Gladstone and Disraeli

GLADSTONE AND DISRAELI, The Second Reform Bill.—Lord Russell became prime min ister on the death of Palmerston, but it was plain that Gladstone would succeed to the leadership of the Whig-Liberal party in the near future, and that Lord Derby would similarly pass on the leadership of the Tory-Conservatives to Disraeli. The main mo tive of the politics of 1865-68 is the manoeuvring of Gladstone and Disraeli, in a House of Commons elected to support Lord Palmerston, for the succession to Palmerston's position as ruler of England. The principal by-product of these manoeuvres was the Second Reform Bill (1867) which doubled the electorate and gave the vote to the artisans in the borough constituencies, thus enfranchising the bulk of the factory workers but not the miners and agricultural labourers. Chartism had expired amid ridicule in 1848, but very soon after that date leading members of both parties had begun to speculate upon an extension of the franchise, and various abortive bills had been introduced. Palmerston's in difference or dislike had postponed the issue, and his death im mediately brought it within the range of practical politics. Rus sell and Gladstone introduced a moderate and colourless meas ure in 1866, which suffered serious amendment at the hands of the Conservatives and anti-Reform Liberals (nicknamed "Adul lamites") , whereupon Russell's government resigned. Derby took office, and in 1867, of ter parting with three anti-Reform col leagues (one of them the future Lord Salisbury) carried an alter native Reform Bill, establishing "Household suffrage" in the bor oughs, and lowering the franchise more guardedly in the county constituencies. The bill had been drastically amended in a demo cratic direction by Liberal proposals which Disraeli accepted and made his own, for both parties were bidding for the support of the new electorate. Lord Derby claimed that he had "educated his party," and "dished the Whigs." But the election had to be postponed till the new registers were ready, at the end of 1868. That year was marked by the activities of the Fenians, the new Irish physical force party, and Gladstone cleverly announced a policy of disestablishing the Irish Protestant Church. English electors hoped that this concession would abate the Irish nuisance, and Gladstone secured a majority of about a hun dred. Of the next twelve years Gladstone had the first six.

Gladstone.

Gladstone's first Irish measure, the disestab lishment and partial disendowment of the Irish Church, in volved a conflict with the House of Lords, the most serious since the first Reform bill. The Lords accepted disestablish ment but prepared to fight for the preservation of a larger fraction of the endowment. Gladstone, who never lost all his early Conservatism, worked hard and successfully for a com promise, actively supported by the queen. The next year (187o) witnessed the passing of an Irish Land Act designed to protect the tenant from "undue and unjust" eviction. It was in effective, and its importance lay not in settling a very difficult problem but in indicating chat the problem had got to be solved. In 1873 an unsuccessful attempt was made to provide an Irish University so constituted that British taxpayers would be willing to support it and Irish Catholic bishops to accept it. Ireland was not conciliated by any of these measures and "coercion" (i.e., suspension of some of the normal privileges of British freedom) proved as inevitable under Gladstone's government as under nearly all other governments of the 19th century.

The principal legislative achievement of Gladstone's first gov ernment was the great Education Act of 187o. Its author, W. E. Forster, was a son-in-law of Dr. Arnold of Rugby and brother-in law of the poet and essayist Matthew Arnold, whose long and unobtrusive career as a school inspector rendered valuable service to state-aided education. The government grant to "voluntary" schools (i.e., schools established by the Church of England and other bodies) had steadily grown since its inception in 1833, and in 187o about half the children of the country received some sort of elementary education. The Act of 187o did not supersede this system, but filled in the gaps in it by erecting schools offering non sectarian "simple Bible teaching," paid for out of local rates, and controlled by locally elected School Boards, which were em powered to make education compulsory in their localities. We may add here that elementary education was made compulsory throughout the country in 188o, and the small fees charged in many schools were abolished in 1891.

Among other measures of the 1868-74 government, Oxford and Cambridge degrees were thrown open to Dissenters, the civil service was thrown open to competitive examination, the army was reorganized by Cardwell and the system of purchasing com missions abolished, and the ballot was introduced for parlia mentary elections. It may be doubted if this last measure was of much value in England; the time when it was needed had gone by, for voters had no longer cause to fear penalties at the hands of their employers. In Ireland, however, its effect was important and unforeseen. By releasing the Irish voter from the inquisition of his landlord it called into existence the Irish Nationalist party.

In the sphere of foreign policy Gladstone had been unable to prevent or to influence the course of the momentous Franco German War (q.v.), though he secured from both parties an undertaking to respect the neutrality of Belgium. His concession to Russia of her right to rebuild Sevastopol as a naval base was a retreat, and retreats, even from untenable positions selected by one's predecessors, are never popular. Equally unpopular, though eminently wise, was his treatment of the Alabama question. The Alabama had been a privateer of the rebel Southern States of U.S.A., equipped in the Mersey, and allowed to leave British waters by the negligence of Palmerston's government. American demands for compensation were somewhat insulting in tone, and the controversy had long dragged. Gladstone got the matter re ferred to an international tribunal and paid the damages awarded. It was an important precedent for the use of arbitration in in ternational disputes. (See "ALABAMA" ARBITRATION.) Disraeli.--A cascade of political reforms is apt to terminate "gratitude for favours to come" and to offend those whom the reforms either irritate or disappoint. Disraeli expressed the sentiments of many when he accused his rivals of "plundering and blundering" and apostrophised the Treasury bench as a "range of exhausted volcanoes." His party secured a sound ma jority in the election of 1874. The new prime minister (soon to go to the House of Lords as earl of Beaconsfield) had described his policy as "the maintenance of our institutions, the preserva tion of our empire, and the improvement of the condition of the people." The third of these promises took shape in an Artisans' Dwellings Act, an important new departure in that it called in local public authorities to remedy the defects of unscrupulous private enterprise in housing. There was also an important Trade Union act, to be dealt with below. But for the greater part of its existence the energies of the government were monopolised by a series of foreign and imperial ventures.

The first and most formidable of these was the Balkan crisis of 1875-78. This was the first general nationalist rising of the Balkan peoples against Turkish rule. Russia, whose championship of distressed Balkan peoples was never very clearly distinguish able from imperialist ambition, went to war with Turkey (1877) and her armies advanced up to the defences of Constantinople. Gladstone supported the Balkan peoples on Liberal and moral grounds and looked forward to the expulsion of the Turk "bag and baggage" from the provinces he had misruled. Beaconsfield cham pioned the Turkish Empire as a first line of defence of the British Empire in India. War between Great Britain and Russia was narrowly avoided, but a risky policy was carried with remarkable skill to a triumphant conclusion, and the questions at issue were settled by a European Congress at Berlin (1878), from which the prime minister returned with compliments from Bismarck and "peace with honour." (See BERLIN, CONGRESS AND TREATY OF.) Beaconsfield's first and most popular imperial venture was the purchase (1875) of a majority of the shares in the Suez Canal Company from the bankrupt Khedive of Egypt. The Khedive's bankruptcy also involved other and less welcome entanglements. His creditors were mainly British and French, and in 1879 the two governments established a "Dual Control" over Egyptian finance. Khedive Ismail proved restive and was deposed, making way for the docile Tewfik. Meanwhile trouble had already come to a head on the Indian frontier. Russia had been intriguing in Afghanistan, and the Viceroy, Lord Lytton (son of the popular novelist), insisted that the Amir should accept a permanent Brit ish resident at Kabul. He refused and an Afghan campaign es tablished a resident, whose murder entailed a second Afghan campaign. In South Africa the Transvaal, declared independent in 1852, was re-annexed by a stroke of the pen in 1877, partly with a view to a future South African Federation and partly to facilitate the suppression of the barbarous and aggressive Zulus. The Zulu war of 1879 achieved the latter objective, not without a tragic and avoidable military disaster at Isandlwhana.

Gladstone had nominally retired from politics in 1874, but "Beaconsfieldism," with its reckless disregard (as he held) of the rights of Bulgarians, Afghans and Zulus, called him back to the fray in the mood of a crusader. His "Midlothian campaign" of oratory in the last weeks of 1879 created a profound impression, and the election of 188o gave the Liberals a decisive victory. Disraeli died in 1881. It was an amazing career which had carried the Jewish novelist and dandy, reluctantly accepted as a leader by the "gentlemen of England" in their rebellion against Peel, to the premiership of one of the strongest of British ministries. Gladstone was to live longer and, in a sense, to fare worse. Among the aspects of Beaconsfield's government his relations with the queen must not be forgotten. Courtesies more than oriental pleased even while they amused, and Victoria emerged at last from the long and unpopular seclusion in which she had venerated the memory of Albert. The way was prepared for the sentimental enthusiasms of the Jubilee period.

Industrial Legislation.

The middle part of the period cov ered by this section was a very important one in the history of Labour Legislation. A case in the courts in 1867 decided that trade unions were "illegal" associations and therefore were unable to sue their officials even though (as in the case at issue) their officials embezzled their funds. It so happened that various criminal assaults on "blacklegs" had recently concentrated un favourable attention on the Unions, and a Royal Commission had been appointed to investigate them. It now became necessary to divert this Commission from its original purpose, and to secure from it a report recommending the "legalising" of unions. The Labour case was ably conducted by Thomas Hughes, Frederic Harrison and Applegarth, a trade union secretary, and a favour able Report secured. The Trade Union Congress was established (1868) to press for legislation on these lines. Gladstone's gov ernment enacted a bill (1871) which carried out the recommenda tions of the Commission but at the same time made all the usual forms of picketing illegal. A new agitation had now to be under taken and carried on into the general election (1874), when 15 "working-men candidates" stood and two were elected. The new electors of the Second Reform Bill, who had supported Gladstone in 1868, turned over in large numbers to the Conservatives, and Disraeli responded with the Act of 1875 which legalized "peace ful picketing," and was reckoned as the charter of trade union liberties down to the end of the century. In the same year an Employers and Workmen Act abolished imprisonment of work men for breach of contract and thus placed employees on the same legal footing as their employers.

Another notable agitation of these years, supported by trade unions all over the country, was that led by Samuel Plimsoll to restrain the dangerous overloading of merchant ships. The "Plim soll line" was enacted by the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876, another measure of the Conservatives. None the less the work ing-men M.Ps. henceforth conducted themselves as members of the Liberal party—"Lib-Labs" as they came to be called by Labour politicians of a later generation who stood for socialism and the independence of labour.

The most notable extension of trade unionism in these years was the Agricultural Labourers' Union of Joseph Arch. But this and other unions that catered for the worse-paid trades were se verely curtailed by the period of acute trade depression that began in the middle 'seventies and lasted till 1888. The causes of this depression, fixed like a great gulf between mid-Victorian and late-Victorian prosperity, were many. America and Germany were beginning to copy our industrial methods and to dispense with our exports. British capital began to flow abroad more freely than before. The substitution of steel for iron, by lengthening the life of rails and other goods, diminished the rate of renewals, and a series of inventions in the metal trade processes involved the scrapping of costly plants and the substitution of Spanish and other foreign iron ores for the inferior products of British mines.