CHAPTER XIV

POLITICAL EVENTS OF 1873-80 AND POSTSCRIPT

NOTE

The following brief summary of political and international affairs is

introduced for convenience of reference. It may be skipped by the

reader, should he disdain politics.

The Government of Mr. Gladstone, returned to power in 1868, began to

disintegrate in 1873. The proximate cause was the Irish University

Education Bill, announced in the Speech from the Throne at the opening

of the session on 6th February, 1873. Irish affairs have always been

the curse of the Liberal Party. But a popular Government would have

survived even the Irish University Education Bill, which, designed to

please all parties, failed of course to please any. The truth is that,

as people soon or late weary of all administrations, so they turned

from the Liberal Government. Mr. Disraeli summarised the history of

the Government in a piece of invective which has become classic: "You

have had four years of it. You have despoiled churches. You have

threatened every corporation and every endowment in the country. You

have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticised every

profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property,

and no one knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. I

believe that the people of this country have had enough of the policy

of confiscation."

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The Government were beaten on the Irish University Education Bill; Mr.

Gladstone resigned; but Mr. Disraeli declined to take office. Mr.

Gladstone was therefore compelled to carry on the Government. Early in

1874 he suddenly appealed to the electorate; which, however, chose to

give his opponents a majority. Mr. Gladstone resigned, or partly

resigned, his leadership, and plunged into the esoteric joys of a

controversy dealing with the doctrine of Papal infallibility. It would

seem that a great ecclesiastic was sacrificed, when the young Gladstone

chose to give to politics talents which would have won him the

Archbishopric of Canterbury.

In Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet Lord Cairns was Lord Chancellor; Lord Derby,

Foreign Secretary; Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India; Lord

Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Cross, Home Secretary; Mr. Gathorne

Hardy, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Ward Hunt, First Lord of the

Admiralty; Sir Stafford Northcote, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The

Duke of Richmond, as Lord President of the Council, led the

Conservative party in the House of Lords. The Liberal leader, walking

in the Gladstonian shadow, was Lord Hartington.

In 1874 the Bill for the Regulation of Public Worship was passed. In

the following year Mr. Plimsoll, by the exercise of that dogged

determination and gallant defiance of Parliamentary conventions, by

means of which Parliament can sometimes be goaded into acts of justice,

forced the Government to pass the Merchant Shipping Bill. Mr. Cross,

the Home Secretary, introduced the useful Artisans' Dwellings Bill,

which was passed. Upon 25th November, 1875, the Government, at the

suggestion of Mr. Frederic Greenwood, purchased from the Khedive of

Egypt, 176,000 Suez Canal shares for the sum of £4,000,000.

In the same year, the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, went

to India, whither he was accompanied by Commander Lord Charles

Beresford, M.P., as A.D.C. (Lord Charles was promoted to the rank of

commander on 2nd {124} November, 1875.) The Prince received a telegram

informing him of the purchase of the Suez Canal shares when his ship

was passing through the Canal on the way to India. Lord Lytton was

appointed Viceroy of India. In 1876 it was announced that the Queen

was to assume the additional title of "Empress of India."

In July, 1875, there was trouble in the Near East, which, nearly two

years later, in April, 1877, resulted in the declaration by Russia of

war against Turkey. The Mediterranean Fleet was ordered to pass the

Dardanelles. In March, 1878, Lord Derby resigned, and Lord Salisbury

succeeded him at the Foreign Office. Mr. Gathorne Hardy went to the

India Office, Colonel Stanley to the War Office, and Mr. James Lowther

became Chief Secretary for Ireland. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had

already succeeded Lord Carnarvon at the Colonial Office.

In the Parliament of 1875-80, young Mr. Parnell began his career.

Indomitable, subtle, cold and inscrutable, he speedily became a power.

A Protestant in faith, he had his foot on the necks of the Irish Roman

Catholic Nationalist members; half an Englishman by birth, he was an

implacable enemy of England. Utilising the tactics of obstruction, he

succeeded in bringing discredit upon a Government which was powerless

to control him and his led captains. He forced the Government to pass

a Bill for University Education in Ireland; and as the measure was no

better, if no worse, than the Gladstonian scheme which had been

rejected, so the result upon the Conservative administration was

equally injurious.

Mr. Gladstone emerged from his studies in Papal infallibility to

denounce Bulgarian atrocities and the like. But the country declined

to become excited on the subject. In the meantime the Russian army was

approaching Constantinople. The British Government took public

measures of military and naval precaution clearly implying that Russia

would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople. Prince Bismarck

thereupon intervened, and invited the nations concerned to discuss

matters at Berlin. Lord Beaconsfield (he {125} had received his

peerage in 1876) and Prince Bismarck were the two most powerful men in

Europe. Beaconsfield chose himself to represent Great Britain at the

Congress, which opened at Berlin on 13th June, 1878. Lord Beaconsfield

returned in triumph, bearing with him "Peace with Honour."

The advance of Russian influence in Afghanistan induced the British

Government, in 1878, to dispatch an expedition to Cabul, which was

occupied by British troops, and from which the Amir, Shere Ali, fled.

Followed, the signature of the treaty of Gandamak by Yakoob Khan, son

and successor of Shere Ali; the treacherous murder of Sir Louis

Cavagnan, British Envoy, and the greater number of his staff; and the

recapture of Cabul by British troops. The true history of the whole

affair, much distorted at the time (and since) by political malice, is

lucidly set forth in Lord Roberts's _Forty-one Years in India_, by the

great soldier who took so distinguished a part in it.

Another frontier war broke out in 1879. In South Africa, Sir

Theophilus Shepstone had annexed the Transvaal; Sir Bartle Frere, Lord

High Commissioner, announcing to the Zulu king Cetewayo, that Cetewayo

was entitled to a strip of territory claimed both by Cetewayo and the

Transvaal Republic, ordered him to disband his army. The advance of

British troops was checked by their total defeat by the Zulus on 22nd

January, 1879, at Isandhlwana. Lord Chelmsford the commander-in-chief,

prosecuted the campaign, defeated Cetewayo and took him prisoner.

During the war the young Prince Louis Napoleon, son of the Empress

Eugenie, lost his life.

In the meantime, the trade of the country had been profoundly

depressed, with the natural result that there was much discontent. On

24th March, 1880, Parliament was dissolved; and the Liberal party were

returned with a majority of some hundred and twenty. The Queen sent

for Lord Hartington; sent for Lord Granville; and finally, for Mr.

Gladstone.

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The Russo-Turkish war of 1877 had brought Russia into opposition to

Austria-Hungary, thus destroying the alliance of the three Emperors;

and although Bismarck made peace between the two Powers at the Congress

of Berlin, Russia became estranged from Germany. In order to restore

her security, Germany concluded an alliance with Austria-Hungary and

shortly afterwards with Italy, which had quarrelled with France

concerning her occupation of Tunis. Thus was formed the Triple

Alliance. Its counterpoise was the drawing together of France and

Russia, in view of whose possibilities Prince Bismarck in 1887

increased the German Army. In 1900 Germany passed the Navy Law, which

ordained that the German Fleet should be so strong that any attack upon

it would be dangerous to the attacking party.

Nothing but the strength of the British Fleet, which had been largely

increased by the action of Lord Charles Beresford in 1888, and again by

the naval programme of 1893, and whose organisation had been brought to

a high state of efficiency by Admiral Sir Frederick Richards

(afterwards admiral of the Fleet), prevented the outbreak of war

between England and France at the time of the Fashoda incident in 1897.

The affair caused both nations to reconsider the situation; with the

result that they settled all outstanding difficulties; and the Triple

Entente of Great Britain, France and Russia balanced the Triple

Alliance. Germany, in 1912, added some 70,000 men to her army, while

Austria and Italy increased their fleets. By the time the Allied

nations of the Near East had declared war upon the Turkish Empire, in

1912, Russia had recovered from the disastrous results of her war with

Japan, so that the Triple Entente once more balanced the Triple

Alliance. But the war in the Near East, with the heavy losses it

inflicted upon Turkey, had opened anew the whole Eastern question. The

settlement concluded {127} at the Berlin Conference thirty-four years

previously was abolished in a moment.

It has been thought worth while to trace the main developments of

European politics from 1873 to the present time; as it happened to Lord

Charles Beresford to be a member of that Parliament which saw the

triumph of the Beaconsfield policy in foreign affairs, and to be a

member of subsequent Parliaments confronted with the emergence of new

and sinister international conditions.

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