don Quixote, look on a flock of sheep as an army?'"
Labouchere wound up his speech, after pointing out the danger of the
Chief Secretary's "hideous doctrine of constructive treason" and
animadverting on the idea of making use of secret informers, whom he
regarded as "the lowest, vilest, and most contemptible of the human
race," by stating that the purpose of the Bill was not to suppress
outrages or exclusive dealing, but solely to enable landlords to
collect their rents.[2]  Mr. Serjeant Simon retorted in his defence
of the Bill, not quite unjustly perhaps, that Mr. Labouchere's speech
had been more facetious than fair, more humorous than consistent.
Certainly the John Lydon mixed outrage was a hardly representative
specimen of the statistics before the House.  The O'Donoghue, on the
other hand, had listened to the speech with great pleasure, and felt
sure it would be received with satisfaction by a larger circle
outside the constituency of Northampton when public opinion in
England and Scotland came to be enlightened on this subject.
Labouchere continued to argue against the Bill in Committee in every
imaginable way.  Much of his argument was mere heckling of Mr.
Forster.  He was always a little inclined to confuse the floor of the
House with the hustings, a state of mind which sometimes deprived his
speeches of the persuasive value that their argumentative ability
deserved.  Every now and then he made a crushing point against the
Government.  {170} "The Home Secretary (Sir William Harcourt)," he
said, "had incited a prejudice against the Land League by quoting
what the Fenians had done in America.  He had read a speech from a
Mr. Devoy, an American Fenian, to the effect that he had contemplated
blowing up the entire Government of this country, most of the towns
in this country and the capital, and, is this monster, the Home
Secretary had asked, to be allowed to say these things without
protest?  He had pointed out the terrible consequences of this
speech: how a certain Patrick Stewart immediately subscribed the sum
of one dollar that these intentions might be carried out....  Such
men as Redpath (another American Fenian) and Devoy, the Right
Honourable gentleman told them, would 'come over to Ireland, and the
Bill is intended for those gentlemen.'  Surely," pursued Mr.
Labouchere blandly, "the Right Honourable gentleman was an eminent
authority on international law and must be aware that, if these
Americans were to come over to Ireland, and if they were to be taken
up on mere suspicion and put in prison for eighteen months without
being told, or without their Minister in England being told, for what
they were put in prison, we should get, and rightly too, into
considerable difficulty with the American Government.  (Sir William
Harcourt: No!)  The Right Honourable gentleman said no.  Perhaps he
meant that he would get us out of the difficulty.  But would it not
have been better to have brought in an Aliens Bill than to suspend
the Habeas Corpus in Ireland?  It was a strange thing to suspend the
Habeas Corpus in Ireland, because an American had made a speech in
America."[3]  This characteristic speech is a very good specimen of
Labouchere's method in attack.  His manner was one of irresponsible
persiflage, stinging and exasperating those of his opponents whom it
failed to amuse,[4] his matter both sound and serious.  It would have
been difficult to have summed up {171} Forster's Bill better than
Labouchere did in the following list of "Alleged advantages and real
disadvantages of the Bill."  (1) Alleged advantages: (_a_) it would
drive a certain number of crazy Fenians out of Ireland.  (_b_) It
would lead to the imprisonment of certain village ruffians who
probably deserve it.  (_c_) It would enable landlords to collect
their rents.  (2) Disadvantages: (_a_) It would do away with the
useful action of the Land League.  (_b_) It would enable the
landlords not only to collect their rents from men who could pay
them, but also to evict from their small holdings men who could
not--the very thing the Land League had been preventing.  (_c_) It
would alienate all classes in Ireland from the English connection.
(_d_) It would substitute secret societies for the open society
called the Land League.  (_e_) The Government would be playing into
the hands of the Fenians, who would acquire an influence they did not
then possess.  Certainly it would have been difficult to prophesy
more accurately what were the actual consequences of the passing of
the Coercion Bill.  He concluded his speech on this occasion by
warning the Irish members not to persevere in a policy of
obstruction, both on account of the prejudice it created against them
and on account of the excellence of their cause.  Let that cause be
stated fairly and honestly to the English people--let it be allowed
to stand on its own merits.  He believed many people in England were
already very much inclined to take the same view as many Irishmen on
Irish matters.  There were many points on which the democracy of
England and Ireland ought to unite.  He therefore hoped that
honourable gentlemen opposite would not be carried away by the
irritation of the moment.  He hated the Coercion Bill as much as they
did, but he could not shut his eyes to the fact that the Liberals,
not the Conservatives, had done the best for Ireland, and he wound up
with a eulogy in this connection of the "two patron saints of my
political calendar"--Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright.[5]

{172}

The Arms Bill--or the Peace Preservation Bill, as it was called--by
which the Coercion Bill was promptly followed, was another target for
Mr. Labouchere's darts.  He pointed out the suspicious nature of the
support given by the Opposition to the Government, which delayed the
introduction of Liberal legislation for England and widened the
breach between the Liberal party and the Irish.

Perhaps the most serious and immediate consequence of the Coercion
Act was the arrest of Parnell, which took place on October 13.  This
event, which caused frenzied joy in England, was one of Forster's
worst mistakes in Ireland.  The Land League at once issued a "No
rent" manifesto.  It was signed by Parnell, Dillon, Sexton, and
Brennan, who were all in Kilmainham Gaol, and Egan, the treasurer of
the League at Paris.  Forster, not sorry to be able to do so,
retorted by proclaiming the League an illegal association, the
legality of which proceeding was doubtful, according to Lord
Eversley.  It had been impossible to convict the League of a
violation of the law and the Coercion Act contained no clause
authorising its suppression.  On the other hand, the "No rent"
manifesto was also an obvious blunder.  The clergy denounced it from
every altar in Ireland, as indeed they could hardly help doing, and
only in the west, where large bodies of the poorer tenants were
already refusing to pay their rents without deduction, did it take
effect.  The agrarian war was consequently intensified, and English
opinion greatly incensed.  The local heads of the League were
arrested all over the disturbed areas, and the Coercion Act pressed
into the service of landlords to enable them to collect their rents,
no matter how excessive they might be.  Evictions were naturally
multiplied.  Most serious consequence of all--and directly traceable
to the ill-advised arrest of Parnell and the leaders of the Land
League--secret societies, with their inevitable accompaniment of
crime and outrage, began to take the place of open and, at least
relatively, constitutional agitation.  Parnell {173} had been asked
by an admirer, who would take his place in case of his arrest.
"Captain Moonlight will take my place," was his grim reply.  Captain
Moonlight did so.  During the months preceding the passing of the
Coercion Act there were seven homicides, twenty-one cases of firing
at the person, and sixty-two of firing into dwellings.

The work of the suppressed Land League was carried on by the Ladies'
Land League under the presidency of Parnell's sister.  The ladies, if
they did not actually stimulate crime, did little to suppress it.
When Parnell eventually emerged from Kilmainham, he was furious with
them, both on account of their policy and their extravagance.
Outrages had increased, and they had spent £70,000 during the seven
months of his incarceration!

The Coercion Act had evidently failed to produce the results
expected.  Nevertheless, Forster and Lord Cowper could think of
nothing but more coercion.  Gladstone refused to accede to their
proposals.  He had never liked coercion himself, and his hands were
strengthened by the support of Chamberlain in the Cabinet, who was
energetically backed in the press by John Morley, then editing the
_Pall Mall Gazette_.  Meanwhile Parnell, realising that his prolonged
detention at Kilmainham was damaging his cause, entered into
negotiations with the Government by means of Captain O'Shea; and
although Mr. Gladstone was, no doubt, literally truthful in denying
the existence of any formal "treaty," an understanding was reached
between the Government and the Irish leader.  The main source of
unrest and disorder in the country was, according to Parnell, the
smaller tenants, some 100,000 in number, who were utterly unable to
pay the arrears of rent due from them, and were, in consequence,
liable at any moment to eviction.  The Government must deal in a
generous and statesmanlike way with the lot of these unhappy people.
Parnell, if free to resume an effective leadership, would be able to
do much to curb the criminal forces set in motion by the secret
societies.  {174} On May 2, Parnell and his companions were released
from Kilmainham, and Forster and Lord Cowper at once resigned.

Forster made his statement in the House on May 4.  It was to the
effect that the state of the country did not justify the release of
Parnell without a new Coercion Act.  Just as he had uttered the
following words, "There are two warrants which I signed in regard to
the member for the City of Cork--" Parnell entered the House.  It was
a dramatic scene.  Deafening cheers broke from the Irish benches,
drowning Forster's voice and preventing the conclusion of the
sentence from being heard.  Parnell quickly surveyed the situation,
and, bowing to the Speaker, passed "with head erect and measured
tread to his place, the victor of the House."

Mr. Gladstone answered Forster, saying that the circumstances which
had warranted Parnell's arrest no longer existed, and that "he had an
assurance that if the Government dealt with the arrears question, the
three members released would range themselves on the side of law and
order."  Parnell then intervened, saying that he had in no way
suggested any bargain with the Prime Minister, but that there could
be no doubt that a settlement of the arrears question would have an
enormous effect in the restoration of law and order, and would take
away the last excuse for outrage.

Irish prospects had not looked brighter in the House for many a year,
but, unfortunately, only two days after the memorable afternoon on
which Mr. Gladstone dissociated himself from his sometime Irish
Minister and threw himself into Parnell's arms, England was horrified
by a terrible tragedy.  Lord Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish had
been appointed to the vacant offices of Lord Cowper and Mr. Forster.
The new Chief Secretary and Mr. Burke, permanent Under-Secretary,
were murdered close to the Vice-regal Lodge in Phœnix Park, on the
evening following Lord Spencer's state entry into Dublin.  Mr.
O'Brien, in his _Life of Parnell_, says that "Cavendish was killed
simply {175} through the accident of his being with Mr. Burke, whose
death was the real object of the assassins."[6]  No one was more
overwhelmed by the tragedy than Parnell himself.  "How can I," he
said, "carry on a public agitation if I am stabbed in the back in
this way?"

The House met on the 8th, and Parnell made a short, straightforward
speech, condemning the outrages in unqualified terms.  He also
expressed the fear that the Government would feel themselves obliged,
under the circumstances, to revert to coercion.  His fear was
justified, and on May 11, the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt,
introduced a Crimes Bill, based on previous suggestions of Lord
Cowper.

It is easy to see now that this proceeding was a mistake.  It should
have been evident to any unbiassed observer that, far from Parnell
and the League being responsible for outrages, whether agrarian or
political, it was during the imprisonment of Parnell and after the
dissolution of the League that they increased and finally led up to
the tragedy of Phœnix Park.  But the Government had to count with
English opinion, which was exasperated by the murder of Burke and
Cavendish almost to the point of hysteria.  To most English people
Ireland was little more than a geographical expression; in so far as
it connoted anything else, it bored and disgusted them.  Parnell
indicated the true inwardness of Mr. Gladstone's altered attitude in
a speech on May 20, in which he said: "I regret that the event in
Phœnix Park has prevented him (Mr. Gladstone) continuing the
course of conciliation that we had expected from him.  I regret that,
owing to the exigencies of his party, of his position in the country,
he has felt himself compelled to turn from that course of
conciliation and concession into the horrible paths of coercion."

Labouchere took Mr. Parnell's view of the situation, and argued with
much zest against the worst features of the Crimes Bill.  Speaking on
May 18, on the second reading, {176} he said that it was clear from
the fact that the House was now asked to pass a remedial measure (the
Arrears Bill) and a Coercion Bill that the former policy of the
Government had been a failure.

But the present Coercion Bill erred precisely in the same direction
that the other had done, because it was not aimed solely at outrage,
but was directed at honourable members sitting opposite.  In fact he
(Mr. Labouchere) could see the trail of the honourable member for
Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) and of his policy in this measure.  The
Government ought to try to get the majority of the Irish people on
their side to fight with them against outrage.  Was this Bill likely
to enlist the sympathies of the Irish members?  Mr. Labouchere
expressed the principle of his objection to the Bill by saying that
as long as political and criminal elements were mixed up in the Bill
he could not vote for it.  He objected particularly to the following
features.  The "intimidation clause" went too far, being directed
against boycotting, which, although it had its bad features, was, as
a system of exclusive trading, legitimate.  He considered it
"monstrous" that the authorities should have power to detain any
person out after sunset.  He objected to the clause dealing with the
press, and he thought that three years was too long a period for the
Bill to remain in force.  Who could say who might be Lord-Lieutenant
in three years?  He could not imagine anything more horrible than
that, say, the right honourable gentleman the member for North
Lincolnshire (Mr. J. Lowther) should be invested with the powers of
the Bill.  The consequence would perhaps be, that if the Prime
Minister went over to Ireland, he would be arrested and put into
prison.  His admiration for the Prime Minister was increasing, but
all his colleagues were not as well minded as himself.  There seemed
to be two currents in the cabinet-- some members who desired to do
all they could for Ireland being baulked by those of their colleagues
called Whigs.[7] {177} Mr. Labouchere worked out of Parliament, as
well as in, for the improvement of the Bill.  He was incessantly
negotiating both with the Government and the Irish leaders to defeat
what he felt to be its impossible features and to modify the
remaining ones in the direction of conciliation.  He had written two
days before the speech just mentioned to Mr. Chamberlain as follows:


10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, May 16, 1882.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I enclose Bill with Healy's amendments.  He says
that what he means in the suggested changes in the Intimidation
Clause is, that only a person who actually threatens a person with
injury should come under the provisions of the Bill.  What he objects
to is constructive intimidation.

I went through the Bill thus amended with Parnell.  He agrees with
them in the main, but would like to have the opinion of a lawyer with
regard to them.  Like Healy, his chief objection is to constructive
intimidation.  He says that if the Government will meet him and his
party in the conciliatory spirit of the amendments, he will promise
that the opposition to the Bill shall be conducted on honest
Parliamentary lines, and that there shall be no abstention.  He
specially urges that the Bill shall only be in operation until the
close of next session; he puts this on two grounds: (1) That the
Tories may possibly come in at the end of that time.  (2) That he may
be able to advise the Irish to be quiet in the hopes of no renewal of
the Bill.

He says that he is in a very difficult position between the
Government and the secret societies.  The latter, he says, are more
numerous than are supposed; that most of those connected with them
only wish to be let alone, but that he greatly fears that if they are
disgusted they will commit outrages.  The late murders, he seems to
think, were, when agrarian, the acts of men who had a grudge against
a particular individual, and, when political, the acts of skirmishers
from America.  I really think that he is most anxious to be able to
support the Government; he fully admits that a Bill is necessary on
account of English opinion, but he does not wish to have it applied
to himself, and he doubts whether it will be really effectual against
the outrage mongers.

{178}

Healy goes so far as to say that if the Prime Minister or you were to
administer the Bill it would do no harm, and that he is not greatly
afraid of it in the hands of Lord Spencer, but that it would be a
monstrous weapon of oppression in the hands of Jim Lowther.  I am
sure that with conciliation you can now, for the first time, get the
Parnellites on your side.


This letter Mr. Chamberlain sent to Mr. Gladstone, promising to bring
the draft of the Bill to the House that afternoon.

Mr. Labouchere continued to Mr. Chamberlain on the following day:


He (Healy) points out that even the Conservative newspapers are
against the Newspaper Clause, and he wants it made applicable only to
newspapers printed out of Ireland.  With regard to the Search Clause,
he will make a fight for nominative warrants, and he also wants an
amendment securing an indemnity in case of injury done to property by
the searchers.  He points out that there ought to be a right of
appeal from the County Court Judge to the Queen's Bench.  With
respect to the Intimidation Clause, he seems to approve of cutting
out the definition clause, but is very anxious for some restriction
in the terms of the clause, so that there may be no crime of
constructive intimidation.

There is to be a private meeting at one to-morrow of himself,
Parnell, T. P. O'Connor, and Sexton.  He will say to them that he
thinks that Government will agree to the County Court Judges and to
the period of the Bill being shortened.  He will, however, before the
meeting, go further into details as regards the position with
Parnell.  He is most desirous that there should be no plea for saying
that there is a bargain of any kind.  I have told him that, in the
Prime Minister, they have a friend, but that they must take into
consideration his position as the leader of a Government where
possibly all are not as well disposed, and as the head of a country
where there is a popular outcry for stringent measures.


On May 22, he wrote again, after a further interview with Parnell:


{179}

This is about the sum total of what Parnell took an hour to tell me.
He does not in the least complain of you, and really is most anxious
to get on with the Government if possible.  He wants me to let him
know as soon as possible to-morrow whether he is to consider that
there is to be no concession.

Parnell says: That the Arrears Bill has been very well received in
Ireland, and that, if it be followed by one making certain
modifications of no very important character in the Land Bill, he is
convinced that the situation will greatly improve, provided that
concessions be made in the Coercion Bill.

He suggests that the Coercion and the Arrears Bill move forward _pari
passu_, and that only small progress be made with the Coercion Bill
before Whitsuntide, in order to give time for the passions to cool,
and for persons to see by experience that the condition of Ireland is
not so bad as is supposed.

If urgency is to be voted on the Coercion Bill, he asks that it
should be voted by a simple majority, and that it should be stated
that it will be used whenever any Legislative measures in regard to
Ireland are brought forward during the Session and obstructed by the
Conservatives.

He greatly regrets the speech of Davitt, but says that he (Davitt)
has no intention to go to Ireland, and that his land scheme is a
little fad of his own.

He says that he is most anxious for a _modus vivendi_, and believes
that if the present opportunity for establishing one be let pass, it
is not likely to recur.  He and his friends, he says, are incurring
the serious risk of assassination in their efforts to bring it about,
and he thinks that his suggestions ought to be judged on their
merits, but that, with the Coercion Act as it is, there will be so
much anger and ill-feeling in Ireland, that all alliance with the
Liberal party will be impossible.

He points out, not as a matter of bargain, but as a fact, that the
Liberals may--if only there be concessions on the Coercion Bill, and
a few modifications in the Land Bill--count on the Irish vote, as
against the Conservatives, and suggests that this will make the
Government absolutely safe, even though there be Whig defections.


Mr. Labouchere continued, as will be seen by the following {180}
letters to Mr. Chamberlain, to press the views of the Irish leaders
upon the Government.


10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, June 3, 1882.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--We have done our best during your absence to hold
our own against Harcourt.  The only important issue yet raised has
been the exclusion of treason and treason felony from the Bill.

On Thursday I went to Grosvenor from Parnell to ask that the debate
should be adjourned.  Gladstone said that Parnell ought to consider
that after Harcourt's "no surrender" speech the Government would not
be able to give in the next day, and that the division if taken would
be larger on Thursday than on Friday, and that the matter might be
reconsidered in Report.  I said that if Government would give any
private assurance, or if Gladstone would say in the House, that the
exclusion would be favourably considered on Report, he could have the
division at once.  This latter he was afraid to do, for Harcourt, as
sulky as a bear, was glaring at him.  He therefore agreed to consent
"with regret" to the adjournment.  When, however, Parnell moved it,
our idiots and the Conservatives shouted so loudly "no," that a
division had to be taken.  Then Healy moved it, on which Gladstone
did hint at the Report, but said nothing definite, except that it
would be impossible to consult at once with the Irish Executive.  The
next day, Grosvenor wrote to me to say that he spoke without
prejudice and held out no hope, but would I call "Parnell's attention
to one sentence in one of Gladstone's concluding speeches, which was
to the effect that it was impossible to call the attention of the
Irish Government to the question of omitting treason and treason
felony, between last night and this day, and therefore it would be
better to bring up the question again on Report.  Please ask Parnell
to consider this fact."

On Friday morning the Irish held a meeting, and they agreed to keep
what they did secret, decided that if treason were retained, at least
treason felony should be eliminated.

On the House meeting Trevelyan tackled me, and said: "I am opposed to
the insertion of treason and treason felony, and {181} I am disposed
to make large concessions.  You know that I am a person of strong
will.  I now understand the Bill, and you will see how I shall act."

Grosvenor also said that I need not believe him, as he quite agreed
with me, but that Harcourt was the difficulty.  I asked him whether
he would agree that if Lord Spencer said that treason and treason
felony were not needed, they should be struck out on Report.  He
replied that the onus could not be thrown on Spencer, but that it
must be the act of the Cabinet.

So after seeing Parnell it was agreed that the division should be
taken at 7.30.

Why Parnell is making such a fight over this, and will make a fight
over the Intimidation Clause, is that unless concession be made, he
will find it difficult to hold his own.  Egan, he says, wants to
carry on the agitation from Paris, in which case it will be illegal;
he wants to carry it on in Dublin, in which case it will be legal.
If concessions are made he will have his way; if not, Egan will
remain the master in Paris.

Grosvenor quite admits that it is most desirable to aid Parnell to
remain leader.

Parnell says:

"I ask, in order to put an end definitely to the land agitation: that
a clause should be introduced into the Arrears Bill, allowing small
tenants in the Land Court to pay on Griffiths' valuation until their
cases are decided: that there should be an expansion of the Bright
Clauses next year if not this; and that a Royal Commission be
appointed to keep the agricultural labourers quiet by taking
evidence.  Then I propose to ask for a fair and reasonable measure of
local self-government, such as an English Government can grant," and
he assures me that in all questions between me and the Conservatives
and the Liberals, the latter shall have the Irish vote.  I believe
that he is perfectly sincere, and that he is thoroughly frightened by
threats of assassination; indeed he told me that he never went about
without a revolver in his pocket, and even then did not feel safe.

I write you all this for your private information, as you may wish to
know the exact situation at present.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


{182}

REFORM CLUB, June 8, 1882.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN--Parnell says that it is absolutely necessary that
something should be understood, and that if no concession be made on
the Intimidation Clause, he considers that things revert to where
they were under the Forster regime, and that they will fight until
urgency is voted and then fight on urgency until a _coup d'état_ is
carried out.  Allowing for some exaggeration, a simple consideration
of his position towards his party shows that this programme is
necessarily forced upon him.

Surely we have a right to see the clause as Government will agree to
it, before passing a portion of it.

I believe that this would be agreed to: that intimidation shall mean
any threats, etc., to violence, any boycotting which involves danger
such, for instance, as a doctor refusing to attend a sick man, or a
refusal to supply the necessaries of life, and any specific act that
is set out in the Bill, but _nothing more_.

C. Russell, Bryce, and Davy are trying their hands at this and hope
to be able to frame a clause on these lines.  You will no doubt see
that, if something cannot be done to-morrow, the fat will be in the
fire.  Would it not therefore be well to leave the clause until the
other clauses are passed, and then bring it on?--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, June 9, 1882.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I wrote you a line in a great hurry last night,
but after the House had adjourned I again saw Parnell.

He is most anxious that Mr. Gladstone should not think that
obstruction arises from any ill-feeling towards him, and that he does
not, in his own interests, wish it to be thought that anything in the
nature of a bargain is to be made.

But he wants Mr. Gladstone to know facts.  He says that there are two
sections in the Land League.  The funds of the League are at Paris,
where a large sum is invested in securities.  Egan wishes to trench
on these securities, but Parnell and Davitt have been able to stop
this, and at present nothing is expended but the weekly
contributions.  Egan and his section of the League are furious at the
idea of the League being converted into a moderate tenant right
Association, with its headquarters {183} in Dublin.  This he desires.
Every day the ultras of his party are telling him that nothing is
gained by conciliation.  If the Bill is to be passed in its present
shape, he declares that neither he nor his friends can have anything
to do with a moderate policy, and, as they absolutely decline to
associate themselves with Egan and his desperate courses, they must
withdraw.

The result, he says, will be that the Fenians will be masters of the
situation, that they will have funds, and that there will be
assassinations and outrages all over Ireland.  So soon as he
withdraws, he considers that his own life will not be worth a day's
purchase.

If he is able to head the tenant right Association, he considers that
he can crush out the Fenians--more especially if something is done in
the Arrears Bill to meet the difficulty of the small tenants, who are
waiting for their cases to be decided on in the Land Courts, being
evicted, before their cases come on, for non-payment of excessive
rents.  If nothing be done in this matter, and if he be allowed to
have his tenant right Association, this he says will be his great
difficulty next winter.  He wishes Mr. Gladstone to observe that
Davitt has not made any speeches in Ireland, and he says that he
obtained this pledge from him in order to show the result of
conciliation.  He disagrees entirely with Davitt's "nationalisation"
of land scheme, and says that the Irish tenants do not themselves
desire it.

He again suggests whether it would not be possible to insert
limitations in the Intimidation Clause?  And he would suggest that,
if possible, it would be desirable to leave the clause as it stands,
without any definition section, and to say that, as there is no
desire to prevent an orderly and legal tenant right Association,
additions will be made to the clause on Report, defining all this.

As regards the tribunal, he hopes that Mr. Gladstone will agree to a
proviso, making the Court consist of a magistrate and a barrister.
This he thinks will render it more easy to accept the intimidation
clause with the limitations that he suggests, for many of the
resident magistrates are half-pay captains, who have been appointed
by interest, and who are hand in glove with the landlords, and some
of them are certain to act foolishly.

If this be accepted, if unlawful associations are made there {184}
which the Lord Lieutenant declares to be unlawful; if it be made a
crime to not attend an unlawful assembly, but to riot at, or to
refuse to retire if called upon to do so from an unlawful assembly, I
do not think that he attaches very great importance to the duration
of the Act, although he still says that he does, but he would be
satisfied if the duration of the Act were for three years with the
proviso that the Lord Lieutenant has to prolong it (if it is
prolonged) by a proclamation at the end of each year.  He is anxious
for this, because he thinks that he could do much for the cause of
law and order, if he were able to point out that possibly the Act
would not run for the whole three years, if the Irish are quiet and
peaceable.

His main anxiety at the present moment seems to be, that Mr.
Gladstone should understand the position of the Land League and of
its leaders.  He wishes most sincerely to fight with the Government
against all outrages, and he complains that his good intentions are
met every moment by a _non possumus_ of lawyers, who seem to regard
it as a matter of _amour propre_ not to listen to him, and he says
(and I am sure he believes it) that the result will be murders and
outrages which will end in martial law.--Yours truly, H. LABOUCHERE.

P.S.--With regard to supply, he says that he thinks it a little hard,
that he should be asked not to obstruct one Bill, because the
Conservatives will obstruct another, and he suggests that Supply
might be taken before the Report on the Bill now under discussion,
with some sort of understanding that the Irish would not put down
notices on going into Committee of Supply.  But on this matter, he
says that he is certain that if Mr. Gladstone will fairly look into
his suggestions, he will see their force, and he still hopes that all
obstruction, etc., etc., may be avoided.


10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, June 10, 1882.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--As it seems to be understood that Harcourt had
stated in the House his readiness to accept the amendment which I
gave you yesterday, Healy has put it down.

As regards "unlawful," which was negatived last night, I explained to
Healy that it was impossible to make the limitation on account of
legal and technical difficulties, and he fully accepted this
explanation.

{185}

With regard to the two limitations which stand in Parnell's name, and
which they ask for, I told Healy that the wording of the limitations
could not be used, as it would have a bad effect to say in an Act
that the non-payment of rent is not an offence.  To this he assented,
and is quite ready to accept any words, taken from the Act of '75 or
from anywhere else, which will cover the limitations.  Would it not
be as well to have the words ready, and to let Parnell have them, or
at least to be ready with the substituted words when Parnell's
amendment comes on?

There is a clause about exclusive dealing.  When the suggestions
which I submitted to you were being discussed by Parnell and Healy,
they were very anxious to include Davy's amendment in regard to
exclusive dealing, substituting for "dealing with"--"buying," by
which they would have excluded a refusal to buy from Boycotting.  I
got them to say that this was not to be pressed if Government
declined to accept the amendment, so I did not trouble you with it.
Late last evening Parnell wanted to insist on it, so I appealed to
Healy.  He said that they were bound not to insist on more than had
been submitted to you, as this would not be honourable, and therefore
all trouble on this head is avoided.

Of course they will in the House divide on some amendment in regard
to exclusive dealing, as a protest, and they may make one or two
speeches, but there will be no obstruction, and I see no reason why
the Bill should not be through Committee (notwithstanding Goschen's
gloomy prognostications) in a few days.

It would, I think, very much tend to aid matters if Harcourt could in
the course of discussion state, that in all cases a barrister will
sit with a residential magistrate.  He has already said that there
will be an appeal to Quarter Sessions, which in Ireland means an
appeal to the County Court Judge.  But some of the residential
magistrates are very foolish persons, and all are regarded as men in
the landlords' camp.

Also, is it not possible to arrive at some clear definition as to
what is an unlawful association?  Parnell says that it is left now to
any residential magistrate to decide the matter.  He suggests that
only such associations shall be unlawful, for the purpose of the Act,
which are proclaimed as such by the Lord Lieutenant.  {186} But
provided that there be a clear definition, he does not care for any
particular wording.

Parnell and Healy request me to say that they are very grateful to
Mr. Gladstone for meeting them half-way, and they seem only now
anxious about "treason felony."  As Herschell told me that he thinks
everything necessary will be covered by the word "treason," I hope
that this matter will also be settled satisfactorily.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

P.S.--Parnell would not like any one but you and Mr. Gladstone to
know about his dispute with Egan, and the embargo on the League
funds, except in a very general way.


10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, June 24, 1882.

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I saw Parnell, and spoke to him as you wished.

His answer is practically this:

"I acknowledge that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain have acted
fairly, and so far as I can I should always be ready to meet their
wishes.  But I deny that we have obtained the concessions that we
expected.  I am not prepared to go back to Ireland and engage in
bringing the agitation within constitutional limits, on the mere
chance of Lord Spencer not arresting me.  The Fenians want one thing:
the Ladies' League another: the people in Paris (Egan) another: and I
another.  Therefore I shall limit my action to Parliament and leave
the Government and the Fenians to fight it out in Ireland.  The
Cabinet do not seem to realise that the Crimes Bill is a very complex
one, and very loosely drawn up.  There has been no obstruction in the
proper sense of the word, although I admit that the Irish have
repeated again and again the same arguments on amendments.  But this
I cannot help, unless I tell them that they will get something by
holding their tongues.  When the Conservatives threatened obstruction
on Procedure, this was met by telling them that the majority
resolution would not be pressed if they would facilitate business.
Why should not the same arrangement be made with us?  Let us know
what amendments will be accepted in future.  I am most anxious to
carry out what I understood was the contemplated policy when I was
released from {187} Kilmainham, and to work with the Government in
bringing the active phase of Irish agitation to a close.  But this I
cannot do if I am suspected of ulterior objects, and if I cannot show
that something is gained for my party."

He then suggested that if the Government would take their November
Session for alterations in the Land Act, he would do his best to
facilitate business now in regard to the Crimes, and the Arrears
Bill, and the Procedure Resolutions, provided that the majority
Resolution were maintained.

I asked him what he really wanted under the term of alterations in
the Land Act?

He said: "To go back to the system of reductions in rent which was
acted on before the Stuart Donleathcase, and to extend the Bright
clauses in the sense of W. H. Smith's resolution."

Finally, I again urged him to remember what Mr. Gladstone and you had
done for him already, and to see whether he could not manage to bring
the Committee Stage of the Bill to an end within a reasonable time.

On Monday, Sexton proposes to cut Chaplin out by bringing forward a
resolution about the suspects.  Parnell says that this is absolutely
necessary, because he and his friends are blamed for only caring for
their own release.  But Sexton will say that he only does this,
because it is a choice between his resolution and Chaplin's, and
there will be no talking to hinder the Government from getting their
money, or with the object of obstructing.

I have got to go to Northampton on Monday, so I shall not be in the
House until late.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


When the Crimes Act was finally passed, Mr. Labouchere expressed
himself in _Truth_ as follows:


When Mr. Parnell was released from Kilmainham, it was understood that
the Land Act would be amended, that evictions would be stopped by an
Arrears Bill, and that the leaders of the land movement would be
permitted to agitate within fair legal limits in favour of the
political and social changes desired by their countrymen.  Had this
understanding been carried out, the breach between the Parnellites
and the Liberals would have been healed.

{188}

Mr. Forster was the first to perceive that as a result of a _modus
vivendi_ he would have to disappear with his policy of coercion.  He
therefore resigned, in the hope that this would render it impossible
to carry out the Kilmainham compact.  Then followed the murder of
Lord Frederick Cavendish.  The horror which this created was
skilfully used by the Whigs in the Cabinet, and they succeeded in
promoting a Bill, not so much aimed at outrages as at the Kilmainham
compact.  This Bill is a complete codification of arbitrary rule.  It
places the lives, liberties, and property of the Irish in the hands
of the Executive, and seeks to suppress every species of political
agitation.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trevelyan was awaiting his re-election when it was
introduced, and it was left to Sir William Harcourt to carry it
through the House of Commons.  Of course, as Sir William is the
head-centre of the Whigs, he delighted in his task.  Not only did he
refuse every modification of the Bill, except those which were
rendered absolutely necessary by the absurd way in which it was
drawn, but almost every day he envenomed discussion by transpontine
outbursts against the Irish members.  I do not blame him.  I blame no
one who plays his cards to his own best advantage.  This is human
nature.  Sir William knew that if the English Radicals and the Irish
were allied, he and his Whigs would lose all influence, whilst of
Ireland he knew absolutely nothing.

The result, therefore, has been that the Whigs triumph, and that
several weeks have been wasted in passing a Bill which will do
nothing to hinder outrages, but which will simply increase the
ill-feeling between England and Ireland.

If the leaders of the land movement are wise, they will not endeavour
to hold meetings.  They should declare that public meeting has been
rendered impossible by the Crimes Act; and they should, as an act of
charity, collect funds to aid all who have been evicted, no matter
from what cause, and thus band the Irish tenants together in a
friendly society.  At the same time, they should devote all their
energies to increase their numbers in the next Parliament, and they
should submit test questions to every Liberal standing for an English
constituency where there are Irish voters, and make these votes
dependent upon the manner in which the questions are answered.  If
Mr. Parnell can {189} hold the balance in Parliament between the
rival aspirants for the Treasury Bench, he may be certain that any
just demand that he may make will be granted.  The democracy of
England and Ireland, with Mr. Gladstone at their head, would make
short work of Conservative and Whig obstructive trash.  The landlords
in Ireland and the Whigs in England stand in the way of peace and
tranquillity in the former island, and of mutual good feeling in
both.[8]


To quote Mr. Labouchere's views on Ireland during the dark and gloomy
period which followed the introduction of the Prevention of Crimes
Bill is to quote Mr. Chamberlain's, for, as is seen by their constant
correspondence, the two were one in their views on Irish discontent.
Mr. Chamberlain made a speech at Swansea in February, 1883, in which
he asked his audience how long they supposed Englishmen with their
free institutions would tolerate the existence of an Irish Poland so
near to their own shores.  Was separation the only alternative?  He
thought not.  Separation, in his opinion, would "jeopardise the
security of this country, and would be fatal to the prosperity and
happiness of Ireland."  He, like Labouchere, was prepared to relax
the bond, even by conceding what was then known as Home Rule, which
would not include an independent Parliament or a separate
executive.[9]

However, in 1883 and 1884, Englishmen had other things to occupy
their minds than the rights and wrongs of Ireland.  In order to
follow the political career of Mr. Labouchere we must for a time
leave the Irish question and consider "the policy of Gladstone's
Government in Egypt."



[1] _Northampton Mercury_, March 27, 1880.

[2] _Hansard_, Jan. 27, 1881, vol. 257.

[3] _Hansard_, Feb. 25, 1881, vol. 258.

[4] To their credit, be it said, they generally were amused.

[5] _Hansard_.  Feb. 25, 1881, vol. 258.

[6] R. Barry O'Brien, _Life of Parnell_.

[7] _Hansard_, May 14, 1881.

[8] _Truth_, July 6, 1882.

[9] S. H. Jeyes, _Mr. Chamberlain_.




{190}

CHAPTER IX

LABOUCHERE AND MR. GLADSTONE'S EGYPTIAN POLICY

Lord Morley has commented on the irony of fate which imposed on Mr.
Gladstone the unwelcome task of Egyptian occupation.  "It was one of
the ironies," he says, "in which every active statesman's life
abounds."  Disparity between intentions and achievements is indeed
inevitable in all departments of activity, but nowhere more so than
in cases of what may be called creative policy.  Destruction is easy.
But a constructive policy which shall bring about a new and more
favourable state of things, and may, therefore, in this sense be
called creative, is strangely apt either to overshoot its mark or to
deviate into unexpected channels, with results wholly unlooked for by
the statesman responsible for its conduct.

Certainly this ironic force of circumstances was peculiarly apparent
in the case of Mr. Gladstone's Egyptian policy.  The problem of Egypt
was not of his seeking, but was a legacy from the Tories.  In 1875
Disraeli, against the advice of Lord Derby, his Foreign Minister, and
without consulting the other members of his Cabinet, arranged with
the London Rothschilds to purchase Khedive Ismail's shares in the
Suez Canal for four millions sterling.  Ismail, whose absolute reign
of eighteen years had cost Egypt[1] no less a sum than four hundred
millions sterling, had been {191} driven by his preposterous
extravagance, and the consequent exhaustion of both his legitimate
and illegitimate methods of procuring revenue, to look abroad for
financial assistance.  France, besides being crippled by the war of
1870, was regarded with suspicion in the matter of the canal, and the
only alternative to France was England.  A trifle like four millions
was very far from what Ismail really required to give any sort of
financial stability to his government, and, after the loan with
Rothschild had been negotiated, the British Cabinet sent out a series
of commissioners to study the state of affairs on the spot, and to
see what could be done in the interests of Egyptian rule and,
incidentally, of the foreign bondholders.  Eventually a settlement of
Ismail's affairs, known as the Goschen-Joubert arrangement, was made,
by which the enormous yearly payment of nearly seven millions
sterling was charged on the Egyptian revenue.  Greek usurers attended
the tax-gatherers on their rounds, and the ruined fellaheen were
forced to mortgage their lands to meet these amazing demands.  Even
such methods failed of success owing to the famine of the two
preceding years.  The obviously juster course was now to let Ismail
become bankrupt and abandon the Goschen-Joubert arrangement, but the
foreign bondholders were naturally opposed to this, and pointed out
reasonably enough that the English Government had guaranteed the
loan.  The moment was favourable to their views.  Dizzy had succeeded
in converting his colleagues, with the exception of Derby, who
retired and was succeeded by Lord Salisbury as Foreign Secretary, to
his neo-Imperialism in which an Asiatic Empire under British rule was
an element.  About this time, too, the secret convention relating to
the lease of Cyprus was signed with the Porte.  When, a month later,
the Berlin Congress was called together, such was the suspicion with
which the plenipotentiaries regarded each other that each ambassador
was obliged, before entering the Congress, to affirm that he was not
bound by any secret engagement with the Porte.  {192} Disraeli and
Salisbury both gave the required declaration.  "It must be
remembered," says Mr. Blunt indulgently, "that both were new to
diplomacy."  A few weeks later the _Globe_ published the text of the
Cyprus Convention, bought by that journal from one Marvin, an
Oriental scholar, who had been imprudently employed as translator of
the Turkish text.  In London the authenticity of the document was
denied, but the truth had to come out at Berlin.  The discovery
almost broke up the Congress.  Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian
representative, and M. Waddington, the Ambassador of France, both
announced that they would withdraw at once from the sittings, and
Waddington literally packed his trunks.  It needed the cynical good
offices of Bismarck to reconcile the English and the French
plenipotentiaries.[2]  There were two very significant points on
which agreement was reached:

1. "That as a compensation to France for England's acquisition of
Cyprus, France should be allowed on the first convenient opportunity,
and without opposition from England, to occupy Tunis."

{193}

2. "That in the financial arrangements being made in Egypt, France
should march _pari passu_ with England."

This was the source of the Anglo-French condominium in Egypt.

Sir Rivers Wilson, who was then acting in Egypt as English
Commissioner, received instructions to see that France should be
equally represented with England in all financial appointments made
in connection with his inquiry.  Wilson's appointment as English
Commissioner on the nominally International Commission of Inquiry was
almost the first signed by Lord Salisbury on taking over the Foreign
Office from Lord Derby.  He was a man from whom much was expected.
In 1878 he was appointed Finance Minister in Egypt.  His predecessor,
Ismail Sadyk, had been treacherously murdered by the Khedive Ismail,
but this fact did not dash his confidence.  He had great faith in
Nubar, Ismail's Prime Minister.  His French education would, he
thought, enable him to preserve the Anglo-French character of the
Ministry.  He also had behind him the full interest and power of the
house of Rothschild, whom he had persuaded to advance the loan of
nine millions, known as the Kedival Domains Loan.  But his brief
career as Finance Minister (the Nubar Ministry was overthrown in the
February of 1879) was a failure.  It is the opinion of Mr. Blunt, and
no one would have been more likely to know the true state of affairs,
that the Khedive himself intrigued against him and that the internal
policy of the country was entirely in the hands of Nubar, who, as a
Christian, was at a disadvantage in governing a Mohammedan country,
and in whose political value Wilson seems to have been greatly
mistaken.  The loan which he had negotiated did not relieve the
taxpayer, but went in paying the more immediately urgent calls.  His
suggestion of a scheme which would have involved the confiscation by
the Government of landed property to the value of fifteen millions
disturbed the minds of the land-owners, and the mistakes of the
Ministry reached their {194} climax when the native army, including
2500 officers, was disbanded without receiving their arrears of pay.

The fall of Nubar was brought about by the _émeute_ of February,
1879, skilfully engineered by the Khedive, and Sir Rivers's position
as Finance Minister became very difficult.  The Consul-General Vivian
(afterwards Lord Vivian) was a personal enemy of his and refrained
from smoothing his path, and when, in March, the crafty Ismail
arranged a little incident at Alexandria similar to that of February,
the Foreign Office, instead of backing his demand for redress,
advised him to resign, which he accordingly did.  Soon, however, he
was able to take a crushing revenge on the perfidious Ismail.  On his
return from Egypt he went straight to the Rothschilds and explained
to them that their money was in great danger, as the Khedive intended
to repudiate the debt, sheltering himself behind the excuse of
constitutional government.  The Rothschilds brought financial
pressure to bear first on Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay.  Their
efforts in these quarters being in vain, they applied to Bismarck,
who was, perhaps, not sorry to have an excuse to state the intention
of the German Government to intervene in the bondholders' interests
in case the French and English Governments were unable to do so.
German intervention would have been a quite unendurable solution, and
the Sultan was at once approached from London and Paris and begged to
depose his vassal.  European pressure was too much for him, and, in
spite of the many millions which he had paid in bribery to the Porte,
Ismail received a curt notice from Sir Frank Lascelles, then acting
English diplomatic agent in Egypt, that a telegram had reached him
from the Sultan announcing that his viceregal duties had passed to
his son Tewfik.  Ismail cleared the treasury of its current account
and retired with a final spoil of some three millions sterling.  No
one hindered his departure.

For a few months after Mr. Gladstone formed his second administration
things seemed to have quieted down in {195} Egypt.  The new Khedive
was a weak character and the country was practically governed by
French and English Ministers in the Cabinet.  Sir Evelyn Baring
(afterwards Lord Cromer) and M. de Blaquières worked together in
perfect harmony.  Sir Evelyn Baring had originally come to Egypt as
Commissioner of the Debt, and had worked so successfully towards a
new settlement that when the question of the appointment of an
English controller to advise the Khedive's Ministers arose, he was
the person naturally indicated for the post.  "Thus," as he says,
"the various essential parts of the State machine were adjusted.  A
new Khedive ruled.  The relations between the Khedive and his
Ministers were placed on a satisfactory footing.  A Prime Minister
(Riaz Pasha) had been nominated who had taken an active part in
opposing the abuses prevalent during the reign of Ismail Pasha.  The
relations between the Sultan and the Khedive had been regulated in
such a way as to ensure the latter against any excessive degree of
Turkish interference.  The system which had been devised for
associating Europeans with the Government held out good promise of
success, inasmuch as it was in accordance with the Khedive's own
views.  Lastly, an International Commission had been created with
full powers to arrange matters between the Egyptian Government and
their creditors."[3]  But, suddenly, as it seemed to those who had
not been watching events on the spot, across this peaceful sky
flashed the red meteor of rebellion, massacre, and arson.

It is no easy matter to estimate the character of Arabi Pasha.  He
seems, from even so friendly an account as that of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt,
not to have been particularly intelligent or particularly brave.  It
appears likely that he, at least, connived at the burning and loot of
Alexandria.  All this, however, would not have prevented his being a
true patriot according to his lights.  As Mr. Herbert Paul observes:
"How far Arabi was a mutinous soldier guided by personal {196}
ambition and how far he was an enthusiastic patriot burning to free
his country from a foreign yoke, would admit of an easier answer if
one alternative excluded the other."[4]  One thing, however, is
certain.  The movement he led was far more than the merely military
revolt which Mr. Gladstone and everyone in England at first thought
it; it was in fact a genuine Nationalist movement directed rather
against the alien Turk than against the alien Englishman.  That the
truth of this is now generally admitted is principally due to Mr.
Blunt and in a lesser degree to Mr. Labouchere and the group of
extreme Radicals of which he was already beginning to be the
unofficial leader in Parliament.  During the spring and summer of
1882, Mr. Labouchere's first observations in the House of Commons on
Egyptian affairs were of a thoroughly orthodox nature.  On May 12 we
find him asking the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Sir Charles
Dilke) "whether any steps are being taken by Her Majesty's Government
in view of the critical state of affairs in Egypt to maintain our
influence in that country."[5]  On July 27 he replies in a vein at
once serious and sarcastic to Mr. McCarthy, who had made a speech in
Arabi's favour.  He thought that Mr. McCarthy had drawn on his
imagination for the character of Arabi Pasha.  They knew perfectly
well that the most eminent men in the world were frequently great
patriots; and they also knew that military adventurers always called
themselves patriots in order to advance their own ends.  They knew
little of the career of Arabi Pasha, but they did know that he had
designedly massacred Europeans in Alexandria, and had deliberately
burnt down one of the noblest cities of his native land.  What would
be the effect of the vote[6] they proposed to give if it were
successful?  The English nation would have to withdraw entirely from
their present position in Egypt, and the result would be that {197}
we should have behaved in a contemptible manner in the face of
Europe.  India would not be worth one year's purchase.  He was not a
great believer in prestige; but if we were to retire after our men
had been massacred our Empire in the East would not be worth a year's
purchase.  This speech, occupying eight columns of _Hansard_, aims at
cutting away the relations between England and Turkey (which shows
that even at so early a date Mr. Labouchere realised something of the
true nature of the grievance of the Egyptian Nationalists) and
upholding British intervention.[7]  Labby among the prophets indeed!

After the retirement of Arabi from Alexandria, he issued a
proclamation stating that "irreconcilable war existed between the
Egyptians and the English, and all those who proved traitors to their
country would not only be subjected to the severest penalty in
accordance with martial law, but would be for ever accursed in the
next world."  Three more towns were plundered and the European
inhabitants massacred.  British public opinion was now thoroughly
aroused, and probably no Government could have stayed in power
without taking some overt action.  The action taken by Mr.
Gladstone's Government was very definite.  On July 22 the Prime
Minister obtained, by a majority of 275 to 19, a vote of £2,300,000.
A force of 6000 men was sent to Egypt from India; 15,000 men were
despatched to Cyprus and Malta.  Sir Garnet (afterwards Viscount)
Wolseley was placed in command in Egypt, "in support of the authority
of His Highness the Khedive, as established by the Firmans of the
Sultan and the existing international engagements, to suppress a
military revolt in that country."

The French Government, while declining to co-operate with the British
troops, assured Lord Granville of their moral support.  In the month
of September the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, in which the Egyptian army
was completely routed, was fought.  By this event British
intervention was justified {198} in the eyes of the world, and what
became in the long run hardly distinguishable from British rule was
established on the banks of the Nile.  It was the battle of
Tel-el-Kebir that convinced Mr. Labouchere of what would be, and in
fact what came to be, the end of the course on which the Government
was embarked, for he very soon sold his Egyptian shares.  "They fell
off his back like Christian's burden in _Pilgrim's Progress_, and
Labby became an honest politician," said Mr. Wilfrid Blunt to me.
The following letter to Sir Charles Dilke very clearly expresses his
new views on Egyptian policy:


REFORM CLUB, October 10, 1882.

DEAR DILKE,--The great ones of the earth who, like you, live in
Government Offices, never really understand the bent of public
opinion.  This is probably a dispensation of Providence by means of
which Ministers are not eternal.

Personally, I should be glad to see the Liberal Party, after passing
a Franchise Bill, sent about their business, and the country divided
between Conservatives and Radicals.  I speak, therefore, from the
Radical standpoint, and viewing the matter from that point, I see
that the dissatisfaction against your Egyptian policy is growing.

Arabi (like most patriots) was "on the make."  His force consisted in
siding with the Notables in their legitimate demands.

Now that the war is over, it is really impossible for Radicals to
accept a policy based upon administering Egypt, partly for the good
of its inhabitants, but mainly for the good of the bond-holders.  I
am a bondholder, so it cannot be said that I am personally prejudiced
against such a policy.  But I am sure that it will not go down, and
indeed that our whole course of action has been so tainted with it,
that there will be great disaffection in the Radical ranks throughout
the country unless the tree be now made to bend the other way.

You are now the man in possession in Egypt, so you can make terms
with Europe.  I would therefore humbly suggest that you should, after
insisting upon an amnesty, call together the Notables and hand the
country over to them, stipulating alone that there should be
Ministerial responsibility, and the control of the purse.  {199} The
International Obligation of Egypt to pay its bondholders was _bon à
professer_, when the Expedition had to be defended, but it is in
reality a pure fiction.  Moreover, if it were not, we cannot decently
join in a holy alliance to maintain Khedives, and to deprive nations
of what is the very basis of representative government.

Having handed Egypt over to the Notables, you can then go before
Europe with a clean bill of health--propose that the connection of
the country with Turkey shall be a purely nominal one and that,
henceforward, no European power shall directly or indirectly
interfere with its internal affairs.

At the same time, you ought to take advantage of your being in Egypt
to establish yourself in some vantage post on the Suez Canal.  This
once done, Egypt separated from Turkey, and all European powers
warned off, we remain in reality absolute masters of the position.
Very probably the Egyptians will make a muddle of these finances, but
this will no more affect us than the mistakes of Spanish finances
affect our tenure of Gibraltar.

Controllers, a swarm of foreign bureaucrats, European administrators,
Khedives ruling against the wishes of their subjects, an English army
of occupation or an army commanded by my esteemed friend, Baker,
composed of black ex-slaves, Ottoman cut-throats, and Swiss cowboys,
are abominations, only equal to that of concerning ourselves with the
payment of interest on a public debt.  To attempt these things will
be to keep open a perpetual Radical sore, and in the end will only
land us in another expedition.

Pray excuse the observations of a humble admirer.  The Jingoes, it is
true, are not so hostile as they were, but you do not suppose that
they would vote for the present Government, whilst on the other hand
the Radicals will sulk and not vote so long as Radical principles are
ignored in Egypt.  Government has not yet announced its policy, so at
present no great harm is done, but the appointment of Baker, the
handing over of Arabi to the Khedive, the reign of Generals and
diplomatists, the absence of any appearance of consulting the
Egyptians, and various other similar things are producing distrust.
You will say, "What can a fellah know of politics?"  To this I can
only answer, {200} "What does a Wiltshire peasant know about
them?"--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


Mr. Labouchere soon began to put forward his reformed views in
Parliament.  On October 30 we find him asking Sir Charles Dilke
whether "Her Majesty's Government is a party to any treaty, alliance,
or compact with any foreign power which would oblige it to prevent
the Egyptians from exercising that control over their taxation,
expenditure, and administration which is enjoyed by the inhabitants
of the independent or semi-independent States which formerly were
integral parts of the Ottoman Empire,"[8] and demanding information
as to the cruelty and insults to which it was alleged the Egyptian
prisoners had been subjected.  Mr. Labouchere wrote a long article in
_Truth_ under the heading: "Egypt was glad when they departed" (Psalm
cv., 38), the following extracts from which put the situation very
clearly as he conceived it.


"That a small body of English troops should remain for a brief time
in Egypt at the expense of that country is, perhaps, a necessity of
the position.  But what I contend is, that during their stay the
Notables ought to be called together, that every place of emolument
ought to be filled up by an Egyptian, that the bag and baggage policy
ought to be adopted towards the Turkish officials, who are as
objectionable to the natives as were the Turkish officials to the
Bulgarians, and that a free constitutional government ought to be
established, based on the two corner stones of all constitutional
liberty--Ministerial responsibility and the right of taxpayers over
the purse.  In order to carry out this programme--distasteful alike
to professional diplomatists and to professional soldiers--we ought
at once to send to Egypt a stalwart and experienced Liberal, who has
graduated in the school of Parliamentary Government, and not in those
of the Horse Guards, of the Foreign Office, or of the India Office.
Looking round, I see no man better able to fill the post than Mr.
Shaw {201} Lefevre.  He is able, he is a skilled and successful
administrator, he is untainted with the creed that all Orientals are
made to be bondsmen for Europeans, and his political principles are
exceptionally sound.

What our diplomacy has to do is, to discover some means to render the
high road to India through the Canal secure.  Obviously we cannot do
in this matter precisely as we should like, which would be to say
that in time of peace all war vessels may pass through the Canal, and
in time of war only ours.  I hardly see how we can go beyond making
the passage neutral in times of peace, and excluding from it in times
of war the ships of belligerents.  If Egypt were left to herself, I
believe that she could very safely be left in charge of the Canal.
Her people would be glad to be clear of all European complications,
and, in case of war, she would occupy Port Said, and notify
belligerents that their ships would not be allowed to pass."


On the question of India he expressed himself thus:


I am not at all of the "Perish India" school of politics.  If it
could be proved that our Empire would perish if we did not establish
ourselves in Egypt, I am by no means certain but what I should be in
favour of our establishment.  But I am a believer not only in the
justice, but in the expediency of an alliance with the people of a
country, and not with its ruler against the people.  Any intermixture
in the internal affairs of Egypt on our part is not only opposed to
Liberal principles, but opposed to English interests.  To what has it
already led?  To a most costly military expedition; to our being
arrayed against rights without which there can be no true liberty or
sound government; to the slaughter of Englishmen and Egyptians with
all the "pomp and pride of glorious war"; and lastly to our soldiers
acting as retrievers, to hunt down and hand over to punishment to an
Ottoman potentate, men many of whom--whether they were ambitious and
whether they were ill-advised--had unquestionably a perfect right to
fight in support of the principle that the only authority of their
nation ought to be its representatives.[9]

{202}

A correspondent at once asked him: "How is it that you were in favour
of the control and in favour of the Expedition, and yet now tell your
readers that the control ought to cease, and that having by means of
the Expedition established a firm foothold in Egypt, our next step
ought to be to evacuate the country?"  The following number of
_Truth_ delivered itself in reply as follows:


The Control, when first established, simply meant that Egypt should
go into liquidation, and pay so much in the pound to its creditors, a
couple of European controllers with half a dozen clerks, being
appointed by the Egyptian Government to receive the composition from
the Egyptian Treasury, and to hand it over to the various classes of
bondholders.  To this there could have been no sort of objection;
but, little by little, this simple and semi-private arrangement was
converted into a so-called international obligation on the part of
the Egyptians to remain eternally divested from all control over
their own expenditure, and to allow their entire financial
administration to be placed in the hands of about 1300 Europeans,
with salaries amounting to nearly £400,000 per annum, whilst the
Controllers themselves had seats in the Cabinet, with a veto upon
everything proposed by their Egyptian colleagues.  France and England
were the executive officers of this scheme.  If the Egyptian officers
had assented to it, nothing further was to be said, except that they
were singularly and curiously wanting in patriotism.  However we find
now that they did not, and that we have been under an illusion.  The
Notables and the entire country were--to their credit be it
said--opposed to it.  Arabi took advantage of this feeling.  He sided
with the country, and at the same time made his bargain.  "I," he
practically said to the Notables, "support you in your rights; as a
_quid pro quo_ you must support me in what I am pleased to call the
rights of the army--that is to say, that it shall be increased by
18,000 men."  Without the army the Notables were powerless; they
accordingly accepted the terms.  We therefore find ourselves in the
position that we were fully justified in asserting that Arabi was a
self-seeking military adventurer, but that he was also the exponent
of the legitimate {203} demands of the Egyptian people.  The Control
had become political--it was no longer a reasonable financial
arrangement, but an unreasonable and improper attempt to deprive the
Egyptians of their rights, in order to secure high salaries for a
swarm of European locusts, and certainty of interest to European
bond-holders.  Those, therefore, who had regarded it in its natural
original conception, as fair and useful, have a perfect right to
assert that this original conception had been so perverted that it
had become a monstrous instrument for the suppression of all national
vitality.

We, however, were tied to France.  If we had not interfered, France
probably would have done so.  Moreover, we foolishly had pledged
ourselves to maintain the Khedive in his position.  The only way,
therefore, to get out of the complication was to cut the Gordian
knot; but, in order to do this, we were necessarily obliged to adopt
the theory that Arabi was a mere military adventurer, who was
attempting for his own ends to coerce not only the Khedive but the
Egyptian people.

Our expedition, as was to be anticipated, has proved successful.  Our
troops hold Egypt.  What then ought we to do?  Obviously to hand it
over to the Notables, who are the representatives of the Egyptian
people, and to inform these Notables that we have no intention of
repeating our previous error, but that, experience having shown us
the fatal results of allowing ourselves little by little to be
dragged into an attempt to manage other people's finances with a view
to public creditors being paid interest, we shall leave Egypt and
Egypt's creditors to settle their conflicting interests as they best
please.  This is the logical consequence of our having acted upon the
assumption that Arabi was terrorising the Egyptians....

It is evident to me, therefore, that the only policy which an English
Liberal Ministry can adopt is to go before Europe with a proposal to
make Egypt an Eastern Belgium, and to base our suggestion upon our
own renunciation of interference in its internal affairs.  I hear it
said that the Liberal party is popular owing to its successes in
Egypt.  It may, perhaps, be for the nonce popular--or, to put it more
correctly, not quite so unpopular--as it was with Jingoes, but these
same Jingoes will not cease to vote for Conservatives....

{204}

How then about the Canal?  Well, I should base my policy upon that
pursued in like cases by the United States.  I should explain to
Europe that the Canal is the connecting link between Great Britain
and India, and that consequently the exigencies of geography and an
enlightened self-interest render it absolutely necessary for us to be
paramount there.  There might be a little grumbling, but no one would
go to war to hinder this, because its plain common-sense would be too
obvious.[10]


In the meantime Arabi was lying in prison at Cairo awaiting his
trial, and Mr. Labouchere took up his case energetically in the House
of Commons.  A military tribunal was to be charged with the trial,
and it was no secret that the Khedive was determined that the death
penalty should be inflicted on the heads of the rebellion.  Mr.
Wilfrid Blunt wrote, on September 1, a long letter to Mr. Gladstone,
stating his intention of providing Arabi with an English counsel at
his own expense and that of his friends, and hoping that "every
facility will be afforded me and those with me in Egypt to prosecute
our task."  Mr. Gladstone, who was deeply hostile to Arabi, replied
through his secretary, that "all that he can say at the present
moment is that he will bring your request before Lord Granville, with
whom he will consult, but that he cannot hold out any assurance that
it will be complied with."

Mr. Labouchere continued to enquire into the Government's intentions
towards Arabi in the House of Commons.  A timely question on October
31 to Sir Charles Dilke secured the intervention of the press at the
trial, and further questions on the following days forestalled the
attempts of the Khedive to wriggle out of the conditions that Mr.
Blunt's advocate had obtained from Mr. Gladstone.  Arabi was, on
December 4, condemned to death, and in spite of Mr. Gladstone's being
at first inclined to let the law take its course, the sentence was
commuted to banishment to Ceylon.  Mr. Labouchere commented in
_Truth_ as follows: "The farce {205} of the rebel's condemnation to
exile with retention of his rank and with a handsome allowance, is a
fitting conclusion to the trial.  I see it stated that Arabi will be
invited to take up his residence in this or that portion of British
territory.  It need hardly be said that he may reside in any part of
the world, outside Egypt, that he pleases.  There is no existing law
which enables us to detain an Egyptian in deference to the wishes of
an Egyptian Khedive; and it is not likely that we shall ever consent
to convert any portion of our territory into an international gaol,
where all who are in disfavour with foreign rulers are to be
deported, and restrained in their liberty."[11]

When Parliament met after Christmas, Mr. Labouchere seconded Sir
Wilfrid Lawson's amendment to the Reply to the Speech from the Throne
to the effect that no sufficient reason had been shown for the
employment of British forces in reconstituting the Government of
Egypt.  It was certain, he said, that Arabi was supported by the
entire Egyptian nation.  He could quite understand why the Opposition
did not challenge the policy of the Government.  The Government were
practically dragged into the war by the acts of the Opposition when
in power.  Anyone who read the Blue Books must see that.  A great
many Liberals and all the Radicals in the country regretted the
Government plunging into the war.  There could be no doubt that it
was entered into for the sake of the bondholders and for that reason
only.  We were going to place the Egyptian army under an English
General and a financier at the side of the Khedive, and then tell
Europe that the Khedive was an independent ruler and that we had
nothing to do with the Government of Egypt.  Why were we there?  For
the single object of collecting the debts of the bondholders.[12]

He wrote to Mr. Chamberlain on January 9, 1883:


You people do not seem to have a very clear policy in Egypt.  I
cannot understand why you do not settle the French by adopting {206}
the line of "Egypt for the Egyptians" and convert the country into a
sort of Belgium.  If you can establish the principle that no one is
to interfere, you have got all that you want.  To do this only two
things are necessary:

1. Fair Courts of Justice where "meum and tuum" is recognised.

2. A Representative Assembly with a right to vote the Budget.

As regards the debt there are three loans, secured by special
mortgages; two on land, and one on the railroads.  Let the mortgagees
take these securities, when the loans would be converted into
companies, and the interest on them not be dependent upon any
political arrangement.  Rothschild has always told me that the
domains, on which his loan of £400,000,000 is secured, are worth
£400,500,000.  By handing over to him the security, £500,000 would
therefore be obtained.

As regards the General Debt (the United), it is a swindle, but
without going into this it might be regarded as the general debt of
the country, and the Egyptians, like any other nation, would be left
to pay or not as they pleased.

The main swindle of the Goschen-Rivers-Wilson scheme was that the
fellahs had paid £17,000,000 to free the land from a portion of the
land tax after 1886.  The law which partially liberated the land was
abrogated, and, instead of the fellahs being treated like
bondholders, although they had paid cash, whereas the latter had
really paid about 20% on the value of the bonds, they were told that
as a _quid pro quo_ they would receive 1% on their £17,000,000 for
fifty years.  The Canal question is nonsense.  If we hold the Red Sea
we hold the Canal, in the sense that we can stop all traffic.  If we
are at war with a maritime power, either we should have the command
of the Mediterranean or we should not.  In the latter case, we should
still by our hold on the Red Sea be able to close the Canal; in the
former case we should be able not only to close it to others, but to
use it for our own powers.  Protocols and treaties are waste paper,
they never hold against the exigencies of a belligerent; and, if we
were at war with one maritime power, we should not have the others
interfering to maintain our treaty rights, for, differing on many
things, all continental powers regard us as the bullies {207} of the
ocean.  An English garrison at Port Said is a reality; as we are not
likely to have one there, our best plan is to leave things alone,
and, in the event of a serious maritime war, at once to occupy Port
Said.


The interests of the Egyptian exiles also claimed Mr. Labouchere's
attention.  We find him in March putting searching questions as to
their precise legal status, demanding satisfactory evidence of their
support being adequately provided for, and enquiring why the Egyptian
Government had unlawfully deprived Arabi of his title of Pasha.

In the debate of March 2 on a supplementary estimate of £728,000 "for
additional expenditure for army services consequent on the dispatch
of an expeditionary force to Egypt," he spoke with his accustomed
frankness.  He would like to know where the money was to come from.
He had seen it stated in the papers and other organs that it was to
be raised by an increase on the Income Tax.  For his part, he should
like to see it raised in one of two ways--one, by raising it from the
landed interest--or, since he was afraid the Government would not
accept that plan--in default, by a general tax on every individual in
the country poor or rich.  Let every one of those shrieking Jingoes
who went out calling on the Government to go to war, now here and now
there, understand that they would have to pay for the cost of those
wars.  Then he thought they would be less inclined than now to
advance the Jingo policy which he was sorry to see had been adopted
by the Government, and which they had inherited from gentlemen on the
other side of the House.  He believed that the war had been a mistake
all through.  If we went to Egypt at all we ought to have installed
Arabi instead of the Khedive.  He believed that as long as British
troops supported the Khedive and supported him against his own
subjects, England was absolutely responsible for what was going on in
Egypt.  No doubt Lord Dufferin did his best to procure trustworthy
information, but he was {208} necessarily very much in the hands of
the Europeans and of the Ministers and friends of the Khedive.  He
did not gather from the dispatches that Lord Dufferin had consulted
the people of Egypt.  Sir George Campbell, the member for Kirkcaldy,
said that he had read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested Lord
Dufferin's scheme of government.  For his own part, although he had
read, marked, and learned it to a certain degree he could not digest
it because it was objectionable to a Radical stomach.  Lord
Dufferin's scheme was a perfect sham of constitutional government.
If any species of representative government were established in Egypt
it must be based on control of the purse.  But when anything was said
to the noble Lord, the Under-secretary, on this subject, he vaguely
alluded to representative government and international obligations.
Was Lord Dufferin prevented from doing what he thought desirable for
the country by any obligations which the Egyptians were supposed to
be under to pay the interest on their debt?  If there was any
obligation on their part it was not our business to go there to carry
it out....  He denied that the people of Egypt were bound by any such
thing, but, supposing they were, it was not England's business to
deprive them of the most elementary and necessary basis of
representative government--the government of the purse.[13]

On June 11, he proposed the reduction of Lord Wolseley's grant from
£30,000 to £12,000.  What, he said, had Lord Wolseley done in Egypt?
He went to Ismailia and from thence marched his men to Cairo.  He
took the straight road, and on the road he found a lot of miserable
Arabs entrenched; he advanced and the Arabs marched away.  That was
the whole history of the exploit in Egypt.[14]

Lord Dufferin left Egypt in May, 1883, He was pleased with the
success of his mission.  To use his own words--"the fellah like his
own Memnon had not remained {209} irresponsive to the beams of the
new dawn."  He left Sir Edward Malet as Consul-General, and resumed
his normal functions at Constantinople.  He departed under a shower
of compliments, and he left Egypt apparently prosperous.  Arabi was
an exile in Ceylon.  Sherif Pasha was the Khedive's loyal and
obedient Minister.  Sir Archibald Alison was in command of the
British garrison.  The Egyptian army, about six thousand in number,
was under the fostering care of Sir Evelyn Wood.  Colonel
Scott-Moncrieff directed the work of irrigation, and another Briton,
Sir Benson Maxwell, superintended the native tribunals.  Hitherto the
British Government had made no mistakes, and Egypt had reaped only
benefit from the intrusion of the foreigner.  The false position in
which England stood with full authority, ample power, and no legal
right, had not yet led to any consequences of a serious and practical
kind.[15]

Danger, was, however, creeping up to Egypt from the south.  A vast,
vaguely limited country, extending from Assouan to the Equator, and
known as the Soudan, had been claimed as Egyptian territory by
Ismail, who had appointed the famous Gordon Governor-General.  On
Ismail's fall in '79, Gordon was recalled and the Soudan fell a prey
to local bandits.  The reconstituted Egyptian Government was
incapable of interference, and towards the end of '82 a Mussulman,
Mohamed Ahmed, raised the standard of religious reform and rebellion
against the distant and incapable Egyptian authorities.  The Mahdi,
or Messiah, as he called himself, took El Obeid and made himself
master of Kordofan by the end of January, '83.  In the summer of the
same year seven thousand Egyptian troops, under the command of Hicks
Pasha, a retired officer of the Indian army, who had entered the
service of the Khedive, were dispatched against him by the Egyptian
Government.  Granville was careful to formally disengage the
responsibility of the English Cabinet in this measure.  It is
certain, however, that he {210} could have prevented this action of
the Khedive's Ministers, and, as he was perfectly well aware through
the information of Colonel Stewart, who had been associated with
Gordon's administration, of the utter impossibility of Hicks's task,
it is difficult to acquit him of moral responsibility.  "The faith in
the power of phrases to alter facts," says Lord Milner in his
_England in Egypt_, "has never been more strangely manifested than in
this idea, that we could shake off our virtual responsibility for the
policy of Egypt in the Soudan by a formal disclaimer."  On November
5, the Egyptian force was cut to pieces near Shekan, about two days'
journey from El Obeid, by the Mahdi at the head of forty thousand
men, and Hicks and his staff died fighting at hopeless odds.  On the
advice of Sir Evelyn Baring, who had just arrived in Egypt from
India, where he had filled the post of Financial Minister to Lord
Ripon's Government, the English Cabinet recognised at last their
responsibility.  It was decided that the Soudan must be abandoned and
that the Mahdi must be induced to allow the Egyptian garrisons,
amounting to about forty thousand men, still remaining there, to
retire.

Mr. Labouchere wrote to Mr. Chamberlain as follows on December 15,
1883: "I hope that we are not going to undertake the reconquest of
the Soudan.  The difficult position in which we are comes from not
having broken entirely with the Conservative policy in Egypt.  _They_
might have annexed the country: we cannot, so we give advice which is
not taken, try to tinker up an impossible financial situation, and
make ourselves responsible for every folly committed by a gang of
corrupt and silly Pashas.  The result is that we are now told that we
have a new frontier somewhere in the direction of the Equator, and
that our honour is concerned, etc., etc.  If the French are so
foolish as to wish to acquire influence in the Soudan, I cannot
conceive why we should seek to acquire it in order to prevent them.
I believe that the Khedive and his friends are {211} delighted at
what has occurred, because they hope that our evacuation will be put
off; so long as we retain one soldier there, or indeed assume the
part of bailiffs for the locusts who make money out of the country,
something will always occur to force us to remain."

Mr. Chamberlain replied on December 18: "I do not think there is the
slightest intention of engaging in any operations in the Soudan.  The
utmost we are likely to do is to undertake the defence of Egypt
proper, and I hope there is no fear of that being attacked.  I wish
we could get out of the whole business, but I have always thought
that, at the time we interfered, we really had no possible
alternative.  I am not Christian enough to turn the other cheek after
one has been slapped, and we had unfortunately put ourselves in a
position in which the first slap had already been administered.  It
is, however, a warning and a lesson to look a little more closely
into the beginnings of things."

On the 20th Labouchere wrote again to Mr. Chamberlain: "From all I
hear, matters are in a mess in Egypt.  Tewfik is a weak creature, and
he and his entourage intrigue against us, and yet intrigue to keep us
there, as they are afraid of what may happen when we go.  If the
fellahs have any opinion, it is dislike of Tewfik as the puppet of
'foreigners.'  The Mahdi will never attack Egypt proper, which is the
valley of the Nile and the Delta.  If we send more troops there, it
will be the more difficult to evacuate.  As long as we retain a
corporal's guard, it will be the object of Tewfik and all the locusts
to get up disturbances in order to compromise us.  Surely it would be
easy to come to an arrangement by which Egypt would be neutralised
and left to itself: the reply always is that interest of the debt
would not be paid and that, in consequence of the Law of Liquidation,
some Power would interfere for the benefit of its Egyptian
bondholders.  But these worthy people must be comparatively few in
numbers, and except as a pretext, no Power would think of taking up
the cudgels for them, any more {212} than they did for Peruvian
bondholders.  The whole thing is a mere bugbear.  Even if France did
go there we should not suffer."  To which Mr. Chamberlain replied on
December 22: "I think I agree with you on all points of Egyptian
policy, but my hands are so full just now that I have to let foreign
affairs work themselves out, and to content myself with occasionally
giving a push in the right direction."

Public opinion in England was deeply stirred by the disaster at
Shekan, and one of those popular cries that are so often and so
disastrously interpreted as heavenly voices went up all over the
land.  The nation called for Gordon.  The question of Gordon's
mission has been exhaustively discussed from every point of view.
The responsibility for his failure and tragic death is apportioned by
Lord Cromer between Gordon himself and the Government who overruled
his (Cromer's) objection to employing him, and went on to make every
mistake they could.  Gordon misinterpreted his orders, and the
Government was then made responsible for the consequences of a policy
of which they had never dreamt.  He thus placed himself in a
situation from which it was impossible to extricate him in time.  Mr.
Wilfrid Blunt, on the other hand, places the responsibility of the
tragedy principally at the door of Cromer.  I am not here concerned
with this delicate controversy.  Of this at least there is no doubt,
Gordon's mission was understood by the country and Parliament to be
of a purely peaceful nature.  Its avowed object was one which
approved itself to Liberal ideas, _i.e._ the disengaging of British
responsibility from a purely Egyptian matter and the rescue of the
Egyptian garrisons.  Radicals understood that these purposes were to
be achieved by purely peaceful means.  The Mahdi was presumably to be
approached by recognised methods of negotiation.  It is well known
that when Gordon got to Khartoum, these instructions went by the
board.  He had been nominated, while on his way, at Cairo,
Governor-General of the Soudan, and the Government left, by means
{213} of supplementary clauses in their instructions, a considerable
latitude to Baring under whose orders, at his (Baring's) request,
Gordon was placed.  Lord Cromer has told the world in his _Modern
Egypt_ of the difficulties of the situation.  Gordon was a mystic and
suffered chronically from "inspirations," which changed a dozen times
a day.  He does not seem to have made any attempt to carry out his
mission by diplomatic methods.  He soon came to conceive of that
mission as a sort of rival "Mahdism."  He became the Angel of the
Lord fighting with Apollyon.  All this must have been inexpressibly
disconcerting to the prudent _homme d'affaires_ at Cairo, and no less
so to his nominal superior in Downing Street.

Mr. Labouchere's attitude in the matter was simple and consistent.
On February 14, four days before Gordon started, the Opposition moved
a vote of censure on the Government in consequence of the Hicks
disaster, and were supported by several Radical members.  Sir Wilfrid
Lawson was supported by Mr. Labouchere in an amendment to Sir
Stafford Northcote's motion: "That this House, whilst declining at
present to express an opinion on the Egyptian policy which Her
Majesty's Government have pursued during the last two years with the
support of the House, trusts that in future British forces may not be
employed for the purpose of interfering with the Egyptian people in
their selection of their own Government."[16]  On February 25, by
which time news of the conquest of Tokar by Osman Digna, the ablest
of the Mahdi's lieutenants, had reached England, Mr. Labouchere asked
the Secretary for War whether it was within the discretion of General
Graham to advance beyond Suakim against Osman Digna.  Hartington
replied oracularly that that appeared to him a question highly
undesirable to answer and that the general object of Graham's
instructions had been already stated to the House.

{214}

Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's Diary for April 4, 1884, records the following
conversation with Mr. Labouchere: "Lunched with Labouchere.  He is
more practical, and we have discussed every detail of the policy to
be suggested to Gladstone.  He will feel the ground through Herbert
Gladstone, which is his way of consulting the oracle.  He told me the
history of Gordon's mission.  Gordon's idea had been to go out and
make friends with the Mahdi, and to have absolutely nothing to do
with Baring or the Khedive, or with anybody in Egypt.  He was going
to Suakim straight, where he counted upon one of the neighbouring
Sheiks, whose sons' lives he had saved or spared, and his mission was
to be one entirely of peace.  But the Foreign Office and Baring
caught hold of him as he passed through Egypt, and made him stop to
see the Khedive, and so he was befooled into going to Khartoum as the
Khedive's lieutenant.  Now he had failed altogether in his mission of
peace, and the Government had recalled him more than once in the last
few days, but he had refused to come back.  Gladstone had decided
absolutely to recall all the troops in Egypt when Hicks' defeat was
heard of, and was in a great rage.  The expedition to Suakim had been
forced upon him by the Cabinet, and Hartington had taken care to give
Graham no special instructions, so that he might fight without
orders.  This Graham, of course, had done, and Gladstone, more angry
still, had gone down to sulk at Coombe.  Now he would stand it no
longer, and he had let Hartington in by the speech he had made last
night.  Nobody expected it.  Labouchere thought the moment most
favourable for a new move."[17]  And on May 19 Mr. Labouchere asked
in the House: "Whether, for the satisfaction of those who believe
that it has never been brought to the knowledge of the Mahdi and of
the Soudanese who are engaged in military operations what the object
of the mission of General Gordon is, he will consider the feasibility
of conveying to them that Her Majesty's Government, {215} in sending
an English General to the Soudan, only desired to effect by peaceful
means the withdrawal of the Egyptian troops, employés, and other
foreigners who many wish to leave the country, and whether he will
take steps to enter into diplomatic relations with the Mahdi, or
whomsoever else may be the governing power in the Soudan, in order to
prevent if possible all further effusion of blood, to establish a
fixed frontier between Egypt and the Soudan, and to effect an
arrangement by which General Gordon and those who may wish to
accompany him will be enabled peaceably to withdraw from the
Soudan."[18]  Mr. Gladstone replied to Mr. Labouchere's question,
finishing his remarks with these words: "Whatever measures the
Government take will be in the direction indicated by the
question--to make effective arrangements with regard to putting all
the difficulties at an end."

Mr. Labouchere, to whom, as a Radical and a Nationalist, the position
of the Mahdi appealed, did not confine himself to work in Parliament.
Mr. Wilfrid Blunt was attempting to negotiate with Mr. Gladstone to
stop the war, which had followed Gordon's death, and had taken Mr.
Labouchere into his confidence.  Mr. Labouchere wrote to Mr. Blunt on
February 20, 1885, as follows:


DEAR BLUNT,--I had a talk with H(erbert) G(ladstone) last night.  He
wants to know what evidence can be given--that the man who came to me
was Arabi's Minister of Police at Cairo, and what was his name--and
that the Mahdi's man is the Mahdi's man.  It is clear that so far he
is right.  If the latter has no credentials he should get them.  Let
us assume that he either has them or can get them.  Then there must
be a basis of terms.  I would suggest then that the Soudan, with the
exception of the Port of Suakim, be recognised as an independent
state under, if wished, the suzerainty of the Sultan, and that all
Egyptian Pashas who wish to leave it be allowed to leave it.

If the credentials hold water, and if these terms are agreed to,
{216} then the Mahdi's man should write them out and say that he will
agree to them.

But it is very essential that nothing should be known about the
matter.  I should have to work others in the Cabinet, and, if
necessary, to appeal to Parliament.  Clearly we could not send a
mission to the Mahdi, but if an agreement were come to, an emissary
from the Mahdi and one from our Government might meet for details.
What I want is to establish a discussion with the Mahdi--the rest
would follow.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

P.S.--You see, if something is to be done to stop this war, we must
leave the vague, and come to hard and fast facts.


In elucidation of the above letter Mr. Blunt writes to me on February
20, 1913: "The person referred to in your uncle's letter of February
20, 1885, is clearly Ismail Bey Jowdat, who acted as Prefect of
Police at Cairo during the war of 1882....  Later he came to London
in connection with negotiations I was attempting to get entered into
by Gladstone with the Mahdi, through Sezzed Jamal ed Din, as to which
I was in communication with your uncle....  I had, no doubt, sent
Jowdat to your uncle, and, at one time, it seemed as if we were
likely to succeed in getting a mission sent or negotiations of some
kind entered into to stop the war....  Jowdat was never himself an
agent of the Mahdi, but he was for the time with Jamal ed Din, who
was in communication with Khartoum...."

Communication with the Mahdi was apparently not easy, for we find Mr.
Labouchere writing again to Mr. Blunt the following month (March 4,
1885):


It appears to me that there will be a pause in our Soudan operations.
It might therefore be desirable to take advantage of this in order to
learn on what terms an agreement might be come to between us and the
Soudanese.  Those in Parliament who, like myself, see no reason why
we should interfere in the internal affairs of that country would be
greatly strengthened, were we to know the precise views of the Mahdi.

{217}

I would therefore suggest to you that, if possible, his agent should
let us know definitely, and after conversation with the Mahdi,
whether the latter would agree to the following terms:

1. The recognition on the part of England of the independence of the
Soudan, and of the Mahdi as its ruler.

2. The Northern frontier of the Soudan to be drawn at or near Wady
Halfa; the Eastern frontier to exclude Suakim and the coast.

3. The Mahdi to pledge himself not to molest any Soudanese who have
taken our side, and to allow all who wish to leave the country to do
so.

4. The Mahdi to receive a Consular and Diplomatic Agent at Khartoum;
to allow all foreigners to carry on their business unmolested in the
Soudan.

5. The establishment of some sort of Consular Courts.

6. If possible some clause with regard to the export of slaves
forbidding it.

It is our object to meet the assertion of the Government that the
Mahdi is a religious fanatic with whom it is impossible to treat,
because he does not regard himself, alone, as the temporal ruler of
the Soudan, but as a spiritual leader of Islam against
Christianity--a species of Oriental Peter the Hermit.  What we want
to show is that he is the proper ruler of the Soudan, and that,
whilst it will be open to any one outside that country to regard him
as a prophet, he seeks to establish no temporal sway beyond the
Soudan.  If the Mahdi would declare his assent to the above terms, I
am convinced that popular feeling here, and the real wishes of the
members of the Government, would soon bring this war to a close, and
that in a very short time we and the Mahdi would be the best of
friends.


It seems unlikely that the terms laid down in this letter were
suggested by Mr. Labouchere without consultation with Mr. Herbert
Gladstone.

He missed no opportunity in Parliament of fighting the good fight of
Radical principles.  At one moment he is pointing out the two
cardinal heresies in the policy of the Government--one political and
the other financial: "The {218} political heresy is that we insist on
putting up the Khedive and maintaining him in power against his
subjects.  The result is that we are absolutely hated in Egypt, and
wherever we are not hated we are regarded with contempt."  The
financial heresy is that "we always insist in our treatment of
Egyptian finance that the payment of interest on the debt should come
first, and the expenses of administration second.  The result of this
policy is over-taxation, the postponement of reform, and a
deficit."[19]  The policy of the Liberal Government was in reality,
though not in profession, he asserted, Jingo policy, and the Radicals
who had worked for Mr. Gladstone's return to power, relying on his
Midlothian speeches, had been jockeyed.  If only Mr. Gladstone would
take his (Labouchere's) advice.  No doubt the Prime Minister when
thinking the matter over would say--Why did I not follow the member
for Northampton?  I should not have been in such a mess as I am now.
For his own part Mr. Labouchere stood by the policy of the Midlothian
campaign, when the Prime Minister denounced the Jingo policy of
annexation and war.  If any one had then said: "You will acquire
power and become the most powerful Minister England has had for many
a day; you will bombard Alexandria; you will massacre Egyptians at
Tel-el-Kebir and Suakim, and you will go on a sort of wild-cat
expedition into the wilds of Ethiopia in order to put down a prophet"
the right honourable gentleman would have replied in the words of
Hazael to the King of Syria--"Is thy servant a dog that he should do
this thing?"[20]

This kind of sword-play went on day after day in the House, and it is
impossible to doubt that, although Mr. Labouchere was unquestionably
sincere in deploring the policy of the Government, he must have
greatly enjoyed the opportunity which it afforded him of displaying
his wit and humour.  Mr. Gladstone did not always appreciate these
{219} qualities, and on one occasion, when Mr. Labouchere was
attempting to divide the House against the Government, his object
being, as he said, "not adverse to the Government, but to strengthen
the good intentions of the Prime Minister in future," that much
enduring statesman turned and solemnly rebuked him for making an
"inopportune and superficial speech."[21]

The case against the Government from the Radical point of view was,
of course, very obvious and easy to put, nor was there anything
particularly original about Mr. Labouchere's arguments.  He rang the
changes incessantly on three points: the essential injustice of our
position in Egypt towards the Egyptians--the underlying venality of
the Government's position owing to their connection with the
bondholders--and the monstrous expense to the British taxpayer of
British military intervention.  It was not the matter of his charges,
but the manner in which he made them that delighted the House.
Sometimes he would lay aside his dialectical weapons and let the
facts speak for themselves.  One day he asks the Secretary for War if
his attention has been drawn to the following statements in the
_Times_ of May 7:


Daylight broke almost imperceptibly.  We were nearer the village of
Dhakool, when the friendly scouts came running in with the news that
the inhabitants were at prayer, and that if we attacked at once we
should catch them.  General Graham pushed on with a troop of the
Bengal Lancers....  The enemy fled on camels in all directions, and
the Mounted Infantry and Camel corps, coming up, gave chase.  Some
two hundred attempted to stand, and showed a disposition to come at
us, but evidently lost heart and disappeared, not before having at
least twenty men killed....  It was curious to witness the desperate
efforts of the enemy to drive their flocks up the steep mountain
side, turning now and again to fire on the Bengal Lancers.  The
"Friendlies" tried to cut off the flocks, and succeeded in catching
{220} some thousands of animals....  The village was looted and
burnt....  We also destroyed the well with gun-cotton....  But, for
our being unaware of the existence of some narrow hillock walks up
which the enemy retired, we might have exterminated them.  Our loss
has been hitherto only two Mounted Infantry men wounded....  We have
done the enemy all the harm we could, thus fulfilling the primary
object of war.


Lord Hartington could find nothing to say, but that such incidents
were unfortunately inseparable from war.[22]

It may be doubted, however, whether Mr. Labouchere's advocacy did
very much for his cause, or for his own reputation as a serious
politician.  The British public (and the House of Commons is a sort
of microcosm of the British public) finds it hard to believe in
sincerity accompanied by banter and persiflage.  Not so are
Englishmen wont to express their conscientious convictions.  Mr.
Labouchere was, of course, not an Englishman.  He was a Frenchman
and, as I have said before, in his mentality a lineal descendant of
Voltaire.  He could hardly hope to succeed where John Bright had
failed.

That Mr. Labouchere's attitude on the subject of Egypt was
appreciated by the Egyptians is proved by a perusal of the letters he
received from Arabi in exile, long after the subject had ceased to be
a stone on which the Radical axe could be ground.  I append some of
these, and another letter from Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt on
the subject of the Exiles.


COLOMBO, September 15, 1891.

MY DEAR SIR,--I beg the liberty to trouble you with this in the hope
of your being able to learn more of the state of our health than you
have been hitherto.  One of the most eminent medical practitioners in
Ceylon, Dr. Vandort, left for England in the last week in the German
mail steamship _Preussen_.  I have asked him to call on you and Sir
William Gregory and inform you of {221} the actual state of such of
us as he has attended on.  By the death of Dr. White we lost our best
evidence, and it pleased those in authority not to heed at all the
opinion of our regular medical advisers and to rely on that of
gentlemen who, whatever their high standing and attainments, had but
one opportunity of seeing us.  Had they questioned also those who
attended on us and our families for years they might have been better
able to form an opinion.

I am now suffering very much from my eyes, being scarcely able to
read anything, and am waiting until an oculist from Madras could
examine them and tell me what I may expect.

Pray forgive me for troubling with this letter.  We have so few of
your kind feelings and position to look up to--and if we are too
importunate we would only beg to be pardoned.

In the hope that you are in the enjoyment of the blessing of health,
and begging the kind acceptance of all respectful regards--I remain,
yours most obediently,

A. ARABI, the Egyptian.


COLOMBO, December 9, 1891.

MY DEAR SIR,--I had the great pleasure to receive your kind letters
of the 2d and 8th October, and should have replied earlier but for
having had to communicate with my brethren in exile, and for there
being time before the next meeting of Parliament.  We beg your kindly
acceptance of our grateful thanks.

We have been officially informed of the decision of H.M.'s Government
on our memorial to Lord Salisbury, but for which we were prepared by
yourself and Sir William Gregory; and also by Lord de la Warr, who
very kindly sent to me copies of the papers (Egypt, No. 1, 1891),
printed for both Houses of Parliament, in March last, and of his
speeches and Lord Salisbury's reply in May and June last.  I now send
copies as requested of the medical certificates had by Toulba Pasha
and the late Abdulal Pasha since the memorial, also the Colonial
Secretary's letter to us and my reply.  [All these were enclosed with
this letter.]

You will permit me to ask your notice of Riaz Pasha's Memorandum of
July 9, 1890, to the Foreign Office concluding with: "H.M's
Government should in any case remember that the exiles were pardoned
and allowances granted to them on the express {222} condition that
they should remain at some distant spot, such as the island of
Ceylon."  On this rather qualified assertion it would quite do to
refer to Mr. Broadley's book _How we Defended Arabi and his Friends_,
where the terms of the arrangement which put an end to the
proceedings in connection with our "trial" will be found.  Mr.
Broadley and Mr. Napier could not, as I cannot, in honour reveal more
than they have done, but my steadfast friend, Mr. Blunt, was not so
constrained to be reticent, and his communications to the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ showed what even the great noble-minded General Gordon
believed the nature and extent of our exile to be.

We should not perhaps however complain of our not being permitted to
end our days in the land of our birth, although what harm that, or
our being in Cyprus, could now do I cannot conceive.  That none of us
have desired or sought in the least to be disloyal to our parole the
testimony of Sir Arthur Gordon to our conduct should be sufficient.
If all my correspondence, family and other, for the last nine years
were read, or any of the hundreds of my visitors, from every part of
the world, were questioned, nothing would there be to show the least
wish to disturb or stay the progress of my loved native land since my
poor efforts failed.

If you would kindly refer to Mr. Broadley's book you will find Lord
Dufferin's scheme in 1883 for the reorganisation of my country, and
my views on Egyptian reform in 1882.  After nine years, when almost
the whole of that scheme and so many of my humble views have been
successfully carried out, is it possible that any one beyond my
personal enemies in my own country could deem me capable of even
dreaming of doing anything to see her in misery again?  My greatest
trust is yet what it was when I wrote to the _Times_ from my prison
in 1882: "I hope the people of England will complete the work which I
commenced.  If England accomplishes this task, and thus really gives
Egypt to the Egyptians, she will then make clear to the world the
real aim and object of Arabi the Rebel" (Mr. Broadley's book, p.
349).  I cannot hope to see the time, but it must come under such
auspices when Egypt will cease to be a "reproach to the nations,"
Islam although she be.

My fellow exiles and I have considered much on the subject {223} of
the parole you suggest in regard to Cyprus.  Our simple parole was
all that Lord Dufferin required of us when exiled.  We gave it, and
he was satisfied.  We have honourably kept our word, and it is only
now, when we find our place of sojourn proving so increasingly
injurious to the health of most of us and our families, that we pray
for a change to a more congenial climate.  In every other respect we
could not dream nor hope for a better home of exile.  We leave
everything to your judgment.  If you think a repetition of our parole
necessary, or of any use, we shall gladly give it again, although our
first, religiously observed, has been so slighted; and we shall send
it to you as soon as you may desire it.  You have done much for us,
and our return for it all could only be gratefully felt, not
expressed; and you will permit us to leave it to you to do for us
whatever more in your judgment may be expedient, and, whatever that
may be, permit us to assure you of our fullest trust.

If any prospect of the change of residence we seek is hopeless, and
Lord Salisbury should adhere to his wish to keep us here, I may but
beg your best endeavour to obtain the increase of allowance I have
applied for in my letter to the Colonial Secretary, to enable me to
have the benefit of such change as the variable climate of this
island could in some degree afford.

I had the pleasure last week of two kind visits by Mr. J. R. Cox,
M.P., on his return home from Australia in the _Orizaba_.  He
mentioned your request and his promise to see me if he came to
Colombo, and your desire that he should learn from me all I had to
say; and he asked me to give him a statement, which I have done to
the best of my ability both by word of mouth and in writing.  He said
he had been long away, and had not seen the papers Lord de la Warr
sent me until then.  I need not say how deeply gratifying it was to
hear from him of your interest in us and of your exertions on our
behalf, and of the wide feelings of sympathy you have raised for us.

You will forgive me for trespassing on your time and work with this
long letter; and if I have been led to say anything that I have
troubled your attention with before, I may only beg the extension of
your indulgence for it.  Placed as I am now, able to think only of
the past, and with no hope for life's future on earth, and deprived
more and more of my greatest solace, study, {224} by the growing
weakness of sight, I fear that my communications to you and to those
who have likewise generously extended sympathy to us in our strait
are of too melancholy a tinge.  As any prospect of better days seems
all but closed to us, we may but bow in humble resignation and
submission to the Divine Will.  When this letter comes to you it will
be your great season of joy and peace.  Permit me and my family to
offer you our best regards and wishes for many a happy enjoyment
together and return of the things to you and all dear to you.--And
believe me, yours most gratefully and sincerely,

AHMED ARABI, the Egyptian.


5 OLD PALACE YARD, S.W., Feb. 1, 1893.

MY DEAR BLUNT,--Jingoism under Rosebery reigns supreme.  I will,
however, see if anything can be done about Arabi.  Your details are
very interesting respecting the late events in Egypt.  Cannot the
Khedive be induced to do this?: Get his Chamber to pass a resolution
declaring that Egypt wishes for independence of all European
intervention, and trusts that the British occupation will cease.  If
it did this we should be able to meet the persistent statements that
the Fellaheen wants us and loves us.  The Turkish Pashas might agree
so as to spite us, but if once the country were left to itself, the
Chamber could assert (?) itself.

It is difficult to say how long the Government will last.  Probably
through the session.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.



[1] Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, _Secret History of the English Occupation
of Egypt_.

[2] I have taken this account of the Cyprus Convention and its
results at the Berlin Congress from Mr. Blunt's _Secret History of
the English Occupation of Egypt_.  He says in a footnote (_op. cit._,
p. 277): "I have given the story of the arrangement made with
Waddington as I heard it first from Lord Lytton at Simla in May,
1879.  The details were contained in a letter which he showed me
written to him from Berlin, while the Congress was still sitting, by
a former diplomatic colleague, and have since been confirmed to me
from more than one quarter, though with variations.  In regard to the
main feature of the agreement, the arrangement about Tunis, I had it
very plainly stated to me in the autumn of 1884 by Count Corti, who
had been Italian Ambassador at the Congress.  According to his
account, the shock of the revelation to Disraeli had been so great
that he took to his bed, and for four days did not appear at the
sittings, leaving Lord Salisbury to explain matters as he best could.
He said that there had been no open rupture with Waddington, the case
having been submitted by Waddington to his fellow-ambassadors, who
agreed that it was not one that could possibly be publicly disputed:
_Il faut la guerre ou se taire_.  The agreement was a verbal one
between Waddington and Salisbury, but was recorded in a despatch
subsequently written by the French Ambassador in London in which he
reminded Salisbury of the Convention conversation held in Berlin, and
so secured its acknowledgment in writing."

[3] Herbert Paul, _A History of Modern England_, vol. iv., p. 247.

[4] Herbert Paul, _A History of Modern England_, vol. iv., p. 247.

[5] _Hansard_, May 12, 1882, vol. 269.

[6] Vote of credit for forces in the Mediterranean.

[7] _Hansard_, July 27, 1882, vol. 272.

[8] _Hansard_, October 30, 1882, vol. 274.

[9] _Truth_, October 5, 1882.

[10] _Truth_, October 12, 1882.

[11] _Truth_, December 7, 1882.

[12] _Hansard_, February 15, 1883, vol. 276.

[13] _Hansard_, March 2, 1883, vol. 276.

[14] _Ibid._, June 11, 1883, vol. 280.

[15] Herbert Paul, _A History of Modern England_, vol. iv.

[16] _Hansard_, February 14, 1884, vol. 284.

[17] Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, _Gordon and Khartoum_.

[18] _Hansard_, May 19, 1884, vol. 288.

[19] _Hansard_, March 26, 1885, vol. 295.

[20] _Ibid._, Feb. 27, 1885, vol. 294.

[21] _Hansard_, April 13, 1885, vol. 296.

[22] _Hansard_, May 8, 1885, vol. 298.




{225}

CHAPTER X

HENRY LABOUCHERE'S RADICALISM

Before dealing further with the part played by Labouchere in Irish
legislation, it will be necessary to consider his view of English
politics as a whole.  He had not at first been an enthusiastic
partisan of Home Rule.  He had even gone the length at Northampton of
saying that he himself was no Home Ruler.  Yet, in point of fact, no
English member was a more zealous advocate of Irish claims than he.
Why was this?  His motives, as I have been able to gather them from
many conversations with him on the subject, were twofold: His Radical
soul was disgusted by what, in the face of the Irish attitude, was
the only alternative to Home Rule, namely coercion, and he realised
that the only effective way to "dish the Whigs," whom he hated even
more than the Conservatives, was to use the Irish vote.

The second motive was by far the stronger.  He had a definite
conception of Radical government to which he would undoubtedly have
sacrificed hecatombs of Irish patriots if necessary.  As a matter of
fact, the Irish patriots happened to be a useful means towards his
end, the establishment of such a government.  Hence his alliance with
them.  When Mr. Gladstone and his Whig-Radical Government were faced
in 1880 with the Irish question in so acute a form, Labouchere saw a
real possibility ahead of establishing a Radical as distinguished
from a merely Liberal {226} Government.  The protagonist of his
scheme was Mr. Chamberlain, already a member of the Cabinet, and, in
the natural course of events, the almost certain successor of the
already venerable statesman whose name had become the war-cry of
English Liberalism.

With Mr. Chamberlain as Prime Minister almost anything might happen:
the Lords and the Church might go, England might become, in all save
the name, a republic.  Mr. Chamberlain was the one statesman with
whom he found himself in complete agreement as to the articles of the
Radical faith, and in his future he saw the future of the party and
of England.  He wrote to him on July 3, 1883: "I was caught young and
sent to America; there I imbibed the political views of the country,
so that my Radicalism is not a joke, but perfectly earnest.  My
opinion on most of the institutions of this country is that of
Americans--that they are utterly absurd and ridiculous.  Nothing
would give me greater pleasure than to see you leader of the House of
Commons, with a Parliament pledged to the most drastic reforms.  This
is the aim of my humble endeavours, but, in the nature of things, a
member below the gangway has not the same responsibilities as a
Minister, and, if he is a Radical, necessarily is more advanced than
a composite Cabinet.  He has, too, to make motions or to hold his
tongue.  For instance, my amendment yesterday evening on titles was
regarded in the House of Commons as a joke.  But go to any meeting of
even Liberals, and you would find that it was essentially a popular
one.  The real trouble in the House of Commons is that the Radicals
below the gangway are such a miserable lot, and seem ashamed of their
opinions.  The Whigs, on the contrary, out of office act solidly
together.  This leads the public to suppose that your views are in a
small minority in the House of Commons.  If the Whigs are ready to
pull a coach half way to what they consider a precipice, they must be
greater fools than I take them to be.  They do not act openly, but
they conspire secretly.  So long, {227} however, as they consent to
work in harness, they ought to be encouraged.  You have told them the
goal, and I am certain that this declaration has done more to
strengthen radicalism than anything that has happened for long.  So I
am perfectly contented, and quite ready to leave well alone."

Alas for the schemes of mortals!  The very element on which
Labouchere relied for the strengthening of the Radical cause in the
Cabinet was to prove to Mr. Chamberlain himself the parting of the
ways.  The statesman who was to reach the highest power on the
shoulders of Irish voters, when it came to the point, would have none
of such support.  The corner-stone fell out of the grandiose edifice
that Labouchere had planned, the palace of Armida crumbled in the
dust.  Bitter, indeed, was his disappointment.  It was characteristic
of him in these circumstances to lose his head and throw up the game.
The reader will remember how, as a boy, he described his own
character at the gaming-table: "In playing even I failed because,
although I theoretically discovered systems by which I was likely to
win, yet in practice I could command myself so little that, upon a
slight loss, I left all to chance."  He lacked the patience or the
industry of mind to reconstruct his schemes, and when Mr. Chamberlain
was lost to the Radical party, Labouchere's constructive imagination
seems never to have recovered the blow.  He continued the war with
abuse of privilege, absurdity consecrated by tradition, and the other
heads of the hydra with which his party fought, but the tone of his
attacks was not the same as before the Home Rule split.  Too often
they degenerated into mere party criticism, the note of personal
invective, one might almost say of spite, becoming more prominent in
them.  He had lost faith in success, because the combination by which
he had hoped to win had failed, and he could not, or would not, think
out another.  It was this consciousness of failure--of personal
failure as he saw it, so closely had he identified himself with {228}
his hopes--that inspired the peculiar bitterness with which, in and
out of season, he attacked the statesman whom he held responsible for
the altered situation.  He did not, as his correspondence will show,
give up hope for some time of Mr. Chamberlain's return to the party,
but, when he had at last given up all such hope, nothing was too bad
for "Joe."  In the pages of _Truth_, in the Reform Club, in the lobby
of the House of Commons, he constantly held forth to all who would
read or listen on the "crimes" of the man who had divided the Liberal
party against itself.  He manifested no such bitterness against
Bright or Hartington; but when Mr. Chamberlain fell from grace, he
fell as no private individual, but as the symbol of the Radical
party.  With him, according to Labouchere, the party fell, and with
the party his immediate hopes for the regeneration of England.  Those
hopes had, with ample justification for their existence, run high
when Messrs. Chamberlain and Dilke joined Mr. Gladstone's
administration in 1880.  Labouchere based his scheme on the
permanence of Mr. Chamberlain's Radicalism, and upon the fact that,
in the natural course of events, a successor would very shortly have
to be found for Mr. Gladstone.  Both these, at the time, reasonable
previsions were falsified by destiny.  Mr. Gladstone remained for
another fourteen years leader of the party, and Mr. Chamberlain
became a Liberal Unionist.  The years between 1880 and 1887 were, in
so far as his political life was concerned, the most important of
Labouchere's life.  Until he saw that his game was finally spoiled by
a totally unexpected fall of the cards, he did not for one instant
relax his efforts to reach the end towards which he had planned to
work.  His patience was remarkable, his foresight uncanny, except in
the all-important direction from which the blow that finally
shattered his hopes descended.

It is interesting, in the light of subsequent events, to read the
article which he wrote for the February number of the _Fortnightly
Review_ in 1884, in which he set forth with {229} characteristic
freedom of expression his views upon Radicals as differing from
Whigs.  "A Radical," he declares early in the article, "has been
defined as an earnest Liberal," and he goes on to describe, in
uncompromising terms, the faith of the earnest Liberal--or true
Radical.  "The Government Bill," he wrote, "assimilating the County
to the Borough Franchise is to be encouraged, although it does not go
far enough, to the extent, _i.e._, of Adult manhood suffrage.  It
will be for Radicals to take care strenuously to oppose every scheme
which is a sham and not a reality.  Let us all who are good Liberals
labour to obtain a good suffrage Bill and a good redistribution Bill.
This will strengthen our Parliamentary position, and we may fairly
anticipate that Manhood Suffrage, electoral districts, triennial
Parliaments, and payment of members will follow."  The following
extract shows very clearly Mr. Labouchere's opinions on what may be
called the technique of legislation:

"The life of a Parliament is too long.  Three years is the maximum
period for which it should be elected.  At the end of this time it is
out of touch with the electorates.  Promises and pledges made at the
hustings are evaded, because each member thinks they will be
forgotten before he has again to seek the suffrages of his electors;
whilst Ministers are too apt to put off, until the period for a fresh
election approaches, any drastic legislation to which they are
pledged as leaders of their party.  It is probable that, were the
duration of Parliament limited to three years, as much political
legislation would take place in this period as is now the case in the
five or six years which is the average life of a Parliament.  The
fear of a speedy reckoning with electors would be ever before the
eyes of Ministers and members.  The 'Can't you leave it alone?' of
Lord Melbourne would be replaced by 'We must do much and do it
speedily, for the day of reckoning is near at hand.'  Long
Parliaments are as fatal to sound business as long credits are to
sound trade.  It is questionable, indeed, whether {230} three years
is not too long for the duration of a Parliament.  We should move in
all probability more quickly, were the nation to insist upon an
annual stocktaking."

The arguments, from the democratic point of view, in favour of the
payment of members are thus set forth:

"The payment of members would do more to democratise our legislature,
and consequently our legislation, than any other measure that can be
conceived.  At present, members, as a rule, are rich men.  Many of
them mean well, but they fatally take a rich man's view of all
matters, and are far too much inclined to think that everything is
for the best in a world where, although there may be many blanks,
they at least have drawn a prize in life's lottery.  So long as the
choice of the poor men is between this and that rich man, so long
will our legislation run in the groove of class prejudice.  The poor
man will not be the social equal of the rich man, and our laws will
be made rather with a view to the happiness and interests of the few
than of the many.  All who are Conservative in heart know this, and
for this reason the payment of members, which is the natural outcome
of a recognition that a labourer is worthy of his hire, finds in them
such bitter opponents.  If a Minister is paid for being a Minister,
it is only logical that a member should be paid for being a member.
People must live.  To refuse payment to members is to limit the
choice of electorates to those very men who are not likely to see
things with the same eyes as the majority of the men who constitute
the electorates.  Parliaments should be composed of rich men and of
poor men.  No one would advocate the exclusion of rich men.  Why,
then, should a condition of things continue which practically results
in the exclusion of the poor man?"

Never has the Radical view of the House of Lords and the Crown been
more forcibly expressed than in the following:

"The Whigs seem to know that ---- is in favour of the abolition of a
House of hereditary legislators.  Let us hope that they are correct.
We are frequently told that the {231} people love, honour, and
respect the House of Lords.  Let any one who entertains this notion
allude to this assembly at a popular political gathering in any part
of the country, and he will find his illusion rudely dispelled.
There are earnest Radicals who hold that there ought to be two
legislative Chambers, and not one; although why they think so, it is
difficult to say, for in every country where the two-Chamber system
prevails, either one of them has become a mere useless court of
registration, or the two are engaged in perpetual disputes, to the
great detriment of public business.  No Radical, however, is in
favour of our existing Upper Chamber.  If he were, he would not be a
Radical.  What an hereditary legislator ought to be is well described
by Burke in his letter to the Duke of Bedford.  What our hereditary
legislators are we know by bitter experience.  They almost all belong
to one particular class--that of the great landlords.  When any
attempt is made to deal with the gross absurdities of our land
system, they rally almost to a man to its defence, not from natural
depravity, but from the natural bias of every one to consider that
what benefits him must be for the best.  The majority of them are
Conservatives; even those who call themselves Liberals are the
mildest of Whigs.  When a Conservative Administration is in power
they are harmless for good or evil.  When a Liberal Administration is
in power they are actively evil.  Such an administration represents
the deliberate will of the nation.  Before bringing in a Bill,
however, it has to be toned down, lest it should meet with opposition
in the Lords.  Nevertheless it does meet with opposition there.  The
Lords do not throw it out, but emasculate it with amendments; then
when it comes back to the Commons a bargain is struck that, if the
Commons will agree to some of these amendments, the Lords will not
insist upon the others.  Thus, no matter what may be the majority
possessed by a Liberal ministry in the House of Commons, it can never
legislate as it wishes, but in a sense between what it wishes and
what the Conservative {232} majority in the Lords wish.  In great and
important questions it almost always obeys its Leader like a flock of
sheep, and thus one man is able to provoke a dissolution, not only
when he thinks that this is in the interests of the country, but when
he imagines it to be in the interests of his party.  It is asserted
that the House of Lords is useful because its rejection of a Bill is
an appeal to the country against a House of Commons which is acting
in opposition to the popular will.  It is not easy to understand on
what grounds the Lords are supposed to know what the popular will is;
and, indeed, they never do, for there is not one single case on
record where, when the Lords have appealed to the country against a
decision of the House of Commons, the verdict has gone in favour of
the former.  Although rich, the peers are not independent.  They are,
in fact, remarkable for their abnormal greed.  Because they are by
the chance of birth legislators, they insist upon decorations,
distinctions, and salaries being showered upon them and their
relations.  In the Financial Reform Almanack for this year there is
an interesting calculation of the amounts that living dukes,
marquises, and earls, and their relations, and those that have died
since 1850, have received out of the public exchequer.  The dukes
figure for £9,760,000, the marquises for £8,305,950, and the earls
for £48,181,292; total £66,247,242.  The voracity of a vestryman is
nothing to compare with that of the British nobleman.  Eighty-three
peers are privy councillors; 55 have received decorations; 192 are
connected with the army and navy; 62 are railway directors; their
total rental is £11,872,333, and they possess 14,251,132 acres; yet
in pay and pensions they absorb annually £639,865, and whenever there
is a change of administration they clamour for well-paid sinecures
about the Court, and other such sops, like a pack of hungry hounds.
_Les soutiens de l'État_ indeed!  _Comme une corde soutient un
pendu!_  The greater number of them are obscure thanes, who never
take an active part in legislation or attend in their {233} seats;
and they are summoned to London by their party leader whenever it is
necessary to vote down some Liberal enactment, which has been passed
after long and careful consideration by the elected representatives
of the nation, and for this service to the State they generally
insist upon receiving an equivalent--a ribbon, a Lord Lieutenancy, or
an office for a relative or a dependent....

"Radicals are essentially practical, and are not accustomed to waste
or misdirect their energies.  They do not approve of the fuss and
feathers of a Court, and they regard its ceremonies with scant
respect, for they are inclined to think that they conduce to a
servile spirit, which is degrading to humanity.  They admit, however,
that the scheme of a monarch who reigns but does not rule has its
advantages in an empire such as ours, where a connecting link between
the mother country and the colonies is desirable.  Their objection to
the present state of things is mainly based upon financial grounds.
Admitting that there is to be a hereditary figure-head, they cannot
understand why it should cost so much, why funds which are voted to
the monarch should be expended in salaries to noblemen for the
performance of ceremonial service, or why the children of the monarch
should receive such enormous annuities."  He quoted an occasion when
the disloyalty of Radicals was supposed to have been amply proved.
One of them had voted for an amendment of Sir Charles Dilke when Lord
Beaconsfield's Government had proposed an allowance of £25,000 per
annum to the Duke of Connaught.  "It would have been more to the
purpose to show," he said, "why this young gentleman should receive
so very ample a pension for condescending to be the son of his
parents.  Nothing has conduced more to shake that decent respect for
the living symbol of the State, which goes by the name of royalty,
than the ever-recurring rattle of the money-box.  Radicals do not
perceive why the children of the monarch should be made public
pensioners any more than the children of the {234} Lord Chancellor.
They know that Her Majesty lives in retirement, and that she has a
wholesome contempt for the costly ceremonies of a Court; they are
aware that as a necessary consequence she has sufficient
accumulations to keep her children in comfort.  They ask, therefore,
why their maintenance should be thrown on the country, and why, if
so, this should be on so very costly a scale.  They consider, it is
true, that Her Majesty has too large a Civil List; yet although they
are not deceived by the 'pious fraud' which assumes that the monarch
is the owner of the Crown domains and surrenders them on accession to
the throne in consideration of a money equivalent for what they
produce, they have no burning desire to interfere with existing
arrangements during the lifetime of the present incumbent, for they
have a sincere respect for the Queen, not only as the constitutional
head of the State, but also on account of her excellent personal
qualities.  They are of opinion, however, that when provision is
asked for the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, this will be a
fitting opportunity to inaugurate an entire change in the financial
relations of the Crown with the country."

The Established Church, education, and the Land Laws are thus
drastically treated.

"The income of the Establishment is close upon £5,000,000 per annum.
It is the Church of a minority.  The greater portion of its revenues
were acquired by confiscation.  Its division of them amongst its
clergy is in defiance of all rule and justice.  Cures of souls are
matters of public barter.  Only the other day the secretary of a
race-course company bought the next presentation to a living in order
to ensure that the views of the next pastor should be sound on the
question of racing.  In every country except this the principle has
been recognised that so-called ecclesiastical property is national
property.  In some countries this principle has been pushed to its
ultimate consequences, in others it has received a more restricted
application.  Were we all {235} members of the Established Church
there might be some plea for our devoting a portion of our property
to the maintenance of the Church's employés.  But the majority of us
are not churchmen.  Why then should we perpetuate so invidious an
application of national funds?  The vested rights of living
incumbents should be respected, and perhaps it would be only fair
that the Church should retain those funds that she has received from
the liberality of private donors within the last few years.  On an
excessive estimate this would amount to £1,000,000 per annum.  We
require the remaining £4,000,000 per annum for educational purposes,
and we mean to have them....

"Whilst all Radicals are agreed that our land system requires a
thorough reform, all are perhaps not in accord as to the details of
that reform.  Some are followers of Mr. George and demand the
nationalisation of land; others--and these are the wiser--whilst
admitting that it is to be regretted that the paramount
proprietorship of the community has been almost entirely ignored,
hardly see their way to resume it absolutely, nor do they admit that
a person who has acquired a legal title to a freehold can be divested
of it without fair compensation.  All, however, are agreed that real
estate has, in contradistinction to personal estate, certain inherent
qualities: it is limited in quantity, and it is a natural instrument;
consequently, the State has a right to regulate the conditions of its
tenure, and its transmission from one individual to another.  We
would legislate to break up and destroy all huge domains; to make the
occupier to all practical intents the master of the soil which he
cultivates, and to secure to him not only fixity of tenure and
independence of a landlord's rules and caprices, but the enjoyment of
these rights at a fair and reasonable price.  A long succession of
landlord legislatures have, in the words of Mr. Cobden, 'robbed and
bamboozled the people for ages.'  All our laws affecting land have
been made in order to perpetuate its tenure in the hands of the few
from generation {236} to generation; to render its purchase difficult
and expensive; to free its owners from taxes and obligations, in
consideration of which their predecessors acquired lordship over it
from the State; and to give it an artificial value by securing to its
possessors social and political pre-eminence.  That there should be
few Radicals amongst landlords is less surprising than that any one
who is not a landlord should remain outside the Radical pale.  To
suppose that when Radicals have the power to place our land laws in
harmony with the good of the greatest numbers, or to imagine that
they will allow the _imperia in imperio_ of huge domains to continue,
is to suppose that they will take to their heart of hearts their
'robbers and bamboozlers.'  Landlords are a mistake socially,
politically, and economically.  The only true proprietary rights in
land are a reasonable interest on sums spent in rendering it more
productive, and this only so long as the outlay continues to produce
this result; to talk of any other natural proprietary rights is as
absurd as it would be to talk of a man having a natural property in
the air that we breathe.  It is too late now, however, to revert to
first principles.  We must accept facts and endeavour to make the
best of them.  This we propose to do, and, as a preliminary step, we
demand the renewed imposition of the land-tax at four shillings in
the pound upon the full true yearly value at a rack rent; that there
should be no more subventions in aid of local taxation from imperial
funds largely derived from taxation on food and drink; and that
landlords who will not use their land themselves should be made to
give it up to those who are ready and anxious to use it."

Towards the end of the article Mr. Labouchere delivers himself
somewhat tentatively on the Irish question as follows:

"It was said in the first session of the present Parliament--and no
one was more fond of using this argument than Mr. Gladstone--that the
limited number of Mr. Parnell's {237} Parliamentary followers proved
that the majority of the constituencies was not with him.  Later on,
when the error of this estimate of his strength was perceived, it was
alleged that his influence was alone secured by terrorism.  Slowly it
had dawned upon the English mind that the vast majority of Irishmen,
rightly or wrongly, cordially and truly sympathise with him.  No one
now questions that he will sweep Ireland at the next General
Election.  On the doctrine of probabilities, this will make him the
arbiter between parties at St. Stephen's.  How is this to be met?
The only suggestion put forward as yet has been that both parties
should agree that the Irish vote is not to count on a party division.
But does any sane human being imagine that such a scheme is
practicable?  The 'ins' would always assent to it, but the 'outs'
would defer their assent until they became the 'ins.'  It is indeed
becoming every day more and more clear that we must either allow the
Irish votes to reckon as other votes, or that we must boldly assert
that Ireland shall no longer be represented in Parliament, because we
disagree with the representatives that it chooses.  There is no
middle course; and, if we accept the former, we shall have to allow
Ireland hereafter to decide as she best pleases on matters that only
locally regard her.  Most Radicals would be of opinion that one
Parliament for the entire United Kingdom is a better system that one
for Great Britain and another for Ireland.  But they would go a long
way to establish a fair _modus vivendi_ between the two islands, and
nothing that Mr. Parnell has ever said can be adduced to show that he
does not entertain the same desire.  Most of his views recommend
themselves to Radicals, especially those in regard to land....  If
the Irish wish for Home Rule why should they not have it?  It surely
would be easy to conceive a plan in which that island would have a
representative assembly that would legislate upon all matters, except
those reserved to the Imperial Parliament.  These reservations might
be precisely the same as those which the American Constitution {238}
reserves to Congress in her relations with State Governments.  Mr.
Gladstone seemed inclined to accept this solution in 1882, for, in a
speech during the session of that year, he asked the Irish members to
submit their plan to the House of Commons, whilst the only objection
that occurred to him was, that it might be difficult to find an
arbiter between the Imperial and the Irish legislature in case of any
conflict of jurisdiction--a difficulty which a cursory glance at the
American Constitution would have solved.  The Irish are sound upon
almost every question; they are even more democratically inclined
than we are.  We want their aid and they want our aid.  Irish,
English, and Scotch Radicals should coalesce.  Mutual concessions may
be necessary, but this is always the case in political alliances.
That the Irish should not love the English connection is hardly
surprising.  We are only now beginning to do them justice, and we
have accompanied this modicum of justice with a Coercion Act, aimed
not only at crime, but at legitimate political agitation.  If we
remove their grievances, if we make Irishmen the true rulers of
Ireland, and if we cease to meddle in matters that concern them and
not us, there is no reason to suppose that they would wish to
separate from us any more than our colonies.  Separation would,
indeed, be as disadvantageous to them as to us."

A year or two later he gave clear expression to the same Radical
faith in the House of Commons in a speech which he made on his own
amendment to the motion that Mr. Speaker do now leave the chair:
"That in the opinion of this House it is contrary to the true
principles of representative Government, and injurious to their
efficiency, that any person should be a member of one House of the
Legislature by right of birth, and it is therefore desirable to put
an end to any such existing rights."  "It has been pointed out to
him," he said, "that these words might include Her Majesty, which, of
course, was not intended ... they had been engaged in democratising,
as far as they could, the Commons {239} branch of the Legislature;
but all their efforts would be abortive, all their efforts at
Parliamentary reform would be illusory, if they allowed side by side
with that House a Legislative Assembly to exist, which, in its
nature, was aristocratic, and which had a right to tamper with and
veto the decisions of the nation, which were registered by the House
of Commons....  Members of the House of Lords were neither elected
nor selected for their merits.  They sat by the merits of their
ancestors, and, if we looked into the merits of some of those
ancestors, we should agree that the less said about them the better.
The House of Lords consisted of a class most dangerous to the
community--the class of rich men, the greater part of whose fortune
was in land.  It was asserted of them that the House of Lords was
recruited from the wisest and best in the country--that the Lords
were so wise and good that, in some mysterious way, they were able to
transmit their virtues to future generations in _secula seculorum_.
The practice in the selection of those gentlemen was not quite in
accordance with this theory.  They consisted generally of two
classes--of those who were apparently successful politicians, and of
those who were undoubtedly successful money-grubbers.  He would take
a few examples, and, as he did not wish to be invidious, he would
take them from both sides of the House.  They all knew and
appreciated Sir R.  Assheton Cross, Mr. Sclater Booth, Sir Thomas
Brassey, and Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen.  What did they think of these
gentlemen?  As members of this House everybody respected and liked
them; but they were looked upon as decent sort of mediocrities of the
ordinary quality, which was converted, in course of time, into
administrative Ministers.  Take another class.  Why were brewers
selected as peers?  Simply because they, of late, had accumulated
very large fortunes by the sale of intoxicating liquors, and for no
other reason.  The names of Guinness, Bass, and Allsopp had been long
household words in every public house in the country, but who ever
heard of them as {240} politicians?  Yet these gentlemen were
considered to be the very best men in the country to be converted
into hereditary peers.  Another class who made money were the
financiers.  Lord Rothschild inherited a large fortune, and had
increased that fortune, and no doubt spent his money in the most
honourable way; but Lord Rothschild did nothing in the House of
Commons in any way to distinguish himself.  With brewers, when one
was made a peer another must be made a peer for advertisement.  So
with financial houses; when a Rothschild was made a peer, it was
necessary to fish up some one of the name of Baring, and one was
converted into Lord Revelstoke--a gentleman who, though probably
eminent in city circles, was hardly known to any one in that House,
and who had never taken part in politics.  So much for the
composition of the House of Lords....  Deducting representative peers
from Scotland and Ireland, and deducting members of the Royal family,
and deducting bishops and archbishops, he found 470 peers sitting as
hereditary peers in the House of Lords.  He found that those peers
had annually distributed among them £389,163, amounting on an average
to £820 each (salaries from appointments under Civil List)--these
rich men who would, with one accord, protest against the payment of
members of the House of Commons.  These were the rich men who were
found at public meetings denouncing members from Ireland as a
wretched crew, because, being mainly poor men, they received enough
to enable them to live from their constituents.  The peers were
almost as careful of their relations as of themselves.  In a valuable
publication he saw it put down that, from 1874 to 1886, no fewer than
7000 relatives of peers had had places of emolument under the
Government....  In the other House there were 120 Privy Councillors,
of whom he ventured to say the majority had never heard.  Orders had
to be found for these gentlemen.  Almost every one of them had a
decoration.  There were three decorations which were absolutely made
for peers and for no other {241} body--the Garter, the Order of St.
Patrick, and the Thistle.  Walpole had declined a decoration
'because,' he said, 'why bribe myself?'  Lord Melbourne said of the
Garter that its pleasing feature was that there was 'no nonsense of
merit about it.'  An impression existed that private Bill legislation
was more independent in the House of Lords than in that House.  He
did not think it was....  No men looked better after the class
interests of those to whom they belonged than the peers.  They were
great landowners; 16,000,000 acres belonged to them.  Yet our Land
Laws were a disgrace to the country and tainted with feudalism....
This House of Lords was not collectively any worse than any six
hundred men would be.  They were _ex necessitate_ a Tory House and a
House of partisans.  The assertion that they subordinated public
interests to their private class and party interests was merely
tantamount to saying that they were human beings.  A House of
Artisans would act on similar principles....  His amendment went to
the root of the evil.  He at first thought of including bishops, but
he struck them out on the principle of _de minimis non curat lex_.
If the hereditary principle were done away with, what the honourable
member for Birmingham called 'the incestuous union between the
spiritual and the political world' would cease of itself.  His
amendment would not prejudice the question of whether there ought to
be two Chambers or one only.  Personally he was in favour of one, but
those who voted with him need not necessarily support him on that
particular point.  Other countries which had two had simply followed
our example, and it was a mere result of chance that we happened to
have two.  If they agreed, the second was useless; if they disagreed,
the second was pernicious.  If the functions of an Upper Chamber were
to be properly fulfilled by those who soared above party and class
interest, we must not look for its members in this world, but we must
bring down angels from Heaven; but, as that would be difficult, there
was one other alternative.  The Conservatives at their meetings {242}
always shouted, 'Thank God we have a House of Lords!'  Radicals had
no intention to remain any longer supinely like toads under the
harrow of the House of Lords.  They intended to agitate until they
could say: 'Thank God we have not an hereditary House of Lords!'"

Mr. Labouchere's amendment on that occasion was defeated by a
majority of 61 in a House of 385 members.  On November 21, 1884,
Labouchere had moved the following resolution: "That in view of the
fact that the Conservative party is able and has for many years been
able, through its permanent majority in the House of Lords, to alter,
defeat, or delay legislation, although that legislation has been
recommended by the responsible advisers of the Crown, and approved by
the nation through its elected representatives, it is desirable to
make such alterations in the relations of the two Houses of
Parliament as will effect a remedy to this state of things."  Sir
Wilfrid Lawson, in seconding the resolution, said that he remembered
a few years ago Mr. Labouchere giving notice of a very similar
resolution.  He asked him if he thought a House could be made for it.
Mr. Labouchere had answered, "No, I do not think there will be, for
all the Radicals want to be made peers."  The member for Northampton
prophesied truly, for not forty members could be got to come down.

With untiring patience, however, Mr. Labouchere moved a resolution of
the same nature almost every year that he was in Parliament.  His
perseverance on the subject was only matched by the dogged
persistence with which he attacked the ridiculous appurtenances
inseparable from the upkeep of a constitutional monarchy.  When he
was asked by Captain Fred Burnaby once at Homburg why he was always
attacking the Royal family, who after all were well meaning people,
he replied: "One must find some very solid institution to be able to
attack it in comfort.  If the love of royalty were not so firmly
established in the middle-class English breast, I should not dream of
attacking it, for the {243} institution might topple over, and then
what should I do?  I should have all the trouble of finding something
else to tilt against."

Another expression of his views on the Establishment is found in his
speech on Mr. Albert Grey's amendment on the occasion of the Second
Reading of the Church Patronage Bill.  "From a Radical standpoint,"
he said, "it was undesirable that there should be an Establishment at
all, and there seemed to be no reason why they should be continually
tinkering up and remedying this and that abuse in connection with the
Church....  He agreed with the Secretary of State that this Bill did
not go far enough, if it granted compensation in the case of those
who now held livings.  To sell a cure of souls had always been
regarded as a most monstrous iniquity, and why should they give
compensation to those who were enjoying what was wrong?  They might
as well suggest that Simon Magus himself should have had
compensation.  There was another preposterous clause in the Bill.
These advowsons could only be sold to the great landlords and the
lords of the manor.  If the livings were sold at all, they should be
sold to anybody who might be ready to buy them.  But why should the
great landlords--the race he should be glad to see cleared off the
land--why should the great landlords and lords of the manor be
allowed to buy livings while other people were not? ... There was no
doubt that matters would be infinitely improved if the parishioners
had the right to veto the appointment of clergymen.  But the
amendment did not go far enough.  Why was there only to be a veto?
Why not allow the parishioners to elect any clergyman they liked?
Why was the bishop to be the only person to be allowed to have a
veto?  If the majority of the people in a locality were dissenters,
he thought they should not be compelled to elect a Church of England
clergyman.  He was opposed to all this tinkering of the Church of
England, which should be disestablished and disendowed....  He was
quite ready to leave the {244} Church such amounts as had been given
to it within the last twenty years; but he had seen calculations made
that, deducting these amounts, a sum of about £5,000,000 per annum
ought to come to the public.  That sum was the property not of a
sect, but of the English people who paid it, and he should like to
see a Bill introduced dealing with glebe lands.  These glebe lands
were, he believed, the worst cultivated in the country, and it would
be infinitely better to redistribute them in allotments amongst the
deserving labourers of the village than to leave them in the hands of
the clergymen.  When his honourable friend brought in a Bill dealing
with glebe lands, and giving back to them the £5,000,000 of which
they were now deprived for the benefit of a sect, then he would give
him his most cordial support."  And so on.

In the June of 1884 he made one of his common-sense speeches on the
subject of the enfranchisement of women.  It occurred during the
debate on the Representation of the People Bill.  "It may be that we
should enfranchise women," he said, "but because we have enfranchised
men is no reason that we should do so.  We may discuss the subject
eloquently, we may refer to Joan of Arc and Boadicea, but, in point
of fact, from the time of Eve till now there has been a distinct
difference between men and women.  There are a great many things
which I am ready to admit women can do better than men, and there are
other things which I think men can do better than women.  Each have
their separate functions, and the question is whether the function of
electoral power is a function which women would adequately discharge.
I do not think it is.  As yet I understand that no country has really
given women the vote; and were it not that honourable gentlemen
opposite, who are generally averse to giving the franchise to any
large body of men, think, and think justly, that a very large
majority of women would vote for Conservatives, I should be surprised
at their making this desperate leap in the dark.  Some honourable
{245} members on this side of the House have told us that women are
better than men.  That is the language of poetry.  But when we come
to facts I am not at all disposed to admit that women are better than
men.  It is not a question of whether women are angels or not, but
whether they will make good electors ...  the honourable member has
told us that he was convinced of this because Queen Anne was a great
queen; and he told us also that Elizabeth was a great queen.  But
Anne was not a great queen, and Elizabeth had the intellect of a man
with the weaknesses of a woman.  The honourable member also spoke of
Queen Christina of Sweden, but every one knows that she was one of
the most execrable queens that ever lived, for, after being deposed
by her subjects, she went to Paris and murdered her secretary.  We
learn that, by the operation of nature, more women are born into the
world than men, that women live longer than men, and that a
considerable number of men leave the kingdom as soldiers and sailors,
while women remain at home.  In consequence of this there are, at any
given moment, a greater number of women than men in the country.  I
am told that in every county, with the exception of Hampshire, more
women would be put on the register than men if we had woman suffrage.
And what would be the consequence?  They would look to the interests
of women; they would band themselves together, and we should have
them, of course, asking to be admitted to this House; and then, if
they were admitted, instead of being on an equality with them, we
should put ourselves under petticoat government; we should have women
opposite, women on these benches, and a woman perhaps in the chair.
They would, of course, like women everywhere, have their own way.
The honourable member had hesitated as to whether he would give the
vote to married women as well as to unmarried women, and, by his mode
of dealing with the question, it would seem that he gave to vice what
he denied to virtue.  As long as a woman remains a spinster, it
appears that she is to have the vote, but that, so soon as {246} she
marries, she is to cease to be an elector; she is to lose her rights
if she enters into the holy and honourable state of matrimony, and,
if her husband dies, she is again to get the vote.  When Napoleon was
asked by Mme. de Stael who was the best woman in the State, he said:
'Madame, the woman who has the most children.'"

It will be seen from the above extract that his opinion of the female
sex was early Victorian, and so it remained to the end of his life.
He was always a bitter opponent of woman suffrage; and when, in 1896,
a petition for the Suffrage signed by 257,000 women from all parts of
the United Kingdom was exhibited, "by kind permission of the Home
Secretary," in Westminster Hall on a series of tables for the
inspection of members, he immediately called the attention of the
Speaker that afternoon in the House to the "unseemly display," and
insisted upon its removal.

He was indefatigable in his efforts to introduce economical Radical
finance into every detail of government, always assuring his hearers
that he was fighting for the principle of economy, and not merely
against the mere absurdity of the existence of certain traditional
offices and extravagances.  In 1885 we find him requesting the
Attorney-General to do his best to suppress the offices of
Trainbearer, Pursebearer, and Clerk of the Petty Bag.  He protested
ably against the large sums spent upon the upkeep of the royal yacht,
and upon the "objectionable practice" of asking the Commons to vote a
sum of money for special packets for conveyance of distinguished
persons to and from England.  He protested against the nation being
asked to pay the expenses incurred in the ceremony of making the
present King (then Prince George of Wales) a Knight of the Garter.
He was, in short, unceasingly vigilant wherever the spending of
public money was concerned, and his remarks were usually practical
and to the point.  A quotation from a letter he wrote to the _Times_
in the same year on the Graduated Income Tax will be of interest, as
peculiarly illustrative of his clear and simple {247} view of the
rights of the poor man versus those of the rich man.  "The income
tax," he wrote, "when first put on by Mr. Pitt, was a graduated tax.
No one then regarded this as a spoliation or confiscation.  That a
rich man should pay a higher percentage of taxation than a poor man
is based upon what Mr. Stuart Mill terms 'equality of sacrifice.'  It
will, I presume, he admitted by all that the first call upon a man's
income is that portion of it which is necessary for him and his
family to eat, to be clothed, and to secure some sort of home.  If a
man earns only £50 per annum, and has an average family of two
children, let me ask what remains after this call has been met?
Nothing.  And if he has to pay taxes, he and his family are obliged
to go without a sufficiency of clothing, or without a fitting home.
Now look at the case of a man with £50,000 per annum, and with a
family of the same size.  He pays in taxation about 4½% on his
income---let us say 5%.  This absorbs £2500.  He may secure to
himself and them not only all necessaries, but all comforts, for £500
per annum.  Surely the sacrifice on his part to the exigencies of the
State of £7000 per annum would not be so great a one as would be that
of £2, 10s. per annum by the man with an income of £50 per annum.  As
a matter of fact, however, the rich man pays at present a maximum of
5%, and the poor man about twice that percentage...."

He made a speech in the Radical Club at North Camberwell on November
14, 1885, in which he once more resumed his creed, and with it I must
end this chapter, so as to proceed with the history of the practice
to which he put his theories.  "In the House of Commons," he said,
"Radicals had hitherto been in a very small minority, and were not
appreciated, and it was therefore gratifying to him as a strong
Radical to find what they did in the House of Commons was appreciated
by those who made the House of Commons.  For his own part he was
bound to say he could not form any clear idea of what 'Conservative'
meant now.  In the past, Conservatives {248} were a party banded
together to support the landed interest, but Lord Randolph Churchill
told them that this was to be all forgotten, and that the
Conservatives were to become Tory Democrats.  These two words were
utterly antagonistic in themselves, and he could not understand how
men could be fish and fowl at the same time.  The only principle
which was guiding the Tories was to get into office and remain there.
No reasonable man could become a Conservative.  As for the Whigs they
were more dangerous than the Tories.  There were about thirty of them
in the House of Commons.  They rarely spoke, but their influence--a
backstair influence--was such that Ministers yielded to them, and it
was to them that the action in Egypt was due, and they were the cause
of the Crimes Bill in Ireland--both of which had been steadfastly
opposed by the Radicals in Parliament.  It was easier to deal with an
open enemy than with a traitor in the camp.  Happily the Whigs were
expiring, and he did not think any one would care to adopt their
creed.  Coming to the Radical creed he said it was that England
should become a democracy, by which was meant the rule of the people
by the people and for the people.  He was surprised statesmen could
not see that the people would use the power given them for their own
advantage.  They would insist on a Government not mixed, as now, with
an aristocratic element in it.  They would deal with the entire
Legislature, the Crown, the Lords, and the Commons; and, if they were
of his mind, they would go in for a much more sweeping franchise.
The vote was a right and not a privilege, and every man, not a
criminal, ought to possess it, or he was defrauded of his right.  He
went in for residential manhood suffrage, for free education, for
which he would apply the Church revenues and the misused charities.
He was opposed to all indirect taxation, and advocated what had been
described as equality of sacrifice in general and local
taxation--that was, he would have a graduated income tax, and, in no
case, tax the necessaries of life.  In {249} conclusion he said he
hoped Mr. Chamberlain would succeed Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister,
and as for the Whigs they were welcome to go over to the Tories.  He
would not refuse to accept Lord Hartington, if he elected to fight
under the Radical party, but he would refuse to sink his own personal
opinions for any one."[1]



[1] _Times_, October 15, 1885.




{250}

CHAPTER XI

IN OPPOSITION

(JUNE, 1885--DECEMBER, 1885)

Mr. Labouchere was not only a zealous friend and advocate of the
Irish members in Parliament, but a variety of circumstances conspired
with his own aptitudes to constitute him an unofficial ambassador
between conflicting parties in the House, and, in particular, between
the Liberal Cabinet and the Nationalist leader.  "His real
influence," wrote Sir Henry Lucy recently, "was exercised beyond the
range of the Speaker's eye.  Nothing pleased him more than being
engaged in the lobby, the smoking-room,[1] or a remote corner of the
corridors, working out some little plot.  By conviction a thorough
Radical, such was the catholicity of his nature that he was on terms
of personal intimacy with leaders of every section of party, not
excepting those who sat on the Treasury Bench.  He was one of the few
men--perhaps the only man--whom Parnell treated with an approach to
confidence.  He watched the growth of the Fourth Party with something
like paternal interest.  Lord Randolph Churchill and he were
inseparable.  In these various episodes and connections he delighted
to play the part of the friendly broker."[2]  In this way, far more
effectively than by formal speech or resolution, though here too
{251} he was untiring in the fight, he was able to use what is called
"the personal factor in politics."  And in his case the personal
factor was no light weight.  His extreme opinions, in which he had
never wavered since the days when, as a young man, he had scornfully
declined the succession to his uncle's peerage, secured him the
confidence both of the Irish and of the left wing of the Liberals,
while, by birth, education, and habit of life, he was the welcome
intimate of men who sat on the other side of the House.  Eton,
Trinity, and the diplomatic service were an unusual training for an
ultra-Radical and gave an attractive flavour of sacrilege to his
views.  No one appreciated this circumstance more than he did
himself, and certainly no one could have put it out to better
interest.

On June 8, 1885, a coalition of Tories and Irish defeated the
Government by a majority of twelve.  The occasion was an amendment
moved by Sir Michael Hicks Beach during the second reading of the
Budget Bill, condemning the increase of beer and spirit duties
proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The combination between
the Opposition and the Irish was due to information having been given
by one of the Opposition leaders to the Irish party to the effect
that the Tories, if returned to power, would not renew the Coercion
Act, which would automatically expire in the following August.[3]
Mr. Gladstone resigned the next day, and, after some delay, Lord
Salisbury accepted office and formed his first administration.  The
new Viceroy, Lord Carnarvon, following the precedents of Lord
Mulgrave in 1837 and Lord Clarendon in 1850, himself made the
declaration of the Irish policy of the new Government.  That policy
was a complete renunciation of coercion.  Ireland was to be governed
by the ordinary law of the land.  "My Lords, I do not believe that
with honesty and single-mindedness of purpose on one hand, and with
the willingness of the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to
look for some satisfactory {252} solution of this terrible question.
My Lords, these I believe to be the views and opinions of my
colleagues."  The "honesty and single-mindedness" of this piece of
tactics were severely criticised by Mr. Chamberlain.  "A strategic
movement of that kind executed in opposition to the notorious
convictions of the men who effected it, carried out for party
purposes and party purposes alone, is the most flagrant instance of
political dishonesty this country has ever known."

The Irish party were much impressed by the advances of the
Conservatives, and when Lord Carnarvon arranged to meet Parnell in
conversation on Irish affairs, in the course of which they discussed
whether "some plan of constituting a Parliament in Dublin, short of
the repeal of the Union, might not be devised and prove acceptable to
Ireland,"[4] Parnell may be excused for having thought that salvation
was to come from the Tories.  Mr. Gladstone had not yet pronounced
himself.  The Liberal Government had imprisoned the Irish leader; its
record in Ireland, with the exception of the Arrears Bill, was summed
up in the word coercion.  Liberal politicians were naturally upset at
the new turn of events.  Mr. Healy had written on May 25 to Mr.
Labouchere saying that "apart from coercion, it was the policy of the
Irish party to equalise all Liberals and Tories as much as possible
_pour nous faire valoir_, so that the matter will have to be looked
at by us apart from the renewal of coercion, though of course, I
imagine, if we thought we could trust the Liberals to avoid obnoxious
legislation and to stick to reform, we should support them strongly.
But how can we have any guarantee of the kind?"  Mr. Healy continues
further on in the letter: "I think a little time in the cool of
Opposition would do your party a world of good....  If we supported
your party next time, the Lords would throw out or render worthless
any Bill the Commons passed, and time has proved that the Whigs won't
face the Lords.  If that institution were abolished we should be
great fools not {253} to be friendlier with the Liberals, but they
are almost powerless to help us, even if they were sincere, so long
as the Lords are all-powerful."  In a letter to Mr. Labouchere, dated
July 18, Mr. Chamberlain made the following significant statement as
to his feeling in the matter:


The present attitude of the Irish leaders is not at all encouraging
to Radicals.  They take no account whatever of our difficulties or of
the extent to which we have, in the past, supported Irish claims, and
now that a Tory Government is in office they are ready to accept from
them with joy and gratitude the merest crumbs of consolation, while
they reject with scorn and contumely the offers of further
legislation which we have made.  I think, under these circumstances,
we must stand aside for the present.  The Irish Members "must stew in
their juice" with the Tories until they find out their mistake.
Whether the support of the Radicals will still be forthcoming is a
question.  My information from the country satisfies me that further
concessions to Irish opinion are not at all popular even with our
Radical constituents, and, under all the circumstances, I am not
unwilling to keep silence for a time and await the course of events.

The Parnellites, as I understand, cannot count upon two things:

First, on holding the balance after the next General Election.  I am
convinced that they are mistaken, and we shall have a majority over
them and the Tories combined.

Secondly, they believe in the readiness of the Tories, under the
stress of party exigency, to make concessions to them in the shape of
Home Rule and otherwise, which even the Radicals are not prepared to
agree to.  In this, also, I am convinced they are mistaken.  To
whatever lengths Randolph Churchill may be willing to go, his party
will not follow him so far, and, sooner or later, the Parnellites
will find that they have been sold.  I believe the experience will be
a healthy one for them and for us.


The situation appealed strongly to Mr. Labouchere, and he took up the
part of the "friendly broker" with zest.  {254} On July 22, he saw
Mr. Healy and wrote the following account of his interview to Mr.
Chamberlain:


Healy favoured me to his views during three hours to-day.  I told him
that we were sure to win without the Irish, but that if he and his
friends wished for any sort of Home Rule, he must understand that his
only chance was to ally himself with the Radicals and to support you.
I said that I had tried to impress this upon Parnell, but that he
talked rubbish about Grattan's Parliament, and seemed to me to be
thoroughly impractical.  Healy said that Parnell in his heart cared
little for the Irish, particularly since a mob ill-treated him in
1880.  He regretted to be obliged to admit that personal feeling
actuated his leader's policy at times, but Parnell felt his dignity
offended by his arrest and his present feeling was revenge on
Gladstone and Forster.

I suggested a rebellion.  But he said that this was impossible
because the present policy of all Irishmen was hanging together, for
they attributed all their troubles to divided councils.  He said that
Parnell is very astute.  He generally finds out which way the feeling
is amongst his followers before he suggests anything, but, in one or
two cases, he has put his foot down, when he obtained his way.

I asked him about Davitt.  He laughed at the idea of his being of any
use to the Liberals.  He is a very difficult man, he said, and a
trouble to Parnell, who would like him to go against us openly, for
this would smash him; he cares neither for Tories nor Radicals.  If
Parnell joined the latter he would coquette with the former and vice
versa.

As regards the present situation he said that there never was
anything which could be called a treaty with the Conservatives, but
that there was an understanding that, if they helped the Tories to
turn out the late Government, and generally supported them during the
remainder of the Session, there was to be no coercion.  "Churchill
talks to us vaguely about Home Rule, but we do not pay much attention
to this.  We are now paying our debt that we have incurred."
According to present arrangements, the Party is to put out a
manifesto calling upon all Irish in England to vote solid for the
Conservative candidates.  This policy was adopted, he continued, in
order to hold the balance.  {255} I went into figures to show him
that we should win without the Irish, and said that the balance
policy would only end in their tying themselves to a corpse.

He admitted that this was possible, and said that personally his
sympathies were with the Radicals, but that it was impossible to
trust the Liberal party, and to hope that the Liberal party could do
anything even if they wished to, owing to the House of Lords.  "No
alliance," I said, "is worth anything which is not based upon mutual
interest.  We shall win at the election, but we shall have to count
with the Whigs.  The English electors will be indignant at your
conduct, and we shall naturally take our revenge on you for your
supporting the Tories.  Now, if you would join us, we should be
strong enough to hold our own against Whigs and Tories.  We want your
votes in the House of Commons; you will find that you will do nothing
without ours.  What do you say to Chamberlain's scheme of Home Rule
in the _Fortnightly_?  He said: "... there are ... some things that I
object to in it, but Chamberlain could not carry it.  Even if he got
it through the House of Commons, the Lords would throw it out."[5]

Well, we went on discussing.  At last he said: "Can we have any
assurance that Chamberlain's scheme would be one on which a Radical
or Liberal Ministry would stand or fall?  Will Gladstone declare for
it?"  "What would you do if you could be certain of a big scheme
forming part of the Liberal platform?" I asked.  "Our party really is
guided by about six men.  What we decide," he said, "the others
accept.  I would propose that we do not compromise ourselves with the
Tories, that we should issue no manifesto, leaving Irish electors to
vote as they like.  When the plan is put forth in the next
Parliament, we should have to say that it does not go far enough,
etc., but it might merely be a dummy opposition.  Whether I could
carry this I don't know, but I think that I could." ... Finally he
said that he would be back at the commencement of August, and that,
if any arrangement could be made, he would do his best to further it.

There are two points in your scheme that he wants modified, and these
I will explain to you when I see you at the House, and {256} you have
a moment's spare time.  He told me to tell you that those who wished
that you should be ill received in Ireland would not have their way,
and that you may count on a perfectly friendly reception.

This letter is long, but I thought that you would like to know
Healy's ideas, as he is by far the most honest and ablest of the
Irishmen....  It is all very well expecting to win the elections, but
the Irish vote is an important factor, and if only we could square
the eighty Irish in the House, and turn them into your supporters,
Whigs and Tories would be dished.  Certainly there is no love lost
between the Allies.  W. O'Brien, Healy told me, declines to speak to
any of them, regarding them as intriguers with whom they are allied
because of the Coercion Acts.


Mr. Healy wrote again to Mr. Labouchere on August 2, and his letter
concluded with the following decisive words: "Of course, however, I
should be bound by the majority, and would steadfastly carry out
Parnell's policy, whatever it is declared by the Party to be."

On August 11, Parliament was prorogued and politicians soon began the
campaign in the constituencies with a view to the General Election,
which was to take place in November.  Lord Salisbury had made the
first bid for the Irish vote in a speech at the Mansion House on July
29, in which he defended Carnarvon's policy as the logical outcome of
the Franchise Act of 1884.  On August 24, Parnell made a very
important speech at Dublin, in which he said that the Irish platform
would consist of one plank only--legislative independence.  The
English press was roused to vehement denunciation.  The _Times_ said
that an Irish Parliament was "impossible."  The _Standard_ besought
Whigs and Tories "to present a firm uncompromising front to the rebel
chief."  The _Daily Telegraph_ hoped that the House of Commons would
not be seduced or terrified into surrender.  The _Manchester
Guardian_ declared that Englishmen would "condemn or punish any party
or any public man who attempted to walk in the path traced by Mr.
Parnell." {257} The _Leeds Mercury_ did not think the question of an
Irish Parliament worth discussing; while the _Daily News_ felt that
Great Britain could only be saved from the tyranny of Mr. Parnell by
a "strong administration composed of advanced Liberals."[6]  The
right wing of the Liberals, represented by Lord Hartington, and the
left by Mr. Chamberlain, both protested.  Hartington, speaking on
August 2, referred to Parnell's manifesto as "so fatal and
mischievous a proposal."  Mr. Chamberlain, speaking at Warrington in
the early days of September, said very definitely: "Speaking for
myself, I say that if these and these alone are the terms on which
Mr. Parnell's support is to be obtained, I will not enter into
competition for it."  The veteran leader, for the moment, was silent,
having retired for repose and meditation to Norway.  But though he
said nothing himself, he stimulated others to speak.  Mr. Barry
O'Brien was approached in August by a well-known English publicist,
who begged him to write some articles on the Irish question of a
"historical and dispassionate nature."  The publicist made this
request "at the suggestion of a great man--in fact a very great man."
The very great man was Mr. Gladstone.  The first article was
published in November under the title of "Irish Wrongs and English
Remedies."  On September 18 Mr. Gladstone issued the famous Hawarden
Manifesto admitting the necessity for Home Rule.

Mr. Labouchere was busy all the autumn trying to get at the various
shades of opinion prevalent among the Irish members.  Michael Davitt
was often a thorn in Parnell's side, and the following letter he
wrote to Mr. Labouchere on October 9 is very interesting as
indicating clearly the way in which the two patriots often came into
collision:


There is a general impression among the rank and file of Irish
Nationalists that the G.O.M. will come nearest to Parnell's demand.
There is no English statesman more admired by the {258} mass of the
people, notwithstanding what _United Ireland_ and platform speakers
may say to the contrary.  But the priests and bishops would rather
have the Tory party attempt the solution of the Home Rule problem,
owing to the fact of the Conservatives being in favour of
Denominational Education.  Men like Healy, strange to say, are also
pro-Tory in this respect, as they fear that if Chamberlain and his
party become dominant, the Radical or democratic element in the Irish
Nationalist movement will be able to settle the Land question on more
advanced lines than those of the Parliamentary party.  In fact we
have Tory Nationalists and democratic Nationalists in our ranks, and
the latter would like to see men like Chamberlain, Morley, and
yourself in a position to arrange the Anglo-Irish difficulty.
Parnell's attitude on Protection is absurd.  If we had a National
Assembly in Dublin to-morrow, he could not carry a measure in favour
of Protection.  Three-fourths of our people live by agriculture, and
these want to export their surplus produce, and would, beyond doubt,
be in favour of Free Trade.  Since Parnell's Arklow speech I have
more than once attacked Protection, and, in his recent Wicklow
pronouncement, he considerably modified his views on the question.
How singular that the volunteers in Grattan's time demanded Free
Trade from England, and that England squelched our manufactures
by--Protection!

I wish to Heaven Chamberlain had not made that Warrington "30 to 4"
speech of his.  He has played into the hands of the Tory Nationalists.

Have you read my suggestions about a possible _modus vivendi_ between
England and Ireland in the concluding chapter of my book?  Parnell
took his One Chamber idea from it.  There is no room for a Custom
House in my simple plan, and the Irish people would jump at such a
scheme of self-government, while every soldier now in Ireland might
be removed without any danger to the integrity of the Empire, if such
a plan of settlement were adopted....


No more vivid light can be thrown on Mr. Labouchere's political
activities at this period than is derived from his letters.  He was
in communication with all parties.  The {259} following selection
from his correspondence illustrates the delicacy and importance of
the negotiations with which he was concerned.  The most interesting
of these letters are undoubtedly those exchanged between himself and
Mr. Chamberlain.  In them we see clearly enough what was the main
interest of Mr. Labouchere's life at this time.  I have already
pointed out how completely he subordinated all other political
questions to his wide-reaching plans for the Radicalisation first of
the Liberal party and secondly of the country.  Irish or Egyptian or
South African politics were but pawns in his game.  In this
correspondence we see how that dominant interest came to be
identified in his mind with Mr. Chamberlain himself.  His frank
admiration of and political devotion to Mr. Chamberlain may be read
between the lines of all his letters.  A note that may almost be
called pathetic creeps into the later letters, when he has realised
at last that his glorious schemes are going to be frustrated by the
man on whom he had so completely relied for their success.  The
dramatic quality of some of the letters is intense.  The angel
wrestles with Jacob and knows it is in vain.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Oct. 15, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--A number of us had a long chat with Parnell on
Saturday, and he seems quite confident that whether Liberals or
Tories get in, Home Rule will be granted.  I quite agree that, if the
Tories get in with our votes and are kept in by our help, they will
come to terms, but I am not at all so sure that if the Liberals get
in they would have the courage (even if they had the will--did we
oppose them) to face the question.

It is no use discussing our attitude from any other than the
expediency standpoint.  We have to make the best fight we can for a
small country, and clearly, if we could put the Tories in and hold
them dependent on us, that is our game.  With the House of Lords
behind them and our help, they could play ducks {260} and drakes with
the Union, were they so minded.  I confess, however, I am so ignorant
of the English campaign that I don't find myself able to speculate on
the outcome of the ballot box, but I can hardly believe that there is
much prospect of the Liberals being beaten.  What you have not
touched upon in any letter to me is the point which always ghosts
me--if the Liberals bring in a bold scheme how will they overcome the
House of Lords?  You must remember that the Tories would then raise
the anti-Irish cry and the Lords would be in no unpopular position in
rejecting a scheme which they would allege meant dismemberment.  Of
course, if the Liberals then promised to dissolve, it is hard to
believe that with our support they would not win, but it must be
remembered that Liberals are not united in our favour, and though Mr.
Gladstone could keep them together, yet men like Hartington and
Harcourt would secretly sympathise with the Tories, and would
certainly not show enthusiasm in rallying the constituencies on an
Irish cry.  I don't believe a bit in principle being of any account
with English parties.  Look at the way Chamberlain spoke of Ireland
when he was baulked of coming over.  Read--to take a minor
creature--Osborne Morgan's speeches.  Mr. Gladstone is the only one
who has shown no bitterness and has kept the controversy in what the
Germans call the _heitern regionen wo die reinen formen wohnen_.  Of
course I admit that we have given great cause for bitterness, but I
maintain that we could not have fought successfully in any other
style, whereas the English, with their bayonets to rely on, need not
grudge us Billingsgate--though certainly we have not been allowed the
exclusive use of this feeble weapon.

I was glad to read Childers' speech, which produced an excellent
impression here by its moderation and practicalness.  With regard to
a plan, Parnell asked Sexton and myself to try and draw up something,
but we were so busy--that without a good library, which we have not
here, easily available, the task is appalling.  Parnell's idea is to
abolish the Lord Lieutenancy, strike a financial balance between the
two countries, giving, as our Imperial quota, an average on ten
years' returns of Irish contributions with the cost of ruling Ireland
deducted.  This would get rid of the Irish Parliament voting or
refusing supplies, as the sum would be a fixed one, and if we did not
pay it we could {261} very easily be compelled.  He would be for
retaining the Irish members at Westminster, and I suppose there would
not be much trouble in the arrangement being made in that case, that
they should be summoned by the Speaker to debate affairs which he
declared Imperial or Irish, and in the English Legislature taking
them at a particular period of the Session for the sake of
convenience.  I think we should have full power over everything here
except the Army and the Navy, as I cannot see what other interest
England has here.  If we pay her a due taxation, what possible care
of hers is it how else we order our affairs?  As for the minority,
the Protestants would soon realise they were safe with the Catholics
(and they would be the pets of our people).  Let there be, by all
means, every guarantee given for their protection however.  If the
Tories come in they would give us Protection, I am sure, but would
stipulate for terms for the landlords.--Faithfully yours,

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Oct. 18, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Just before the end of the Session Herbert
Gladstone came to me, and asked me to endeavour to arrange some sort
of _modus vivendi_ with the Irish.  His father, he said, required
time, if any joint action was to be taken in the next Parliament, to
gain over the Whigs, and he was determined not to lead unless he had
a united party behind him.  I told Herbert Gladstone that I was
convinced that Parnell, for various reasons, did not want an
arrangement and that he would prefer to remain an irreconcilable, but
that it might be possible to influence him through Healy and others.
So I sent to Healy, who came over to England.  Healy explained that
personally he was strongly in favour of an arrangement, but that any
one going against Parnell would be nowhere just now, because the
Irish had got it into their heads that union was strength.  But he
promised to do all that he could.  Then I went abroad.  On my return
Herbert wrote to ask what had been done.  Healy replied that a
Committee consisting of Sexton, T. P. O'Connor, etc., had been
appointed to look into federations generally, and {262} to report
thereon, but that Parnell hardly spoke to his followers upon
political matters, beyond such as concerned the Irish elections, and
he went into various details as to what he thought would prove
satisfactory.  This letter I sent to Hawarden, and got back a letter
stating the views of the G.O.M., the phrase being always "I" or "I
think my father" as had been agreed.  The G.O.M. says that he is
disposed to grant the fullest Home Rule etc., but that he does not
think it is desirable to formulate a scheme before the elections, and
he again presses for the Irish minimum.  I have sent this to Healy.
Evidently the game of the G.O.M. is to endeavour to unite the Party
on Irish Legislation, and to make that his _cheval de bataille_; but
he says that he will do nothing unless he can get some assurance that
the Irish will in the main back him up.  I don't think that they
will, but, with such strange creatures, there is no knowing.

I spent yesterday morning with our friend Randolph.  He says that the
Conservatives count upon 280 returns in their favour, and that if
they get anything like this they will not resign, and they hope to
remain in office for two or three years, owing to the coalition
between the Whigs, the Irish, and the Radicals.  He says that
Hartington, who up to now has been very guarded in his observations,
now in private denounces you, and vows that he will not stand it.  In
his (Randolph's) opinion, he will withdraw from politics.  If he does
not, Randolph anticipates that the outcome will be an Aberdeen
Ministry.  Randolph looks very ill, though he says that he is pretty
well.  He is taking digitalis for his heart, and says that he is
certain that the late hours in the House of Commons will knock him
up....

What is the real feeling in the country I do not know, but I have in
the last fortnight attended some of the meetings of the nonentities
who are contesting the Metropolitan Constituencies, and here you are
first and the rest nowhere.  The Whigs seem to have disappeared
entirely.  My impression is that they have all gone over to the
Conservatives, and that the Whig leaders are--if the country is to be
judged by the metropolis--entirely without followers.  When you
allude to Goschen there are groans, when you allude to Hartington
there is silence; and you have to get up a cheer for the G.O.M. by
dwelling upon his noble heart and that sort of trash.  I think,
however, that {263} the Conservatives will gain more seats in London
than we anticipate.

By the way, I do not think that the alliance of Randolph with the
Irish is going on very smoothly.  He complained to me that it was
impossible to trust Parnell, and that the Maamtrasna business had
been sprung as a surprise.  Before the Conservatives came in, Parnell
told me that he would support the Conservatives on no Coercion Bill,
a scheme for buying out the landlords, and money expended in further
works.  No sooner were they in than he told me that the feeling in
Ireland was so strong for Home Rule that it must be pushed forward.
My own experience of Parnell is that he never makes a bargain without
intending to get out of it, and that he has either a natural love of
treachery, or considers that promises are not binding when made to a
Saxon....

Would it not be possible to have one grand Bill for local government
in both islands, and settling the difference between local and
Imperial Sessions.  It might be made so as to oblige English
Conservatives to oppose it in their own interests, and sufficiently
strong to make it difficult for the Irish to reject it on the second
reading?--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

HIGHBURY, BIRMINGHAM, Oct. 20, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--Thanks for your most interesting letter, which
confirms my suspicions as to the intentions of our great chief.  I
was led to them in the first instance by the speeches of H. G. at
Leeds--he is generally inspired, I think.  Mr. G. himself was
cautious with me at Hawarden, though he did not conceal that his
present interest was in the Irish question, and he seemed to think
that a policy for dealing with it might be found which would unite us
all and which would necessarily throw into the background those minor
points of difference about the schools and small holdings which
threaten to drive the Whigs into the arms of the Tories or into
retirement.  But I agree with you that the _modus vivendi_ cannot be
found.  First, because all Liberals are getting weary of making
concessions to Parnell, {264} and will not stand much more of it, and
secondly, because Parnell cannot be depended on to keep any bargain.
I believe, therefore, that Mr. G.'s plans will come to naught.

I hope Randolph Churchill is all out in his calculations.  I do not
give the Tories more than 200.  Of course the future depends on the
result of the Elections, but my impression is that Hartington will
yield, grumbling as usual, but still yielding.

The effect of the campaign I have just completed has surprised me.  I
really had no idea at first of giving more than a "friendly lead" to
candidates in the new constituencies.  The idiotic opposition of the
Whigs and the abuse of the Tories has turned my gentle hint into a
great national policy--and now it must be forced on at all hazards.
The majority of new County candidates are pledged to it--ditto Scotch
members, ditto London.  In Lancashire it is not so strong, as there
are signs of rebellion in the constituencies against the half-hearted
orders of the local Caucus.

I fear we cannot run English and Irish Local Government in one
Bill--the present conditions are so absolutely dissimilar--but we
will consider this again, if we have the opportunity.  I am glad to
say there is a good chance that Goschen will be defeated at
Edinburgh.  The working men are dead against him.

On the whole I am satisfied with the outlook.  The first difficulty
is to find fellow-workers: the rank and file are all right, but there
is an awful lack of Generals, and even of non-commissioned
officers.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Oct. 20, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I send you enclosed to look at.[7]  I have
forwarded copy to Healy.  Evidently the G.O.M. is getting a little
anxious about the Election, and is now trying to persuade the
Parnellites that they must try and get pledges from the
Conservatives, because he knows that they cannot.  As he says, the
Land question is the difficulty, because he is not prepared to admit
that its regulation in Ireland is involved in {265} Local Government,
and that it in no way affects the integrity of the Empire, whether
land in Kilkenny belongs to this man or that.  I have pointed out to
Healy that the difficulty might perhaps be turned by supporting your
plan of compulsory purchase by local authorities in both islands, and
I have explained to him the meaning of a fair price--viz. such an
amount as would give the landlord the same net income in consols or
Government bonds, as he gets now from his land, or ought to get, and
I have urged upon him that if such a Bill were passed, and if there
were Home Rule in Ireland, the Irish might surely make things so
uncomfortable to the landlords that they would be glad to clear out
for very little.

Would it not be a good plan to have one grand Bill, coupling together
local self-government here, and Home Rule in Ireland?  We should in
that way get the Irish votes for England, and if the portions of the
Bill really do give substantial Home Rule in Ireland, I greatly doubt
whether the Irish would venture to vote against the second reading.
They might develop their views and swagger in Committee.  If this
Bill were coupled with another on your lines respecting land, the two
questions could be solved, or your purchase claims might form part of
the Bill.  At the bottom of the difficulty is the G.O.M.  He still
hankers first after the Whigs, and is not sound on the land
question..., and is bent upon that difficult task of making oil and
water combine.  Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

HIGHBURY, BIRMINGHAM, Oct. 23, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--My last letter has partly anticipated yours of
21st.  I return H. G.'s communication.  He has apparently his
father's capacity for mystification, for I cannot possibly make out
what he is really driving at.

Does he imagine that the Tories can be committed beforehand to
support a small Liberal majority in some scheme of advanced Local
Govt.?

He must be an _ingenuus puer_.  For my part I believe in leaving the
Irishmen to "stew in their own juice."  My proposal is the {266}
maximum that English Radicals will stand and a great deal more than
the Whigs will accept.  It had practically been agreed to by Parnell,
and yet he threw it over at the last moment.  It is impossible to
depend on him and it is much better policy now to play the waiting
game.  If Randolph is right we shall be the better for not being
pledged.

I am sure, however, that he is wrong, but even then we shall be much
stronger in negotiation when we have a majority at our backs.

If the G.O.M. were ill-advised enough to propose a separate
Parliament, he will find very little support from any section of the
party.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Nov. 12, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--This is the last communication from Healy,
which he wants sent to the G.O.M.  So I send it through the usual
channel.  After saying that he will do his best for Lefevre, he says:


"It is very difficult for us to adopt a piecemeal policy, although it
certainly is the intention to issue instructions that in regard to
half a dozen Liberals, they shall be supported at all hazards, but so
far as I can gather the working of Parnell's mind up to the present,
it is not certain that he will go against the Liberals bald-headed,
if at all.  T. P. O'Connor is strong for supporting the Tories.  If
we could have an understanding with the leaders, it would settle this
and every other question.  It seems to me curious that we are now to
be asked to define our demands, on a question on which English
Statesmen do not need much instruction, seeing that in 1881, when the
agrarian question was certainly complicated, nobody dreamed of asking
our opinion, but on the contrary the beauty of the measure was that
it was supposed to be disapproved by the Nationalists.  I cannot,
therefore, help feeling that this demand for a plan from us is simply
a desire for our discomfort, and the profit of the English.  If there
is really earnestness in the Liberal {267} Party next Session (should
they be in a majority) to settle the Irish question, I do not think
they will find us unreasonable.  God knows it is time we were at
peace, but if they insist on forcing on us a Bill, which we denounce,
and which we shall wreck in the working, the contest between the two
countries will grow more aggravated than ever.  Spencer and Forster
were hit a thousand times more than Trevelyan, and yet they never
went pushing about, spitting gall as he has done.  The G.O.M. is the
father of them all, and I do urge him to develop a little the lines
of his first speech which I have just read."


And then he goes into a puff of the G.O.M.'s Article against Darwin,
which, it seems, delights the Roman Catholics.

Could you not give them a few smooth words in a speech, particularly
in regard to land.  They have taken it into their silly heads that
you are now their enemy, and as they have eighty votes it is just as
well to clear this illusion away.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Nov. 16, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--This is the proposal to the Irish, which I
forward.[8]  It is in reply to Healy's last communication.  You will
see that the question of the land etc., being under the control of
the Irish Chamber, is shirked.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

HIGHBURY, BIRMINGHAM, Nov. 22, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--You see, Parnell has gone against the Liberals.
I felt certain he would.  He has been playing with those around him
and has intentionally deceived some of his own friends.  I really
think he will force us all, Radicals and {268} Liberals, to reject
all arrangements with him.  If we had a good Speaker with dictatorial
powers he could stop Irish obstruction and P.'s power in Ireland
would be shaken as soon as the people saw he was impotent in
Parliament.

We are having a much harder fight than we expected.  I think we shall
win all our seats here, but it is a hard pull.  The Tories are very
confident and are regaining courage in the counties.  My hope is that
the labourers will lie courageously--promise to the Tories and vote
for us....--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Nov. 25, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--That undaunted sportsman the G.O.M. is still
hankering after the Irish and his general scheme of pacification.  I
get a letter from Rosebery every day, asking for this and that
information.  I have written to say that if the Liberals get a
majority, it may be possible to negotiate, but that at present it is
a mere waste of time to try anything.

We have been losing for a very clear reason.  You put forward a good
Radical programme.  This would have taken.  But no sooner had you put
it forward than Hartington and others denounced it.  Then the G.O.M.
proposed that any question should be shunted to the dim and distant
future, and that all should unite to bring him back to power, with a
Coalition Ministry--in fact the old game which had already resulted
in shilly shally.  I think the inhabitants of towns have shown their
wisdom in preferring even the Conservatives to this.  I want to find
the people on our side, who are against disestablishment.  Some Peers
and leaders are, but the masses go for it.  They are simply sulky at
being told that everything must knock under to Peers and Whigs.  This
is how I read the elections.  Our only hope now is in the "cow," and
here too I am afraid that the Whigs will have thrown cold water on
all enthusiasm.  I am not myself particularly sorry at what is
occurring.  A year or two of opposition will be far better--from the
Radical standpoint--than a Cabinet with a Whig majority in it.  With
all the elements of disintegration, we surely shall {269} be able to
render Conservative legislation impossible, and to force on a
dissolution very soon, when your Caucus must come out with a clear
and definite programme.  Milk may be good for babes, but Whig milk
will not do for electors.  The Whigs have dished themselves, thank
God.  Even Gladstone's name goes for little at public meetings.
Yours is the only one which makes any one stand up and cheer.--Yours
truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Dec. 1, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I quite agree with you.  But would it not be
well to make it clear that the Election was run on the Whig and not
on the Tory Programme?[9]

I should imagine that the Irish will come round.  The aim of the
Conservatives will be to keep in a short time with their aid, then to
quarrel with them, and to seek to hold their own against the Irish
and the Radicals by a combination with the Whigs.  This scheme
Randolph Churchill explained to me a short time ago.  If G.O.M. still
hankers after an alliance with the Irish, it may be possible to
arrange one, which would cause a split between him and his Whig
friends.  He was always wanting to know as soon as possible what
could be effected, because he said that he wanted time to gain over
some of his late colleagues.

I am not the least surprised at results.  Putting aside the Irish
vote and bad times, was it likely that there would be great
enthusiasm for a cause, which was explained to be to relegate
everything of importance to the dim distant future, and to unite in
order to bring back to power the old lot, with all their doubts and
hesitations, under a leader who was always implying, without meaning
it, that he meant to retire?--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

SIGN MANSIONS, BRIGHTON, Dec. 3, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--This afternoon I got a telegram {270} from
Randolph to say he was coming down, and I have had him here all the
evening.

He says (but don't have it from me) that, if a vote of want of
confidence is not proposed, they will adjourn for three weeks after
the Speaker is chosen.  If they have a majority with the Irish, he
says that they are inclined to throw their Speaker as a sop to the
Irish, and evidently he has a scheme in his head to get Hicks-Beach
elected Speaker, and to take his place himself.

He told me that he had given in a memorandum to Lord Salisbury about
the state of parties in the House of Commons, in which he puts down
Hartington as worth 200 votes, and you for the balance.  They intend
to give a _non possumus_ to all proposals for Home Rule, and they
expect to be supported by Hartington, even if the G.O.M. goes for
Home Rule.  Salisbury is ready to resign the Premiership to
Hartington if necessary, and the new Party is to be called the
"Coalition Party."  It appears that the G.O.M. (but this I have vowed
not to tell) has given in to the Queen a scheme of Home Rule, with a
sort of Irish President at the head, who is to be deposed by the
Queen and Council, if necessary.

Should they not be turned out, they will at once start a discussion
on Procedure.

Is not the cow working wonders for us?  Next time we must have an
urban cow.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

HIGHBURY, BIRMINGHAM, Dec. 4, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,-- ... The "urban cow" is the great difficulty.  I
put my money on free schools, but, judging by London, the electors do
not care much about it.

Things are going better for us.  I was forced to speak yesterday at
Leicester, and you will see I had a dig at the Whigs.  I will drive
the knife in on the 17th.

Surely Hartington will not be such a fool as to make a coalition.  If
he is inclined that way I should be happy to give him a lift.  It
would be the making of the Radical party.

If the Tories go against Peel they will irritate Hartington and the
Moderates.  I don't care a straw either way.

{271}

I should warmly support any proposals for amendment of Procedure
which gave more power to the majority.--Yours truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

_P.S._--We must keep the Tories in for some time.  If R. Churchill
will not play the fool, I certainly should not be inclined to prefer
a weak Liberal or Coalition Government to a weak Tory one.  His best
policy is to leave us to deal with the Whigs and not to compel us to
unite the party against the Tories.--Yours,

J.C.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

HIGHBURY, BIRMINGHAM, Dec. 7, 1885.

DEAR LABOUCHERE,-- ... The G.O.M. is very anxious to come in again.
I am not, and I think we must sit on his Irish proposals.  It will
require a careful steering to keep the Radical boat head to the
wind.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

Foljambe is out, for which I am devoutly thankful.  There goes
another Moderate Liberal and Hartington's speech did not help him.  I
hope E. Cavendish will go too.  He is not safe.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Dec. 7, 1885.

MY DEAR L.,--Thanks for your postings.  As far as I can make out your
party will be in a minority of 5 or 6 when all is over a couple of
days hence.  We shall have 86 in our party.  I have not seen Parnell
for over a fortnight and know nothing of his mind except that I think
it significant he should have told his interviewer that he expected
Home Rule from the Liberals.  This, of course may have been a hint to
prick up Salisbury, and it remains to be seen how it will work.  But
in my opinion we have no course but to turn out the Tories.  Eighteen
of their men are Irish, who would oppose tooth and nail every
concession to us, and as they would vote against their own party on
H. R. (supposing "Barkis is willing") that would count 36 against
{272} them, which, of course, would hardly be made up to them by
Liberal votes, as your party, with three or four exceptions, would
stand coldly aside and rejoice to see them and us, combined, put in a
minority.  Looking at the matter in the most cynical manner,
therefore, I don't see what P. can do but put out the Conservatives.
With us you would have such an immense majority that you could spare
the desertion of a score of rats amongst the Whigs, while many of the
Borough Conservatives who owe their seats to us might abstain from a
H. R. division.

As to the means of putting them out, I assume, if we were agreed as
to terms, that it would be easy to move an amendment to the Address
which we could support.  Whether this should have relation directly
to Ireland is a matter for the strategists of your party to consider,
as while it would suit our book perfectly it might not rally all your
men and might lead to inconvenient debate.  It would, however, look
odd in us, after denouncing you so bitterly, to put you in
straightway on some by-issue, not in relation to self-government,
and, moreover, as we should be strictly "dark horses" as to which
side we should support, an Irish amendment would have the advantage
of extracting from ministers certain expressions or promises in order
to fetch us, which could be made great capital out of afterwards by
you.  Without having thought deeply on the strategical aspect of the
situation, it occurs to me that the best thing would be to have an
understanding with the Liberals and "play" the Government for a few
weeks with the Irish fly to see would it rise, without actually
landing them.  Both you and we would then get time to see their
programme and how their party swallowed it--so as to corner them
afterwards.

It is clear no scheme of Home Rule can be carried through the Lords
without a dissolution, and then, with our help, you could have a
majority of 200 over the Tories.  But we should have a good
registration of Voters' Bill passed first and some amendments of the
Ballot Act.  I think your people should at once get into touch with
Parnell.  He went to England this morning and should be seen by some
one from your side.  I agree with you that Mr. Gladstone alone can
settle the Irish question.  He is the only man with head and heart
for the task, and the only man who can reduce to decency the
contemptible cads who so largely {273} composed the last Liberal
party.  I thank God that so many of the howlers and gloaters over our
sufferings have met their fate at the polls.--Yours,

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

BRIGHTON, Dec. 8, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just got a letter from Herbert
Gladstone, which I have sent on to Healy.[10]...

I have replied that it is very questionable whether any sort of
arrangement can be come to with Parnell, but that, if so, it will be
necessary for "Herbert" to explain precisely "logical issues and
solid facts"--or, in other words, to let us have the maximum of
concession.

I doubt Parnell agreeing to any scheme which "Herbert" may propose,
their views are so divergent.  But suppose that he does --would it
not be well to use the G.O.M. to settle this question and get it out
of the way.  If he agrees with Parnell, he will not agree long with
his Whig friends.  So soon as the Irish question is over, something
might be done to separate the Whigs entirely from the Radicals--or at
least something to cause the G.O.M. to begin those ten years of
probation which he requires before meeting his Maker.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Dec. 10, 1885.

MY DEAR L.,--Better try, would a letter to Parnell at 9 Palace
Chambers, Westminster, find him, and ask him to make an appointment
with you.  There is no necessity to refer him to the correspondence
that has taken place, but tell what you feel in a position to say on
behalf of your party leaders.  He must see that Gladstone must come
in if we are to get anything, and the only thing I see to be settled
is the ritual to be observed in {274} bowing the Government out.  I
presume he will move an amendment to the Address, unless he has some
satisfactory pledge from Salisbury, which I don't believe, and I
don't believe in the power of Salisbury or anybody else to throw dust
in Parnell's eyes.  "Hard cash"[11] or a Catholic University won't
bait the Tory hook for us to swallow.  I'm for the whole hog or none.
I think it would be important if we could have some understanding as
to the procedure, we, in the opinion of your leaders, should adopt as
to the terms of an amendment to the Address.  They might prefer it
should be one they could speak on and not support, or both support
and speak on.  The latter seems most convenient in case it is thought
better to turn the Government out immediately, so as to allow of the
re-election of the new Ministers.  My view, however, is (and it is
not a strong one, because I have not heard the arguments contra) that
it would be better to keep the Tories in a little for the reasons
previously given, and also for the additional one that once they
accept our help they will all be tarred with the Irish brush, and
cannot afterwards complain of your party accepting an alliance by
which they are not ashamed to profit.  "Sour Grapes" would then be a
complete answer to them in opposition.

The stupidity of men like Harcourt calling us "Fenians" is
inconceivable.  Personally I should not object to the epithet, which
I regard by no means an ignoble one, but I can well forecast the use
Churchill would make of it in opposition with Sir William in power by
grace of the "Fenian" vote.  "The Gods themselves fight in vain
against stupidity."

If you exercise any control over the _Daily News_, it ought to keep
your party straight by purging it of the rancour of defeat.  Swear at
us in private as much as you like, but avoid flinging bricks of the
boomerang make.  The _Daily News_ calling the Anglo-Irish voters
"clots of turbid intrigue" must have cost you a trifle at the polls.
We can slang you _de droit_ because we are powerless and
irresponsible, but a governing body shall go "all delicately marching
in most pellucid air."  Excuse the philosophy!--Yours,

T. M. HEALY.


{275}

_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S. W., Dec. 11, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--There is much in what you say, but the fear is
that anything like a bargain with the Irish would be resented by the
English and Scotch workmen and that a Tory-Whig Coalition appealing
to their prejudices against a Radical-Parnellite alliance would carry
all before them then.  This is a real danger.  I am convinced, from
personal observation, that the workmen will not stand much more in
the way of Irish conciliation or concessions to Parnell.

I am clear that we had better bide our time and rub the Tories' noses
well in the mess they have made.  Till the 16th.--Yours,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Parnell to Mr. Labouchere_

IRISH PARLIAMENTARY OFFICES,

LONDON, S. W., Dec. 17, 1885.

DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I have only just opened your letters, as I have not
been in London for some time.  I will try and give you notice the
next time I am in town, but my present impression is that it would be
better to await events, and see what attitude the two English Parties
may take towards each other at the commencement of the new
Parliament.--Yours sincerely,

CHAS. S. PARNELL.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

  10 QUEEN ANNE'S MANSIONS,
  ST. JAMES'S PARK, Dec. 19, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I wrote to Hawarden in the sense we agreed on
respecting your views--keeping, however, a good deal to the vague.

Yesterday morning came a letter from Parnell.  Had only just received
my letter, was passing through London, would say when he was coming
back.  Dilatory as usual.  In the afternoon Healy arrived.  He stayed
six hours.

The sum of all amounted to this:

{276}

Parnell is half mad.  We always act without him.  He accepts this
position; if he did not we should overlook him.  Do not trouble
yourself about him.  Dillon, M'Carthy, O'Brien, Harrington, and I
settle everything.  When we agree, no one can disagree.  We are all
for an arrangement with the G.O.M. on terms.  We are forming a
"Cabinet."  We shall choose it.  We shall pass what we like in this
Cabinet.  We have never yet let out any secret.  The Kilmainham
revelations were let out by Forster and O'Shea.

_Terms_.--G.O.M.'s plan.


_Details_.--We agree to nomination for two Parliaments or five years;
we like it, for we want to hold our own against Fenians.  Protestant
religious bodies may, if wished, elect representatives.

On contracts, we would agree to an appeal to the Judicial Committee
of the House of Lords.

We would agree to any landlord having the right to sell his land to
Irish State on valuation by present Commissioners, provided that all
value of tenants' improvements were deducted.  We do not go so far in
land matters as Chamberlain--certainly not further.

On veto.  We could not accept the veto of the Imperial Parliament.
This is the corner-stone of independence in the minds of Irishmen.
Several plans were suggested--two-thirds majority, etc.  I think
something might be worked out by means of a sound Privy Council.

We would assent to reasonable amendments by the Lords, but we should
ask to be consulted.

We have no objection to a Prince.  This would be a great sop to the
"Loyalists."

Of course we must have the Police.  We would reduce them to
3000--there are too many.

We claim to pay a quota--to raise this quota as we like; there is no
fear of Protection.  Parnell and some Belfast manufacturers are the
only Protectionists in Ireland.  Perhaps, however, we might give
bounties for a time.  If we did, we should pay them, not you.

If Bill thrown out in Lords, an Autumn Session; if thrown out again,
to be brought in again in 1886, unless Mr. Gladstone prefers a
dissolution.

{277}

No Procedure resolutions until Home Rule settled.

There are only three Judges to whom we object.  One is old and deaf
and wants to retire, another is dying (Lawson).

If terms agreed to, never to come out that there were negotiations.
We would regard ourselves as members of the Liberal party;
occasionally indulge like you Radicals in a wild-cat vote, but vote
with Liberals on all Parliamentary issues.

I have sent this with a lot more details to Hawarden.

Rosebery writes to tell me that the "revelations" are well received
in Scotland, and that there will be no difficulty there.[12]

Do pray think how very advantageous it will be to get rid of these
Irish.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

  10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, ST. JAMES'S PARK,
  Sunday, Dec. 21, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Healy came again to-day, and he tells me that
the whole gang are now ready to accept the terms--provided that they
are the terms.  He stands absolutely against an Imperial Parliament
veto and says that it is impossible.

I proposed this:

A Royal Prince--a sort of King Log.

The reorganisation of the Irish Privy Council on a fair and
reasonable basis.

The veto to be the Governor acting by the advice of the Privy
Council--_i.e._, of a majority.

The Governor to be changed on petition of two-thirds of the Assembly.

He thinks that this would do, and I have sent it to Hawarden.

Healy has seen Parnell, and, without speaking to him about
negotiations, he came to the conclusion that there will be no
opposition there.

The Conservatives, I hear, have it in consideration to submit the
Queen's Speech immediately, and to put up one of their men {278} to
propose a vote of confidence, if there be no amendment on our side.

I asked Healy what the Irish would do then?  He said, "If nothing is
settled, walk out probably."  "Then?" I asked.  "Go with the
Conservatives and turn out the Liberals."

But it seems to me that, without being sure of the support of the
Irish, Mr. Gladstone could hardly take office.

If so, what then?  Hartington?

Hartington is cuts with Churchill.  He says that he has insulted him
in his speeches, and that he will never speak to him again.

Churchill told me a few weeks ago that the Conservatives were
determined to dissolve, if Home Rule were attempted, in order to
protect the House of Lords.  Would they have the courage to dissolve
at once?  Are they not rather calculating on Mr. Gladstone not being
able to form a Government, and either coming back with the Whigs, or
dissolving on the ground of a deadlock?

How the revelation came out was this:

Herbert Gladstone told Reed of the Leeds paper his father's views.
Reed told Mudford.  Could this have been stupidity, or was it
intentional by order of Papa?

The _Pall Mall_ of yesterday was directly inspired from Hawarden.
The channel was Norman.  Certainly the ways of Mr. Gladstone are
rather more mysterious than those of the Heathen Chinee.  My reading
of it is that he is simply insane to come in....  The Irish are
suspicious of him, and intend to have things clear before they
support him.  Parnell says that he has a way of getting people to
agree with him by the enunciation of generalities, but that when he
has got what he wants, his general principles are not carried out as
might have been anticipated.  This is so true that I could not deny
myself the pleasure of letting him know it.  In this case, he will
have to be a good deal more definite, if he is to count on the Irish.

My own conviction is that if the Irish get Home Rule, they will--with
the exception of the land question--surprise us by their
conservatism.  Their first thing will be to pass some sort of very
drastic legislation against the Fenians.

What the next step will be, I don't exactly know.  The Irish too want
to know.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


{279}

_Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury_

INDIA OFFICE, Dec. 22, 1885.

... Now I have a great deal to tell you.  Labouchere came to see me
this morning.  He asked me our intentions.  I gave him the following
information.  I can rely upon him:

(l) That there would be no motion for adjournment after the 12th, but
that business would be immediately proceeded with after three or four
days' swearing.  On this he said that, if we liked to go out on a
motion for adjournment, he thought the other side might accommodate
us.  I told him that such an ineffably silly idea had never entered
our heads.  Then he told me that he had been asked whether he could
ascertain if a certain statement as to a Tory Home Rule measure which
appeared recently in the _Dublin Daily Express_ was Ashbourne's
measure, and if the Tories meant to say "Aye" or "No" to Home Rule;
to which I replied that it had never crossed the mind of any member
of the Government to dream even of departing from an absolute
unqualified "No," and that all statements as to Ashbourne's plan were
merely the folly of the _Daily News_.  Then I was very much upset,
for he proceeded to tell me that, on Sunday week last, Lord Carnarvon
had met Justin M'Carthy, and had confided to him that he was in
favour of Home Rule in some shape, but that his colleagues and his
party were not ready, and asked whether Justin M'Carthy's party would
agree to an enquiry, which he thought there was a chance of the
Government agreeing to, and which would educate his colleagues and
his party if granted and carried through.  I was consternated, but
replied that such a statement was an obvious lie; but, between
ourselves, I fear it is not--perhaps not even an exaggeration or a
misrepresentation.  Justin M'Carthy is on the staff of the _Daily
News_.  Labouchere is one of the proprietors, and I cannot imagine
any motive for his inventing such a statement.  If it is true, Lord
Carnarvon has played the devil.  Then I told Labouchere that if the
G.O.M. announced any Home Rule project, or indicated any such project
and, by so doing, placed the Government in a minority, resignation
was not the only course; but that there was another alternative which
might even be announced in debate, and the announcement of which
might complete the squandering {280} of the Liberal party, and that
his friend at Hawarden had better not omit altogether that card from
his calculations as to his opponents' hands.  Lastly, I communicated
to him that, even if the Government went out and Gladstone introduced
a Home Rule Bill, I should not hesitate, if other circumstances were
favourable, to agitate Ulster even to resistance beyond
constitutional limits; that Lancashire would follow Ulster, and would
lead England; and that he was at liberty to communicate this fact to
the G.O.M.[13]


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

  10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE,
  Dec. 22, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I got a long letter from Hawarden this morning.
The substance is, "Let the Irish get a positive assurance from the
Conservatives that they will do nothing, and his tongue will be
free."  This I send to Healy.

I have been spending the morning with Churchill.  His plan is this.
Queen's Speech at once--in address an expression of confidence.
Liberals to draw G.O.M., Churchill to get up and say that obviously
he intends to propose Home Rule.  If so, adverse vote will be
followed by dissolution.  Will they dare to do this?  Churchill says
that they will, and that I might privately tell Mr. Gladstone this.

He vowed that Brett had given Parnell a written statement from Mr.
Gladstone.

Healy told me to ask whether there were any direct negotiations with
Parnell.

Hawarden replies: "There are no negotiations going on between Parnell
and my father, who has constantly from the first, declared, etc.,
etc."

Who are we to believe?  Mr. Gladstone, as we know, has a very
magnificent conscience, but he will finish by being too clever by
half, if he tries to play Healy off against Parnell, who, as I told
you, is not much more than a figurehead.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


{281}

_P.S._--Churchill says that they hear that Goschen has been playing a
double game--that to win over Hartington he became a Balaam.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Dec. 23, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Has this occurred to you?  The Whigs evidently
will not stand Mr. Gladstone's proposals.  If you therefore were to
rally to them, you would clear the nest of these nuisances, and, as
Mr. Gladstone cannot last very long, become the leader of the
Opposition or of the Government--a consummation that we all want.

I think that the Customs matter would not be a _sine qua non_.

Imperial matters would be few.  We are against wars.  The main
Imperial question would be for extra money--in case of wars.  In the
main the Irish would be with us--their views about land are much
yours--I should fancy therefore that, provided we have a clear
distinction between local and imperial affairs, we should soon be the
very best of friends.

That Mr. Gladstone will go on, I think pretty certain,
because--excellent and good man as he is--he sees that his only
chance is, to get the Irish.  He is now engaged in a game of dodging.
He has invented as usual a "principle"--that he can go into no
details until he officially knows that the Government will do
nothing.  The object is to get the Irish on generalities.  They,
however, are quite up to this, and even supposing that they were to
vote with us, they would at once turn him out, if he were to play
pranks.  I do not quite therefore see how he could come in without
some sort of secret understanding with them.

Now, what would satisfy them?

On customs, as I have said, there would be no great difficulty.

Ditto on protection to minorities.

Remains the veto.

They are anxious to get over it, but cannot accept the Imperial
Parliament.  Would it be to our advantage that they should?  We
should be continually having rows in Parliament about their Acts.

When I saw Healy on Sunday I suggested this:

{282}

A King Log in the person of a Member of the Royal Family.  The veto
to be exercised by King Log with the consent of his Privy Council.

The Privy Council to be entirely reorganised, or the present lot to
be swamped by men--not ultras, but of moderate character.

Things would then work out by some of the Irish Ministers being made
Privy Councillors.

This he said the Irish would accept.

Now, with such a plan, with nominated Members for five years, and
with representation of Protestant Synods and such like bodies, would
there be much fear?

What the Irish are afraid of are the Fenians.  This is why they snap
at nominated Members, although they may perhaps openly protest.

If I can get hold of Morley, I will have a talk with him; he is, I
think, of a secretive nature.

Suppose that the worst occurs--an immediate dissolution--the rural
cow would still do its work, for it might be put that the Tories are
really dissolving not for Ireland but to prevent the cow being given.
On other urban cows Mr. Gladstone would be very much in your hands,
for to get into power, I really believe that he would not only give
up Ireland, but Mrs. Gladstone and Herbert.

Churchill is going to Ireland.  It is an old promise, he says, to go
for Christmas to Fitzgibbon, and nothing to do with politics.  Did I
tell you that when I said that I knew that Carnarvon had been
intriguing with Archbishop Walsh, he said that Walsh was a very
ambitious man, and would not long remain under Parnell, and that
Carnarvon had tried to square the Education question with him?

Let us even suppose that we are beaten at the elections.  There would
a Tory-Whig Government.  How long would it last?

Hartington seems to be on bad terms all round.  Churchill tells me
that he (Hartington) declines to meet him or speak to him on the
score of his speeches.  Evidently he is confederating with Goschen,
and probably Forster will become a third in the triumvirate?  They do
not strike me as precisely the men who will ever act with you, unless
you knock under to them.

{283}

It is by no means certain that we should be beaten at an election.
Mr. Gladstone is still a power.  Rosebery says that the Scotch are
all right.  The Irish vote has turned and will turn many elections.
Our cards, therefore, if boldly and well played, are by no means such
as would warrant the hands being thrown up.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--Is Churchill reckoning with his party when he talks about an
immediate dissolution?  How will its Members like being sent back to
their Constituents?  Many are hard up.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Dec. 23, 1885.

MY DEAR L.,--Thanks for your views.  If Churchill and his lot want to
stay in, in order to thwart us and Mr. Gladstone, then I say, by all
means, let them have a few months office, and let us give
them--well--purgatory for a bit and see how they take it.  It seems
to me that opinion is not quite ripe enough yet amongst your party to
swallow strong meat.  I therefore think a while in the cold would
teach them whether Mr. Gladstone was wiser than the tuppence ha-penny
intelligence of his rank and file.  What the God-fearing Radical
evidently wants is a course of Tory slaughter abroad, and sixpence on
the income tax, and we are just the boys to help them to it.  Opinion
here in loyalist circles seems to take it for granted that Gladstone
needs a check from his own party, and I confess it has somewhat the
aspect of it.  So it seems to me we shall have to turn round and
"educate" the Liberal party, since they won't allow the greatest man
they ever had to do so.  A pretty mess they will be in, unless they
seize this opportunity under his leadership of consolidating their
party.  I should like to know what would become of them without
Gladstone?  You would have Chamberlain and Hartington cutting each
other's throats and the Tories standing laughing by, profiting by
your divisions!  And what should we be doing?  You may be sure
whatever was worst for the Liberal party.  You may dissolve fifty
times, but until you dissolve us out of existence, there we'll be, a
thorn--aye, a bayonet in your sides.  Here we were with the chance of
getting all Ireland {284} round to some moderate scheme that would
end for ever the feud between the two countries, and now it appears
that some gentlemen who were born yesterday, and couldn't tell the
difference between a Moonlighter and an Orangeman, propose to spoil
the whole thing--and in the interest of the "Empire" forsooth.  I
venture to think that the statesman who had the boldness to think out
some proposition for the pacification of this island--small as it
is--is the best friend the Empire has had for many a long day!  My
heart is sick when I read the extracts telegraphed from the English
papers to think these are the idiots we have to deal with and to
argue with.  It is almost a justification of O'Donovan Rossa.  They
have Moses and the Prophets, but they want a sign from Heaven.  Of
course, I know there are ten thousand difficult details to be
settled, but these men don't want to settle anything.  They have some
party dodge to serve, and Ireland is their happy hunting ground.  Let
them take care that the quarrel is not a poisoned morsel for their
dogs.  Churchill babbles of coming over to rouse the Orangemen!  _Je
lui promets des emotions_.  He had better bring Gorst with him to
rally the "re-actionary Ulster members."  If these men think as well
as talk this blague, England is very lucky in her rulers.

But to quit apostrophe (which you must pardon) what are we to do?
Can we expect Mr. Gladstone to bear the battle on his single shield?
Is it not plain that if we plunge into Home Rule plans just now
before your intelligent public apply their enlightened minds to it we
shall get far less than what we should get by waiting and worrying
you for a few years?  We are all young, and though British saws won't
bear me out, you are a very fickle and unstable people, while ours
has the tenacity of 700 years to carry us through.  We can wait
awhile and see who gets the worst of it, and if we are beaten in our
time--well, there are plenty of young men and young women in Ireland
to breed future difficulties for you.  Some of us thought as
Nationalists we were making a great sacrifice in being willing to
give up our ideals, but the spirit in which we are met shows how much
our surrender is appreciated by the individuals who subscribed for
cartridges for the Hungarians, Italians, and Poles.  The curse of
being the sport of your two parties is in itself the best argument
for the necessity of Home Rule.

{285}

As for Churchill, a great deal of what he told you I take to be
bluff--told for the purposes of intimidation.  I don't believe they'd
dissolve, and if they are so inclined we ought not to give them the
chance but help them over the stile, in order to trip them up at some
better opportunity.  When we beat them a few times, say on their
estimates, and worry them on adjournments and motions, they will be
in a much less heroic mood than they are now.  Slow poison is a
better medicine for them than the happy dispatch!  By hanging on
their skirts for a few weeks, snubbing them and humiliating them at
every opportunity, they will be in a much more reasonable frame of
mind than they are now, and meantime perhaps your young lions could
be reduced to reason and your old ones have their claws trimmed.  It
is no good talking about the details of Home Rule, when the very
mention of the word gives half the Liberal party the shivers.  The
men that won't take Mr. Gladstone for a leader to-day will have to
take Mr. Parnell to-morrow, for assuredly things cannot rest as they
are.  Mr. Gladstone's enemies just now are England's and Ireland's
worst enemies also.  He alone can settle the question moderately and
satisfactorily, yet he is assailed by his own party as if he were
some reckless junior acting not from the ripeness of knowledge and
sagacity, but through some adolescent's lust of untasted power!  Your
party ought to get up an altar to Mundella and put his long nose in
the tabernacle.  It is sweet to know that he has controlled the
education of British youth.

A happy Christmas to you, my dear Labouchere.

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, Dec. 23, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--Surely Randolph's policy will not work.  A
dissolution within a few weeks of the General Election would be very
unpopular and indeed unjustifiable, unless the whole Liberal party
followed Mr. Gladstone in a Home Rule proposal.  But it is clear he
will be left in the lurch, if he proposes it, by the majority of the
party, and in these circumstances {286} a dissolution would not help
the Tories, and would probably unite the Liberals under
Hartington--while Mr. Gladstone would retire.

I should have thought the Tory game would have been to go out and to
leave Mr. Gladstone to form a Government if he can.

Unless he repudiates Home Rule this would be impossible, while if he
does repudiate it he would have the Irish against him and could not
get on for a month.

I shall be in London on the 4th January, and could dine with you to
meet Randolph on that evening--if convenient.

I shall not be up again till the 11th.  Have they finally settled to
go straight on with the address and without any adjournment?--Yours
very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Labouchere_

INDIA OFFICE, Dec. 24, 1885.

DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I am engaged to be at Hatfield on the 4th.  That
compared morally with your proposed "festin" will be as Heaven is to
Hell, but my sinful spirit will sigh regretfully after Hell.  I am
making enquiries as to your letter which you suggested to me
yesterday, but have not yet received a reply.

I thought over Justin M'Carthy's story about Carnarvon.  It must be a
lie, for on Sunday last the latter was in London.  He came over on
the Friday previous for the Cabinets on the following Monday and
Tuesday.--Yours ever,

RANDOLPH S. C.

_P.S._--The weak point of your accusation in this week's _Truth_ of
treachery on the part of the Government is that the announcement of
Gladstone's having written a letter to the Queen first appeared in
_The Daily News_![14]

Now we are not likely to take Mr. Hill[15] as our confidant.


{287}

_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Dec. 24, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Churchill writes:

"I am engaged to be at Hatfield on the 4th.  That, compared with the
society of you and 'Joe,' ought to be as Heaven is to Hell, but my
sinful spirit sighs regretfully after Hell."

They go on without adjournment, estimating that the swearing can be
done in three or four days.

Rosebery writes to say that he has heard nothing from Hawarden since
he wrote urging silence, a suggestion which he supposed was not
appreciated.  All I know, he says, is that Mr. Gladstone is devilish
in earnest about the matter.

Supposing that the Radicals went against Home Rule, the fight with
the Irish would be long.  Don't you think that the country would
think that it would be better fought by the Conservatives than by the
Radicals?  They would--with pleasure--make it last long.  It would be
like the French wars to Pitt.

I saw Harcourt yesterday.  He told me that he had been to see you,
and seemed to me sitting on the fence.  "What I am thinking of," he
said, "is that if the Irish found that they could get nothing, they
would resort again to dynamite."  I told him that I thought that
_his_ life would not be worth a week's purchase.  Was there ever such
a timorous Sambo?

Henry Oppenheim tells me that Hartington dined with him a few days
ago, and that so far as he could make out he seemed inclined to stand
by Mr. Gladstone.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, Dec. 24, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I do not think the Irish proposals are possible.
If they refuse control of Imperial Parliament, there is really
nothing left but separation.  A hybrid arrangement with nominations,
Privy Councils, etc., would not stand {288} examination and would be
a perpetual source of friction and further trouble.

I do not believe in their Conservative legislation.  They mean it,
but the American Fenians would be too strong for them.

There is much fascination in your suggestion of Radical policy,
especially in the chance of dishing the Whigs whom I hate more than
the Tories.

But it won't do.  English opinion is set strongly against Home Rule
and the Radical party might be permanently (_i.e._ for our time)
discredited by a concession on this point.

We must "lie low" and watch--avoiding positive committal as far as
possible.

Did I tell you that the G.O.M. thanked me for my last speech?

I doubt if he has made up his own mind yet or formulated any definite
scheme.

He has several times repeated the phrase "supremacy of Parliament."

I am informed on good authority--the best in fact--that there is no
truth in the statement that he has submitted a statement to the
Queen.  As Randolph is quite wrong about this, he must be taken as a
doubtful authority in other matters also.

I suppose that if he is going to Ireland he will not be back in time
for dinner on the 4th.--Yours ever,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

  10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, ST. JAMES'S PARK,
  Christmas Day, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--This is Churchill's statement about the Queen.
When they came in they were told that there was a Home Rule scheme of
Mr. Gladstone's and it was shown to Salisbury.  I suspect that it is
true, for no sooner was Mr. Gladstone out than Herbert began--on the
ground that his father wanted exactly to know the Irish minimum, in
order to have time to treat the matter with his friends.

I place as the basis of Mr. Gladstone's action an almost insane
desire to come into office.  Now he knows that so far as _he_ is
{289} concerned, this can only be done by squaring the Irish.  At 76
a waiting policy may be a patriotic one, but it is one of personal
effacement.  This is not precisely the line of our revered leader.

Randolph says he is only going to Ireland, as he has done on previous
years, to pass Christmas with Fitzgibbon.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--Healy and I have elaborated a letter containing the Irish
minimum.


_Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Labouchere_

INDIA OFFICE, Dec. 25, 1885.

DEAR LABOUCHERE,--My correspondent with whom you thought you might
correspond with advantage does not wish now to be drawn.

_Very Private_.  G.O.M. has written what is described to me as a
"marvellous letter" to Arthur Balfour, to the effect that he thinks
"it will be a public calamity if this great question should fall into
the line of party conflict," and saying that he desires the question
should be settled by the present Government.  He be damned!--Yours
ever,

RANDOLPH S. C.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Xmas, 1885.

MY DEAR L.,--It may be that Brett is the go-between, and therefore
that Gladstone could use the views of others to head off Parnell.
Now as I believe we should speak with one voice and chime the same
note, I don't think it would be well for me to say anything at
present beyond thanking you for all your kindness.  I mean anything
to any one but yourself.  Harcourt's views quite interest me, and he
is quite right, for if our people are disappointed after the visions
held out to them, they cannot be held in.  This country could easily
be made ungovernable so far as the collection of rent or legal
process is concerned, and the obstructors would find they were not
dealing with playboys but {290} with resolute men.  It is because I
am for peace and feel the necessity for it that I am willing to
accept any reasonable settlement, as things could not go on as they
are for very long.  If prices next year are as bad as this the
country will not be habitable in any case for rackrenters.

I can hardly believe the Tories would dissolve if your party shows
itself united.  It is on your divided counsels they reckon.  If a big
vote goes against them it will knock the bottom out of their
mutterings.  Besides supposing the dissolution goes against them,
they must count the cost.  Defeat would mean the instant carrying of
any schemes Gladstone liked to put forward and no nonsense from the
Lords.  The Peers could not reject it, and if they did and Gladstone
threatened to dissolve against their existence--_bon soir_!  I am
firmer therefore in my opinion that Randolph's talk was mere
funkee-funkee, a train laid to explode in Hawarden, and I shall be
surprised if it goes off.

Your fellows will never realise the price they will be willing to pay
us until they see the Market opened and a wretched minority sitting
and smiling across the floor from the seats they themselves should
recline on!  Their teeth won't begin to water till the 12th Jan.
Therefore I believe a waiting game is our game, for surely it is of
as much consequence to your men that they should govern England as it
is to ours that they should govern Ireland?  The fact that Parnell's
reserve is so provoking to the English is his best justification in
our minds.  Chamberlain's point about whether the Imperial Ministry
which enjoyed the confidence of the English on Home affairs should
resign if defeated by our help on foreign questions is a poser.  It
seems to me the federal idea cannot work unless you too have a local
and an Imperial Parliament.--Yours,

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. Labouchere to "The Times"_[16]

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, S.W., Dec. 26, 1885.

"WHAT THE PARNELLITES WOULD ACCEPT."

SIR,--During the last Parliament I voted frequently with the Irish
members against the Government.  I did so because I was {291} opposed
to exceptional measures of coercion, and believed that the remedy for
Irish wrongs consisted in allowing Ireland to manage her own affairs,
subject to full guarantee being given for the maintenance of the
integrity of the Empire.  In this view it would appear that I was
only in advance by a year or two of the opinions of many Liberals and
Radicals and of some Conservatives.

Owing to the course of action which I pursued, I was thrown into
personal and friendly relations with many of the Irish and
Parliamentary party, which relations I have maintained, and I think I
am able to form a pretty accurate estimate of their views.  First,
however, I will say with your permission a word respecting Irish
opinion, and the position, so far as I can judge it, of the Irish
political leaders.  Among those of them opposed to the present state
of things the majority are not separatists, some because they are in
favour of the Union with the British Isles, others because they are
aware that separation is practically impossible.  Those who aspire to
separation are an infinitesimal minority, and they subordinate their
opinions to those of their colleagues.

Throughout Ireland a passionate desire for Home Rule is entertained
by all with the exception of the landlords, the officials, and the
Orangemen.  A good many of the landlords are disposed, however, to
rally to it, while the area over which the Orangemen hold sway is
growing smaller and smaller every year.  Many of the Presbyterians of
Ulster have already thrown in their lot with the Home Rulers.  There
is now but one single northern Irish county left which does not
return a Parnellite--viz. Antrim.  In four Ulster counties--Monaghan,
Cavan, Donegal, and Fermanaugh--no one but Parnellites have been
chosen.  The desire for Home Rule is irrespective of any wish to
alter the land system, although this wish is an important factor in
Irish feeling.  Agriculture is almost the only industry in Ireland,
and one reason why the landlords are disliked is that, with some few
exceptions, they have set themselves in antagonism to the aspirations
of the nation for Home Rule.  The Land Act has disappointed and
dissatisfied every one, for, while the landlords declare that their
property has been confiscated, the farmers cry out that their
property--_i.e._ their improvements, have been handed over to be
rented for the landlords' benefit in the teeth {292} of the Healy
clause.  It is hopeless to suppose that an Imperial Parliament,
composed of a majority of gentlemen, who know very little about the
real merits of the case, can settle this great question, at which it
has been tinkering for generations, and I, as an Englishman, object
to have my time taken up in discussing it any more, and trying to
accommodate the differences between Irish renters and Irish rentees.
Mr. Chamberlain has rightly objected to the Imperial Exchequer being
saddled with purchase money to be paid to the landlords, and I think
our duty to them would be performed if we were to insist, in any
settlement of the Irish question, that they shall be entitled to call
on the Irish treasury for a fair price for their estates whenever
they want to sell them, due regard being had to the tenants'
statutably recognised ownership of his improvements.  Thus the
landlords, if they object to live in an island, the inhabitants of
which enjoy the advantage of self-government, would be able to leave
it with the equivalent for their land in their pockets in hard cash.
With their departure the police difficulty would disappear, and with
it the necessity of England paying £1,500,000 per annum for the Royal
Irish Constabulary, although the Irish insist that they only require
a force of ¼ this size, and are willing to pay for it themselves.

Speaking generally, and if the land system were satisfactorily
settled, it may be said that the Irish are not Radicals in one sense
of the word.  Their habit of thought is Conservative.  They are, like
the French, somewhat too inclined to look and state interference in
everything.  Their tendency is, as M. Guizot said of the French, to
fall into a division between administrators and administered.  Their
hostility to law is not to law abstractedly, but to the law as
presenting what they regard as an alien ascendency.  I am inclined to
think that, had they a Parliament of their own, they would surprise
us by their Conservative legislation.

Apart from the Nationalists, who form the great bulk of the nation,
are the Fenians.  They are comparatively speaking few in number.
Their strength consists in being able to tell the Irish that Home
Rule never will be granted, and that Ireland must either separate
from us, or be ruled by us in local as well as in Imperial affairs.

{293}

That the Nationalists have to a certain extent acted with the Fenians
is true.  But could they do otherwise?  They had to fight against a
common opponent.  Between a Nationalist and a Fenian there is as much
difference as between the most moderate Whig Squire who sat in last
Parliament on the Liberal benches and me.  Yet we both voted
frequently together against the Conservatives.  The Nationalists are
the Girondists, the Fenians are the Jacobins.  Like the Girondists
they make common cause against a common enemy.  (_He carries on this
simile lengthily._) Mr. Parnell and his political friends have
substituted constitutional agitation for lawless and revolutionary
agitation.  He has only succeeded in this by persuading his
countrymen that his action will result in success.  If he be doomed
to failure, the Fenians will once more gain the upper hand in Ireland.

The _Times_ has more than once suggested that the Irish Parliamentary
party should state precisely what they want.  They want a Parliament.
How possibly can they be expected to say officially to what
limitations and to what restrictions they would submit for the sake
of a definite settlement before some responsible English statesman,
with a strong following at his back, is prepared to give them a
Parliament?  They would indeed be fools were they to make such a
tactical blunder.  In any negotiation of which I have ever read,
bases are agreed on before either party--and certainly before the
weaker party--specifies details.

I think, however, I am not far wrong in saying the following scheme
would be accepted:

1. Representation in the Imperial Parliament upon Imperial matters
alone.  This would require a hard and fast definition as to what is
Imperial and what is local, together with, as in the United States,
some legal tribunal of appeal.

The Army, the Navy, the protection of the British Isles, and the
commercial and political relations with foreign nations would be
regarded as Imperial matters, and probably there would be no
insuperable difficulty--if it were deemed expedient--in arranging a
Customs Union, such as that of the German Zollverein before the
German Empire came into existence, leaving it to the Irish to foster
their industries, if they please, by means of bounties.  There would
be an Imperial budget, which would be submitted each year to the
Imperial Parliament with the Irish {294} sitting in it.  Each country
would contribute its quota according to population and property.  If
more were required, the proportions would be maintained.  Each island
would raise its quota as it best pleased.

2. The Government of Ireland--a Viceroy, a Privy Council, a
Representative Assembly, Ministers.

(1) The Viceroy--a member of the Royal family, with a salary of
£25,000 per annum.

(2) The Privy Council.--The present Privy Council consists of about
fifty individuals, all of them anti-Nationalists, and some of them
virulently so.  The Council would have to be reorganised.  This might
be done by nominating 100 new Councillors, men of moderate views, but
who would frankly accept the arrangement and endeavour to give
practical effect to it.  The Council would gradually be increased by
the admission of the Irish Ministers.

(3) House of Representatives.--Its members would be elected as with
us according to population.  As a concession, however, it would be
agreed that one-fourth of the members might be nominated, either
during two Parliaments or for five years.

(4) Ministers.--They would be selected from the Parliamentary
majority as with us.  The Viceroy would call upon the leader of the
majority to form a Cabinet.  He would, however, retain the
constitutional right of the Queen to dissolve.

3. The Veto.--This would be reserved to the Viceroy, with the consent
of his Privy Council.  Of one thing I am absolutely certain.  It is
that no arrangement is possible which would give the veto to the
Imperial Parliament.  The Irish object to this, because they consider
that it would convert their assembly into a mere debating Society.
We--although we seem just now enamoured with it--should soon find
that all legislation in England would soon be brought again to a
standstill, as we should be perpetually debating Irish bills.  The
Irish would also object to the Queen exercising the veto by the
advice of her Council, for, practically, this would mean the veto of
those representing the majority in the English Parliament.  The Privy
Council is, unfortunately, historically odious in Ireland.  But were
it recast, it is probable that the Irish would not object to the Veto
which I have suggested.

{295}

4. Protection of Minorities.--They would already be protected by the
veto, by the nominated members and by the Orangemen, who would return
a considerable contingent; but the Irish would go even further than
this.

(1) No contract existing or entered into could be set aside by Irish
legislation.  In the event of any one feeling himself aggrieved in
this matter, he might appeal to the Judicial Committee of the House
of Lords.

(2) Any Landlord would have the right to insist upon his land being
bought by the Irish state on the estimate of its value, by the Land
Judges, due consideration being taken of tenants' improvements.

5. The Army in Ireland and the Fortresses would be under the orders
of the Imperial Ministry, much as is the case in the United States of
America.

I am far from saying that the Irish, if left to draw up the
settlement, would insert these conditions.  Many of them savour of
tutelage and distrust.  But I am pretty certain that, although in
discussion they might claim more, they would, if they could not get
more, accept this scheme with an honest intention to make it
workable.  Less they would not accept, and for a very good reason.
If their leaders are to be responsible for the peace, tranquillity,
and prosperity of Ireland, they must have full powers to act, and the
scheme of Government must in the main be acceptable to the majority
of the governed.

At present we have arrived at a Parliamentary deadlock.  No measure
dealing with Ireland can be passed in the existing House of Commons
without the aid of the Irish contingent.  If a Coalition Government
were to succeed in passing, either in this Parliament or a subsequent
Parliament, a half-hearted measure, the Irish would decline to accept
it.  They would simply refuse to act on it, and thus confusion would
become worse confounded.  Experience has proved that any proposal not
to count on the Irish vote is outside the area of practical politics.
Experience has also shown that the rival political parties will not
subordinate their differences to any anti-Irish policy.  Such schemes
are like the kiss of peace of the French Assembly during the French
Revolution.  They sound all very well but last about half an hour.

{296}

We have then to decide whether we will try the experiment of
federalisation under the restrictions for the unity of the Empire,
and the protection of the minority in Ireland such as I have roughly
indicated; or whether we will embark in a career of what practically
amounts to war between the two islands.

Many Conservatives are excellent citizens, others are party men.  The
latter would probably not object to the latter alternative.  It would
unquestionably have the effect of the French wars in the days of
George III.  They, I fully admit, would be better able to carry out a
system of repression than the Radicals.  They therefore would in the
main hold office.  Domestic reforms would be neglected, the Radical
chariot would stand still.  You, Sir, I apprehend, are not a Radical,
and though you may not be influenced by this arrest of the chariot,
you would not regret the _propter hoc_.  But it ought to lead any
Radical to pause and reflect.

I did not show myself a fanatical worshipper of Mr. Gladstone during
the last Parliament, in fact I must have voted against him as often
as I voted for him.  In my address to my constituents I said that I
should raise my voice against any Administration, no matter what it
be called, that lags on the path of progress or that falls into
error.  My constituents have been good enough to leave it to me to
decide what is lagging and what is error.  If the Conservatives will
at once bring in a Bill dealing with Ireland in the manner I have
indicated they shall have my vote as far as that Bill is concerned.
But I gather that they have determined to oppose a _non possumus_ to
all such demands and not to go beyond including Irish in any general
scheme for local Government in both islands.

I turn therefore to Mr. Gladstone.  His public utterances lead me to
believe that he is prepared to sacrifice his well-earned ease, and to
endeavour to settle the question in a manner satisfactory to us and
to the Irish.  His experience is vast, his patriotism is undoubted,
his tactical skill is unrivalled.  I would suggest therefore that we
should give him full powers to treat for us with the Irish, and that
we should support him in any arrangement which meets with his
sanction.  The Irish have always had a {297} sneaking affection for
him; they will recognise that he has to count with English public
opinion, and they will concede far more to him than to any other
negotiator that we might select.  I have seen that Lord Hartington
and Mr. Forster have pronounced against Home Rule, and that the
former is negotiating with Mr. Goschen.  Lord Hartington generally
pronounces against a measure as a preliminary to accepting it; I do
not therefore ascribe much importance to his declaration.  Mr.
Forster, during the last Parliament, distinguished himself by
uttering, in season and out of season, gibes and sarcasms against his
former colleagues.  Mr. Goschen, a man of great ability and honesty,
could not find one English Liberal Constituency to return him, and
sits in Parliament by the good favour of the Edinburgh Conservatives.
With all respect therefore to the two gentlemen, I hardly think that
the Liberals will accept a policy from them.  If we are to judge by
what happened in the last Parliament they have no followers....  Let
Mr. Gladstone then boldly declare himself for a well considered
measure of Home Rule....

H. LABOUCHERE.[17]

To the Editor of the _Times_.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Dec. 26, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Hawarden writes:...[18]

This is rather my plan--commerce would fall within the province of
Imperial matters--religion, too, might; taxation is a little more
difficult, for it would require much definition.[19]

{298}

Will the Irish trust Mr. Gladstone, and go with the Liberals on
general assurances?  They may, and they may not; they are very
suspicious.  Were I they, I should, and then upset him if he dodged
later on.

Anyhow, I think that we may take it that Mr. Gladstone is determined
to have a try at Irish legislation if he gets the chance, and the
fact that the Irish can at any time stop him in his career will lead
him to go great lengths.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Labouchere_

2 CONNAUGHT PLACE, W., Dec. 26, 1885.

DEAR LABOUCHERE,--You have definitely captured the G.O.M. and I wish
you joy of him.  He has written another letter to A. Balfour,
intimating, I understand, without overmuch qualification, that if
Government do not take up Home Rule he will.

It is no use your writing to Lord Salisbury.  The Prime Minister
cannot disclose the intentions of the Government except in the
ordinary course when Parliament meets.

I shall look forward to Monday's _Times_.--Yours ever,

RANDOLPH S. C.

I think Joe had much better join us.  He is the only man on your side
who combines ability with common sense.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

BIRMINGHAM, Dec. 26, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--The G.O.M. is sulking in his tent.  No one can
get a word from him--he has not replied to letters from Hartington,
Rosebery, and myself.

Further consideration convinces me that no scheme on the lines of
Rosebery's proposal is worth attention.

There is only one way of giving _bona fide_ Home Rule, which is the
adoption of the American Constitution:

{299}

1. Separate legislation for England, Scotland, Wales, and possibly
Ulster.  The three other Irish Provinces might combine.

2. Imperial legislation at Westminster for foreign and Colonial
affairs, Army, Navy, Post Office, and Customs.

3. A Supreme Court to arbitrate on respective limits of authority.

Of course the House of Lords would go.  I do not suppose the five
Legislations could stand a second Chamber apiece.

Each would have its own Ministry responsible to itself.

There is a scheme for you.  It is the only one which is compatible
with any sort of Imperial unity, and once established it might work
without friction.

Radicals would have no particular reason to object to it, and if Mr.
Gladstone is ready to propose it--well and good!

But I am sick of the vague generalities of John Morley and the _Daily
News_, and I am not going to swallow Separation with my eyes shut;
Let us know what you are doing.

The best thing for us all is to keep the Tories in a little longer.
Let them bear the first brunt of the situation created by the state
of Ireland and the disappointment of the Nationalists.  But how the
devil is this to be managed?  If the Irishmen choose they can turn
the Government out at any moment.  Can you not persuade them that it
is clearly to their interest to keep them in for one session--while
Mr. Gladstone is preparing public opinions?--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

HIGHBURY, BIRMINGHAM, Dec. 27, 1885.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I thought the scheme alleged to have been
submitted to the Queen was one of recent date.

If the rumour refers only to the time of the late Government, there
is not much in it.  Mr. Gladstone had no scheme then--only the
vaguest ideas as to the necessity of doing something.

It is pretty evident that whatever else he may do to "crown his
career" he will break up the Liberal party.

His proposal about veto is a transparent fraud.  It could not last as
an effective control for a single Parliament.  I wish {300} some one
would start the idea of a Federal Constitution like the United
States.  I do not believe people are prepared for this solution yet,
but it is the only possible form of Home Rule.  It is that or nothing.

In my opinion Mr. Gladstone cannot carry his or any other scheme just
now, and if the Irishmen force the pace the only result will be a
dissolution and the Tories in a working majority.

Let them refuse to put the Tories out just yet unless Mr. Gladstone
publicly declares himself.  If they were to put the Tories out
to-morrow, and then turn on the Liberals in a month, they would
secure only a strong Coalition both in the House and the country for
resistance to all Irish claims.

I believe the true policy for every one except Mr. Gladstone is to
"wait and see."--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Dec. 28, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--If I might venture to criticise--you assume
that the Conservatives and the Irish would both act as you wish.
Neither would.  The Conservatives are sharp enough to decline to
retain power in order to be discredited warming-pans, and the Irish
must demonstrate, now that they have carried the country.

Writing to Hawarden, I have hinted at your views, and asked whether a
below the gangway amendment would be accepted, stating generally that
the Irish question must be dealt with.  If the G.O.M. and if you were
to vote for this, we should still be beaten.  The party would not
have pledged itself to it as a party; the Irish would be satisfied,
and if on some issue in a month or two we had an election, we should
get the Irish vote.

I should say myself that it would be far better not to have the Irish
at Westminster at all; this would meet the conundrum of an Imperial
and an English Ministry.  As a statistical fact, Ireland does not now
contribute much more than the cost of her civil Government to the
Imperial Exchequer.  Let her contribute nothing, or some fixed sum
for armaments (which she probably {301} would not pay).  She would be
like the Dominion.  We should hold the country through the army and
the fortresses, and if she tried to separate, we should suspend the
Constitution.  But as a matter of fact, she would not try.  The Irish
"idea of patriotism is to serve the country at a good salary, and to
get places for cousins, etc.  You would see that Irish politics would
become a perpetual vestry fight for the spoil.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Dec. 30, 1885.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--This is the last from Hawarden, which I
transmit to Healy.  The "channel" is in reply to a letter from Healy
saying that if Mr. Gladstone prefers other channels, he (Healy) must
take leave to withdraw.  It is all very well, but Parnell will not be
such a fool as to show his hand for the benefit of Mr.
Gladstone....[20]


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Dec. 30, 1885.

MY DEAR L.,--I have been in the country holidaying.  The statistics
you want I think could be got from Col. Nolan's return, which alas
shows that you profit £3,000,000 per annum out of us.  I speak from
memory.  Go to Smith in the House of Commons' Library, and ask him to
find it out for you.  He can get you this and any other statistical
facts you need.  But some thirty years ago your people dropped
showing a separate Irish account and bulked the whole thing in order
to diddle us, and {302} therefore it is net easy to reckon the
figures out.  O'Neill Daunt, however, can supply everything you can't
get elsewhere.  I think Randolph must have pulled the longbow rather
taut to you in every way.  I don't believe anything he has been
saying.  As to Chamberlain he must be crazy to write that way to
Morley.  Give the G.O.M. power and he could form a Cabinet in a week
minus Joe, and the Gates of Birmingham should not prevail against it
(it is "Hell" in the original).  Your letter ought to do much good.
You greatly improved it.  It has been quoted into all the Irish
papers and commented on.  I am glad it appeared, but of course, I
know nothing of the genesis.  I agree with you about representation
in the Imperial Parliament.  Your people seem to shy at it, and it
would be better for us not to have it, unless your side insists.
Still there will be many Irishmen loath to surrender all
representation, but they cannot have everything.  I don't think
Fottrell can physic Chamberlain's disease.  He's going to be a
Mugwump.  I wish him joy of the profession.  His chance was to be
first Lieutenant to the G.O.M. _cum jure suc_, and he is going to
degenerate into a kind of small Forster species of Sorehead.  I note
what you say about our papers.  Like Brer Rabbit we ought to "lay
low" just now.  Small wonder if Gladstone should be intimidated into
minimising coercion.  The Heathen rage very furiously against him.  I
mistrust Grosvenor's influence on Hawarden.  If the old man was ten
years younger, I'd be for keeping in the Tories till we got County
Boards out of them in order to chasten your party in the cold winds
of opposition.  Our people won't have any fraud of a Bill made for
the Whigs to swallow.  We shall be reasonable, but so must your
party.  We can wait, for we are used to it.  Your party leaders
represent personal ambition, and are in more of a hurry.--Faithfully
yours,

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Dec. 31, 1885.

MY DEAR L.,--I return H. Gladstone's letter which I regard as most
important.  I am very glad to think Gladstone is not being
intimidated out of his position by the pitiless storm beating {303}
upon him.  I agree that nothing satisfactory can be done until the
House meets, and we shall then have a week before the Address is
read, and our party will have met, and we shall know its mind, while
personal communications will have become possible amongst the Liberal
leaders also.  I think Chamberlain is ruining himself.  If Gladstone
sticks to his text he can easily form a Cabinet without him or the
Mugwumps, and then where will they be?  Trevelyan's speech to-day is
very bad too, but they are all ciphers until Gladstone puts his one
before their noughts.

I have your letters safely and will return all your former enclosures
to-night.  I am not writing this from my house or I'd send them with
this.  I have kept copies of nothing and burn your letters, as the
police could always find a pretext here to walk in on you and read
your billets-doux.--Faithfully yours,

T. M. HEALY.



[1] The present Strangers' Dining-room.

[2] Sir Henry Lucy, _Sixty Years in the Wilderness_, vol.  ii.

[3] Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii.

[4] Barry O'Brien, _Life of Parnell_.

[5] Mr. Healy wrote an attack on Mr. Chamberlain's article, as soon
as it appeared, in _United Ireland_, under the title of "Queen's
Bench Home Rule."

[6] Barry O'Brien, _Life of Parnell_.

[7] The enclosure was letter from Mr. Herbert Gladstone dated October
18.

[8] The proposal was contained in a letter from Mr. Herbert Gladstone
to Mr. Labouchere, which Mr. Labouchere quoted in full for Mr.
Chamberlain's information.  It enumerated six conditions as the basis
of a settlement of the Irish Government question.

[9] The election ran from Nov. 23 to Dec. 19.  The result was that
333 Liberals were returned, 251 Conservatives, and 86 Parnellites.

[10] Mr. Labouchere quotes the greater part of a letter from Mr.
Herbert Gladstone, dated Dec. 7, in which Mr. Herbert Gladstone urges
the all importance of the Irish question, and the necessity of
ascertaining the plans of the Irish leaders.

[11] The term "hard cash" is quoted from the letter of Dec. 7, from
Mr. Herbert Gladstone to Mr. Labouchere, already referred to (see
note page 273).

[12] Statement as to Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Scheme was published
in the _Leeds Mercury_ and the _Standard_ on December 17, and in the
_Times_ and other London papers of December 18.

[13] Winston Spencer Churchill, _Lord Randolph Churchill_, vol. ii.

[14] In _Truth_ of December 24, Mr. Labouchere commented on his own
assertion that a letter Mr. Gladstone had written to the Queen was
communicated by her to Lord Salisbury, who, in his turn, communicated
some of its contents to the _Standard_.

[15] Editor of the _Daily News_ from 1868 till 1886.

[16] _Times_, Dec. 28, 1885.

[17] An old Radical M. P. writes criticising this letter: "Mr.
Labouchere has never been regarded by us as a Radical at all, but as
a Separatist, and we have always profoundly distrusted his advice
upon the few occasions on which it was possible to regard it as
serious."--_Times_, Jan. 4, 1886.

[18] Mr. Labouchere here quotes a letter he had received from Mr.
Herbert Gladstone, stating Mr. Gladstone's determination not to
formulate any scheme which might be taken as a bribe for Irish
support, nor to shift from his position, before the Government had
spoken, or the Irish party had, in public, terminated their alliance
and put the Tories in a minority of 250 to 330.

[19] Mr. Gladstone's idea of a veto was that it might be exercised by
the Crown on ordinary matters on the advice of an Irish Minister,
but, on certain questions, _e.g._ religion or commerce, perhaps
taxation, by the Imperial Ministry.

[20] Mr. Labouchere here quotes in full a letter from Mr. Herbert
Gladstone to himself, stating that, if communications have to take
place with the Irish party, only one channel will be recognized, viz.
Parnell.  But he adds he does not think there is any chance of
bringing their party to the scratch before Parliament meets, because
of the insufficiency of the knowledge they possess to enable them to
decide on any action, before the Address debate is actually in
progress.  He also points out how impossible it would be for Mr.
Gladstone to adopt Mr. Chamberlain's policy of waiting, and adds that
if the Liberal Party chooses to break up over an Irish Parliament it
cannot be helped.




{304}

CHAPTER XII

THE SPLIT IN THE LIBERAL PARTY


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 1, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--No, I do not think that he (Mr. Gladstone) is
hedging; from his personal standpoint, he knows that his only chance
of coming in is to get over the Irish, and then to get over his own
party.  Waiting games may suit others, but he cannot wait, and
already considers that he has been out for very long.  He thought so
a week after Salisbury came in, and at once commenced with the Irish.

This, I should imagine, is his game.  On the Address, he will
endeavour to put the Tories in a minority, with or without the Irish.
He then expects to be called upon to form a Government.  He will at
once begin to enter privately into terms with the Irish.  These terms
will be much the same sort of thing as I wrote in the _Times_, or
non-appearance at all in the Imperial Parliament, after the manner of
Canada.  If he cannot make terms, it may be that his desire for
office will lead him to come in, but if he is to be believed, he will
not.  What will then be the position?  He cannot well dissolve, so
there must inevitably be a Palmerston-Hartington Government, whilst
the Radicals would be split up, some going for the Irish, others
against.  This, it seems to me, means the destruction of the Radical
Party for many a year.  Mr. Gladstone knows that he is too big an
individuality to be the head of a Coalition Government, moreover he
has burnt his ships.

Suppose, on the other hand, the Conservatives dissolve at once, after
Mr. Gladstone has pronounced in favour of Home {305} Rule.  On what
cry should we go to the country, if not on Home Rule?  Evidently
those opposed to it would give the preference to the Conservatives,
for they one and all would have put their foot down, whilst we should
be tainted with the unholy thing, even if we had made a Jonah of Mr.
Gladstone.  So long as the Irish question is not settled, the Tories
must have the pull in the country, and the Radicals must remain
discredited and disunited.

This being so, is it not worth while to take the other course?  It is
by no means certain that we should be beaten at an election.  Mr.
Gladstone is still a power.  The Irish have votes which would turn
several places.  The electors may be divided into people who think
about the question of Ireland, and those who don't.  For the latter a
"cow" might be invented, whilst many of the former would say that as
one English party has gone for Home Rule, it must come, and if so as
speedily as possible.

The real enemies of the Radicals are the Whigs, and they are
essentially your enemies.  It is a mistake to undervalue them.  They
have always managed to jockey the Radicals.  They hang together; they
have, through Grosvenor, the machine; they dominate in Clubs and in
the formation of Cabinets.  They may ally themselves with you _re_
Ireland, but this will be for their benefit, not yours.  Nothing
would give them greater pleasure than to betray you with a kiss, for
you are their permanent bogey.  Once you are out of the way, and the
sheep of Panurge, _i.e._, the vast majority of the Liberal M.P.s,
would be boxed up in their fold.  At every election we should have
shilly-shally talk, very vague and apparently meaning much, followed
by half-hearted measures.

All this is why I still hold that the Radical game is to go with Mr.
Gladstone on Irish matters, and to use him in order to shunt them
and, if possible, the Whigs--not that this course is not full of
danger, but that it seems to me to present less danger than any
other.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, Jan. 3, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--The more I look at the thing, the less I like
it.  Whatever we do we shall be smashed for a {306} certainty.  The
question is whether it is better to be smashed with Mr. Gladstone and
the Parnellites or without them.

I believe the anti-Irish feeling is very strong with our best
friends--the respectable artisans and the non-Conformists.

One thing I am clear about.  If we are to give way it must be by
getting rid of Ireland altogether, and by some such scheme as this.

Call Ireland a protected state.  England's responsibility to be
confined exclusively to protecting the country against foreign
aggression.

England's authority to be confined exclusively to the measures
necessary to secure that Ireland shall not be a _point d'appui_ for a
foreign country.

The financial question to be settled by a fixed annual payment to
cover:

1. Ireland's share of the Debt.

2. A sinking fund to extinguish it in fifty years.

3. The cost of the military garrison.

_Query_: Should we hold the customs till this Debt is extinguished,
or find some other security for payment?

In order to gild the pill for the English sympathisers with
Protestant and landowning minorities:

Ireland to be endowed with a Constitution--the elements to be:

1. A Governor with power to dissolve Parliament--no veto.

2. A Senate, probably elected but with some qualifications to secure
a moderately Conservative Assembly.

3. A House of Commons.

To meet the prejudices of English manufacturers and workmen, a
Commercial treaty pledging Ireland not to impose duties on English
manufactures.  (Bounties might be left open.)

In this case Ireland could have no foreign relations.  It is
impossible to allow her to communicate direct any more than Australia
and Canada.  But this was a great source of complaint by Irish
patriots in the time of Grattan's Parliament.

The difficulties of any plan are almost insurmountable, but the worst
of all plans would be one which kept the Irishmen at Westminster
while they had their own Parliament in Dublin.

{307}

I end as I began.  We shall be smashed because the country is not
prepared for Home Rule.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 4, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I think your scheme an excellent one; only
Ireland is so wretchedly poor a country, that it will not pay its
contribution; that, however, is a detail.

I am perfectly certain that Mr. Gladstone is determined to go on, and
that any idea of a Whig cum Radical demonstration to induce him to
keep quiet will not avail.  Rosebery writes, "He is boiling over with
the subject," and you know how, when once an idea gets hold of his
mind, it ferments; as Hawarden said in a recent letter, he is
determined to stand or fall by it.

I suspect that this scheme is passing through his ingenuous mind.  To
get in by the Irish vote, then to ask the Conservatives to consult
with him as to a plan.  The Irish, however, are quite cute enough not
to help him in, until, one way or another, they are secured against
this.

I have just received this from Churchill:

"The Queen's Speech will be delivered on the 21st.  No mention of
Home Rule.  What a blessing it would be if we could get rid of the
Whigs and the Irish at one coup.  But I am afraid that this will be
impossible, and that the former as usual will knock under."

--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to the "Times"_ (_Extract_)

REFORM CLUB, Jan. 2, 1886.

You, sir, possibly have not been brought closely in contact with the
Irish leaders.  I have; and more practical, sensible, I may indeed
say, more moderate men, when not under the influence of temporary
excitement, I never came across....  I have indeed been greatly
struck with their largeness and broadness of view, which contrasts
advantageously with our supercilious mode of treating political
opponents who have not the advantage of {308} being Anglo-Saxons, our
insularity, and our want of facility to grasp new ideas, or to
realise the necessity of adapting ourselves to circumstances, as
Bunsen--one of our great admirers--said, what most struck him during
his residence here was "the deficiency of the method of handling
ideas in this blessed island."--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.[1]

To the Editor of the _Times_.


_Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Labouchere_

INDIA OFFICE, Jan. 7, 1886.

DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I should be delighted to dine with you on the 12th
or 15th, if that would be convenient and agreeable to you.  I think
Joe is quite right to walk warily.  After all, if the G.O.M. goes a
mucker it may be a good thing for everybody.  He has always disturbed
the equilibrium of parties and done no good to any one except
himself.  However, you will probably think me prejudiced.--Yours ever,

RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 7, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Churchill will come on the 15th if that suits
you.  Is there any other Conservative or Liberal you would like?

I suspect that Mr. Gladstone will not give the necessary pledges to
the Irish.  They have an idea that he might get in by their votes,
and then try to make terms with the Conservatives, and bring in a
milk and water measure.  He talks of faith in him.  Singularly enough
they have not that amount which they ought to have.

There is also the possibility that they will take a bird in the hand
from the Conservatives--in the form of some local county measure,
which would strengthen them in Ireland, and which would give them
leverage.

If this be so, how about a resolution in their favour--somewhat {309}
vague--which would win them over to us in case of an election, and
which would not be carried?--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. T. M. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Jan. 7, 1886.

MY DEAR L.,--I am afraid I badly repay all your letters.  I greatly
fear that Chamberlain's tone shows that even if he accepts the
proposals in principle, he will help the Whigs to make Mr. Gladstone
minimise them, and thus they may prove inacceptable to Ireland.  Then
it will be the Land Act misery over again, or rather your party would
not be let in by us to pass a maimed measure, and so the Tories would
reap the profit of our dissensions.  _Beati possidentes!_  However, I
think when your men get blooded by a few skirmishes with the Tories,
they will be willing enough to patch things up to turn them out.
With regard to Morley's point about the Veto, I recognise that the
bigger powers we get the more natural would be your desire for some
guarantee against their abuse--the better the Parliament, the more
effective the Veto.  As the scientist would say, you want it
increased according to the square of the power.  A Governor-General,
I think, would meet this, and, for my part, I think it would capture
or render quiescent a lot of the loyalists if he were a prince.  A
few Royal levees and some judicious jobs would probably bring most of
these gentry round in a short time.

Your letters have been admirable, and I am sure have done good,
though none of us could write to the _Times_ or acknowledge it in any
way.  Moreover, except through extracts in the _Express_, none of us
see it here.  A single copy of any newspaper from across the Channel
does not enter the office of _United Ireland_!  However, as we are
not your rulers this is no crime.

The usual stuff I see is being talked about Home Rule leading to
separation, and how the American-Irish would not accept the
settlement, nor the Fenians.  The fellow who writes as "an old
Fenian" in the _St. James' Gazette_, extracts from which I have seen,
is Dick Piggott, late of the _Irishman_ newspaper, who swindled {310}
every Fenian Fund he could milk, and whom the boys would not touch
with the tongs.  I undertake to say that if a suitable Home Rule
scheme be proposed, though Parnell said he could offer no guarantees,
that we could call a National Convention to ratify it, and therefore
could treat as a traitor every one who afterwards opposed it, or did
not loyally abide thereby.  Moreover, terrible as are the
American-Irish in English eyes, I believe--and I have visited and
spoken at every big city from New York to San Francisco, and from
Galveston on the Mexican Gulf to Montreal in Canada--that we could
summon a representative Convention in Chicago, including the Clan na
Gael, the ancient Order, and the Rossa crowd which would endorse the
settlement and thereby effectually dry up the well-springs of
revolutionary agitation.  But to do this we must get no sham vestry,
but an assembly that would gratify the national pride of the Celtic
race.  Our people in America will only be too glad to be allowed to
mind their own business, and many of the wealthy among them will come
back and settle down here, investing their capital and teaching the
people the industries they have learnt abroad.  The mass of them are
as Conservative as any in the world, and when I told a crowded
meeting the night of the Chicago Convention in 1881--referring to
wild advice that had been offered--"that the Irish leaders were no
more to be bought by American dollars than by English gold," the
sentiment was cheered to the echo and was mutilated accordingly in
the report of the _Irish World_.

However, this is running a long way ahead of events, and this idea of
mine is not one that I have yet broached to my colleagues.

I expect to be over on Tuesday, but hope to be allowed to run back
then till the 21st, as I suppose we shall have nothing to do in the
interval.  I don't suppose we shall make up our minds as to whether
we shall move an amendment to the Address, till after we hear it
read.  Even then this, I presume, would depend as to whether a _modus
vivendi_ with you was arrived at, for if the Tories are in earnest
with their threat to dissolve, the best tactics would be to have no
Irish Debate and to cook their goose on a side issue--Egypt, Burmah,
or what-not.--Truly yours,

T. M. HEALY.


{311}

_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, Jan. 8, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--The 15th will suit me.  Many thanks.  I fancy
Randolph Churchill will be more talkative if we are alone, unless you
know any one whom he likes to meet.  I leave it entirely in your
hands.

Mr. Gladstone has asked me to meet him on Tuesday.  Perhaps he may be
explicit, but I am not sanguine.

If the Irish are ready to give the Tories a chance, by all means let
us wait and see results.

I could not support any resolution at present.  If it were vague, the
Irish would not thank us--if it were definite, I doubt if it would be
good policy to vote with it.

We are sure to have an opportunity on the Local Government Bill--if
we desire to take advantage of it.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 9, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I had a letter from Healy yesterday.  So far as
I understand the matter, things are in this position.

Mr. Gladstone is in his tent.  He will do nothing until the Address.
He then, I think, inclines to an understanding with the Irish, for
this is a _sine qua non_ of his coming in.

Healy says that the Irish will decide nothing until the Address.
They will not aid in turning out the Tories unless there is a
specific understanding as to what Mr. Gladstone's Bill is to be.  If
such arrangement be satisfactory, they will agree to vote them out on
Burmah, Egypt, or anything else, so as to render it difficult for the
Tories to dissolve.  They perceive the difficulties of Mr.
Gladstone's position and are just now in a yielding mood, but beyond
a certain point they cannot go, as their own people would turn
against them.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


{312}

_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 12, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just got a long letter from Herbert
Gladstone.  So far as I can make out, Mr. Gladstone has in reality
abandoned none of his projects.  But he is cornered by the fact that
the Irish will not aid him to get in without very definite assurances.

Healy writes to say that he will be here on Thursday, and that
nothing has been decided as to the course of the Irish.  He
suggests--if some agreement can be come to--saying not one word on
Home Rule, but turning the Government out upon a bye issue, Egypt,
Burmah, or anything.  I have written to ask whether the following
plan would be assented to:

(1) Turn out Government on bye issue.  (2) Have some sort of
temporary scheme for governing Ireland.  (3) Appoint some sort of
dilatory Commission.  (4) Bring in Bill next year.  I have explained
that this would only be possible if Mr. Gladstone could, in some way
or other, make it clear to the Irish what the Bill is to be, and also
that he would stand or fall on it.

This would give time to educate public opinion, and to have good
Bills on English subjects, whilst it would render it impossible for
the Conservatives to dissolve.

I don't know whether I could get the Irish to assent--supposing that
Mr. Gladstone does--but I should be sanguine of doing so.  They have
now so arranged their party that practically Healy, O'Brien,
Harrington, and Parnell can do precisely what they like.  Parnell I
put last, because he will agree to the decisions of the other
three.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--I write this, because I shall not be able to explain it to
you this evening before Randolph Churchill.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 15, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I should have been delighted to {313} dine with
you on the 31st, but I have already asked some people to dine with me
on that day.

Harcourt favoured me during an hour yesterday with his views.  They
are vague and misty.  He has got it into his head that the Government
mean a Coercion Bill.  If they are wise, I should think that they
would bring one in, and thus split up the Liberals at once.

Mr. Gladstone is evidently meditating some coup on his own account,
and to retire in a blaze of Irish fire-works.  He does not want to
wait, but if he acts, he holds that he must act at once.  He is by no
means in a good humour with his late colleagues.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Jan. 15, 1886.

MY DEAR MR. L.,--Herbert Gladstone is totally wrong about me.  I
neither saw nor heard from nor communicated with Churchill or any
member of the Government since the House rose--I except the Irish law
officers whom I meet daily in Court, but whom I never exchange a word
with on politics.  I am now just of the same opinion I always held,
but I don't see what we can do till your party move.  It would play
the devil with us were we to put the Liberals into office and then
have them to turn round on us, by proposing a settlement we could not
accept.  We cannot buy a pig in a poke.  You may say we could turn
them out at a minute's notice.  That seems very easy on paper by
counting parties, but if we are going to play this game successfully
the fewer ministries we turn out the better, as any naked exhibition
of our power in a gratuitous way would be sure to get you a majority
if you dissolved on that issue.  No, we prefer instead of having to
put you out, not to let you get in, until there's a straightforward
arrangement made.  At least this is what seems to me to be
commonsense.  I know nothing of the Tory plans.  Of course, if they
are fools enough to play your hand by proposing coercion our hands
may be forced--I only write on the assumption that they have sense.
What I say is let Mr. Gladstone satisfy Parnell and the whole thing
is settled.  {314} Was it from Grosvenor's experience and anecdotes
of the Irish party that the Duke of Westminster called us
_debauchees_?  Were we too lax in our attendance on Parliament to
please Lord Richard--prowling round St. John's Wood, when we ought to
have been braking his coach?  So we must please our fastidious
censors by arranging that the new party will sit up of nights in the
House, instead of sporting about town as His Grace suggests the old
one did.  Shall be over on Thursday.

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. Healy to Mr. Labouchere_

DUBLIN, Jan. 17, 1886.

MY DEAR L.,--I don't think I could say anything fresh until Thursday,
when I shall go fully into matters with you.  I quite feel the
difficulties of Mr. Gladstone's position and think our party fully
appreciate them, and would even strain points to obviate them, if
this can well be done by men in our straits.  However, I would point
out that on his side we have had nothing but a repudiation of the
principles attributed to him by the "Revelations," and this, _plus_
good intentions, is not sufficient ground for eighty-six men to
consult and decide on.  If no communication is made to Parnell, as I
think it ought to be, for our meeting, we shall probably let things
drift and do nothing.  I would have preferred all along not to have
been the repository of any views held by your Leaders, lest it might
be supposed I was trenching on the prerogatives of Parnell's
position, and now I think the time has come--if he is to be
approached at all for some communication to reach him otherwise than
through me.  If I can be shown any honourable basis, on which we
could vote your party into power, I shall rejoice and will press my
views strongly on our men.--Faithfully yours,

T. M. HEALY.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Jan. 22, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I send this to you by hand, {315} because if
you are inclined to go on with the plan you suggested, it will be
necessary to act.

Parnell is quite ready--without prejudice--that is to say, he says
that he does not absolutely assent, but thinks that he will, which
you know, with him--who is more hesitating than Fabius--means that he
will.  His lieutenants agree--although he does not know this.

But he says that, admitting that Mr. Gladstone can give no pledges,
he must know two things:

1. That Mr. Gladstone, if called upon by the Queen to form a
Government, will form one, _i.e._, if Goschen, Hartington, etc.,
decline to join, that he will not throw up the sponge, for, with
considerable point, he says that he prefers the Conservatives to a
Hartington Government, supported by the Moderate Liberals and
Conservatives, and you as a Radical.  Such a Government he might not
be able to turn out, and it might remain master of the situation.

2. He wants an understanding that if Mr. Gladstone comes in he will
act on his speech, and at once bring in his scheme for the Government
of Ireland.

I saw Herbert Gladstone, and he is to explain these two demands to
his father.

Herbert Gladstone says that his father would take office without
Hartington, but that his main difficulty is the Peers.  He hopes that
he will be able to get over this difficulty very soon.

I have replied that at any moment the Irish may break out, and that
if once we get to Procedure we shall all fall to pieces, and that the
determination of the Irish to fight against Procedure will very soon
make us too.

I begged J. Collings to put off his amendment, and told him that
perhaps I might get him some votes.  Randolph Churchill tried to
bring the general debate to an end last night, but this we stopped,
and Sexton moved the adjournment.

Grosvenor asked me how long the debate would last?  I said the Irish
meant to keep it up.  He said that he did not want them to.  I said
that they were not asking him whether he did or not, but that he was
asking me now long it would last.  He told me that he would prevent
the G.O.M. ever going for Home Rule, and then spoke about the Party.
He said, "You or _Truth_ {316} are making a great mistake.  You
assume that the Radicals constitute the majority of the Liberal
Party, but really the Whigs do."  I asked him what would happen if
the G.O.M. were to retire; he replied, a Whig Administration under
Hartington with you--that you and the Radicals would soon perceive
that you were not masters of the situation, etc.

I, of course, did not tell him about Collings's amendment, but it
will be very difficult to get him to whip for it, and you will have
to put your foot down about it.  Parnell agrees, if they are to be
bought off, that the Irish shall appear not to take much interest in
the matter, but to vote up before the Whigs know what is to occur.

Parnell is more than reasonable.  In his present mood, he is all for
a fair scheme.  His two _sine qua nons_ are, that there should be an
Assembly called a Parliament for local matters, and that he should
have the Police.  He says that it would be absolutely impossible for
him to keep down the Fenians without this, and that he is fully
determined not to accept the responsibility.  About the veto, etc.,
he will make concessions, and give any guarantees that are required.

He made a most conciliatory speech last night.  Before making it he
said, "There shall not be one word in it to which any one can
object."  He is very anxious to know about your feeling on the matter
of Mr. Gladstone's plans.

With regard to Ireland, he says that the people really cannot pay
their rents in some places, and that he is certain that if nothing be
done there will be rows in a few weeks.  But he is doing all that he
can to keep things quiet, and next week he will dissolve some of the
most bumptious of the Local Branch Leagues.

I told Herbert Gladstone that you had suggested to me the Collings
amendment.[2]  Could you not see Mr. Gladstone and push the matter?
I also told Herbert Gladstone that Grosvenor was not to be trusted.

I shall, I suppose, see you in the House this afternoon.  Never shall
we have a better chance, but if we do not use our chances, they will
disappear.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

{317}

_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., Feb. 15, 1886.[3]

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--... As regards out future policy I can say
nothing at present, but I think that a closer inspection of the
difficulties in the way has brought Mr. Gladstone nearer to me than
he was when he first came to London.  If Parnell is impracticable my
hope is that we may all agree to give way to the Tories and let them
do the coercion which will then be necessary.  They will be supported
for this purpose by a clear majority in the country and probably in
the House.  As for passing Home Rule resolutions at the present time,
I utterly disbelieve in its possibility.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_[4]

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, March 31, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--There would be much joy in the Radical heaven
if things could be hit off with you, and they would all be ready to
put Elijah's mantle on you if they could come to some agreement as to
this damned Irish question.

The feeling is, I think, this: they are in favour of Home Rule, and
do not particularly care about details, provided that the scheme
settles the matter.  They do not love the Irish, but hate them, and
would give them Home Rule on the Gladstone or Canada pattern to get
rid of them.  Home Rule, therefore, whatever the Whigs may say, will
be carried.  They are dead against any employment of English credit
for the Irish landlords or Irish tenants.  This--whatever the detail
of Mr. Gladstone's plan may be--will be lost.

I rather suspect that the revered G.O.M. is playing a game; he is
bound to Spencer, therefore he is to bring in his Land Bill.  But, if
it meets with disapproval, is it likely that he will throw {318} up
the Home Rule sponge for the sake of Spencer and the Irish landlords?
Will he not rather say that it is a detail of a great project, and
not an essential one?

Now, just see what would be the position if we could act with you on
these lines?  The Whigs would be cleared out.  If Gladstone is
beaten, we would soon upset a Hartington cum Conservative Government.
We might have grandiose revolutions--giving cows to agriculturists,
and free breakfast tables to artisans.  We should be against Tories,
Whigs, and Lords.  With you to the front we should win at an
election, or if not at once, later on.  There never was such an
opportunity to establish a Radical party, and to carry all before it.
Is it worth while wrecking this beautiful future, for the sake of
some minor details about Irish Government?  You may depend upon it,
that the Irish, if not granted Gladstone's Home Rule, will never
assent to anything else.  Coercion would follow, and this would give
power to the Tory Whigs for years.  For my part, I would coerce the
Irish, grant them Home Rule, or do anything with them, in order to
make the Radical programme possible.  Ireland is but a pawn in the
game.  If they make fools of themselves when left to themselves, it
would be easy to treat them as the North did the South, rule by the
sword, and suppress all representation.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

REFORM CLUB, April 7, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Any number of Radicals expressed their hope
this afternoon in the House that you would see your way to approve of
Mr. Gladstone's amended Bill.  They are all most anxious that you
should be the Elisha of the aged Elijah, and aid in getting this
Irish question out of the way.

I believe that the old Parliamentary Hand means to throw out that, on
details, discussion can take place in Committee.  The line, I hear,
on Excise and Customs is: Do you want the Irish Members? if not, you
must give them Excise and Customs; if you do, this is not necessary.

I was asked to sound Parnell a couple of days ago about {319}
annexing Belfast and the adjacent country to England.  I did not see
him, but I learnt that he is strongly against it.  The project is, I
think, now abandoned, for the Scotch seem likely to go straight
without it, and the Belfast people do not want it.

To the best of my belief the real number that Hartington has got is
sixty.  We cannot make out about Ponsonby calling on Hartington,
unless the Queen is anticipating events, and sounding him about what
she must do, if asked to dissolve.  Randolph tells me that Lord
Salisbury called upon him to settle details about the debate.  I
doubt whether this is precisely true.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., April 8, 1886.[5]

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--Nothing would give me greater pleasure than, to
come back to the fold.  Unfortunately I am told to-day on the highest
authority that the scheme to be proposed to-night will not meet the
main objections which led to my resignation.  I am very sorry, as I
was and am in the most conciliatory mood.--Yours very truly,

J. L. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, April 15, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Some friends of yours are urging that there
should be an interview between you and Mr. Gladstone.  They asked me
what I thought?  I said that it was doubtful whether this would lead
to much beyond vague talk by Mr. Gladstone.

You objected to (1) Members being excluded, (2) Magistrates not being
appointed by England, (3) Excise and Customs.  No. 3 is given up.
No. 1 is an open question, which is practically yielded.  There
remains, therefore, only No. 2.  As regards the two Orders, I presume
that Mr. Gladstone alluded to them, when he said that he did not
himself deem guarantees necessary.  {320} There is no reason
therefore why we should not throw them out in Committee, or if they
pass, and there is a Radical majority in Parliament later on,
reconsider the matter.  So the Bill has been remodelled on your
pattern.

As regards the Land Bill,[6] I hear that Lord Spencer says that if it
is thrown out in the House of Commons, he will not complain.  Mr.
Gladstone therefore avoids trouble by bringing it in, and as the
Conservatives cannot well vote for it, I am sure that we can throw it
out on the Second Reading.

Your coming over would ensure the passing of the Irish Government
Bill; it would go to the Lords.  Then Queen, Lords, and Whigs would
be on one side, and the Radicals on the other.  Mr. Gladstone must
soon come to an end.  You would be our leader.  The Whigs would be
hopelessly bogged.  Radicalism would be triumphant.  Does not this
tempt you?  It really does seem such a pity with the promised land
before us, that we should wander off into the wilderness, on account
of small differences of detail.  There is no scheme which the mind of
man could contrive that would not be open to criticism.  A better one
than that of Mr. Gladstone is conceivable, but show me how any body
of men would be found to agree upon any other scheme?  There is
nothing more easy than Constitution making, except criticising the
Constitutions made by others, and there always are, and always will
be, a number of people to go against any scheme.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., April 17, 1886.

No. 1.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I really made a great effort last night to come
to an arrangement, and whether it is successful or not depends now on
Mr. Gladstone's inclination to meet me half way--rather perhaps I
should say it depends upon the action of yourself and other Radical
members who agree with my views and are in a position to bring
sufficient pressure to bear upon the Whigs to make reconciliation a
certainty.

{321}

I am quite convinced, from the information that reaches me, that
unless some such reconciliation is effected the Liberal party will be
hopelessly divided at the general election.

The majority will very likely go with the party machinery and with
Mr. Gladstone, but a sufficient number will stand aloof to make
success impossible.

We cannot leave the matter uncertain till after the 2nd reading.  I
know enough of Parliamentary tactics to be sure that in that case we
shall get nothing, but be beaten in detail on every division.  All I
ask is that Mr. Gladstone should give some sufficient assurance that
he will consent--first, to the retention of the Irish representation
at Westminster on its present footing according to population, and at
the same time the maintenance of Imperial control over Imperial
taxation in Ireland; and secondly, that he should be willing to
abandon all the so-called safeguards in connection with the
Constitution of the new legislative body in Dublin.

You can get this assurance if you like, and the matter is therefore
in your hands.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, April 17, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I made it quite clear and distinct both to
Herbert Gladstone and to Arnold Morley what you wanted, after seeing
you.  Herbert is to tackle his father on the subject.  I have no
doubt that we can arrange the matter.  Arnold Morley would hold that,
anyhow, you would vote for the Bill.  I said that this was not quite
so certain, and that your proposal was a reasonable one.  Herbert
Gladstone said that his father did not in the least undervalue your
support, and considered that your present attitude was paralysing the
party outside Parliament.  Some friends of yours were getting up a
memorandum to Mr. Gladstone about the Bill, asking him to promise
this and that.  Do pray stop them.  If once we get to memorandums we
shall have counter ones from the Whigs, and they put Mr. Gladstone in
a hole.

Herbert Gladstone says that the real _bona fide_ difficulty of his
father is, that he cannot devise a scheme.  Could you not let {322}
me have one?  This would settle this nonsense.  How would it be if
proxies were allowed in respect to the Irish?--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--What day is your meeting at Birmingham?


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., April 17, 1886.

No. 2.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--Since writing you I have received your card.  It
is necessary that I should say that nothing will induce me to vote
for the second reading, unless I get some assurance of Mr.
Gladstone's willingness to maintain the Irish representation.  I do
not think there is any practical difficulty in the way greater than,
or as great as, the difficulties already attempted to be overcome in
the Bill.  I am told that Morley stands in the way of a
reconciliation as he considers himself pledged by his Chelmsford
speech to the exclusion of the Irish members from Westminster.

As regards the memorandum, I understand that it is only to the Whips
for their information, and not for Mr. Gladstone.  I think it may
safely be allowed to go on.  I believe a number of the Whips would be
quite willing to sign it and to accept the compromise.

My meeting at Birmingham is on Wednesday.  I will try and maintain a
conciliatory attitude, but the position becomes increasingly
difficult.  I am bothered out of my life to attend Radical meetings
in different parts of the country.  I have already received
invitations from Manchester, Rochdale, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Woolwich,
and other places.

I need not say that I do not want to start on a campaign unless it is
absolutely necessary.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM, April 19, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I write you a line to catch the post.  Herbert
Gladstone told me that he had talked with his {323} father on the
matter last Saturday.  The difficulty of Mr. Gladstone seems to be
this: he has no great objection himself to the Irish Members sitting
here.  But he does not like to consult his Cabinet, for fear of
resignations, and does not like to give a pledge without consulting
them.  He considers that he has already said a good deal in his
speeches to show how open his mind is.

Now, would it not be possible for us all to vote for the Second
Reading, and to announce that we shall go for the Members sitting in
Committee?  It is true that we risk being beaten.  But, according to
the Whips--and so far as I can make it out they are correct--there is
a majority for the Bill on the Second Reading.  In the main the
Members will vote for the principle of Home Rule on the Second
Reading, however opposed they may be to certain details.  The
estimate is that this majority will be from fifteen to twenty.  As a
rule, however, doubtfuls gravitate into the party fold, so it
possibly will be more.  It cannot, however, be sufficiently large to
make the Government independent of us in Committee.  We shall be the
masters of the situation, and Mr. Gladstone will completely bleed to
death instead of being murdered by us, for the odds are that the Bill
will never come out of Committee.

I venture, therefore, to think that, seeing the difficulties of Mr.
Gladstone giving any specific pledge, seeing the tone of Members, and
seeing the objections to going against the vast majority of Radicals
and with the Whigs, it would be well to rest satisfied, if Mr.
Gladstone will distinctly agree to leave the matter an open question.
I think that we can get a majority of Radicals both on the "Member"
question and on the "Order" question.  The course I propose seems to
be the best practically.

We have a meeting at the St. James's Hall, on Thursday, at which I am
to take the Chair.  The Resolution is conceived in the above spirit,
and I have already had rows with some of the Members who are to
attend, because they say it looks like knocking under to Chamberlain.
It assents to Second Reading, but trusts that the measure will be
modified in a democratic sense in Committee.  This we shall carry.

I do not myself believe in Morley's resignation, nor indeed in
Harcourt's.  It is possible, however, that the Lord Chancellor will
be firm, though I understand that he likes his salary.  {324}
Supposing that you voted against the Second Reading with ten
followers.  This would be a tactical fiasco.  If, however, you
carried all the Radicals with you--or almost all--in Committee, this
would be a tactical success, whilst the Radicals would be delighted
with your acting with them on the first, and would act with you on
the second.  Had we begun sooner, I think that we could have got up a
pronouncement against the Bill, if the point were not yielded.  But
most of the Radicals have now compromised themselves.

I talked to Hartington and some of the Whigs this evening.  They
seemed to me rather down-hearted.  I suspect that they are not
getting the support that they anticipated.  This is always the case
with a big cave.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM, April 19, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Your letters will go to Mr. Gladstone this
evening.  If he is wise he will make terms about the Members sitting.
I hear that he was very much put out about your speech, and no one
dared to speak to him before he left for Hawarden.

John Morley is going to speak on Wednesday.  He will be conciliatory,
and say, "If a plan can be devised, etc."

Mr. Gladstone should ask you for your plan, as he says that he cannot
make one.

I don't well see how he can promise to go against the guarantees.  He
has already said that they are inserted for weaker brethren.  They
will, if retained, and if we vote against them, keep the Irish on our
side.

Don't forget that if you do not get what you want, there is still the
Third Reading.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM, April 20, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--You will see our resolution in the _Daily News_
of to-day.  Do you see your way to write me a little {325} letter, in
reply to a supposed one from me asking you what you think of the
resolution and expressing a hope that the Radical party will be
united, etc.  It would not do if you were to say that you should vote
against the Second Reading, but could you not blink this--say
something about the principle of the Bill being the principle of
justice, and that in Committee the Radicals must unite to insist upon
the admission of Members and the abrogation of the orders.  If you
could not absolutely do this, you might leave it vague, allowing some
to think that you will vote for the Second Reading and others to
think that you will not.

I am writing to Dilke to ask him if he can see his way to write a
similar letter.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, April 21, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--The Resolution which you send me, and which is
to be proposed at your meeting to-morrow night, seems well designed
to unite the Radical party.  We are all fortunately agreed that the
principle of Home Rule in some shape or another must be accepted, and
we only differ, if at all, as to the methods by which it is to be
carried into effect.  For myself, I firmly believe that Home Rule may
be conceded in such a form as to join the three Kingdoms more closely
together.  On the other hand, I fear that the effect of the Bill in
its present shape would be to bring about absolute separation at no
distant date.  I hope the Government may see its way to accept the
modifications which Radicals advocate, and if any assurance to this
effect is given I shall gladly support the Second Reading in the hope
that minor improvements may be effected in it.--I am, yours truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, April 22, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--My speech last night will show you {326} where I
am.  I cannot say that I am surprised at the desire of the friends of
the Government that objectors should accept the Second Reading and
reserve their opposition for the Committee stage; but the advice is
too transparent and cannot possibly be accepted.

I do not believe there is really the least difficulty in allowing the
Irish Members to come to Westminster and there to vote only on
questions which are not referred to them at Dublin.  John Morley's
difficulties are childish and perfectly insignificant as compared
with the difficulties which Mr. Gladstone has already surmounted in
the preparation of his Bill.

Bradford election shows what will be the end of it all.  In spite of
the large Irish vote now transferred to the Liberal candidate the
majority of 1500 has dwindled to half that number!  I am being
bullied to attend Radical meetings in all parts of the country, but
at present I have replied that I am not willing to undertake anything
in the nature of a campaign against Gladstone.  At the same time I am
pressing all my correspondents to try to bring about an arrangement
by mutual concession.  I confess I am not very sanguine of
success.--Believe me, yours truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, April 24, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I cannot authorise the change you suggest in my
letter, which I only wrote as you asked me for it, without much idea
that it would be useful.

I think the chance of any reunion is very slight.  I certainly could
not agree to vote for the second reading without preliminary
assurances as to retention of the Irish representation.

I have no doubt that the result of my action will involve temporary
unpopularity with the Radical party, but they will probably want my
help again at some future time, and will then exhibit as short a
memory and as little consistency as they are doing now on the
question of Irish Government.

{327}

In the meantime the honour of leading a party so uncertain appears to
me less clear than it did some months ago.--Believe me, yours very
truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Sir Charles Dilke_

POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM, April 24, 1886.

MY DEAR DILKE,--Chamberlain sent me a letter for the St. James's Hall
meeting, but it came too late.  It would not, however, have helped
matters, for he sticks to the phrase "the Government accepts."  I had
a letter from him this morning, much in the same tone, also one from
Morley, who says that Chamberlain's speech is an attempt to coerce
the Government, and that they won't stand coercion.

I have been trying to get Chamberlain to agree to vote for the Second
Reading, on condition that the Government makes the admission of
Irish in Parliament a _bona fide_ open question, on which the House
may vote without official leading and without the Whips telling.  If
he would do so, this would reconcile these two babies.  I really
don't see how Gladstone can accept modifications, before Committee,
urged in this _sic volo sic jubes_ style.  Could you suggest from
Chamberlain (as from yourself) that he might be satisfied with the
open question.  He says that he would be beaten in Committee.  But I
don't see this--and even if it were so, he would have many
opportunities hereafter to get back his friends, the Irish, if he
really wants them.  The great point is to find some _modus vivendi_
which would keep the Radicals together, and to this he ought to
subordinate much, instead of making difficulties.  The Radicals do
not take his point about the objections to fight in Committee, and
there will be a row about his bullying the G.O.M.  On so big an
issue, his position is untenable--the Whig one is more reasonable.
If only once a negotiation could be started upon the open question
basis, Mr. Gladstone would manage to dodge him into voting for the
Second Reading, and this is all that is wanted in Chamberlain's own
interest.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


{328}

_Sir Charles Dilke to Mr. Labouchere_

PYRFORD, WOKING (undated).

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--It looks as though the Second Reading will be
rejected, and, if Mr. Gladstone appeals to the constituencies, it
will, I fancy, be a rout.  But I quite agree as to the great
importance of patching up the fued between Chamberlain and Mr.
Gladstone, for the sake of everybody and everything, and I shall
continue to do all I can in that sense.  I had a letter from
Chamberlain as to Ireland on Saturday to which I replied.  I think my
reply will bring another, and on that I can try again in your
sense.--Yours,

CHAS. W. DILKE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM, April 24, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Naturally the Radical Associations want to hear
you, for even so humble an individual as I am gets a dozen letters
every morning asking me to go to meetings at all sorts of places.

I think that the feeling in the country is this:

They regard the principle of the Bill to be a Domestic Legislation
for Ireland.  The Radicals are in the main opposed to "orders" and to
exclusion of Irish.  They do not like the idea of Radicals voting
with the Whigs and Tories against the principle, and the view that it
would be impossible for successful opposition to take place in
Committee against the "orders" and the "admission" is too complicated
for their understandings.  In fact they don't want a Party division
to be spoilt, and wish to humble the Tories and the Whigs.

Morley writes to me to-day to say that your speech means coercion.  I
have replied that in all things there must be a give and take.

I am sure that if you can get an assurance that the question of the
admission is to be a _bona fide_ open one, that we should win on
it--assuming that the Conservatives go for it.  Such an arrangement
avoids the necessity of either side marching under the harrow.

{329}

Once the question left open, in the interval between the Second
Reading and Committee, we could get up a strong agitation for the
"admission," whilst no one would be opposing us, and you would have
all the credit of the alteration.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, April 30, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I think that you must now see that the Irish
Bills in their present form are doomed.

I have a list of 111 Liberals pledged against Second Reading.  Of
these I know of 59 who have publicly communicated their intentions to
their constituents.  I believe most of the rest are safe, but, making
all allowances for desertions, there is not much chance of forcing
the Second Reading through.

I know of many men who are pledged like yourself to vote for
amendments in Committee, and some who are pledged to vote against
Second Reading if the amendments are not carried.

The Land Bill has no friends at all.

It is difficult to say what my own following as distinguished from
Hartington's is, but I reckon that something like fifty would vote
for Second Reading, if my amendments were conceded.

It is time that a final decision was taken.  The fight is growing
hotter every day and the division of the party will be irretrievable
if the controversy is pushed much further.  I am not surprised at the
action of the Caucuses.  I know them pretty well, and they consist of
the most active and thoroughgoing partisans.  But it is the men who
stay away who turn elections, and there will be a larger abstention
on this Irish question than we have ever had before in the history of
the Liberal party.

I believe the issue is in the hands of Radicals like yourself.  If
you exert the necessary pressure the Bills may be recast.  Much has
been done by their introduction.  The Party as a whole has accepted
their principle of Home Rule, and we might come to an agreement about
the details.  But this will be out {330} of the question if we go
into opposite lobbies on the Second Reading.

There is no necessity to withdraw the Bill at once.  If the
Government will give the necessary assurance of amendments to retain
Irish Representation and Imperial control of taxation, we might carry
Second Reading and then the Bills could be committed _pro forma_ for
the necessary changes, or withdrawn for the session.

All our people would be delighted at the postponement of the
dissolution, and in the interval we might kiss and be friends.  I do
not suppose the Chief will listen to this, but I have thought it
right to make one more effort before the battle is finally
engaged--Yours truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, May 1, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have been doing my best to get some sort of
_modus vivendi_ in which the honours of war would be divided.

I had a letter from Morley yesterday in which he promised to be most
conciliatory at Glasgow.  He said:

"I don't think there is a pin of difference between you and me as to
the desirableness of passing the Second Reading at almost any cost.
But Chamberlain wants us to go down on our knees, and this cannot be
done for the money."

He had previously suggested to me what he said, I see, at Glasgow
about the Irish Members coming back in three years.  I replied that
this might possibly form a basis, but that it must in this case be
understood that they came back without any further legislature on the
subject.  To this he demurred, but I think that he would not make
difficulties.

I do not dispute your figures, but I would point out to you that some
of your fifty can be manipulated.  As a rule a big cave does not hold
together.  Some of its Members in the end take refuge in voting for a
Party Bill, and give as a pretext some {331} phrase used by the
Minister for having done so, and in the G.O.M. you have a past master
in these sort of catching phrases.

I was brought up in diplomacy.  When two countries send each other
their ultimatums, a third country desirous of peace proposes
something between the two, and peace is made upon its adoption by the
belligerents.

I have been suggesting that Mr. Gladstone should agree to leave the
question an open one, the word "open" being understood to signify
that the Whips do not tell, and that every one--Ministers
included--should be allowed to vote as they please.  I don't well see
how the G.O.M. could go further.  Although we may call it a detail,
the exclusion of Irish Members is really a fundamental principle in
the Bill, and were he absolutely to agree to change it, this would
be, as Morley says, going down on his knees to you who, whether right
or wrong, are the head centre of the Radical minority, and not of the
majority.  Would you, yourself, eat humble pie to this extent?
Moreover, I think that, if he had to submit this proposal to his
Cabinet, there would be suspicions, and the Cabinet just now can
hardly stand another split.

I have never gathered that Mr. Gladstone himself is opposed to the
retention of the Irish.  All that he says is, "The problem is a
difficult one: show me a good plan and I have no objection to adopt
it."

There is another way of meeting you, but I don't know whether Mr.
Gladstone would accept it.  It is this.  Leave matters as they now
are with respect to the Irish Members, by eliminating all clauses
excluding them.  Their position would thus be left to future
legislation on the subject.  They would in this case sit as they are,
and vote upon Imperial and English local issues until the entire
question is treated in a separate Bill.

A third plan might be that of John Morley's, to exclude them for
three years, and for them at the end to come back as they are now,
unless any alteration during the interval be legislatively made in
their position.

Parnell is very much opposed to the retention.  He puts his
opposition upon the difficulty of getting Irishmen to come over.  He
asks whether there are to be two separate elections, or only {332}
one.  In the first case, he complains of the expense and of the
difficulty of finding men, in the second he asks how men can sit and
vote in both Parliaments when they are both sitting at the same time.

Do pray be conciliatory in the matter, and be satisfied with the
substance.  If the "open question" were granted, I am sure that you
would have a majority of Radicals, who agree with you in the main,
but think that they ought to regard the Second Reading at the
conservation of the principle of a domestic Legislature for Ireland.
After all, a General Election with a Radical split would either give
Mr. Gladstone a majority against you, or would end in a Conservative
victory, neither of which would be a gain to you.

I take Brand's constituents of Stroud, and the constituency of
Ipswich as specimens of public feeling, for I have been at both of
them this week.

At Stroud we had a meeting.  The Whigs did not attend.  Winterbotham
took the chair.  He announced that he should vote against the Bill.
There were groans and "three cheers for Gladstone."  I went for the
Bill, but explained that it was desirable that the Irish Members
should be retained, and that this was your view.  There were shouts
of "let him vote with Gladstone on the Second Reading."  At the end
some overzealous ass proposed "three cheers for Brand."  This was met
with a chorus of howls and groans.  I enquired later on what was the
real position, and was told that all the Radicals were against Brand,
but that there would be no use calling upon him to resign, as about
five hundred Whigs would stick to him, and these with the
Conservatives would secure his return.

At Ipswich the meeting was entirely for the Second Reading.  I
praised up Collins, etc.  They cheered his name, but whilst dead
against the Land Bill, went for the other Bill, and did not seem to
care much for details.  Two of the County Members spoke.  They had
been returned--mainly through Collins's exertions--but they told me
that the agricultural labourers wanted the question settled, and did
not care much how it was settled.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

{333}

_P.S._--You have never let me have your "plan" in reply to the
observation, that the idea is good in theory, but that the practical
difficulties are insuperable.


_Telegram, Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Labouchere_

HAWARDEN, May 1, 1886.

Herbert Gladstone expected from Scotland to-night letter from me to
Midlothian will shortly appear.[7]

GLADSTONE.

  LABOUCHERE,
  10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, S.W.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM, May 1, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just got this telegram.  If Mr.
Gladstone has not told you that he is going to write his letter,
don't please let it out.  I sent him yesterday your figures as to the
division, and preached as strongly as I could conciliation, telling
him that some sort of give-and-take _modus vivendi_ should be arrived
at, otherwise the Bill might be lost.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, May 3, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Mr. Gladstone has your ultimatumest of
ultimatums.  My impression is that he will assent.  I had a talk with
Morley this morning, and knocked it well into his head that the
question, as you say, is to be or not to be as regards the Bill.

{334}

The decision will depend very much upon the figures.  Of course they
don't take yours _au pied de la lettre_, but they evidently are
thoroughly uncomfortable about them.  They admit that the feeling
throughout the country is in favour of the Irish remaining.  Harcourt
blustered fearfully in the Cabinet about his intentions.  Perhaps it
might be well if you were to write him a letter.  If we can bring
about an arrangement, it will be a great thing for the party--put
aside the Bill.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 3, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I am pretty sure now that your terms will be
accepted.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 3, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Since writing to you Arnold Morley asked me to
come into his room.  He said that he had been shown your letter, and
wished to ask me whether I thought that the terms were the lowest
that you would take.  I said "Yes," that I thought they were.  Was I
quite certain that you would not vote for the bill if there were no
concession?  Quite certain.  Was it to be understood that you would
vote for it if Mr. Gladstone said that the Government would support
or bring in a clause granting representation to Ireland, leaving it
for Committee to say how many constituted representation?  I said,
that I understood this, but that he had better consult your letter.

I see that there would be a row at once if Mr. Gladstone were to go
into details, so I should think that it would be better to leave them
alone.  I told him that moreover Members (one had) had told me that
they would only vote for the Bill if you were satisfied, and that he
must perceive that the Radicals were in favour of the Irish remaining
here.  He admitted this, and {335} promised to explain this to Mr.
Gladstone; he had, he said, in fact represented this to him ten days
ago, only then your terms were not so limited as now.

Perhaps it might be well if you would write me a line (not in answer
to this, or as though I had written to you) urging a speedy
settlement--for Mr. Gladstone is apt to wait for something to turn up
to his advantage.

His letter to his electors is good clap-trap.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

BIRMINGHAM, May 4, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--My list alters every day as I receive further
reports from my correspondents.  I have only had notice of two
deserters, and the total figures now stand as follows:

  Promised against,  133
  Absolutely pledged, 84


I have not heard anything from Mr. Gladstone, but have written to
Harcourt as you suggest.  I am unable to make more of Mr. Gladstone's
manifesto than of many other of his public utterances, but I note one
point with satisfaction.  He says in effect that the retention of
Irish members is a mere detail: to me it is vital, but if it is only
a detail to him surely there is no excuse for his not publicly giving
way.--Believe me, yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

  HIGHBURY, MOOR GREEN,
  BIRMINGHAM, May 4, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I have a number of enquiries as to what I am
going to do.  I thought I had made it all clear in my speeches, but I
reply to every one that I shall certainly vote against Second Reading
unless I can get satisfactory assurances beforehand; and that I will
not vote for Second Reading unless I know that the Government will
keep the Irish Representation {336} on its present footing.  That
means, of course, either 103 members or a reduction according to
population.  Any other representation would be illogical and absurd.
The interest of Ireland in Imperial questions is in proportion to
population and not to her share of total taxation.  It might be in
proportion to her share of the taxation for _Imperial_ objects.
Surely the best plan would be to accept your suggestion and for the
Government to agree to drop the clauses about Representation at
Westminster, leaving it an open question for Committee whether there
should be any reduction, or any restriction on their liberty of
speaking and voting on non-Imperial subjects.

But will not Mr. Gladstone be content to secure the affirmation of
the principle by Second Reading, vote, and then commit the Bill _pro
forma_ for amendments or withdraw it for the session?

If anything is to be done it should be at once, otherwise I doubt if,
even with my assistance, the Second Reading can be carried.  The
opposition is more numerous than I supposed, and is growing.--Yours
very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

In a previous letter I have sent you my latest figures.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 6, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Morley would have agreed to leave out the
clause.  Mr. Gladstone would not.  He has elaborated some alternative
scheme, which is to come before the Cabinet to-morrow.

From your personal standpoint I should say "take it."  It will be a
substantial concession, and will be made to you.  If you do not, very
possibly several of your followers will accept it.

I really don't believe that you will get more.  It will fully
recognise the paramount character of the Imperial Parliament, enable
Irish to vote on taxation, Imperial matters, etc., and I doubt
whether the feeling is in favour of their voting on English issues.

Anyhow, you get your principle recognised.  The Bill, if it passes
here, will be thrown out in the Lords.  We shall go to {337} the
country, not on details of any Bill, but on a domestic legislature
for Ireland, and many things may happen before next year.--Yours
truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--Don't say anything about this yet, for it is not definite,
and won't be until to-morrow's Cabinet.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 7, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--The Cabinet yesterday was not a formal one;
there is to be one to-morrow.  Some, I understand, are in favour of
cutting out the clause respecting the exclusion of the Irish, and
leaving the matter to future legislation--others suggest alternative
schemes.  Of this I am certain, it may be that terms will not be
agreed to before the discussion on the Second Reading, but, provided
that the Bill cannot be carried without you and your friends, the
point will be yielded.  I regard therefore the matter as done, so
don't pray act as though it were not.  Any one takes a certain time
to make grimaces before he consumes his humble pie, and does not gulp
it down, so long as he has any hope of being able to avoid doing
so.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, May 8, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just been reporting progress at Downing
Street.  Wolverton, who was there, quite agreed that if you want
ninety Irish, you ought to have them; and, in fact, the simplest
thing is to leave the lot as they are.

It was admitted that the Bill would require modifications, if the
Irish are to sit.  Objection was taken to our collecting all revenues
on the score that the presence of the hated Saxon throughout the
country would put the backs of the Irish up.

You will perhaps remember that Parnell entirely objects to the amount
of the quota, and so, by showing him that he will lose by the whisky
system, we might get him to unite in insisting upon an alteration.

{338}

The idea of Herschell--which I put forward as mine, and said that you
did not seem to object--took.  If they can hit it off in the Cabinet
by four o'clock, they are to let me know, and I will send you a
telegram.

Things being as they are, I go to Hastings, with _Thérèse Raquin_ to
read in the train, with the hope that we are again a happy family.

Don't with Herschell make it too clear that the food on which our
friends are browsing is humble pie.  The substance is everything, and
no sooner will it be known that you mean to vote for the Second
Reading, and that Mr. Gladstone knocks the bottom out of his tub as
regards the exclusion of the Irish, than the Tories and the Whigs
will point the moral.

I read out the words which Mr. Gladstone was to use in his speech.
"What then are the modifications?" they asked.  I said that as he was
not wanted to specify them, they ought to rest and be happy with the
phrase.  I said that all that I had written down was in no sort of
way binding on you, and, so far as you were concerned, was
non-existing, and that they were to be treated as my own pious
opinions.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--I said that I gathered that you would not be in this
afternoon, but to-morrow morning.


_Telegram, Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

May 8, 1886.

Stansfield who was in train says all went right at meeting this
afternoon Herschell not there thought to be out of town if you do not
hear from him this is why.

LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Arnold Morley to Mr. Labouchere_

12 DOWNING STREET, S.W., May 8, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--Herschell had to leave town before the end of
the Cabinet, and on his return on Monday he will be sitting in the
House of Lords.

Perhaps later on it may be arranged.

{339}

Would you or would you not telegraph to him to explain his not
coming?--Yours truly,

ARNOLD MORLEY.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

Sunday, May 9, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--On coming back here from Hastings, I have found
this letter from Arnold Morley.  I think that the "cave in" is
complete, and if you only seize the first opportunity to accentuate
it and to recognise it, your triumph will be complete--details are,
comparatively speaking, unimportant.  If you get into a discussion
about them you lose your triumph.  You went for "full
representation," and, as I understand it, you get it.  At the meeting
at Hastings a speaker alluded to you--dead silence.  The man next me
said, "A few months ago they would have all cheered."  When I spoke I
said that I thought Mr. Gladstone would agree to Irish
Representatives, in which case I thought that you would vote for
Second Reading upon which the audience cheered again and again.  This
shows how the cat jumps even in a place like Hastings, which is not
very Radical.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Sunday, May 9,1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Morley has just been here.  He don't want you
to be told more than that you will be satisfied.  I told him that I
had seen you, and had said generally that you were mistaken in
supposing that the Cabinet did not intend to yield, and that I had
gathered from you that if they did, you would probably vote for the
Second Reading.  They are, I find, in some trouble about their
definite statement about the third point--the right of the Irish to
come here by requisition of the Dublin Parliament on all Imperial
matters.  They are prepared to elaborate some plan for them to
legislate--or to have the power to legislate--upon such matters, but
they have not yet themselves made out the plan to their satisfaction,
nor can they agree as to what is Imperial and what is not.  Mr.
Gladstone therefore will {340} be rather guarded on this head, but he
will (says Morley) make it quite clear that they accept the
principle, and they _bona fide_ are prepared to give it effect.  They
are, moreover, rather afraid of being too definite, because they have
not seen nor heard anything from Parnell, and will not have the
opportunity to do so before the debate commences.  They assert that
practically representation and taxation involve pretty well all
Imperial measures--and this is to a great extent the fact, for the
Crown declares war, makes treaties, etc.  Anyhow they are quite ready
to meet you on this, and if you think that Mr. Gladstone's words are
too vague, or can suggest any others, Herschell will consult with
you.  Morley says that they are not going to take the debate next
week, _de die in diem_.  So if needed, anything can be cleared up on
Tuesday.  But he, of course, is anxious that you should declare your
acceptance of the Bill as soon as possible.

I finally told him to impress upon his great chief, that he must be
clear.  I really think that they are fully prepared to satisfy
you.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., Sunday.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--What does your letter mean?  It seems to me that
you are being bamboozled by the old Parliamentary hand.  Both Mr.
Gladstone and Herbert Gladstone told people yesterday that they were
not going to give way.

I am not going to leave the matter to Committee; unless the
assurances to-morrow are precise and definite, I shall certainly vote
against the Second Reading.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Monday, May 10, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Morley did not leave until one o'clock this
morning, when I had a letter posted to you.  I think that I put it
perhaps too strongly about the "On Imperial matters," but I had been
fighting for the exact words, and was cross {341} about their not
being precisely as I understood they were to be.  Morley vowed that
they would be.  I said that they were not.  Practically they are.  I
really do believe that they have not got a definition of "imperial,"
and they only do not want to bind themselves to the Irish Parliament
being obliged to _demand_ representation.  I said "peace and war."
Morley replied, "this belongs to the Crown, and is raised by
supplies."  I suggested "a commercial reciprocity treaty."  He
replied, "this too is in the hands of the Crown, and is raised by a
change in taxation."

I do not think that there is any _mala fides_, but a desire to avoid
hostile criticism, on "what is Imperial."  Morley vowed to me again
and again that there was no intention to dodge, and that having given
up the principle they asked for nothing better than to make it full.
I suggested, "all questions not excluded by the Bill."  He replied,
"state what questions, not involved in taxation, you mean, and show
where one does not overlap the other."

As regards the Committee, they still hold to it, and this will cover
most of the questions.

Please think this over, and if you can suggest any definite line of
demarcation, and will give it me in the House, I will let Mr.
Gladstone have it before he speaks.

My last words to Morley were: "Chamberlain is quite fair on his side:
he has a natural distrust of the old Parliamentary hand, and will not
be humbugged.  He no doubt will not quarrel over mere words, but he
must have the substance.  Knock this well into Mr. Gladstone's head."

I write you this, because, thinking it over, I may have exaggerated a
thing in which there is nothing important.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

HOUSE OF COMMONS, Monday, May 10, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I gave Arnold Morley three questions to take to
Mr. Gladstone.

1. Would he propose the retention of Irish Members for all questions
of taxation?

2. Would they come here like English Members?

{342}

3. Would taxation include everything which was involved in Imperial
taxation affecting them?

He answered "yes" to all, but said that in regard to taxation he had
suddenly thought that the tea tax is renewed every year, and that he
had not put this before the Cabinet, but he personally had no sort of
objection to their voting on it, and did not suppose that the Cabinet
had.

I suggested that Herschell should see you.  He writes to say that he
will be engaged all Tuesday and suggests Wednesday.

I have told them--which they all know--that the speech has produced
the most deplorable effect, and that you are quite right in being
indignant; and that unless they definitely make up their minds to
explain everything satisfactorily, the Bill is lost.  This they admit.

I am urging on them to agree to introduce themselves a clause about
"other Imperial matters," and I tell them that unless they are frank
and yield on such points it is utterly vain to hope to win over you
or any one else.

The funny thing is that Mr. Gladstone has walked off under the
conviction that his speech was most satisfactory.--Yours,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Telegram, Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 11, 1886.

I think they are quite conscious of their mistake, and ready to
capitulate along the line.  Would it not be possible to see the
emissary to-morrow or Thursday?

LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., May 11, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--In the remarkable speech of the Prime Minister
last night,[8] nothing impressed me more than the passages in which
he spoke of the advantages of public declarations in the House of
Commons as contrasted with the inconvenience of underground
negotiations carried on elsewhere.

{343}

Under all circumstances you will, I am sure, approve my decision not
to enter on any further private discussions of the proposals of the
Government.

If they have any fresh modifications to suggest, I hope they will
state them in the House, when I am sure they will receive the most
favourable consideration from all who, like myself, deeply regret the
differences of opinion which have arisen in the Liberal Party.

I am engaged all Wednesday, but this is of no consequence, as in the
present position of matters no good could come of any private
interview.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

Mr. Labouchere appends a note to this letter as follows:

"This is in reply to a letter I wrote Chamberlain last night to say
that he would do well to keep quiet, as probably Herschel, would see
him on Wednesday--not having been able to see him last Saturday."


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

TWICKENHAM, May 17, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--If I speak to-day or to-morrow, I shall say
nothing about negotiations.

This is, I think, about what occurred.  Mr. Gladstone was ready to
yield and bring in the "Imperial matters" Clause before the Saturday
Cabinet.  At the Cabinet he was asked whether he had elaborated such
a clause, which previously he had said was impossible to devise.  He
had to admit that he had not, and so a lot of asses, some of whom did
not understand the exact point, and the necessity of sticking to any
agreement, talked on until it was time for them all to go away.

On Sunday, when I first saw Arnold Morley after receiving your note,
he vowed that it was all agreed to, and as I told you I wrote down
the three points in his presence.  When he came in the evening, after
having sent to Mr. Gladstone, he explained that it was impossible
absolutely to say that Mr. Gladstone would pledge himself to bring in
the Third Clause, because he had not framed any Clause, and could not
give a definite promise until he knew whether he could frame it.  I
urged him not to leave {344} Mr. Gladstone until he had framed it,
and there was a Cabinet on Monday.  Still it was not framed.  Hence
Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary shilly-shally speech.  They all
perceived what fools they had been, except those who were anxious
that no agreement should be come to with you (notably Harcourt who is
playing for the succession), and it was hoped that Herschell would be
able to smooth down matters.  There was to be a Cabinet on Thursday,
and I think the Clause would have been framed, only by this time they
did not see why they should yield, if concession would not ensure the
Bill, and Mr. Gladstone (as usual) thought that time should be taken
to see how things developed themselves.

In the House, as you know, there is a feeling that the Bill should be
read as a declaration of the principle of "a local legislature," and
nothing more.  Mr. Gladstone has not said a word about this.  It
would be a bitter pill, and he is just now in a prophetic state of
belief that, if he dissolves, he will carry everything before him.
What the Constituencies will do, neither you, nor he, nor any one
else can predicate.  It may be that with the Irish vote, the desire
to settle, the belief in him, and the notion that he has been treated
ungenerously, he will win.  My impression is that we shall be much as
we are, except that the Tories will be strengthened at the expense of
the Liberal and Radical seceders.

Now, I put this to you for my private information.  It is no proposal
from Government.  They hold that you are irreconcilable, and are
sulking.  Supposing that he would withdraw the Bill after Second
Reading, could you have a better and a bigger triumph?  Read
Salisbury's speech.  Does this look like real union?  Randolph is
used to promise privately, but Salisbury has a vague idea of honour,
and so he explains what such promises are worth.

Of course I don't know what Hartington promises.[9]  But {345} does
he love you?  No.  The Whigs are all running about boasting how they
have you in their toils.

You may believe me or not, but I really do want to see a way to a
reconciliation, because I want you to be our leader.  A
reconciliation is still possible on the basis of withdrawing the Bill
after reading it a second time.  To withdraw it before would be too
much humble pie, and Mr. Gladstone sees--and no doubt you do--that
this would ruin him.  Moreover, the man has some feeling in the
matter.

Supposing that you were to announce on Thursday that the Government
must withdraw after Second Reading.  If Mr. Gladstone was to do this,
afterwards, he would be knocking under completely, and yet almost all
the Radicals (except Illingworth and Co.) would endorse your
suggestion.

By autumn many things may happen.  Mr. Gladstone would have brought
in a Bill, he would have withdrawn it on your demand, and you may
depend on it, he never would bring in one again in the same shape,
but one satisfactory to Radicals and unsatisfactory to Whigs and
Conservatives.

This therefore seems to me far better than discussing concessions,
whilst from your own standpoint I emphatically say that it is better
for you than to go to the country against Mr. Gladstone, against what
is called the party, and with such a lot as Salisbury and the Whigs,
who regard you as the devil incarnate.  Let the latter gravitate to
the Tories.

There is also this: sentiment is a factor in politics.  The notion
that you are in any way acting ungenerously to Mr. Gladstone renders,
or will render, the Radicals rabid against you, and after all they
are the only persons who agree with you in politics, or who have any
real idea of being _your party_.

I write this for your _private eye_.  I shall not say to any one that
I have written to you.

If, however, you hold to the idea of the Second Reading and the
withdrawal, I would work in that direction.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--Your Ulster fervour does not wash.  They are utter humbugs,
these worthy Orangemen.


{346}

_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., May 17, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I have never doubted your sincere desire to
bring about an arrangement.  I do not intend to make any allusion in
public to the negotiations.  I blame no one for their failure--there
were misunderstandings on both sides.  But I cannot conceive how Mr.
Gladstone could have supposed that the terms of his speech were
calculated to meet the objections taken.  As regards the present
situation I am pledged now to vote against the Second Reading, and I
must do so, whatever may be said as to subsequent withdrawal.

Our friends feel--and I think they are right--that they cannot treat
a vote for Second Reading of a Bill as though it were only an
abstract resolution.

I admit the truth of nearly all that you say as to the prospects of
the party.  No man can foretell the results of the General Election,
but I expect with you that the Tories will gain.  I think they will
gain chiefly at the expense of the supporters of the Bill, but in
this I may be mistaken.

I cannot struggle against the torrent of lies and slanders directed
against my personal action.  I can only say that I have been, I
believe, more anxious for reconciliation that any one of my followers
or present allies.  I have not to my knowledge said a single bitter
word about Mr. Gladstone, or expressed either in private or in public
anything but respect for him and belief in his absolute sincerity.
Yet in spite of this the supporters of the Government are more bitter
against me than against any one else.

For the present I shall maintain the same reserve, and shall not
attempt reprisals; but if the discussion goes on much longer on the
same terms I suppose I shall have to defend myself and to say what I
think of some of those gentlemen who, having swallowed their own
principles and professions, are indignant with me because my
digestion is less accommodating.

I have an enormous correspondence, some of it hostile, but most of it
friendly.  The breach in the party is widening, and in a short time
it will be beyond repair.

All I can say is that I have done all in my power to heal {347}
it--short of giving up my conscientious convictions and assenting to
measures which I believe are totally wrong.  I have not the least
feeling against Mr. Gladstone; he is sincere in all that he is
doing--but I cannot think favourably of many of those who are loud in
his support, but who to my certain knowledge are as much opposed to
his Bills in their hearts as I am myself.--Yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

_P.S._--Salisbury's speech is as bad as anything can be.[10]


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

  TRUTH BUILDINGS, CARTERET STREET,
  QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, S.W.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Herschell and one or two others were to meet
(or possibly have met) to-day to decide upon what proposals were to
be submitted to you.  But I will let them have your letter.  If the
G.O.M. loses his Bill, it will be from not having been able to be
clear for five minutes in his seventy-seven years,--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

Tuesday--or rather Wednesday Morning, May 25, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I am pretty certain that unless wiser counsels
prevail, Mr. Gladstone will not consent to withdraw the Clause.
Childers, who has been doing all that he can to induce him to do so,
finds that the Cabinet (so far as they have an opinion) are against
it, and Mr. Gladstone strongly so.  Morley vows that he would rather
die, and that sort of thing.  I cannot find that they have any valid
reason for this, but so it is.

Mr. Gladstone will, I think, in as plain words as possible (if he can
be plain for a few minutes), fall back upon the programme {348} that
we were negotiating, and say that he will so modify the Bill in
Committee that it will give the Irish Representation here on Imperial
matters, and he seems to have a notion floating in his brain of
announcing that if the Second Reading be passed he will either
withdraw or defer the Bill.

The notion seems to be that the Liberal opponents may be put down at
100, and that this will reduce them to 70; these calculations,
however, are evidently upon exceedingly vague data.

It is pretty clear that a number of the opponents do not like the
idea of a dissolution, and that they are very anxious for an
arrangement.  It is therefore quite possible that they will come in
upon some such basis.

Do pray think the matter over, and consider whether it is not worth
your while taking these assurances as a concession to you.  Of course
it is not certain that they will be definite, but you might insist
upon their being made definite in the House of Commons.

I think that it is a proof of astounding weakness not giving up the
Clause.  These people can never make up their minds either to fight
or to make peace.  The G.O.M. has a natural love of shilly-shally,
and those around him encourage him in this for their own purposes.
My own belief is that they don't want you to vote for the Bill, and
that you would spoil their game if you did.  The G.O.M. cannot last,
and if only you would rally you would be certain of the mantle,
whereas with Goschen and Hartington you never possibly can get
on.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, The Derby Day, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--If you can agree to anything less than the
excision of the twenty-fourth Clause, and consider that it would be
useful to let Mr. Gladstone know this, could you write me a letter
stating your views?  This I could let Mr. Gladstone have to-morrow
morning, as a letter to me and _not intended_ for him to see, with
the understanding that it is for his {349} private reading and not
for his Cabinet.  It might probably lead him to go farther than he
otherwise would in his concessions.  He, no doubt, wants to pass his
Bill, and although he believes that he would sweep the country at an
election, he must in his calmer moments know that he may possibly not
do so.  But I am certain that there are men in the Cabinet who,
whilst pretending to be in favour of conciliation, are doing all they
can to prevent it--some arbitrarily, and some because their private
ambitions point to your being forced into a position of antagonism.
I do not think that Mr. Gladstone will be likely to change in regard
to the Cabinet decision respecting the twenty-fourth Clause.  The
point therefore is to find some other mode of ensuring what is
practically a surrender in respect to Irish representation here.  The
excision of the Clause is the simple and direct method, but when did
our venerable friend ever take the direct method?  If, however, he
_clearly_, _distinctly_, and _definitely_ pledges himself to
introduce a Clause having the same object as the excision, and to
incorporate it in his Bill, the result is the same, although the road
may not be quite as straight.  He might easily be parried in the
House by your saying, "I understand the Prime Minister to, etc.,
etc.," and then you might fairly say that you have got precisely what
you want, and thus bear off the honours of war.  You have never
publicly insisted upon the particular mode by means of which the
desired end is to be attained.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, Wednesday.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have just got your note and have privately
let Mr. Gladstone know your position.  I have suggested this, that if
he intends to insert a Clause giving the Irish Representation, he
must necessarily withdraw the twenty-fourth, and that consequently he
can use the word "withdraw," which might get over the difficulty.
But whether he will do this, I don't know.  Except that the Cabinet
would not hear of the withdrawal, and leaving matters as they are in
regard to {350} Irish Representation until future Legislation, they
seem to have left him a free hand.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

Thursday, May 26, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--There is no doubt about the prorogation.  It
was settled last night, much against the wishes of some, who regard
it as too much of a surrender.  I have been urging that Fowler, who
is to speak after some Conservative who has got the adjournment for
to-morrow, should translate from one hour of Gladstonese into five
minutes of English.  The absurd objection to this is (as yet) that he
is not in the Cabinet.  My impression is that most of the Radicals
will return to the fold.  They don't like a dissolution, with a
Liberal enemy against them.  This is all very well for you, but the
fry will go to the wall in these localities.  Some of the Scotch have
also come in.

After all, if Mr. Gladstone withdraws his Bill and agrees to bring in
another, in which Clause twenty-four is to be reversed--the exclusion
being inclusion--he does more than withdraw the clause, and the
prorogation was really only decided on by Mr. Gladstone in order to
give you full satisfaction.  Caine, I hear, says that he never will
vote for the Bill--probably not, considering the influence of the
Cavendishes at Barrow.  If he did, he would not get in.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

May 29, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--I think that I have arranged for a written
antidote which will appear on Monday to the "responsible frivolity"
of our loquacious and indiscreet friend.  I am not yet quite sure
whether it is arranged, so please don't say anything to _any one_
about it, or, if it appears, say that I had anything to do with it.
_He_ insists that he said in the House exactly what {351} he had said
at the Meeting.[11]  Reading his speech, it is difficult to pin him
to any particular passage--the only thing that can be said is that he
used phrases, which might cover a wider principle than "a domestic
Legislature for Irish affairs."  I was asked to put on paper my
objections to the speech.

I took these points: (1.) that he made a vote cover a general
recognition of the Bill; (2.) that he studiously limited all
"reconstruction" to a particular point; (3.) that he implied, and
almost stated that the Bill was to be introduced, and made no clear
offer to consider the whole subject of the details which were to give
effect to the principle of his domestic Legislature principle, and
did not say that he would consider any suggestions offered to him by
leading persons in the Liberal Party.

These are, in point of fact, your criticisms, not mine.

_He_ was astounded at any one not finding all this in his speech, but
I said that, surprising as this might be, no one friend or foe had
found anything of the kind.

It seems to me that the real object of all should be to tide over the
present conjunction, and to leave everything "without prejudice" for
this autumn Session.  The public do not know the object of their
adoration as we do.  He is still their fetish, and they regard any
doubt of his divine character as sacrilege.

I should have thought that Henry James' idea of not voting would have
suited both you and Hartington.  It certainly is the most logical
outcome of the position.  He says that the Bill is a mere declaration
of principle.  You say that it may be more.  He offers to withdraw
the Bill, after the principle has been ratified by a vote.  You
cannot quite believe him in anything beyond that the Bill will be
withdrawn.  This being so, if all of you were to agree to leave him
and his principle to find their level in the House of Commons--to say
that you are for a domestic legislature, and therefore cannot vote
for the Bill, but that you are not for more, and therefore that you
cannot vote for a Bill which may involve more.  I think that this
would put you quite right with the Radicals, and leave you a free
hand, although it may {352} be doubtful whether the Whigs, who go
against principle and details, would be quite so wise to accept this
solution.

If, however, the Whigs do vote, and if you and your people abstain,
it is not quite certain that we should carry the Bill; in which case
the outcry would be against the abstainers, and they would be cursed
for precipitating a dissolution against the idol.

According to the Whips, Saunders has again got salvation.  Half of
these people are like women, who are pleased to keep up the "I will"
and "I won't" as long as possible in order to be counted.  Generally
this ends in "I will."

Akers Douglas told the Whips last night that the debate was not to
end before Thursday; they could not quite make out whether this was
official or not.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, June 5, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--At the desire of a large number of Radical
Members of Parliament, I write to make an appeal to you with regard
to your attitude upon the Government for Ireland Bill.  They are all
of them amongst your warmest admirers, and they have always looked to
you as the leader of their phase of political thought.  They
advocated your "unauthorised programme" at the last General Election,
and they have persistently defended you against the attacks and
aspersions of all who have denounced you and your views upon
political or social issues.  With much that you have said upon the
Irish Bill they agree, and they think that they have a right to ask
you to give a fair consideration to any request that they may make to
you in order to maintain the union which they are anxious should
exist between you and them.  In your speech upon the Second Reading
of the Bill, you said that you were in favour of the principles of a
separate domestic Legislature for Ireland, with due reservations, but
that you did not consider that Mr. Gladstone had made it sufficiently
clear that voting for the Bill would mean nothing but a recognition
of this principle, and would leave its supporters absolute
independence of judgment with regard to the new Bill that he might
introduce in an autumn {353} Session.  I think that he has met this
objection in his letter to Mr. Moulton that has been published
to-day.  We think, therefore, that perhaps you could not respond to
our wishes, and either vote for the Bill or--if you could not go so
far as this--abstain from voting.  The issue of the division on
Monday is, we believe, entirely in your hands.  Should the Bill be
lost there will be a General Election at once, which will disturb the
trade and commerce of the country; and it will take place at a time
which, as no doubt you are aware, will be the worst period of the
year for the Radicals, owing to the Registration Laws now in force.
It is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that a General
Election, without you on our side, may lead to a Whig-Tory, or
Tory-Whig Government, which would relegate to the dim and distant
future all those measures which you and we so ardently desire may
become law.  Under these circumstances is it too much for us to ask
you to make an effort to avert all these contingencies?  When
Achilles returned to his tent, the Greeks were defeated.  What would
it have been had Achilles lent the weight of his arm to the Trojans?
I fully recognise how conciliatory your attitude has been, and how
anxiously you have sought to see your way from disruption during all
the discussions which I have had with you.  I still cannot help
hoping that, in view of the distant assurances of Mr. Gladstone in
his letter to Mr. Moulton, and in view of the wishes of so many of
your warmest admirers in the House of Commons, you will see your way
to defer to the request which, through me, they make to you.--Yours
truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

June 5, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--This letter is really written at the desire of
a lot of Radicals.  They were pestering me all last evening.

The position is this: 316 pledged for, 136 pledged against, leaving
out the Speaker and those absent; there are about 26 not absolutely
pledged on either side, or inclined to reconsider their pledges.  We
have got some to promise to abstain or to follow the Maker Pease in
voting for the Bill.  But we have not yet enough, and so far as I can
see at present the Bill is lost.

{354}

The issue therefore really depends upon you.  Surely it would be well
to stave it off by saving the Bill.  Much may happen before autumn.
We may lose the G.O.M., who has a very collapsed look.  Anyhow, if he
does bring in _his_ Bill again, it will never pass in the autumn, but
will be lost by a large majority.

I am really writing to you without speaking to any one of the
Government, nor at the suggestion of the Government.  You might yield
very gracefully to the Radicals, and I make the letter an appeal
_forma pauperis_.  Were you to do so, you would become the most
popular man in England, with all who are honestly your political
adherents, for I need not say that the Whigs and Tories are not
likely to adore you for long.  It would be delicious to spring a
correspondence on the Government and the public on Monday morning.  I
am going down to Twickenham this afternoon until Monday.  If you
think it any good I would meet you anywhere before going.

This occurred to me yesterday.  Mr. Gladstone might adjourn the
debate till some day in the autumn Session, and then carry it on,
after stating all the changes he will make in his Bill.  The
difficulty of this is, that he vows that it is against all
Parliamentary rule to legislate after the Approbation Act.  I don't
know whether he could meet this by votes on account.  Then, too, is
it certain that he would have a majority?  If however you approve of
this, I would again suggest it.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

40 PRINCE'S GARDENS, S.W., June 5, 1886.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I thank you for your letter of this morning, and
sincerely appreciate the spirit in which it is written, but
especially your recognition that my attitude has been conciliatory
throughout these unfortunate differences, and that I have been at all
times most anxious to prevent the disruption of the Liberal Party.

You do not give me the names of the friends on whose behalf you
write, and who now urge me to vote in favour of the Second Reading of
a Bill with many of my objections to which they themselves agree.  I
do not know therefore whether or no they {355} have already pledged
themselves to take the course which you urge upon me, but I assume
that this is the case as I have not myself received any
communications in the same sense from any of those who have declared
their inability to support the Second Reading.

I am unable to accept your reference to my speech as quite accurate,
but I adhere on every point to the words of the original report.  I
quite admit that Mr. Gladstone has given ample assurance that he will
not hold any member who may vote for the Second Reading as committed
thereby to a similar vote for the Second Reading of the Bill when
reintroduced in October, but the question still remains whether such
members will not be obliged to take this course in order to preserve
their own logical consistency.

Up to the present time Mr. Gladstone has given no indication whatever
that the Bill to be presented in October will be materially different
from the Bill now before the House.  On the contrary, he has
distinctly stated that he will not depart from the main outlines of
the present measure.  It is, however, to the main outlines of the
present Bill that the opposition of my friends and myself has been
directed, and it appears to me that we should be stultifying
ourselves if we were to abstain at the last moment from giving effect
to our conscientious convictions.  We are ready to accept as a
principle the expediency of establishing some kind of legislative
authority in Ireland subject to the conditions which Mr. Gladstone
himself has laid down, but we honestly believe that none of these
conditions are satisfactorily secured by the plan which has been
placed before us.  I share your apprehension as to the General
Election at the present time; but the responsibility for this must, I
think, rest with those who will have brought in and forced to a
division a Bill which, in the words of Mr. Bright, "not twenty
members outside the Irish party would support if Mr. Gladstone's
great authority were withdrawn from it."--I am, yours very truly,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.

_P.S._--As I understand that many Radical members are cognisant of
your letter, I propose to send it together with my reply for
publication in the _Times_.


{356}

_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

10 QUEEN ANNE'S GATE, June 5, 1886.

MY DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Yes, I thought of publishing if you were to
agree--but if not--I rather think it would not conduce to the Second
Reading.  It might even if you said that you would advise others to
abstain, or something of that sort.  The G.O.M. will die rather than
withdraw his Bill, but he might perhaps be induced to adjourn the
debate until autumn, if you were to suggest this.  I am off to
Twickenham, as I have Palto and Ellen Terry coming down, who (thank
God) probably have never heard of the infernal Bill.  Randolph is, I
believe, coming, but I suppose it is no use asking you to join such
frivolous society.  My conviction is that the Radicals are damned for
years if we are defeated to-morrow.

If you can write anything comforting, and send it here tomorrow
morning, I will tell some one here to bring it down at once to Pope's
Villa.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.



[1] The _Times_, January 4, 1886.

[2]It was upon this Amendment that Lord Salisbury's Government was
defeated.

[3] The lull in Mr. Labouchere's correspondence is accounted for by
the fact that Lord Salisbury's Government, finding itself in a
minority of 79 on the early morning of January 27, resigned, and, on
February 26, Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister for the third time.
Mr. Chamberlain became President of the Local Government Board.

[4] Mr. Chamberlain had resigned his post in the Cabinet on March 16.

[5] On April 8 Mr. Gladstone moved the first reading of the Home Rule
Bill.

[6] Land Bill introduced and the First Reading on April 16.

[7] On May 3, a manifesto was issued from Mr. Gladstone in which he
intimated that the Land Bill was no longer to be an essential article
of the Liberal faith, and that, in the Home Rule Bill, all questions
of detail were subsidiary.  The only important thing was to support
the principle of establishing a Legislative Body in Dublin empowered
to make laws for Irish as distinguished from Imperial affairs.

[8] Motion made for Second Reading of Home Rule Bill and amendment,
on May 10th.

[9] On May 14th, a meeting summoned by Lord Hartington met at
Devonshire House, at which Mr. Chamberlain was present.  It was
calculated at this meeting that the "dissenting Liberals" would
amount to something over one hundred.  The important point of the
meeting was that Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Hartington agreed, for the
time, to act together and to vote against the Second Reading.

[10] Mr. Chamberlain was probably referring to Lord Salisbury's
speech of May 15th, in which he suggested that the Irish belonged to
the races incapable of self-government, such as--the Hottentots!

[11] On May 27th Mr. Gladstone held a meeting of Liberals at the
Foreign Office, when, in a conciliatory speech, he declared that the
Government desired, by a vote on the Second Reading, no more than to
establish the _principle_ of a measure, which was to give Home Rule
to Ireland.




{357}

CHAPTER XIII

SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BALFOUR'S COERCION POLICY

When Mr. Gladstone's Government was defeated on June 9 by 341 votes
to 311, the Prime Minister immediately dissolved Parliament, and the
General Election was over before the end of July, the Unionist
majority being 118.  Mr. Gladstone resigned on July 12, before the
final returns were sent in, and, when Parliament met again in August,
Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Chief
Secretary for Ireland, and Lord Londonderry, Viceroy.  The second
great Home Rule battle had been fought and lost.

Of course Irish affairs immediately occupied Parliament, but on
September 21 the Land Bill, introduced by Parnell, and upon which, he
warned the House, the peace of Ireland depended, was rejected by a
majority of 95 votes.  On October 23, the Plan of Campaign was
launched and furiously denounced by the Conservatives in the House of
Commons and on every platform throughout the country.  Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach resigned the Chief Secretaryship on account of his
failing eyesight, and was replaced by Mr. Balfour.  The first
Parliament that met in 1887 was given notice of two measures for
Ireland--a Coercion Bill to be introduced in the House of Commons and
a Land Bill in the House of Lords.  The Coercion Bill was the most
stringent of its kind ever introduced.  It abridged and destroyed the
{358} constitutional liberties of the people of Ireland and created
new offences.  It withdrew the protection of juries, and gave full
powers to resident magistrates of dealing with cases of intimidation
and of holding public meetings against the will of the executive.  It
was proposed, moreover, that the measure should be a permanent one,
and not restricted to one or a limited number of years.[1]

Two extraordinary events occurred in that year, in both of which Mr.
Labouchere played an important part.  They both had their indirect
origin in the coercive measures which Mr. Balfour succeeded in
passing through the House.  The first took place during the spring,
when the _Times_, in order to strengthen the hands of the Government,
in their remorseless warfare on Irish liberties, published, during
the course of a series of articles called "Parnellism and Crime," the
facsimile of a letter supposed to have been written by Mr. Parnell to
Mr. Patrick Egan in 1882, referring brutally to the Phœnix Park
murders.  The letter was contained in the fourth article of the
series.  The reader will easily perceive from the following short
extracts the spirit in which these articles were conceived: "Be the
ultimate goal of these men (the Parnellites) what it will, they are
content to march towards it in company with murderers.  Murderers
provide their funds, murderers share their inmost counsels, murderers
have gone forth from the League[2] offices to set their bloody work
afoot, and have presently returned to consult the 'constitutional
leaders' on the advancement of the cause," occurred in the first
article.  The third article declared that "even now" the Parnellite
conspiracy was controlled by dynamiters and assassins, and proceeded
thus: "We have seen how the infernal fabric arose 'like an
exhalation' to the sound of murderous oratory; how assassins guarded
it {359} about, and enforced the high decrees of the secret conclave
within by the ballot and the knife.  Of that conclave to-day, three
sit in the Imperial Parliament, four are fugitives from the law."
The first series of the articles finished up with this appeal: "Men
of England!  These are the foul and dastardly methods by which the
National League and the Parnellites have established their terrorism
over a large portion of Ireland.  Will you refuse the Government the
powers which will enable these cowardly miscreants to be punished,
and which will give protection to the millions of honest and loyal
people in Ireland?"

It is very certain that all Liberal Unionists, and even a few of the
more educated Tory statesmen, realised that the articles were merely
theatrical appeals to the contracted imaginations of those armchair
politicians, whose ways of influencing voters in rural districts were
all powerful, but it was not to be expected that the man in the
street could understand them as such.  On him they made a profound
impression.

The first article appeared on March 7, the second on the 14th, and
the third on the 18th.  On the 22nd Mr. Balfour gave notice of his
Coercion Bill.  "Parnellism and Crime" had prepared the way for him.
The Bill was read for the first time in the beginning of April, and
on the last day of the debate on the Second Reading, April 18, the
_Times_ published its _pièce de résistance_--what has since become
known as "the facsimile letter."  It ran as follows:


15/5/82.

DEAR SIR,--I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you
should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to
us.  To do that promptly was plainly our best policy.  But you can
tell him and all others concerned that though I regret the accident
of Lord F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got
no more than his deserts.  You are at liberty to show him this, and
others whom you can {360} trust also, but let not my address be
known.  He can write to House of Commons.--Yours very truly,

CHAS. S. PARNELL.


I have before me the photograph of the facsimile letter, used in the
Parnell Commission, and also the letters received by Mr. Labouchere
at different times from the Irish leader, and it seems incredible, on
comparing the general style and caligraphy of the former with the
latter, how the _Times_ agents and Mr. Soames could have been
deceived for one moment; but I must not anticipate in this place the
verdict of the Commission on the forgery, in the obtaining of which
Mr. Labouchere played such a characteristic part.  The whole of
England was indignant when the issue of the _Times_ containing the
facsimile letter appeared on their breakfast tables, and even
comparatively tender-hearted persons began to think seriously that no
treatment of Ireland by the English could be savage enough to avenge
the cold-hearted, calculating cruelty of Parnell.

Mr. Balfour's Coercion Bill had not, however, yet become law, and the
_Times_ continued its popular articles, which were greedily devoured
by the public, the body of the second and third series consisting for
the most part of an accumulation of evidence to prove that, in the
year of the Land League, the conspirators had succeeded in getting
the American Clan na Gael and the Irish Parliamentary party into
line.  It did its work so well that, by the 8th of July, when the
Coercion Bill passed its Third Reading, under which, subsequently,
fully one-third of the Nationalist members charged in its columns
were put into prison, there were very few English people outside the
Radical faction who did not think that Ireland had got no more than
her deserts.

It was, in the _dénouement_ of the series of events, following upon
the publication of Mr. Parnell's supposed letter, that Mr. Labouchere
played such an important part, and, as it was nearly two years before
the mystery was completely {361} unravelled, the story of the forged
letter must now be left, so as to take up in chronological order the
second event of 1887 in which Mr. Labouchere was vitally concerned.

Mr. Labouchere kept himself well in touch with what was going on in
Ireland, and the following detailed letter that he received from Mr.
T. M. Healy towards the end of 1886, gave him a vivid picture of the
state of things there during the first half year of the Conservative
Government, and assisted him much in the line of policy he
consistently followed then and throughout the ensuing years:


The country is really perfectly quiet, and the misfortune is that the
Tories are reaping the benefit of Gladstone's policy, and will, of
course, claim the credit for their "resolute Government."  Moreover,
they are putting all kinds of pressure on the landlords to grant
abatements.  Buller is Soudanizing Kerry à la Gordon, and giving the
slave-drivers no quarter, so that with the stoppage of evictions
there, moonlighting is coming to an end and the people believe that
Buller won't let them be turned out of their cabins.  He has a good
man with him as Sec.--Col. Turner--who was aide to Aberdeen during
the late Viceroyalty.  Turner is a staunch Radical and Home Ruler who
sympathizes with the poor, and we know very well that the brake has
been put on against the local Bimbashis.  They are cursing Buller
heartily, and yesterday he had to issue an official contradiction of
the undoubted truth that he is obstructing evictions by refusing
police.  There are more ways of killing a dog than choking him with
butter.  How they would storm against Liberals if any such officer
were sent to Kerry to override the law, and how they denounced Morley
for exercising the dispensing power, because of a few sympathetic
sentences.  What I am afraid of in all this is that the tenants
nowhere are getting a clear receipt, and that they will afterwards be
pressed for the balances unless there is an Arrears Act.  Probably
the Tories meditate muddling away the rest of the Church surplus in
benefactions to the landlords to recompense their benevolence.  Of
course only the September rents are due yet, and September and March
are much less frequent gale months with us than November and May.
The November rents will be {362} soon demanded, and then we shall
really know what the landlords will do.  I think they will surrender,
for if they don't they won't be paid.  Every one of them is sick of
the fight.  Their retainers and bailiffs who made a profit out of
evictions, and the attorneys who promoted them for the costs, have
not been paid for a long time as they used long ago, and like a
stranded vessel on the rocks it is only a question of the fierceness
of the gale how soon the entire system will go to pieces.  They were
in much better blood for fighting in '81 and what have those of them
got who stood out?  Desolate farms that no one will touch, while the
sight of emergency occupants no longer terrifies the tenants, who
know that they are costing the master three times the rent and that
their labours are as profitless as a locust's.  These fellows are the
riffraff of the towns who idle away their time in the next
public-house or play cards with the police sent to protect them.
They burn everything that will light for firing, and their occupation
of the premises is about as husbandman-like as that of a party of
Uhlans.  Such is the prospect for the gentry who refuse abatements,
and as they know the people have not got money, I believe they will
make a virtue of necessity.  Then the Government are known to be
against them, and they cannot appeal from their own friends to the
Liberals, so what are they to do?  They distrust Churchill
completely, and believe he is capable of anything.  If, however, they
hold out we shall have warm work.  I have refrained from addressing
agrarian meetings so far, though Dillon and O'Brien have gone on the
warpath, because it is not clear to me yet what is the best line to
take, and besides I think Parnell should give the note, so that
nobody may get above concert pitch.  What Parnell's views are I don't
know, and he is the man on the horse.  The consciousness of the
people that they have Gladstone on their side would in any case, I
think, take all the uglier sting out of the agitation, now that they
feel a settlement to be only a matter of time.  It is very hard for
any one to advise them when the responsibility is directly on
Parnell, but if he intervened popular opinion would blaze like a
prairie fire.

Thanks for your enquiry about my return to the House.  There are now
three Irish vacancies, but I don't feel anxious to go in now that I
am out of the hurly-burby.  It is a heavy {363} monetary loss to me,
still, if it seemed my duty, I would stand again.  O'Brien hates
Parliament and vows he won't go back, but if he would consent so
should I.  The English have no idea what a beastly nuisance it is,
giving up your work in order to live in London, and then to be
blackguarded as hirelings and assassins for our pains.  I cannot
think that there is much chance of turning out Randolph for a long
time to come.  Even if we could win over Chamberlain, he has few
followers, and Hartington could still give the Ministry a majority.
I think the pair of them are trying to kill Gladstone, and that this
is quite as much a purpose of their policy as to prevent Home Rule.
I feel sure that no modifications of the late Bill that we could
agree to would induce either of them to come over.

In a Parliamentary sense Mr. Gladstone is a better life than
Hartington, as when the Duke of Devonshire dies his influence will
abate, and his followers in the House cannot be so well kept
together.  Joseph and he hate each other too much to agree on
anything else than disagreeing with Gladstone, so that I cannot see
any land ahead just yet.  I fear there is nothing for it but to trust
to the chapter of accidents.  Cloture cannot, if carried, do us much
harm.  If used to promote coercion then you will have outrages and,
for aught I know, dynamite once more in the ascendant, so that while
they may get rid of the pain in one part of the system the disease
will break out somewhere else.  Every one here wants peace, and the
wisdom of Gladstone's policy is more manifest to me every day.  There
is an entire change in the temper of the people, and it would even
take some pretty rough Toryism to make them take to their old ways
again.

If the present Government were wise they would take advantage of this
frame of mind, but there is little prospect of their doing so.


In the monster demonstration which took place in Hyde Park, after the
reading of the Coercion Bill for the first time, Mr. Labouchere had
been one of the group of eloquent orators, including Mr. Michael
Davitt, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Hunter, and Professor James Stuart, who, from
a long semi-circle of pavilions, had led upwards of a quarter million
{364} demonstrators, poured out from the Radical Clubs and
Associations of London, in protest against the tyrannical methods
contemplated by the Government.  A short extract from the speech of
Mr. Baggallay, made in the House of Commons on April 14, gives an
interesting little picture of Mr. Labouchere on the occasion of the
demonstration: "I see the member for Northampton in his place," he
said; "I am glad to see him back again after his short holiday, a
holiday which I was sorry to see that he himself had cut short by
unnecessarily making his appearance on a waggon in Hyde Park.  May I
be allowed to tell him that I was in Hyde Park also, although I was
not in a waggon.  I am prepared to admit that the crowd there was
orderly.  It has been asserted that there were a great many rowdies
present.  No doubt there were, but, for a Bank holiday, and for Hyde
Park on a fine day, I think the congregation assembled there was
fairly respectable.  But, sir, what did they go there for?  A great
many were out for a holiday, but I believe that a very large number
went there in order to see the leader of the Liberal party, or rather
the real leader of the Radical party.  I was asked over and over
again, 'Where's Labby?'  There can be no doubt that the point of
attraction was the platform at which the member for Northampton
presided.  The language Mr. Labouchere used in reference to this
Coercion Bill was not perhaps quite so moderate as it might have
been.  He told his audience that the policy of the Government was
like the ruffianism of Bill Sikes, and he added that if the Bill
became law he hoped Irishmen would resist it."  (Mr. Labouchere:
"Hear, Hear!")  "I do not know if Mr. Labouchere is prepared to
repeat those words in the House--(Mr. Labouchere: "Most
unquestionably I repeat them.)"[3]  And so on.

The protest had, of course, nothing but a moral value, minimised as
much as possible by a slashing leading article in the _Times_,
followed by a double dose of "Parnellism and {365} Crime."  But, in
the September of that year, Mr. Labouchere, in company with four
other members of Parliament (Mr. T. E. Ellis, Mr. Brunner, Mr.
Dillon, and Mr. John O'Connor), went over to Ireland, in order to
address the historic meeting at Michelstown.

Everybody knows the outline of what occurred--how the police,
escorting a Government reporter, tried to force a passage through a
hostile crowd to the speaker's platform, and how they were eventually
driven back into their barracks, through the windows of which they
fired at random, killing three men and mortally wounding two others.
The meeting occurred on September 9, and on the 12th the matter was
discussed during the debate in the House of Commons.  Mr. Balfour
pronounced instant and peremptory judgment, although his information
on the subject must have been obtained with incredible rapidity.[4]
He told the House that he was of opinion, "looking at the matter in
the most impartial spirit, that the police were in no way to blame,
and that no responsibility rested upon any one except upon those who
convened the meeting under circumstances which they knew would lead
to excitement and might lead to outrage."[5] Mr. Labouchere,
following Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Balfour, made a characteristic
speech, in the course of which he gave an inimitable account of what
actually did happen at Michelstown.

"Now, sir," he said, "I was there.  I was in a position which enabled
me to see very clearly what took place.  I am not a novice in these
matters.  I have been in a great many _ententes_ on the continent.  I
have been a reporter in some cases, and I have not only been in a
position to see, but I have also been in the habit of chronicling
what I did see....  We went down, and the train arrived at Fermoy.
This is about fifteen miles from Michelstown, and when we were within
a mile of the latter place, we were met by a {366} procession with
flags and trumpets, and a certain crowd accompanying it....  We
entered the town with this procession, and pulled up in the
market-place.  Michelstown is a very small provincial town with very
wide streets and few of them.  In the midst of the town there is this
marketplace, which is perhaps as large as Trafalgar Square.  The
market-place slopes, and at the top, is the main street of the
village, and--I ask the House to remember this--there are two police
barracks.  One is the permanent police station ... and the other a
temporary police station, used by the police on this occasion, and
faces the market-place.  When we arrived there we got into a brake,
which formed one part of the procession.  This brake was mainly
tenanted by priests, the Mayors of Cork and Clonmel, and a few other
gentlemen.  Mr. M'Carthy, a parish priest of the neighbourhood, was
appointed chairman, and the crowd naturally gathered around.  Mr.
Dillon said to me: 'Let us cut this as short as possible: they will
send the police and military into the town.  They will attempt
something, and something may occur if we go on long.  I suggest we
say a few words and ask the crowd to disperse.'  I at once assented.
Dillon then got up on the front side of the brake to say a few words,
and at that time, or perhaps a few minutes before, I saw a body of
police drawn up in a line in the lower part of the market-place.
They had a reporter with them, and they pushed their way to within a
short distance of the platform....  They could get no further.  The
people were so tightly packed.  I will give an instance of this.
When we got there we got out of our carriage, and we were all going
on to the brake, which was, I suppose, five yards away.  I was
delayed a moment, and I was delayed at least two moments trying to
get through these five yards, the people being so crowded that it was
almost impossible to push through them.  How then was it possible for
the police, three abreast, without great violence, to push their way
through such a dense mass as this?  Our brake was at the top of the
market-place, {367} the people were all in front.  Why on earth did
not the reporter go to the outside of the meeting, and down the other
side?  He could easily have got in that way, and we should have been
glad to welcome him there.  But the police deliberately tried to
force their way right in front where the people were wedged in as
much as possible.  I then saw these dozen policemen, with the
reporter in their midst, stop.  I supposed then they were satisfied
and saw they could get no further.  Dillon made one or two
observations, and then the police fell back, and I thought perhaps
they were going round.  Let me observe we did not see the Resident
Magistrate at all.  If the Resident Magistrate had shown himself, and
said he wanted the reporter to pass, one would have let him pass.
The difficulty was that the reporter did not come alone, but with
this body of police.  Dillon went on speaking, and the horsemen--not
this wonderful regiment I see mentioned in the _Times_, but some
twenty horsemen--closed round outside the meeting in order to hear.
Suddenly, after the advance guard had fallen back, and joined the
other police, they (the police) all rushed forward.  I am told they
came to where these horsemen were, and one of the policemen drew his
sword, and wounded one of the horses.  I believe Mr. Brunner saw this
done.  Immediately there was a scrimmage....  The police commenced
and continued it.  The next thing that happened was that the police
ran away.  Captain Seagrove may have been amongst them, but it
appears he deserted them on this occasion, and went to a neighbouring
inn on the right of the market-place....  The police ran into the
barracks....  Brunner and Ellis got on the brake, and joined the
Mayor of Cork in urging the people to clear the streets for fear of
further bloodshed, and I remained on the brake, because I was anxious
to see what would take place."  He continued his speech, urging with
great ability the futility of pursuing in Ireland such tactics, which
amounted to nothing in the world but the forcing upon a weaker
country {368} the tyranny of a stronger.  "The Chief Secretary tells
us," he continued, "that, by these means, he hopes to create a Union
between England and Ireland.  What sort of a Union does he expect to
create?  Does he expect to create a Union of hearts and affections?
Does he hope to create an affection for the English Government?  I am
happy to see that in Ireland the people are making a wide distinction
between the people of England and the Government of England.  They
know their troubles are only temporary, that a new alliance exists
between the democracies of England and Ireland, and that the classes
will not be able to hold their own against such an alliance.  I hold
that the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Balfour) is indirectly responsible
for what has occurred at Michelstown, and that those who are directly
responsible are R. M. Seagrove and Inspector Brownrigg.  I accuse
these men of gross and deliberate murder."[6]

After Mr. Labouchere sat down, there was really very little to be
said on the other side.  Lord Randolph Churchill, however,
endeavoured to do his duty by his party, and commented thus on
Labouchere's speech, craftily criticising its style and ignoring its
substance: "And then, Sir, we had the statement of the member for
Northampton, which seems to me to resemble in its nature certain
newspapers which are now current, and, to some extent, popular in the
metropolis, which convey their news to the public in paragraphs.  The
statement of the hon. gentleman did not seem to me to be altogether
connected.  It was really a series of paragraphs, which succeeded
each other without much connection as far as I could make out.  I put
aside the statement of the hon. member for Northampton, because I
have difficulty in regarding him as altogether serious in this
matter."[7]

It is difficult to see why Lord Randolph Churchill did not regard Mr.
Labouchere's statement on the subject as serious.  Had he been
commenting on Mr. Balfour's speech on the {369} occasion, one might
have understood a certain amount of scepticism as to the speaker's
good faith.

In the following February Mr. Labouchere, in a speech on Mr.
Parnell's amendment in answer to the Address from the Throne,
referred again to Mr. Balfour's airy dismissal of any serious
consideration of the Michelstown affray: "What the Chief Secretary
had stated in the House about the matter was absolutely incorrect.
He had always thought that the right hon. gentleman would be
especially careful in matters of evidence, for, as a philosopher, he
was his (Labouchere's) favourite philosopher.  He had sat at the feet
of that Gamaliel, he had read his _Defence of Philosophic Doubt_,
until he had almost doubted of his own existence.  Yet, when the
right hon. gentleman became Irish Chief Secretary, he forgot all his
philosophy.  The reason was that there were exigencies required of an
Irish Secretary that were not to be found in the calm fields of
philosophy.  It was a melancholy thing for a philosopher to be
plunged by the exigencies of his position into matters like this--to
have vile instruments to carry out his orders, and to believe them or
rather to pretend to believe them...."[8]

The note of persiflage contained in all Labouchere's speeches on the
Michelstown affair may have deceived his hearers as to the
profoundness of his feelings of indignation, but his measured,
well-considered utterances in _Truth_ were for all who read them a
sufficient guarantee of his good faith.  Immediately after the
affray, he wrote thus of the head of the constabulary force in Co.
Cork: "I came across a person of the name of Brownrigg the other day.
The ferocity, the insolence, the brutality of this man never were
exceeded and rarely equalled by Cossack or Uhlan in a country
occupied by Russian or German.  I strongly recommend him for
promotion.  He is a man after the heart of our Tory despots, for he
seemed to me to unite in his person every characteristic that goes to
make up an official ruffian, {370} armed with a little brief
authority.  On this man the responsibility of the Michelstown murders
rests.  He caused them, either deliberately, or from stupidity and
brutality combined.  If he has furnished Mr. Balfour with an account
of what took place there, he adds to his other virtues the capacity
of being one of the best liars that the world has ever produced, for
the statement of Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons of the
Michelstown affair, from 'official information,' is one long tissue
of deliberate falsehoods."[9]

At the inquest which was held upon the victims, the jury returned a
verdict of wilful murder against the chief police officer and five of
his men.  _Truth_ pronounced as follows upon the inquest:
"Immediately after the Michelstown meeting I had occasion to call
attention to the conduct of Brownrigg, the chief of the constabulary
there.  This ruffian has given evidence, and his evidence is one long
tissue of lies, so impudent that Mr. Irwin, the District Police
Inspector, has borne testimony against him.  When Mr. Irwin stated
what the nature of his evidence must be, Brownrigg, it would appear,
called his men together and tried to drill them into perjury, in
order to obtain confirmation of his mendacity.  I am not surprised at
anything which this man may do, for I found him vain, irascible,
insolent, and muddleheaded beyond all conception."

Mr. Labouchere's article, called "The Michelstown Murders, "giving in
more detail than he had been able to do in the House, the real facts
of the affray, is a masterpiece of judicial summing up.  It is too
long to quote in full, but the following extract will show how close
was his reasoning, and how unanswerable his arguments:


Three men were killed, and two were wounded.  Two of the men killed
received each two bullets.  This proves two things: 1. That the
police deliberately aimed.  2. That there could not have been a
crowd.  Never yet was a crowd fired into, and, of {371} the three men
killed by the discharge, two each be struck twice.  Any one can see
that this is mathematically so improbable as to be impossible.

Station No. 1 is a house with an iron door, and iron shutters to the
windows.  Even if it had been attacked, an unarmed crowd could not
have got into it; all the more as there were military within call
ready to act, and Captain Seagrove was not in the station, and
consequently could have at once called up the soldiers.  It is
admitted that there are 160 panes of glass in the windows, and that
only six of these panes were broken by stones.  The police therefore
were not in danger of their lives, nor in any danger.[10]


The verdict of the inquest was afterwards quashed (Feb. 10, 1888) in
the Queen's Bench on the ground that the coroner had perpetrated
certain irregularities of form, and, as Lord Morley remarks, "the
slaughter of the three men was finally left just as if it had been
the slaughter of three dogs."  No other incident of Irish
administration stirred deeper feelings of disgust in Ireland, or of
misgiving and indignation in England.[11]  Meanwhile the _Times_
articles "Parnellism and Crime" seemed to have been forgotten, except
by Mr. Labouchere, who had in _Truth_ chaffingly suggested to the
_Times_ the appointment of Mr. Brownrigg to write a few instalments
of the sensational serial pamphlet.  The poison, however, had worked,
and goodwill towards Ireland had nearly died in English breasts.
Parnell had declared in the House of Commons on the day of its
publication that the facsimile letter was a clumsy fabrication.
"Politics are come to a pretty pass," he said, "in this country when
a leader of a party of eighty-six members has to stand up at ten
minutes past one in the House of Commons in order to defend himself
from an anonymous fabrication such as that which is contained in the
_Times_ of this morning."[12]

{372}

Nobody except his Radical friends believed him, and the affair would
probably have sunk into oblivion if a former member of the party, a
Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, had not, after mature reflection, conceived that
he had been libelled in the famous articles.  In the summer of 1888
he prosecuted the _Times_ for damages, and lost his case, for, as a
matter of fact, Mr. O'Donnell had not been mentioned in the articles,
and it almost appeared that something like a guilty conscience had
prompted him to bring the action.  But the prosecuting counsel's
method of presenting the case not only compelled Sir Richard Webster
to reproduce and exhaustively comment upon the "Parnellism and Crime"
articles, but furnished him with the opportunity of startling London
and the world with a long series of other letters, some of them more
damning even than the facsimile letter, five purporting to be from
Pat. Egan, the former treasurer of the Land League, addressed to
various agitators and felons including James Carey, the informer, and
three supposed to be from Parnell.  It is only necessary to this
narrative to quote one which was read out on July 4, 1888, by the
Attorney-General in his address to the jury.  It ran as follows:


9/1/82.

DEAR E.,--What are these fellows waiting for?  This inaction is
inexcusable, our best men are in prison and nothing is being done.
Let there be an end of this hesitancy.  Prompt action is called for.
You undertook to make it hot for old Forster and Co.  Let us have
some evidence of your power to do so.  My health is good,
thanks.--Yours very truly,

CHAS. S. PARNELL.


"Dear E." meant Patrick Egan.  In January, four months before the
Phœnix Park murders, Mr. Parnell was in Kilmainham Prison.  Well
might the Attorney-General say, as he solemnly read out the letter in
Court: "If it was signed by Mr. Parnell, I need not comment upon it."
{373} He also made the announcement that the "facsimile letter," as
the first one published in the _Times_ has always been called, as
well as the ones he had produced in Court that day, had been for some
time in the possession of the _Times_.  Presumably the _Times_ had
kept them in the hopes that the Irish leaders would sooner or later
bring an action for libel against the paper, when they would
triumphantly have produced the letters and so confounded the whole
party.  As it turned out, their production at that moment rather
resembled the killing of a fly with a sledge-hammer, for Mr.
O'Donnell's case was one of such palpable insignificance.  An
important reason may be mentioned here, for explaining what may seem
to be an extraordinary lack of initiative on Mr. Parnell's part.  He
had not been willing to prosecute the _Times_ because he was firmly
convinced that Captain O'Shea had been concerned in the production of
the letters, and, to add to his unwillingness, his friends in England
had pointed out to him the immense improbability of a jury of twelve
Middlesex men, being, at that moment, sufficiently without racial
prejudice, to pronounce a verdict in his favour.  After the
Attorney-General's declaration that the _Times_ would retract
nothing, and the implied challenge in his admission that, if false,
no grosser libels were ever written, Mr. Parnell took action.  On the
day of the delivery of the verdict in the case of O'Donnell _v._
Walter, he formally denied the authenticity of the letters, and asked
for a Select Committee of the House to enquire into the matter.  His
request was refused, but finally it was suggested from the Treasury
Bench that the enquiry should be entrusted to a Commission of Judges
appointed by Act of Parliament.  A Bill embodying this suggestion was
read for the second time on July 24, and the names of the
Commissioners were added in the Committee stage.  Sir James Hannen
was chosen as President of the Commission, and with him were
associated Sir Charles Day, an Orangeman, and Sir Archibald Levin
Smith.  Mr. H. Cunynghame, a junior barrister (now Sir {374} Henry
Cunynghame), was appointed Secretary to the Commission.[13]

Mr. Labouchere had, of course, scented in the whole business a
chapter of _chronigues scandaleuses_ after his own heart.  He set to
work to study it at once _con amore_, and very soon came to the
conclusion that all the letters had been forged by one Richard
Pigott, the story of whose chequered career was soon to become the
property of a marvelling public.  "Immediately on the Egan letters
being produced in the O'Donnell _v._ Walter case," he writes in his
own account of the affair, "Mr. Egan telegraphed to me that he was
sending over Carey's letters to him.  (Mr. Egan was then in America.)
These letters followed.  They referred to a municipal election, and,
being written at the same time as a forged letter of Mr. Egan to
Carey, they proved conclusively that the latter could not be genuine.
Whilst the discussion was taking place in Parliament about the Royal
Commission, Mr. Egan again telegraphed that he had been comparing the
letters ascribed to him in the O'Donnell trial with the drafts of
certain letters which he had written to Pigott about the purchase of
the _Irishman_,[14] and the letters ascribed to Mr. Parnell, with the
copies of two letters written by that gentleman to Pigott in relation
to the sale, which copies were in his (Egan's) possession.  He said
that he had found such a similarity of phrase in the genuine letters
and in the forged letters that he was certain that the latter were
fabricated from the former.  An emissary soon after came over with
the Egan drafts and with Pigott's letters (one of which contained
that blessed word 'hesitancy'), to which the former were replies, and
with the copies of Mr. Parnell's letters.  One of the drafts had been
{375} published previously as a part of a correspondence between Egan
and Pigott in the _Freeman's Journal_, and the copies of Mr.
Parnell's letters were in the handwriting of Mr. Campbell.[15]  Now
it was utterly impossible that the similarities, amounting in one
case to three consecutive lines, could be a mere chance.  It was,
therefore, a mathematical certainty that Pigott had forged the
letters, while it was obvious that Mr. Egan's drafts were genuine,
for they could have been at once disproved, if incorrect, by Pigott
producing, at the investigation, the original of them, which, it was
to be presumed, he had in his possession.  I showed the Carey letters
to Mr. Parnell alone, and the Egan correspondence with Pigott to Sir
Charles Russell and Mr. Parnell alone, and then locked them up.  On
Mr. George Lewis being retained, I handed them over to him, and he
proceeded to get up Pigott's 'record,' only a portion of which came
before the Court, but a portion amply sufficient to show that he had
lived for years on blackmailing, forgery, and treachery."[16]

Mr. Labouchere then went off to Germany for his summer holiday, and,
while abroad, a chance conversation revealed to him that the
incriminating letters had been already shown by Mr. Houston, the
Secretary of the Loyal and Patriotic Association, to Lord Hartington.
Houston was therefore immediately subpœnaed, and it later
transpired that he had offered them to the _Pall Matt Gazette_ before
he sold them to the _Times_.  "Two facts were consequently certain,"
said Mr. Labouchere.  "Houston had sold the letters, and Pigott had
forged them.  Although we were ourselves certain of the latter fact,
it was possible that, as we had only the drafts of the Egan letters,
it might be said (as indeed it was said, by Pigott in the
witness-box) that Egan had written his drafts from the _Times_
letters, instead of the _Times_ letters having been fabricated from
the Egan letters.

"About the middle of October," continued Mr. Labouchere, "Mr. Egan
sent over here a trusty emissary, with {376} orders to report to me,
and to see whether it would not be possible to buy of Pigott the
original of the Egan drafts, for he knew his man, and believed
(rightly) that he would have no objection to sell anything that he
possessed for a consideration.  I sent this emissary to Kingstown,
where Pigott was residing.  The emissary told him that Egan wanted
these originals.  Pigott declined to deal with the emissary, and said
that he must be put in communication with some one whom he could
trust.  On this I told the emissary that Pigott could see me at my
house on a certain evening.  I went down to the Commission which was
sitting on that day, and informed Mr. Parnell and Mr. Lewis of what
had been arranged.  It was agreed that they should both be present."

Mr. Labouchere's letter to Pigott making the appointment for this
interview has, with its hint to come "by the underground," been so
often referred to that it is worth while giving it here in full:


24 GROSVENOR GARDENS, S.W., Oct. 25, 1888.

DEAR SIR,---I shall be here at 10 o'clock to-morrow morning, and
shall be happy to see you for a confidential conversation, which, as
you say, can do no harm, if it does no good.  I will return you your
letter when you come.  I think this house would be the best place,
for it certainly is not watched, and it would be as easy to throw off
any one coming here as going elsewhere.  Your best plan would be, I
should think, to take the underground, and get out at Victoria
Station.  The house is close by.--Yours faithfully,

H. LABOUCHERE.


It may be mentioned in parenthesis that Mr. Labouchere had misdated
his letter.  It was really written, as was proved by the postmark on
the envelope, on October 24, and the interview took place on that
evening at 10 o'clock, as he changed the time of the appointment by
telegram.

Both Mr. Labouchere and Pigott were very well aware {377} that 24
Grosvenor Gardens, if not being watched at the moment when the above
letter was penned, would be so as soon as Pigott was inside it, for
the unhappy forger was dogged in all his footsteps by the _Times_
agents.  Mr. Labouchere had, however, nothing to fear, and poor
Pigott had very little to lose, and a vague expectation of something
to gain.  The upshot of the interview was that, in the presence of
Mr. Parnell and Mr. Lewis, Pigott confessed that he had forged the
letters and suggested that he would give a full confession, and write
to the Attorney-General and to the _Times_ that he was the forger, if
Mr. Lewis would withdraw his subpœna and let him go to Australia.
But it was not Pigott's confession that Mr. Lewis and Mr. Labouchere
wanted.  It was the originals of the drafts of the Egan letters.  Mr.
Parnell and Mr. Labouchere withdrew to another room, leaving Mr.
Lewis to do what he could with the slippery Richard.  "Soon," to
continue the narrative in Mr. Labouchere's own words, "Mr. Lewis came
into the dining-room, and said to me, 'Pigott wants to come to me
to-morrow and give me a full statement.  He is going away and wants
to speak to you'; adding, 'Mind, whatever you do, don't give him any
money; if you do he will bolt.'  I left Mr. Lewis with Mr. Parnell,
and went back to Pigott.

"That worthy at once came to business, and said that the _Times_ had
promised him £5000 to go into the box, and asked what I would give
for him not to do so.  I replied that I would give nothing, but that
Egan's emissary had already told him that, acting for Egan, I wanted
the original of the Egan drafts, as these would prove the forgery up
to the hilt, and that if he had them and they were satisfactory, I
would pay for them.  He asked whether I would give £5000 for them.
When I declined, he asked whether I would give £1000.  I said it
would be more like one thousand than five, but that I must first see
the documents.  I then asked whether the signature of the Parnell
letters, which is at the top of a page, was forged, or whether it was
an autograph which had {378} fallen into his hands, and he had
written the letter on the other side.  'Why do you want to know
this?' he asked.  'Mere curiosity,' I replied.  On which he said that
it was forged.  He then left."

Nothing definite as to the original Egan letters was obtained by Mr.
Lewis when he called the next day, and neither did he obtain the
promised statement.  The interview with Messrs. Labouchere, Lewis,
and Parnell at Grosvenor Gardens, and the subsequent private one with
Mr. Lewis, were reported to the _Times_ agents by Pigott with a
fanciful account of what took place at each.  He shortly afterwards
returned to Ireland, and Mr. Labouchere continued his efforts to
procure all possible evidence on behalf of his Irish friends.  He was
considerably helped by his acquaintances in America, who were able to
furnish him with invaluable details and scraps of knowledge about the
various witnesses for the _Times_, which came in appositely more than
once in Sir Charles Russell's masterly cross-examinations.  It is
interesting to notice, in perusing many of the curious letters
received by Mr. Labouchere at this period from Irish patriots living
beyond the Atlantic (what Mr. Labouchere had so often heard from the
lips of Mr. Parnell himself),[17] how far from popular Parnell was
with most of them.  He was too meek and mild for them, and they could
not understand his patience under injury and abuse.  In one of these
letters occurs the following anecdote about the intrepid Irish
leader: "I want to tell you," says the writer, "something about
Parnell in 1883--ask him: two men called on him when he was in Cork
and said (recollect the two were extremists), 'Mr. Parnell, unless
you give us £1000 for extreme measures we will shoot you before we
leave Cork.'  Parnell simply replied, 'Well, I certainly have a
choice, for which I am obliged--to be shot now or to be hung
afterwards.  I prefer the former.  You will never get £1000 from me
for the purpose you mention.'  One and all of these patriots, {379}
however, at this crisis of Parnell's career were determined to uphold
him, and to allow whatever grievances they had against him to stand
over until after his political character had been vindicated in the
eyes of the hated English.

Mr. Labouchere remained in communication with Pigott throughout the
winter.  Pigott dangled before him the possibility of further
important communications, and on November 29 Mr. Labouchere wrote to
him as follows:


As I understand the position it is this--Mr. Lewis holds that we can
prove our case against the _Times_ in regard to the letters
conclusively, and this, you will remember, Mr. Parnell told you.  We
prove it in a certain way.  You say that you wish to be kept out of
it, and not be called as a witness.  If such a course can strengthen
our case, and prove it still more conclusively, I do not see why it
should not be adopted, for the object is to prove irrespective of
individuals.  Evidently, some one must know how you propose to do
what you want, and what you say you can do.  If you like to confide
in me, I will tell you what I think, and, if I agree with you, it
will be then time for you either to assent or dissent to Mr. Parnell
or Mr. Lewis being informed.  But you are a practical man--so am I.
Mere assertion, neither you nor I attach much importance to, without
documentary or some other clear confirmation.


Pigott answered as follows:


  ANDERTON'S HOTEL,
  FLEET STREET, E.C., Dec. 4, 1888.

DEAR SIR,--I have arrived here, and write a line to ask you to make
an appointment, as I know that your house is watched--as is also Mr.
Lewis's Office--and as I am "shadowed" wherever I go outside a
certain limit, perhaps you could kindly arrange that we should meet
somewhere else to-morrow afternoon or Thursday, or in fact any other
day you choose.--Faithfuly yours, RD. PIGGOTT.


What occurred at the meeting which took place as the result of the
above correspondence is best told in {380} Mr. Labouchere's own
words: "Pigott came about ten and stayed till one A.M.  Again he
explained that he had forged, and gave me a good many details about
the way in which he had done it, telling me, amongst other things,
that he had given Houston three names as the sources of the letters,
two of which were efforts of his imagination, and the third a real
person.  He seemed rather proud of his skill, and by encouraging this
weakness I got everything out of him.  I asked him how Houston could
have been so easily fooled, and whether he was an absolute idiot?  He
replied that he was clever up to a certain point, but thought himself
twice as clever as he was, and that these sort of persons are easily
trapped.  In this I agreed with him, and he told me that Houston had
told him that he wanted letters, because it was intended to publish a
pamphlet, and that the letters were to be held in reserve to be
sprung upon the Court if there was an action for libel, adding that
such an action would be certain not to be brought.  Again and again,
with weary iteration, he came back to his plan to confess in writing,
and then to go to Australia.  I told him that he surely must be sharp
enough to see to what accusations this would subject me, and how
hurtful it would be to our case, which I assured him was of such
strength that it would smash him, quite irrespective of anything he
might say or do.  'Why, then, do you want documents?' he said.
'Because,' I replied, 'the issue is a political one.  We have to deal
with prejudiced Tories who have already compromised themselves by
pinning themselves to the genuineness of the letters, and
consequently our case cannot be too much strengthened.  With such
people you must put butter upon bacon.'  'What documents do you
want?' he said.  'Egan's letters, the original signatures from which
you traced those of Egan and Parnell, and a few letters forged in my
presence,' I said.  'I have not got Egan's letters: I destroyed them.
I have not got the signatures.  I gave Houston the letter of Parnell
from which I took his signature.  I will, if you like, forge the
letters in {381} your presence.  I will give you the names of the
three men from whom I told Houston I got the letters, and I will give
you the letters that Houston wrote to me,' he answered.  I said that
I would not give sixpence for these without the two items that I had
mentioned, and he reiterated that he had not got them.  'Why,' I
suddenly said to him,' did you write to Archbishop Walsh about the
letters?'  'The Archbishop,' he replied, 'has not got my letters; he
sent them all back; to reveal anything concerning them would be to
violate the confidence between a priest and a penitent.'  'Well,' I
finished by saying, 'think it over.  I am going out of town.  When I
return, come and see me again, and in the meanwhile try and find the
originals of Egan's letters.  I will let you know when I come back.'
He said that he would think it over, and, on wishing him good-night,
I asked him what he contemplated doing?  He said that he was in a
terrible mess, but that he saw no other course open for him but to go
into the box and swear that he had bought the letters, and that if
they were forgeries he had been deceived.  'You will be a fool if you
do,' I said, 'but that is your affair, not mine.  If I were in your
place I should tell the truth, and ask for the indemnity.'  'That is
all very well,' he said, 'but on what am I to live?'  And so we
parted."  Mr. Labouchere did not see Pigott again until he saw him in
the witness-box more than two months later.  Pigott returned to
Ireland about the middle of December and the Commission adjourned
until January 15.  Patrick Egan had written to Mr. Labouchere on
December 2 from Lincoln, Massachusetts saying: "I hope you will be
able to squeeze the truth out of Pigott in the way you say, as I
should dislike terribly to see him profit in any way by his villainy.
I do not believe there is a single thing in the suspicion against
O'Shea....  The fellow is incapable of playing the role of heavy
villain.  I am quite convinced that the forgery part of the scheme
was the sole work of Pigott.  You will perceive that all your
injunctions with regard to secrecy have been {382} observed on this
side, but everything gets out from London and Dublin.  Yesterday we
had on one of our Lincoln evening papers a cable (probably a copy of
a New York Herald cable) giving all particulars about the watch that
is being kept on Pigott and the discovery that C. is doing detective
work for the _Times_, that F. was mixed up with the forgeries and
other matters."

It must be borne in mind that, when the Commission adjourned in the
middle of December, the all-important question of the letters had not
yet been touched upon.  "The objects of the accusers," says Lord
Morley, "was to show the complicity of the accused with crime by
tracing crime to the League, and making every member of the League
constructively liable for every act of which the League was
constructively guilty.  Witnesses were produced, in a series that
seemed interminable, to tell the story of five-and-twenty outrages in
Mayo, of as many in Cork, of forty-two in Galway, of sixty-five in
Kerry, one after another, and all with immeasurable detail.  Some of
the witnesses spoke no English, and the English of others was hardly
more intelligible than Erse.  Long extracts were read out from four
hundred and forty speeches.  The counsel on one side produced a
passage that made against the Speaker, and then the counsel on the
other side found and read some qualifying passage that made as
strongly for him.  The three judges groaned.  They had already, they
said plaintively, ploughed through the speeches in the solitude of
their own rooms.  Could they not be taken as read?  'No,' said the
prosecuting counsel, 'we are building up an argument, and it cannot
be built up in a silent manner.'  In truth it was designed for the
public outside the court, and not a touch was spared that might
deepen the odium.  Week after week the ugly tale went on--a squalid
ogre let loose among a population demoralised by ages of wicked
neglect, misery, and oppression.  One side strove to show that the
ogre had been wantonly raised by the Land League for political
objects of their own; the other, that it was the {383} progeny of
distress and wrong, that the League had rather controlled than'
kindled its ferocity, and that crime and outrage were due to local
animosities for which neither League nor parliamentary leaders were
responsible."[19]  The Nationalists were impatient for the real
business to begin, for it was felt by every one that, if the letters
were proved to be genuine, the case was practically won all round for
the _Times_, whereas, if they proved to be forgeries, public opinion
on the subject could have but one bias.  Indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
himself had said: "To lead the inquiry off into subsidiary and
unimportant matters would be ... fatal to the reputation of the
_Times_--fatal to its success."  And again, "If the _Times_ fails to
maintain its principal charges, I do not think much attention will be
attached to other charges.  Any attempt, as it appears to all, on the
part of the _Times_ to put aside those principal charges or not to
put them in the forefront will redound to their discredit."[19]  The
delay, however, gave this advantage to the Nationalist side--they had
more time in which to accumulate confirmatory evidence against the
forger, and the forger was given more time in which to further
involve himself, in the net which his fowler had spread for him, by
writing foolish letters and telling needless lies.  Pigott had
promised Mr. Labouchere to return to London whenever he sent for him.
Parnell wrote to Mr. Labouchere during the Christmas vacation of the
Commissioners:


HOUSE OF COMMONS, Jan. 14, 1889.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I am anxious to see you before your Irish friend
returns to London.  Kindly give me an appointment, and let it be if
possible after four o'clock.--Yours sincerely,

CHAS. S. PARNELL.


{384}

He wrote again as follows on the 21st:


I do not think you need send for your Dublin friend this time, as the
_Times_ will probably do that for you, and you will hear when he is
in London.  Another forged letter of Egan's was produced in Court
last week, and sworn to by Delaney, evidently one of the Pigott
series.  I am laid up with a cold, but hope to be out tomorrow, when
I will try and call to see you in the afternoon.--Yours very truly,

CHAS. S. PARNELL.


The Irish friend was, of course, Pigott, and Delaney was a convict--a
witness for the _Times_.  He was one of the Phœnix Park criminals,
and was described by the _Daily News_ reporter, present in court, as
of "over middle height, stoutish in build, reddish-yellow haired, and
with features which were more of a Russian than an Irish cast.  He
wore a short jacket of check tweed, and a big white cravat about his
neck."  He had been brought up from Maryborough prison, where he was
doing his life sentence.  His brother was hanged for the Phœnix
Park murders, and so would he have been himself if he had not
confessed, and, in consequence, had his sentence changed from
execution to penal servitude for life.  He had sworn to the
handwriting of Patrick Egan on one of the letters produced in court.
"Are you an expert?" asked Sir Charles Russell carelessly.  No, Mr.
Delaney was not an expert, but he remembered the signature after so
many years, and he identified it when he was shown it "yesterday
evening" by the _Times_ agent.  He was able to identify it because
Carey, seven or eight years ago, showed him three of Mr. Egan's
letters.[20]

Pigott had been subpœnaed by the _Times_ as a witness early in
December.  On January 24, Mr. Labouchere wrote to him saying: "I see
that Sir R. Webster talks about soon getting to the letters.  When
are you likely to be over?  If you wish it, I will send your expenses
to come over."  At the end of the month he sent Pigott £10.
Labouchere's letter and the {385} £10 note were confided at once by
Pigott to Mr. Houston, who handed them over to Mr. Soames, and, of
course, they were produced in court and a rather different
interpretation put upon them to the one the recipient knew was
warranted.

Pigott was not called into the witness-box, the ordeal which he so
justly dreaded, until the fifty-fourth day of the Commission's
sittings.  He at once gave an account of the way he had obtained the
first batch of incriminating letters.  It read like a romance, as
indeed, it was in every sense of the word--how Mr. Houston had begged
him, if possible, to find some authentic documents to substantiate
accusations against the Irish leaders, how he had set forth for
Lausanne, all his expenses handsomely paid, and had met there an old
friend who had told him about a letter written by Parnell which was
in Paris, and might be obtained; how he had then proceeded to Paris
and by a marvellous stroke of good luck had run up against an
Irishman in the street who was able to give him more details about
the Parnell letter, and other documents of a similar kind, which had
been found in a black bag in a Paris lodging-house.  He had not
immediately bought the bag and its contents, because there were many
difficulties in the way, but he had gone back to London and told Mr.
Houston the whole story, and returned to Paris ready to clinch the
bargain.  But the Irish friend was not easy to bring to terms.  He
said Pigott must, before he could get possession of the letters, go
to America and obtain the permission to buy them from the Fenians
there.  To America he accordingly went, and returned with a letter
from John Breslin to the Irish friend authorising the sale of the
Parnell letter (afterwards known as the "facsimile letter") and the
rest of the papers.  Houston came over to Paris and paid him £500 for
the contents of the black bag, and gave him £105 for his own trouble.
It must be remembered that all his travelling expenses had been paid,
as well as £1 a day for hotels--not a bad remuneration for a needy
man such as Pigott was, who, it turned out later, was making what
living {386} he could by the sale of indecent photographs and books
to all who cared to buy them.  Doubtless the black bag was useful to
him in his book and picture business, which was why he did not sell
it with its temporary contents to Mr. Houston.  The said contents, as
bought by Houston, were as follows: Five letters of Mr. Parnell's,
six of Patrick Egan's, some scraps of paper, and the torn-out leaves
of an old account-book.  The black bag was supposed to have been left
in Paris by an Irish patriot (Frank Byrne or James O'Kelly) and had
been taken possession of by the Clan-na-Gael.  Subsequently two other
batches of letters were obtained by Pigott in Paris, and likewise
sold to the _Times_.

The Attorney-General, in the course of his examination of Pigott,
drew from him the following remarkable account of his visit to Mr.
Labouchere's house on October 24:


_The Attorney-General_.  Tell us, as nearly as you can, what passed
between you, Mr. Labouchere, and Mr. Parnell, and if, at any part of
it, Mr. Parnell was not present, just tell us and draw the
distinction--what passed as nearly as you can: how did the
conversation begin?

_Pigott_.  I think, as well as I recollect, Mr. Parnell commenced the
conversation, and what he said was to the effect that they held
proofs in their hands that would convict me of the forgery of all the
letters, and he asked me, with reference to my statement to the
effect that I wished if possible to avoid giving evidence at all, how
I proposed to do that.  I explained that I had not been subpœnaed
by the _Times_ up to that date, that the only subpœna I received
was the one Mr. Lewis had served me with, and it occurred to me then
that probably, if I could induce Mr. Lewis to withdraw his
subpœna, I might avoid in that way coming forward at all.  Mr.
Parnell was of opinion that that could not be done, that Mr. Lewis
could not withdraw his subpœna, that I would be obliged to appear.
Then, I think, Mr. Labouchere took up the running, and he was rather
facetious.

_The Attorney-General_.  What did he say, please?

_Pigott_.  He made a proposition to me right out, that I should {387}
appear in the witness-box and swear that I had forged the letters,
thereby ensuing--entitling myself to receive from the Commissioners a
certificate of immunity from any proceedings, legal or criminal.  He
said that was his reading of the law, and Mr. Parnell agreed with him
that such was the case, that it was an extremely simple matter; it
was merely going into the box, taking an oath, and walking out free.

_The Attorney-General_.  I want just to get this: did the suggestion
that if you went into the witness-box, and said that you forged the
letters, that you would get your certificate, come from Mr.
Labouchere?

_Pigott_.  Distinctly.

_The Attorney-General_.  What else, please?

_Pigott_.  He urged me, as a further inducement to do this, that I
would become immensely popular in Ireland, the fact that I had
swindled the _Times_ would be sufficient of itself to secure me a
seat in Parliament to begin with, and then, if at any time I wished
to go to the United States, he would undertake that I should be
received with a torchlight procession from all the organisations
there.  Of course, I could scarcely believe that he was serious, but
still----[21]


Here almost uncontrolled merriment burst out all over the court, in
which Mr. Labouchere himself joined more heartily than any one.


_The President of the Court_.  I must say, whether this is true or
not, it is not a fit subject for laughter.


But whether the President would or no, it was impossible to prevent
constant ripples of laughter from breaking out all over the court
while Pigott was narrating his version of the first meeting at Mr.
Labouchere's house.  Pigott told how Mr. Lewis had arrived on the
scene, and had also denounced him as the forger of the letters--"Mr.
Lewis assumed his severest manner," said Pigott.  He continued his
evidence after some further questions from the Attorney-General.


{388}

_Pigott_.  Mr. Labouchere beckoned me outside the door into the hall,
and he there said--I forgot to mention that in the course of
conversation I stated that I had--I do not know exactly whether I
said I had been promised £5000 by the _Times_ or that I had demanded
it.

_The Attorney-General_.  One or the other?

_Pigott_.  One or the other.  So referring to that Mr. Labouchere
said that they were prepared to pay me £1000--that he himself was
prepared to pay me £1000, but, of course, I was not to mention
anything about it to Mr. Parnell or to Mr. Lewis.

_The President_.  One moment before you go further.  "He beckoned me
outside"--where was he then?

_Pigott_.  That was at Labouchere's house.

_The President_.  I know, but where was it?

_Pigott_.  Outside into the hall.

_The President_.  Was it a whole house or was it a flat?

_Pigott_.  It is a whole house.  He took me into the entrance hall,
the room that we were in was the front room.

_The President_.  A dining-room or library or what?

_Pigott_.  A library.

_The Attorney-General_.  Is that the end of the conversation that
then took place?

_Pigott_.  Up to that time, yes.

_The Attorney-General_.  What did you say to Mr. Labouchere when he
said he was prepared to pay you £1000?

_Pigott_.  I said I thought it was a very handsome sum; I did not say
whether I would take it or not.  As well as I can recollect, however,
I raised no objection.  I took it that he understood me to agree to
that sum.  Then, on returning to the room, I said distinctly--very
distinctly--that nothing under heaven would induce me to go into the
witness-box and swear a lie--nothing would.  Then Mr. Lewis explained
to me the necessity for my going into the witness-box might be
avoided by the course that he suggested: that is that I was to write
to the _Times_ to state that I believed the letters were forgeries,
or that I had forged them myself, if I preferred it.  At all events I
was to acquaint the Manager of the _Times_ with the fact that the
letters were actual forgeries, and that thereupon the _Times_ would
naturally withdraw the letters, and the thing would drop, and of
course Mr. Labouchere's {389} offer would stand.  Well, Mr. Lewis did
not say that, but of course I understood it.


Pigott proceeded to give his account of his interview with Mr. Lewis
on the following morning.  He said that Mr. Lewis had taken notes of
what he (Pigott) said, and he (Pigott) had told Mr. Lewis all he had
told Mr. Soames with reference to the hunt for and discovery of the
incriminating letters in Paris.  Mr. Soames's evidence, given in
court on February 15, of what Pigott had told him on this subject
differed very considerably from what, according to Mr. Lewis's notes,
he had told the latter.  For instance, Mr. Pigott told Mr. Lewis on
October 25 that he had sold the letters to Mr. Houston, never
believing for a moment himself that they were genuine.  In court, on
February 21, Pigott denied the accuracy of Mr. Lewis's notes, made
during his conversation with him at Anderton's Hotel on October 25.

All Pigott's correspondence with Mr. Lewis and Mr. Labouchere was
then read out in court, with the replies of the two gentlemen to Mr.
Pigott.  The Attorney-General ended his examination as follows:


_The Attorney-General_.  The only other matter I want to put to you
is this: these gentlemen told you--Mr. Parnell and Mr.
Labouchere--that they had copies of letters, which they had written
to you?

_Pigott_.  Yes.

_The Attorney-General_.  From which it was alleged that you had
copied these documents?

_Pigott_.  Yes.

_The Attorney-General_.  Did they produce any to you?

_Pigott_.  No.

_The Attorney-General_.  Did they at any time, either at Mr. Lewis's
office or at Mr. Labouchere's, offer to show you any of them?

_Pigott_.  No.


As the Attorney-General, rearranging his gown, was {390} slowly
resuming his seat, a loud murmur of conversation broke out over the
court.  It stopped suddenly.  Scarcely was the Attorney-General
seated when Sir Charles Russell stood bolt upright.  He had a clean
sheet of paper in his hand.  There was such a silence in the court
that even the fall of a pin would have been heard.  Pigott's little
day of peace was over.  Poor fellow!  He had done his best to keep
his share of the business in the black shadows where such deeds are
wont to skulk, but the gloom was about to be dispelled by the light
of truth.



[1] Lord Eversley, _Gladstone and Ireland._

[2] The Land League founded by Parnell in 1879 for the purpose of
bringing about a reduction of rack rents, and facilitating the
creation of a peasant proprietary.  Egan was the treasurer of the
Land League.

[3] _Hansard_, April 14, 1887, vol. 313.

[4] Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii.

[5] _Hansard_, September 12, 1887, vol. 321.

[6] _Hansard_, September 12, 1887, vol. 321.

[7] _Ibid._

[8] _Hansard_, February 14, 1888, vol. 322.

[9] _Truth_, September 15, 1887.

[10] _Truth_, September 22, 1887.

[11] Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii.

[12] _Hansard_, April 18, 1887, vol. 313.

[13] The Counsel for the _Times_ were Sir Richard Webster, the
Attorney-General, Sir Henry James, Mr. Murphy, Mr. W. Graham, Mr.
Atkinson, and Mr. Ronan; Sir Charles Russell and Mr. Asquith, M.P.,
appeared for Mr. Parnell.

[14] The Irishman was a Fenian newspaper owned by Pigott, and sold by
him to Parnell in 1881.

[15] Mr. Parnell's secretary.

[16] _Truth._

[17] See letters to Chamberlain in Chapter IX.

[18] Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii.

[19] Macdonald, _Diary of the Parnell Commission_, July 6, 1887.

[20] Macdonald, _Diary of the Parnell Commission._

[21] _Special Commission Act_, 1888, vol. v.




{391}

CHAPTER XIV

THE COLLAPSE OF RICHARD PIGOTT

Sir Charles Russell's cross-examination of Pigott on the fifty-fourth
and fifty-fifth days of the Commission's sittings is generally
considered to be one of the finest things of the kind, from a
technical point of view, ever heard.  A friend who was much with him
at that time relates that, on the day the cross-examination
commenced, he was irritable and depressed and unable to eat, and that
he could not have been more nervous had he been a junior with his
first brief instead of the most formidable advocate at the Bar.  But,
as he stood facing the forger, his whole appearance changed.  He was
a picture of calmness, self-possession, and strength, there was no
sign of impatience or irritability, not a trace of anxiety or
care.[1]  In the profound silence that had fallen upon the court he
began, in tones of great courtesy:


Mr. Pigott, would you be good enough, with my Lord's permission, to
write some words on that sheet of paper for me.  Perhaps you will sit
down in order to do it.  [He gave him the sheet of paper he had in
his hand.]  Would you like to sit down?

_Pigott_.  Oh no, thanks.

_The President_.  Well, but I think that it is better that you should
sit down.  Here is a table upon which you can write in the ordinary
way, the course you always pursue.

_Sir Charles Russell_.  Will you write the word "livelihood"?  {392}
Just leave a space.  Will you write the word "likelihood"?  Will you
write your own name, leaving a space between each?  Will you write
the word "proselytism," and finally, I think I will not trouble you
any more at present, "Patrick Egan" and "P. Egan" underneath
it--"Patrick Egan" first and "P. Egan" underneath it?  There is one
word more I had forgotten.  Lower down, please, leaving spaces, write
the word "hesitancy" with a small "h."


Pigott, after he had written what he was told, handed back the sheet
of paper, and, as soon as Sir Charles Russell had glanced at it, he
knew that he had scored a great point for Mr. Parnell.  The word that
he had told Pigott to write last, and with a small "h," as if that
were the significant part of the experiment, was the word which
Pigott had misspelt in one of the letters supposed to be from Parnell
to Egan which the Attorney-General had produced at the O'Donnell _v._
Walter trial.  Pigott had again spelt it wrong.  Hesitancy on the
piece of paper which he handed back to Sir Charles Russell was spelt
"hesitency."

The cross-examination of Pigott occupied the rest of that day, and
before the end of it the wretched man had fallen into hopeless
confusion.  The production of some of his correspondence with the
Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Walsh), in which he offered, for a
consideration of course, to avert the possibility of a blow which was
about to fall upon the Nationalist party (presumably the publication
of the facsimile letter), almost finished his brazen self-command.
The day's sitting ended in a roar of laughter, for Pigott's silly,
aimless reflections, elicited by the advocate's remorseless,
persistent questions, were ludicrous, and it was easy to see what the
climax of the affair would be.  The next day things went worse and
worse for Pigott.  A correspondence which he had with Egan in 1881
was produced, in which he had misspelt the word "hesitancy" as he had
done the day before in court.  Egan's answers to Pigott were not
forthcoming, for reasons which the forger made known later on, but
the {393} drafts of these answers, produced by Mr. Lewis (who had got
them direct from Mr. Egan through Mr. Labouchere), bearing a
remarkable similarity to the Egan letters produced by the _Times_,
were read by Sir Charles Russell.  Copies of letters written by Mr.
Parnell to Pigott in 1881 were also read out, coinciding word for
word in parts with the "facsimile letter" and the others put in by
the accusers of the Nationalist party.  Then Pigott was made to
acknowledge how he had blackmailed Mr. Forster, and Mr. Wemyss Reid
produced the Pigott-Forster correspondence in court.  Before the
reading of this correspondence was finished, the densely packed
audience in the court, according to the _Daily News_ reporter, was
wrought up to the highest pitch of amusement and excitement.  The
court usher had long since ceased to cry out "Silence!"  The
merriment was almost continuous.  The judges themselves were unable
to repress their feelings.  A loud ringing roar of laughter broke
forth as Sir Charles Russell read one letter containing Pigott's
application for £200 to enable him to proceed to Sydney, and some
hints as to the pressure which was brought to bear upon him to
publish the Forster letters.  Mr. Justice Day, bending forward,
reddened and shook with laughter.  In this letter Pigott wrote: "I
feel this is my last chance, and if that fails only the workhouse and
the grave remains."  Poor Pigott looked as if he would prefer even
the grave to the witness-box.  He changed colour; the helpless,
foolish smile flickered about the weak heavy mouth; his hands moved
about restlessly, nervously.  Then came the climax--Pigott's letter
to Mr. Forster, saying that he felt tempted to reveal to the world
how he had been bribed by Mr. Forster to write against the interests
of Ireland.  The notion of Pigott's appearing in the character of
injured innocence sent the audience off once more into a fit of
laughter.  It was now four o'clock, and, in the uproar and confusion,
Pigott descended from the box, smiling foolishly.[2]  That he had
forged {394} the letters no one now doubted for a moment.  The way he
had actually done it was not yet absolutely clear, but the ingenuous
Pigott was not going to leave any mysteries unsolved.  The court was
adjourned until the following Tuesday.

The story of how the court met on February 26, and when Pigott was
called upon to enter the witness-box there was no answer, and how it
was subsequently elicited that he had disappeared from his hotel on
the previous afternoon and not been seen again, has been graphically
told by more than one writer.  Who had given him the money to bolt,
and who had assisted him to evade the constables who were supposed to
be watching him, has never been positively revealed, but the fact
remained--there was no Pigott there to tell the end of his squalid
tale.  The court adjourned for some thirty minutes, and then Sir
Charles Russell made the startling announcement that Pigott, without
an invitation from any one, had called upon Mr. Labouchere in
Grosvenor Gardens on the previous Saturday, the day after his
disastrous cross-examination, and had then and there dictated to him
a full confession.  This confession had been signed by Pigott and
witnessed by Mr. George Augustus Sala.  Mr. George Lewis, to whom Mr.
Labouchere had communicated the confession, had refused to have
anything to do with the document, and sent it back to Pigott with the
following letter:


ELY PLACE, HOLBORN, Feb. 25, 1889.

SIR,--Mr. Labouchere has informed me that on Saturday you called at
his house and expressed a desire to make a statement in writing, and
he has handed to us the confession you have made, that you are the
forger of the whole of the letters given in evidence by the _Times_
purporting to be written respectively by Mr. Parnell, Mr. Egan, Mr.
Davitt, and Mr. O'Kelly, and that, in addition, you committed perjury
in support of the case of the _Times_.  Mr. Parnell has instructed us
to inform you that he declines to hold any communication directly or
indirectly with you, and he further {395} instructs us to return you
the written confession which we enclose, and which for safety sake we
send by hand.--We are, sir, yours obediently,

  LEWIS & LEWIS.
  Richard Pigott, Esq.


On the following day Sir Richard Webster made the announcement to the
court that a letter had been received in Pigott's handwriting, posted
in Paris, addressed to Mr. Shannon, the Dublin solicitor, who had
been assisting Mr. Soames.  The letter had not been opened, and he
handed it to the President of the Commission, who passed it down to
Mr. Cunynghame, and asked him to open and read its contents.  It was
Pigott's confession made to Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Lewis's letter to
Pigott quoted above.  The envelope contained also a note from the
irrepressible Pigott as follows:


  HÔTEL DE DEUX MONDES,
  AVENUE DE L'OPERA, PARIS, Tuesday.

DEAR SIR,--Just before I left enclosed was handed to me.  It had been
left while I was out.  Will write again soon.--Yours truly,

R. PIGOTT.


The confession, as far as the letters were concerned, ran as follows:


The circumstances connected with the obtaining of the letters, as I
gave in evidence, are not true.  No one save myself was concerned in
the transaction.  I told Houston that I had discovered the letters in
Paris, but I grieve to have to confess that I simply myself
fabricated them, using genuine letters of Messrs. Parnell and Egan in
copying certain words, phrases, and general character of the
handwriting.  I traced some words and phrases by putting the genuine
letter against the window, and placing on it the sheet of which
copies have been read in court, and four or five letters of Mr. Egan,
which were also read in court.  I destroyed these letters after using
them.  Some of the {396} signatures I traced in this manner, and some
I wrote.  I then wrote to Houston telling him to come to Paris for
the documents.  I told him that they had been placed in a black bag
with some old accounts, scraps of paper, and old newspapers.  On his
arrival I produced to him the letters, accounts, and scraps of paper.
After a brief inspection he handed me a cheque on Cook for £500, the
price that I told him I had agreed to pay for them.  At the same time
he gave me £105 in bank-notes as my own commission.  The accounts put
in were leaves torn from an old account book of my own, which
contained details of the expenditure of Fenian money entrusted to me
from time to time, which is mainly in the handwriting of David
Murphy, my cashier.  The scraps I found in the bottom of an old
writing-desk.  I do not recollect in whose writing they are.

The second batch of letters was also written by me.  Mr. Parnell's
signature was imitated from that published in the _Times_ facsimile
letter.  I do not now remember where I got the Egan letter from which
I copied the signature.

I had no specimen of Campbell's handwriting beyond the two letters of
Mr. Parnell to me, which I presumed might be in Mr. Campbell's
handwriting.  I wrote to Mr. Houston that this second batch was for
sale in Paris, having been brought there from America.  He wrote
asking to see them.  I forwarded them accordingly, and after keeping
them three or four days, he sent me a cheque on Cook for the price
demanded for them, £550.  The third batch consisted of a letter
imitated by me from a letter written in pencil to me by Mr. Davitt
when he was in prison, and of another letter copied by me from a
letter of a very early date, which I received from James O'Kelly when
he was writing on my newspapers, and of a third letter ascribed to
Egan, the writing of which, and some of the words, I copied from an
old bill of exchange in Mr. Egan's handwriting.  £200 was the price
paid to me by Mr. Houston for these three letters.  It was paid in
bank-notes.  I have stated that for the first batch I received £105
for myself, for the second batch I got £50, for the third batch I was
supposed to receive nothing.

I did not see Breslin in America.  This was part of the deception.

With respect to my interview with Messrs. Parnell, Labouchere, {397}
and Lewis, my sworn statement is in the main correct.  I am now,
however, of opinion that the offer to me by Mr. Labouchere of £1000
was not for giving evidence but for any documents in Mr. Egan's or
Mr. Parnell's handwriting that I might happen to have.  My statement
only referred to the first interviews with these gentlemen.  I had a
further interview with Mr. Labouchere, on which occasion I made him
acquainted with further circumstances not previously mentioned by me
at the preceding interviews.


There was a pause after Mr. Cunynghame finished reading the
extraordinary document.  It was an awkward moment for the
Attorney-General, but, in an extremely dignified speech, he informed
the court that, on behalf of his clients, he asked permission to
withdraw from the consideration of the Commission the question of the
genuineness of the letters which had been submitted to them.  On that
day Mr. Parnell appeared for the first time in the witness-box, and
in answer to Sir Charles Russell's questions swore to the forgery of
his signature on all the letters in question.  There was no attempt
to cross-examine on the part of Sir Richard Webster.  Mr. Labouchere
entered the witness-box on March 3.  He gave his evidence very slowly
and realistically, rather in the style perhaps of what Lord Randolph
Churchill described as newspaper paragraphs, but there was no lack of
connection in his descriptions of his various interviews with Pigott.
When it came to the final interview on the preceding Saturday the
questions of the great advocate became very close.


_Sir Charles Russell_.  He came to your house?

_Mr. Labouchere_.  He did.

_Sir Charles Russell_.  Did you expect him?

_Mr. Labouchere_.  No.

_Sir Charles Russell_.  Had he given you any warning he was coming?

_Mr. Labouchere_.  No.

_Sir Charles Russell_.  Or had you asked him to come?

{398}

_Mr. Labouchere_.  No.

_Sir Charles Russell_.  Now tell us what took place on the occasion.

_Mr. Labouchere_.  He came in.  I did not catch the name when the
servant introduced him.  I was writing at the table, and looked up,
and saw him standing before me, and he said to me, "I suppose you are
surprised at seeing me here?"  And I said, "Oh! not at all.  Pray
take a seat."

_Sir Charles Russell_.  I said what----?

_Mr. Labouchere_.  "Not at all."  Nothing would surprise me about Mr.
Pigott.  He sat down.  He then said that he had come over to confess
everything; that he supposed he should have to go to prison, and he
was just as well there as anywhere else.  I said that he must
thoroughly understand if he did confess, the confession would be
handed to Mr. Lewis, and that I must have a witness.


Of the historic interview in Mr. Labouchere's study in Grosvenor
Gardens there has been no more graphic an account written than the
one by its only witness, the veteran journalist, George Augustus Sala:


In February 1889 [he wrote] I was the occupant of a fiat in Victoria
Street, Westminster, and one Saturday, between one and two P.M., a
knock came at my study door, and I was handed a letter which had been
brought in hot haste by a servant who was instructed to wait for an
answer.  The missive was of the briefest possible kind, and was from
my near neighbour Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P., whose house was then at
24 Grosvenor Gardens.  The note ran thus: "Can you leave everything
and come here at once?  Most important business.--H.L."  I told the
servant that I would be in Grosvenor Gardens within a quarter of an
hour, and, ere that time had expired, I was ushered into a large
library on the ground floor, where I found the senior member for
Northampton smoking his sempiternal cigarette, but with an unusual
and curious expression of animation on his normally passive
countenance.

He was not alone.  Ensconced in a roomy fauteuil, a few paces from
Mr. Labouchere's writing-table, there was a somewhat {399} burly
individual of middle stature and more than middle age.  He looked
fully sixty, although I have been given to understand that his age
did not exceed fifty-five; but his elderly aspect was enhanced by his
baldness, which revealed a large amount of oval _os frontis_ fringed
by grey locks.  The individual had an eyeglass screwed into one eye,
and he was using this optical aid most assiduously; for he was poring
over a copy of that morning's issue of the _Times_, going right down
one column and apparently up it again; then taking column after
column in succession; then harking back as though he had omitted some
choice paragraph; and then resuming the sequence of his lecture, ever
and anon tapping that ovoid frontal bone of his, as though to evoke
memories of the past, with a little silver pencil-case.  I noted his
somewhat shabby genteel attire, and, in particular, I observed that
the hand which held the copy of the _Times_ never ceased to shake.
Mr. Labouchere, in his most courteous manner and his blandest tone,
said, "Allow me to introduce you to a gentleman of whom you must have
heard a great deal, Mr.----."  I replied, "There is not the slightest
necessity for naming him.  I know him well enough.  That's Mr.
Pigott."

The individual in the capacious fauteuil wriggled from behind the
_Times_ an uneasy acknowledgment of my recognition; but if anything
could be conducive to putting completely at his ease a gentleman who,
from some cause or another, was troubled in his mind, it would have
been the dulcet voice in which Mr. Labouchere continued: "The fact is
that Mr. Pigott has come here, quite unsolicited, to make a full
confession.  I told him that I would listen to nothing he had to say,
save in the presence of a witness, and, remembering that you lived
close by, I thought that you would not mind coming here and listening
to what Mr. Pigott has to confess, which will be taken down, word by
word, from his dictation in writing."  It has been my lot during a
long and diversified career to have to listen to a large number of
very queer statements from very queer people; and, by dint of
experience, you reach at last a stage of stoicism when little, if
anything, that is imparted to you excites surprise.  Mr. Pigott,
although he had screwed his courage to the sticking place of saying
that he was going to confess, manifested considerable tardiness in
orally "owning up."  Conscience, we were justified in assuming, had
{400} gnawed to an extent sufficient to make him disposed to relieve
his soul from a dreadful burden; but conscience, to all seeming, had
to gnaw a little longer and a little more sharply ere he absolutely
gave tongue.  So we let him be for about ten minutes.  Mr. Labouchere
kindled another cigarette.  I lighted a cigar.

At length Mr. Pigott stood up and came forward into the light, by the
side of Mr. Labouchere's writing-table.  He did not change colour; he
did not blench; but when--out of the fulness of his heart, no
doubt--his mouth spake, it was in a low, half-musing tone, more at
first as though he were talking to himself than to any auditors.  By
degrees, however, his voice rose, his diction became more fluent.  It
is only necessary that, in this place, I should say that, in
substance, Pigott confessed that he had forged the letters alleged to
have been written by Mr. Parnell; and he minutely described the
manner in which he, and he alone, had executed the forgeries in
question.  Whether the man with the bald head and the eyeglass in the
library at Grosvenor Gardens was telling the truth or was uttering
another batch of infernal lies it is not for me to determine.  No
pressure was put upon him, no leading questions were asked him, and
he went on quietly and continuously to the end of a story which I
should have thought amazing had I not had occasion to hear many more
tales even more astounding.  He was not voluble, but he was
collected, clear, and coherent; nor, although he repeatedly confessed
to forgery, fraud, deception, and misrepresentation, did he seem
overcome with anything approaching active shame.  His little
peccadilloes were plainly owned, but he appeared to treat them more
as incidental weakness than as extraordinary acts of wickedness.

When he had come to the end of his statement Mr. Labouchere left the
library for a few minutes to obtain a little refreshment.  It was a
great relief to me when he came back, for, when Pigott and I were
left together, there came over me a vague dread that he might
disclose his complicity with the Rye House Plot, or that he would
admit that he had been the executioner of King Charles I.  The
situation was rather embarrasing; the time might have been tided over
by whistling, but unfortunately I never learnt to whistle.  It would
have been rude to read a book; and besides, to do so would have
necessitated my taking my eyes off {401} Mr. Pigott, and I never took
them off him.  We did get into conversation, but our talk was curt
and trite.  He remarked, first taking up that so-often-conned
_Times_, that the London papers were inconveniently large.  This,
being a self-evident proposition, met with no response from me, but
on his proceeding to say, in quite a friendly manner, that I must
have found the afternoon's interview rather stupid work, I replied
that, on the contrary, so far as I was concerned, I had found it
equally amusing and instructive.  Then the frugal Mr. Labouchere
coming back with his mouth full, we went to business again.  The
whole of Pigott's confession, beginning with the declaration that he
had made it uninvited and without any pecuniary consideration, was
read over to him line by line and word by word.  He made no
correction or alteration whatsoever.  The confession covered several
sheets of paper, and to each sheet he affixed his initials.  Finally,
at the bottom of the completed document he signed his name beneath
which I wrote mine as a witness.[3]


The history of the Commission subsequent to Pigott's disappearance
does not belong to this biography.  It is enough to say that it
terminated its business on November 20, 1889, after having sat no
less than 126 times.

On the 8th of March, eight days after his last appearance in the
witness-box, the news of Pigott's suicide reached London.  It
appeared that after his interview with Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Sala,
he treated himself to an evening's amusement at the Alhambra Music
Hall.  He left on Monday morning for Paris, whence he posted the
envelope containing his confession and other enclosures to Mr.
Shannon.  He reached Madrid on Thursday, where he put up at the Hotel
des Ambassadeurs, and spent the afternoon and following morning in
visiting the churches and picture galleries.  He would not have been
tracked so quickly by the detectives if he had not sent a wire to Mr.
Shannon--the Dublin solicitor who had assisted Mr. Soames--asking for
the money "you promised me," which gave the clue to his {402}
whereabouts.  On the following afternoon, when he was informed by the
hotel interpreter that a police officer wanted him, he retired to his
bedroom and shot himself through the brain.[4]

Richard Pigott had one redeeming feature in his character--unless his
complete lack of self-consciousness in evil doing be counted as
another--an intense love for his motherless children.  There were
four of these.  Mr. Labouchere's compassion for the wretched man had
early been aroused in connection with the really pathetic state of
his domestic affairs, and, although his "underground" relations with
Pigott prevented him from being able to promise definitely to give
him any assistance for his children in the event of the _Times_ or
Parnell prosecuting him as a consequence of his confession, it is
easily to be imagined that Pigott would have perceived during his
visits to Grosvenor Gardens the extraordinary tenderness of feeling
that Mr. Labouchere could never conceal where there was a question of
any suffering to be saved to a child.  In his examination by Sir
Charles Russell Mr. Labouchere had said: "Pigott said to me, 'I shall
go to prison, but perhaps I am better there than anywhere else; the
only thing I regret is the position of my children, who will starve.'
I said: 'Well, I think they won't starve, or anything of that sort,
but if you want me to make any terms about your children, you must
not expect it from me.'"  Poor puzzled Pigott!  He had done
everything he could to please every one round him, and yet he could
get no one at this crisis to do the one thing that would have set his
fluttering mind at ease.  No one would promise to befriend the four
little boys at Kingstown.  Truly, as he had told Mr. Labouchere, he
was in a terrible mess.

But as soon as the poor fellow was dead, and his motives could no
longer be impugned by the vigilant Tories, Mr. Labouchere set himself
with energy to see that the children were cared for.  He sent a
friend to Kingstown to report to {403} him on the condition of the
orphans, and she wrote to him as follows: "I had a long chat with the
housekeeper who is to my mind an excellent woman.  A more
self-forgetful creature I never saw, and nobody ever wrapped truths
in softer garments.  She pitied her master.  She says that Pigott
adored these children, and that it was his desire to give them
comforts and education which drove him into such crimes.  I do hope
that something will be done for these poor friendless children, to
whom the father was a most indulgent parent.  I saw lying in the room
little toy yachts and tricycles, bearing evidence that there was
softness as well as weakness in the character of the dead man.  The
only relative that the housekeeper knows of is an uncle, who holds a
good position under the Government.  She wrote to him and got no
reply."  A fund was started for the benefit of the children, and in
the pages of _Truth_ Mr. Labouchere pleaded their cause with
eloquence.  In May Archbishop Walsh wrote to him as follows:


  4 RUTLAND SQUARE,
  DUBLIN, May 23, 1889.

DEAR MR. LABOUCHERE,--There are two ways in which effect can be given
to your charitable purpose.  The trust can be executed direct through
me, or I can arrange to have the matter carried out by the parish
priests of the place where Pigott lived--Glasthule close by
Kingstown, Dublin.  I may say to you that two generous offers were
made to me immediately after the suicide.  One was a proposal to take
charge of the two elder boys with a view to their emigration to the
U.S. or Canada, where something would be done to give them a fair
start.  The other was an offer to take one of the younger children
and practically to provide for this little fellow by an informal
adoption.

In both cases I pointed out that there is, I fear, a serious
difficulty in the way of my interfering in any prominent way in the
case, and indeed in the interference of anyone who is an active
sympathizer (as was the case in the two offers) with Home Rule, etc.

{404}

The Liberal Unionists of Dublin who brought the unfortunate father
into temptation have a heavy responsibility towards the poor
children.  It is worse than mean of them to shirk it.  But they not
only shirk it, they try to throw the responsibility on to the other
side.  The insinuation made by many of them is that Pigott was got
out of the country by sympathizers with Mr. Parnell, and that the
suicide even may have been managed for a consideration.

A very serious question then arises as to what can be prudently done
in the case of the children.  Of course they must not be neglected.
But, so far as I can see, there is no present danger on that score.
The two elder boys are at school at Clongowes, a high-class school
for lay pupils, conducted by the Jesuit Fathers.  Their schoolfellows
have, throughout the whole case, shown a splendid spirit towards
them.  The two younger boys are safely placed in charge of the former
housekeeper in a place where they are not known, not far from Dublin.

My advice would be to let matters lie until the school holiday time
comes on, about the beginning of July.

In the meantime I shall communicate with the persons who made the
offers of which I have told you.

When the case comes to be dealt with, I should suggest that the best
way to act would be through Canon Harold, the parish priest.

Meanwhile should not something be done through the newspapers to work
up the call, which can be most legitimately made, on the Irish
Liberal Unionists to do at all events something really substantial in
the case?--I remain, dear Mr. Labouchere, faithfully yours,

WILLIAM WALSH, Archbishop of Dublin.


The statement of Dr. Walsh that there were people in Dublin who
insinuated that Pigott had been got out of the country by the friends
of the Nationalists seems almost incredible, but it is a fact that,
even in England, in country places, lectures were given, under the
auspices of the Primrose League, to persuade rural voters, who might
have been reading the newspapers, that the forgery of the Pigott
letters {405} had never been proved, and even more ridiculous
statements were made in some places.  Mr. Labouchere wrote in _Truth_
on March 7:


I feel it my duty solemnly to affirm that (incredible as it may
appear to Primrose Dames) I did not bribe Pigott to commit suicide by
promising him an annuity.  It is somewhat fortunate for me that I can
prove an alibi; otherwise I make no doubt that I should have been
accused of having been concealed in Pigott's room at Madrid, and
having shot him.  Well, well, I suppose that allowance must be made
for the crew of idiots who have gone about vowing that the _Times_
forgeries were genuine letters, and who are now grovelling in the
mire that they have prepared for themselves.

Nothing can exceed my sorrow that we were not privileged to hear in
court the evidence of the expert in handwriting, Inglis.  So great,
indeed, is my regret that I will willingly (if the _Times_ is in want
of money) pay the sum of £20 for his "proof."  I have always regarded
these experts as the most dreary of humbugs, and in this view I am
now confirmed.  I myself subjected the photographs of the _Times_
forgeries to the limelight in a magic-lantern, and I soon discovered
that there were signs of tracing.  In some of the words--and
particularly in the signatures--there is a small white line, where
the ink had not taken over the tracing.  If Inglis had done the same,
he would not probably have made so ridiculous a fool of himself.


It must be owned that Mr. Labouchere made himself exceedingly
annoying in the pages of _Truth_ on the subject of the forged
letters.  His taunts and scathing witticisms at the expense of the
prosecuting side and Messrs. Soames, Houston & Co. were almost past
enduring, and more than one apology was furiously demanded of him, to
which he usually replied by heaping more ridicule on the unfortunate,
writhing victim.  Some abortive attempts were made to hoax him and
make a fool of him as he succeeded so frequently in doing of others.
In the winter of 1889 a somewhat unpleasant case was brought before
the Central Criminal {406} Court, the only event of public interest
connected with which was the departure from England of a well-known
nobleman on the very eve of the day that the warrant was issued for
his arrest, and it was in connection with this affair that someone
tried to put salt on Labby's tail.  Whoever the joker was he must
have felt rather sold when he read the following paragraph in the
next issue of Labby's journal;


I have received through the post the following letter and enclosure.
Evidently someone is attempting to Pigott me.  I do not hesitate to
say that the letters are not from those by whom they profess to be
written.  It is really shameful that two such good men and true as
Lord Salisbury and Mr. Houston should be selected for this
reprehensible hoax.


  PRIMROSE LEAGUE CENTRAL OFFICES,
  VICTORIA STREET.

SIR, I enclose you an autograph letter of Lord Salisbury.  I obtained
it from a man of the name of Hammond, whom I promised to reward if he
could get me any letters likely to injure the character of Tory
leaders.  He tells me that a client of his in Cleveland Street called
upon him and produced it from a black bag.  I have already offered
the letter to Lord Hartington and to the Editor of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, but they have both declined to have anything to do with it.
If you use it I must request you to send me a cheque for £1000, and
you must pledge yourself never to give up the name of Hammond.  He is
a very worthy man, and he fears that if it were known that he had
given me the letter some Tory would shoot him.--Your obedient servant,

E. C. HOUSTON.

(_Enclosure_)

HATFIELD HOUSE, Oct., 17.

MY DEAR LORD***,--There is a good deal of evidence against you,
although the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General have decided
that the evidence of identity is not sufficient, but I hear a rumour
that more evidence can be obtained.  I can count upon the Chancellor
standing to his guns, but I am not quite so sure of Webster.  He, you
know, will have to answer that {407} scoundrel Labouchere in the
House of Commons, when he brings on the subject and he is getting
shaky.  Perhaps he will be forced to issue a warrant.--Yours very
truly,

SALISBURY.


Another hoax practised on Mr. Labouchere came off, and a considerable
time elapsed before the perpetrator of it was discovered.  He
eventually turned out to be a member of one of the most staid and
respectable clubs in London.  Here is the story of the hoax, as Mr.
Labouchere related it in _Truth_:


During the last few weeks I have received a number of anonymous
letters, all in the same handwriting, couched in terms the reverse of
complimentary.  Some of them were on the paper of the East India
United Service Club, St. James's Square.  This did not trouble me, as
I receive so many of such letters that I am accustomed to them.  On
Thursday last, however, my anonymous friend sent orders signed in my
name to a number of tradesmen desiring them to send me goods.  He
ordered two hearses each with two mourning coaches, and requested a
representative of the cremation company to call and arrange for my
cremation.  He also ordered a marriage cake of Messrs. Buzzard, a bed
of Messrs. Shoolbred furniture of Messrs. Maple, Messrs. Druce, and
Messrs. Barker & Co.; coal of Messrs. Whiteley, Ricketts, Herbert
Clarke & Co.; Cockerell & Lee; a coat of Mr. Cording, caps of Messrs.
Lincoln & Bennett, a billiard table of Messrs. Thurston, prints of
Messrs. Clifford, carpets of Messrs. Swan & Edgar, beer, spirits, and
wine from several firms, some of which was delivered, and a vast
number of other goods from West End houses, including an umbilical
belt for hernia from a city firm.  He also sent letters to various
physicians in my name, and they have favoured me in reply with
prescriptions for divers diseases.  He further engaged cabins for me
to India and to the United States.  Not content with this he ordered
a salmon to be sent in my name to Mr. Gladstone, a Stilton cheese to
Sir William Harcourt, a travelling bag to Mr. Asquith, and a haunch
of venison to Sir George Trevelyan.  And he supplemented these
liberal orders {408} by issuing invitations in the name of a mythical
niece to a party at Twickenham and a dinner at my London house.  All
this is far more annoying to the tradesmen than it is to me, and I
would therefore suggest to my friend to revert to his old plan of
anonymous letters.  Neither of the hearses came, owing to
representatives of the firms having called to know how many men would
be required to carry my corpse downstairs.  Had the hearse arrived it
would have been curious, as the mutes would probably have disputed in
which I was to be moved off, and would have had to appeal to me
eating my marriage cake and arrayed in my umbilical belt to decide to
which I would give my preference.



[1] Barry O'Brien, _Life of Lord Russell of Killowen._

[2] Macdonald, _Diary of the Parnell Commission._

[3] _Life of Sala_, written by himself, vol. ii.

[4] Macdonald, _Diary of the Parnell Commission._




{409}

CHAPTER XV

MR. LABOUCHERE NOT INCLUDED IN THE CABINET

There is no doubt about the fact that Mr. Labouchere was always at
his best when he was in Opposition.  This characteristic was not
peculiar to him, but was shared by Sir William Harcourt, and, in a
marked degree, by Lord Randolph Churchill.  During the six years of
Lord Salisbury's second administration (August, 1886-August, 1892),
he stood out prominently as a man of ability and independent courage
in what was an extremely weak and inefficient Opposition.  Always
true to his Radical principles, he protested ably whenever the
questions of Civil Service estimates were to the fore--the expenses
incurred in the removal or restoration of diplomatic and consular
buildings, or in the organisation of missions and embassies to
foreign countries, all the involved expenditure that is comprehended
under the term, so mysterious to the lay mind, of "miscellaneous
legal buildings," in the upkeep of the royal parks and palaces.  The
annual expenditure for the warming and lighting of Kew Palace
especially aroused his ire.  He had, he said, hunted for the building
and at last perceived over an iron gate a tumble down,
depressed-looking house in which he could not imagine that anyone
less insane than George III. in his later years could be expected to
wish to reside, and if there were any such, they might, at least,
warm and light themselves without any application to the British
taxpayer.  As for Kensington Palace, to vote an annual sum for its
{410} maintenance was merely dropping water into a bottomless well.
It was dilapidated and useless.  Why not pull it down or turn it into
a large restaurant--an investment which would certainly pay--and put
money into the taxpayer's pockets for a change?  Of course he should
advocate that only temperance drinks should be sold upon the
premises, but even with that restriction a profit would be certain.
Then he would attack the extravagance of the House of Commons.  Oil
lamps in the committee rooms!  Were Ministers a species of patron
saints before whom perpetual lamps had to be kept burning in order to
secure their favours?  Electric light had been installed in the
House, and yet the annual sum spent on oil lamps was undiminished.
Perhaps, replied the long-suffering Mr. Plunkett, after the
expenditure on oil had been ruthlessly gone into and shown to be
superfluous, the hon. member for Northampton will soon be a Minister
himself and will then know the awkwardness of attending in the House
from three in the afternoon to one in the morning and having to turn
up or down an oil lamp every time he went from one room to another.
In short, Mr. Labouchere's obstructionary tactics were magnificent.

His speeches on the Triple Alliance were marked by an intimate
knowledge of European politics acquired by a long and sympathetic
frequentation of the best politicians in Europe and as different as
possible from the accumulation of facts out of text-books which
formed the mental equipment on the subject of many of his colleagues.
The point of departure of his first speech on the Triple Alliance was
a statement made in the Italian Parliament on May 14, 1891, by a
deputy named Chiala to the effect that the Italian position was now
secure by land and sea, English interests being identical with
Italian.  On June 2, 1891, he asked Sir James Fergusson whether
special undertakings were entered into in 1887 between England and
Italy of such importance as to justify Signor Chiala's remark, which
had met with no challenge in the Italian Chamber, and he spoke {411}
with characteristic eloquence both then and on July 9, against the
renewal of the Triple Alliance, which obliged England, he said, to
side with Italy against France, under the pretext of maintaining the
status quo in the Mediterranean.  Mr. Gladstone wrote him the
following letter on the subject:


HAWARDEN CASTLE, CHESTER, July 11, 1891.

DEAR MR. LABOUCHERE,--So far as I can understand I think you have
left the question of the Triple Alliance and our relation to it
standing well in itself and well for us.  If ever there was a
complication from which England ought to stand absolutely aloof it is
this.  I would take for a proof apart from all others the astounding
letter of Mr. Stead in yesterday's _Pall Mall Gazette_, who founds an
European policy on the isolation of France still perhaps at the head
of continental civilisation.  I fear with you that Salisbury has
given virtual pledges for himself which in all likelihood he will
never even be called upon to redeem, and which Parliament and members
of Parliament may with perfect propriety object to his redeeming.
What a little surprises me is that the Italians should not better
understand the frailty of the foundation on which I fear they have
built their hopes.

In the _Daily News_ yesterday Mr. White says the alliance was first
concluded in 1882.  If so it was certainly without our approbation, I
think without our knowledge.--Yours faithfully,

W. E. GLADSTONE.


In Mr. Labouchere's attacks on Lord Salisbury's Foreign Office
administration, he found many of the opportunities which he loved of
pouring ridicule upon the whole institution of diplomacy.  He told
the Committee, during the discussion on the Foreign Office vote, how
the service is recruited.  A friend of his, he said, who reached the
top of his profession, presented himself for examination.  Of the
questions put before him he could answer none, being completely
ignorant of the subjects upon which they were supposed to test him.
Great was his surprise when the results of the examination {412} were
made known.  He found himself not only passed but at the top of the
list of candidates.  "How can these things be?" he asked the examiner
when he next met him.  "Well," replied the great man, "we saw you
knew nothing, but your manner was so free from constraint under what
to some people would have been embarrassing circumstances, that we
decided: 'That's the very man to make a diplomatist,' and so we
passed you."  That this little anecdote was introduced to the notice
of Sir James Fergusson as a prelude to Mr. Labouchere's bland
explanation that, according to his personal experience,
Under-Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and members of the diplomatic
body generally were of all men the most ignorant, did not rob it of
any of its sting.  Across the Channel, Mr. Labouchere's abilities,
where foreign politics were concerned, were rated at their true
value.  In February, 1892, the _Voltaire_ published a long article
dealing with the personality of this "remarkable man" and his
knowledge of European affairs, which concluded with these words: "Mr.
Labouchere is one of those grand Englishmen who do credit both to the
party which they defend and to the party which they condescend to
attack.  Moreover, shortly he will be a member of the Cabinet, and
Mr. Gladstone depends on his co-operation to finish the last struggle
with the dying Tory party."

That Mr. Labouchere's name was not included in Mr. Gladstone's
Cabinet of 1892 was an omission that struck not only European
politicians but the public of England, both Conservative and Radical,
as curious.  Mr. Gladstone, who had intended him to have one of the
most important offices in the Cabinet (not the Post Office, as has
been so often asserted), was himself taken aback, and so much so that
when he was made aware that the Queen would object to Mr.
Labouchere's name being submitted to her, he went the length of
privately asking Mr. Labouchere to write him a letter stating that he
should not accept office were it offered to him.  Had Mr. Labouchere
been under the necessity of {413} wishing to improve his political
position in the country, there is no doubt that this would have been
his opportunity for doing so.  Such a course of action would have
appeared to the superficial observer to fit in with his Radical
principles, and he could have pretended to his followers that he
considered his power greater below the gangway than on the pedestal
of office, and (a matter, however, which was of supreme indifference
to him) his enemies could not have pointed the finger of scorn at
him.  Incidentally, too, Mr. Gladstone would have been saved from an
imputation of ingratitude to a follower who had stood by him, through
thick and thin, to win the cause that the Grand Old Man had nearest
his heart, to wit, Home Rule for Ireland, and a follower, who,
throughout a long and original political career, had never once
failed towards his leader in any detail of the minutiæ that went to
make up the etiquette of political intercourse in the last century.
But, as Mr. Labouchere explained to a near relative at the time, he
couldn't stand the humbug of the suggestion, and he would, moreover,
have been pledged to support the Ministry.  Besides, that the Queen
should have objected to him was not a surprise.  Nobody was able to
appreciate better than himself, with his tolerant view of human
nature, the fact that tastes differ, and to realise more fully that,
in so far as personal feelings went, he might very easily be a
_persona ingrata_ where Court favour was concerned.  "So that the
good ship _Democracy_ sails prosperously into Joppa," he wrote at the
time, "I care not whether my berth is in the officers' quarters or in
the forecastle.  Jones or Jonah it is all the same to me, and if I
thought that my being thrown overboard would render the success of
the voyage more certain, overboard I would go with pleasure--all the
more as I can swim."  But, in his surmise as to why the Queen had
objected to him he was mistaken, and he did not know the real reason
until several years afterwards.  He imagined it was because he had so
persistently protested against the Royal grants, whenever {414} they
had appeared to him excessive.[1]  It is difficult to see why Mr.
Gladstone, _having told him as much as he did_, did not tell him
more--to wit, the actual facts.  It would have been perfectly
straightforward and perfectly consistent, and the explanation was one
that Mr. Labouchere could have accepted with dignity, and all
appearance of a slight put upon an eminent politician, by treating
him as a nobody to be passed over without any kind of justification,
would have been avoided.  The fact of Mr. Labouchere's being the
proprietor of and "chief writer" in _Truth_ was the ground of the
Queen's objection, and if my readers have followed the course of this
biography with care, they will very easily be able to imagine how
early, and also how very reasonably, the Queen's dislike to the
publication had taken root.

Mr. Labouchere's jest about Mr. Gladstone laying upon Providence the
responsibility of always placing the ace of trumps up his sleeve was
a good one.  In one of his private letters I find the quip worded a
little more pungently.  "Who cannot refrain," he says, referring to
the then Prime Minister, "from perpetually bringing an ace down his
sleeve, even when he has only to play fair to win the trick."
Clearly in the case of the exclusion of Mr. Labouchere from his
Cabinet, Mr. Gladstone had only to play a simple and straightforward
game for the trick to be his.  In fact, it was his with the Queen.
There was no necessity for any further ruse, and the matter would
have ended.

{415}

Mr. Labouchere, still in the dark about the reason of the slight put
upon him, replied thus to one of his supporters at Northampton, who
questioned him as to the fact that he was not included in the
Cabinet.  He seems to have made an effort to put the matter as well
as he could for his leader:


5 OLD PALACE YARD, Aug. 19, 1892.

DEAR MR. TONSLEY,--The Queen expressed so strong a feeling against me
as one of her Ministers that, as I understand it, Mr. Gladstone did
not think it desirable to submit my name to her.--Yours truly,

HENRY LABOUCHERE.


The following correspondence ensued.  In reading it, it must always
be borne in mind that Mr. Labouchere did not at that time know the
precise grounds upon which he had been excluded from the Cabinet:


_Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Labouchere_

HAWARDEN CASTLE, Aug. 22, 1892.

DEAR MR. LABOUCHERE,--My attention has been called to a letter
addressed by you to Mr. Tonsley, and printed in the _Times_ of
to-day, and I have to assure you that the understanding which has
been conveyed to you is not correct.  I am alone responsible for
recommendations submitted to Her Majesty respecting the tenure of
political office, or of the absence of such recommendation in any
given instance.  I was aware of the high position you had created for
yourself in the House of Commons and of the presumption which would
naturally arise that your name could not fail to be considered on any
occasion when a Government had to be formed.  I gave accordingly my
best consideration to the subject, and I arrived at the conclusion
that there were incidents in your case which, while they testified to
your energy and influence, were in no degree disparaging to your
honour, but which appeared to me to render it unfit that I should ask
your leave to submit your name to Her Majesty for a political {416}
office which would involve your becoming a servant of the
Crown.--Believe me very faithfully yours,

W. E. GLADSTONE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Gladstone_

5 OLD PALACE YARD, Aug. 23, 1892.

DEAR MR. GLADSTONE,--I beg to acknowledge your letter of yesterday's
date, and to thank you for its kindly tone towards myself.  I had
been away from home, and only got it when it was too late to alter
anything that I had written for this week's _Truth_ upon the matter,
as the paper goes to press on Tuesday at 12 o'clock.  I feel sure
that you will recognise that I have never asked you--directly or
indirectly--for any post in your administration.  I should indeed not
have alluded publicly to the the matter, owing to its personal
character, had it not been that the newspapers were discussing why I
was not asked to become a member of your administration, the
implication being that I had urged "claims," and that I resented
their being ignored.  I fully perceive the difficulty of your
position, and, whilst I cannot admit that the Sovereign has a right
to impose any veto on the Prime Minister that she has selected in the
choice of his colleagues, I admire your chivalry in covering the
Royal action by assuming the constitutional responsibility of a
proceeding, in regard to which I must ask you to allow me to retain
the conviction that you were not a free agent.

With respect to myself, it is a matter of absolute unimportance that
I am not a servant of the Crown, or--as we Radicals should put it--an
Executive servant of the Nation.  The precedent, however, is a
dangerous one, as circumstances might occur in which the Royal
ostracism of some particular person from the public service might
impair the efficiency of a Liberal Ministry representing views not in
accordance with Court opinion.  Of this there is no danger in the
present case.  My personality is too insignificant to have any
influence on public affairs, and I am--if I may be allowed to say
so--far too stalwart a Radical not to support an administration which
I trust will secure to us Home Rule in Ireland; true non-intervention
abroad; and many democratic reforms in the United Kingdom.  My only
regret {417} is that the Liberal party has not seen its way to
include many other and more drastic reforms in its programme, notably
the abolition of the House of Lords and the Disendowment and
Disestablishment of the Church of England.

It will always be a source of pride to me that you thought me worthy
of being one of your colleagues, and that, in regard to the incidents
which rendered it impossible for you to act in accordance with this
flattering opinion, you consider that they testify to my energy and
influence, and are in no way disparaging to my honour.

With the sincerest hope that you may long be preserved as the
People's Minister, I have the honour to be yours most faithfully,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Labouchere_

HAWARDEN CASTLE, Aug. 25, 1892.

DEAR MR. LABOUCHERE,--I cannot hesitate to answer your appeal.  At no
time and in no form have I had from you any signification of a desire
for office.  You do me personally more than justice.  My note to you
is nothing more nor less than a true and succinct statement of the
facts as well as the constitutional doctrine which applies to them.
I quite agree with you that men in office are the political servants
of the country, as well as of the Crown.  There are incidents
attaching to them in each aspect, and I mentioned the capacity which
alone touched the case before me.--Believe me very faithfully yours,

W. E. GLADSTONE.


It would be idle to deny that the fact of not being in the Cabinet
was, temporarily, a very great disappointment to Mr. Labouchere.
Faithful Northampton forwarded to him, through the Executive of their
Liberal Association, the following resolution, the sentiment and
kindly feeling of which was appreciated to the full by Northampton's
member: "That this Executive records its warmest praise for the
brilliant defences of democracy put forth by the senior member {418}
for Northampton, and rejoices at his fealty to the ties of party,
notwithstanding the personal affront of unrequited services; and,
further, it is more than satisfied that, by this tactical error, he
continues free to serve the cause of the people, in which in the past
he has so signally distinguished himself."  It was to Northampton
that Mr. Labouchere frankly expressed where the real sting of his
treatment by his party lay: "Mr. Gladstone handsomely testified," he
said, "that I had never asked for office.  It is, however, one thing
not to desire office, and another thing to be stigmatised as a
political leper unfitted for it owing to incidents which, while
testifying to my energy and influence are in no way disparaging to my
honour."[2]

Mr. Labouchere spent his summer holiday as usual at Cadenabbia, and
his mind soon resumed its equable habit of thought.  The return of
Sir Charles Dilke to the House of Commons had been a genuine pleasure
to him, and he was in constant correspondence with him during his
holiday, which he extended some weeks beyond its usual limits.  His
letters dealt largely with the, to him, all-absorbing subject of the
renewal of the Triple Alliance.

"Notwithstanding," he wrote on September 17, "the excitement about
the Italian workmen in France (which has now cooled down) I very much
doubt whether the King will be able for long to keep going the Triple
Alliance.  The customs Union with Austria has not been a success, and
the taxes are so enormous that there must come a crash.  The
Socialists and the Anarchists are joined by many who simply want to
live, and who put down the heavy taxation and the want of a market to
the policy of the Government.  As for the Army, it is not worth much,
as they have depleted the line regiments of good men in order to form
a few crack regiments.  If the French were to play their cards well,
they might soon force the King into a friendly understanding.  I
{419} wonder when Parliament will meet next year, if it sits until
Xmas.  I suspect that our revered leader is angling to be able to get
south in January and possibly February.  If he can he will dodge
every question except H.R."

Another sentence from a letter to the same correspondent I cannot
resist quoting.  It is so easy to picture how very much he must have
enjoyed reading the German and Italian papers to which he refers, for
the details of the great Italian statesman's policy were almost like
spelling-book knowledge to him.  "I have been amused," he wrote on
September 10, "at the comments of the German and Italian papers upon
Mr. Gladstone's declaration that Cavour would have been for Irish
Home Rule."  Here is another charming letter written from Cadenabbia:
"A man who is owned by a dog has a troublous time.  I am owned by a
child, who is owned by a dog.  I have a daughter.  This daughter
insisted on my buying her a puppy which she saw in the arms of some
dog stealer when we were at Homburg.  My advice to parents is, Never
allow your parental feelings to lead you to buy your daughter a dog,
and then to travel about with daughter and dog.  This puppy is the
bane of my existence.  Railroad companies do not issue through
tickets for dogs.  The unfortunate traveller has to jump out every
hour or so to buy a fresh ticket.  I tried to hide the beast away
without a ticket, but it always betrayed me by barking when the guard
looked in.  I tried to leave it at a station, but the creature (who
adds blind fidelity to its other objectionable qualities) always
turned up before the train started, affectionately barking and
wagging its tail.  The puppy, being an infant, is often sick,
generally at the most undesirable moments for this sort of thing to
happen.  When it is not sick it is either hungry or thirsty, and it
is very particular about its food.  I find bones surreptitiously
secreted in my pockets.  I am told that they are for the puppy, and
if I throw them away I am regarded as a heartless monster.  Yesterday
he ate a portion of my sponge.  I did not interfere with him, for I
had heard {420} that sponges were fatal to dogs.  It disagreed with
him, but alas, he recovered.  I take him out with me in boats, in the
hope that he will leap into the lake, but he sticks to the boat.  I
am reduced to such a condition on account of this cur that I
sympathise with Bill Sikes in his objection to being followed
everywhere by his faithful dog.  Am I doomed, I ask, to be for ever
pestered with this animal?  Will he never be lost, will he never be
run over, will he recover from the distemper if fortune favours me by
his having this malady?  Never, I repeat, buy your daughter a dog,
and travel with daughter and dog."[3]

Mr. Labouchere did not return to London before the middle of October.
The question of foreign affairs interested him unceasingly throughout
Mr. Gladstone's fourth administration.  When the composition of Mr.
Gladstone's Cabinet had been published in the continental papers,
many comments had been made upon the appointment of Lord Rosebery to
be Foreign Secretary, and the _Temps_ published a pointed leading
article on the subject.  It declared that Lord Rosebery was regarded
by many persons as the incarnation of Imperialism and Chauvinism, but
it went on to reassure its readers by saying that after all, as Mr.
Gladstone would be so occupied with his Home Rule scheme and minor
social questions, the hankerings of the Foreign Office after national
glory would be suppressed.  In any case, it added, Mr. Labouchere
will, if necessary, criticise and protest against dangerous ardour.
The subject of Uganda occupied the English Parliament early in 1903,
and Mr. Labouchere moved an amendment to the Address to the effect
that he hoped that the Commissioner sent by Her Majesty to Uganda
would effect the evacuation of that country by the British South
African Company without any further Imperial responsibility being
incurred.  He gave an account of how the treaty with the King of
Uganda had been obtained, culled from Captain Lugard's own report.
Captain Lugard {421} arrived in the country, he said, with a
considerable force of Zanzibaris with breech-loaders and two Maxim
guns.  A warm discussion arose on many points.  Some of the chiefs
were for signing, but the King held back and giggled and fooled.  He
demanded time.  "I replied," reported Lugard, "by rapping the table
and speaking loudly, and said he must sign now.  I threatened to
leave the next day if he did not, and possibly to go to his enemies.
I pointed out to him that he had lost the southern half of his
kingdom to the Germans by his delay, and that he would lose more if
he delayed now.  He was, I think, scared at my manner, and trembled
very violently." ... And so on.  The speech was one of remarkable
power.  Although it covers over ten pages of _Hansard_, the reader's
interest does not flag for an instant.  It was replied to by the
Prime Minister with appreciation and vigour.

On February 13 Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill,[4] and
the speech Mr. Labouchere made during the debate is his last
utterance on the subject that I shall quote.  He was true to his
great leader to the very end, although that end had been extended to
a date far beyond the period that might reasonably have been
expected.  It was a remarkable fact, said Mr. Labouchere, that in
1886 they were told that Home Rule would ruin Ireland and the proof
was that securities had gone down.  They were now told that Home Rule
would ruin Ireland because securities had gone up!  As a matter of
fact, balances at savings banks had gone up because of certain Land
Acts and Rent Acts, by which a good deal of money which used to go
into the landlord's pockets now went into the savings bank....  A
matter like the Home Rule scheme was necessarily very complicated.
They had two islands, one a large one and one a small one.  The {422}
object of the Bill was to enable them to produce such a state of
things as would enable them to have a local Parliament in Ireland
dealing alone with Irish matters, and a Parliament in England dealing
with British local matters, and also with Imperial matters.  It was
very much like trying to put a square peg into a round hole.  He
quite agreed that the angles of the peg would remain.  They could not
get the fit geometrically perfect, but the great object was to get
the best fit they could under the circumstances.  It must always be
remembered in this matter of Home Rule that they had to choose
between two alternatives.  After the Bill of 1886 the Unionists went
before the country saying that there was a third course, that of some
species of local government.  When they got into power where was the
third course?  It entirely disappeared....  The Duke of Devonshire
had tried to terrify them the other night about the House of Lords,
that the House was going to defend the liberties of the United
Kingdom by running counter to the will of the people.  For his part,
he had never been strongly in favour of an assembly like the House of
Lords.  He could not understand why some six hundred gentlemen should
interfere with the decisions of the representatives of the people.
If they did they would find that additional force would be given to
the intention of the democracy to put an end to their existence.[5]
It is interesting to note that in this, his last Parliament, the
Prime Minister himself was converted to Mr. Labouchere's views on the
Upper Chamber.  When his Home Rule Bill was thrown out by the Lords,
and his Parish Councils Bill maimed and emasculated, he came to the
conclusion that there was a decisive case against the House of Lords.
"Upon the whole, he argued," says Lord Morley, "it was not too much
to say for practical purposes the Lords had destroyed the work of the
House of Commons, unexampled as that work was in the time and pains
bestowed upon it.  'I suggested dissolution to my colleagues in
London, where half {423} or more than half the Cabinet were found at
the moment.  I received by telegraph a hopelessly adverse reply.'
Reluctantly he let the idea drop, always maintaining, however, that a
signal opportunity had been lost."[6]

In spite of Mr. Labouchere's activity during the winter of 1892-3 his
health was not good.  He suffered from constant colds and coughs, and
his throat, too, was troublesome.  The desire for change was upon
him, and his mind went back to the happy days of his youth in
America.  He would have liked to be made Minister at Washington.  The
idea had occurred to him at Cadenabbia when some American friends had
suggested to him how popular such an appointment would be on the
other side of the Atlantic.  The climate would have suited him, and,
above all, the friction which was so inevitable between him and the
Cabinet would have been avoided.  Washington was quite removed from
any of those quarters of the globe where Mr. Labouchere's and Lord
Rosebery's foreign policy might possibly come into collision.  But
his desire was not to be fulfilled.  Perhaps naturally, Lord Rosebery
thought that his appointment to such an important post would look
rather as if he were trying to get rid of a formidable opponent, or
at least as if he were trying to bribe him into silence.  His refusal
to grant Mr. Labouchere's request was unqualified, and Mr. Labouchere
acknowledged the repulse, with his usual philosophic calm.
"However," he wrote to Lord Rosebery, on December 8, 1892, "as the
matter rests with you, and as you are averse to the suggestion, I can
only say that all is for the best in the best of worlds."

Mr. Gladstone resigned the Premiership on March 3, 1894, and Lord
Rosebery became Prime Minister.  The life of the Liberal Government
was short, and Mr. Labouchere soon found himself again in his native
air of Opposition, when his old interest in Parliamentary matters
revived.  It was a matter of common knowledge that Mr. Labouchere was
strongly opposed to the Premiership of Lord Rosebery, as {424} anyone
possessed of his strong Radical nature was bound to be, but that he
had anything to do with the snap division which ended Lord Rosebery's
Ministry[7] is clearly contradicted by an interview which was
published in the _Globe_ on the very day after the fall of the
Ministry.  The _Globe_ correspondent found Mr. Labouchere in the
highest spirits smoking his "eternal cigarette" in his study at Old
Palace Yard.  "What do you think of the present condition of things?"
he asked.

"Well," replied Mr. Labouchere, "I have only just become aware of
what happened.  I was sitting on the terrace yesterday evening just
about seven with Sir William Harcourt, who was joking about the
quietness of things, and saying it was a dull day without a crisis,
when the division bell rang.  I said, 'Great Heavens!  What's that
for?  I want to get home to dinner.'  With that I rushed into the
division with Sir William, and really didn't know what it was
about--you know you can get into the Lobby now direct by a special
door.  Well, having recorded my vote I hurried off to the theatre,
and didn't wait to enter the House.  Of course, if I had known what
was going to happen I should have waited to see the row.  I heard
nothing of the affair until this morning, when I read it here," added
Mr. Labouchere, pointing to the newspaper beside him.

"I see," said the interviewer, "that you voted with the Government?"

"Oh yes.  I want less cartridges--not more, and anything in that
direction gets my support.  As far as I could see it was only a
rag-tag division."

"Do you mean one of those dinner-time snatches, like your House of
Lords amendment?"[8]

"Oh no, not even as good as that; just the swing of the pendulum."[9]

{425}

The question on South Africa was soon to agitate England, and all
matters of lesser interest must be left now to show the impassioned
part which Mr. Labouchere played in an affair which cannot be said
even to-day to have found its final solution.



[1] The following paragraph from one of Mr. Labouchere's Draft
Reports, composed when he was member of a committee to investigate
the whole question of Royal grants in 1891, shows how reasonable this
surmise was:

"In conclusion, your Committee desires to record its emphatic
opinion, that the cost of the maintenance of the Members of the Royal
Family is already so great, that under no circumstances should it be
increased.  In its opinion, a majority of Her Majesty's subjects
regard the present cost of Royalty as excessive, and it deems it,
therefore, most undesirable to prejudice any decisions that may be
taken in regard to this cost, when the entire subject will come under
the cognisance of Parliament, by granting, either directly or
indirectly, allowances or annuities to any of the grandchildren of
the Sovereign."

[2] Letter to Mr. Fredk. Covington, Chairman of the Northampton
Liberal and Radical Association, Sept. 13, 1892.

[3] _Truth_, September, 1892.

[4] The first reading took place on Feb. 20.  It was passed through
Committee on July 27.  After a scene of uproar it passed the House of
Commons on Sept. 2, by a majority of 34.  It was thrown out by the
Lords on Sept. 9, by a majority of 378.

[5] _Hansard_, Feb. 16, 1893, vol. viii., Series 4.

[6] Morley, _Life of Gladstone_, vol. iii.

[7] The Government was defeated on the night of June 21, 1895, upon a
vote taken in Committee on the Army Estimates.

[8] _The Globe_, June 22, 1895.

[9] On March 13, 1894, Mr. Labouchere had moved an amendment to the
Address, praying the Queen to withdraw the power of the Lords to veto
Bills.  The division was called during the dinner hour, when the
House was comparatively empty, and the Government were found to be in
a minority of 2.  Sir William Harcourt, who reproved Mr. Labouchere
for the levity with which he approached a great constitutional
question, got out of the dilemma by moving a new Address.




{426}

CHAPTER XVI

THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA

On Sunday, December 29, 1895, an armed force commanded by Dr. Jameson
and Captain Willoughby invaded the territory of the Republic of the
Transvaal.  The object of the Jameson Raid was to combine with a body
of disaffected Englishmen, living at Johannesburg, in order to upset
the Government of the Transvaal, and, thereby, to provoke the
intervention of the neighbouring British Commissioner, and so lead to
the remission of the grievances of the Uitlander population.  Such
intervention, in the opinion of those responsible for the Raid, was
not intended to result in the absorption of the South African
Republic by the British Empire, though this point has never been made
altogether clear.  The English in Johannesburg, the Uitlanders as
they were called in Dutch, failed, however, to meet the invaders, and
Jameson and his men were captured without difficulty by the troops of
the Republic, and were handed over to the Imperial Government to be
tried and punished.  Subsequently, a select Committee of the House of
Commons was appointed to investigate the causes of the Raid.  The
Committee, which numbered amongst its members Mr. Labouchere, met for
the first time on February 5, 1897.  The directors of the British
South Africa Company, Messrs. C. J. Rhodes, Jameson, Alfred Beit,
Lionel Phillips, and Rutherford Harris, were represented by Counsel.
Mr. Labouchere frequently told me that he had never felt altogether
{427} satisfied with the composition of the Committee.  There were
not enough stalwart Radicals on it.  It was composed as follows: Sir
Michael Hicks-Beach, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr.
Chamberlain, the Attorney-General, Mr. Cripps, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr.
Jackson, Mr. Wharton, Mr. George Wyndham, Sir William Harcourt, Sir
Henry Campbell Bannerman, Messrs. John Ellis, Sidney Buxton, Blake,
Labouchere, and Bigham (now Lord Mersey).  Mr. Labouchere found his
chief support in Mr. Blake, but even he fell off towards the end, and
the member for Northampton registered his solitary vote for the
second reading of the alternative report with which he wished to
replace that of the chairman.  The chairman's report finally adopted
by the Committee may be summarised as follows:


"(1) Great discontent had for some time previous to the incursion
existed in Johannesburg, arising from the grievances of the
Uitlanders.

"(2) Mr. Rhodes occupied a great position in South Africa; he was
Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and, beyond all other persons, should
have been careful to abstain from such a course as that which he
adopted.  As Managing Director of the British South Africa Company,
as director of the De Beers Consolidated Mines and the Gold Fields of
South Africa, Mr. Rhodes controlled a great combination of interests:
he used his position and those interests to promote and assist his
policy.  Whatever justification there may have been for action, on
the part of the people of Johannesburg, there was none for the
conduct of a person in Mr. Rhodes' position, in subsidising,
organising, and stimulating an armed insurrection against the
Government of the South African Republic, and employing the forces
and resources of the Chartered Company to support such a revolution.
He seriously embarrassed both the Imperial and Colonial Governments,
and his proceedings resulted in the invasion of the territory of a
state which was in friendly relations with Her Majesty, in breach of
the obligation to {428} respect the right to self-government of the
South African Republic under the conventions between Her Majesty and
that state.  Although Dr. Jameson 'went in' without Mr. Rhodes'
authority, it was always part of the plan that these forces should be
used in the Transvaal in support of an insurrection.  Nothing could
justify such a use of such a force, and Mr. Rhodes' heavy
responsibility remains, although Dr. Jameson at the last moment
invaded the Transvaal without his direct sanction.

"(3) Such a policy once embarked upon inevitably involved Mr. Rhodes
in grave breaches of duty to those to whom he owed allegiance.  He
deceived the High Commissioner representing the Imperial Government,
he concealed his views from his colleagues in the Colonial Ministry
and from the Board of the British South Africa Company, and led his
subordinates to believe that his plans were approved by his superiors.

"(4) Your Committee have heard the evidence of all the directors of
the British South Africa Company, with the exception of Lord Grey.
Of those who were examined Mr. Beit and Mr. Maguire alone had
cognisance of Mr. Rhodes' plans.  Mr. Beit played a prominent part in
the negotiations with the Reform Union; he contributed large sums of
money to the revolutionary movement, and must share full
responsibility for the consequences.

"(5) There is not the slightest evidence that the late Commissioner
in South Africa, Lord Rosmead, was made acquainted with Mr. Rhodes'
plans.  The evidence, on the contrary, shows that there was a
conspiracy to keep all information on the subject away from him.  The
Committee must, however, express a strong opinion upon the conduct of
Sir Graham Bower, who was guilty of a grave dereliction of duty in
not communicating to the High Commissioner the information which had
come to his knowledge.  Mr. Newton failed in his duty in a like
manner.

"(6) Neither the Secretary of State for the Colonies nor {429} any of
the officials of the Colonial Office received any information which
made them, or should have made them or any of them, aware of the plot
during its development.

"(7) Finally, your Committee desire to put on record an absolute and
unqualified condemnation of the Raid and of the plans which made it
possible.  The result caused for the time being grave injury to
British influence in South Africa.  Public confidence was shaken,
race feeling embittered, and serious difficulties were created with
neighbouring states."[1]

It is impossible to quote even such a summary as I have just given of
Mr. Labouchere's Draft Report.  He began by indicating the
difficulties under which the Committee laboured:

"(1) Your Committee decided, in the first instance, to limit its
inquiries into that portion of the matters submitted to it for
investigation having relation to the Jameson Raid.

"(2) A considerable amount of oral and documentary evidence has been
placed before it.  But its task was rendered difficult.  Some of the
witnesses, who were either cognisant of the Jameson plan, or who took
part in the Jameson Raid, displayed an unwillingness to make a clean
breast of all that they knew, and in many instances witnesses refused
to answer questions that the Committee considered might properly be
put to them.  Lord Rosmead could not be called as a witness on
account of ill health, although Mr. Rhodes had referred to him in his
evidence as able to answer questions, to which that gentleman was not
willing to reply.  Documents of the greatest importance, in
possession of one of the witnesses, were not forthcoming,[2] nor was
an opportunity given to all the members of your Committee to examine
him as to the statement that he had made in evidence in connection
with them, nor was he reported to your House for contumacy, with a
view to your House taking action to {430} overcome it.  It seemed
probable from the evidence that much in regard to the document had
been stated to the War Office, as a ground for its taking certain
action with respect to the officers concerned in the Raid.  But
witnesses from that office were not examined as to these
communications.  Although these documents were in the hands of his
solicitor, who informed your Committee that Mr. Rhodes claimed them
as his property, and would not allow him to produce them, no direct
application was made to Mr. Rhodes by your Committee to allow them to
be produced.  Other documents of a similar character were secured by
your Committee only after Mr. Rhodes had left the country.  He was
not, consequently, examined in regard to their or as tenor, to his
action in respect to them.

"(3) Owing to these causes your Committee cannot pretend to have
become possessed of a perfect and full knowledge of everything
connected with the Jameson plan and the Jameson Raid.  It has
consequently only been able to weigh evidence against evidence, and
to deduce from what has been submitted to it the inferences that seem
to flow therefrom."[3]

He proceeded to stigmatise, even more severely than the Report
adopted by the Committee, the political conduct of Mr. Rhodes, for
whom, in private, he had conceived considerable personal admiration.
In paragraph 25 of Mr. Labouchere's Draft Report was this statement:
"Your Committee is, however, of the opinion that they (Messrs. Rhodes
and Beit) merit severe punishment.  Mr. Rhodes is a Privy Councillor,
he was a Cape Premier, and he was the autocrat of Rhodesia when the
conspiracy that your Committee has investigated was in preparation,
and when it was sought to carry it out.  He deceived his Sovereign,
the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the High Commissioner of
South Africa, the Governor of the Cape Colony, his colleagues in the
Cape Cabinet, the Board of the Chartered {431} Company, and the very
persons whom he used as his instruments in his nefarious designs; and
he abused the high positions which he held by engaging in a
conspiracy, in a success of which his own pecuniary interests were
largely involved, thus inflicting a slur on the hitherto unblemished
honour of our public men at home and in our colonies.  Mr. Beit is a
German subject.  In conjunction with Mr. Rhodes he fomented a
revolution in a state in amity with us, and promoted an invasion of
that state from British territory.  These two men, the one a British
statesman, the other a financier of German nationality, disgraced the
good name of England, which it ought to be the object of all
Englishmen to maintain pure and undefiled."

The only other important point in Mr. Labouchere's Draft Report was
that referring to the alleged complicity of the Colonial Office in
the Raid.  While Mr. Labouchere admitted that the evidence in no way
showed that any such complicity had existed, he regretted that the
question had not been probed to the bottom, "because the slightest
appearance of any indisposition to do this by your Committee may lead
some persons erroneously to suppose that there may be some truth in
the statements of witnesses connected with the Jameson plan that the
secret aims of Mr. Rhodes were more or less clearly revealed to Mr.
Chamberlain and to Mr. Fairfield."

He expressed himself very strongly in the following article on the
Chartered Company in _Truth_:


If the events of the past week have not opened the eyes of Englishmen
at large to the character of the patriots and heroes who have too
long ruled the roost in South Africa, our boasted national common
sense must indeed be a pitiful sham.  What is the position?  The
South African Republic is a state originally brought into existence
by the Boers treking from Cape Colony into the wilderness, and
establishing themselves beyond what were then the limits of British
colonisation.  We tricked them once into surrendering their
independence, merely reserving a suzerainty as against their right to
conclude treaties with foreign {432} states without our consent.  But
since that was done, gold was discovered within their territory, and
this has led to the migration of a vast number of English and men of
other nationalities into the region where the Boer imagined that he
was safe from pursuit.  On the whole, these settlers, considering how
unwelcome their presence must have been, have not been badly treated.
The taxation is not excessive, and the condition of the mining
industry is infinitely better than it is ever likely to be under the
Chartered Company.  Out of all those who have dabbled in Transvaal
mining shares during the last year I wonder how many know the facts
respecting the relation of the companies to the Government of the
country.  The Government charges on every mining claim a ground rent
or royalty of 10s. a month.  To a company owning fifty claims this
means a ground rent of £300 a year--a very reasonable charge, when
from thirty to sixty per cent. can be earned on the capital of the
Company.  As against this what do the Chartered Company charge?  One
half the net profits of all mines worked under their jurisdiction.
This alone should teach shareholders of the Transvaal mines how
little they have to gain from the overthrow of Boer Government by the
Rhodes gang, and how thankful they may be for the course of events
last week.

The non-Boer population, however, at Johannesburg and elsewhere have
a genuine grievance on the question of the franchise and other rights
of citizenship.  In order to maintain their exclusive sovereignty in
the land the Boers insist upon a fifteen years' residence for full
naturalisation....  The period is too long, and it would be prudent
on the part of the Boers to reduce it.  There is no reason to suppose
that they would refuse to do so, were the demands of the Uitlanders
advanced in a regular manner....  But even were the Boers ever so
deaf to justice and so blind to their own interests as to meet the
Uitlander case with an obstinate _non possumus_, what pretext does
this afford for armed intervention by the Chartered Company?  A
pretence it is true has been made that, before commencing their Raid,
Jameson and his men resigned their positions under the Company; but
even if such a form were gone through, it is obviously only a
colourable pretence.  The invading force was drilled, armed, and
maintained by the Company.  At its {433} head was the administrator
of the Company.  On his staff was the Company's generalissimo.  It
took with it the ammunition, equipment, and horses of the Company....
Neither in the political aims of the Uitlanders, nor the position of
the Johannesburgers was there a shadow of justification for Jameson's
Raid.....  The proceedings bear their character on their face and are
of a piece with all that has gone before in the history of the
Company.  The design was to play the Matabele coup again on a bigger
field.  What was the origin of the Raid on Lobengula?  The Company
had obtained Lobengula's permission to occupy Mashonaland and dig
there for gold, and had no further right beyond this.  When occupied,
Mashonaland was found to have no paying gold.  The shares of the
Company were unsalable rubbish.  A pretext was therefore found for
making war on Lobengula and seizing Matabeleland--a pretext as
transparently dishonest as the pretext for the invasion of the
Transvaal.  All the circumstances showed in that case as in this,
that the coup had been carefully prepared long beforehand.  When the
train had been laid, a quarrel was picked with the Matabele, who had
entered Mashonaland at the Company's request, and they were attacked
and shot down by this same Jameson while doing their best to retire
in obedience to his orders.  Instantly the whole of the Company's
forces, all held in readiness, entered Matabeleland under the
pretence that the Matabele and not the Company were the aggressors.
Lobengula's savages were mowed down by thousands with Maxims.  Those
who were taken prisoners were killed off to save trouble.  The envoys
sent by the King to try and make terms were barbarously murdered.
The King himself fled and died before he could be captured.  His
territory and the flocks and herds of his people were parcelled out
among the Company and the band of freebooters who had been collected
by promises of loot.  One million new shares were created by
Jameson's principals and colleagues, and, in the subsequent boom,
shares were unloaded on the British public at prices ranging up to £8
per share.  Matabeleland, however, has proved no richer in paying
gold than Mashonaland.  The shares have been going down again.  What
were the Chartered gang to do next?  In the Transvaal there are
extensive paying gold mines, and money which the gang would like to
pocket is going elsewhere.  Forthwith {434} the Chartered Company's
forces are marshalled again.  A sudden and obviously factitious
agitation springs up at Johannesburg.  Rumours of deadly peril to the
alien population are put in circulation, goodness knows whence.  The
women and children are packed off--so it is said, but no one knows
why or at whose instigation.  Simultaneously a message imploring aid
from the quaking citizens reaches Jameson, no one knows how, and in a
moment the fighting doctor and his bold buccaneers are once more over
the border.  There, however, all resemblance between the two coups
ends.  The Chartered heroes have not to deal this time with naked
half-armed savages, but with white men as well armed as themselves,
and as well able to use their arms.  There are Maxim guns on the
other side this time and Krupp guns as well.  Result: after a few
hours' fighting, the conquerors of Matabeleland are killed or taken
prisoners, and the doughty Jameson and his staff are lodged in
Pretoria Gaol.  I have no desire to exult over their fate.  It is a
shameful and abominable business all round, out of which no
Englishman can extract a grain of satisfaction.  But if ever men died
with their blood on their own heads, they are the men who fell in
this raid, and if ever prisoners of war deserved scant mercy, Jameson
and his comrades are those prisoners.  They may thank their stars
that they have fallen into the hands of men who are not likely to
treat them as they themselves treated the Matabele wounded and
prisoners.[4]


He continued his attack in a series of articles.  The burden of his
argument was always the impurity of motive arising from the financial
interest involved.  "What a comment on our morality," he writes on
April 2, "has been our action during the last few months!  We
quarrelled with the Americans about Venezuela about a bog in which we
fancied there might be gold; we remain in Egypt because we are
looking after the interest on Egyptian bonds, and finding salaries
for a herd of English employees; we are engaged in a Soudan
Expedition because Dongola is fertile, and its possession will afford
a plea to us to violate our pledges to leave {435} Egypt; we are
disputing with President Kruger because he has fallen out with a crew
of company mongers; we are backing up a company in Rhodesia because
its shares have been put up to a high premium on the Stock Exchange.
But, pledged as we are to see that there is good government in
Armenia, we are supinely looking on whilst Armenian men are being
slaughtered, Armenian women ravished, and Armenian villages burnt.
Why?  Because there is no money to be made in protecting Armenians,
and our financiers have no interests in Armenia."[5]

Mr. Labouchere thought, rightly or wrongly, that the Imperialism of
Mr. Rhodes was little more than a mask to cover the desire for
financial expansion.  Not that he thought badly of Mr. Rhodes
personally.  He thought that he deceived himself in perfectly good
faith.  While he detested his aims, he could not help admiring the
energy and skill with which they were promoted, and something simple
and direct in the character of the man himself.

The estimate I had formed of Mr. Labouchere's opinion of Mr. Rhodes
as a private individual was recently confirmed by the following
extract from a letter which I received from Mr. Charles Boyd
containing a reminiscence of an interview he had with Mr. Labouchere
in 1897:


That was the year [he wrote] of the British South Africa Commission
of which he (Mr. Labouchere) was a member, and which, as George
Wyndham's Secretary, I regularly attended; he was, of course, very
much "over the way," in Mr. Jaggers's sense, to what one may call the
Imperialist view of the South African question.  It was, I think, in
May, or, at all events, near the end of the sitting of the
Commission, that I conceived the spirited notion of offering myself
for the post of Imperial Secretary to the High Commissioner for South
Africa, Sir Alfred Milner, then recently appointed; though without
official experience, I had some good backers on the strength of some
little {436} study of the South African problem.  Among these was one
of the kindest of men, the late Mr. Moberley Bell, manager of the
_Times_, with whom one morning I sat in his house in Portland Place
considering that forlorn hope, as it most properly proved to be of my
ambition.  "The only thing is," said Mr. Bell, "what are you going to
do with Labby?  You know you are a child of the opposite camp."  I
agreed with gloom that, if I had any chance, and Mr. Labouchere "took
notice," my antecedents might not be a recommendation.  The imperial
South African Association was then about a year old, and active and
formidable enough to have caught the eye of _Truth_.  Mr. Bell,
leaning his big head on his big hand, had a benevolent inspiration.
"If I were you," he said, "I'd jump into the nearest hansom and drive
straight to 5 Old Palace Yard.  It's a sort of move he may quite well
love.  You will be 'squaring Labby,'" and Mr. Bell dismissed me with
his blessing.  Yet a little and somewhat nervous-like I stood in the
presence of your Uncle, in that wonderful room which you will so well
remember giving on the green turf of the Abbey precincts.  I stated
my case, and displayed one or two testimonials, including that of his
friend Sir Charles Dilke.  "And now," said I indignantly, "if I do
have any chance, I am told that I am in danger of _Truth_."  "Nothing
of the kind," said Mr. Labouchere.  "I have, to begin with, a
considerable admiration for George Wyndham, and, as for yourself,
your having the nerve to come straight to me is sufficient proof of
your fitness for the Imperial Secretaryship or for anything else,"
and with a graceful movement of his wrist he disengaged some
cigarettes from a sort of gilded network basket of the same, which
depended from the wall, and bade me sit down and smoke.  He talked of
the Commission, and asked me what I thought of the evidence of Mr.
Rhodes, with whom, of course, he had considerably crossed swords, not
to say whom he had bated.  I expressed, possibly with an air of
defiance, an extreme sense of Mr. Rhodes' candour.  "But bless you,"
said Mr. Labouchere, "I know all that as well as you.  I like Rhodes,
I like his porter and sandwiches.  An entirely honest, heavy person.
On the other hand, did you ever see anything so fatuous as the
performance of H----?"

Presently he returned to my candidature, and said, "I'd better write
you a testimonial myself, and that will allay your fears..."

{437}

As is well known, the troubles of South Africa did not come to an end
with the settlement of the Jameson Raid.  The aggrieved Uitlanders
had not availed themselves, when it came to the point, of Dr.
Jameson's action, and their unredressed grievances--that they
suffered from serious grievances was admitted even by Mr.
Labouchere--festered in their minds and produced, as time went on,
deeper and more widespread dissatisfaction.  Nor was the appointment
in 1897 of Sir Alfred (now Lord) Milner as British Governor of Cape
Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa by Mr. Chamberlain, who
had taken office under Lord Salisbury as Colonial Secretary,
calculated to allay the resentment of the Boers, his Imperialist
sympathies being well known.  Towards the end of 1898, Sir Alfred
Milner left South Africa for England.  He was away for three months,
and during his absence several things occurred to hasten the
unfortunate crisis--the outbreak of war.  General Sir William Butler
had been selected to fill the chief military command in South Africa,
left vacant by the sudden death of Sir William Goodenough.  Sir
William Butler, immediately on his arrival in South Africa, allowed
his sympathy with the Afrikander party to be very apparent.  He was
convinced that the English population of the Transvaal had no real
grievances, and were only striving to make mischief.  When Sir Alfred
Milner returned to the Cape, on February 14, 1899, he was faced by a
very different situation to the one he had left.  In almost all the
towns of Cape Colony and Natal meetings had been held by the
Colonists protesting against the continuation of the existing state
of affairs in the Transvaal, and demanding the intervention of the
Imperial Government.  Dutch feeling was no less agitated.  Among the
extreme section of Afrikanders everywhere a movement was on foot for
the formation of a National League which should bind together all
Afrikanders in strenuous opposition to any attempt of the Imperial
power to intervene in South African affairs.[6]

{438}

In England, the first indication of what was coming was revealed to
the discerning public who read Parliamentary reports by the
publication of the army estimates, in which a sum not exceeding
£1,211,900 was asked for to cover the military expenses (March,
1899-March, 1900).  Mr. Dillon asked why it was considered necessary
to increase so enormously our forces in South Africa.  The Colonial
Secretary (Mr. Chamberlain) replied to the effect that the Transvaal
Republic, which borders on the colony of Natal and Cape Colony, had
enormously in creased their offensive or defensive forces within the
last few years.  They had spent large sums in forts, artillery, and
rifles, and millions of cartridges had been imported.  Therefore, as
long as the British Government was responsible for the peace in South
Africa, a like increase of warlike preparation was necessary on our
part.  Mr. Labouchere replied aptly that the increased defensive
measures adopted by the Boers had only followed upon the scandalous
and outrageous raid which had been made upon their country by the
minions of the Chartered Company.  Then a paragraph appeared in the
_Times_ to the effect that the Commander-in-Chief had been engaged in
completing the organisation and composition of the "larger force
which it will be necessary to dispatch to South Africa in the event
of the negotiations at present in progress with the Government of the
Transvaal proving unsuccessful."  Mr. Labouchere asked, on July 7,
whether the officers mentioned in this communique as going to South
Africa to organise the forces, were to go into Cape Colony and into
Natal to organise them, and, if so, whether it was with the consent
of the Ministers of those Colonies?  To which question Mr. Balfour
replied "I do not know."[7]

On October 17, Mr. Dillon moved an amendment to the Address in answer
to the Queen's Speech, praying for arbitration to settle the
difficulties between the two Governments, so that "an ignominious war
may be avoided between the {439} overwhelming forces of your
Majesty's Empire and those of two small nations numbering in all less
than 200,000 souls."  Mr. Labouchere seconded the amendment, and
pleaded eloquently for arbitration, suggesting President McKinley as
the best arbitrator possible.  The peroration of his speech was
excellent, but, alas, it fell at the time upon ears already eagerly
alert for no other sounds than the music of triumphant victory and
glorious marches home after a course of deeds of valour, which the
mere fact of British nationality was to render as easy of achievement
as an afternoon's football.  It reads now with a different ring, and
testifies to the spirit of justice and temperance which were so
characteristic of all his policy in those crises when the English
nation gets stirred up, as it sometimes does, to a spirit of
hysterical enthusiasm, in comparison with which the excitability and
nervous agitation of the "foreigner" is a mere joke.  "I confess that
I feel very sorry for the end of these unfortunate Boers," he said.
"They are fathers of families, they are farmers, honest and ignorant
if you like.  They are fighting for that which they believe to be the
holiest and most noble of causes--their homesteads and their country.
We must all regret that their country is not only turned into a
battlefield, but that a number of these men, the breadwinners of
families, will be slain.  For my part, I cannot accept the
responsibility of contenting myself with merely washing my hands of
an injustice like this.  It might be a very politic thing to say:
'There is a feeling in favour of war; I protest against it, but I
wash my hands of it, and shall criticise hereafter the conduct of the
Colonial Secretary.'  I have not criticised the conduct of the right
hon. gentleman in this matter except indirectly, because that is not
the question of the moment.  The question is to do the best we can to
put an end to this war, and that is why I have seconded, and why I
would venture to urge the House to agree to the amendment which has
been moved, because then the war would cease in a very few days."[8]

{440}

On October 20, Mr. Labouchere pointed out that, although the total
cost of our army is £22,000,000, we are "positively spending
£10,000,000 in sending troops to South Africa."  He added, with some
truth, that, as the Government had a majority, to ask the House to
vote against these proceedings was useless.  But he declared that, in
his opinion, before the war was over, it would cost the country a
hundred millions.  A burst of laughter and ironical cheering from the
Ministerialists greeted the statement of the member for Northampton.
They all imagined that Buller would be in Pretoria before Christmas,
and that there would even be some change out of the ten millions
voted.  What a chill would have fallen over that light-hearted
assembly if some hand had written on the wall at that moment the real
sum which the South African enterprise so gaily entered upon would
cost the nation!  Something well over two hundred millions did not
cover it.[9]

In March 1900, the War Loan Bill raising a sum of thirty-five
millions was passed through both Houses of Parliament.  The events of
the war which had taken place by this time were, briefly, these: The
British dispatch which led up to the Boer ultimatum was presented in
Pretoria on September 25, and the mobilisation of the Boers commenced
on the 27th.  The Transvaal ultimatum was presented to the British
agent on October 9, and the war began upon the 11th.  At the end of
the first fortnight the English claimed the victories of Talana and
Elandslaagte, whilst the Boers could boast that they had swept the
whole of Natal down to Ladysmith.  At Pretoria there was great
jubilation, and the highest expectations of success for the farmers'
arms were entertained.  Before Christmas the defeats of Nicholson's
Nek, Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso had plunged England into
depths of gloom.  The investment of Ladysmith had been completed, and
the first stage of the war marked by the advance of the Boers into
British territory was over.  {441} On the 22nd of December, Lord
Roberts had set sail from Southampton to the Cape.  To him the
British Government had turned in its hour of need to restore the
shaken prestige of the British army and to bring the war to a
successful conclusion.  Their confidence was justified, though the
conclusion of the war was still far distant.  The horrible disaster
of Spion Kop occurred in January, but the middle of March saw Lord
Roberts in Bloemfontein.  Ladysmith and Kimberley had been relieved,
and the whole vast territory south of these points was in uncontested
occupation of the British troops.

In Mr. Labouchere's speech of March 13, on the occasion of the second
reading of the War Loan Bill, he had pleaded eloquently for a
cessation of hostilities in South Africa.  The Boers, he said, had
now been driven out of British territory, but the only terms upon
which the British Government would make peace were degrading to a
brave and honest people, namely the surrendering of their
independence, and the blotting of their nationality out of existence.
"Can you tell me of any war," he asked, "in which the vanquished side
asked for terms and were told that the victors would grant terms only
in the capital of the defeated country, and on condition of their
surrendering their independence?  I call this thing an iniquity, and
a disgrace to this country to propose such terms.  Perhaps the
question of iniquity does not appeal to hon. gentlemen opposite.  It
is not only a crime--it is a blunder.  I do not believe this is a way
to establish peace and harmony and good feeling in South Africa....
You are at present appealing to the lowest passions outside of this
House.  I do not believe you will succeed in the long run; it may be
that the people will be carried away by the feeling which at present
exists among Englishmen, but they will soon see that they have been
fooled into this war by the vilest body of financiers that ever
existed in this world, and that the opportunity had been taken to lay
hold of the territory and gold, which Lord Salisbury himself boasted
we did not wish for."[10]

{442}

There is no doubt that Mr. Labouchere was extremely unpopular in
England during 1900.  It was difficult for the man in the street to
separate his political attitude, with regard to the war, from that of
the Irish Nationalists, with whose policy he had been so long
identified, and who welcomed the war as supplying fresh food for
their campaign of denunciation against the British Government, and
who openly expressed their exultation at the Boer successes.  Mr.
Labouchere did not rejoice at the British humiliation.  The point
that he always had in view was the prevention of more bloodshed, and
the injustice of the annexation of new territory by the force of
numerical superiority.  Further, he considered that the negotiations
which took place in the summer and autumn of 1899, before the
outbreak of war, had not been carried on with fairness towards the
Boers.  After the President of the Transvaal Republic had agreed to a
seven years' Franchise Law, retrospective in its action, for the
colonists, Mr. Chamberlain took exception to a provision of the new
Bill, which required that the alien desirous of burghership should
produce a certificate of continuous registration during the period
for naturalisation.  He suggested further that the details of the
scheme should be discussed by delegates appointed by Sir Alfred
Milner and the Transvaal Government (July 27).  The Transvaal
Government, as it had a perfect right to do, instead of immediately
accepting Mr. Chamberlain's suggestion, submitted alternative
proposals to the British Government, which gave most liberal
concessions to the Uitlanders, the details of which were to be
discussed with the British agent at Pretoria.  To these proposals
were attached certain conditions, one of which was that "Her
Majesty's Government will not insist further upon the assertion of
suzerainty, the controversy on the subject being tacitly allowed to
drop" (August 19).  Mr. Conynghame Greene, the British agent at
Pretoria, wired the Boer proposals and conditions to Sir Alfred
Milner.  Sir Alfred Milner wired to Mr. Conynghame Greene in reply:
"If {443} the South African Republic should reply to the invitation
to a joint enquiry put forward by Her Majesty's Government by
formally making the proposals described in your telegram, such a
course would not be regarded by Her Majesty's Government as a refusal
of their offer, but they would be prepared to consider the reply of
the South African Republic on its merits."

In Mr. Labouchere's opinion, it was at this point of the negotiations
that the disingenuousness of Mr. Chamberlain's action was most
apparent.  The formal reply of Her Majesty's Government to the Boer
proposals was delivered on August 30.  It declared that the Boer
proposals were accepted, but that the British Government utterly
refused to consider the conditions attached to them.  It was obvious
now that the Boers had no other course open to them but to fall back
upon the Commission proposed by Mr. Chamberlain on July 27, and to
which their proposals and conditions were the alternative, and,
according to Sir Alfred Milner's wire to Mr. Conynghame Greene,
understood by both Governments as such.  On September 2, therefore,
they asked for further information as to the Joint Committee which
they were now _par force majeure_ and _faute de mieux_ prepared to
accept.  The reply they received on September 12 was that "H.M.
Government have been compelled to regard the last proposal of the
Government of the South African Republic as unacceptable in the form
in which it was presented"; that they "cannot now consent to go back
to the proposal for which those in the note of the Government of the
Republic of August 19 are intended as a substitute"; and that, if
those proposals of the Transvaal Government, taken by themselves and
without the conditions attached by that Government, are not agreed
to, "H.M. Government must reserve to themselves the right to
reconsider the situation _de novo_ and to formulate their own
proposals for a final settlement."  On September 15, the Secretary of
State of the Transvaal Republic replied that he learned with deep
{444} regret of the withdrawal of the invitation to a joint enquiry.
The proposal of August 19, made by him in the name of his Government,
involved the danger of affecting the independence of the Republic,
but his Government had set against this danger the advantage of
obtaining the assurances mentioned in the conditions.  He protested
against the injustice of being asked to grant the original proposals
without the conditions annexed, and he could not understand Mr.
Chamberlain's present refusal to accept the Commission which was his
own alternative.  The reply of the Republic consequently was that it
could not grant the first half of the August 19 offer without the
second, but would accept the Joint Commission which had been proposed
by Mr. Chamberlain; that it welcomed the introduction of a Court of
Arbitration, and was willing to help in its formation, but that it
was not clear what were the subjects mentioned as outside the Court
of Arbitration, and it deprecated the foreshadowing of new proposals
without specification.  Mr. Reitz finally implored the acceptance of
the Joint Commission, as "if H.M.'s Government are willing and able
to make this decision it will put an end to the present state of
tension, race hatred would decrease and die out, the prosperity and
welfare of the South African Republic and of the whole of South
Africa would be developed and furthered, and fraternisation between
the different nationalities would increase."  On September 25 Mr.
Chamberlain replied that no conditions less comprehensive than the
final offer of H.M. Government could be relied upon to effect the
object for which they had been striving.  The dispatch concluded with
these words: "H.M. Government will communicate to the High
Commissioner the result of their deliberations in a later dispatch."
On September 30 the British agent at Pretoria telegraphed by request
of the Secretary of State of the Republic to ask what decision had
been taken by the British Government.  Mr. Chamberlain replied on
October 2 that "the dispatch of H.M. Government is being prepared
{445} but will not be ready for some days."  In the meantime
Parliament had been summoned to grant supplies, the Reserves were
called out, and ships were chartered to convey all available troops
to South Africa.  From September 27 to October 8 the President of the
Orange Free State telegraphed frequently to Sir Alfred Milner.  He
complained of the concentration of troops on the frontiers of his
State and of the Transvaal, again and again preferred his good
offices to avoid all possibility of war, and in almost every telegram
urged that Her Majesty's Government should at once make known the
"precise nature and scope of the concessions or measures, the
adoption whereof Her Majesty's Government consider themselves
entitled to claim, or which they suggest as being necessary or
sufficient to secure a satisfactory and permanent solution of
existing differences between them and the South African Republic,
whilst at the same time providing a means for settling any others
that may arise in the future."  To this request Sir Alfred Milner
made no reply.[11]  On October 9 the famous Ultimatum was presented
to the British agent at Pretoria.  Amongst other plain statements it
contained words to the effect that the Transvaal felt obliged to
regard the military force in the neighbourhood of its frontiers as a
threat against the Republic, and that it became necessary to ask Her
Majesty's Government to give an assurance that no further troops
should be landed in South Africa, that troops on the borders of the
Republic should be withdrawn either by friendly arbitration or some
other amicable way.  In the event of a refusal the Secretary of State
of the Transvaal must regard the action of Her Majesty's Government
as a formal declaration of war.  War broke out, as has been said, on
October 11.

When Lord Roberts marched triumphantly into Pretoria on the 9th of
June, some important letters were found in the capital of the
Transvaal out of which great political interest was made against the
group of Englishmen, of {446} whom Labouchere was one of the most
important, who were known as the "little Englanders" in
contradistinction to the ever growing numbers of "Imperialists."
These letters were sent to Mr. Chamberlain, and a correspondence on
the subject ensued between him and Mr. Labouchere.  Mr. Labouchere
published the whole of it in _Truth_, prefacing the letters with the
following remarks:[12]


"The correspondence which I print below speaks for itself.  I had not
supposed that I was one of the three M.P.'s whose letters had fallen
into the hands of Mr. Chamberlain, as I do not think that I ever
wrote to any one in Pretoria.  But I did, before the war, both write
and talk to Mr. Montagu White, the Transvaal representative in
London, and it would seem that he sent some of my letters to
Pretoria.  What there is requiring explanation in either my
conversations or correspondence I do not know.  The advice which I
gave to Mr. White was that his Government should make reasonable
concessions, and should gain time, in order to tide over the false
impression created by Mr. Chamberlain's appeal to the passions which
had been excited by statements in regard to Boer rule derived from
the 'kept' Rhodesian press in South Africa and the correspondents of
the English newspapers, who were nearly all connected with that 'kept
press' and with the Rhodes gang.  Had my advice been followed, there
would have been no war.  The difficulty which stood in the way of its
being adopted was that President Kruger and other leading Boers were
fully convinced that Mr. Chamberlain had been in the counsels of the
Jameson-Rhodes conspirators of 1895, and that--no matter what
concessions the Transvaal might make--he was determined to have his
revenge for President Kruger having got the better of him on that
occasion."


Here is the correspondence:


_Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Labouchere_

COLONIAL OFFICE, Aug. 6, 1900.

SIR,--I beg to call your attention to the enclosed copy of a letter
from Mr. Montagu White, with copies of two letters {447} purporting
to have been written by you, and to inquire if you desire to offer
any explanations or observations with regard to them.--I am, Sir,
Your obedient,

J. CHAMBERLAIN.


(_Enclosure_) _Mr. Montagu White to Dr. Reitz_[13]

58 VICTORIA STREET, LONDON,

Aug. 4, 1899

DEAR DR. REITZ,--I feel tired and done for to-night.  It is past six
o'clock and I still have forty miles to go before I get home.  My
inclination is to wire to you, asking you to tell the British
Government to go to the devil and to do their "darnedest."  It is
perfectly sickening the way one is kept in a continual state of
suspense and nervous excitement.  Everything is as quiet as possible
on the surface, and there has been a tremendous decrease in press
cuttings which is a sure sign that matters are relapsing into a
normal condition.  But I have been able to judge of the effect upon
our friends of hints that we may not be able to accept the proposed
Commission.  Without exception, they are one and all dead against our
refusing it, and all agree that we shall have to face a very serious
crisis if we refuse the proposal, and that without the friendly
support of the majority of the newspapers which have hitherto been on
our side.  Spender of the _Chronicle_, who has fought consistently
and well for us, tells me that none of them can understand in what
way we shall be worse off for accepting the Commission, for (if) your
people disagree about the finding of the report what can Mr.
Chamberlain do further?  Even our best friends say that by rejecting
the report of the Industrial Commission two years ago, we have
allowed things to go so far that it is unwise to talk of
intermeddling in our home affairs as a refusal to entertain what
public opinion here endorses as a fair proposal.  The essence of
friendly advice is: Accept the proposal in principle, point out how
difficult it will be to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion as to
statistics, etc., and how undesirable it would be to have a
miscarriage of the Commission.  In other words: gain as much time as
you can, and give the public time here to get out of the dangerous
frame of mind which Chamberlain's {448} speeches have created.
Spender is of opinion that after two months' delay all danger will
have vanished.  I cannot say I share his optimistic views, for this
sort of thing has been going on for three years.  Labouchere said to
me this morning: "Don't for goodness sake, let Mr. Kruger make his
first mistake by refusing this; a little skilful management, and he
will give Master Joe another fall."  He further said: "You are such
past masters in the art of gaining time, here is an opportunity; you
surely haven't let your right hands lose their cunning, and you ought
to spin out the negotiations for quite two or three months."  I must
leave off now.  Please remember one thing: I do not send you my
advice.  I send you the opinions of friends and the tendency of
public feeling here.

Some one sent me some lines parodying R. Kipling's _Lest We Forget_.
I got it published in _Truth_.--Yours very truly,

MONTAGU WHITE.


(_Enclosure_) _Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Montagu White_

5 OLD PALACE YARD, S.W., Aug. 2, 1899.

DEAR MR. MONTAGU WHITE,--You will see the lines in _Truth_.  I have
altered one or two words to make the grammar all right.  I do hope
that President Kruger will manage to accept in some form or another
the reference (proposed conference).  Bannerman and all our Front
Bench believe that it is only a way devised by the Cabinet to let Joe
climb down.  The new Franchise Act stands.  The _onus probandi_ of
showing that it does not give substantial representation to the
Uitlanders and yet leave the Boers masters is with Chamberlain.  The
difference between five and seven years is not a ground for proof.
The details for registration do not prove it.  Let President Kruger
quote our Registration Laws, which you had better send him, and do
not forget that a lodger has to register every year; he is not
automatically on the Franchise list.  In connection with this, Milner
suggested in his dispatch six years.  He afterwards said that six was
a mistake for five.  But Chamberlain in his reply approved of six.
It is impossible to calculate the effect without knowing how many
Outlanders there are, and how long each has been in the country.  To
discover the basis of inquiry would take a long time.  As the {449}
decision would go by the majority, the question would be on the
Chairman, who would have a casting vote.  Surely it could be arranged
with Natal; the Cape and the Orange Free State, as well as the
Transvaal, should be represented, with the Chairman an Englishman who
has not yet expressed an opinion.

My own impression is that comparatively few will ever become Boers
amongst the English; they will not like to give up their nationality.
The President has a great opportunity to give Joe another fall.  If
at the same time the Dynamite Concession is abrogated there will be a
rise in many shares, and this will be regarded as a barometer that
everything is going on well and satisfactorily.  The great thing is
to gain time.  In a few months we shall be howling about something in
another part of the world.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


(_Enclosure_) _Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Montagu White_

5 OLD PALACE YARD, S.W., Aug. 4, 1899.

DEAR MR. WHITE,--It is the general opinion that Chamberlain "climbed
down."  As Bannerman put it to me: "His speech was a little bluster
of his own with the main parts arranged by his colleagues, and they
sat by like policemen to see that he read them."  As a matter of fact
he did read all the important parts.

If the President agrees to the Committee it will, under clever
tactics, take months to settle conditions, and then it will take
further months to come to a decision.  If the basis is established
that there shall be a substantial representation of the Uitlanders,
yet not such as can endanger the majority of the Boers, no harm can
well come of the Commission.  The only difficulty is that it is a
sort of recognition of our right to meddle.  But this might be
avoided in two ways: (1) By getting Schreiner into it and making it a
sort of South African affair; (2) by making a bargain and agreeing
only on the understanding that there should be arbitration on all
matters affecting the true reading of the Convention.  But if the
latter is proposed then the President should put in some proposal for
the Chief Justices and one Imperial Judge or Governor to be the
tribunal.

The universal opinion is that the Cabinet has forced all this {450}
upon Chamberlain, and that they are determined not to have war and to
do something to let him down easily.  Salisbury's speech was
conceived on these lines, and a little vague bluster but nothing
more.  I accentuated Bannerman's declaration about hostilities; this
pledges the Liberal party against war.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


_Mr. Labouchere to Mr. Chamberlain_

  HOTEL AND PENSION WALDHAUS,
  VULPERA TARASP, ENGADIN SCHWEIZ, Aug. 18, 1900.

SIR,--I beg to acknowledge your letter of Aug. 6, enclosing copy of a
letter of Mr. Montagu White, with copies of two letters "purporting
to have been written by me," and inquiring if I desire to offer any
explanation or observations with regard to them.

For what I may have written or said to Mr. Montagu White I am
responsible to the House of Commons, of which I am a member; to my
constituents who have done me the honour to send me there; and to the
law.  To you I owe no sort of explanation.  I ascribe, therefore,
your invitation to furnish you with one in respect to the enclosed
letters to the singular illusion that no matter what course you may
see fit to adopt, whether as a Conservative or a Liberal Minister,
all owe you a personal explanation who take the liberty to disapprove
of it, and to do their best to prevent its bringing us into
unnecessary hostilities with some foreign power.  Whilst not
recognising this pretension on your part, I will, however, offer you
some observations in regard to these letters, as you apparently
desire that I should do so.

The letters of mine enclosed were, I do not doubt, written by me.
The only exception that I have to take to the copies is that a few of
the words in them are, I should fancy, erroneously copied, as they do
not make sense.  The advice tendered in them seems to me to be
excellent, and I know of no reason why I should not have addressed it
to Mr. White, who was then the representative of a country with which
we were at peace.  Many letters passed before the War between that
gentleman and myself.  He was most desirous that all possibility of
war should be removed, and {451} that harmony and good feeling should
be established on a firm basis between Great Britain and the
Transvaal.  This we both thought could only be effected by a full
recognition of the Convention of 1884, as explained by Lord Derby,
who signed it for Great Britain, and by reasonable concessions on the
part of the Transvaal Government in regard to the naturalisation and
electoral franchise of the Uitlanders domiciled in the Republic.  I
therefore suggested that the Transvaal Government should grant to
such domiciled aliens naturalisation and electoral franchise of the
Uitlanders on precisely the same terms as they are granted to aliens
in Great Britain.  A law thus framed would, I thought, not be open to
objection on your part, and would put an end to all the carping
criticisms raised by you in respect to small and unimportant details
in the concessions that you were forcing on the Transvaal in regard
to these matters, and which seemed to me hardly calculated to bring
about a peaceful solution of the situation.  If I remember rightly
the last letters exchanged between Mr. White and myself were just
before the close of the normal session of Parliament last year.  Mr.
White in his letter informed me that he had received a communication
from Mr. Reitz, the Transvaal Sec. of State, in which that gentleman
told him that, although he had always been a strong advocate for all
reasonable reforms in respect of the Uitlanders, and although he had
used all his influence to promote a peaceful solution of the pending
issues between the two countries, your despatches were so
persistently insulting in their tone, and all concessions made by his
Government were so invariably met by you with fresh demands, that
even the most moderate of the Transvaal Burghers were becoming
convinced that you were determined to oblige them either to surrender
at discretion to all that you might demand, or to defend by arms the
position secured to the Transvaal by the Convention of 1884.  He
therefore suggested that the negotiations should be taken in hand by
Lord Salisbury, in which case he was convinced that a settlement
satisfactory to both sides would be easily come to.  As I entirely
agreed with this opinion of Mr. Reitz, and believed that you were the
chief impediment to such a settlement, I replied to Mr. White that
the tenor of Mr. Reitz's communication should be conveyed to a
leading member of the Cabinet, and that {452} I hoped--although I did
not expect--that the suggestion would bear fruit.

As I gathered from your observations in the House of Commons that you
had not made up your mind whether you would publish the letters of
Members of Parliament to Transvaal authorities that had fallen into
your hands, I will--so far as my letters are concerned--relieve you
of further consideration by publishing them myself, together with
this correspondence.  I have often urged that the public should have
the advantage of a full knowledge of all documents which are likely
to enable them to form a sound judgment in respect to the issues that
have arisen in South Africa.  Might I, with all respect, venture to
suggest to you that you should follow my example?  The Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs (whoever he may be) and Her Majesty's
representatives in foreign capitals correspond not only by
despatches, but by what they are pleased to term "private letters,"
which are to all intents and purposes despatches.  I presume that the
same course is usual between Secretaries of State for the Colonies
and Her Majesty's Colonial Governors.  You have announced that you
are in favour of a "new diplomacy" in which nothing is kept back from
the public.  Would it be too much to ask you to inaugurate the "new
diplomacy" by publishing all the so-called private letters that have
been exchanged between you and the Governors of Natal and the Cape
Colony; and all the letters and despatches exchanged between these
Governors and our military commanders in South Africa, of which you
may have copies?  Without these documents it is impossible that
either the House of Commons or the electors of the United Kingdom can
form a true conclusion in regard to the "diplomacy" that led to the
war, or be able to affix the responsibility on the right shoulders in
respect to our lack of preparation for hostilities in South Africa
and our initial reverses.  If it is too much to hope that you will
act on this suggestion, I would venture to urge that at least you
should publish the correspondence between yourself and Mr. Hawksley
in regard to your alleged knowledge of the contemplated
Rhodes-Jameson conspiracy of 1894.  Mr. Hawksley is still, and then
was, the solicitor of the Chartered Company of South Africa, and is a
close friend and confidant of Mr. Rhodes.  When the Parliamentary
Committee {453} of Inquiry into all connected with the conspiracy was
sitting, Mr. Hawksley was a witness.  He alluded to this
correspondence.  But when I wished to examine him about it--which was
my right as a member of the Committee according to Parliamentary
usage--this was not permitted by the Committee.  After the Report of
the Committee was published Mr. Hawksley made public his conviction
that, if this correspondence saw the light, a guilty knowledge of the
conspiracy would be brought home to you.  When the debate on the
Report took place in the House of Commons, he placed the
correspondence in the hands of a member with instructions to read it
if you made any attack upon Mr. Rhodes.  Far, however, from doing
this, you went out of your way to assert that Mr. Rhodes had done
nothing to invalidate his rights to be considered an honourable man,
although only a few days before you had agreed to a report in which
he was branded as having been guilty of dishonourable conduct.  Since
then, again and again, you have been asked to produce the
correspondence.  But this you have persistently refused to do,
although no public interest could suffer by the production.  Yet, if
Mr. Hawksley is wrong in the inference he deduces from the
correspondence, it is obvious that its publication would go far to
allay the suspicion which led President Kruger to doubt your desire
for a peaceful solution of the strained relations that existed
between Her Majesty's Government and that of the Transvaal Republic,
and which even now militates against all good feeling between the
colonists of South Africa of British and Dutch origin.

I trust that you will excuse my venturing to make these suggestions.
I do so because I heartily agree with you as to the desirability of
the "new diplomacy."  It is the only way in which that popular
control can be established over the Executive which is essential in a
self-governing community, if it is to escape from falling under the
domination of some purely unscrupulous adventurer gifted with a ready
tongue.

I believe with my leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, that the war
might and ought to have been avoided, and I cannot help hoping that
my letters which have fallen into your hands will show you that I
laboured to the best of my ability in order that it should be
avoided.  Unfortunately these efforts were not {454} successful.  The
war was commenced under a lamentable ignorance on the part of Her
Majesty's Ministers of the resistance which the two Dutch Republics
would oppose to our arms.  Reverses followed owing to the meddling of
civilians in military matters.  Pretoria, Johannesburg, and
Bloemfontein are in our hands.  The Orange River Free State has been
annexed.  The Transvaal Republic has been annexed.  Under these
circumstances peace and prosperity can only be restored in South
Africa when all suspicion is removed that the Secretary of State for
the Colonies was actuated by his previous relations with the
Rhodes-Jameson conspiracy in forcing a war.  I am sure, too, that you
will agree with me that it will not be right for the electors of the
United Kingdom to be called upon to pronounce an opinion on the
policy of a war which has cost us thousands of valuable lives and
tens of millions of money, as well as on the mode in which the war
has been conducted, until all that can enable them to arrive at a
conclusion has seen the light.--I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

H. LABOUCHERE.

_P.S._--If you desire to offer any explanations or observations with
regard to your action in respect to South Africa, they will receive
due consideration.

The Rt. Hon. J. Chamberlain, etc., etc.


Mr. Labouchere wisely remarked at about this period of the South
African War: "War is war.  The old Greek line holds good that in war
the great ones go mad, and the people where it takes place weep.
This must inevitably always be the case."  With equal force, but less
elegance, he also remarked: "I do not waste my time in answering
abuse.  I am accustomed to it and I thrive under it like a field that
benefits by the manure that is carted on to it."  He must have
thriven exceedingly during the summer of 1900, for the amount of
abuse collected and thrown over him was phenomenal.  Most of it was
extracted from the most shadowy appearances of fact possible.  The
Conference, or Commission, referred to in the Pretoria
correspondence, was {455} understood by papers of quite high
standing, such even as the _Birmingham Post_, to be the Bloemfontein
Conference, the abortive proceedings of which had come to an end
early in June, 1899.  Nevertheless, Mr. Labouchere was accused by the
press of having, in his letters to Mr. Montagu White, elaborated a
scheme, to make the conference at Bloemfontein not only a failure,
but a deliberately planned sham.  With regard to the cry of treason
which was raised against him indiscriminately, the dates on the
letters--even had his communications been of a treasonable
nature--rendered such a charge childish in the extreme.

As soon as Mr. Labouchere received Mr. Chamberlain's letter with its
enclosures, which followed him to the retired Swiss Valley where he
was spending his holiday, he wrote at once to the leader of his party
telling him of what had occurred.  Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was
spending August at Marienbad, and wrote him the following letter in
reply:


MARIENBAD, Aug. 22, 1900.

MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--I am much interested in your story, and shall
look forward to my _Truth_ with extra avidity.  All you describe was
perfectly proper and legitimate this time last year, or indeed at any
time: and where high treason comes in I cannot see.  My little
facetiousness will do the great man no harm if it is published.  I
remember the fact perfectly.  All the while the statesman was
speaking, Aaron-Balfour and Hur-Hicks Beach were not holding up his
hands, but watching, with anxious faces, his every word.

Mark Lockwood, who is here, told me that you were one culprit, and
that the other was no other than the ingenuous John Ellis, who was
guilty of writing to some lady asking whether the stories of strange
doings under martial law were authentic!  If this is all one may
exclaim _tantæne animis cælestibus iræ_?  Can our Sec. of State be so
small-minded!

What a gorgeous palace you are living in!  It quite eclipses anything
here, even in your favourite St. John's Wood quarter.  {456} They are
all there: at least a fair representation, ready for Him.  But alas
He does not come.  Weather superb here, but not much company to amuse
or interest.--Yours,

H.C.B.


The war dragged on until the May of 1902, when the Boers were obliged
to make peace, not so much on account of the military situation as
because the burghers were weary of fighting and wanted to lay down
their arms.  And what else could be expected of them?  Half the
national army were prisoners of war, nearly four thousand had been
killed, the rest were weakening and dwindling hourly, twenty thousand
women and children had died in the concentration camps, thousands
more were perishing on the veld.  There was no help from Cape Colony,
no help from Europe, no help from the sympathetic minority in England
itself.[14]  The national representatives of the South African
Republic and the Orange Free State were given three days in which to
consider the conditions of peace which were put before them by Sir
Alfred Milner, and which they were told were absolutely final.  Their
answer was given on the 31st, at five minutes past eleven, only an
hour before the expiry of the term of grace.  The last few moments of
their conference were occupied by President Schalk Burger, who closed
the melancholy meeting with these words:

"We are standing here at the grave of the two Republics.  Much yet
remains to be done, although we shall not be able to do it in the
official capacities which we have formerly occupied.  Let us not draw
our hands back from the work which it is our duty to accomplish.  Let
us ask God to guide us, and to show us how we shall be able to keep
our nation together.  We must be ready to forgive and forget whenever
we meet our brethren.  That part of our nation which has proved
unfaithful we must not reject."

In considering the part Mr. Labouchere played in the {457}
discussions that took place in Parliament and in the press, during
the pitiful struggle, no attitude but one of admiration for his
consistency and envy of his courage can be maintained for a moment.
This chapter cannot be better closed than with a repetition of his
own words, expressed valiantly at the moment when he was of all men
in England perhaps, the most unpopular: "The best settlement that can
be made now will be worse for all parties than the settlement which
could have been effected by tact and self-restraint had the Boers
never been goaded into war.  I adhere to everything that I have ever
said as to the causes that brought on this war, with all its
disastrous results.  I retract not one word that I have published in
_Truth_, or spoken in Parliament, or written in any letter, or
uttered in any shape or form about the Chamberlain diplomacy and the
Chamberlain war."[15]



[1] _Times' History of the War in South Africa_, vol. i.

[2] The Hawkesley telegrams.  These were subsequently published in
the _Independence Belge_.

[3] _Report from the Select Committee on British South Africa_, 1897.

[4] _Truth_, Jan. 9, 1896.

[5] _Truth_, April 2, 1896.

[6] _Times' History of the War in South Africa_, vol. ii.

[7] _Hansard_, vol. 74, July 7, 1899.

[8] _Hansard_, vol. 77, Oct. 17, 1899.

[9] Henry W. Lucy, _The Balfourian Parliament_.

[10] _Hansard_, vol. 80, March 13, 1900.

[11] _Truth_, Sept. 13, 1899.

[12] _Truth_, Aug. 23, 1900.

[13] Secretary of State of the Transvaal Republic.

[14] _Times' History of the War in South Africa_, vol. v.

[15] _Truth_, Sept. 6, 1900.




{458}

CHAPTER XVII

LABOUCHERE AND SOCIALISM

We have seen the depth and intensity of Labouchere's political views.
Conservatism in its Tory or Whig form he hated and relentlessly
fought.  On the other hand, it is not to be doubted that some of the
modern developments of the social side of radical policy since his
retirement from politics would be far from meeting with his approval.
The fact is that he was as strongly anti-socialist as
anti-conservative.  He believed in competition as a principle of
social existence and inequality as a natural fact, although he held
firmly that the natural inequality of men should not be reinforced or
distorted by the artificial inequality of rank.  He did not believe
that the task of government could rightly be held to imply moral
responsibility towards weaklings; such as were unable to survive by
themselves should not be assisted to do so.  This was his theory; in
his personal relations with others he often failed to practise it.
"A fair field and no favour" was his social formula.  Government
might legitimately intervene to prevent such abuse of opportunity as
might result from the business relations of employers and employees;
but when all was done that could be done in that way, it was a man's
natural qualities that enabled him to swim or doomed him to sink.
Any attempt to interfere by legislation with this ultimate
differentiation of nature was in his opinion immoral and sentimental
folly.  A Cabinet had no charge of souls, it was {459} merely a
business concern running the affairs of the nation as cheaply and
effectively as possible.

It is evident that a man holding these opinions could not be other
than unfavourable to Socialism.  The question of Socialism, indeed,
as a practical factor in politics hardly presented itself during the
most active period of his political life, but in later days it came
to the fore, and that, as might have been expected, in his own
constituency, so largely composed of workers.  In going through Mr.
Labouchere's papers I have come across the report of a public debate
which he held with Mr. Hyndman, the well-known Socialist leader, in
the Town Hall of Northampton.  The discussion is interesting as
illustrating very clearly Mr. Labouchere's own view of the whole
problem of labour and also as showing the definite line of cleavage
between the spirit of the older radicalism in popular estimation, at
all events, and much that is identified with the radicalism of to-day.

Mr. Labouchere had been heckled in a more or less friendly way by
some Socialist listeners at one of his meetings and had in
consequence consented to meet Mr. Hyndman in debate.  The subject of
discussion was: "The socialisation of the means of production,
distribution, and exchange to be controlled by a Democratic State in
the interest of the entire community, and the complete emancipation
of labour from the domination of capitalism and landlordism, with the
establishment of social and economic equality between the sexes."

Mr. Hyndman opened the discussion with a speech of great eloquence.
He began by denouncing the terrible evils of poverty and sickness
among the working classes.  "There are through the length and breadth
of England large proportions of the population sunk into the most
terrible misery--misery which I will defy you to find equalled in the
most savage tribes on the planet."  The growth of wealth and poverty
were admitted to be simultaneous and out of the total wealth produced
the workers only took a quarter or, {460} on the most favourable
showing, a third.  "That means that for every stroke of work the
producer does for himself he does three for other people.  It had
been said that the prevalent misery had been exaggerated by
Socialists, but according to the statistics of Mr. Charles Booth, who
was no Socialist, 180,000 families were living in London below the
level at which a family could subsist.  City life debilitated country
stock, and the third and fourth generations of those who have come
into our great cities become valueless even for capitalists to make
tools out of."

All this was misery due to capitalists and the system of wagedom.  On
the other hand, the economic forms of to-day were rapidly weakening,
and the probability was that capitalism would drift much sooner than
was expected into universal bankruptcy.  "I long to see--I am not
afraid to repeat the words--a complete social revolution, which shall
transform our present society, by inevitable causes, from senseless
and miserable competition, in which men fight and struggle with one
another like pigs at a trough (the biggest hog perhaps getting his
nose in first, and, it may be, upsetting the whole thing), into
glorious and universal co-operation where each shall work for all and
all for each.

"Even now, if it were not for competition, there would be plenty, and
more than plenty, for all.  I say that the economic forms are ready
for the transformation I have spoken of.  But first, what is our
position of to-day?  The old Malthusian delusions are gone.
Everybody can see that where the power to produce wealth is
increasing a hundredfold, at the same time the population is
increasing but one per cent. per annum.  It is not over-population
that causes the difficulty, but the miserable system of distributing
the wealth which the population creates.  What are the conditions
to-day?  What are the powers of production at the control of mankind?
Never in the history of man were they near what they were to-day.  At
this present moment, Mr. Chairman, according to the evidence of the
{461} American statist, Mr. Atkinson, on the great factory farms in
the west of America, four men, working with improved and competent
machinery upon the soil, will provide enough food for 1000; and in
every other department of industry it is true in a like, or almost in
a like degree.  The power of man to produce cloth, linen, boots, for
instance, is infinitely greater than ever before in the history of
the race.  What is more, it has trebled, quadrupled, centupled within
the last fifty or a hundred years.  What is then your difficulty at
the present moment?  Not as in old times, a difficulty to produce
enough wealth, but the fact that your very machines which are so
powerful to make wealth for all, are used against you in order to
turn thousands of you out on the streets.  It is no longer, as at was
in some earlier communities, the power to produce wealth that is
lacking.  In Northampton as in every industrial town in England, you
see great mechanical forces around you, but the workmen instead of
controlling the machines are controlled by them.  And the products?
What is our theory?  This.  All production to-day is practically
social.  Everything that is produced is produced for exchange and in
order to make profit.  Commodities are socially produced by
co-operation on the farm, in the great workshop, in the mine.  But
the moment the product is produced it ceases to belong to those who
have produced it and goes into the hands of the employing capitalist,
who uses it in order that he may make out of it a personal gain.
Consequently, you have here a direct and distinct antagonism between
the form of production and the form of exchange.  On the one hand,
you have got great mechanical forces socially used simply for
production for profit, whereas if they were socially used and the
product socially exchanged every member of the community would
benefit.  To-day every increase in the power of machinery may result,
frequently does result, in hundreds, or thousands, or tens of
thousands of hands being thrown out unemployed on the market.  Under
the system of society we are inevitably {462} coming to those very
powers which will engender wealth, happiness, and contentment for
all."

Mr. Labouchere then rose and replied as follows:

"As your Chairman has already told you, this meeting is the outcome
of a remark I made the other day when I was down here.  Some of those
who entertain strong Socialist views were asking me this or that
question on the occasion of my giving an account of my stewardship
before the electors of this town.  I pointed out that Socialism was
only one of the subjects I had got to deal with, but if they would
excuse me from going into details then I should be able to come down
and discuss with them.  I did not anticipate then that we were to
have the pleasure of Mr. Hyndman's company in that discussion.  I
thought it was to be a sort of free-and-easy between the Socialists
and myself.  But you have sent for your big gun to demolish me.  I
can only lay before you my own views and those of the Radical Party
upon social matters, and make a few observations, showing, as I
think, that Mr. Hyndman's system, a very millennial system it is no
doubt, is neither practicable, nor, if carried out, would effect the
ends which he anticipates.  Now, Mr. Hyndman's system, I fully admit,
is for the entire regeneration--he has told us so, I think--of the
world.  It is to be carried out by a scheme which has never yet,
since the commencement of the world, been tried.  No doubt, as Mr.
Hyndman has stated, there are evils, very great evils, and much
misery in the world under the present system.  But it is not enough
to prove that to show that any particular remedy will do away with
them.  There is, no doubt, a great deal of sickness in this world.
That we all admit.  But we should be amused if a doctor came forward
and said: 'If you try this particular pill you will find that all
sickness will be driven away from the entire world.  You are a
criminal, you are mistaken, if you don't take that pill.'  But Mr.
Hyndman's plan goes much further than the example of the pill.  You
must remember that if Mr. Hyndman's plan were not successful it would
ruin this {463} country and everyone in it.  Surely, then, it is our
business as practical men to look thoroughly and cautiously into this
plan before we adopt it.  Mr. Hyndman himself will admit that it is,
at least, a leap in the dark.  Mr. Hyndman has a light in his hand,
but this light is not sufficient to tell us what would occur if we
were to take this leap.  I am not going to say just now whether it
would be successful or unsuccessful; all I say is, we ought to look
at this matter in a thorough strict and business manner, not dealing
with it in vague generalities, but looking into it in all its
details, because when it comes to a question of any business, the
real consideration in deciding whether the business is a sound one or
an unsound one is not of generalities but essentially of details.
Now I think that Mr. Hyndman, whether his plan be good or not,
somewhat exaggerates the evils of the present system.  Mr. Hyndman
told us just now that in towns labour was in such a condition that
those who engaged in labour faded out in three generations.  Well, I
confess I was astonished at that.  I don't suppose you are all
descended from Norman ancestors or anything of that, but I put it to
you.  Many of you can surely remember that you had
great-grandfathers; many of you had great-grandfathers who lived in
Northampton.  There are many of you whose grandfathers, whose fathers
were engaged in labour.  You are engaged in labour yourselves.  Do
you feel yourselves such a puny miserable body of men that you are
going absolutely to die out?  But I forget.  It is not that you are
going to die out, you have died out according to Mr. Hyndman.  Then
what do I see before me?  As the American says: 'Is there ghosts
here?'  Are you human beings?  There you stand; you have been engaged
in trade; you have been for many generations in Northampton; I do
think you have utterly deteriorated--that you are absolutely worth
nothing.  But statistics prove the contrary of what Mr. Hyndman says.
If you take the death-rate in any large town--Manchester, Birmingham,
or London, for instance--you will find that, so far from having {464}
gone up, it has gone down.  Notwithstanding the misery that no doubt
exists, the towns are more healthy now than before.  Now, I do not
think that Mr. Hyndman seems to understand precisely the present
system under which we live.  ['How about yourself?']  My friend says
'How about myself?'  I am going to explain the present system.  In an
argument it is always desirable to take some common ground, and we
may take this as a common ground: the end of all government is to
secure to the greatest numbers such a condition of existence that all
may obtain fair wages for a fair day's work, and that all may be
employed; and that the government is good or bad in proportion as it
approaches to this goal.  Now, gentlemen, there are Individualists
and there are Collectivists.  Modern Radicalism, I would point out to
you, recognises this perfectly.  It recognises perfectly that while
Individualism is a necessary basis for social organisation, yet there
is a very great deal that the State can do.  Modern Radicalism is in
favour of both Collectivism and Individualism.  Now I will read to
you some words I wrote down some time ago--words that were used by a
statesman whom I do not always agree with on foreign politics, but
who, in domestic politics, is a very sensible man.  Speaking before
some association, Lord Rosebery said this:

"'Do not be frightened by words or phrases in carrying out your
designs, but accept help from whatever quarter it comes.  The world
seems to be tottering now between two powers, neither of which I
altogether follow.  The one is Socialism, the other is Individualism.
I follow neither the one school nor the other, but something may be
borrowed from the spirit of each to get the best qualities of
each--to borrow from Socialism its large, general conception of
municipal life, and from Individualism to take its spirit of
self-respect and self-reliance in all practical affairs.'

"Upon that subject those are essentially my views; and I would
contend they are the views of the Radical Party {465} as it at
present exists.  Now I am coming to our present system.  I am going
to say something for this poor old system.  I have often, in
different parts of Northampton, attacked the details of the system.
I am now going to say there is something good in it.  Mr. Hyndman
seems to consider that the world is composed of a great many men who
are engaged in labour on the one side, and on the other a great many
huge capitalists who exploit those men.  Mr. Hyndman told you that
the man engaged in manual labour only receives a third of the value
of his labour, and that the other two-thirds go to those horrible
capitalists.  Gentlemen, I essentially and absolutely deny that such
is the case.  But allow me to point first to these capitalists.  Now
a difference is often made between the amount obtained by labour and
the amount obtained by those who do not engage in manual labour.  It
is exceedingly difficult to arrive at exact figures, and for this
reason, that when you take what you call the national income of the
country it is often forgotten that the national income is very much
counted twice or three times over.  Take, in the first place, the
income tax returns.  I want to show you how money is really
distributed.  There is about £100,000,000 coming to individuals in
England from investments in foreign bonds.  Very well, and you surely
will admit that that is not derived from the labour of Englishmen.
Then £49,000,000 is paid to officials.  It sounds an enormous
quantity, this £49,000,000 paid to officials of the imperial and
local government.  I have often thought that a great many officials
are paid a great deal too high, but we are not entering into that
this evening, and there must be some officials; there must be some
government, and payment of the officials does not directly come from
the sweat and labour of working men.  Then there is £143,000,000
derived from public companies.  Now these public companies are all in
shares.  These shares, too, are held by small men, not by great men.
A vast number of men hold them.  Remember that the whole system of
limited liability companies are {466} really created in order to
enable small men to act together and hold their own against the very
rich men.

I now come to the real amount which is directly derived from
production and distribution, banking and such like; which directly
goes into their pockets from the labour of working men.  For this
amount you must consult what is called Schedule D of the Income Tax.
That schedule puts down the professions and trades.  Altogether the
total is £147,000,000 on which the tax is raised.  That is the amount
of the income.  Now, if you take the professions, law, medicine, art,
etc., as producing £67,000,000--I believe that is considered a fair
amount--£80,000,000 is left for all the traders, all the shopkeepers,
all the bankers, and all the middlemen of the entire country.  Well
now, you must remember another thing.  You must remember that these
incomes are not eaten by the men who have them, but really go back to
labour.  ['No, no.']  Did I hear somebody say 'No'?  You do say 'No,'
do you?  Well, then, tell me what does become of them?  Let a man
spend his money in luxuries as he likes; these have to be produced;
he is a consumer; it may be a foolish one, but his money goes back
and forms a part of the entire wage fund of the country.  When you
say they have not a right to waste and squander their money, I think
it would be better if they did not.  But just remember how much is
spent in the drink trade in this country.  Let us look at ourselves a
little, or I will trouble you to look at yourselves a little.
£132,000,000 is the amount, I think, that is spent every year in
drink.  Of that £80,000,000, it is estimated, is spent by the working
classes.  I am not going into the question of drink, whether right or
wrong, foolish or proper; I only want to point out that every class,
to a very considerable extent, squanders a good deal of its means.
Gentlemen, there is no more incontrovertible fact than this--that the
more capital there is in the country the better it is for the country
and the better it is for labour.  I have already pointed out that it
itself creates labour by those {467} persons who have capital
consuming the capital.  For instance, this £100,000,000 which comes
from foreign investments: would it be of any use that its owners
should fly from this country with their £100,000,000 per annum?  It
is better that they should spend it here.

"There are other advantages connected with capital.  Mr. Hyndman has
pointed to the evils of competitions.  Now I am going to show you
that competition is really to the advantage of the working man.  You
will admit that a certain amount of capital is necessary in order to
fructify industry.  You have to have a factory, plant, and a wage
fund.  All this requires capital.  The cheaper capital is obtained
the more there remains for wage fund.  On that there can be no sort
of difference.  ['How is it we never get it?']  Well, you are begging
the question.  I am going to show you that you do get it.  Owing to
this country having so much increased in wealth the interest upon
capital has gone down.  There is perpetual competition going on among
capitalists themselves.  This is proved by facts.  In 1800 the
interest on money was about five per cent.; at the present moment
interest is rather less than four per cent.  All that is taken away
from capital most unquestionably goes to labour.  It cannot go
anywhere else.  This is why countries compete for capital.  Look at
our colonies and foreign nations.  Do not they all compete for
capital?  Of course they do.  There is a third reason: the greater
number of rich you have in a country, the greater the amount of wool
which you may shear for the national expenditure.  Take Northampton.
Suppose twenty men came here, each with £10,000 per annum.  You would
say it is an uncommonly lucky thing they have come to Northampton.
We'll levy rates upon their houses, and they will spend money here
and benefit the town.  Suppose these men came with £100,000 and
suppose they put up some hosiery factories.  Surely you admit that
that would be a great advantage to the town of Northampton.
Evidently, the greater the amount of {468} capital attracted to any
one particular place the greater the advantage to that place.  The
idea of driving away capital is much like a farmer saying: I will
drive away my sheep because these sheep eat grass.  They do eat
grass.  But the grass is converted into mutton.  In the same way the
money of the capitalists is converted into a labour fund for you.
Well, gentlemen, I say the only way for a country to be prosperous is
to encourage capital to go there, and the only way to encourage
capital to go there is to give some sort of security to capital.

"What is the difference between this country and Persia, or any other
Eastern country?  In the Eastern country a despot is always laying
hands on every atom a man can save.  A man therefore hides away, or
runs away, from the country with his savings.  The result is that the
country is poor and the working men of that country are poor.  Now
take the cases of China and this country.  In China there are
400,000,000 inhabitants.  No doubt the Chinese work very hard.  There
is, however, no capital there; there is no safety for capital.  And
the consequence is that the Chinese labourers do not produce so much
as the comparatively few million workers in England.  Moreover, every
fifteen Chinese do not get the wage of one single working man in
England.  The reason is that the Chinese are not industrially
organised.  They have not the advantage of capital to aid them in
producing.  Each works, so to say, on his own hand, with the result
that they are far worse off than the men in the factory which has
been brought into existence by capital.

"Now, gentlemen, I will take a cotton factory, under the present
system.  It has to be built and equipped.  That requires capital.
There is capital required for the wage fund, that is to say, to pay
wages to the men during the year, because of course the money does
not come in until the end of the year, and then capital is required
to buy the raw material.  Mr. McCulloch says that for every adult
thousand men employed in such a factory £100,000 is required for
fixed capital, £60,000 is required for a wage fund, and {469}
£200,000 is required for the purchase of raw material.  The total is
£360,000.  Now, gentlemen, the first charge is obviously interest on
capital.  You must get the capital in some way.  Assume that you
borrow it.  You get interest on capital.  Another charge is the raw
material.  Raw material you cannot alter because the cotton comes
from abroad.  All you can do in order to increase the amount going to
the wage fund is to reduce the amount that goes as interest on
capital, and that which is called profit to the undertaker of the
concern.  Now what is the profit in the whole of the textile trade?
The profit and the interest on capital do not amount to more than
four per cent.  A portion of that goes to the capitalist and the
remainder for the organising skill and intelligence of the man who
brings the whole thing together and works it.  Well, you surely will
not tell me that that is excessive.  It is rather too little.  For my
part I have often wondered why in the world a man takes the risks of
trade instead of investing his money in something that brings him in
four per cent.  Mr. Hyndman talked of the gambling interests of the
capitalists.  Why, that is all for your benefit.  Each capitalist,
call him a gambler or a vain man, thinks himself cleverer than other
people and says, I am going to make a fortune.  One does make twenty
per cent., and the other gets ruined.  But if you take the whole body
of capitalists their profits come out at four per cent.  If it were
not for the gambling chance, or the ability shown by some undertaken
in making this four per cent., you would not get money at so low a
rate of interest as now, nor would you get a body of skilled
organisers ready to take so little as they do take at the present
moment for their ability and work.  Now, Mr. Hyndman will, I think,
admit with me that the thousand men would not produce so much were it
not for the organising powers of some man, and also for the capital
employed.  We know they would not.  Each man without the aid of
capital would make so much a day.  With the organisation and with the
capital employed in the {470} business he makes a great deal more, so
that he really benefits--he gets more than he would from his own
particular separate work.  He gets more that is from his collective
work by this application of capital and organisation than he would be
logically entitled to were he to work without the aid of capital and
machinery.

"Now I am going to show you by a few figures what benefit capital has
been to the working man.  Here, again, you have a great difficulty
with the figures.  They are calculated out by various men, but I
think this conclusion is generally accepted.  In 1800 all that was
earned, obtained, secured in wages to working men was seventy
millions sterling.  In 1860 this had increased to 400 millions.  In
1860 the numbers engaged in manual labour were double those engaged
in 1800, so you must make a deduction for that.  It would then stand
thus, that whereas a man got seventy pence, shillings, or pounds for
his work in 1800, in 1860 by the co-operation of capital he received
200.  But it is even more at the present time, for he now receives
600 millions.  There is a dispute as to whether it is 500 millions or
600 millions.  Mr. Giffen says it is 600, Mr. Leone Levi says it is
531.  Mr. Hyndman says it is 300.  Well, anyhow, that is two to one.
I stand by Mr. Giffen and Mr. Leone Levi and take the figure as at
531.  But here again is another way of putting it.  In the first year
of the present reign, the gross income of the country was 515
millions.  Of this 235 millions went to labour.  Labour at the
present time gets 531 millions according to the lower estimate of
Professor Leone Levi, consequently labour now gets more than the
income of the entire country at the commencement of the present reign.

"Gentlemen, there can be no more erroneous idea than to suppose, as
Mr. Hyndman apparently (as I gathered from him) laid down, that the
lot of the working man is not bettered by machinery, or that
machinery by doing part of the work now done by working men either
increases the number of hours or reduces the wages of labour.  My
contention is {471} that it reduces the number of hours and increases
the wage of the individual.  Listen to this: Machinery, of course, is
revolutionising the labour market; but it is not found that
machinery, while it displaces labour, though opening up new channels
for the displaced workers, either increases the hours of labour or
decreases the remuneration.  Before the Sweating Committee it was
stated that the wages of nailmakers in this country was 12s. a week
on the average.  The American nailer earns £6 a week; yet American
nails are only half the price of English.  The explanation is that,
owing to excellent machinery and efficient labour, maintained by high
wages and short hours, the American produces 2½ tons of nails while
the English man or woman is making two cwt.  You say 'Shame!'  I say,
'Why don't you do it?'  Why don't you follow the example of the
Americans?

"Take again the illustration of a Waterbury watch.  So exact is the
machinery which cuts the different parts of this watch that an
assistant will put one of these instruments together in a few minutes
by selecting at random a piece from as many heaps as there are parts
in the watch.  Yet the workmen earn 45s. a week, and the watches can
be sold cheaper than those made by workmen earning 8s. or 9s. a week
in the Black Forest.  How is this?  Because by the aid of his
improved machinery the American completes 150 watches in the same
time as the European is painfully manufacturing forty.  You will say
that some capitalist wrote that; some man who was unfit to judge the
matter.  I will tell you who the capitalist was.  I got it out of
Reynolds's newspaper last Saturday.  As I pointed out, in the factory
you have these diverse charges--the charge for interest, the charge
for ability in organising, and the charge for the wage of the worker.
The business, I hold, of the wage worker is to see that he gets a
fair wage; and it is because the only way to do this is to combine in
trade unions that I am one of the strongest advocates of trade
unionism in the whole country.  Then take distribution.  I leave
{472} out the carriage and sale of the various articles in the shops.
Here again competition reduces prices.  You know that as well as I
do.  You know perfectly well that you see stuck up in some shops:
'Come and buy here; things are half a farthing less than anywhere
else.'  Shopkeepers compete against each other.  And there you have
just the same reason as in the case of factories why men go into the
business of shopkeeping, because each man thinks he is cleverer than
his neighbour; each one believes he is going to make his fortune and
his neighbour is not.  But labour benefits by this because the lower
the price of the article the greater the demand for it.  I say that,
taking the whole shopkeepers of this country, taking their labour,
taking the amount of capital they put into their different shops, it
is impossible to say that they get an excessive profit from their
trade.

"Now, of late there has been a good deal of discussion in regard to
co-operation.  I observe that Mr. Hyndman did not allude to
co-operation.  But co-operation exists at present, both in regard to
production and in regard to distribution.  In order to carry out
co-operation on the very largest scale it would not be necessary to
alter the whole basis of society.  Under the present despised system
any working-men may co-operate with each other, may be their own
employers, and in that way get every farthing that is derived from
their employment.  Statistics show that co-operation, just like other
things, sometimes pays and sometimes does not pay.  In Lancashire, in
Yorkshire and in the north of England there is a great deal of
co-operation both in regard to production and in regard to
distribution.  The latest returns show that about $15,000,000 is
employed in this work.  As I have said, in some cases they pay and in
some cases they do not pay.  I have observed some curious things in
connection with this.  You would say that at a co-operative store you
would get an article cheaper than at a shop, whereas, as a matter of
fact, you do not get an article cheaper.  It is a curious thing that
you don't, and the reason is this.  The {473} co-operators get
together in shares a certain capital which has to pay four or five
per cent.  Then each member gets a _pro rata_ return at the end of
the year, a percentage upon the amount he has paid in the store in
connection with his own particular trading.  That is perfectly fair.
Well, so eager are they to get the return that they put up the price
of the goods against themselves.  You must remember that while I
advocate co-operation, or while I say that co-operation needs no
Socialism to enable working-men to get every farthing from the
process of production and distribution, I do not believe that
co-operation in distribution is not without certain evils.  Why is it
that shops still hold their own, and I believe always will hold their
own?  By competition in the first place prices in the shops are
reduced to as little as or less than the prices in the stores.
Again, if a man wants a red herring he don't walk to the middle of
the town, near where the stores have to be, but prefers going to a
neighbouring shop and buying it there.  Moreover, we know that a
great many men have spent their wages before the end of the week, and
they want a little credit.  You may depend, upon taking all things
into consideration, that no very great benefit is to be got out of
co-operative distribution.  I merely went into this question of
co-operation, not to discuss so much the advantages or disadvantages
of co-operation, as to point out to you that co-operation can exist,
may exist, and does exist among working men, whenever they like it,
under the present system.

"Now I come to Mr. Hyndman's plan.  I have said a few words in favour
of the present system.  I have tried to explain what that present
system is, and how, as a matter of fact, labour does benefit by the
existence of capital and capitalist.  Mr. Hyndman's plan, I take it,
is based upon the notion that labour does not get its full share;
that it only gets one-third.  ['It ought to get the lot.']  Very
well, I have often in the course of my life thought I ought to get
the lot, but I have never got it, I can tell you.  Mr. Hyndman's
{474} idea is that if the State took upon itself the functions
performed by private capitalists everybody would be fully employed
and properly paid.  Could this desirable result be brought about?
That is the real thing.  If, at once, under Mr. Hyndman's guidance we
could enter upon the millennium we should all be for entering.  But
the question is whether we _should_ enter it by this gate or whether
we should get somewhere else.

"I have got here the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation.
I have extracted it from Justice.  It is all right.  Mr. Hyndman
pointed out that a great many things in the programme were merely
doctrines which had been put forward by the Socialists, and had now
been adopted by the Radicals.  I should say that there was a great
deal in it that was put forward by the Radicals and had always been
advocated by the Radicals; and we are exceedingly glad that the
Socialists agree with us so far.  Now I like this programme.  What
has been my trouble in talking with some Socialists is that they
never have the courage of their own opinions.  What are you hissing
for?  I am going to praise you.  As members of the Social-Democratic
Federation you are surely not going to take under your wing every
Socialist in the world.  I have often had discussions with
Socialists, and I have found that they leave out certain portions of
their programme.  I have said to them: That is a necessary plank in
your programme; knock out any of these stones and you knock down the
arch.  You have done nothing of the kind.  You have fairly and
squarely put this as the Social Revolution in all its details.  You
see I am not complaining of you, so don't cry out again before you
are hurt.  Now, Number 7 says: 'The means of production,
distribution, and exchange to be declared as collective or common
property.'  Now, what does this mean?  That all manufacturing, all
shopkeeping, all shipping, all the agricultural industry, and all
banking ought to be done by the State----"

{475}

_Mr. Hyndman_: "Community."

_Mr. Labouchere_: "Or community.  Every man, as I understand it, is
to do his bit of work, every man is to have his share of the profit
of the business.  Have you ever thought what amount of capital this
would require?  The building of factories would require 1000 million
pounds for ten million workers.  The wage fund would be 600 millions;
the raw material would be 200 millions; the shipping, say about 500
millions.  I am trying to underestimate the amount.  As to the shops,
I suppose, if you took all there are in the whole country, they would
cost about 100 millions.  Then the agricultural buildings and
machinery, excluding the land itself, would be, say, 500 millions.
This would be very much under a proper estimate, but still the whole
amount runs up to something like 3000 millions.  Are all the
factories to be seized?  My friend says 'Yes.'  That will knock off
1000 millions at once.  Are all the shops to be seized?  ['Yes,
yes.']  This will knock off 100 millions for the shops.  Still, if
you do this, you won't certainly have done.  Obviously you have to
buy the raw material, you have to have a wage fund, and a good deal
to keep the machinery in order even when you have laid hands on it in
the expeditious way your friend proposes.  That would be 2000
millions.  How are you going to get it?  You would borrow it.
_Would_ you borrow it?  Let us suppose you borrow it.  To borrow it
you have to get somebody to lend it to you.  I have known a great
many persons ready to borrow more than people are ready to lend.
Another item, which I am bound to say is not in the Radical programme
of the Social-Democratic Federation, is the repudiation of the
National Debt.  Now, sure, if you repudiate the National Debt you
would find a difficulty in getting anybody to lend you the money you
want.  Where are you going to get it?  Are you going to levy it upon
property?  What property are you going to levy it upon?  We'll allow
that the land and factories are to be seized.  If they are not to be
{476} seized they are to be ruined; they are to be left high and dry.
No individual man is to work in them.  You would have a certain
amount of portable property like the money that comes in from foreign
investments, but its owners would not wait to have it taken.  They
would immediately clear out of the country."

_Mr. Hyndman_: "Hear, hear."

_Mr. Labouchere_: "I am going from surprise to surprise.  I really do
believe that Mr. Hyndman wishes that the men with the 100 millions
should clear out of the country.  These 100 millions are derived from
investments made abroad.  The investments are already made, and the
money may be paid here or abroad just as its owners please.
Therefore you would absolutely have no control over it.  Its owners
could walk off to America or France to-morrow, or to one of our
colonies, where they would be welcomed with pleasure and where they
would be able to live with their 100 millions and spend it just as
they liked.  The only difference would be that they would not be
consumers here, they would not compete with their capital to reduce
the interest on the capital necessary to run the whole business of
the country.  I am very curious to know, I cannot quite make out,
whether a man may save or not.  It is not clear.  I see one of the
articles is, 'the production and distribution of wealth is to be
regulated by society.'  That leads me to suppose he may not save.  I
should say myself that if you are going to carry out this millennium
you could only do it by preventing any sort of saving: because if
savings take place you will have some men rich and some poor,
evidently.  But how about the professions?  What are they to be done
with?  Are professional men not to be allowed to make any savings?  I
see all justice is to be free.  Well, that would create a good deal
of litigation; but I personally suffer a good deal from justice, so
that I don't know that I should particularly object to that item.
You would have, I presume, these professions!  You would have doctors
and men {477} engaged in art and so forth?  They would be able to
sell their productions abroad, their skill abroad.  Consequently how
would you regulate their fortunes?  How are you going to regulate the
distribution of wealth in regard to these men?  I say the thing is
absolutely and utterly impracticable.  You could not.  Yet,
gentlemen, it seems there is some idea of saving, for I see this in
another article: 'The extension of the Post Office Savings Bank which
will absorb all private institutions that draw profit from money or
credit!'  Well, but who would put into the Post Office?  The Post
Office, if they did put it in, would have to incur all the risks of
the great business.  But I told you that the National Debt was to be
repudiated.  What is the fact?  That the Post Office Savings Bank has
invested £5,599,000 of public savings, of labour mainly, in consols.
If, consequently, you were to do away with the National Debt one of
the things you would do would be to repudiate five millions sterling
saved by labour.  Now, I think it was some gentleman who was
discussing the matter with me in the _Reporter_ who said that you
might save, but no man would be allowed to employ any savings by
making another man work for him.  Allow me to point out to you that
indirectly one man must work for another if he does not work for
himself.  Is he going, like that wicked man in the Bible, to hide his
talent in a napkin?  Not a bit.  I suppose he will make a little
interest on it.  He won't work for the interest himself, so somebody
else will.  If you are going to try to distribute wealth you will
have continual disputes, for I deny that, so long as human nature is
what it is, so long as a man wants to lay by something for his
children, you will be able to prevent savings.  The only thing you
would be able to do would be to frighten savings away from this
country, and cause them to be taken to some other country, which
would compete against you.

"Let us suppose now that this initial difficulty of obtaining the
money is got over.  Then there comes the organisation.  Well, who
would organise?  Who would be {478} superintendents, and who would be
workers?  Who would engage in the complicated business of exchange
with foreign countries?  Remember, all skilled talent would
disappear.  You say 'Ha, ha!'  Do you really think that a man who
perhaps is a skilled organiser of labour, who could earn a thousand
or two thousand a year abroad or in the colonies, would stay here and
receive an exceedingly small sum, simply because he was an
Englishman?  Of course he would go away.  I say you would deprive the
country of its most intelligent organisers.

"There is another difficulty.  Who would settle the employment to be
secured for each person?  Here is a shepherd.  He would say: 'I want
to be a shoemaker.'  'My good friend,' they would say, 'we don't want
you; go and be a shepherd.'  They'd say to me: 'We've got quite
enough newspapers without yours.  We want a good chimney sweep.  Be
that.  Go to Newcastle.'  They'd say to our friend, Mr. Hyndman:
'We'll find employment for you in hay-making in Somersetshire.'  Mr.
Hyndman may say he likes that paternal arrangement; he likes
hay-making.  I'll tell you one thing: I wouldn't go and sweep
chimneys in Newcastle.  But you say that the State carries on the
Post Office, the Army, and the Navy, among other things; and I say it
carries them on exceedingly badly too.  You will find, taking ship
for ship, that ships can be built in a private yard much cheaper than
in a public yard.  As for the Post Office, I agree with Mr. Hyndman
in saying I do not know any public Department so badly managed as the
Post Office.  There is an enormous deal of sweating; the big men get
too big salaries, and the little men do not get enough.  If the Army,
Navy, and Post Office be an exemplication of what would be done under
the paternal arrangement, Heaven help us!

"But, gentlemen, what really surpasses my understanding is this, how
in the world, if Mr. Hyndman's system were adopted, any regular work,
or shorter hours, or better pay, {479} or employment of all would be
more easily obtained than under the present system.  I say your
capital, if you did get it, would be at a higher cost.  I say that
profit, if you take profit, is almost reduced by competition to a
minimum.  You would not make one shilling by the transaction.
Supply, surely, would depend upon demand.  You could not alter that.
Take the foreign trade.  You would not increase your foreign trade,
under this system.  You would still have to compete with foreign
countries in China and elsewhere.  Foreign consumers would take goods
from those from whom they could buy them cheapest.  The Socialists
have perceived this, and they have invented the idea of establishing
on the land an enormous number of labourers, who are to act as
consumers, and consequently take all the home surplus products.  And
I see here it is proposed that the Municipal or State army of
labourers should be organised as on the great farms in America.  Mr.
Hyndman alluded to what they did on these bonanza farms.  They send
men down to them twice a year, once to sow and once to reap.  You
might find if you had the proposed armies that the product might be
increased, but the number of persons employed on the land, that is to
say, the consumers on the land, would be reduced.  That is why I have
been in favour of small holdings.

"As to the numbers of the agricultural labourers, those labourers won
us the election last time, remember.  What are you hissing at?  Did
you want the Conservatives to win?  You must take people as they are.
These agricultural labourers may be wrong, but their strongest desire
is to become possessors of small holdings.  That has been the aim and
object of the Parish Councils Bill, which will slowly and quietly
nationalise the land by throwing the property, little by little, and
very quickly I think, into the hands of the Parish Councils, who will
let it to the villagers.  You will then get a large number of
agriculturalists on the land, far greater than now, consuming your
products.  At the same time you would avoid their coming into the
towns and {480} competing with you for labour.  The subject is a very
lengthy one.  As I said, you have to go into the question in all its
absolute details.  I will only tell you one other reason why I object
to this system of making us all children in the hands of the State.
I say it would be the greatest danger to our liberties.  Why is the
Anglo-Saxon race the master race in the world?  Why has the
Anglo-Saxon race maintained its liberties?  It is because of that
individualism, that self-reliance, which exists in this country.  I
would trust no body of men, not Mr. Hyndman and the leaders of the
Social-Democratic Federation--though I make no implication against
them--nor even a body of angels, with the power of destroying and
ruining, at one fell blow, the entire nation.  This unquestionably
would be the case, and who would be able to resist it?  You would
have some strong and powerful man coming forward, supported by all
the discontented, all the men who were not prepared to accept this
wondrous dispensation, this dead level of equality.  I say you would
have such a man; I say the risk is too great.  Mr. Hyndman has
alluded to France.  What did one great Frenchman, M. Guizot, say?
He said: 'The evil of France is that a Frenchman must either be
administered or an administrator.'  What is the consequence of that
feeling?  They have no self-reliance.  Every now and then they have a
Republic, and then comes one like Napoleon, who overturns their
Republic and seizes upon the whole thing.

"I have almost finished now.  I infinitely prefer listening to Mr.
Hyndman to speaking myself, but I had to make some defence of the
cause by which I stand.  I do say that the Radical Party as at
present constituted, the modern Radical Party, has adopted every
reasonable idea of Socialism.  And the future of this country depends
upon Socialism being recognised within proper limits--Collectivism I
would prefer to call it--individualism being recognised, trade
unionism being recognised, co-operation being recognised.  We must
all give up our little separate fads and all work together in {481}
the cause of Democracy, the rule, the absolute rule, of the people,
ruling for the benefit of the people."

Mr. Hyndman said in reply:

"There are just one or two points I should like to deal with in reply
to Mr. Labouchere.  To begin with I have listened with the greatest
surprise to-night to his constant reference to the wage fund.
Without any disrespect to him I say that, as a matter of fact, that
figment has been abandoned by every political economist of any note
for the last thirty years.  It was abandoned by Mr. John Stuart Mill,
in deference to the criticism of Long and Cairnes twenty-five years
ago.  The bottom was knocked out of it by Marx forty years ago.  What
is the wage fund, my friends?  The wage fund is provided by the
labourer himself, who, mark you, advances his labour to the
capitalist before he gets a farthing of wages.  There is not a man in
this hall, however big an Individualist or Radical he may be, not a
single working man here who goes to work from week end to week end
that does not advance a week's labour to the capitalist before he
gets a sixpence in return.  The fact of the matter is that the
capitalist has got in his possession the value, and more than the
value, far more than the value paid as wages before he pays a
sixpence of those wages.  He can go to his banker with the product he
has got out of the labourer and get an advance before he pays those
wages.  Practically in getting the advance he realises the product of
his employees' labour.  The fallacy of the wage fund theory is
recognised by every economist, and I defy Mr. Labouchere to prove I
am wrong.  I will defy Mr. Labouchere to name an economist who
upholds it."

At this point of Mr. Hyndman's speech Mr. Labouchere rose and said:

"I deny that there is one single economist of repute who questions
the effect of what I said about the wage fund.  The employer has
either to provide himself with a wage fund, and then he is entitled
to interest on his money, or he has to {482} borrow it from someone
else, and then he has to pay interest.  The working-man, it is
perfectly true, gives him credit for a week--not always, but I am
taking Mr. Hyndman's statement--but the employer does not, I
say--take the cotton industry--the employer does not get back his
money till the end of the year.  Consequently, whereas the working
man gives credit for a week, the employer has to give him credit for
fifty-one weeks.  ['No, no.']  I say yes, there is no question about
it.  All that I want to point out is that you have to pay interest on
this wage fund.  Mr. Hyndman admits it, because he says, what does he
do?  He goes and obtains it from his banker.  Does his banker give it
to him?"

To which Mr. Hyndman retorted, not ineffectually:

"I say that the security has been provided by the working man before
the capitalist is able to raise a sixpence on it, and that all he
does is to divide up the surplus value he has got from the worker
with the banker who has made the advance.  There is no such thing as
a wage fund, except that provided by the worker himself.  And it is
exactly the same with the capital.  Friends and fellow-citizens,
where does this capital come from?  From the labourers themselves.
Where can the capital come from if not from the labour of the
workers?  Did not the workers build every factory in this country,
from its base to its topmost storey?  Did they not put down every
sleeper on the railways, and lay down every mile of line?  I say,
therefore, that this idea of the wage fund, which has been repudiated
by John Stuart Mill, by Cairnes, by Mr. Alfred Marshall, by every
economist of note, does not exist in economy, but is a figment of the
imagination.  Now, friends, as to this question of families fading
out.  Mr. Labouchere says that the death-rate has lowered.  That is
perfectly true.  On the average the death-rate _has_ lowered.  But
mark this.  It has lowered principally in the well-to-do districts.
The death-rate in St. George's, Hanover Square, is 11 per 1000; in
several districts of Lambeth it is 66."

{483}

Mr. Labouchere, evidently astonished, turned to the Chairman and
said, "Is that a fact?"  Some one in the audience shouted "Proof!"

"Proof you must look up in the statistics; I can't bring a library
here with me.  I say, friends, in addition to that, that vitality is
on a lower plane.  For this, again, I give as my authority passages
quoted in Alfred Marshall's _Principles of Economics_, where you will
find the opinions of doctors.  I also refer you to reports of
certifying surgeons for the factories for the year 1875 and later
dates.  I say that when I speak of families fading out, I mean that
the physical and mental vigour and initiative of those families are
crushed down in our great cities.  I have never heard it disputed
before; I don't think I shall hear it disputed again.  If you ask any
of the great contractors as to his supply of powerful navvies, he
will tell you he cannot get them out of the towns.  If you ask any of
the recruiting officers he will tell you the lads from the cities are
physically useless.  You will find the standard of height for
recruits has decreased five inches during the present reign, and the
chest measurement in proportion.  Consequently there is, I say, in
our great cities, which form the bulk of the population, a constant
physical deterioration going on, which will end in the fading-out of
the people unless we replace this system of robbery and rascality and
oppression that is going on at present by a better.  I cannot stop
any length of time to dispute about the way in which the wealth that
is taken from the workers is divided up.  It matters not to me
whether it is the Royal Family, or the professional men, or the
servants who divide it, or in what proportion they divide it, after
it has been taken from the worker.  That makes, I say, no difference
whatsoever.  The workers never see it again.  Four per cent. also on
£100,000,000 is forty per cent. on £10,000,000.  How is the amount of
capital reckoned?  Mr. Labouchere knows perfectly well that a coal
mine or factory which has cost but £40,000 will frequently be
capitalised at £200,000.  {484} That is the way they put it in the
Blue Books.  I can give an example of a mill in Rochdale where the
freehold belongs to the man who owns that mill, when and where every
single charge is met in a separate category, and then, after all
these are divided, the interest on the capital is reckoned over again
on the whole capitalised value.  I say that four per cent. does not
represent the profits on cotton, even in these comparatively bad days
for the cotton industry.  But the mere fact that the profit is going
down means that competition is cutting its own throat, that we are no
longer masters of the markets of the world.  And what does the
capitalist do when his profits go down?  He tries to make another
turn of the screw on his labourers--and the result was the great
cotton strike which occurred a short time ago, when, for sixteen
weeks on end, the poor unfortunate spinners and weavers stood out
because they would not have that amount which the capitalist was
losing in the competitive market sweated out of their very bone and
blood.  So much for your four per cent. or your forty per cent.  It
is wrung out of the workers, it can come from nobody else.  As to the
organiser, what did the Roman slave-owner give to his villeins, who
stood in the same relation to the working slaves as the capitalist
organiser to the labouring classes to-day?  He paid him lower
remuneration because his labours were less exhausting.  That is a
positive fact.  I say that if you want organisers who to-day are
appointed by the capitalist, let them be appointed by the workers,
who can pay them far better than the capitalists, because you will
have all the capitalists' profits and all the amounts the capitalists
sweat out of their employees' labour as well to pay with.  ['Don't
capitalists start as working men?']  Yes, and the more they grab, the
bigger they get.  As to the amount received by the working men as
wages, Mr. Leone Levi was one of the most unscrupulous and lying
champions of the capitalist class who ever wrote.  He represented
that the average wages of working men and women throughout England
{485} were 32s. a week.  That is a positive fact; it is on record in
his own books.  Thirty-two shillings a week!  I say that is a
deliberate lie.  And that is how he made out his amount of 531
millions.  As a matter of fact, Mr. Giffen and Mr. Mulhall both
included in the wages of the working classes all those paid to
domestic servants, the soldiers and sailors, all that is paid to your
noble friends the police.  I say that, as a matter of fact, those are
not producers in the common sense of the word.  They are simply
encumbrances upon the industrial community.  I say, further, that out
of the amount paid in wages to the working classes, which I reckon at
£300,000,000 to £350,000,000, not a sixpence more, one-fifth or
one-fourth has to be paid as rent for the miserable dwellings the
workers occupy.  That is, I say, the position of the labouring
portion of the community at the present time.  I am told that
shopkeepers are a useful class.  Well, surely there are too many of
them.  You will find in one street half a dozen people vending the
same wares.  The organisation of any decent system of distribution
would not allow such a state of things to continue, but would turn
the unnecessary distributors into producers, and thus lighten the
weight of producing on the others.  Mr. Labouchere does not seem to
understand that what we want is not money.  You cannot eat it; you
cannot be clothed with it.  What you want is good hats, good homes,
and good beefsteaks--enjoyment, contentment in life, comfort, and
beyond all these, public amusements of every kind.  I say that these
have nothing whatsoever to do with money.  If you want to save, you
don't want to save money; you want to save those things which are
necessary to the support and continuance of life.  Mr. Labouchere
seems to think that communism is unknown on this planet.  I say that
human beings far lower in the range of civilisation than we, with
comparatively small and puny means of production, live far more
happily, in far better conditions of life, than enormous proportions
of our great city population.  Where?  I will tell you.  I say I
{486} have lived among communal tribes where, as a matter of fact,
the conditions are as I have told you.  The inhabitants of Polynesia,
the Pueblas of New Mexico, and the people of other places which I
have not seen, live better, considerably better, with all their small
means of production, than the proletariat of our great cities, and
they produce, regard being had to the productive powers at their
command, articles of clothing and domestic use as remarkable in their
way as the finest products of civilisation.  More than that, all the
great bed-rock inventions of humanity, the wheel, the potter's wheel,
the smelting of metals, the canoe, the rudder, the sail, every one of
these and many more, the stencil plate and weaving, to wit, were
invented under communism and no human being knows who invented them.
That is a sufficient answer to the supposition that under a Socialist
state of society there would be no progress in the invention.  But I
am asked what the capitalists will do when the transformation to a
co-operative commonwealth is made.  They will go away with their
capital.  What is capital?  Capital is the means and instruments of
production used by a class to make profit out of labour.  Can the
capitalist roll up the railways and take them away in his
portmanteau?  Will he walk away with the factories in his waistcoat
pocket?  Mr. Labouchere himself sees the futility of some of this.
He advocates the nationalisation of the railways because he says that
they will be better administered under the State than to-day."

_Mr. Labouchere_: "No, no."

_Mr. Hyndman_: "Why then do you want to nationalise them?"

_Mr. Labouchere_: "I very much doubt whether they would be better
managed in the sense that they would produce more money than now.  I
hold that the roads of a country ought to belong essentially to the
State.  It is better for the general benefit that they should be held
collectively.  I do object to their giving preferential rates to
foreigners and {487} charging excessive amounts to persons sending
goods a short distance in England.  That is the reason why I think
the railways would be better in the hands of the State."

_Mr. Hyndman_: "As a matter of fact, preferential rates can be
stopped without the nationalisation of the railways.  Mr. Labouchere
can bring in a Bill when Parliament meets to prevent them.  Why,
then, is he so Utopian as to demand the nationalisation of the
railways?  I want, however, to raise the discussion out of the minor
points, and I say this, that Socialism does not mean organisation by
the State under the control of Mr. Hyndman, or any one else, but the
entire organisation of industry, on the highest plane of co-operation
for the benefit of all.  In that co-operative commonwealth
competition for profit will be unknown.  Mr. Labouchere has drawn a
tremendous picture of what it will cost to effect the change.  What
does the social system cost you as it is going on to-day?
Competition carried to its logical issue must engender monopolies.
These monopolies have been given by the capitalist class to
themselves in their capitalist House of Commons.  That assembly must
be re-constituted and turned to Social-Democratic purposes.  But then
you will lose all those clever men who will not join with you!  Where
will they go?  We are stronger in France than in England, and
stronger in Germany than in France.  Will they go to China?  That
seems to me the last refuge of the wandering individualist, the last
place on the planet where the individualist will be able to go.
Socialism is gaining ground in every country in the world, and mark
this, where the people are best educated, there we are most powerful.
Germany is the best educated country, and Socialism is stronger there
than in any other nation.  Whatever city in England has a body of
educated workers, there we make way quickly.  Mr. Labouchere seems to
think that no one will serve his fellowmen unless he is able to grab
from them.  His idea of humanity seems to me--I wish to say {488}
nothing that is in the least offensive, and I will withdraw it at
once if it is considered so."

For about a minute there was disorder so great that Mr. Hyndman was
unable to proceed.  The Chairman rose and appealed for quietness
during the two or three minutes that remained to Mr. Hyndman.
Silence having been restored, Mr. Hyndman said:

"I say, friends, that the representation that the men of
intelligence, of genius, of capacity, and the like would leave us and
go to other places means that they are not animated by the idea of
serving their species, but simply of making their own fortunes.  I
say that mankind, as a whole, has higher ideals than that.  I say
that all the great work done on this planet, all the great books that
have ever been written, all the great inventions that have ever been
made, have not been made for money, but for something higher than
that.  I say further, that when a man has been paid all he requires
to sustain a happy, contented, and wholesome life, when he has around
him a people living happily with him, co-operating with him, when he
sees that every effort he makes tends to the advantage of the whole
community and to the drawback and domination of none, I say that
then, animated with a lofty public spirit, he will place his whole
power, his whole intelligence, his very faults, and his life at the
disposal of the community he benefits by his existence."

Mr. Hyndman went on to point out that many of the reforms adopted by
the Radicals were in reality due to Socialist inspiration.  He
instanced the eight hours day and the nationalisation of railways,
which Mr. Labouchere had advocated, and concluded what must have been
a stirring and able speech as follows:

"Now I repeat, friends and fellow-citizens, that we are arguing for
what is inevitable, that at the present moment the capitalist system,
like the feudal system before it, and chattel slavery before that,
heads back progress.  I say {489} that now, in many directions the
force of electricity, and various great mechanical and chemical
inventions, which might tend to the benefit of the race are being
headed back by low wages and vested private interests.  I don't think
anybody can deny that.  It must be admitted also that universal
commercial crises have occurred time after time in this century, each
one worse than the one before it.  Since the Baring crisis of 1890
there have been great financial difficulties, and thousands and tens
of thousands of people have been thrown out of work.  Why?  Not
because there is not plenty of wealth to be produced, but because, as
a matter of fact, the power to produce it is taken from the producers
altogether.  I say that, whether we like it or not, a system of
Socialism is being built up out of the facts of to-day.  From the
misery we see around us there is necessarily arising a glorious
future, the golden age which all the greatest of the sons of men from
Plato and Moore onward have desired and foreseen, an age in which
wage-slavery and competition having ceased, men will co-operate for
the greater advantage and enjoyment of all.  Friends, that which the
great thinkers of old saw through a glass darkly we see face to face.
We are the inheritors of the martyrdom of men to the forms of
production and distribution throughout the ages.  I ask you to-night
not to treat this question as being brought down to you from on high,
but as growing up under your feet below.  Consider it earnestly for
the sake of the men, women, and children who are being crushed down
in our cities, and whose lives may be rendered worthy and happy.  Let
us uplift ourselves at once from the question of twopenny and
twopenny-halfpenny profit into a higher, nobler, and more glorious
sphere."

Mr. J. G. Smith, on behalf of the Socialists, wound up the
proceedings by proposing a vote of thanks to both speakers.  He
expressed his appreciation of the "sincerity and honesty" with which
Mr. Labouchere had met Mr. Hyndman.

{490}

Opinions will probably differ as to who really got the better of this
encounter, nor shall I be rash enough to award the palm.  At least
Mr. Labouchere's speech shows the sort of way in which he approached
the question.  It shows his dislike of theory, his determination to
stick to the concrete, and his distaste for rhetoric.




{491}

CHAPTER XVIII

MR. LABOUCHERE AS A JOURNALIST

BY MR. R. BENNETT, EDITOR OF "TRUTH"

Mr. Labouchere went into newspaper work with all the best
qualifications that a journalist can have, and with many that no
other journalist has ever had a chance of possessing.  He had an
inborn gift for writing, using his pen by sheer force of natural
impulse.  He took a lively and unfailing interest in all the doings,
sayings, and thoughts of his fellow creatures, while looking at all
human affairs with critical but dispassionate detachment.  His
reflections, if not very profound, were always acute, novel, and
humorous; and he had a method of expression, whether in speech or
writing, peculiarly his own--pithy, witty, and unconventional.  He
was a great reader; he was at home in French, German, and Italian; he
had acquired a smattering of the classics at Eton and Cambridge; and
he had a retentive memory.  When he first took up journalism he was
nearly forty, and he had had an unrivalled experience of all phases
of life, extending from Jerusalem to Mexico.  Among other things, he
had spent ten years as an attaché in six or eight different capitals;
he had gambled in nearly every casino in Europe; he had travelled
with a circus in America; he had run a theatre in London; he had sat
in the House of Commons; he had dabbled in finance in the city.  Add
to all this that he had a considerable aptitude for business, as for
most other things; lastly that he was never under any {492}
obligation to write a line except to please himself; and it is not
surprising that he made a distinguished mark in the world of
journalism.  It is perhaps not too much to say that the best work of
his life was done as a journalist.

Yet he seems to have tumbled into this work quite accidentally, and
in the most unusual fashion.  He began as a newspaper proprietor; he
subsequently became an editor; and he ended as a casual unpaid
contributor.  This strange inversion of the normal career of a
successful journalist is in keeping with everything else in his life
and character.  The story of his proprietorship of the _Daily News_
and of his association with Edmund Yates on the _World_ has been told
elsewhere in this book.  His work on those papers, extending over
seven years, had given Mr. Labouchere a useful and varied experience
of very different classes of journalism when he decided, in 1876, to
start a journal of his own.  There had been no quarrel of any kind
between him and Yates, and it was not in any spirit of antagonism to
the proprietor of the _World_ that he decided to make his own paper
one of the same type.  At that date there was rather a reaction
against the solidity and stolidity of the older journalism, and out
of it had sprung a class of journals animated by a lighter spirit,
and handling both men and things in a free and easy style.  _Vanity
Fair_ and the _World_ had been very successful in this line, and
their spirit appealed to Mr. Labouchere, who detested pretentiousness
in every shape, and to the end of his days never ceased to regard as
a ridiculous object the journalist who takes himself seriously.
"What is _Truth_?" asked some successor of jesting Pilate, who had
heard of the title proposed for the new paper.  "Another and a better
_World_," replied Labouchere; and the quip no doubt expressed
correctly what he had in his mind.  The spirit in which he proposed
to endow London with a new journal is perhaps even better shown in
the title originally projected for this organ, which was, not
"Truth," but "The Lyre."  It was in deference to the opinion of {493}
Horace Voules that Mr. Labouchere consented to abandon "The Lyre" in
favour of "Truth."  Voules's business instinct, which was highly
developed, warned him that it is better to assume a virtue if you
have it not.  No doubt he was right.  Nobody, so far as I know, has
yet had the courage to start a paper called "The Lyre," but Mr.
Labouchere would have done it had he been left to himself.

The mention of Voules reminds one that Mr. Labouchere's first step
when he had decided upon his new venture was to find a competent
practical journalist to undertake the "donkey work."  In a lucky
moment he fell upon Horace St. George Voules, who eventually became
his _alter ego_ in _Truth_ office.  Horace Voules himself was a man
of very remarkable personality and abilities.  He was the son of a
well-known solicitor at Windsor, who, by a strange freak of fortune,
was the local Tory election agent, and as such had been instrumental
in unseating Mr. Labouchere when he was returned for that borough.
While still only a boy Voules had formed an ambition to become a
journalist, and, by way of beginning at the beginning, had entered
the great printing and publishing house of Cassell, Fetter, and
Galpin as a printer's apprentice.  He made his way upward with
extraordinary ability, and the partners formed such a high opinion of
him that when, in 1868, they started the _Echo_--the first London
halfpenny paper--they put Voules in as business manager.  He was then
only four-and-twenty.  He continued to manage the _Echo_ with
remarkable success till the summer of 1876, when it was acquired by
the late Mr. Passmore Edwards, and Voules resigned.  He went away to
take a holiday, and a few weeks later received a letter from Mr.
Labouchere asking him to come and see him.  This was the beginning of
an intimate association which lasted till Voules's death in 1909.  An
agreement was entered into under which Voules was to be "manager" of
_Truth_ at a very modest salary, though with a percentage of the
profits which ultimately proved very valuable; and this agreement was
the only one {494} ever concluded between the proprietor and his
second-in-command, although for the last twenty-five years of
Voules's life the whole editorial and financial control of the paper
was in his hands alone.  Another point of interest is that to meet
the expenses of the new paper Mr. Labouchere opened a special account
with his bankers and paid into it the sum of £1000.  Some time later,
when the growth of the business necessitated more capital, this sum
was increased to £1500; but for the first few years £1000 was the
whole of the capital that Mr. Labouchere invested in his venture, and
practically it was never touched; that is to say, the account which
he opened in 1876 with that credit remained with at least that amount
to its credit until he sold the paper in 1910.  From those details it
may be gathered that neither the proprietor nor his manager regarded
themselves as entering upon an enterprise of any great pith or
moment, or imagined that they were founding a journal which would
become famous over the whole world.  It certainly did not occur to
Horace Voules, then an ambitious and remarkably successful young man
of thirty-two, that in becoming "manager" of this undertaking at £600
a year he was taking a position that would occupy him for the rest of
his days.

In such circumstances the first number of _Truth_ made its appearance
in the first week of 1877.  It was a decided success, as success in
that class of journals was reckoned at that date, though the sale of
the first number was only a fraction of the figures reached fifteen
or twenty years later.  What was of more consequence, and perhaps
more surprising, the second and following numbers were equally
successful; for the production of a new journal is rather like the
production of a new play--a full and enthusiastic house on the first
night does not necessarily mean a long run.  Horace Voules was fond
of boasting that _Truth_ had paid its way from the first, and some of
the credit of that result was undoubtedly due to his great business
abilities.  Mr. Labouchere had not gone into the venture with any
idea of making money.  {495} He knew the history of the early
difficulties of the _World_, which have been referred to in an
earlier chapter of this volume, and it was probably an agreeable
surprise to him that he was not called upon to meet a loss on the
first few months' working of _Truth_.  In an interview which appeared
in one of the monthly magazines a few years ago, Voules described the
scepticism with which his chief received the balance-sheet presented
to him at the end of the first six months.  It appeared to Labouchere
too good to be true, and he exercised his ingenuity in attempts to
demolish it.  In later years his attitude towards balance-sheets was
very different.

The combination of Labouchere and Voules was a very powerful one.
Few newspapers have ever had a more remarkable pair of brains and
personalities behind them--the one acute, ready-witted, audacious,
irresponsible, intent only upon amusing himself and amusing his
readers; the other long-headed, business-like, strenuous, and
pushful, intent only upon making money.  The time came when _Truth_
owed everything to the guidance and inspiration of Horace Voules; but
at the start it was Mr. Labouchere who made the paper.  This can
easily be seen on looking back to the files of the journal during the
first two or three years of its existence.  There was nothing very
striking or sensational in the matter of its contents; in form and
substance it did not differ materially from the journals of the same
class that had preceded and followed it.  But the hand and spirit of
Labouchere were all over it, and gave it a character and
individuality which were bound to make the fortune of any journal.
His literary activity at this period was amazing.  As Voules used to
say, he was exactly like a child with a new toy; and after playing
with many toys he had found the one which exactly suited him, for the
handling of a pen was his greatest joy.  "He would have written the
whole paper if he could," said Voules.  In point of fact for a time
he did write a considerable part of it every week.  He poured out
amusing {496} paragraphic commentaries on every subject of the moment
that interested him, and flooded the paper with droll reminiscences
of his own adventures and the innumerable distinguished people whom
he had met in all parts of the world.  He "did" the dramatic
criticism, and he never did anything better; in this owing much, no
doubt, to his personal experience as a theatrical manager.  He wrote
every week a "City" article--a very unconventional kind of City
article, quite unlike any product of financial journalism before or
since.  It broke out occasionally in the most unexpected directions;
for example, one finds an irresistibly comic account of his
experiences among brigands in Mexico cropping up in a survey of the
financial position of that country.  Starting on another occasion to
discuss the merits of Greek stocks, he lapses into a disquisition
upon the character of the modern Greeks, especially the peasantry,
illuminated by reminiscences of his travels in their country.  One of
the funniest things he ever wrote--a detailed account of his journey
through the Holy Land with the Rev. J. M. Bellew--made its appearance
as an integral part of a critique of some new play.  The connecting
link between the two things was that Mr. Bellew's son, the late Mr.
Kyrle Bellew, had made his debut on that first night.  It is only
when a man writes for his own paper that he can do this sort of
thing; what would be the emotions of any normal editor on receiving
from his dramatic critic a three-column narrative of a journey in
Palestine as part of a notice of Mr. Bernard Shaw's last masterpiece!
It was the spontaneity, this unexpectedness, the evident absence of
all premeditation or effort, as well as a sort of irresponsible
indifference to the ostensible business of the moment, that gave such
a piquancy to Mr. Labouchere's writing, as it did to his
conversation.  It was something quite new in journalism, and it
remains to this moment absolutely unique.

Another characteristic of Mr. Labouchere's which gave a peculiar
flavour to _Truth_ was his frankness and disregard for {497} the
_convenances_ in speaking about his contemporaries.  He had no taste
for mere tittle-tattle and scandal-mongering in print.  Prying into
the private life of well-known people was rather a weakness of the
"society journals" of the day, among which _Truth_ was classed, and
Mr. Labouchere never favoured it.  But it must be admitted that in
private conversation he was an inveterate gossip, always well-posted
in whatever talk was current to the discredit of anybody sufficiently
known to be talked about; and when he found occasion to speak about
any person in print, all that he knew about that person was apt to
come out, with precisely the same unconventional frankness that
distinguished his own personal confessions.  Added to this he was not
only contemptuous of pretence, sham, and humbug in every shape,
hating "snobbism" in its widest sense as heartily as Thackeray
himself, but he was hopelessly devoid of the spirit of reverence,
even in regard to matters that usually receive reverence on their
merits.  Nothing was sacred to him.  He seemed to discover
instinctively the seamy side of what other people admire, and to find
a delight in calling attention to it; and this mischievous habit of
mind displayed itself in his handling of men as well as things.
Introduced into journalism, and fortified with an extensive knowledge
of life picked up in the diplomatic service, the theatrical world and
the city, and in the ordinary social intercourse of a man of good
family related on all sides to distinguished people, Mr. Labouchere's
natural bent of mind and freedom of speech led to the embellishment
of _Truth_ almost every week with candid observations upon
contemporary personages, which might be open to criticism on the
score of taste, but which made extremely entertaining reading.

Inevitably his pen got him into trouble.  The only wonder is that the
trouble was not more serious, and for this it may be safely assumed
that Mr. Labouchere was much indebted to Mr. Horace Voules.  After a
very few weeks working together, the two men became very intimate
friends, {498} and Mr. Labouchere, who rarely erred in his reading of
men, acquired a great respect for Voules's judgment, so much so that,
in characteristic fashion, he speedily turned over to his friend all
sorts of business quite unrelated to _Truth_.  Voules himself was
essentially a fighting man, as he showed when he obtained control of
_Truth_, but he had the mind of a lawyer as well as a man of
business, and he had--though it may sound paradoxical--a much greater
interest in the profit of the paper than the proprietor himself.
From the first, although nominally only concerned with the commercial
side of _Truth_, he read in proof every line of the paper, and he was
not the man to allow the proprietor or anybody else to tumble
accidentally into an indefensible libel action.  He used to say that
he had often saved his chief from that fate, and no one who knew them
both would doubt him.  Another thing which often saved Mr. Labouchere
was his invariable readiness to apologise to anybody whom he had
unintentionally annoyed or injured.  He did so on many occasions in
the early years of _Truth_, and he would always do it if he was
approached in the right way.  Not only this, but if he was once
persuaded that he had been too hard on a man, or that what he had
intended as mere play had seriously wounded the subject of his
playfulness, he would often try afterwards to make amends.  In more
than one instance he became quite friendly with people whom he had
more or less insulted before he knew them.  For better or worse, it
was one of the cardinal traits of Mr. Labouchere's character that he
was incapable of strong emotion, and, among others, of personal
malice.  In one or two instances he conceived rather strong
antipathies to individuals--not without reason--but it was entirely
foreign to his nature to hurt a man for the sake of hurting him; and
a most remarkable thing about him was that while he would strenuously
attack a man's conduct or ridicule unmercifully his speech or
actions, he was quite capable of meeting the same man in a perfectly
friendly spirit, and discussing what had been done on one side and
{499} said on the other, not only without heat, but with a sincere
sympathy for the victim of his pen.  This trait was essential in his
character--a result of that philosophic interest in his fellow
creatures which caused him to look at all of them alike without any
conventional bias in favour of one mode of life or action rather than
another.  If he had encountered a burglar in his house already loaded
with valuables, his first impulse would have been, not to call the
police, but to engage the intruder in conversation, and to learn from
him something of the habits of burglars, the latest and most
scientific methods of burgling, the average profits of the business,
and so forth.  He would have been delighted to assist his new
acquaintance with suggestions for his future guidance in his
profession, and to point out to him how he might have avoided the
mistake which had on this occasion led to his being caught in the
act.  In all this he would not by any means have lost sight of his
property; on the contrary, the whole force of his intellect would
have been surreptitiously occupied with the problem of recovering it
with the least amount of inconvenience to his friend and himself.  He
would have manœuvred to bring off a deal.  If by sweet
reasonableness he could have persuaded the burglar to give up the
"swag," he would have been delighted to hand him a sovereign or two,
cheer him with refreshment, shake hands, and wish him better luck
next time; and he would have related the whole story in the next
week's _Truth_ with infinite humour and profound satisfaction.

This is scarcely an effort of imagination.  Something very similar
happened in _Truth_ office in the 'nineties long after Mr. Labouchere
had ceased to take any active interest in his paper.  A money-lender
who had been severely, but not unjustly, handled in _Truth_, insisted
upon seeing Mr. Labouchere personally.  By that time Horace Voules
was the only person who ever saw anybody who had business with the
editor, but he happened to be away, and Labouchere consented to see
the man.  The money-lender arrived in a {500} most truculent mood;
but he was quickly disarmed by Labouchere's ignorance--perfectly
genuine--of the nature of his grievance, and beguiled into telling
his story with artless confidence.  What threatened at first to be a
heated wrangle developed into a friendly interchange of views, in
which Mr. Labouchere, showing a keen scientific interest in
money-lending operations, explained to his visitor exactly where he
was at fault in the management of his business, and gave him a few
practical hints which might assist him to make larger profits without
exposing himself to unfavourable remark.  The man seemed extremely
pleased with the valuable advice he received, and it was his own
fault if he did not depart very much the wiser for the interview.
When Mr. Labouchere was writing at large in the early days of
_Truth_, he made a great many people extremely angry, and some never
forgave him.  But to be angry with him if you met him face to face
was only possible for the very stupid.  Some few years ago the late
Mr. John Kensit made an unsuccessful application to the High Court to
commit the proprietor of _Truth_ for contempt.  Considering all that
had been said about him in the paper, he had considerable ground for
not loving its proprietor, even if he had been aware, which he was
not, that Mr. Labouchere had never had a hand in what had been said
about him.  But they sat next to one another in the well of the court
during the hearing of the motion, and by the time the case was on
they were chatting and laughing together like old friends.
"Good-bye, Mr. Labouchere, said the Protestant champion at the end of
the proceedings.  "This has been quite a pleasant meeting."  "I hope
you have enjoyed it as much as I have," answered Labby.  "I am sorry
that you have got to pay for it."  And they shook hands
affectionately.

On the other hand, Mr. Labouchere had a certain combativeness of
disposition, and he was from the first bent upon using _Truth_ for
the exposure of abuses and frauds on the public.  Consequently, in a
certain number of cases he {501} deliberately laid himself out to
attack individuals, regardless of the penalties of the law of libel.
His journal had not been in existence many months before an action
was commenced by Mr. Robertson, the manager of the Royal Aquarium at
Westminster.  Mr. Labouchere was a director of the company owning
that place, and he wrote very fully and frankly about its affairs in
_Truth_--in particular a humorous account in his best manner, of an
altercation between Robertson and himself in the fair at Boulogne.
The circumstances of the action are of no interest now; but the case
is memorable as the first of the long series of libel actions that
_Truth_ has successfully defended in the course of its existence, and
further as the occasion of one of the earliest forensic successes of
Charles Russell, afterwards Lord Russell of Killowen, and an intimate
friend of Mr. Labouchere's for the rest of his life.  Russell had not
at that time taken silk, and was little known, but Mr. George Lewis
(as he then was) and Mr. Labouchere had sufficient confidences in his
abilities to brief him without a leader, and the experiment was fully
justified by the result.  The next legal proceeding in which Mr.
Labouchere involved himself was a _cause célèbre_ of the first
dimensions--his prosecution by the proprietor of the _Daily
Telegraph_ on account of a series of persistent and, it must be
confessed, somewhat vicious attacks upon the management of that
journal.  Mr. Labouchere elected to defend himself, and he has rarely
acquitted himself in public with more address than he did on that
occasion, though he had a good deal of useful assistance from the
late Lord Justice Bowen, then a stuff gowns-man, who was briefed for
the printers of the paper.  There is no occasion at this date to
revive other circumstances of this personal encounter between two
eminent representatives of journalism.  The jury disagreed, the case
was not brought to trial again, and the hatchet was buried.  Mr.
Labouchere was released on his own recognisances, and many years
later he used to be fond of explaining that he was still in that
condition.  Apparently he remained in it till his death.

{502}

One other libel case of Mr. Labouchere's early journalistic days may
be recalled for the sake of the very characteristic accident out of
which it arose.  Mr. Labouchere had written something extremely
dangerous.  Voules noted it on the proof, and after a consultation
between them Mr. Labouchere agreed to take the passage out.  He
accordingly drew his pen through two or three of the incriminating
lines, or rather he attempted to do so; but his pen always worked in
rather an erratic way, and the marks he made on the proof were as
much under the words as through them.  The consequence was that the
printer misunderstood the intention, and the libellous passage which
had alarmed Voules not only appeared in the paper, but appeared with
the additional emphasis of italics!  This was one of the accidents
which had to be repaired with an apology, though this did not prevent
the issue of a writ.  If any other actions for libel were commenced
in the early years of Mr. Labouchere's editorship they did not lead
to serious fighting, and there was nothing in them worth recalling
now.  But he certainly contrived in the course of three or four years
to give his paper a great reputation for courageous plain speaking,
and to convey the impression that its proprietor was a dangerous man
to fall foul of, and a difficult man to tackle successfully.

As for his work as an editor during that time, he seems to have taken
it very easily after the first few weeks.  "I will give him six
months," Edmund Yates was reported to have said when his friend was
beginning with such a big splash; and the thought was not begotten of
a wish, but of Yates's knowledge of his late contributor.  The fatal
weakness of Mr. Labouchere's character--certainly during the second
forty years of his life, and probably during the first forty--was
incapacity for sustained effort.  He quickly grew tired of everything
he took in hand, and he hated drudgery and routine work.  Horace
Voules used to relate his amazement at the zest with which his chief,
at the first start, threw himself into the work of reading copy and
proofs, and criticising {503} and planning improvements in the paper
when it was produced; and his equal amazement at the process by which
such editorial functions were one by one delegated to the so-called
"manager," never again to be resumed.  The same story is told by
others who were familiar with the inside of _Truth_ office during its
early days.  From the first Voules's position was that of an
assistant-editor, and in the course of a year or two he became very
much more of an editor than an assistant, while the editor lapsed
into the position of an adviser and an indefatigable contributor.  It
must have been in 1878 or 1879 that Voules went away for a holiday on
the Continent, and received a letter in which Mr. Labouchere informed
him that there was very little going on, and added, "I do not think I
shall bring the paper out next week."  Voules believed him to be
perfectly capable of this enormity, and the mere thought of it filled
him with such dismay that he came back to London by the next train.
"You need not have worried yourself so about it," said Mr. Labouchere
when his colleague reached the office.  "Probably I should have
brought the paper out all right."  But, unlike his employer, Voules
was very given to worrying himself, and this incident worried him so
much that he never left the proprietor in charge of his own paper
again.  At holiday times he used always to take a house within easy
reach of London, and it is a fact that for fourteen or fifteen years,
until he had his first bad illness, he never missed seeing _Truth_ to
press himself.  This little incident, so very characteristic of Mr.
Labouchere, at least serves to justify the observation that he soon
learned to take his editorial functions lightly; and it shows the
waning of the zest with which he had taken up the "new toy" a year or
two previously.

Until the general election of 1880, Mr. Labouchere remained regular
in his attendance at the office, and actively interested in the
affairs of his journal if his principal work for it was purely
literary.  But after he was returned for Northampton and began to
make a figure in Parliament, which {504} he did almost from the
first, _Truth_ began to have a secondary place in his affections.  In
the course of the next year or two he seems to have gradually
relinquished the entire editorial control into Voules's hands.  He
ceased to supply dramatic criticism, and to write with any regularity
on city matters.  On the other hand, he naturally began to write
regularly on politics, which up to that time he had done only now and
then and without expressing any strong opinions.  At that date the
connection between the Press and Parliament was much less intimate
than it has since become.  The journalistic M.P., so familiar a
figure in recent years, was virtually unknown.  There were only two
or three newspaper proprietors in the House of Commons; none in the
House of Lords.  The descriptive reporter had not yet made his
appearance in the Press Gallery; the gentlemen there were shorthand
writers only.  The Lobby correspondent had not risen to that public
importance for which he was destined.  Mr. Labouchere consequently
had the field very much to himself as a parliamentary journalist.
Perhaps he did not make as much use of the opportunity as he would
have done three or four years earlier, when journalism for its own
sake had such a hold upon his affections.  He was always extremely
averse to using his parliamentary position for the advantage of his
own paper; indeed, so far did he carry this feeling that in later
years when any matter was under ventilation in _Truth_, which
naturally furnished matter for the interrogation of a Minister, it
was most difficult to obtain his assistance, and quite impossible to
persuade him to ask a question himself.  If he consented to give his
help, he nearly always got a friend to put the question down.  From
first to last--to the intense annoyance of Horace Voules--his
disposition was always to use his own journal as an aid to his
schemes and ambitions in Parliament, never his parliamentary position
for the advantage of his journal.

Nevertheless, the reputation that he speedily made for himself in the
House of Commons, his novel and individual {505} style of handling
politics and politicians--friends and foes alike--and the audacity of
the opinions which he was always delivering with an air "that was
childlike and bland," necessarily had their effect upon the paper
that he owned and wrote for.  As the organ of a rising M.P.,
constantly before the public, and a mouthpiece of advanced
Radicalism, _Truth_ gained more than it lost by the cessation of Mr.
Labouchere's exuberant literary activity.  The circulation of the
paper, which had not increased to any great extent between 1877 and
1880, now began to display considerable buoyancy.  At the same time
Horace Voules was beginning to make his hand felt.  He enlisted many
useful recruits to fill the space left vacant by Mr. Labouchere.  In
particular he developed the paper on the financial side, having a
strong fancy, as well as great aptitude, for that line of journalism.
In fact he may be considered a pioneer in it, for at that time there
was not a single financial daily paper in London, and the financial
articles in the general daily Press were framed in a very bald and
perfunctory style.  With the assistance of Mr. L. Brousson, who wrote
for _Truth_ with most valuable results for nearly twenty years under
the pseudonym of "Moses Moss," Voules made the paper as strong in
finance as Mr. Labouchere made it in politics, and very much more
popular.  Voules was a man of great enterprise, courage, and
resource, a sound judge of "what the public wants," and at the same
time a born fighter.  He wrote little himself, but he had a good eye
for literary ability in others--at any rate the kind of ability that
he needed for his own purpose.  Following up the lead which Mr.
Labouchere had given in attacking frauds and abuses, he made during
the 'eighties several big journalistic coups by the exposure of
financial swindles.  From this he passed on to the fertile field of
charity.  By this time he had got together a fairly complete and
competent staff for dealing with such matters.  He made a thorough
investigation of every subject he dealt with.  He interviewed
witnesses himself; he inspired every line that {506} was written for
publication.  Thus fortified, he threw down the gauntlet to one
swindler after another.  Many were routed and driven out of the field
by the mere force of the case made against them in _Truth_.  Others,
who defended themselves by proceedings for libel, were met and
overthrown one after another in the Law Courts.  The story of all
these personal encounters, which lasted almost continuously for ten
or twelve years, would fill a volume--and a volume without any
parallel in the history of journalism.  The work ended only because
there was no more to be done.  There was no game left worth powder
and shot.  Horace Voules had simply cleared out this particular
field.  Nor was his activity confined to any one field.  The public
services--particularly the Army--the Church, the administration of
justice, especially by justices of the peace, and indeed almost every
sphere of human activity where there was any wrong or misconduct that
required castigation, brought perennial supplies of grist to the
journalistic mill over which Horace Voules ruled in Carteret Street.

Thus it came about that towards the end of the last century _Truth_
had become a journal with a unique record, an influence that was
felt--mostly for good--all over the English-speaking world, and
incidentally a very valuable property.  Before the end of the
'eighties it must have begun to yield Mr. Labouchere--a rich man
independently of it--a larger income than would have sufficed for all
his requirements, which were never extravagant.  The attitude of the
parent towards his bantling, which had grown in such an unexpected
fashion, was very much like his attitude towards everything else that
happened to him in life.  If he took any pride in his offspring, he
did not manifest it openly; in a general way he betrayed no concern
in its performances.  When he visited the office, which he usually
did for an hour or two on Monday and Tuesday mornings on his way to
the House of Commons, it was only to correct the proofs of his own
contributions--by this time almost entirely confined {507} to
politics, except when he went abroad in the autumn--to consume a
frugal lunch, and to chat about anything but the business of his
paper with anybody whom he could find to talk to.

A personal reminiscence of this period will show how strangely
uninterested he was in the affairs of the paper which he was supposed
by the public to direct.  In the spring of 1893, Horace Voules had a
bad illness, the first of many, and as he kept the whole business of
the office in his hands the situation was rather serious.  I went
down to see him at Brighton, where he lived for the last twenty years
of his life, and heard from his doctor that if he ever came back at
all it could not be for many weeks.  On returning to town I went
straight to the House of Commons and reported this alarming
intelligence to Mr. Labouchere.  If I had reported it to the Speaker
he could not have manifested less concern.  What chiefly interested
Mr. Labouchere was the nature and treatment of Voules's ailment; he
was always prepared to give advice, publicly or privately, on the
preservation of health.  "You know Voules eats a great deal too
much," he said, which was no doubt true.  "His doctor should do so
and so.  I will write to him at once."  I suggested to him that it
might be more useful if he would write something for _Truth_, as we
had not an editorial article in sight for next week.  "You can do
very well for once without an article, can't you?" was the staggering
reply.  I endeavoured to convey to him that there was a great deal of
work at the office which somebody would have to do in Voules's
absence, among other things about fifty letters a day requiring to be
attended to.  "I should not bother myself about answering letters if
I were you," said my employer.  This did not surprise me so much, for
I had previously heard from Voules of our proprietor's golden rule
for dealing with correspondence: "I never knew a letter yet, Voules,
which would not answer itself if you left it alone for two months."
It did not take many minutes' conversation to show that the editor
was {508} quite the last person from whom any assistance was likely
to be obtained in carrying on the paper in the emergency that had
arisen; at the same time I remember that we had a very interesting
talk about the Home Rule Bill before I left him.  I wondered
afterwards what he would have said if I had written to him in his own
words to Voules, "I don't think I shall bring the paper out next
week."  Probably it would not have disturbed him seriously.  It
should be added that he did write to Voules as he had promised--a
very kind, sympathetic letter, in which he begged Voules above all
things not to hurry back, and assured him that everything would go on
all right in his absence.  I forget whether he said that he would see
to that, but it is quite possible that he did.  It is a fact that the
following week--the first in which Voules had been absent for about
fifteen years--Mr. Labouchere also omitted his customary visit to the
office on a Monday morning.  I suppose he thought that as Voules was
away I should not have much time to talk to him.

To those who were behind the scenes there was something ludicrous and
something supremely "Laboucherean" in the contrast between this airy
indifference to the fortunes of his journal, and the public
conception of the proprietor as an indefatigable editor personally
inspiring and directing all its performances.  Possibly it amused Mr.
Labouchere himself, but far more probably he never gave it a thought,
for nothing in his life that appeared to other people abnormal ever
presented itself in that light to him.  To any one who knows the
_laissez-aller_ spirit in which he treated every affair of life, it
cannot cause the slightest surprise that he allowed himself to drift
into a position which was, on the face of it, somewhat equivocal.
The best evidence of the view that he himself took of this anomalous
position is afforded by the way it came to an end.  Horace Voules
chafed for a long time under his own relation to the titular editor,
and it is really more difficult to understand his long acceptance of
this position than Mr. Labouchere's failure to do anything towards
{509} altering it.  The explanation in his case, no doubt, is that
with the growth of the profits of the business he gradually came into
a very handsome income, and he was a man who valued this a good deal
more than personal glory.  But he certainly felt aggrieved, as most
men would, that so much of the credit of his work should go to
another, and what perhaps annoyed him more was Mr. Labouchere's
characteristic indifference to everything that was done in his name.
Out of this there grew up a coolness between them, and at last Voules
openly kicked.  The moment the question of the editorship was raised
in this way, Mr. Labouchere instantly conceded it, as Voules might
have known he would.  "My dear Voules," he said, in mild surprise.
"_I_ don't want to be the editor.  You can call yourself the editor
if you like."  In his own mind he probably said, "If you attach any
value to such an absurd trifle, why, in the name of wonder, did you
not say so before?"  In this characteristic fashion, Mr. Labouchere
divested himself of the last rags of editorship.  Voules recounted
the conversation to me immediately after it took place.  I cannot fix
the date precisely, but it was probably in 1897 or 1898.

There remains little to be related of Mr. Labouchere's career as a
journalist.  But it may assist the comprehension of what appears
difficult to understand, in his relation to the real editorship of
his paper during so many years, to refer to what passed between him
and Voules on a lamentable occasion in 1902.  At that time certain
unfortunate circumstances had come to light which made it impossible
that Mr. Brousson should remain on the staff of _Truth_, or that
Horace Voules should continue in the formal position of editor; I
trust I may be forgiven for referring in mere detail to the
indiscretion of an old and dear friend and the sad end of a brilliant
career.  Mr. Labouchere, to whom the situation must have been as
painful as to anybody, took counsel with Sir George Lewis, as a
friend of both parties, and between them they excogitated an
announcement for publication to {510} the effect that Mr. Voules had
resigned the editorship of _Truth_, but would remain associated with
the paper.  It was the least that could have been announced under the
circumstances, but naturally poor Voules fought hard against it, and
a warm debate took place at Sir George Lewis's office.  Voules wanted
to know who was to be appointed editor, and in what capacity he
himself was to be "associated with the paper."  He declined to submit
to the humiliation of having to serve under one of his own
subordinates.  Mr. Labouchere told him that he did not see the
necessity of appointing another editor.  "You can't seriously propose
that the paper is to be carried on without an editor," said Voules.
"My dear Voules," replied the proprietor, "I have now been connected
with newspapers over forty years, and I have never yet discovered
what an editor is.  If you like, I will resume the editorship, but it
seems to me quite unnecessary."  So little did Voules understand his
old friend even at that date that he came to me at the end of the
interview in a terrible state of agitation, convinced that Labouchere
was playing with him, and that he and I were to change places.
Labouchere was, of course, perfectly serious, and for the next seven
years _Truth_ remained without an editor.  I suppose that in all his
life Mr. Labouchere never did a more extraordinary thing than this,
judging by what would be considered ordinary conduct for a man in his
position in such a case.  Yet surely the extraordinary course which
he took is an example of the way in which his habit of looking at the
essential things in life, and snapping his fingers at conventions and
traditions, guided him to the best possible solution of a serious
difficulty.  He regarded it as essential that Voules should not be
formally and officially the man in control of the paper.  He regarded
it as equally essential--but how few would have done so!--that the
man who had served him so well and honourably for five-and-twenty
years should not be cast out to end his days in disgrace.  So he
said: "I will have no editor in future.  I see no necessity {511} for
it.  Manage as best you can without one!"  Is not this really a
stroke of genius, seeing that it is a solution of the difficulty that
no one else would ever have dreamed of, that it is so perfectly
simple, and that it effected everything that was really necessary?
It also becomes easier, I think, after this to understand how Mr.
Labouchere had previously allowed his paper to go on for about
seventeen years under the editorship of its business "manager"
without suspecting that there was anything anomalous in this
arrangement until his manager surprised him by protesting against it.

I feel that I cannot close this narrative of Mr. Labouchere's
relations with _Truth_ without a reference to the termination of his
sole proprietorship of that journal, for it was very characteristic
of him.  Slight as was the interest that he evinced in his property
in his later years, he never seemed desirous of parting with it,
naming a prohibitive price when any one offered to buy it, as many
did, including Horace Voules.  When, after poor Voules's death in
1909, I myself pressed him to turn his proprietorship into a company,
he politely but firmly declined, observing that he distrusted boards,
and had always believed in finding a man who can manage your business
for you and leaving him to do it.  Undoubtedly that was the principle
on which he had conducted many of his affairs.  But in the end I
ventured to suggest to him that it would be a great kindness to me
and other members of his staff, who had been connected with the paper
for many years, if he could see his way to put the proprietorship on
a permanent footing, and save us from the possible results of a sale
of the paper to the first bidder in the event of his predeceasing us.
His response was instantaneous and most sympathetic.  He practically
offered me an option on the paper at half the price he had asked
Voules a few years previously, and interested himself warmly in
explaining to me how I was to turn this opportunity to the best
advantage.  When the proposed deal did not promise to come off very
speedily, he finally said that he would waive {512} his objections to
converting himself into a mere shareholder, and leave us to form a
company, taking from him or placing with others such shares as we
could.  So ended Mr. Labouchere's proprietorship of _Truth_--in an
act of pure kindness of heart.  It is an exact parallel to his
easy-going abdication of the editorship at the first hint from Voules
that the existing position was rather hard on him.

Mr. Labouchere was a man of most extraordinary character.  "He was an
extraordinary person!" is the exclamation that one has heard a
hundred times rising involuntarily to the lips of those who knew him
well.  The story of his connection with journalism is an
extraordinary one, but as loosely sketched in the foregoing
reminiscences it can give but an inadequate impression of what was
most remarkable about him.  This would be equally true of any mere
narrative of the events of his career, or any collection of his
disjointed utterances.  In writing of him one is always in danger of
conveying the impression that he was a mere eccentric or freak.  In
reality he was something very much more.  Among other things he was
one of the most prolific and spontaneous writers that ever lived, and
everything that he wrote, however trivial the subject, bore some mark
of his own unique personality.  His love of his pen was perhaps his
most vital characteristic; it resembled, indeed, his love of his
cigarette, and the two affections always came into play
simultaneously.  He would take up a pen anywhere, and commit his
thoughts to paper without regard to external circumstances--during a
debate in the House of Commons, during a children's party in Old
Palace Yard, in a public room of an hotel.  When abroad on his
holidays he used to write contributions to _Truth_ as regularly as if
he were under contract to supply so much copy each week--evidently
writing purely as a pleasure.  Probably Mr. Labouchere is the only
man who ever wrote for publication, systematically and voluminously,
without ever being paid for what he wrote.  Indirectly, of course, as
the proprietor of _Truth_, {513} he profited by his contributions to
his own paper; but nobody who knew him will suppose that this
consideration ever presented itself to him as a motive for exertion.
Neither was he actuated by that common weakness, love of seeing
himself in print.  On the contrary, what became of anything he wrote
after he had produced it was a matter of profound indifference to
him.  "I am the only person, I believe, on the Press," he wrote in
his later days, in answer to an apology for consigning to oblivion a
rather long-winded article forwarded from Florence, "who does not
care in the least whether his lucubrations do or do not appear in
print."  He wrote to me many times in the same strain, and it was no
doubt literally true.  Frequently he would write an article and omit
to post it; sometimes he mislaid it permanently, sometimes he
accidentally destroyed it.  Sometimes he would send a second edition
of an article already received and printed, explaining that he could
not remember whether he had posted the first edition or torn it up by
mistake.  From long experience of him, I doubt whether he ever looked
at anything he had written after it was printed and published, unless
some accidental circumstance gave him occasion to refer to it.

No man who ever wrote more strikingly exemplified the aphorism "_le
style c'est l'homme_."  His style was entirely his own--a pure,
spontaneous growth, neither derived from reading, nor formed by
conscious effort.  It reflected as vividly as his conversation the
characteristics of his intellect, his lucidity of thought and
expression, his quick apprehension, his distaste for display, his
unconventional habit of mind, his dry humour, his naïve wit.  A very
good judge, and an old acquaintance in Parliament, writing of him in
the _Saturday Review_ after his death, said that "Mr. Labouchere's
prose was Voltairian."  It was Voltairian because his mind was
Voltairian, and because he reproduced on paper, instinctively and
without effort, exactly what was in his mind.  But it is out of place
to speak of anything that Mr. Labouchere did {514} in terms of
uncritical eulogy.  On the technical side Mr. Labouchere's literary
work was marred by the failings which beset him in everything he
undertook--his repugnance to "taking trouble," and his supreme
indifference.  Although he would overhaul his proof mercilessly, and
go on doing it as often as a proof was submitted to him, the process
was generally that of expanding and rewriting, rarely of touching up
and improving what he had written.  He thought as little about
"polishing up" a sentence for the sake of literary effect as of
brushing his hat before he went for a walk.  The consequence was that
the inevitable blemishes in the work of a man who wrote so fluently,
but never had the patience to read and correct his own manuscript,
constantly made their appearance in print.  No one who reads his
work, knowing the way it was done, can doubt that he had it in him to
enrich English literature with veritable masterpieces.  It was the
will that he lacked, not the ability, and so it was with nearly
everything he undertook.

Mr. Labouchere was a man of genius--genius real, original, and
many-sided.  The signs of it are evident in almost everything he did,
including his mistakes and his eccentricities.  But he had the
misfortune to be born very rich, and if he was not by nature indolent
he acquired an indolent habit of mind through never being under the
necessity of exerting his powers to their full capacity.  His genius
was of the critical, not the creative order, and this also
contributed to his forming a view of life inconsistent with strenuous
exertion, for it led him to despise nearly everything that men
ordinarily prize, success in all its shapes included.  During all the
time I knew him, his attitude towards life was that of a man playing
a game, interested in it certainly, but only for the amusement it
afforded him.  It is worthy of note that he confesses to having been
in youth an inveterate gambler, and having given up play because he
found that it was acquiring too much hold over him.  To be interested
in everything, but too much interested in nothing, was a cardinal
{515} principle of his life.  Few men have ever incurred more
obloquy, and many worthy people regarded him with aversion; but it
was only from misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.  To this he
himself contributed by his perverse habit of self-depreciation, his
indifference to the opinions of his fellow-men, and the amusement he
found in mystifying them.  It is absurd to put him on a pedestal--a
position which he never allowed any one else, and which he took good
care to show he never desired for himself.  But it was impossible to
be much in contact with him without appreciating that he was a being
of a rare order of intellect, with something in him that placed him
above the ordinary failings and foibles of humanity, however much he
might try to magnify his own.  It was my privilege to know him pretty
closely for over thirty years, and very intimately for the last ten.
Though he did in that time many things that one would have wished he
had not done, and said many that would have been better left unsaid,
I can look back to him now only with admiration for his wisdom and
his wit, and affection for his drolleries and his indiscretions, no
less than for his many virtues.

There comes back to me the last time I sat with him, by the side of
the lake at Cadennabia.  "Let us get away from this beastly band," he
had said, in the hall of the hotel after dinner, "one can't hear
oneself speak."  So we sat down outside, and he rambled on: "I can't
think why people want bands when they come here.  Wonderful place
this for stars!  What I like about it is that you can see them in the
lake without craning your neck.  I sit here and follow Bacon's
advice: look at the stars in the pond instead of in the sky, and you
won't tumble into the pond.  There was a Greek named Pythagoras--or
some ass at any rate--who comforted himself with the notion that in
the future state he would be able to hear the music of the spheres.
Who wants to hear the music of the spheres?  Bother that band!  What
strikes me most about the stars is that they do their {516} work so
quietly.  Pythagoras picked up his notions in the East--probably from
the Jews.  They imagined angels with harps and a perpetual concert in
heaven.  Good God!  Think of having to sit at a concert for all
eternity!  Wouldn't you pray to be allowed to go to hell?  The only
reason that I can see for desiring immortality would be the chance of
meeting Pythagoras and the other asses, and having a few words with
them.  Now Socrates was not an ass.  He was for banishing musicians
from his republic.  No doubt he saw that this would get him a lot of
republican votes.  Gladstone once said to me----"

And then he dropped off to sleep.  He was beginning by that time to
doze at odd times, though all his life it was characteristic of him
not to be able to take his sleep like an ordinary mortal.  And not
long after I left him sitting there by the lake, sleep finally
overcame him, and he passed out into the night, to learn more of the
silence of the stars, and to have it out, if possible, with
Pythagoras.




{517}

CHAPTER XIX

THE CLOSING YEARS

Upon only one occasion in his life could a charge of Jingoism have
been brought against Mr. Labouchere.  The last long speech he made in
the House of Commons was against the second reading of the Women's
Enfranchisement Bill, in which he said that he objected to women
being given the vote because they could not be soldiers; in short,
because their physical limitations prevented them from being able to
take a place in the battlefield.  A member pointed out that the
speaker himself was not a military man.  With passion he replied
that, whereas there was not a man alive who could not fight, and, if
necessary, swim through seas of gore to protect his native land, the
other sex were incapable of putting up with the hardships and
privation involved in warfare.[1]

It was in the third session of Mr. Balfour's Parliament that Mr.
Labouchere made his last speech in the House of Commons.  He was
nearly seventy-four years old, and had been hankering for some time
after the delights of a reposeful old age in the retirement of the
beautiful villa he had bought in the neighbourhood of Florence four
years before.  Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman had written to him in the
previous December, when a rumour of his intended retirement had
reached him: "I hope you are not really thinking of breaking off with
Parliament, though I frankly say it is what {518} I should do if I
could, who have the advantage of a year or two over you, but I think
we old stagers with sound views are wanted to steady the new-century
gentlemen by a little of our early Victorian wisdom."  But Mr.
Labouchere was wise enough to know how dull it would be to exist in a
modern Parliament as almost the only survivor of the grand old
Victorian Radical party, whose sympathies and ideals, the policy of
the Labour members alone resembled, in the remotest degree.  His mind
was made up, but he kept his own counsel, except to his leader,
because, as he wrote to Mr. Robert Bennett at the time of his
retirement, a man who is known not to be going to stand again becomes
a nonentity in Parliament.

In a letter to Mr. Edward Thornton, the month before his withdrawal
from public life, he gave his view of the Parliamentary situation at
that time:


Just now politics are dead.  When Parliament meets, the Liberals will
try to put the Government in a majority during the session, and
Balfour will try to carry on to the end of it.  There seems no reason
why he should be beaten, provided that he can keep his men in the
House.  But this is also our difficulty.  The individual M.P. never
wants an election....  Campbell Bannerman is now absolutely certain
to be the next Premier unless his health breaks down.  All that you
see about this or that man in the Cabinet is only intelligent
anticipation.  He is not _de jure_ on the succession to the
Premiership, there are no consultations, and he has a wholesome
distrust of his Front Bench friends who almost all have intrigued
against him.  I know him intimately, and he talks to me pretty
freely, for I have expressed to him that I want nothing.  At
seventy-four a man is a fool to be a Minister.


The news of Mr. Labouchere's retirement came as a surprise to most of
the world.  The first intimation to the public was his letter to the
Liberal electors of Northampton announcing his decision.  It was
written from Florence, and dated December 14, 1905.  It ran as
follows:


{519}

GENTLEMEN,--I have been elected by a majority of you to represent you
in six Parliaments.  I have received no intimation from any of the
Radicals, to whose votes I have owed my having been your member for
twenty-five years, that they disapprove of my Parliamentary action
whilst serving them, or that they do not wish me to be one of their
candidates at the next general election.  Were I, therefore, to come
forward again as a candidate there is little doubt that I should be
one of your representatives in a seventh Parliament.  But I am now
seventy-four years old.  At that age a man is neither so strong nor
active as he once was, and any one who wishes to represent
efficiently a large and important constituency like yours in
Parliament should be strong in wind and limb.  I feel therefore that
I ought not to take advantage of your consideration towards me in a
matter so vital to you in order to lag superfluous on the political
stage.

I have delayed until now making this announcement because it was
impossible to know when a general election would take place, and I
thought that it would be more convenient to you for me to wait until
the date of the election was settled and near at hand.  I do not
think that my withdrawal will affect the position of parties in
Northampton.  In Dr. Shipman you have a member whose Parliamentary
action has been in accord with the pledges that have already secured
his return, and on whose personal worth all are agreed.  You will
have no difficulty in finding a man to replace me, as eager to
promote the cause of democracy as I am, and who will be better able
to fight for the cause than one in the sere and yellow leaf.


Mr. Labouchere remarked once, that he had on one occasion only been
asked by a constituent for a pledge with regard to his Parliamentary
action.  He had unhesitatingly given it, and been unflinchingly true
to his word.  The elector's injunction had been, "Now, mind, I say,
and keep your hi on Joe."  But whether the story is a slight
exaggeration of the confidence his constituents had in him to
faithfully represent their views at Westminster or not, it gives
elliptically a description of his attitude during the twenty-five
years he served the electors of Northampton.  He became {520} their
member as an anti-Imperialist, in Lord Beaconsfield's interpretation
of the term, and he took his leave of them as an anti-Imperialist, in
the more modern, and what may be called "Chamberlain" sense of the
word.

I shall quote Mr. T. P. O'Connor's farewell on the occasion of his
retirement, which he published under the title of "The Passing of
Labby," for, apart from its literary merit, it is the fine
appreciation of a friend of many years' standing, who knew the value
of Mr. Labouchere from the social as well as the Parliamentary and
journalistic points of view:


There is no old member of the House of Commons who will not feel a
pang of personal regret at hearing that Labby is leaving that
Assembly.  No one has a right to criticise a man for giving up an
active life at seventy-four years of age--he has done his work.  But
Labby had become an almost essential part of the House of Commons;
and there never will be anybody who can quite take his place there.
That extraordinary combination of strong party zeal, with a lurking
desire to make mischief; the sardonic and satirical spirit, mingled
with a certain fierce, though carefully concealed zeal for the public
good; the mordant wit that was equally the delight of the House and
of the smoking room; the world-wide and varied experience of all life
in almost every country and in almost every form--these are the
possessions of but one man, and his like we shall never see again.
There are two Labbys.  There is the Labby who almost corrodes with
his bitter wit, and who seems to laugh at everything in life.  There
is the other Labby who has strong, stern purpose, who hates all
shams, all cruelty, all imposture, all folly, and who has made war on
all these things for more than a quarter of a century.  There is even
a third Labby--the man who hates to give pain even to a domestic, and
who is laughingly said to have run out of a room rather than face the
irritated looks of a maidservant whom he had summoned by too vigorous
a pull at the bell.  One of the reasons of the popularity Labby
enjoyed in the House was his tolerant amiability.  I have seen him in
the smoking room in the most friendly converse with many a man whom
in previous years he had most fiercely attacked; he bore no ill will,
and treated all {521} those encounters as demanded by business, and
as dismissable when the fight was over.  Finally Labby was a far
straighter, far more serious, far more effective politician than his
own persiflage would allow people to think.  With all his light wit,
there was something stern and rigid in the man, as you could see from
the powerful mouth, with the full compressed lips.  He was perfectly
honest in his hatred of extravagance, pretence, vainglory.  He
preferred riding in a tramcar to riding in a coach and four.  He
dressed so shabbily sometimes that his counsel used to have to
remonstrate with him when he had to answer a charge of libel.  He was
an ascetic in eating.  Once he dined quite comfortably, when he was
electioneering, on ham sandwiches with sponge-cake for bread.  He
rarely, if ever, tasted wine; he smoked incessantly the poorest and
cheapest cigarettes.  As he was in private, so he was in public life.
He derided all great Imperial designs as snobbery and extravagance;
he hated ambition--in short, he was in both his personal habits and
his public opinions, a true devotee of the simple life.  He did
immense service to his party in his time.  During the heat of the
Home Rule controversy he spoke in scores of towns; took journeys by
night and by day, never spared himself exertion, never complained of
discomfort; in his laughing air, with his assumed air of languor, he
was a strenuous, manly, courageous fighter.  And he never changed, he
never concealed, he never explained away his opinion upon anything.
And so I bid him with regret farewell from a scene where he was a
model of honest good faith and courage.[2]


So Labby goes! [mourned the _Morning Post_].  What Parliament and
public life will be without him, I hate to think.  The letter of
cheery regrets to his Northampton constituents subtracts the _sauce
piquante_ from the Parliamentary dish.  The House has long counted
Labby as the last of its originals, has prized him as a refreshing
relish, has looked to him for the unexpected flavour.  All strangers
would ask inevitably to have him pointed out, and the House would
fill at once when the word went round the corridors and lobbies and
smoking rooms that Labby was "up" and holding forth from his
customary corner {522} seat below the gangway--the best of all
positions from which to address the House.  So too the smoking room
became suddenly crowded when Labby was to be seen standing there with
back to fireplace, the eternal cigarette between his lips, ready for
talk.  It gives a peculiar pang to realise that he will be seen there
no more.  But the pang is lessened when one finds Labby--Labby of all
men--seriously pleading old age as a ground for his retirement.  It
sounds like one of his little jokes, or, perhaps, it is a genuine
case of hallucination.  Labby had possibly a touch of old age at
twenty, but he had also the sense to outgrow it.  Since then he has
never relapsed, and now in the seventy-fifth year of his youth, and
with a pen several years younger, it is a vain and commonplace and
un-Labbyish thing to pretend that youth and he are no longer
"housemates still."  An unbelieving world will not accept that
plea....  I daresay that, half a century ago, Labby was, not unlike
the wise youth Adrian in Meredith's _Richard Feverel_, quite
unnaturally cool and quizzical, long-headed and non-moral, but an
Adrian humanised by something of the Bohemian spirit and a turn for
careless pleasuring.  And in those days, no doubt--his Eton and
Cambridge days--he struck his contemporaries as really old.  But no
one, for fifty years, has ever accused him of not having overcome his
early weakness; and it was the very last charge I ever expected to
hear Labby prefer against himself.[3]


There was something about Mr. Labouchere's personality, apart from
his deeds and thoughts, which appealed almost irresistibly to the
affectionate sympathies of all mankind.  To find an ill-natured
comment in any of the articles that were published about him in the
press when he left the House of Commons is so difficult that, were
such a one to be recorded in this volume, it would give its author an
almost unenviable position of distinction.  But in order to be
perfectly impartial, I shall merely quote the pleasant part of the
only one I could find, so that its writer need not feel that he has
been placed in an out-of-the-way corner with a fool's cap on his head:


{523}

On the whole Mr. Labouchere has done a great deal of good in his
life, more good and less evil than many so-called statesmen.  He has
exposed swindlers and moneylenders and rotten companies.  He has
obtained for the public the right to ride, drive, and walk up and
down Constitution Hill.  No victim of cruelty or injustice ever
appealed to him for a hearing in vain.  Above all he wrote an English
style of remarkable purity, logic, and humour.


Letters of regretful farewell poured in upon Labby in his Florentine
home, and he possessed a kindly characteristic common to nearly all
frankly unpretentious human beings.  He loved his post.  In his cosy
armchair by the fire he read his letters and enjoyed them, and what
was more--he proceeded to answer them.  No pre-occupation, however
diverting, ever prevented him from, at the first available moment
sitting down to his writing-table, and, in the almost illegible hand
which he vainly tried to improve, penning answers to his welcome
correspondents.

"I have been very sorry, but not surprised," wrote Sir Henry Campbell
Bannerman to him on Christmas Day, "to read in the newspapers of your
retirement.  It is not over kind of you to put it on the ground of
age, for that hits some of the rest of us hard.  For my part, I
confess my sentiment when I read it was: _O si sic omnes_--and envy
was the prevailing feeling.  But, seriously, we shall miss you
greatly as one always ready to hoist the flag of the old Liberalism,
as distinguishable from the less stout and stalwart doctrine which
passes for Liberalism with the moderns.

"But now as you are going would you care to have the House of Commons
honour of Privy Councillor?  If so it would be to me a genuine
pleasure to be the channel of conveying it.  You ought to have had it
long ago.  I may add that in the highest quarter gratification would
be felt.  I have taken soundings.  I think we have done and are doing
pretty well.  The Government are pretty well the pick of the basket,
though there are some good men left out, and I {524} think we can
make it a change of policy and not a mere change of men.  All
seasonable wishes to you and yours.--Yours always,

"H. C. B."

"Knowing you to be a wise man," wrote Lord Selby, who had been
Speaker of the House in three of the six Parliaments of which Mr.
Labouchere had been a member, "I was not surprised to see that you
had made up your mind to eschew Westminster, and enjoy Florence and
its climate, but if I were still in the Chair I should miss you in
the next Parliament, and I am sure the smoking-room will be a forlorn
place without you; and I do not see how the loss is to be repaired,
for it takes a good many years to grow a plant of the same kind.  I
wish you and Mrs. Labouchere long leisure and much pleasure in your
Italian home, seasoned with occasional visits to England.  The
election may be said to have begun with Balfour's speech at Leeds,
and Campbell Bannerman's at the Albert Hall...."

The leader of the Irish party wrote from Dublin:

"DEAR LABOUCHERE,--When writing the other day, I did not know that
you had any idea of retiring from Parliament.  I learned your
intention with deep regret.  You have been so long one of the truest
friends of Ireland that you will be missed by us all, and at a time
when we can badly spare a real friend.  With heartiest good wishes,
and many thanks for your advice and assistance on so many occasions,
I remain very truly yours,

"J. E. REDMOND."

"I have just read your farewell to Northampton," wrote Sir Wilfrid
Lawson, on December 17, "and it has troubled me.  I am going to stand
again for Cockermouth (I am older than you!) with a _fair_ chance of
success, but, if I win and get back to the House, I shall feel that
it is not exactly the same place without you.  I therefore just write
this to say how sorry I am to lose you.  Certainly you have always
held up bravely and ably the banner of the Radicalism in which {525}
I believe, and it remains to be seen whether we shall get it as well
held up in the Parliament which is to be.  Any way those who believe
in Government 'of, for, and by the people,' ought to be grateful to
you for your persistent preaching and teaching of that doctrine.

"The new Government promises well, but I remember a story on which
you trenchantly commented in _Truth_ some years ago.  When Lord
Dudley was married it was proposed in the Kidderminster Corporation
that they should give him a wedding present, on which an old weaver
rose and suggested that it should be postponed '_till we see how he
goes on_.'

"Well, I hope that you will go on well and happily till the end of
your days, and, meantime, not forget to give outside help to your old
comrades, who for a bit longer are grinding in the Parliamentary
mill."

Lord James of Hereford wrote:

"The announcement of your departure from the House of Commons seems
almost to affect me personally.  I recall a day in the end of August,
1868, when you and I and John Stamforth were sitting in front of the
Kursaal at Homburg.  You and I were discussing our relative chances
in Middlesex and at Taunton, and then you asked Stamforth how he was
getting on at Athlone.  "I am member for Athlone," replied that
unfortunate man, who afterwards, as you know, polled one vote.

"Well, the water has been flowing on since then.  You and I have seen
a good deal of political life, and taken a fair share in it.  I hope
we have not done much harm, but Heaven only knows.  I am very sorry
that you are not continuing in the fight....

"I know how little I can do, for I am three years older than you
are--but the House of Lords offers some opportunities for easy going
to an old one."

"DEAR LABOUCHERE," wrote Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,--"We have enjoyed
sweet converse together in the House of Commons and in the woods of
Marienbad on 'men and {526} things.'  We are both leaving the House
of Commons at the same time, so I send you a word of greeting--or
farewell, or by whatever other name it may be appropriate to describe
these words....  A short Parliament generally follows a long
Parliament, and I expect to see this canon once more illustrated."

"The _New York Herald_ of this morning announces your appointment as
a P. C.," wrote Sir Edmund Monson from Paris.  "I am very glad that
you have received this distinction, which, in my own case, I have
always regarded as the most acceptable of all that have been bestowed
on me....  I can quite understand your relinquishing Parliament, and
I hope you may long enjoy the _otium cum dignitate_ which no place
better than Florence can supply....  Believe me, always your sincere
old friend,

"EDMUND MONSON."

Lord Brampton wrote on the last day but one of the year: "I have just
received your note.  Your reasons for retirement from Parliament are
unreasonable.  But, as far as I am concerned, although I have not a
word of objection to offer, still I remain _sorry_.  With all my
heart I rejoice in to-day's _Times_, and offer to you, my right
honourable friend, my heartiest congratulations to you and all yours,
and every good wish for the coming New Year.  I wish I could avail
myself of your invitation to Florence, but I fear I have no chance,
as I am very weak still and can hardly hold a pen."

Only one other letter must be quoted from the friends of Labby's
youth.  Sir Henry Lucy wrote on Christmas Day:

"MY DEAR LABOUCHERE,--You will find in the forthcoming issue of
_Punch_ some reflections on 'The Sage of Queen Anne's Gate,' from the
Diary of Toby, M.P.  I believe they echo the feeling of the whole
House of Commons, irrespective of party, at the prospect of your
withdrawal from the scene.

{527}

"But why cut Westminster altogether?  There is still the House of
Lords.  If I might behold you walking out shoulder to shoulder with
the Archbishop of Canterbury to vote 'content' or 'not content' as
the case might be, I should feel I had not lived in vain....  With a
warmth and friendship dating back nearly thirty years--Eheu! we were
colleagues on the _World_ staff in 1875."

Toby, M.P., recalled in a pathetic little article in _Punch_ the way
Mr. Gedge had tried to do Labby out of his corner seat below the
gangway, where Sir Charles Dilke had sat beside him on one side of
the House or the other ever since Mr. Gladstone's Parliament of 1892.
In order to secure a seat in the House, members had to be present at
the reading of prayers, during which any one could slip a card with
his name upon it into the back of the place he wanted.  Now Labby was
never at prayers, and yet, Mr. Gedge noticed, he had always had the
same seat secured to himself in the orthodox manner.  Accordingly,
one day he allowed his thoughts to wander whilst the House of Commons
devotions were proceeding, and his eyes followed his thoughts.
Between his fingers held devoutly before his face, he peeped, and
noticed Sir Charles Dilke, buried in prayer as usual.  Then he saw
his devotion relax for a moment.  Sir Charles was slipping a card
into the back of the seat which he intended to secure for himself,
and Mr. Gedge was horrified to see that he proceeded to slip a card
with Labby's name upon it into the back of the next one--the coveted
corner seat below the gangway.  Mr. Gedge subsequently drew the
attention of the House to this piece of underhand dealing, but
honourable gentlemen did not choose to take any notice of what would
clearly not have been observed, if Mr. Gedge had been paying proper
attention to his prayers.

A propos to the seating accommodation in the House of Commons, it
should be remembered that as far back as 1893, when the disgraceful
scrimmage for seats took place at the introduction of Mr. Gladstone's
Home Rule Bill, {528} Mr. Labouchere had begun to agitate for a new
House of Commons with seats for every member.  He explained to a
journalist at the time his plan for an ameliorated House:

"At present," he said, "a man goes before a constituency and, after a
lot of trouble and expense, wins a seat--so it is called.  He then
comes up here to Westminster, and finds he has gone through only half
the preliminaries necessary for securing a seat.  He has taken only
the first steps, which are simply child's play to what he has yet to
do.  Getting elected is simply nothing comparatively.  First I wanted
an octagonal chamber," he proceeded, "but I find general opinion will
retain the present form.  So my idea is to have eight rows of seats
on each side of the House, curving round at the end opposite to the
Speaker.  If each row will seat forty-two members, you will find that
will provide a seat for the whole six hundred and seventy-two.  Then
every one could retain his seat throughout the session.  The
difficulty about the square shape of the House is that it gives you
an equal number of seats for each party and the Government is
generally in a majority.  That is why I would run the seats round at
one end--so that the supporters of the Government could have the
whole of one side, and as far as the second gangway on the other.
Having a broader House would necessarily mean enlarging the Press and
Strangers' Galleries also.  All the members are in favour of it, with
the exception of the front benches.  They have got their seats
assured, so they say that the House is cosy, and to enlarge it would
force them to pitch their voices higher."  The journalist who was
interviewing him commented on the extreme moderation of his designs
for an ameliorated House of Commons.  "Oh," remarked Mr. Labouchere,
"these are just the alterations we shall probably make.  What I
personally should have liked would be to clear the Lords out of their
House, which is bigger than the House of Commons, and install
ourselves therein."[4]  Eight years {529} later he went to Vienna,
and poured forth in _Truth_ the story of his envy when he saw the
Austrian House of Deputies:


I went to see the Parliament House, and, after inspecting it, I felt
that I could with pleasure join a mob to disinter the remains of the
eminent architect who built the Palace at Westminster and hang his
bones on a gibbet.  The Vienna architect has erected a building which
is Parliament Architecture.  Everything is adapted to the wants and
requirements of those who want to use it.  The members of each of the
two Chambers sit in a semi-circular room, and each member has an
armchair and a desk before him.  The general objection made to this
plan of a deliberative room is that it obliges members to speak from
a tribune.  But at Vienna they speak from their places, and, owing to
the excellent acoustic properties of the Chamber, they can be
perfectly heard.  I went over the place in the company of a priest
who was visiting it at the same time.  He perceived that I was an
Englishman, and asked me how the place compared with the English
Parliament House.  "The members in England," I said, "sit in an
oblong room, in which there are only places for half their number."
"But what do the others do?" he asked.  "They do not listen to the
debates," I replied; "they seldom know what is under discussion.  A
bell rings and they come in, and are told to vote as their leader
orders them."  As a good Radical I felt it necessary to give a
further explanation, so I continued: "The majority of the members are
the supporters of the Government; it is one of the worst Governments
with which a country was ever cursed; it is called the 'stupid
party,' and it is composed of Junkers and men who have made much
money.  They want the laws to be made for their benefit, and not for
the benefit of the poor."  "But why," he said, "do they have a
majority, for I suppose that the poor have votes as well as the rich,
and there must be more poor than rich in England?"  "They gained
their election by corruption and falsehood," I answered.  "Their
wives and their daughters went about giving the electors feasts, and
they went about saying everywhere that the Radicals wanted to destroy
the Empire.  In this way they {530} bought some with gifts, and
others they deceived with falsehoods.  Soon the electors discovered
how they had been fooled, and for five years they have wanted to take
away the Government from the 'stupids,' but, by our laws, a
Parliament is elected for seven years, and the country is still
obliged to submit to the disgrace of having such a Government for one
or perhaps two more years.  Then there will be another election, and
the 'stupids' will be in a minority, and the Radicals who represent
the sense and intelligence of the country will become the
Government."  "And the Radicals," he said, "will, I suppose, make a
Chamber large enough to hold all the members."  "I am not sure of
that," I answered.  This seemed to surprise him, but he thanked me
for having made clear to him the party differences in England.[5]


But my story is wandering backwards instead of forwards.  And so
stories usually do in the City of Flowers, where the present is so
full of ease and pleasure that a man's mind is free to linger where
it will, either lazily in the middle ages, or to stray with graceful
discrimination in the bye paths of memory to find the savour again of
some of the deeds of a gallant past.  He may choose, perhaps, to
grasp contentedly and almost without effort, the gifts of the gods
that lie about in profusion, but he must always remember that care
and earnestness, strenuousness and ambition have no place in
Florence.  It was of course a home after Mr. Labouchere's own heart.
He went to London in the January of 1906 to be sworn in as a Privy
Councillor, and, in February, he came back with delight to his villa
to enjoy the merry continental _train de vie_ he had always loved.

Whilst in London, he wrote to Mr. Edward Thornton, who was then in
India:


I did not, as you see, stand.  At seventy-four one gets bored even
with politics.  I am only over here for a fortnight, as I have to get
sworn into the Privy Council.  The Unionists have been {531} beaten
badly, because they seem to have gone out of their way to court
defeat.  One never knows what may happen, but they will remain in a
minority for the next twenty years, if they run on Protectionist
lines.  Joe swaggers and has captured the machine, and Balfour would
do well to fight him instead of knocking under to him.  The Chinese
labour helped us greatly.  They ought to have known that the old
anti-slavery feeling is still strong, but they seem to imagine that
every one has Rand shares....  The really important thing connected
with the election is the rise of a Labour Party.  I do not think,
however, that there are above six M.P.'s returned who are _bona fide_
and Socialists, they are all jealous of each other.


He wrote to Mr. Thornton again on March 10:


I had had enough of Parliament, for one gets bored with
everything....  I have not the slightest notion what a Privy
Councillor is, except that I had to take half a dozen oaths at a
Council, which were mumbled out by some dignitary, and then Fletcher
Moulton, who was also being sworn in, and I performed a sort of cake
walk backwards.  I don't precisely know whither we shall go in the
summer--for it is such a relief to let the day take care of the day.
It is lucky C. B. has so large a majority, otherwise things would
have been difficult with the Labour lot--far more difficult than with
the Irish.


Mr. Labouchere's most regular correspondent up till the time of his
death in January, 1911, was Sir Charles Dilke.  The friendship
between them had continued uninterruptedly since 1880.  Two letters
that Mr. Labouchere wrote to Sir Charles Dilke in 1910 have an
especial interest, bearing as they do upon the problem that had
always interested Mr. Labouchere so keenly throughout the whole of
his political career, and which, in the first twentieth century
Liberal Parliament, had assumed a new aspect.  The first of these
letters was written on February 11:


MY DEAR DILKE,--What is the Government going to do in regard to the
Lords?  I can understand a one-Chamber man, in {532} default of
getting directly what he wants, trying to get it indirectly, by
having a sham Upper Chamber.  But if the Government has to appeal to
the country on a suspensory veto, I doubt this creating much
enthusiasm.  If it be carried, this suspensory vote would, of course,
be used by the Peers for all that it is worth when a Liberal
Government is in to throw _batons dans leurs roues_.  I should have
thought, with the experience of the last Parliament, that it would be
realised that Peer obstruction, cleverly managed, could reduce any
Liberal Government to ridicule and contempt.  So long as a Reform is
hung up by the Lords, the electors have no heart in further Liberal
legislation, which, in its turn, would also be hung up.  A Party with
a H. of C. majority at its back cannot afford to be unable to carry
through its measures.  Why not go at once for the abolition of the H.
of Peers, and its being replaced by some sort of an elected Upper
Chamber?  Nothing is easier than to contrive one.  The basis would be
the constitution of the U.S. Senate _mutatis mutandis_.  It should
have only one half of the membership of the H. of C., and if the two
Houses cannot agree, then they should sit and vote together on the
issue.  Notwithstanding the curious way in which Senators are elected
in the Senate of the U.S., I never heard of any serious proposal to
alter this.  Its main strength is due to its executive powers, and
this we need not provide for in our Senate.  With any reasonable plan
of election, and the members reduced to about 300, it is odds against
there ever being a majority of one Party of above 40 or 50.  No
Government at present can get on long without a certain majority of
slaves of more than this in the Commons, so the Commons would always
get their way.  I have been at times a President of and a member of
several Abolition of Lords Associations, and have advocated abolition
in thousands of speeches in the country.  The feeling was generally
against hereditary Legislators, for this comes home to all as an
absurd abuse.  If I were in the House I would move an amendment on
the Address against hereditary Legislators, and the vast majority of
the Government supporters would vote for it, as they would most of
them be afraid of their electors.  What surprises me is that the
Unionists do not counter the plans of the Government by many such an
amendment.  They are sacrificing what is their interest to a lot of
obscure Peers, who are of no {533} importance.  As for the House of
Lords, with only a suspensory veto, it is worthless to them, except
for tactical obstruction in order to discredit a Liberal Government.

It is rather curious that if the H. of C. reflects the opinions of
the country there is a majority for Tariff Reform, as all the
National M.P.'s are Protectionists.  As it is, they will find it
difficult to vote for the Budget, with O'Brien painting Ireland red
against it.  He is a power in Ireland, and Redmond is perfectly aware
of it.  Anyhow the manœuvring in the H. of C. and the Debates will
be amusing.  There will be difficulties with the Labour men, headed
by Keir Hardie.  If I were the Unionists I would buy him.--Yours
truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


The second was written on November 17, and ran as follows:


MY DEAR DILKE,--... It is a curious thing that in the discussions
about Home Rule all round, no one has pointed out that in the German
Empire Bavaria occupies a peculiar position.  It has far more
independent rights than any other State.  It was only on these terms
that it came into the Empire, for there is no great love lost between
the Prussians and the Bavarians.  Yet it sends its quota of
representatives to the Reichsrath.  Therefore there seems to me no
particular reason why, if there be Home Rule all round, the position
of Ireland should not be that of Bavaria.

I confess that I do not think much of the Government proposal in
regard to the veto.  It seems to me a stupid arrangement.  The Upper
Chamber is a fifth wheel on the coach which only can make itself a
nuisance by persistent obstruction, which in two years is swept aside
automatically.  My experience in going to lots of anti-Lords Meetings
led me to the conclusion that the country hates an Upper Chamber on
hereditary lines, but does not quite believe in a Single Chamber
which is absolute master.  Why does no one propose to "scrap" the H.
of L. and to have an elected Upper House, one-third of whose members
are renewed by election every two years, or some such period?  This
would be on the lines of the U.S. Senate, only with a popular
franchise, {534} instead of the strangely illogical one of the U.S.
Such an Upper Chamber would probably be conservative in the real, and
not the party sense of the word, and yet command respect.  It would
rarely act except when the decision of the H. of C. was influenced by
a small minority, threatening to turn the Government out if it did
not knock under to it.  Were the Unionists to come forward with such
a scheme, they might very probably get a majority.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


After Sir Charles Dilke's death, Mr. Labouchere wrote the following
interesting letter to Lord Channing, dated Feb. 18:


DEAR CHANNING,--No, I am not writing any memoirs.  I shall find it
more agreeable to read yours than to do so....  I knew him (Dilke)
very well since his start in politics.  When in the House, he was the
only man well up, particularly in domestic legislature, and, really,
it is thanks to him that many useful measures were passed.  In
explaining them, however, he was too apt to lose himself in minor
details.  In foreign politics he never clearly knew what he wanted,
and he was given to believe in mares' nests which he thought he had
picked up abroad....  He fancied that he would be able to become the
leader of the Labour M.P.'s.  They were ready to profit by his
speeches, but it soon became clear that they would only have a Labour
M.P. for their leader.  We started a sort of Labour Party with a
Whip.  But they came to me and said that it must be understood that
he was not to be either President or Chairman.  In the main this was
due to jealousy of him....  I did all that I could with Campbell
Bannerman for him to be in the Cabinet.  Campbell Bannerman
hesitated.  Then Morley made a speech asserting that the Liberals
would not be satisfied unless he was included.  At once the Bishop of
Rochester and a head dissenter (I think it was Clifford) published
letters protesting.  Campbell Bannerman then pointed to these
letters, and said that we should have a split in the party if he were
in the Cabinet.  Personally, I quite agree with you as to his
ostracism from office, but you know what the English are, and
particularly the dissenters....

{535}

Why did you resign your seat?  It was a perfectly safe one.  I
resigned because I had got to an age, when I got tired out at a long
sitting.  It is curious I was with Campbell Bannerman and his wife
and mine.  She wanted him to give it up, as his doctor had told him
that he ought to.  I urged him to go on.  He said that this was odd
advice, when I had said that I should do so, and he was younger than
I was.  I replied that it was worth taking risks to be Prime
Minister, but not for anything else.  And he is dead and I alive....

If ever you want to rest calmly you must come down here and see me.
I have a big villa close to Florence, and live a vegetable
existence.--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


A great grief befell Mr. Labouchere in 1910.  He and Mrs. Labouchere
had been spending the summer as usual at Villa d'Este and Cadenabbia,
and had returned to Florence in the early days of October.  Never had
Mrs. Labouchere appeared to be in better health and spirits.  On the
evening of the 30th October, she had delighted every one with her
inimitable reading aloud of _David Copperfield_, and life at Villa
Cristina, on that day, had seemed, if possible, more joyous and
serene than usual.  The next morning the blow fell, but so gently as
to be almost imperceptible.  Mrs. Labouchere, feeling a little giddy
on rising, had returned to her bed to allow the temporary sickness to
pass off.  By the afternoon she was beginning to slip away into
unconsciousness, and before the bells in the neighbouring convent had
begun to welcome the dawn of the Tutti Santi, she had gone forth
alone on her last long journey.

The winter of 1910 and 1911 passed quietly away for Mr. Labouchere.
His days were cheered by the constant presence of his daughter, who
had married Marchesa Carlo di Rudini, the son of the former Prime
Minister of Italy, and Mr. Thomas Hart Davies stayed with him till
Christmas Day, returning to Florence again in the early spring.  A
succession of visitors from England and Rome kept the house {536} gay
and lively as he loved to have it, always provided that he had to
take upon himself none of the activities or responsibility of
entertaining.  "I am merely a passenger on the ship," he would say,
when he wanted to wriggle out of any active participation in the
organisation of whatever might be going on.  But it always happened
to be towards the corner of the ship where that particular passenger
was resting that the pleasure and interest of every one converged.
It was not so much the charm of his talk, that was, perhaps, more
entertaining in his old age than it had ever been, as the
extraordinarily youthful and never failing interest that he continued
to take in the affairs of every one else that made him the best
conversationalist in the world.  No little event of the smallest
human interest was too trivial to amuse him, and to awake the never
failing source of his mother wit.  He passed the summer at Villa
Cristina and went to Villa d'Este in September.  Though his spirits
were as gay and unflagging as ever throughout the winter, it was easy
to see that his physical strength was beginning to weaken.  The walk
which he took daily round his garden fatigued him so much that, by
Christmas, he had given up even that mild form of exercise.

He experienced another bereavement during the winter in the death of
his oldest and most intimately associated friend, Sir George Lewis.
He felt his loss very deeply, and I remember that when he told me the
news his voice was full of emotion.  He related that Sir George Lewis
had always looked upon him as his _mascotte_.  "As long as you're
alive and flourishing, Labby," he used to say, "I shall be all right
too, so mind you take care of yourself."  "Just shows what nonsense
all those things are," continued Mr. Labouchere, "for here am I as
well and strong as ever, and there is poor Lewis dead and gone."  The
return of Mr. Hart Davies to the Villa early in December cheered him
up immensely, and his devoted friend did not leave his side {537}
again, until the last sad morning when he bade farewell to him on the
hill of San Miniato.

It was fitting perhaps that almost the last letter that Mr.
Labouchere should have written, should have been to one of his old
theatrical friends.  Mr. Charles James Sugden, the actor, wrote to
him and asked him to write a preface to his (Sugden's) forthcoming
volume of Reminiscences.  Here is Mr. Labouchere's reply:


VILLA CRISTINA, Jan. 4, 1912.

MY DEAR SUGDEN--You ask me to write a preface to your forthcoming
book.  I don't think that I ever read one in my life, for they always
seem to be platitudes, impertinently thrust forward by some person
who has an exaggerated idea of his own importance, in order to hinder
me from getting at what I really do want to read.  Good wine needs no
bush, and I shall be greatly disappointed if I do not derive great
pleasure from reading yours, for you have been brought into close
contact with so many persons of note in their day, and some of whom
are still in this world, and can throw many sidelights on them, and
know many anecdotes about them.  Pray bring it out as soon as
possible.  I am now over eighty, and at about that age senile
imbecility commences, so I do not want it to make progress before I
have had the opportunity to read the book and can appreciate
it.[6]--Yours truly,

H. LABOUCHERE.


But it was not until the beginning of the second week in January that
we all felt certain that he would never be well again.  He was
sauntering along so gently and carelessly, as only Labby knew how to
saunter, towards the brink of the dark river.  When the little heaps
of cigarettes, that were arranged about his library so as to be
always ready to his hand, ceased to dwindle as usual, it became clear
to each and all that he must be very ill indeed.  As simply as a
child, tired with play, he took to his bed on the 11th of January,
{538} and did not get up again.  He died peacefully at midnight on
January 15, 1912.

The earliest remark of Mr. Labouchere's that I have recorded in this
book was a jest, and so was the last I heard him utter.  On the
afternoon of the day before he died, as I was sitting at his bedside,
the spirit lamp that kept the fumes of eucalyptus in constant
movement about his room, through some awkwardness of mine, was
overturned.  Mr. Labouchere, who was dozing, opened his eyes at the
sound of the little commotion caused by the accident, and perceived
the flare-up.  "Flames?" he murmured interrogatively, "not yet, I
think."  He laughed quizzically, and went off to sleep again.

* * * * * * *

The words in which Mr. Hart Davies conveyed the news of his end to
Carteret Street are so beautiful in their simple directness that no
others can fitly replace them in this biography:

"His mind always remained perfectly clear.  He took a lively interest
in the German elections, the political crisis in France, and the
events of the Italian-Turkish War.  He was ever one for whom nothing
that concerned the human race (_nihil humani_) was alien to his vivid
intelligence.  But his bodily powers were constantly declining, and
on Monday, January 15, just before midnight, the end came, peacefully
and painlessly, a fitting termination to the career of one who had
ever been a fighter and ever in the forefront of the battle.

"He was buried on Wednesday morning, under the cold drizzling rain of
the Florentine winter, at San Miniato, in the same grave with his
wife, who died some fifteen months before him.  There, his tomb, at
the edge of the western battlement of San Miniato, looks over the
Tower of Galileo and the dark cypresses of Arcetri.  It may be said
of him, as Heine said of himself, that on his grave should be placed
'not a wreath, but a sword, for he was a brave soldier in the war for
the liberation of humanity.'"

{539}

Before his death, he had expressed a strong wish as to the place of
his burial.  He wanted to rest beside his wife at San Miniato.  But,
when the arrangements for the funeral were about to be made, it was
remembered that only Catholics were permitted to lie in the beautiful
cemetery of the Florentines.  The difficulty seemed insuperable, and
the preliminary steps had already been taken to bury him in the
Protestant graveyard.  His daughter, however, determined to leave no
stone unturned so that she might carry out her father's dying wishes.
An appeal was made to some municipal authority, and, by an
extraordinary coincidence, that seemed to make Labby's funeral fit in
with all the rest of his strange paradoxical career, it was
ascertained that, just at that moment, the possession of the cemetery
was passing out of the hands of the religious body to whom it had
hitherto belonged, and was becoming the property of the lay
ecclesiastical authority of the city, and there had been no time for
new regulations or restrictions to be formulated.  There were,
therefore, from a legal point of view, none in existence, and so it
turned out that Mr. Labouchere was permitted to lie in the spot that
he had himself chosen.

For many days after his death, the letters of condolence and sympathy
from all quarters of the globe continued to pour into the deserted
home.  Of these one must assuredly be published, for it bears witness
to the loyalty and affection that was unfailingly manifested to him
by the borough he had represented for twenty-five years in
Parliament.  It was addressed to Marchesa di Rudini, by Mr. Edwin
Barnes, the Secretary of the Northampton Liberal and Radical
Association, and ran as follows:


At a special meeting of the Executive Committee of the above
Association, held last night, the following resolution was
unanimously passed, which I was directed to send to you: "The
Liberals and Radicals of Northampton have heard with the deepest
regret of the death of the Right Hon. Henry Labouchere, {540} who,
for more than a quarter of a century, faithfully represented the
Borough in the House of Commons.  The members of the Executive of the
Northampton Liberal and Radical Association hereby place on record
the profound gratitude of all its members for the loyal service which
Mr. Labouchere rendered to the cause of Democracy during so many
years.  Whoever faltered, he stood firm, and it will always be a
proud remembrance that Northampton also stood firm, and that there
was no break in the mutual confidence of member and constituents.  To
his daughter, the Marchesa di Rudini, and other members of Mr.
Labouchere's family, we offer our sincerest sympathy in the
irreparable loss that they have sustained, and trust they may find
some consolation in the warm tributes that have been paid by men of
all parties to his life, character, and work."  Having known Mr.
Labouchere for many years, and being his agent in the important
election of 1900 (during the Boer War), allow me to add my own
personal sympathy and condolence with you.



[1] May 12, 1905.

[2] _M.A.P._, Dec. 30, 1905.

[3] _Morning Post_, Dec. 23, 1905.

[4] _Penny Illustrated Paper_, Feb. 25, 1893.

[5] _Truth_, Sept. 21, 1900.

[6] _The Referee_, Jan. 21, 1912.




{541}

INDEX


Abbeville, Labouchere at, 141

Abbot, Labouchere's action against, 108, 109

Abdulal Pasha, exile of, 221

Abercorn, Duke of, 85

Aberdeen, Earl of, 262; Col. Turner as _aide_ to, 361

Adelphi Theatre, Green at the, 29

Affirmation Act, passing of the, 160

Afghan War, the, 143

Afrikanders, National League of, 437

Aix, Provence, Fouché exiled to, 12

Albert, Prince, 67

Albret, Jeanne d', founder of the Protestant University at Orthez, 1

Alexander II., Emperor of Russia, watches Labouchere at écarté, 57

Alexandria, bombardment of, 71, 194, 195, 196, 218

Aliens Bill, 170

Alison on Mexico, 33

Alison, Sir Archibald, his command in Egypt, 209

Alliance Loan, the, 13

Allsopp, Labouchere on, 239

America, Bradlaugh in, 161-64; Fenianism in, 81, 170, 288, 309-10,
385; its constitution an example for England and Ireland, 237-8, 293,
294, 298, 531-33; its diplomats in Paris during the siege, 43; its
interest in Labouchere's Paris letters, 96; its labour system
compared with English, 461, 471, 479; its surgery and its girls in
the Franco-Prussian War, 44, 45; its system of education, 42;
Labouchere's prediction for, 14, 41, 44, 226; Lord Taunton travels
in, 14-15; unpopularity of Parnell in, 378

Amiens, Labouchere at, 140

Amsterdam, house of Hope at, 2, 10

Anarchist party, the, 418

Anglo-American War, 9

Anne, Queen, Labouchere on, 245

Antwerp, 7, 10

Appeals in the House of Lords, Labouchere on, 83

Appropriation Act, the, 354

Arabi Pasha, exile of, 203-9, 219-24; rebellion of, 70-1, 195-98,
202, 215

Arago, Mayor of Paris, 127

Arklow, Parnell at, 258

Armenian persecutions, the, 435

Arms Bill, the, 172

Army, Labouchere on the, 478

Arrears Bill, the passing of, 176, 179, 181, 183, 187, 252, 361

Ascot, Labouchere at, 106

Ashbourne, his Irish policy, 279

Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., counsel for Parnell _v._ Walter, 374 _n._,
407

Assouan, 209

Athlone, Stamforth contests, 525

Atkinson, American statist, 468

Atkinson, counsel for the _Times_, 374 _n._

Audiffret-Pasquier, Duc d', _Histoire de Mon Temps_, 13 _n._

Austen, Charles, correspondent in Paris during the siege, 141 _n._

Australia, J. R. Cox in, 223

Austria, customs union with, 418

Austrian chargé d'affaires, in Stockholm, Labouchere's duel with, 50

Austro-Prussian War, the, 97

Avebury, Lord, at Eton, 18

Aztecs, the, in Mexico, 34


Bacon, Lord, quoted, 20, 515

Baden-Baden, Labouchere at, 54, 65

Baggallay, Lord Justice, his judgment against Bradlaugh, 157; on
Labouchere in Hyde Park, 364

Baker, his army in Egypt, 199

Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., administration of, 438, 517, 518, 524, 531;
Bannerman on, 455; Gladstone's letters to, _re_ Home Rule, 289, 298;
his coercive measures as Irish Secretary, 357-60; Labouchere on his
philosophy, 369

Ballantine, Serjeant, acts as counsel for Labouchere, 76 _n._, 77; at
Evans', 29; dines with Labouchere and Orton, 116

Balloons, as letter carriers, during the siege of Paris, 128-35

Ballot Act, amendments of the, 272

Balston, Edward, Labouchere's house master at Eton, 18

Bannerman, Sir Henry Campbell, his letters to Labouchere, _re_
retirement, 517, 523; his premiership, 518, 524, 531; on
Chamberlain's South African policy, 427, 448, 449, 454, 455

Baring, Alexander, partner in the house of Hope, 2

Baring, Rev. Alexander, his story of P.-C. Labouchère, 2

Baring Brothers, restore French credit, 12, 13; their crisis in 1890,
489

Baring, Dorothy, her marriage to P.-C. Labouchère, 2

Baring, Emily, marriage of, 14 _n._

Baring, Sir Evelyn.  See Lord Cromer

Baring, Hon. Francis Henry, 3 _n._

Baring, Sir Francis, consents to his daughter's marriage, 3; his
friendship with Wellesley, 5, 7, 8

Baring, Lucy, daughter of Charles, 13 _n._

Baring, Sir Thomas, his daughters' marriages, 14

Baring, M.P., Thomas Charles, 3 _n._

Baring.  See Lord Revelstoke

Barnes, Edwin, Secretary of Northampton Liberal and Radical
Association, 539

Barrère, Camille, on the staff of the _World_, 107

Barrier, Jean Guyon, 2

Barrow, Cavendish influence at, 350

Barton fights Labouchere at Eton, 18

Bass, Labouchere on, 239

Bathurst, Lord, as Foreign Secretary, 6

Bavaria, an example for Ireland, 533

Bayonne, 1

Bazaine, Marshal, at Metz, 123, 124

Beaconsfield, Earl of, advises Northcote in the Bradlaugh case, 154;
arranges an Egyptian loan with Rothschilds, 190, 191; attends the
Berlin Congress, 191, 192; defeated at Taunton, 13, 14; his
administration, 85, 86, 235, 520; his Imperialism, 143

Bedford, Duke of, Burke's letter to, 231

Beefsteak Club, the, Labouchere's expulsion from, 117

Beit, Alfred, his complicity in the Jameson Raid, 426, 428, 431

Belfast, manufacturers of, 276, 319

Belgium, Egypt compared with, 203, 206

Bell, Moberley, manager of the _Times_, 436

Bellew, Kyrle, début of, 111, 496

Bellew, Montesquieu, Labouchere travels to Palestine with, 111-13, 496

Belloc, Hilaire, as a conversationalist, 73

Bennett, Robert, editor of _Truth_, 518; on Labouchere as a
journalist, 491-516

Berlin Congress, the, Disraeli and Salisbury attend, 191, 192

---- Decree of, 9

Beza, Theodore, professor at Orthez, 1

Bigham, 427.  See Lord Mersey

Bingham, Captain Hon. D., in Paris during the siege, 138 _n._, 141
_n._

Birmingham, Chamberlain, M.P.  for, 167, 241, 322, 323; death-rate
of, 463

_Birmingham Post_, 455

Biron, Mr., counsel for Labouchere, 76 _n._

Bishop Auckland, Labouchere at, 118

Bishops, Labouchere on, 241

Bismarck, 96 _n._; as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, 62; at the Berlin
Congress, 192; his _Memoirs_, 70; threatens intervention in Egypt, 194

Blackwood, Sir Arthur, at Eton, 18

Blake, his support of Labouchere, 427

Blanc, Louis, Labouchere protected by, 132

Blaquières, M. de, French controller in Egypt, 195

Bloemfontein, capture of, 454

---- Conference, the, 455

Blücher, General, 57

Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen, _Gordon and Khartoum_, quoted, 214; his
reminiscences of Labouchere, 69-73; his support of Arabi Pasha, 204,
222; Labouchere's letters to, _re_ Arabi in exile, 220, 224;
Labouchere's letters to, _re_ the Soudan War, 216-19; on the death of
Gordon, 212; on Disraeli and Salisbury, 174; on the English policy in
Egypt, 193, 204, 214-15; on Labouchere as a politician, 198, 214;
_Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt_, quoted, 190
_n._, 192 _n._

Boadicea, 244

Boer War, the history of the, 436-57; Labouchere's protests against,
436, 438-39, 540

Boers, the, their resentment against England, 437.  _See also under_
Transvaal

Bologna, 61

Bonn, 32

Bonner, Mrs. Bradlaugh, _Life of Mr. Bradlaugh_, 142 _n._

Booth, Charles, statist, 460

Booth, Sclater, Labouchere on, 239

Boston, Labouchere mistaken for an Irish patriot, in, 47, 48

Boulogne, Labouchere at, 500

Bourbon, the House of, 8

Bowen, Lord Justice, 501

Bower, Sir Graham, censure of, 428

Bowles, Thomas Gibson, correspondent in Paris during the siege, 141
_n._

Boycott, Captain, English agent of Lord Mayo, 165

Boycotting, practice of, 165, 176, 185

Boyd, Charles, his interview with Labouchere, 435, 436

Bradford, election of 1886 at, 326

---- Forster, M.P. for, 176

Bradlaugh, Charles, Gladstone's tribute to, 160-61; his imprisonment,
154; his struggle for the right to affirm, 145-64; Labouchere's
defence of, 148, 151, 156-64; returned for Northampton, 142-45, 158

Brampton, Henry, Lord, his letter to Labouchere, _re_ retirement, 526

Bramwell, Lord Justice, his decision against Bradlaugh, 157

Brand, M.P. for Stroud, 334

Brand, Sir Henry, 238; his rulings in the Bradlaugh struggle, 146,
151-2, 160

Brassey, Lord, Labouchere on, 239

Brennan, his imprisonment, 172, 174

Brentford, election scenes at, in 1868, 86, 90-2

Breslin, John, American Fenian, 385, 396

Breteuil, Labouchere at, 140

Brett, 280, 289

Bridges, Sir Henry, his ditty, 117.  _See_ Appendix

Brielle, 6

Bright, John, his defence of Bradlaugh, 146, 149-51; Labouchere's
admiration of, 171, 228; opposes coercive measures in Ireland, 166,
181, 187; opposes the Egyptian policy, 220

Brighton, Labouchere at, 269, 273; Voules at, 507

Bristol, Lord, Labouchere's fag at Eton, 19 _n._

British South Africa Company, its complicity in the Jameson Raid,
426-37, 438, 452, 454; its evacuation of Uganda, 420

British virtue, Labouchere's indictments of, 105

Broadley, A. M., _How We Defended Arabi and His Friends_, quoted by
Arabi, 222

Broome Hall, Surrey, John Peter Labouchere at, 16, 31, 73

Broue, Catherine de la, 2

Brough, Lionel, at New Queen's Theatre, 99; bluffs Labouchere, 94

Brousson, L., on the staff of _Truth_, 505, 509

Brownrigg, Inspector, Labouchere on his conduct at Michelstown, 368-71

Bruce, Campbell, counsel, 76 _n._

Brunner, Mr., at Michelstown, 365, 367

Brunswick, House of, Bradlaugh's impeachment of, 148

Bryce, James, on the Coercion Bill, 182

Buckenbrock, Labouchere's friendship with, 52

Budget Bill of 1885, the, 251

Buenos Ayres, Labouchere's appointment in, 65

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Indians in, 40

Buffon quoted, 133

Bulgaria, Turks in, 200

Buller, his policy in Ireland, 361

Buller, Sir Henry, as Ambassador at Constantinople, 54, 63, 64.
_See_ Lord Dalling

Buller, Sir Redvers, in Pretoria, 440

Bunsen, Labouchere on, 308

Buonaparte, Jerome, 9

Buonaparte, Joseph, in Spain, 8, 9

Buonaparte, Louis, as king of Holland, 5-9

Bureaucracy, Labouchere on, 122

Burke, Under-Secretary for Ireland, murder of, 174, 175, 359, 372

Burke, Edmund, his letter to the Duke of Bedford, 231

Burmah as a political pawn, 310-12

Burnaby, Captain Fred, his reminiscence of Labouchere, 242

Busch, _Our Chancellor_, 53 _n._

Butler, General Sir William, his command in South Africa, 437

Buxton, Sidney, 427

Byrne, Frank, 386

Byron, H. J., _Dearer than Life_, 99


Cadenabbia, Labouchere at, 418-21, 423, 515, 535

Caine, M.P., Labouchere on, 350

Cairnes, quoted by Hyndman, 481, 482

Cairo, Arabi at, 70, 204; General Gordon in, 212; Lord Wolseley in,
208; Prefect of Police at, 216

Calais, Labouchere at, 127

Calcraft, hangman, 115

Caldwell's dancing rooms, 105

Callan, M.P., Mr., on Bright and Bradlaugh, 150

Cambridge, St. Peter's College, 23; Trinity College, Labouchere at,
22-7, 251, 491, 522

Cambridge, Duchess of, her friendship with Labouchere, 54

Campbell, secretary to Parnell, 375, 396

Campbell, Sir George, 208

Canada, Dominion of, Labouchere on, 301, 304

Canning, George, his duel with Castlereagh, 6

Canrobert, Marshal, his corps, 123 _n._

Cape Colony, Lord Milner as Governor of, 437; Rhodes as Premier of,
427, 430; war spirit in, 437

Capital _v._ Labour, discussed by Hyndman and Labouchere at
Northampton, 458-90

Cardwell, Mr., 136

Carey, James, informer, forged letters to, 372, 374, 375, 384

Carlisle, Earl of, 14

Carnarvon, Lord, as Viceroy of Ireland, 251-56, 279, 282, 286

Carrington, Lord, assaults Grenville Murray, 110 _n._

Caspian Sea, the, 135

Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, firm of, 493

Castlereagh, his duel with Canning, 6

Catholic Emancipation, question of, 6

Cattle-maiming in Ireland, 165, 169

Cavendish family, the, their influence at Barrow, 350

Cavendish, Lord E., Chamberlain on, 271

Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 146; murder of, 174, 175, 188, 358, 359,
372

Cavour, Gladstone on, 419; Labouchere's reminiscences of, 62

Ceylon, Arabi's exile in, 204-9, 220-24

Châlons, French camp at, 122-23 _n._

Chamberlain, Joseph, as President of the Local Government Board, 317
_n._; Churchill on, 209; Healy on, 303, 363; his alleged complicity
in the Jameson Raid, 427, 431, 446, 452; his correspondence with
Labouchere _re_ the Boer War, 446-54; his correspondence with
Labouchere on Home Rule, 261-356; his Egyptian policy, 70, 211, 212;
his Irish policy prior to the Home Rule Bill, 256-303; his probable
Premiership, 226, 227, 249, 280, 319, 320, 349; his responsibility,
as Colonial Secretary, for the Boer War, 437-38, 442-57; his scheme
of Home Rule, 255, 326; his secession from the Liberal party over
Home Rule, 226-28, 318-355; Labouchere's admiration of, 259;
Labouchere's letters to, _re_ Bradlaugh, 159; Labouchere's letters
to, _re_ the Egyptian policy, 205-6, 210, 211; Labouchere's letters
to, _re_ the Irish Coercion Bill, 177-187; Labouchere's letters to,
_re_ Radicalism, 41-2, 226-27; Labouchere's opposition to, 519, 531;
on Gladstone's Irish policy, 167, 189, 226, 263, 266, 271, 306; on
Herbert Gladstone, 265; on the House of Lords, 241; on the Land
Question, 276, 292; on the Parnell Commission, 383; on Salisbury's
Irish policy, 251; opposes the use of coercion in Ireland, 165, 173,
189

Chaplin, M.P., Henry, 146, 150; on the Coercion Bill, 187

Chartered Company.  _See_ British South Africa.

Chatham, Earl of, his death, 6

Chaumes, Prussian army at, 127

Chelmsford, Morley at, 322

Chesterfield, Philip, Earl of, his _Letters to His Son_, 29; quoted,
88

Chevreau, M., 126

Chiala, Signor, on the relations between England and Italy, 410

Chicago, Healy in, 310

Childers, M.P., his Irish sympathies, 150, 260, 347

China, industrialism of, 468, 479, 487

Chinese Labour question, the, Labouchere on, 531

Chippeway Indians, Labouchere's life among the, 40-41

Christina of Sweden, Queen, Labouchere on, 245

Church of England, Disestablishment of the.  See Disestablishment.

Church Patronage Bill, the, Labouchere on, 243

---- Rates Abolition Act, 81

Churchill, Lord Randolph, at Brighton, 269; at Twickenham, 356;
Chamberlain on, 253, 264, 271, 285-86, 288, 313; Hartington's quarrel
with, 278, 282; Healy on, 274, 283, 285, 303, 313, 362, 363; his
comment on Labouchere's Michelstown speech, 368, 397; his friendship
with Labouchere, 250; his illness, 262; his letters to Labouchere
_re_ Home Rule, 285, 289, 298 ff., 307; his letter to Salisbury _re_
Home Rule, 279; in Ireland, 282; in opposition, 409; Labouchere on,
315, 319, 344; negotiates with the Irish party, 254-303, 315; on
Chamberlain, 298, 308; on the Conservative party, 248; refers to
Labouchere as "the religious member," 142

Churchill, Winston Spencer, _Lord Randolph Churchill_, quoted, 280
_n._

Civil List, the, Labouchere's attacks on, 233, 234, 239-40, 246, 409,
413, 465-66, 478

Clan-na-Gael, the, takes possession of Parnell letters, 386

Clarendon, Earl of, 67; Viceroy of Ireland, 251

Clarke _v._ Bradlaugh, action of, 157

Clayton, John, at New Queen's Theatre, 99

Cleave, Mr., 76

Clongowes, school at, 404

Clonmel, Mayor of, at Michelstown, 366

Coalition Ministry, the, 6; of 1885-86 proposed, 268, 270, 295, 304

Cobden, Richard, on landlordism, 235

Cockermouth, Lawson M.P. for, 524

Coercion Bills, passing of the, 171-179, 238, 251, 256, 263, 313,
357-61, 363

Colenso, 440

Collectivism _v._ Individualism discussed by Labouchere and Hyndman,
463, 464, 479

Collings, Jes, 333; his amendment, 315, 316

Communism, Hyndman on, 485

Condé, Prince de, his army, 7

Condorcet, his gambling system, 66

Connaught, Duke of, his allowance, 233

Conservative party, the, Labouchere on, 247-48, 458; their advances
to the Irish, 251, 308

Constantinople, Labouchere as secretary of Embassy at, 54, 62-5; Lord
Stratford Ambassador at, 62, 63

Constitutional monarchy, Labouchere on, 230, 233, 242, 246

Cooke, Q.C., W. H., 76 _n._

Coombe, Gladstone at, 214

Cooper, Labouchere's tutor at Cambridge, 22

Co-operation, principle of, 472

Cork, Mayor of, at Michelstown, 366, 367; Parnell M.P. for, 174, 378

Cortes in Mexico, 34

Corti, Count, on the Berlin Congress, 192 _n._

County Councils, establishment of, 302

Covent Garden, Labouchere's life in, 28-30, 70

Covington, Frederick, 418 _n._

Cowper, Lord, Viceroy of Ireland, his resignation, 174; urges
coercion, 165, 166, 173, 175

Cox, M.P., J. R., his visit to Arabi, 223

Crampton, Mr., British Minister at Washington, 46, 47

Crawford, George Morland, leaves Paris before the siege, 119-120

Crawford, Mrs., on Labouchere as a diplomatist, 66, 67-8; on
Labouchere in Paris before the siege, 119-120

Cremorne, Labouchere at, 105, 129

Crimean War, instigated by Lord Stratford, 63; recruiting in America
for, 45

Crimes Bill.  _See_ Prevention of.

Crimping, practice of, in America, 45

Cripps, Sir Alfred, on the Select Committee on British South Africa,
427

Cromer, Lord, as English Controller in Egypt, 195, 212; in India,
210; on General Gordon, 212

Cross, Sir R. Assheton, 150; Labouchere on, 239

Crown and Country, financial relations between, 42, 230, 232, 242,
246, 413

Cuernava, Labouchere at, 36

Cumming, Dr., impersonation of, 82

Cunynghame, Sir Henry, member of the Parnell Commission, 373-74, 395

Cyprus, England's lease of, 191, 192, 197, 222


_Daily Chronicle_, Spender of, 448

_Daily News_, affected by Birmingham imperialism, 96 _n._; Churchill
on, 279, 286; Labouchere as a correspondent of, 43-44, 96, 114,
119-41; Labouchere's financial connection with, 95, 96, 492; on Home
Rule, 257, 274, 279, 299, 326; on the Parnell Commission, 383-84,
393; on the Triple Alliance, 411

_Daily Telegraph_, its action against Labouchere, 500; Lawley,
correspondent in Paris, 141 _n._; on Home Rule, 256

Dalglish, Robert, 76 _n._

Dallas, correspondent in Paris during the siege, 141 _n._

Dalling, Henry Bulwer, Lord, as Ambassador at Constantinople, 54, 63,
64

Damascus, Labouchere at, 72

Darmstadt, Court of, plays at whist, 55

Darvill, Mr., town-clerk of Windsor, 75

Darwin, Charles, Gladstone on, 267

Daunt, O'Neill, 302

Davitt, Michael, Healy on, 254; his scheme for the nationalisation of
land, 179, 182-83; his letter to Labouchere _re_ Home Rule, 257-58;
Pigott forgeries of, 395, 396; speaks against the Coercion Bill, 363

Davy on the Coercion Bill, 182, 185

Day, Sir Charles, member of the Parnell Commission, 373, 393

Deacon, banker, 16

Dead Sea, Labouchere at the, 112

_Dearer than Life_, produced at New Queen's Theatre, 99

De Beers Consolidated Mines, the, 427

_Defence of Philosophic Doubt_, Balfour's, 369

Delaney, his evidence in the Parnell Commission, 384

Democracy, English government by the, Labouchere on, 238-39, 248,
413, 418, 481, 540

Derby, Lord, anecdotal photograph of, 68; Grenville Murray's attacks
on, 109; his ministry, 85; retires on the Egyptian loan, 190, 191,
193; signs the Convention of 1884, 451; travels in America, 14

De Sartines, chief of police, wit of, 4

Devonshire, seventh Duke of, his death, 363

Devonshire, eighth Duke of, on the House of Lords, 363.  _See_ Lord
Hartington.

Devonshire House, anti-Home Rule meeting at, 344 _n._

Devoy, American Fenian, 170

Dhakool, capture of, 219, 220

Dickens, Charles, _David Copperfield_, 535; _Household Words_, 32, 68

_Dictionary of National Biography_, 46 _n._

Diet of Frankfort, the, Bismarck Prussian representative at, 52, 54,
55

Digby, Sir Kenelm, 28

Dilke, Sir Charles, 436; as a member of Gladstone's Government, 196,
200, 204, 228, 233; his acquaintance with foreign affairs, 71; his
Egyptian policy, 71, 196, 200, 204; his return to Parliament, 418;
Labouchere's letters to, _re_ the abolition of the House of Lords,
532-34; Labouchere's letters to, _re_ the Egyptian policy, 198-200;
letters to and from Labouchere _re_ Home Rule, 325, 327-28; secures
Labouchere's seat in the House, 527

Dillon, Charles, at Michelstown, 365-67; Healy on, 276, 362;
imprisonment of, 172, 174; his speeches _re_ South Africa, 438

Diplomacy, Bismarck on German, 52; Labouchere on English and
American, 44, 53, 411, 452

Disestablishment of the Church of England advocated by Labouchere,
43, 226, 234, 243, 244, 248, 417

Disraeli, Benjamin.  _See_ Beaconsfield.

Dongola, 434

Donkey as a diet, 139

Donleath, Stuart, case of, 187

Dorking, Mrs. Labouchere at Oakdene, near, 130 _n._, 138 _n._

Douay, Abel, death of, 123

Douglas, Akers, 352

Dramatic, artists, Labouchere on, 101-102

---- critic, Labouchere as a, 496, 503

Dresden, Labouchere as attaché at, 59

Drink bill, national, 466

Dublin, headquarters of the Land League, 181, 183; Healy in, 239,
271, 273, 283, 289, 303; Liberal Unionists of, their responsibility
for the Pigott children, 404; Parliament in, 422; Parnell at, 256;
Phœnix Park, 174, 175; proposed Irish Parliament in, 252, 306,
321, 327, 339; Redmond in, 524; trial of the Land League in, 166

_Dublin Daily Express_, 279, 309

Duclos, Maître, notary to Trochu, 136

Ducrot, General, in Paris, 136

Dudley, Lord, marriage of, 525

Duelling, Labouchere's experience of, 50

Dufferin, Lord, his Egyptian policy, 207, 208, 223

Dumas, Alexandre, _père_, Labouchere meets, at Genoa, 113, 114

Dumas, Mlle. Maria, Labouchere at the wedding of, 114

Dunn, Parliamentary agent at Windsor, 75

Du Pre, Caroline, her marriage, 14 _n._

Du Pre, James, banker, 16

Du Pre, Rev. William Maxwell, his marriage, 14 _n._

Durand's, Paris, 120

Durham, Bishop of, 3 _n._

Durrant, Mr., solicitor to Sir Henry Hoare, 76, 78-81

Dyke, Sir W. Hart, 427

Dynamite Concession, the, 449


_Echo_, Voules as manager of, 493

Economy, Labouchere's political, 409, 410

Eden, Frederick Morton, his reminiscence of Labouchere at Eton, 19

Edict of Nantes, revocation of the, 2

Edinburgh, Chamberlain at, 323; represented by Goschen, 264, 297

Education, English national, Carnarvon on, 282; Chamberlain on, 270;
Conservative support of denominational, 258; Labouchere on, 42-43,
84, 234, 235, 248; Mundella as Minister of, 286

Edward VII., accession of, 148; as Prince of Wales, defends Grenville
Murray, 67

Edwards, Passmore, acquires the _Echo_, 493

Egan, Patrick, his forged correspondence with Parnell, 358, 372-405;
treasurer of the Land League in Paris, 172, 181, 182, 186, 358, 372

Egypt, as a political pawn, 310-13; English occupation of, 70-71, 72,
190-224, 248, 259, 434; French interest in, 191, 192, 197, 203, 210;
its occupation of the Soudan, 209; its Soudanese frontier
established, 215, 216; national movement under the Arabi in, 195-98,
205; rule of Khedives in, 190-97, 205, 207-8

Elandslaagte, battle of, 440

Electoral districts, Labouchere on, 229

Elephant as a diet, 138

Elgin, Lord, Governor of Canada, at Washington, 45

Elizabeth, Queen, Labouchere on, 245

Ellenborough, Lady, in Palestine, 72

Ellis, John, 427, 455

Ellis, T. E., at Michelstown, 365, 367

El Obeid, the Mahdi at, 209, 210

Enfield, Lord, his quarrel with Labouchere during the Middlesex
election, 85-93

England, house of Hope transferred to, 4; its relations with America,
81; its relations with Turkey, 196-7, 199

English, abroad, Labouchere on, 95

---- diplomatists in Paris during the siege, 43-44

---- institutions contrasted with the American, 41

---- system of education contrasted with the American, 42-43

Ephesus, Council of, 150

Escott, T. H. S., contribution to the _World_, 107

Established Church of England, _See_ Disestablishment

Eton, education at, 42; Labouchere at, 18-21, 251, 491, 522

Eugenie, Empress, in Paris, 124, 126, 134; her letter derided, 134

Evans', Convent Garden, _habitués_ of 28, 29; Labouchere in residence
at, 28-31, 70

Eversley, Lord, _Gladstone and Ireland_, quoted, 358 _n._; on the
Land League, 172

Evidence Amendment Act, the, 145

Expenses of Voters, Labouchere on, 83


Fagan, Captain, received by Wellesley, 7, 12

Fagging, Labouchere's views on, 20

Fairfield, Mr., 431

Fakenham, Rev. John Labouchere of, 21 _n._

Farnham Castle, 2 _n._

Fatherland, production of, 103

Favre, Jules, member of the Provisional Government, 127, 128

Fawcett, Professor, 136

Fenianism in America, 81, 170, 288, 310-11; in Ireland, 171, 183,
186, 275, 276; Labouchere on, 276, 278, 282, 292, 316

Fenwick, Mr., directs the case against Labouchere for cribbing, 24-25

Ferdinand VII. of Spain, Napoleon's treatment of, 8, 10

Ferguson, Sir James, 410, 412

Fermoy, Labouchere at, 365

Ferry, Jules, member of the Provisional Government, 127

Feudalism, Labouchere on, 241.  _See also_ Land System

Finance, economical, Labouchere's efforts on behalf of, 246, 494-95,
505

Financial Reform Almanack, the, quoted, 232

Fitzgibbon, Churchill visits, 282, 289

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, his letter to Labouchere _re_ retirement,
525-26

Fletcher Moulton, Privy Councillor, 531

Florence, flight of the Grand Duke from, 61; Labouchere in, 60-62,
72, 95, 513, 517-23, 530-39; Unione Club, 61; _Florence Herald_,
quoted, 62 _n._

Flower, Mr., retires from the candidature of Windsor, 75-80

Foljambe, Chamberlain on, 271

Fond du Lac, Labouchere at, 41

Forbes, Archibald, on the staff of the _World_, 107; war
correspondent to the _Daily News_, 96, 127

Foreign Office, Archives, examples of telegrams in, 53, 54

---- ---- messengers, their expense, 54

Forster, M.P., R. N., seconds Sir H. D. Wolff, 148

Forster, W. E., Chief Secretary for Ireland, allusions to, in
Parnell's supposed letters, 372; blackmailed by Pigott, 393; Healy
on, 303; his arrest of Parnell, 172, 254; his resignation, 174, 188,
267, 276; Labouchere on, 282, 297; urges coercive measures in
Ireland, 165-73, 176, 182

_Fortnightly Review_, Chamberlain on Home Rule, in the, 255;
"Radicals and Whigs" quoted, 41, 42, 228-29

Fottrell, 302

Foucault threatens the Protestants of Orthez, 1

Fouché negotiates his own downfall, 5-12

Fowler, Sir Henry, his speech inspired by Labouchere, 350

France, financial situation of, in 1817, 12, 13; Guizot on, 480;
inauguration of the Third Republic, 126, 127, 191; its interests in
Egypt, 190, 192, 197, 203, 210

Franchise, Act of, 1884, the, 256

---- extension of the, Labouchere on, 229, 244-46, 248.  _See also_
Suffrage

---- Law for the Transvaal, 442, 448-49

Franckfort, Bismarck in, 52, 53; Labouchere as attaché in, 52, 54,
60, 69, 119

Franco-Prussian War, 116, 191; Labouchere's correspondence during,
43-44, 96, 119-41

Freehold Land Society, its work in Northampton, 143

_Freeman's Journal_, the correspondence between Egan and Pigott in,
375

Free Trade for Ireland, Davitt on, 256-57

French, journalism during the siege of Paris, Labouchere on, 133-36

---- wars, allusions to, 287, 296

Froisard, General, defeat of his Army Corps, 124


Galveston, Healy in, 310

Gambetta, member of the Republican Government, 127

Gambling, Labouchere's system in, 65-66

Garter, Order of the, 241

_Gaulois_, its address to the Prussians, 134

Gave, the river, 1

Gedge, Mr., tries to do Labouchere out of his seat in the House, 527

_Genealogist, The_, the Labouchere pedigree, 14 _n._

Genoa, Labouchere and Dumas at, 113

George III., 296; at Kew, 409

George V., his installation as K.G., 246

George, Mr., his scheme for the nationalisation of land, 235

German, Empire, its proposed intervention in Egypt, 194; position of
Bavaria in, 488; Socialism in, 487

---- people, Labouchere's dislike of, 51, 52

---- Zollverein, principle of the, 294

Gibbon, Edward, 88, 151

Gibraltar, English tenure of, 199

Gibson, M.P., Mr., 150

Giffen, Mr., quoted, 470, 485

Girondists, the, compared with the Irish Nationalists, 293

Gladstone, Mrs., 282

Gladstone, Herbert, Lord, Chamberlain on, 265; negotiates between his
father and Labouchere, 214-17, 261-303, 312-55

Gladstone, William Ewart, 407; his Egyptian policy, 71, 189, 190,
194-219; his first administration, 85, 86, 136 _n._; his position in
the Bradlaugh case, 148, 151-55, 158, 160; his tribute to Bradlaugh,
160-61; Labouchere dubs him "Grand Old Man," 158; opposes coercive
measures in Ireland, 165, 166, 173-75, 225, 236, 238; Labouchere's
admiration of, 171, 176; adopts coercive measures in Ireland,
175-189; his second administration, 194, 297; rebukes Labouchere,
219; Chamberlain regarded as the successor of, 225, 227, 249, 281,
318, 321, 348; his resignation in 1885, 251; his Irish policy prior
to the Home Rule Bill, 252-320, 361; in Norway, 257; Labouchere on
his motives in the Irish question, 262, 281, 288, 298, 304, 308, 313,
318, 326, 329, 419; his capacity for mystification, 265, 278, 283,
335, 347, 350; his third administration, 269 _n._, 283, 315, 317
_n._, 357; submits Home Rule scheme to the Queen, 270, 287 _n._, 288;
Healy on, 272, 274, 283-86, 290, 303, 314, 315, 361-63; Parnell on,
278; his desire for office, 281-82, 288; his letters to Balfour _re_
Home Rule, 289, 298; Chamberlain on, 298-300, 326, 334-35, 340, 342,
346; his popularity, 305, 351; Chamberlain secedes from, 318-355;
introduces the Land Bill, 321; his first Home Rule Bill, 319-357,
413, 416, 419, 420; his letters to Labouchere _re_ the Triple
Alliance, 411; his fourth administration, 412, 420, 423; his letters
to Labouchere _re_ his exclusion from his Cabinet, 412-18; his second
Home Rule Bill, 421, 422, 528; his final view of the House of Lords,
422-23; his retirement, 96 _n._, 274, 315, 354

Glasgow, Chamberlain at, 323

---- Home Government Association of, 156

_Globe_, its interview with Labouchere on the fall of Rosebery's
Ministry, 424; publishes the Cyprus Convention, 192

Godin, Stephen Peter, 14 _n._

Gold fields of South Africa, 427

Goldney, M.P., Sir Gabriel, 146, 150

Gonesse, 140

Goodenough, Sir William, death of, 437

Gordon, Colonel Bill, his conversation on Egypt, 72

Gordon, General, 72; Arabi on, 222; as Governor-General of the
Soudan, 209; his death at Khartoum, 212-15

Gordon, Sir Arthur, 222

Gorst, Sir John, Healy on, 284; opposes Gladstone's motion in favour
of Bradlaugh, 155

Gortschakoff, Prince, at the Berlin Congress, 192

Goschen, Viscount, negotiates with Hartington, 281, 282, 297, 348; on
the Coercion Bill, 185; returned for Edinburgh, 265; unpopularity of,
262

Goschen-Joubert arrangement with Egypt, the, 191, 206

Gosling, Sir Audley, his reminiscences of Labouchere, 39, 65, 65 _n._

Got, of the Comédie Française, 120

Graduated Income Tax, the, Labouchere on, 246, 247

Graham, General, his command in the Soudanese War, 213, 219

Graham, W., counsel for the _Times_, 374 _n._

Grant, Parliamentary agent at Windsor, 75

Grantham, M.P., Mr., 146, 150

Granville, Lord, 121; consulted by Gladstone _re_ Arabi, 204; denies
responsibility for the defeat of Hicks Pasha, 209

Grattan, his Parliament, 254, 258, 306

Gravelotte, battle of, 124

Greeks, Labouchere on the, 191, 496

Green, Paddy, waiter at Evans', 29, 70

Greene, Conynghame, British agent at Pretoria, 442-43, 444

Gregory, Sir William, his interest in Arabi, 221

Grenville, Lord, ministry of, 6-7

Grey, Albert, his amendment of the Church Patronage Bill, 243

Grey, Lord, director of the British South Africa Company, 428;
ministry of, 6-7

Griffiths, his valuations in the Land Court, 181

Grosvenor, Captain, M.P., for Westminster, 80

Grosvenor, Lord Richard, Government Whip, 146; Healy on, 314;
Labouchere on, 305, 315, 316; on the Coercion Bill, 179, 180

Guinness, Lord, Labouchere on, 239-40

Guizot, M., on France, 292, 480


Haag, Frères, _La France Protestante_, 1

Habeas Corpus Act, question of its suspension in Ireland, 165-70

Hague, The, birth of P.-C. Labouchère at, 2

Halliday, dramatic author, 99

Hame, General, surrenders Laon, 127

Hamilton, Lord George, his election for Middlesex in 1868, 85-92

Hammond, Anthony, 19 _n._

Hanbury, M.P., Robert, death of, 83

Hannen, Sir James, President of the Parnell Commission, 373

Hanover, Crampton, envoy at, 45; Napoleon's plans for, 9

_Hansard_, speeches of Labouchere in, 197

Harcourt, Sir William, 407; at his best in Opposition, 409, 424;
Healy on, 260, 274, 289; his Coercion Bill, 170, 175, 180, 181, 184,
188; Labouchere on, 287, 313, 323, 334, 344; moves a new Address, 425
_n._; on the Michelstown meeting, 365; sits on the Committee on
British South Africa, 427

Hardie, Keir, Labouchere on, 533

Harold, Canon, 404

_Harper's Magazine_, biographical sketch of Labouchere in, 38

Harrington, 312; Healy on, 276

Harris, Rutherford, director of the South Africa Company, 426

Harrison, Morley on his Irish scheme, 309

Harrow, education at, 42

Hart Davies, Thomas, visits Labouchere in Florence, 535-37

Hartington, Lord, as Secretary for War questioned on the Egyptian
policy, 213, 214, 219, 220; Chamberlain on, 264, 270, 271, 286, 329;
Churchill on, 269, 281; Goschen negotiates with, 348; Healy on, 260,
283, 363; his Irish policy prior to the Home Rule Bill, 257-98; his
meeting _re_ Home Rule, 344 _n._; his quarrel with Churchill, 278,
282; Labouchere on his position in the Home Rule split, 268, 278,
282, 287, 297, 304, 315, 318, 324, 329, 344, 351; Parnell forgeries
shown to, 375, 406; secedes from the Liberal party, 228, 249

Hastings, Labouchere at, 338, 339

Hatfield, Lord R. Churchill at, 286, 287

Hatton, Joseph, his biographical sketch of Labouchere, 38, 40, 103

Haussman, M., 126

Havana, 31

Hawarden Castle, Gladstone at, 301, 415

---- Manifesto, issue of the, 257

Hawkesley, Mr., solicitor, his correspondence with Chamberlain, 429
_n._, 452-53

Hawtrey, Dr., headmaster of Eton, 18; Labouchere on, 20-21

Healy, Timothy Michael, agitates for Home Rule, 254-303; Davitt on,
258; his amendments of the Coercion Bill, 177, 179, 181, 185, 186;
his attack on Chamberlain's article, 255 _n._; his letters to
Labouchere _re_ coercive measures in Ireland, 361-64; his letters to
Labouchere _re_ Home Rule, 252, 256, 259-60, 271-72, 273-74, 283-85,
289-90, 301-3, 309-15; on Parnell, 253-54, 266, 280

Heath, Labour candidate for Nottingham, 93

Heim, Van Der, Dutch statesman, 6

Heine, Heinrich, 538

Herbert, Dr. Alan, in Paris during the siege, 120

Herbert, Edward, at Constantinople, 63

Herschell, Farrer, his mediation views on the Home Rule question,
338, 340-43, 347; Solicitor-General, 146, 150, 186

Hesse family, the, 54

Hibbert, John Tomlinson, 76 _n._

Hicks Beach, Sir Michael, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, 357;
Bannerman on, 455; Churchill's scheme for, 270; his Amendment of the
Budget Bill, 251; on the Select Committee on British South Africa, 427

Hicks Pasha, defeat and death of, 210-11, 213, 214

Hill, Dr. Birkbeck, contributes to the _World_, 107

Hill, Frank, editor of the _Daily News_, 96, 286

Hill, M.P., Staveley, 146, 150

Hillyer, Mrs., sister of Henry Labouchere, 17 _n._

Hoare, Sir Henry, contests Windsor and is unseated, 75-82

Hodson, Henrietta, appears at the New Queen's Theatre, 99;
Labouchere's letters from Paris to, 129.  _See_ Mrs. Labouchere.

Holborn Casino, the, 105

Holker, M.P., Sir John, 146, 150

Holland, invasion of, 4; Louis Buonaparte as king of, 4-9

Homburg, Labouchere at, 54, 65, 69, 72, 95, 119, 242, 419, 525

Home Rule Bill, introduction of, 527; Labouchere on, 167, 189, 225,
236-39, 508, 521.  See also Ireland.

Home Rule Split, the, its effect on Labouchere, 227

Hope, M.P., Beresford, 146, 150

Hope, house of, its dealings with America, 15; John Peter Labouchere
as a partner in, 16; P.-C. Labouchère as a partner in, 2-5

Hope, John, takes P.-C. Labouchère into partnership, 2

Hopwood, M.P., Mr., member of Select Committee on Bradlaugh case,
146, 150

House of Lords, abolition of the, advocated by Labouchere, 226,
230-33, 238-42

Household Suffrage Act, the, its effect in Northampton, 143

Houston, E. C., his purchase of letters from Pigott, 375, 380, 385,
386, 389, 396, 405

Howard, Lady Mary, her marriage, 14

Hudson, Sir James, English Minister at Turin, 61

Hugessen, Mr. Knatchbull-, Labouchere on, 239

Hungarians, English enthusiasm for, 284

Hunter, Mr., in Hyde Park, 363

Hyde Park, demonstration against the Coercion Bill in, 363;
Labouchere on, 84

Hylands, P.-C. Labouchère settles at, 13

Hyndman, Mr., defends Socialism against Labouchere at Northampton,
459-90


Iddesleigh, Lord.  _See_ Northcote, Sir Stafford.

Illingworth, Radical M.P., 345

Illinois, educational system of, 42

Imperial Parliament, Labouchere on an, 293, 299-301, 304, 336, 422

---- South African Association, the, 436

Income Tax, the, Labouchere on, 207, 246, 249, 466

_Independence Belge_, 429 _n._

India, English rule in, 135; Labouchere on, 197, 201, 204

Individualism _v._ Collectivism, discussed by Labouchere and Hyndman,
464, 465, 480, 487

Industrial Commission of South Africa, 447

International Law, studied by Labouchere, 81

Ipswich, Labouchere at, 333

Ireland, agriculture in, 292; Churchill in, 283, 289;
disestablishment of the Anglican Church in, 86, 88; Labouchere's
political sympathy for, 72, 225, 247, 248, 508, 521, 523; landlordism
in, 261, 264-65, 276, 292, 361-62; Protection in, 258, 261, 276-77;
question of coercive measures in, 165-89, 225, 251-52,313, 318-19,
329, 358-72; question of Home Rule for, 167, 189, 225, 236-39,
416-17, 419, 421-22, 508, 521, 523; correspondence on, 250-356;
secret societies in, 171, 177

Irish Nationalist party, the, 266, 293; Conservative advances to,
251, 252; English feeling against, 165-66, 175, 240-41, 258, 285-86

---- patriots in Boston, Labouchere among, 47, 48

---- police force, Labouchere on, 276, 292, 316

---- Privy Council, Labouchere on, 276, 277, 282, 294

_Irish World, The_, 310

_Irishman_, Parnell's purchase of the, 374

Irving, Sir Henry, appears at the New Queen's Theatre, 99, 102;
mistaken for the defeated candidate at Brentford, 92

Irwin, District Police Inspector, 370

Ismail, Khedive, his claim on the Soudan, 209; his rule in Egypt,
190-95, 209

Ismail Bey Jowdat, W. S. Blunt on, 215, 216

Ismail Sadyk, murder of, 193

Ismailia, Lord Wolseley at, 208

Italian-Turkish War, the, 538

Italian unity, England's support of, 284

Italy, England's relations with, in the Triple Alliance, 410, 411


Jackson, Mr., 427

Jackson, M.P., Sir Henry, 146, 150

Jacobin party, the, 293

Jamal-ed Din, Sezzed, W. S. Blunt on, 216

James, of Hereford, Henry, Lord, 351; Attorney-General, 146, 148,
150; counsel for the _Times_, 374 _n._; his letter to Labouchere _re_
retirement, 525

Jameson, Dr., history of his Raid, 426-36, 438, 452, 454

Jerrold, Douglas, at Evans', 29

Jerusalem, Labouchere at, 111, 112

Jeyes, S. H., _Mr. Chamberlain_, 189

Joan of Arc, 244

Johannesburg, capture of, 454; grievances of Englishmen in, 426, 427,
431-34, 442, 443, 451

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, _Life of_, 29; quoted, 108

Jordan, the, Labouchere at the source of, 112

Joubert, his arrangement with Goschen,191

_Journalistic London_, by Joseph Hatton, 38, 104 _n._

Jowdat, Ismail Bey, W. S. Blunt on, 216

Justice, 474


Kensit, John, his action against Labouchere, 500

Kératry, Prefect of Police, 127

Kerry, Buller in, 361, 362

Kew Bridge, Labouchere at, 91

---- Palace, Labouchere on, 409

Khalil Pasha, outwitted at whist, 58

Khartoum, 72; Gordon at, 212-14; the Mahdi at, 216

Khedival Domains Loan, the, 193

Khedives, rule of the, 193-200, 205, 207-8, 224

Kidderminster, 525

Kilkenny, 265

Kilmainham Gaol, Parnell's imprisonment in, 172-74, 187, 276, 372

Kimberley, relief of, 441

Kinglake, W., his history of the Crimean War, 62

Kingstown, Pigott's home at, 376, 402

Kipling, Rudyard, his _Lest We Forget_ parodied, 448

Kirkcaldy, Campbell M.P.  for, 208

Kitawber, Labouchere joins a circus at, 39

Kolli, Baron, police agent, 10

Kordofan, the Mahdi at, 209

Kruger, President of the Transvaal, 435, 442, 446, 448, 453


Labouchere, Henry, his inheritance from his uncle, 14, 250; his
recollections of Talleyrand, 14; mistaken for a son of Lord Taunton,
15; his love for America, 14-15, 41-42, 44, 225; his birth and
education, 16-22, 491; his alleged cribbing at Cambridge, 22-27; his
propensity for gambling, 22, 29, 30, 35, 47, 55, 65-66, 70, 491, 514;
his life at Evans', 28-31, 70; at Wiesbaden, 30; travels in South
America, 31-38, 496; follows a circus, 39, 40, 491; lives with the
Chippeway Indians, 40-41, 45; imbibes Radicalism in America, 41, 226;
as attaché at various embassies, 53-60, 66, 69, 412, 491; lives in
Florence during his appointment to Parana, 60-62; as Secretary in
Constantinople, 62; elected for Windsor and unseated, 75-83; as M.P.
for Middlesex, 83-93; his protests against extravagant finance, 84,
246-47, 409; contests Nottingham, 93; his proprietorship of the
_Daily News_, 95, 492; his managership of the New Queen's Theatre,
98-104, 491, 496; as financial editor of the _World_, 106, 491, 492;
his editorship of _Truth_, 110, 117, 492-512; visits the Holy Land
with Bellew, 11-12, 496; his reminiscences of Dumas, 113-14; his
curiosity as a journalist, 114-18; his lawsuits, 117, 500-2; his
experiences in Paris during the siege, 43, 96, 106, 119-41; as member
for Northampton, 142 _et seq._; his support of Bradlaugh, 144-64;
opposes coercion in Ireland, 166-90, 225, 363-64; his Egyptian
policy, 196-204, 205-20; his defence of Arabi, 203, 204-5, 207,
220-26; his conception of Radical government, 225-49, 530-34; his
admiration for Chamberlain, 225-26; his Parliamentary influence, 250,
520, 521; negotiates between the Irish party and the Liberals,
252-356, 421-22; _see also under_ Chamberlain, Gladstone, Hartington,
Parnell, etc.; at Twickenham, 356; at Michelstown, 365-71; discovers
Pigott's forgeries, 360, 371-406; hoaxes practised on, 406-8; at his
best in Opposition, 409, 423; on the Triple Alliance, 410, 418; his
exclusion from the Cabinet in 1892, 412-18, 527; at Cadenabbia,
418-21, 423, 515, 533-34; his desire to become Minister at
Washington, 423; his opposition to Lord Rosebery's administration,
423, 424; his report on the Jameson Raid, 426-32; on the Chartered
Company of British South Africa, 431-34; opposes the Boer War,
438-457; discusses Socialism with Hyndman at Northampton, 459-90; his
chief characteristics, 496-499, 512-15; his retirement and home at
Florence, 517-36; his appointment as Privy Councillor, 523, 526,
530-31; on the seating of the House of Commons, 527-30; his death and
burial, 536-40

Labouchere, Henry, son of Pierre-César, his political career, 13-15.
_See_ Taunton, Baron

Labouchere, John Peter, father of Henry, 14, 16; his death, 130 _n._;
visits his son at Cambridge, 27

Labouchere, Rev. John, 21 _n._

Labouchere, Matthieu, 2

Labouchere, Mrs., mother of Henry, letters from Paris to, 128 _n._,
130, 138

Labouchere, Mrs., wife of Henry, at the New Queen's Theatre, 99;
death of, 535

Labouchère, Pierre-César, grandfather of Henry, his partnership in
the house of Hope, 2-5; his portrait, 2 _n._; his two sons, 13, 16;
negotiates for peace between England and France, 4-12; restores
French credit, 12, 13

Labour party, rise of the, 518, 531

Labour _v._ Capital, discussed by Hyndman and Labouchere at
Northampton, 460-90

La Bruyère, on married life, 93

Ladies' Land League, work of the, 173, 186

Ladysmith, relief of, 440-41

Lambri Pasha, 150

Lancashire opposes Home Rule, 280

Land Bill, the, 159, 421-22; amendments of, 187; Chamberlain on, 329;
Labouchere on, 292, 318, 320, 332; Healy on, 309; rejection of, 357

Land League, the, establishes Boycotting, 165; its "no Rent"
manifesto, 172; its suppression, 172-75; its useful functions, 171,
358 _n._; prosecution of, 166; the _Times_ on, 360, 382; two sections
of, 182, 186

Land system, English, Labouchere on the, 231, 234, 235, 241

Landlordism in Ireland, Labouchere on, 276, 292, 295, 318

Laon, Prussian army at, 127

Lascelles, Sir Frank, announces the deposition of Ismail, 194

Last, Parliamentary agent at Windsor, 76, 81

_Last Days of Pompeii_, produced at the New Queen's Theatre, 100

Latham, examiner at Cambridge, 24

Lausanne, Pigott at, 385

Lawley, Frank, correspondent in Paris during the siege, 120, 138
_n._, 140

Lawson, Lionel, at Evans', 29

Lawson, Mr. Justice, 277

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, his amendment seconded by Labouchere, 205, 213;
his letter to Labouchere, _re_ retirement, 524-25; seconds
Labouchere's resolution against the House of Lords, 241

Laycock, contests Nottingham, 93

Leech, John, at Evans', 29

Leeds, Balfour at, 524; Herbert Gladstone at, 263

_Leeds Mercury_ on Home Rule, 256; publishes Gladstone's Home Rule
scheme, 277 _n._

Lefevre, Shaw, 266; Labouchere on, 200-1

Legislation, the technique of, Labouchere on, 229

Leicester, Chamberlain at, 270

Lennox, Lord Henry, his opposition to Bradlaugh, 146, 150, 156

Levi, Leone, quoted by Labouchere, 470, 484

Lewis, Sir George, as solicitor to Labouchere, 108, 501, 510; as
solicitor to Parnell, 375-79, 386-89, 393-98; his death, 536

Liberal, party, its breach with the Irish, 172, 179, 187, 252-53; its
policy in Egypt, 190, 194-224; its treatment of Gladstone, 284

---- Unionist party, the, 422; Chamberlain joins, 228

Licences, Brewers', Labouchere on, 83

_Life of Parnell_, O'Brien's, 174

Limited Liability Companies, Labouchere on, 465-67

Lincoln, Mass., Egan at, 381

Linton, Mrs. Lynn, on the staff of the _World_, 107

Lobengula, raid on King, 433

Local Government, Chamberlain on, 264, 265, 311; Labouchere on, 167,
265

Lockwood, Mark, 455

London, death-rate of, 463, 482-83; Ismail Bey Jowdat in, 216;
Labouchere's homes in: Albany, 78; Bolton Street, 110, 116; Hamilton
Place, 13-14; Old Palace Yard, 39, 224; Portland Place, 16; Queen
Anne's Gate, 71, 158, 177; Labouchere's knowledge of, 104, 105; P.-C.
Labouchère's mission in, 4

Londonderry, Lord, as Viceroy of Ireland, 357

Long, quoted by Hyndman, 481

Louis XIV., religious persecutions of, 1

Louis XVIII., his ministers, 12

Louis of Bavaria, King, in Munich, 49

Lowe, Mr., his clause in the Public Schools Bill, 84

Lowther, James, his Irish policy, 176, 178

Lucy, Sir Henry, _More Passages by the Way_, 3 _n._; on Labouchere's
political influence, 250; on Labouchere's retirement, 526, 527; on
the staff of the _World_, 107, 527; _The Balfourian Parliament_, 440

Lugard, Captain, in Uganda, 421

Lumley, Augustus, cotillon leader in St. Petersburg, 57

Lush, Lord Justice, his judgment against Bradlaugh, 157

Lydon, John and Margaret, 168, 169

Lying Clubs, Labouchere on, 117-18

Lynch, Quested, in Paris, during the siege, 138 _n._

Lyons, Lord, in Paris and Tours, 121

Lyons, M.P., Dr., on the membership for Northampton, 149

_Lyre, The_, proposed title for _Truth_, 493

Lytton, Lord, his information _re_ the Berlin Congress, 192 _n._


Maamtrasna, affair of, 263

M'Carthy, Justin, Churchill on, 279, 286; _Daily News Jubilee_, 128
_n._; Healy on, 276; his defence of Arabi, 196; on the staff of the
_Daily News_, 279

M'Carthy, Rev. Mr., at Michelstown 366

McCulloch, Mr., quoted, 408

McCurdy, C. A., on Labouchere and Bradlaugh, 162-63

Macdonald, _Diary of the Parnell Commission_, quoted, 383 _n._, 384
_n._, 393 _n._, 402

McKinley, President, 439

Macmahon, Marshal, at Metz, 123-24

Madelin, Louis, _Fouché_, 10 _n._

Madras, 221

Madrid, British Embassy in, 83; Pigott's suicide in, 401, 405

Magersfontein, 445

Maguire, Mr., 428

Mahdi, the, rebellion of, 208-20

Malet, Sir Alexander, British representative at the Diet of
Frankfort, 55,69

Malet, Sir Edward, 69; as Consul-General in Egypt, 209

Mallet, T. L.; his journal, 13 _n._

Malta, negotiations for the possession of; 8; reinforcement of its
garrison, 197

Malthusianism, Bradlaugh's views on, 144; Hyndman on, 460

Manchester, 97; Chamberlain at, 323; death-rate of, 463

_Manchester Guardian_ on Home Rule, 256

Manning, Cardinal, supports Bradlaugh, 156

_M.A.P._, 117; on Labouchere's retirement, 521 _n._

Marburg, Labouchere in, 59, 60

Marcy, Mr., American Secretary of State, his love of whist, 49

Marie Louise, Empress, her marriage, 4, 5

Marienbad, Campbell Bannerman at, 455; Labouchere at, 526

_Marseillaise_, the, 127 _n._

Marshall, Alfred, _Principles of Economics_, quoted, 482

Marvin, translator of the Cyprus Convention, 192

Marx, Carl, quoted by Hyndman, 481

Maryborough prison, 384

Mashonaland, occupation of, 433

Massey, W. H., M.P., 146, 150

Matabele War, the, 433, 434

Matthew, Mr. Justice, his judgment against Bradlaugh, 157

Matthews, Mr., counsel, 76 _n._

Maxau, 122 _n._

Maxwell, Sir Benson, superintends Egyptian tribunals, 209

Maxwell, Sir William of Monteith, 16

May, Sir Thomas Erskine, Clerk of the House, 145

Mayo, Lord his English agent, 165

Meagher, Irish patriot, Labouchere mistaken for, 48

Medicine, Labouchere's interest in the science of, 60, 507

Melbourne, Lord, his _laissez-faire_ policy, 229; ministry of, 13; on
the Garter, 241

Meredith, George, _Richard Feverel_, 522

Merewether, lawyer, contests Northampton, 144

Merivale, Herman, his anecdote of Labouchere and his uncle, 82; his
_Time and the Hour_ produced at the New Queen's Theatre, 98, 99

Mersey, Lord, 428

Metz, Napoleon III. at, 122 _n._, 123

Mexico, Labouchere in, 32-38, 72, 100, 496

Michael Angelo, Labouchere modernises the villa of, 72

Michelstown, police charge at, 365-70

Middlesex, Labouchere as member for in 1867, 83-86, 99, 143;
Labouchere contests unsuccessfully in 1868, 85-93, 525

Middlesex Coal Dues, the, Labouchere on, 85

Mijwel el Mizrab, Sheykh, 72

Milan, decree of, 9

Military Knights of Windsor, Labouchere on, 83

Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 247, 481, 482

Miller, Joaquin, 40

Milner, Alfred, Lord, as Commissioner for South Africa, 435, 442; as
Governor of Cape Colony, 437, 442, 445, 448, 456; his _England in
Egypt_ quoted, 210

Minneapolis, Labouchere at, 41

Mississippi steamboats, the, 106

_Modern Egypt_, Lord Cramer's, 213

Mohamed Ahmed.  _See_ Mahdi

Molière, Marie-Madeleine, 2

Mollerus, Dutch statesman, 6

Moltke, rumour of his death, 134

Monarchy, English, Labouchere on, 230-31, 233, 242-43

Moncrieff, Colonel Scott-, directs the irrigation of Egypt, 209

Monson, Sir Edmund, his letter to Labouchere _re_ retirement, 526

Mont Blanc, 44

Monteith, Maxwell of, 16

Montes, Lola, 49

Montreal, Healy at, 310

Moonlighting in Ireland, 173

Moore, Messrs. Telbin and, 98

More's _Utopia_, 489

Morgan, Osborne, his speeches on Ireland, 260

Morley, Arnold, his mediation on the Home Rule question, 322, 334,
338-43.  347; part proprietor of the _Daily News_, 95

Morley of Blackburn, John, Earl, Chamberlain on, 299, 302, 326;
Davitt on, 257-58; his letters to Labouchere _re_ Home Rule, 317,
327, 331; his _Life of Gladstone_ quoted, 365 _n._, 371, 382, 422;
his resignation, 325; his views on Home Rule, 309, 322, 329, 332,
333; Labouchere on, 282, 324, 327; on Gladstone's Egyptian policy,
190; opposes coercion in Ireland, 173

_Morning Post_, Bowles correspondent in Paris of the, 141 _n._;
Grenville Murray as correspondent of, 67; on Labouchere's retirement,
521-22

"Moss, Moses," 505

Mott's Foley Street rooms, 105

Moulton, Mr. Gladstone's letter to, 353

Mountmorres, Lord, murder of, 165

Mudford, journalist, 278

Mulgrave, Lord, Viceroy of Ireland, 251

Mulhall, Mr., statistician, 485

Mundella, Minister for Education, 285

Munich, Labouchere as attaché in, 49, 50

Murat, Joachim, as King of Naples, 8, 9

Murphy, David, cashier, 396

Murphy, Serjeant, at Evans', 29; counsel for the _Times_, 374 _n._

Murray, Grenville, betrays official secrets in the _Morning Post_,
67-68; his action against Lord Carrington, 110 _n._; on the staff of
the _World_, 109


Nantes, P.-C. Labouchère at, 2

Napier, Mr., his defence of Arabi, 222

Naples, kingdom of, 8

Napoleon I., his ideal woman, 246; Labouchere on, 480; negotiates for
peace with England, 5-12

Napoleon III.  at Metz, 122 _n._, 123-24; his imprisonment, 122,
124-25, 126; his plan of campaign, 122 _n._, 123

Natal, war spirit in, 437, 438, 449

National, debt, Labouchere on the, 475, 477

---- income, the, Labouchere on, 465

_National Reformer_, Bradlaugh's statement of his case in the, 146-47

Nationalisation, of land, Labouchere on the, 235

---- of railways, Labouchere on, 486, 487

Navy, Labouchere on the, 478

Neutrality Law, Labouchere on the inadequacy of the English, 81

Newcastle, 478

Newgate, Labouchere's description of, 114-15

Newman, Cardinal, his position in regard to Bradlaugh, 156

Newmarket, Labouchere at, 22

New Mexico, Pueblas of, 486

New Queen's Theatre, Labouchere as manager of, 98-104

Newton, Mr., censure of, 428

New Windsor, Labouchere's election for, 75-82

New York, 106; Healy in, 310; Labouchere in, 41

_New York Herald_, 382, 526

Nice, Labouchere at, 95, 97

Nicholas, Emperor, Lord Stratford's hatred of, 63

Nicholson's Nek, 440

_Nineteenth Century_, Cardinal Manning's article in the, 156

Nolan, M.P., Colonel, 146, 150; his returns, 302

Nolte, Vincent, his reminiscences of P.-C. Labouchère, 3, 4 _n._

Nonconformists, their anti-Irish feeling, 306

Norfolk, Labouchere in, 22

Norman, Henry, 278

_North Briton_, 164

North Camberwell, Labouchere at, 247

Northampton, Bradlaugh returned for, 142-45, 149, 151-52, 157;
Hyndman at, 459; industrialism of, 462, 467; Labouchere, M.P. for,
14, 105, 106, 116, 142-45, 148-49, 158, 159, 161, 167, 225, 410,
415-18, 459, 465, 503; Labouchere's retirement from, 518-527; Liberal
and Radical Association, its tribute to Labouchere, 539-40

_Northampton Echo_ quoted, 162

_Northampton Mercury_ quoted, 143, 144 _n._

Northbrook, Lord, 13 _n._

Northcote, Sir Stafford, his motion against Bradlaugh, 146, 152-55;
his motion on the Egyptian policy, 213

Norway, Gladstone in, 257

Nottingham, contested by Labouchere, 93

Nubar, his Premiership, 193-94


O'Brien, R., Barry, his articles on the Irish question, 257; his
_Life of Lord Russell of Killowen_, 391 _n._; his _Life of Parnell_
quoted, 252 _n._, 257 _n._; on the murder of Lord F. Cavendish, 174-75

O'Brien, Smith, his Irish rising, 48

O'Brien, W., 312; Healy on, 276, 363; his influence in Ireland, 533;
his Irish policy, 256

O'Connor, John, at Michelstown, 365

O'Connor, Mrs. T. P., her reminiscence of Labouchere among the
Indians, 40-41

O'Connor, T. P., on the Coercion Bill, 178; on Labouchere's
retirement, 520-21; supports the Tories _re_ Home Rule, 261, 266

Odessa, Grenville Murray as Consul at, 68, no

O'Donnell, F. H., his case against the _Times_, 372-74, 392

O'Donoghue, The, on Labouchere, 169

O'Kelly, James, Pigott forgeries of his letters, 386, 394, 396

Ollivier, French Premier, resignation of, 124

Onslow, M.P., David, 146

Oppenheim, Henry, 287; part proprietor of the _Daily News_, 95

Orange Free State, annexation of the, 445, 449, 454, 456

Orangemen oppose Home Rule, 291, 294, 345

_Orinoco_, s.s., 31

Orthez, home of the Labouchere family, 1

Orton, Arthur, dines with Labouchere, 116

O'Shea, Captain, Healy on, 276; his supposed share in the forged
letters, 373, 381; negotiates between Parnell and Gladstone, 173

O'Shea, J. Augustus, correspondent in Paris during the siege, 141 _n._

Osman Digna captures Tokar, 213

Ostrogotha, Duchess of, her baby's birth, 53

Otrante, Duc d'.  _See_ Fouché.

Ouvrard, tool of Fouché, 10-12

Oxford, Henry Labouchere the elder at, 13


Palikao, Count, French Premier, 124

_Pall Mall Gazette_, Bingham correspondent in Paris for, 141 _n._;
inspired by Gladstone, 278; Morley's editorship of, 173; refuses
Pigott forgeries, 375, 406; Stead's letter in, 411; W. S. Blunt's
defence of Arabi in, 222

Palmerston, Lord, 46 _n._; his agreement with Murray, 67-68

Palmyra, Labouchere at, 72

Palto at Twickenham, 356

Parana, Republic of, Labouchere's appointment to, 60

Paris, British Embassy in, 83, 120; death of Grenville Murray in, 110
_n._; headquarters of the Land League in, 172, 181, 182, 186;
Labouchere in, 30, 31; Labouchere's letters to London during the
siege of, 43, 44, 96, 106, 119, 124-41; Louis Buonaparte in, 8;
Parnell letters in, 385, 386, 389; P.-C. Labouchère summoned by
Napoleon to, 11-12; Pigott in, 394-95, 396, 401; public parks of, 84;
Queen Christina in, 245

Parish Councils Bill, the, 422, 479

Parliament, House of Commons, extravagance of, 410; payment of
members of, 229, 230; reasons for entering, 74; seating accommodation
of, 527-30; triennial election of, 229, 248

Parliament, House of Lords, abolition of, 226, 230-33, 238-42, 248,
417, 422, 425 _n._, 527, 531-34; its obstruction of the Home Rule
Bill, 290

Parliamentary, journalist, Labouchere as, 504

---- Oaths Act, the, its bearing in the case of Bradlaugh, 145, 151,
155, 157, 160

Parnell, Charles Stewart, speaks in favour of Bradlaugh, 153; as
president of the Land League, 165, 166, 177, 182, 358 _n._; his
imprisonment and release, 172-74, 252, 254; his position as Irish
leader during the Home Rule struggle, 173-189, 236, 237, 252-356; his
confidence in Labouchere, 250; Lord Carnarvon treats with, 252; his
motives discussed by Healy, 254, 266, 271, 274, 276, 285, 290, 362;
Davitt on, 257-58; Chamberlain on, 266-67, 317; Labouchere on, 273,
280, 312, 314-17, 332, 337: his letters to Labouchere _re_ Home Rule,
275-76; on Gladstone, 278; introduces the Land Bill, 357; publication
of his supposed letters in the _Times_, 359-60, 361, 371; his
amendment to the Speech from the Throne, 369; denies the authorship
of his supposed letters, 372-73, 397; his defence by Sir C. Russell,
374 _n._, 375, 392-98; his unpopularity in America, 378; his letters
to Labouchere _re_ the Pigott forgeries, 383-84

Parnell Commission, the, history of, 360, 373-97

Parnell, Miss, president of the Ladies Land League, 173

Paul, Herbert, _A History of Modern England_, quoted, 195 _n._, 209
_n._; on Arabi, 195-96

Peace Preservation Bill, the, 172

Pearl, Cora, in the siege of Paris, 43

Pease, Maker, 353

Peel, Arthur Wellesley, 76 _n._, 270

Pelletan, M., member of the Provisional Government, 127

Pemberton, M.P., Mr., 146, 150

Peninsular War, the, 5-8

_Penny Illustrated Paper_, interview with Labouchere in, 529 _n._

Perceval, Mr., ministry of, 6-7

Percy, Lord, his attitude to Bradlaugh, 146, 149

Persia, despotism of, 469

Peruvian bondholders, 212

Peter the Hermit, 217

Petty Bag, office of, Clerk of the, 246

Phillips, Lionel, director of the South Africa Company, 426

Phipps, brewer, contests Northampton, 144

Picard, Ernest, member of the Republican Government, 117

Piccadilly Saloon, the, 105

Pichegru invades Holland, 4

Pigott, Richard, Healy on, 309-10; his sale of the _Irishman_ to
Parnell, 374; his forgery of the Parnell-Egan correspondence,
373-406; his confession to Labouchere, 394, 402; his flight and
suicide, 394, 402-406

Pisani, Alexander, as head of the Diplomatic Chancellerie,
Constantinople, 64

Pitt, William, 287; his graduated income-tax, 247

Plato, 489

Plunkett, Mr., 410

Poland, English sympathy with, 284; Ireland compared with, 189

Polynesia, industrialism of, 486

Ponsonby, Sir H., 319

Pope, Alexander, his villa at Twickenham, 40

Portland, Duke of, ministry of, 6

Port Said, occupation of, 201, 267

Portugal, destiny of, 9

Post Office, Labouchere on the, 478; nomination of Labouchere for, 412

---- ---- Savings Bank, Labouchere on the, 477

Pretoria, British agent in, 442; capture of, 440, 445-46, 454;
Jameson's imprisonment in, 434

Prevention of Crimes in Ireland Bill, passing of the, 175, 185-190,
248

Primrose League, the, its misstatements _re_ Pigott, 404

Privy Council, the, Labouchere becomes a member of, 523, 526, 530, 531

Procedure Resolutions, the, 187

Promissory Oaths Act, the, 155

Protection, Labouchere on, 531, 533; Parnell's attitude to, 258, 261,
276-77

---- of Life and Property in Ireland, Forster's Bill for, 166-74

Prussia, Crown Prince of, advances on Paris, 123, 127

Public Schools Bill, the, Labouchere on, 84

Puebla di los Angelos, Labouchere at, 34

_Punch_, reminiscences of Labouchere in, 526, 527

Pursebearer, office of, 246

Pythagoras, Labouchere on, 515, 516


_Queen's Messenger_, Labouchere's proprietorship of the, denied, 110

Queensberry, Sybil, Lady, 72

Quotla di Amalpas, Labouchere at, 36, 38, 62


Radical Party, the, Chamberlain's secession regarded as its fall,
228, 250, 318, 319, 352, 354; its attitude to the Egyptian policy,
196, 198-200, 212, 215, 217-19, 249; its attitude to Socialism,
462-89; its sympathy with Ireland, 72, 225, 248, 252, 318; its
treatment by the Irish, 252; Labouchere as unofficial leader of, 196,
198, 525; Labouchere's ideals for, 225-48, 259, 304, 318, 319, 525

Radical principles, Labouchere's, their divergence from Whig
principles, 42

Rawson, Henry, part proprietor of the _Daily News_, 97

Reade, Charles, as a dramatic author, 101-2

Recruiting, system of, in America for the Crimean War, 45

Redmond, J. E., as leader of the Irish party, 524, 533

Redpath, American Fenian, 170

Reed, correspondent of the _Leeds Mercury_, 272

_Referee, The_, 537 _n._

Reform Club, the, Labouchere at, 75, 89, 182, 198, 228, 318

Registration Laws, the English, 448

Reid, Wemyss, 393

Reitz, Dr., Secretary of State for the Transvaal, 444, 447, 451

Religious Disabilities Removal Bill, the, 160, 163-4

Rent Act, 421

_Reporter_, interview with Labouchere in, 477

Representation of the People Bill, the, Labouchere on, 244

Revelstoke, Lord, as a politician, 240

Reynolds's newspaper, 471

Rhodes, Cecil, his complicity in the Jameson Raid, 426-30, 452, 453;
his Imperialism, 435; Labouchere's personal admiration of, 430, 435,
436; Labouchere's public condemnation of, 430-1

Rhodesia, 435

Riaz Pasha, administration of, 195, 221

Ripon, Lord, his government in India, 210

Roberts, Earl, at Eton, 18; his command in South Africa, 441, 445

Robertson, manager of the Royal Aquarium, his libel action against
Labouchere, 501

Robertson, M.P., J. M., his account of Bradlaugh's parliamentary
struggle, 142 _n._

Robinson, Lionel, on Labouchere's financial interest in the _Daily
News_, 96

Robinson, Sir John, _Fifty Years of Fleet Street_, quoted, 133 _n._;
manager of the _Daily News_, 96, 120, 128 _n._; on the syndicate of
the _Daily News_, 95

Rochdale, 484; Chamberlain at, 322

Rochefort, Henri, release and triumph of, 127, 130

Roell, Dutch statesman, 6

Roman Catholicism in Ireland, Labouchere on, 86

Roman Catholics delighted by Gladstone's article against Darwin, 267;
support Bradlaugh, 156

Rome, 535; Fouché, Governor of, 11, 12

Ronan, counsel for the _Times_, 374 _n._

Rosebery, Earl of, as Foreign Secretary, 420, 423; Chamberlain on his
Home Rule policy, 298; his letters to Labouchere _re_ Home Rule, 268,
277, 283, 287, 307; his Premiership, 423, 424; Labouchere on, 224

Rosmead, Lord, his work as Commissioner in South Africa, 428, 429

Rossa, O'Donovan, 284, 310

Rothschild, Baron, as a politician, 240; his Egyptian loans, 190,
191, 193, 194, 206; procures Labouchere a pass, 140

Rouen, Labouchere at, 120

Rouher, M., on the French army, 123

Rousby, Mrs. Wybert, appears at the New Queen's Theatre, 99, 102

Rousseau, J.-J., on his own education, 21

Rovigo, Duc de, Napoleon's aide-de-camp, 11

Royal Aquarium, Westminster, Robinson manager of, 501

Royal Parks and Pleasure Grounds, Labouchere on the upkeep of, 84, 409

Rudini, Marchesa di, daughter of Labouchere, 535, 539~40

Rumbold, Sir Horace, meets Labouchere at Constantinople, 63

Ruppenheim, Schloss of, Labouchere at, 54

Russell, Charles (Lord Russell of Killowen), his defence of
Labouchere, 501; his defence of Parnell, 374 _n._, 375, 378, 384,
389-98, 402; on the Coercion Bill, 182

Russell, Lord John, Foreign Secretary, appoints Labouchere to Buenos
Ayres, 65; checks Labouchere's information from St. Petersburg, 59

Russell, Odo, in Paris during the siege, 120

Russians, the, Labouchere's opinion of, 56, 57; their method of
playing cards, 58

Ryder, Mr., in _The Last Days of Pompeii_, 100-1


Saarbrück, French Army Corps at, 124

St. Anthony's Falls, 41

St. Augustine, _Confessions of_, 21

St. Cloud, Napoleon at, 10

St. James's Club, Labouchere's membership of, 70

St. James's Hall, Home Rule meeting at, 324, 327

St. Martin's Hall, 98

St. Patrick, Order of, 241

St. Paul, Labouchere at, 40

St. Petersburg, Crampton Ambassador at, 46 _n._; Labouchere as
attaché in, 52, 55-60

St. Thomas, Labouchere at, 32

Sala, George Augustus, at Evans', 29; his reminiscences of
Labouchere, 99, 116; witnesses Pigott's confession, 394, 398-401

Sale of Liquor on Sundays Bill, the, 83

Salisbury, Marquis of, attends the Berlin Congress, 191, 192; his
Egyptian policy as Foreign Secretary, 191-4, 221, 223; Irish policy
of his first administration, 251, 257, 270, 271, 274, 286 _n._, 288,
305; Churchill's letter to, _re_ Home Rule, 279-80, 298; his defeat
and resignation, 317 _n._; as leader of the Opposition, 319, 344,
347; his second administration, 357, 406, 409, 411; his third
administration, 438; on the Transvaal, 441, 450, 451

Sampson, city editor of the _Times_, Labouchere's attacks on, 107

San Francisco, Healy in, 310

Sardinia, kingdom of, 61

Sardou, _La Patrie_, 103

_Saturday Review_ on Labouchere, 513

Saunders, Labouchere on, 352

Sazary, Napoleon's aide-de-camp, 11

Schalk, Burger, President, 456

Scholl, Aurélien, 120

Schreiner, Mr., 449

Schwarzenberg, Prince, Premier of Austria, Palmerston's grudge
against, 67

Scudamore, F. I., on the staff of the _World_, 107

Sculthorpe Rectory, Fakenham, 21 _n._

Seagrove, Captain, at Michelstown, 368, 369, 372

Secret Societies in Ireland, 171, 177

Sedan, battle of, 125, 127

Selby, Lord, his letter to Labouchere _re_ retirement, 524

Sexton, his imprisonment, 172, 174; his services in the Irish party,
260, 261, 315, 363; on the Coercion Bill, 178, 187

Sezzed Jamal ed Din, 216

Shakespearian revivals announced by Labouchere, 104

Shannon, solicitor, Pigott's letter to, 395, 401

Shaw, George Bernard, 496

Sheffield, attaché in Paris, 120

_Sheffield Telegraph_ on Bradlaugh, 145

Shekan, battle of, 210, 212

Sheppard, Jack, relics of, in Newgate, 115

Sherif Pasha, administration of, 209

Shipman, Dr., M.P.  for Northampton, 519

Sicily, kingdom of, 8, 9

Simla, Lord Lytton at, 192 _n._

Simon, Jules, member of the Provisional Government, 127

Simon, M.P., Serjeant, 146, 150; defends Forster's Irish Bill, 169

Simpson, Palgrave, part author of _Time and the Hour_, 98 _n._

_Sixty Years in the Wilderness_, by Sir H. Lucy, quoted, 250 _n._

Smith, Barnard, his complaint against Labouchere for cribbing, 23-26

Smith, J. G., at Northampton, 489

Smith, Librarian in the House of Commons, 301

Smith, Sir Archibald Levin, member of the Parnell Commission, 373

Smith, W. H., on the Coercion Bill, 187

Soames, Mr., solicitor, concerned in the Parnell forgery case, 360,
385, 389, 395, 401, 405

Social Democratic Federation, programme of the, 474-76

Socialism, Labouchere's attitude to, 418, 458-89

Socrates, Labouchere on, 516

Soissons, 123 _n._

Soudan, the, Gordon as Governor-General of, 209

---- War, the, 209-18, 434

South Africa, Labouchere's sympathy with, 259

South African Republic.  _See_ Transvaal.

South America, Labouchere's visit to, 31-8

Southampton, 441

Southwark, representation of, 93

Spain, kingdom of, 8, 199

Spencer, Lord, as Viceroy of Ireland, 174, 178, 181, 184, 186, 267,
317, 320

Spender, James, Montagu White on, 447, 448

Spezia, Labouchere at, 109

Spion Kop, 441

Stael, Madame de, questions Napoleon on his ideal woman, 246

Stamforth, John, contests Athlone, 525

_Standard, The_, on Home Rule, 256; O'Shea correspondent in Paris
for, 141 _n._; publishes Gladstone's Home Rule scheme, 277 _n._, 286
_n._

Stanley, Hon. Frederick, 76 _n._

Stansfield, 338

Stead, William, his letter in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, 411

Stewart, Colonel, his information _re_ Hicks Pasha, 210

Stewart, Patrick, 170

Stockholm, Labouchere's duel while attaché in, 50, 51, 72

Stormberg, 440

Strassburg, French army at, 122 _n._

Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, as Ambassador at Constantinople, 62,
63, 68

Stratford-on-Avon, Mr. Flower of, 75

Stroud, Labouchere at, 332

Stuart, Professor James, speaks against the Coercion Bill, 363

Suakim, political importance of, 214-18

Suez Canal, the, political importance of, 199, 201, 204, 206

Suffrage, Adult Manhood, Labouchere on, 229-48

---- Woman, Labouchere's opposition to, 244-46

Sugden, Charles James, Labouchere's letter to, _re_ prefaces, 537

Swansea, Chamberlain at, 189

Sweating Committee, the, 471

---- in Government offices, 478-79

Sweden, Queen of, 53

Swift, Dean, on cattle-maiming, 169

Sydney, N.S.W., 393


Talana, battle of, 440

Talavera, battle of, 7

Talleyrand, Prince, presents Labouchere with a box of dominoes, 14

Tariff Reform, Labouchere on, 532

Taunton, Henry Labouchere the elder M.P. for, 13, 14-15; Sir Henry
James M.P. for, 525

Taunton, Henry, Baron, differentiates between himself and his
brother, 16; is invited to assist his nephew at Windsor, 82;
Labouchere declines to inherit his title, 251; political career of,
13-15, 67

Taxation on food and drink, Labouchere on, 236

Taylor, Tom, _Joan of Arc_, 102; _Twixt Axe and Crown_, 99

Telbin and Moore, Messrs., 98

Tel-el-Kebir, battle of, 70, 198, 218

_Temple Bar_, "Over Babylon to Baalbek," 113

_Temps, Le_, on Lord Rosebery, 420

Terry, Ellen, at Twickenham, 356; in the _Double Marriage_, 99

Tewfik, Khedive, his rule in Egypt, 194, 211

Thackeray, W. M., 497; at Evans', 29

Theatre-goers, Labouchere on, 101, 102

Therapia, British Embassy in, 83

_Thérèse Raquin_, 338

Thesiger, Q.C., acts as counsel for Abbot _v._ Labouchere, 108, 109

Thiers, _Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire_, 10 _n._

Thistle, Order of the, 241

Thornton, banker, 16

Thornton, Edward, Labouchere's letters to, 518, 530-31

Thornton, Godfrey, 14 _n._

Thornton, Rev. Spenser, 14 _n._

Tichborne case, the, Labouchere's reminiscences of, 116

_Time and the Hour_, production of, 98-99

_Times, The_ Arabi's letter to, 222; Bell manager of, 436;
denunciations of its city edition by Labouchere, 108; its case
against O'Donnell, 371-74, 392; its case against Parnell, 377-94; its
correspondents in Paris during the siege, 141 _n._; Labouchere denies
proprietorship of _Queen's Messenger_ in, 110; Labouchere's letters
in, _re_ his exclusion from the Cabinet, 415; Labouchere's letters
to, _re_ Home Rule, 291-98, 304, 309, 356; Labouchere's letters to,
_re_ the Income Tax, 246; on Home Rule, 256, 293; on Labouchere's
letters from Paris, 119; on the Middlesex election of 1868, 87-89,
92; on "Parnellism and Crime," 358-60, 364-65, 367, 371; on the
Windsor election petition, 78-80; publishes Gladstone's Home Rule
scheme, 277 _n._; publishes supposed letters from Parnell, 359,
371-75, 405; quoted, 438; report of Soudanese War in, 219

_Times' History of the War in South Africa, The_, quoted, 429 _n._,
437 _n._, 456 _n._

Tipperary, 135

Tokar, conquest of, 213

Tonsley, Mr., 415

Toole, J. L., plays at New Queen's Theatre, 99

Tory democrats, Labouchere on, 248

Toulba Pasha, exile of, 221

Tours, Crawford correspondent at, 120, 121

Trades Unionism, Labouchere on, 471

Trainbearer, office of, 246

Transvaal, English population of, 426, 428, 436, 437; its invasion by
Dr. Jameson, 426-37

Trevelyan, Sir George, 150, 407; Healy on, 267, 303; on the Coercion
Bill, 180, 188

Triple Alliance, the, Labouchere's opinions on, 410, 418

Trochu, General, Commander-in-chief in Paris, 125, 129; Labouchere's
estimate of, 136, 137

_Truth_, Grenville Murray's "Queer Stories," 109; Horace Voules as
manager and editor of, 493-512; Labouchere's editorship of, 14, 106,
109, 110, 117, 493-511; Labouchere's reminiscences of youth in, 17
_n._, 20 _n._, 30-46, 53 _n._, 91; libel actions against, 472,
499-502; on the Boer War, 445 _n._, 446, 455, 457; on Bradlaugh, 161;
on Chamberlain, 228; on the Chartered Company of B.S.A., 431-34; on
the Egyptian policy, 200, 202, 204-5; on his exclusion from the
Cabinet, 415; on hoaxes, 405-8; on Home Rule, 287, 315; on the House
of Commons, 529-30; on India, 200; on the Irish question, 187-89; on
Lord Dudley, 525; on the Michelstown murders, 369, 370; on the Pigott
forgeries, 375, 404, 405; on owning a dog, 419; parody of _Lest We
Forget_, in, 448; Queen Victoria's dislike to Labouchere's
proprietorship of, 414; "The Ghastly Gaymarket," 105 _n._

Tryon, Sir George, at Eton, 18

Tunis, French occupation of, 192

Turin, Nationalist sympathies in, 61

Turkey, its intervention in Egypt, 194-202; its relations with
England, 196-97, 199; leases Cyprus to England, 191, 192

Turner, Colonel, in Ireland, Healy on, 361

Tuscany, deposition of the Grand Duke of, 61, 62

Twickenham, Labouchere at, 40, 323-28, 333, 354, 356, 408

_Twixt Axe and Crown_, produced at New Queen's Theatre, 99


Uganda, English policy in, Labouchere on, 421

Uitlanders, grievances of the, 426, 427, 437, 442, 451

Ulster, opposition to Home Rule in, 280, 284, 291, 299, 345

_United Ireland_, 255 _n._, 257, 309

United States of America, salary of the President, 42

Usedom, Countess d', caricature of, 70


Valencay, Kolli at, 10

Vandort, Dr., physician to Arabi Pasha,220

_Vanity Fair_, 492

Vansittart, Mr., contests Windsor, 76, 77

Venezuela, 434

Venice, Labouchere at, 111

Vera Cruz, Labouchere at, 32-35, 38

Verdun, Bazaine at, 124

Versailles, Labouchere at, 139, 140; Prussian army at, 127, 128, 139,
140

Victor Emmanuel II., Labouchere's reminiscences of, 62

Victoria, Queen, 85; Gladstone submits scheme for Home Rule to, 270,
277, 286 _n._, 288; her Civil List, 234; her objection to
Labouchere's inclusion in the Ministry, 67, 413-15; King Louis of
Bavaria inquires for, 49

Vienna, Grenville Murray attaché in, 68; Labouchere in, 529; public
parks of, 84

Villa d'Este, Labouchere at, 535, 536

Vinoy, General, in Paris, 128 _n._, 136

Vivian, Lord, as Consul-General in Egypt, 194

Voisin's, Paris, 139

Voltaire, Labouchere's neutrality compared with, 220, 513

_Voltaire_ on Labouchere, 412

Voters' Bill, a, Healy on, 273

Voules, Horace, his editorship of _Truth_, 493-512

Vulpera Tarasp, Labouchere at, 45, 454

Vyse, Colonel, contests Windsor, 76


Waddington, M., at the Berlin Congress, 192 _n._

Wady Halfa, 217

Wagner, F.S.A., Henry, his "Labouchere Pedigree," 14 _n._

"Wait and See" policy, the, Chamberlain on, 300

Walcheren, expedition to, 6

Walker, John F., 106-7

Walpole, Sir Robert, declines a decoration, 241

Walpole, M.P., Spencer, chairman of Select Committee on Bradlaugh
case, 146, 150

Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, Churchill on, 282; his relations with
Pigott, 381, 392, 404

Walter, case of O'Donnell _v._, 372, 373-74

War Loan Bill, the, 441

Warr, Lord de la, his interest in Arabi, 221, 223

Warrington, Chamberlain at, 257, 258

Wars of Religion, the, 1

Warton, M.P., Mr., on Bradlaugh, 149, 163

Washburne, Elihu, American Ambassador in Paris during the siege, 43

Washington, Labouchere as attaché at, 39, 45-46, 72; Labouchere's
ambition to become Ambassador at, 71, 423

Waterhouse, Major, 76 _n._

Waterloo, battle of, 42, 57

Webster, Sir Richard, Attorney-General, on Parnell's supposed
letters, 372-73, 386, 395, 397, 406; his examination of Pigott, 386-89

Weissenburg, battle of, 123

Welby, Lord, on Labouchere at Eton, 18

Wellesley, Lord, English Foreign Secretary, P.-C. Labouchère's
mission to, 5-10

Wellington, Arthur, first Duke of, in the Peninsula, 7; on the battle
of Waterloo, 42, 57

West, Sir Algernon, at Eton, 18

Westminster, Duke of, on the Irish party, 315

---- Hall, Women's Suffrage Petition in, 246

Westmoreland, Earl of, as Ambassador in Vienna, 68

Whalem, Bridget and Patrick, 168-69

Wharton, Mr., 427

Whewell, Master of Trinity, encounters Labouchere, 27-28

Whig party, the, Labouchere on, 229, 248, 305

Whig principles, their divergence from Radical principles, 42

Whist as a diplomatist's game, 49, 55, 58

Whitbread, M.P., Mr., 146, 150

White, Mr., on the Triple Alliance, 411

White, Montagu, Labouchere's correspondence with, 446-49, 451, 455

Wicklow, Parnell at, 258

Wiesbaden, Labouchere at, 30, 54

Wigan, Alfred, comedian, part manager of the New Queen's Theatre, 98

Wilkes, John, his struggle for political liberty, 163, 164

Williams, M.P., Watkin, 146, 150

Williams, Deacon, Thornton and Labouchere, bank of, 16

Willoughby, Captain, his part in the Jameson Raid, 426

Wilson, Sir Rivers, as English Commissioner and Finance Minister in
Egypt, 193, 194, 206

Wilton Park, Bucks, 16

Winchilsea, Lord, on the staff of the _World_, 107

Winchester, Thorold, Bishop of, 2 _n._

Windsor, Labouchere elected for, and unseated, 70, 74-83, 95, 493

Wingfield, Lewis, in Paris during the siege, 138 _n._

Winterbotham, chairman at Stroud, 332

Wodehouse, English Ambassador in Paris during the siege, 43

Woking, Dilke at, 327

Wolff, Sir Henry Drummond, his motion against Bradlaugh, 146, 147,
150, 163

Wolseley, Garnet, Viscount, his mission in Egypt, 197, 208

Wolverhampton, Lord.  _See_ Fowler, Sir H.

Wolverton, Lord, on Chamberlain and the Irish party, 337

Women, votes for, Labouchere's opposition to, 244-47, 517

Wood, Sir Evelyn, his command in Egypt, 209

Woollaston, examiner at Cambridge, 24

Woolwich, Chamberlain at, 323

_World, The_, Labouchere's connection with, 94, 106-11, 492, 495, 527

Wörth, battle of, 124, 127

Wyndham, Charles, at New Queen's Theatre, 99

Wyndham, George, member of the South Africa Commission, 427, 435, 436


Yarmouth, 6

Yates, Edmund, at Evans', 29; editor of the _World_, 492, 502; on
Labouchere as a contributor, 106-11


Zanzibaris, troop of, in Uganda, 421





[Transcriber's Notes: 

Unusual and incorrect spellings have been left as printed.

Page numbers are surrounded by curly braces, e.g. {123},
footnotes by square brackets, e.g. [4].









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