La Madeleine Feb. 9, 1884
You make writing as difficult as living afar, by your unspeakable goodness, but also by the infusion of the contrary quality. If I promise not to attack the Government, and to believe in Lord Derby, will you agree not to hit me so hard? I cannot well help doing what I do, taking all things into consideration; and as to my tiresome book,[208] please to remember that I can only say things which people do not agree with, that I have neither disciple nor sympathiser, that this is no encouragement to production and confidence, that grizzled men, except ——, grow appalled at the gaps in their knowledge, and that I have no other gift but that which you pleasantly describe, of sticking eternal bits of paper into innumerable books, and putting larger papers into black boxes. There is no help for it. But your reproaches are much moredistressing to read than you suppose, and make me think them better to read than to hear. Otherwise, I too would have a dream, to describe, and wish that yours came true from January 1 to December 31.
George[209] did not catch me at Marienbad, and came from Munich in a big box, only the other day. I had partly read him, but I was in a difficulty about thanking you for it with full honesty as long as I only knew it casually, by unhallowed copies. But I do thank you, if I may do so even now, most gratefully for the kindness of it altogether, and particularly for your belief that I should understand it, and care for it apart from the sender. Although in this you have flattered me; for there are points in which I dare say I do not like him as much as you do.
Do not think ill of the people they call academic Socialists. It is only a nickname for the school that is prevailing now in the German universities, with a branch in France and another in Italy, a school whose most illustrious representative in England, whose most eminent practical teacher in the world, is Mr. Gladstone. In their writings, inspired by the disinterested study of all classic economists, one finds most of the ideas and illustrations of Mr. George, though not, indeed, his argument against Malthus. This makes him less new to one; but nobody writes with that plain, vigorous directness, and I do believe that he has, in a large measure, the ideas of the age that is to come.
I am glad, too, that you like Seeley's book. It is excellent food for thought. But so is the first article in the JanuaryQuarterly.[210] I wrote eight pages of criticism and should have liked to send them toyou instead of Maine, but perhaps you have not read him.
Liddon's objection to saying what may damage a very meritorious body of surviving friends of Rosmini is practically reasonable; but it is rather a reason for not writing at all on the subject. Rosmini made a vigorous attempt to reform the Church of Rome. He was vehemently attacked, repelled, censured; and he defended himself in a work more important, argumentatively, than the first. If this dramatic incident is left untold, if his stronger statements are omitted from his case, we shall get an imperfect notion of a memorable transaction, and of an interesting, if not a great, divine.
I am so very glad that Mr. Gladstone is in his best health, and that the troubled times have put out of sight the notion of retirement. For that reason I could almost console myself in looking at the Soudan. That affair has been in the hands of a colleague without much original resource, attentive to the wind, and glad to follow the advice of local agents. It chances that I have been reading ——'s confidential letters written to a friend sure not to show them to Ministers; and I have thought him deficient in imagination—in the discovering faculty—and also in independence. There is no denying that there has been a lack of initiative genius in the last few weeks, and that Mr. Gladstone would have done more if Bonaparte had been his departmental colleague.
Of all critics of my list,[211] Lubbock is best informed in a vast region where I am a stranger. I by no means disregard his criticisms. I have not got the list myself, and should like nothing in the world so much as to sitwith you and talk over the objections you have collected. But will that, or will anything like it, ever be? If it may, do send one line on Tuesday to wait arrival at 18 Carlton House Terrace.
*****
18 Carlton House Terrace S.W. Feb. 13, 1884
Here is a ceremonious invitation to dine to-morrow, which I most gladly accept.
I gather, from something I have just heard, that Froude will not wish for the Professorship. As to Freeman, I am not quite sure. There can be no real competitor but Gardiner.
Dinner without any prospect beyond will be mere dust and ashes; but what awful fun Oxford[212] would be!
Feb. 15, 1884
... It was such a delight to meet the greatest of all our historians[213] at this particular moment. There never was so much kindness in this world. I can think of nothing but our journey, and the wretchedness of having only one day there. Of course I am going to live at the Clarendon. If any doubt arises, do not let it exist for a moment. Then I must visit the Bodley for an hour, and Stubbs, Liddon, M. Müller, Jowett, Brodrick, Bright of University.
But these are my private wanderings. Do remember that, and let them not spoil thecachetof their own grouping. As all passes through you, do take an opportunity to say how thankfully and joyously I accept his invitation.
La Madeleine March 17, 1884
May I employ the fleeting and disrespectful pencil to express sentiments of the most opposite kind? I am still so stupidly weak, unaccountably pulled by an illness which is an anachronism here, that I am afraid to wait till I am quite ripe for ink, to speak of the happy time I owed to your companionship in the two capitals of greater Britain. There has never been anything like it, and I wonder when there will again. Cambridge is in reserve; but nothing can ever equal the sensation of festive home among people I had never seen, that you procured for me at Keble. The worst recollection is the parting at Paddington. I chose my hour next day so badly that, coming at 6, I found your mother invisible, yourself out, and your sister gone. I have said nothing yet to M——; but I do look forward two months to another meeting. I am very glad that my last conversation with Mr. Gladstone left no worse impression, for in the obscurity of St. James I preached heavily on my favourite text: "après moi le déluge;" and on my favourite preacher.
Meanwhile the troublesome question of retirement is in a new phase. The half Reform bill is floated by a half pledge as to redistribution which is personal to himself. He cannot leave it to be redeemed by others, who, he expressly stated, are not parties to it. He is virtually pledged to complete the work himself; that is, to meet the next Parliament. For they will inevitably force him to dissolve in the autumn, if they do not succeed in crowding out the Reform question. If not carried by an immense majority, it will be carried by Irish votes. The Lords will be able to say that England ought to be consulted definitely, that it ought not to be overruled by Ireland, in an old Parliament, and that such a change in the Constitutionis not to be carried by enemies of the Constitution until the country has pronounced.
I don't imagine that it is a bad point to dissolve upon—at any rate, there is no swopping in such a crossing.
But I suppose he has abandoned the hope of himself retiring from Egypt, and if he does not, nobody else will; and so one must begin to face what is inevitable, and to acknowledge that the Soudan has altered our position in Egypt. A further complication cannot be far off. The best time to re-open the Turkish question will be whilst we are a little damaged as to disinterestedness by Cyprus and Egypt, whilst our increased security makes us less anxious and less nervous about Constantinople, and whilst the censor of the Turk resides at No. 10. The position in the East is so much altered since Berlin[214] that Russia will not long be bound by that Treaty, having a price by which Austria can be won. Every step of that sort will help to fix us in Egypt.
And as long as we are at Alexandria or even at Souakim, the future of Central Africa will depend on us, or at least on our people. I do not believe that Mr. Gladstone would revive John Company and send him to the Equatorial lakes; and yet I fancy there is an opening there for inventive statesmanship.
My eagerness about Liddon's elevation does not mean that my head was turned by the ambush of that deferential Sacristan at Oxford Station,[215] or that the Warden[216] talked me over—though he talked wisely. For I am not in harmony with Liddon, and scarcely in sympathy. He has weak places that nobody sees and resents so sharply as I do; and he has gotover, or swallowed, such obstacles on the road to Rome that none remain which, as it seems to me, he ought logically or legitimately to strain at. I will even confess to you alone—that that affair of Rosmini leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. But one might pick holes in any man, even in the new Bishop of Chester.[217] Nothing steadies a ship like a mitre—and as to his soundness, his determination to work in and through the Church, and not on eccentric courses, I satisfied myself with the supreme authority of Dean Church, on my last night in town. One cannot help seeing that Liddon is a mighty force, not yet on its level. He knows how to kindle and how to propel. Newman and Wilberforce may have had the same power, but one was almost illiterate; the other knows what he might have learnt in the time of Waterland or Butler; whereas Liddon is in contact with all that is doing in the world of thought....
*****
*****
La Madeleine March 30, 1884
... You ask a question on which I can express unexpected agreement. As long as property is the basis of representation, I think it hard to exclude female owners. There is an obvious principle in it, of course. But though obvious it is not stringent; because female influence is not excluded. We not only have no Salic Law, but we allow women to vote on matters not political, and we have attached political influence to property so closely, that rich old women, like the Duchess-Countess,[218] or Lady Londonderry, aredreadful powers in the land. The argument from consistency does not, therefore, make for exclusion.
At the same time, I think it an evil in many ways. Girls and widows are Tories, and channels of clerical influence, and it is not for them so much as for married women that your argument tells. If we ever have manhood suffrage—dissociating power from property altogether, it will be difficult to keep out wives. The objections to voting wives are overwhelming.
*****
You open a delightful vista of Colleges and Chapels at Cambridge. It is not so easy to answer quite definitely. If the Reform Bill, read a second time before Easter, is sent up by Whitsuntide, the division in the Lords will be early in June. My difficulty would then be that, having to come in June, I could hardly come to England in May. Supposing my Reform vote to be wanted only after Midsummer, then my probable plan would be to come to London by the middle of May; and I should be at your orders for Cambridge any time between 20th and 30th May....
Subject to these conditions, I shall be only too happy to escort you down to the Sidgwicks', to whom, please present my best thanks. If Maine is there, I dare say we can count on a luncheon there.... I am talking of myself and own plans; but all the time I am thinking of your cares and troubles, of which you say so little. If you can send me a line of good news to Rome, I shall be so glad.
La Madeleine June 19, 1884
You will be careful, another time, I hope, as to the enclosures you forward, seeing how long a reply they involve, and how great a delay. The difficulty which prolongs and has delayed my letterwill be very apparent to you before you reach the end.
First, as to the personal question:—
It was not my purpose to depreciate Canon Liddon. I came over with the highest opinion of him—an opinion higher perhaps than Dr. Döllinger's, or even than Mr. Gladstone's, whose ostensible preference for divines of less mark has sometimes set me thinking. Impressed by his greatness, not as a scholar to be pitted against Germans, but as a spiritual force, and also by a certain gracious nobleness of tone which ought to be congenial, I tried, at Oxford and in London, to ascertain whether there is some element of weakness that had escaped me.
Evidently, Liddon is in no peril from the movement of modern Science. He has faced those problems and accounted for them. If he is out of the perpendicular, it is because he leans the other way.
The question would rather be whether a man of his sentiments, rather inclined to rely on others, would be proof against the influence of Newman, or of foreign theologians like Newman.
On the road Bishops and Parliament were taking a few years since, there would be rocks ahead, and one might imagine a crisis in which it would be doubtful who would be for maintaining the National Church and who would not. I have chanced to be familiar with converts and with the raw material of which they are made, and cannot help knowing the distinct and dissimilar paths followed by men like Newman himself, Hope, Palmer, R. J. Wilberforce, Ward, Renouf, many of whom resembled Liddon in talent and fervour, and occupied a position outwardly not far from his own.
He once called the late Bishop of Brechin[219] the first divine in the Church. I knew the Bishop well, and am persuaded that the bond that held him in the Anglican Communion might easily have snapped, under contingencies to which he was not exposed.
Putting these questions not quite so crudely as they are stated here, I thought that I obtained an answer. At any rate, I was assured that Liddon is made of sterner stuff than I fancied, that he knows exactly where he stands, where others have stood before him, and where and why he parts with them; that the course of Newman and the rest has no secrets and no surprises for him; that he looks a long way before him, and has no disposition to cling to the authority of others. In short, it appeared very decidedly that he is—what Bishop Forbes was not—fixed in his Anglican position.
Under this impression, I could not help wondering why Wilkinson, Stubbs, and Ridding are judged superior to Liddon. I could have felt and have expressed no such wonder if I had not taken pains to discover that he has tried and has rejected the cause of Rome, and that neither home difficulties nor external influence are at all likely to shake him.
Far, therefore, from meaning disparagement, I rate him higher than any member of the English clergy I know; and touching the question of stability, I have the sufficient testimony of his friends, of men naturally vigilant on that point, of which I am not competent to judge or to speak.
So little competent, indeed, that I should be at a loss to define his system, or to corroborate, of my own knowledge, the confidence which others haveexpressed. It seemed to me necessary to indicate that, for myself, I could not speak without some qualification or reserve, such as perhaps would only occur to a close student of Roman pathology. To do more, will be giving undue and unfair prominence to a parenthesis. It lays stress where there ought to be none, makes the deduction, the exception, greater than the positive statement, and gives me the air of a man whose praise is designed to convey a slur of suspicion.
That is why your letter with its formidable enclosure has afflicted me with dumbness. The doubt which I indicated in writing to you has been suggested chiefly by what passed in reference to Rosmini.
You will remember that you sent Liddon word that Rosmini wrote a very long defence of the little book which he was translating. He preferred not to make use of the information and not to see the book; and he avoided the subject when we met at Oxford. The reason is, that the Rosminians wish the Defence to be ignored, as it qualifies the submission of the author when the book defended was condemned.
The suppression injures nobody; it only puts the readers of the translation slightly off the scent, and gives an imperfect article instead of none. There is some trace of complicity with those who are interested in asuppressio veri. But it may have been due, as he was under obligations to them, and this is only preliminary matter.
My real difficulty is, that he speaks of his author with great respect, and evidently thinks his doctrine sound and profitable.
Now Rosmini, allowing for some superficial proposals of reform, was a thorough believer in the Holy See. His book itself, by the nature of the reforms proposed, implies that no other defects of equal magnitude remain to be remedied. Apart from the Five points he accepts the papacy as it stands; and he has no great objection to it, Five points included.
He was what we vulgarly call an ultramontane—a reluctant ultramontane, like Lacordaire. An Anglican who views with satisfaction, with admiration, the moral character and spiritual condition of an Ultramontane priest, appears to me to have got over the principal obstacle on the way to Rome—the moral obstacle. The moral obstacle, to put it compendiously, is the Inquisition.
The Inquisition is peculiarly the weapon and peculiarly the work of the Popes. It stands out from all those things in which they co-operated, followed, or assented as the distinctive feature of papal Rome. It was set up, renewed, and perfected by a long series of acts emanating from the supreme authority in the Church. No other institution, no doctrine, no ceremony is so distinctly the individual creation of the papacy, except the Dispensing power. It is the principal thing with which the papacy is identified, and by which it must be judged.
The principle of the Inquisition is the Pope's sovereign power over life and death. Whosoever disobeys him should be tried and tortured and burnt. If that cannot be done, formalities may be dispensed with, and the culprit may be killed like an outlaw.
That is to say, the principle of the Inquisition is murderous, and a man's opinion of the papacyis regulated and determined by his opinion about religious assassination.
If he honestly looks on it as an abomination, he can only accept the Primacy with a drawback, with precaution, suspicion, and aversion for its acts.
If he accepts the Primacy with confidence, admiration, unconditional obedience, he must have made terms with murder.
Therefore, the most awful imputation in the catalogue of crimes rests, according to the measure of their knowledge and their zeal, upon those whom we call Ultramontanes. The controversy, primarily, is not about problems of theology: it is about the spiritual state of a man's soul, who is the defender, the promoter, the accomplice of murder. Every limitation of papal credit and authority which effectually dissociates it from that reproach, which breaks off its solidarity with assassins and washes away the guilt of blood, will solve most other problems. At least, it is enough for my present purpose to say, that blot is so large and foul that it precedes and eclipses the rest, and claims the first attention.
I will show you what Ultramontanism makes of good men by an example very near home. Saint Charles Borromeo, when he was the Pope's nephew and minister, wrote a letter requiring Protestants to be murdered, and complaining that no heretical heads were forwarded to Rome, in spite of the reward that was offered for them. His editor, with perfect consistency, publishes the letter with a note of approval. Cardinal Manning not only holds up to the general veneration of mankind the authority that canonised this murderer, but makes him in a special manner his own patron, joins the Congregation of Oblates ofSt. Charles, and devotes himself to the study of his acts and the propagation of his renown.
Yet I dare say I could find Anglican divines who would speak of the Cardinal as a good man, unhappily divided from the Church of which he was an ornament, and living in error, but yet not leading a life of sin—I should gather from such language that the speaker was not altogether averse from the distinctive characteristic of Ultramontanism, and had swallowed far the largest obstacle on the road to Rome.
The case of Rosmini is not so glaring, but it is substantially the same. Language implying that an able and initiated Italian priest accepting the papacy, with its inventory of systematic crime, incurs no guilt, that he is an innocent, virtuous, edifying Christian, seems to me open to grave suspicion. If it was used by one of whom I knew nothing else, I should think ill of him. If I knew him to be an able and in many ways an admirable man, I should feel much perplexity, and if I heard on the best authority that he deserved entire confidence, I should persuade myself that it is true, and should try to quiet my uneasiness.
That is what I have done in the case of Liddon. When he speaks of an eminent and conspicuous Ultramontane divine with the respect he might show to Andrewes or Leighton, or to Grotius or Baxter, he ignores or is ignorant of the moral objection, and he surrenders so much that he has hardly a citadel to shelter him. I dare say he would give me a very good answer, and I do not hesitate to utter his praises. But I have no idea what the answer would be, and so must leave room for a doubt.
I should hardly have resolved to say all this to anybody but yourself, relying on you not tomisunderstand the exact and restricted meaning of my letter. I should like my reason for misgiving to be understood. But I care much more to be understood as an admirer, not an accuser of Canon Liddon. My explanation is worthless if it fails to justify me there.
St. Martin Haute Autriche June 20, 1884
The idleness of Coombe Warren[220] has much to answer for. I was taken by surprise when you sent me that letter,[221] and would have given a great deal to escape the necessity of answering it. Ever since, it has stood grievously in the way of writing to you; and I have conquered my difficulty with extreme reluctance. Try to forgive my not writing—try, much harder, to forgive my writing.
*****
When I come I shall have to congratulate you on your authorship. I do not do so now, because it would be meaningless, the C.R.[222] being due here to-morrow only. I do hope you liked doing it, and like having done it, and like to think of doing it again.
I still think that we ought to evacuate;[223] but I thought there would be no time for Mr. Gladstone to do it, and no obligation on others. The convention is a very dexterous way of laying compulsion on the Ministers, whoever they may be, several years hence. It meets what I thought an insurmountable difficulty, if it succeeds, as I hope it will. But I cannot look with satisfaction on the principle as compensation for the risk of failure. The cause does not seem to me so sacred or so pure as to offer consolation for the fall of the Ministry.
It is an indefinite principle, depending for its application on variable circumstances. It is not clean cut. We retain certain ill-gotten possessions, obtained by treaty or by necessity. It is not evident that we should surrender a possession which is not ill-gotten.
Our motives for surrender are mixed. It is to relieve us from a very troublesome and very dangerous engagement, to avoid a formidable expenditure, to disarm the menacing jealousy of other Powers. The mixture of motives is obvious, and we are not in a position to claim the merit which belongs to the purest among them.
The Ministry would not be united for common action on this question, if the motives of expediency did not come to aid the motive of principle. The bit of gold has to be beaten very thin to gild the whole of them. One sees and recognises the surface gilding, but one knows that there is inferior metal beneath.
The position would be loftier and more correct if we retired from an enterprise crowned with success, in the fulness of conscious superiority as well as of conscious rectitude. But we have not accomplished triumphantly the work from which we withdraw. We are not incurring the sacrifice of stopping short in a career of victory and of political triumphs, so that the world wonders at our moderation and self-control. We are giving up an undertaking in which we have disappointed the expectation of the world, in which we have shown infirmity of purpose, want of forethought, a rather spasmodic and inconclusive energy, occasional weakness and poverty of resource; and our presence and promise have been mixed blessings for the Egyptian people. So that the principle is notlarge enough as a basis for such a structure, nor clear enough to yield me comfort for the enforced close of such a career.
Do not be angry with me for saying all this—you have heard it before.
St. Martin Aug. 15, 1884
In spite of breakfast, dinner, and tea, of garden parties and evening parties, of road and rail, I have brought away with me a feeling of having hardly seen you, and of having had very little talk, so that I begin at once to look forward to next time and the good opportunities it may yield. It will, I hope, be very early in November. We left you for a very pleasant day at Seacox with Morier, and an easy journey, diversified by meeting young Lacaita at Wurzburg, and travelling with him all night.
*****
You never told me what plans there are for the short recess. I am glad the Scottish campaign is to be soon, so as to give guidance to the popular movement. There is a good deal of nonsense in the air; but I hope there will be strength.
Salisbury's avowal of numerical principles set me thinking. I cannot make out whether it is a surrender or a snare. It confirms the expectation that they will put the minority theory forward, which is, I think, their best card. Not so much because I agree with them, as because it divides the Liberal party, and rescues them from the position of mere resistance.
The objections to Northbrook's mission[224] are obvious; and yet I should have liked to go out with him, and try to understand the problem as it now stands; for it is taking a new shape, unwelcome, I fear, toMr. Gladstone, and yet not unforeseen, at least since the appearance of Blignières. It does not seem impossible to combine rigid principle with practical necessities.
There is not a brighter spot in my retrospect than our visit to Cambridge, the execution of it, as well as the delight of it, due to you. Looking back I fancy that I can never have said to you nearly how much I was impressed by Sidgwick's conversation—to say nothing of their hospitality. But the fact is we never talked over anything, and it is all to come.
Alfred's[225] triumphant bowling makes me hold his coat and umbrella comparatively cheap, yet I suppose we got beaten after all.[226]...
I have been staying at Tegernsee with Döllinger. The impending vacancy at Lincoln was announced while I was there, and I am sorry to say that we did not quite agree in the speculations which it suggested. I hope you will see my dear friend at Chester.[227] There is not a greater Tory in England, or a greater ornament to that perverse party.
St. Martin Aug. 29, 1884
There was nothing definite to quote in my conversation with the Professor[228] about Liddon. He hardly knows the better side of Liddon, as a preacher, and as a religious force. He sees that he is not a very deep scholar, and thinks his admiration for Pusey a sign of weakness, I think he once used the term fanatical—meaning a large allowance of one-sidedness in his way of looking at things. Indeed, Döllinger is influenced by nearly the same misgivings that I felt some months ago; and he has not had the same opportunities for getting rid of them. For instance,the Dean of St. Paul's[229] assured me that Liddon, far from reclining on others, is masterful and fond of his own opinion. Moreover, Liddon's attitude in the question of Church and State, is a matter which the Professor and I judge very differently, and it is a difference which it is useless to discuss any more.
I am waiting very eagerly for the speeches in Midlothian. They will be almost the most important of his whole career.
Forwood's proposal of equal electoral districts is another sign of dissolution in Toryism. The principle of setting a limit to inequality might be defended much more plausibly. I am glad to figure in your company in Northumberland as well as at Cambridge. Your experiment[230] is perhaps worth trying, and Stuart knows his people too well to promote it if it is likely to fail. An outsider has not any secure means of forecasting; but I shall retain some hesitation.
Your letter was waiting here when I came from Tegernsee, where I have spent another few days with my Professor.[231] Knesebeck, the Empress' secretary, was there; and I was dismayed to learn that Morier has spoken to him in the most hostile terms of our foreign policy. I was sorry, in London, that you did not see more of that strong diplomatist in Downing Street.
In the doubt as to your movements I direct to Hawarden, where I hope you will see the excellent, learned, homely, humble Bishop of Chester, whose virtues ought to disarm even the recalcitrant Dean.[232] In about two months I hope we shall meet.
*****
St. Martin Sept. 10, 1884
I was able to realise your late experience,[233] even to the tones of voice in certain passages, and I envied you. It must make one change. He[234] cannot any longer elaborately and perversely ignore the fact that he himself is the life and the force of the Liberal party. His reception by Midlothian in 1880, when he did not appear as a candidate for office, constrained him to become Prime Minister; and the more definite issue laid before Midlothian in 1884, still more emphatically answered, determines that he must remain P.M. Just as he accepted the consequences then, when they involved withdrawal of public declarations, he must accept them now, when they compel, and are very definitely designed to compel, the surrender of private aspirations.
The public voice has spoken this time more loudly and more consciously. It would not be right towards the country, but especially towards his colleagues, to obey it then and to resist it now. It would be not only a breach of the contract now made by something more than implication, but a yielding up of the party to its enemies in an inextricable crisis. I have not the least doubt that the position will be so understood.
I think less of the gain which the Ministry derives from the policy, the limitation and the enormous effect of the speeches. It is possible, I think, to detect a weak place in them. When one speaks in answer to opponents who are present, and who state their own case, the thing to do is to demolish it. But when one addresses the public, in the absence of debate, it is often good policy to state the opposite case in one's own way, prior to demolition; one's own way is the way one would state it if it was one's own: andeverybody knows that he would make the Tory position more logical, more plausible, and stronger than they make it themselves, if he was on their side. It is a process one has to go through for oneself, to see what the adversary's case looks like, stripped of all the passion, ignorance, and fallacy with which he presents it. We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong; and we are strictly bound not to transform the sophisms of the advocate into flaws in his case.
An intelligent Tory might say that this figure or precept of rhetoric was not followed, and that their argument was presented, not unfairly, but not at its best.
Of course he would see the point of the speeches in the restraint of agitation, and the offer to make terms. I hope—against hope—that this moderation is founded on knowledge of what is going on among the Tories. One sees signs of collapse in their policy of reform, but not in their determination to resist, and my own impression is that even Wemyss meant to fight it out, only in another way. But if there is no collapse, I see no resource except the agitation which Mr. Gladstone still deprecates.
To my mind the most significant passage was that in which he spoke of the probable fall of several Ministries. That means that the Home Rulers are going to be the arbiters of party government. That means ruin to the Liberal party. Many Liberals see the moment looming when they will have more sympathy with a party led by moderate Conservatives than with a party inspired by Radical Democrats. The looming will be quickened by the necessity of presenting a front to the Irish. But that is only a small partof the argument accumulating against retirement before the next Parliament, when the new constituencies will be fixed for generations.
Odo Russell[235] leaves a larger gap than he filled, and he is difficult to replace at a moment of peculiar soreness and strain. In the service, I should prefer Dufferin; out of it—Bedford! I understand that he would not accept. I find Lord Granville quite feels that our strongest diplomatist, Morier, is out of the question at Berlin, but it will be ten times worse to send Carlingford, and an indication of weakness.
Many, very many, thanks for your letter, which did not seem to me to suffer from the distractions and dissipations of Dalmeny. The best part of it is the good report of your father's health and spirits.
Cannes Nov. 12, 1884
Your delightful letter came from Munich this evening after I had posted mine.
It is an exquisite pleasure to look forward to meeting in such a short time. I should so much wish to have a glimpse of you, and a chat, before the plot thickens with us, so as to get the bearings. If all goes well, I have some chance of arriving pretty early on Monday, and my first business will be to ask if there is a line from you at the Athenæum. There is an uncertainty about the through trains, as there are no travellers yet, and so I may be disappointed.
It is a very important crisis, as there is a possibility of such complete and perfect success for Mr. Gladstone's policy of Reform; and I do so hope he may have it in all fulness. There never was such personal ascendency; and I trust nothing will happen in Africa to disturb it.
Yes, I would give a trifle to have heard the discussion of our Revolution by our greatest statesman[236] and our greatest historian.[237] The latter betrayed his uncompromising Conservatism by half a parenthesis at Keble. It is very superficially disguised in his book, and he ought to have been more grateful to me than he was for abusing Macaulay. Brewer was just like him in judging those events, and Gardiner contrives only by an effort not to revile the good old Cause. We are well out of the monotonous old cry about Hampden and Russell.
*****
La Madeleine Nov. 12, 1884
We have had a long journey from St. Martin, and are hardly settled down in the midst of a vast solitude, when the unreasonable success of the Government compels me to pack my bag once more.
What makes it a pleasure, I need not say. If all things go as I expect, I shall be in town on Monday night or early on Tuesday.
If you are so very kind as to send a line to the Athenæum suggesting the right end and object and reward of travel, please put outside,to wait arrival.
I do not stay with the Granvilles this time, that I may vote against Ministers at my ease. And I do not bring M——, which is a grief; still, I look forward to a deal of riotous living, and to many sources of public and private satisfaction.
La Madeleine Dec. 9, 1884
... M— received an account which pleased her, of my bath of goodness and spirituality at Oxford; and the writing to her about scenes and people she knows,and trying to explain thoughts and facts, has been half the pleasure of my solitary journey.
The meeting at your door[238] of the professors of heterodoxy[239] and chatterboxy[240] in political economy is delightful, and I hope it will fructify. But my friend the "nice little old gentleman"[241] will always be too strenuous and urgent for the Fra Angelico of Economists; and besides, we live in the Gladstonian era—and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. That, however, might be a bond of union between those Sophisters.
In London I could not escape a luncheon with ——, who threatens me with a friendly visit next month at Cannes. Next week I expect Bryce with Robertson Smith. Did I tell you of my pleasant dinner with them on Wednesday, and meeting Creighton?[242] He is an agreeable and superior man, whom you would like; and he is full of general knowledge. But I am afraid you will find his book[243] a severe study.
Thursday—Rather an uninteresting dinner at ——; but one goes there to eat. Lord G. not in very good spirits. I conciliated Enfield, who ... was a little shocked to find that I agree with Courtney.
There was not a gap of time for a farewell in Downing Street, and I had to decline dinners with the Granvilles, Mays, and Pagets, and a visit to Seacox—Hamlet left out.
The journey succeeded beautifully, for it was the roughest passage I remember, and I was none theworse for it. At Calais one gets into a sleeping-car and gets out of it at Cannes, after dining and sleeping comfortably. A young Englishman described the Grasse Hotel to me, where he had lived with Cross, who was writing a book. He did not discover that it[244] was the book in my hand. I have sent it back with some considerable suggestions.
Mrs. Green writes an amusing account of Dr. Stubbs's violent language in politics when she approaches him with her history. I have advised her to sacrifice everything and everybody to the object of securing his help. Leviathan will not aid her.
I have strongly urged May to write a new chapter of Constitutional History, coming down to this our era of Good Feeling, as Americans call the last administration of Monroe.[245] It is the greatest landmark in English Politics; and it has the merit of all well-defined epochs, that it is not going to last.
At the British Museum, Gardiner was working, and I wished him joy on the endowment of Research.
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