Gladstone"s Resignation--Election of his Successor--Birth of the Caucus--The System Described--Its Adoption at Leeds--Its Effect upon the Fortunes of the Liberal Party--The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation.
It was in the autumn of 1873 that I undertook a formidable task as a journalist. I had long been of opinion that the provincial daily papers, if they were properly organised, might make themselves independent of the London dailies, and prevent the latter from competing with the local press. Having convinced the proprietors of the _Mercury_ of the soundness of my views, I looked out for allies elsewhere. The _Manchester Guardian_ was the chief rival in those days of the _Leeds Mercury_ in the great district comprising East Lancashire and Yorkshire. The _Guardian_ was conducted with spirit and energy, and I had been annoyed to find that it was gradually pushing its way into that which we regarded as the territory of the _Mercury_. I accordingly proposed to the local rival of the _Guardian_, the _Manchester Examiner_, that it should enter into an alliance with the _Leeds Mercury_ for the improvement of both newspapers. My proposal was rejected with great prompt.i.tude by the managers of the _Examiner_. They declared that they regarded the costly efforts that were being made by the _Guardian_ to establish its preeminence in Lancashire as a ridiculous waste of money, and plainly intimated that they would never attempt to enter into a compet.i.tion which, in their opinion, savoured of stark lunacy.
Long afterwards I remembered my negotiations with the _Examiner_ when I saw that newspaper, after pa.s.sing through a lingering decline, finally absorbed by its successful rival, the _Guardian_. Baffled at Manchester, I turned my eyes to another quarter. The _Glasgow Herald_ suffered in Scotland from the spirited management of the _Scotsman_ as we were suffering from the enterprise of the _Manchester Guardian_. I went to Glasgow and laid my proposals before the proprietors and editor of the _Herald_. After some negotiations they were accepted, and a working alliance was established between the _Leeds Mercury_ and the _Glasgow Herald_, which only came to an end in 1900. We established a joint London office, with special wires to Leeds and Glasgow respectively. (I ought to say that the _Herald_, like the _Scotsman_, already had its special wire from London.) We formed a thoroughly efficient editorial staff to do the work of the London office, and we entered into an arrangement with one of the London daily papers by which we secured access to all the information it received. In this way I was able to guarantee the readers of the _Leeds Mercury_ as good a supply of important London news as they could obtain in one of the London dailies. I went further than this, however, and took a step of the wisdom of which I am not now so fully convinced as I was in 1873. This was the installation of a night editor in our office in Fleet Street, whose business it was to secure the earliest copies of the London morning papers and to telegraph from them over our private wires any special items of news that those papers contained, and that were not supplied by the ordinary agencies. The _Times_ was hostile to this new departure, and we had some difficulty in getting copies of the paper for the purpose of our "morning express," as we called the new service. The other London dailies did not object. The result was that a great part of each day"s issue of the _Leeds Mercury_ contained all the special items of news published in the chief London newspapers of the same morning. It was a bold and audacious innovation in the methods of English journalism, and I need not say that it was one that was quickly imitated by others.
Besides making arrangements for a special report of Parliament, I extended the old London letter of the _Mercury_ by securing for it a number of contributors who were interested in different fields of activity. Hitherto it had only been political. I now gave it a social and literary character as well. It was in carrying out this part of my work that I first became the intimate friend of William Black. I had met him years before, but our friendship was of the slightest until I induced him to take a leading part in the London correspondence of the _Mercury_. He was at that time a.s.sistant-editor of the _Daily News_, but he did not like the work, and was anxious to be relieved of the drudgery of nightly attendance at the office in Bouverie Street. I was able to offer him terms which justified him in relinquishing his connection with the _Daily News_. He was just beginning his career as a brilliantly successful novelist. "A Daughter of Heth" had won the favour both of the critics and the public, and this he had followed up with "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton." The arrangement he made with the _Leeds Mercury_ enabled him to devote his time and strength to fiction, and, as I have said, it brought us into a relationship which quickly ripened into one of affectionate intimacy.
There never was a man who stood the sharp test of prosperity better than did Black. When we first became intimate he was just beginning to be known, but within a year or two from that time he had become the most popular of English novelists, and had become famous throughout the civilised world. Obscure or famous, he was just the same. To a rare simplicity of manner he added a chivalrousness of spirit that was almost an inspiration to those who were brought into contact with him. As a friend he scarcely had an equal. In all the affairs of life he would make his friend"s cause his own, and fight for it with an energy and enthusiasm that few men are capable of showing, even on behalf of their own interests. At a time, for example, when he was deep in the writing of one of his own greatest novels, he voluntarily undertook the work of a dying friend as a contributor to the Press, in order to ensure the payment of his salary to the end of his life. I remember meeting him once on his way to that friend"s room, carrying in one hand a hare and in the other a can containing some soup or other delicacy. He was very particular about his appearance, always smart in his dress, and rigorously observant of the social _convenances_; yet these characteristics did not prevent his walking through the streets of London on a summer afternoon laden in this fashion. My first dinner with him was at the Pall Mall Club, in Waterloo Place, at the end of 1873. He had another young man of our own age to share the entertainment, and behind his back he spoke of this young man--who was, like himself, a Scotsman--with an enthusiastic admiration. He was an artist who had just come up to try his fortune in London, and that fortune, Black declared, could be nothing less than the Academy. He was right, for the man who made the third at that little dinner-party was the late Colin Hunter, A.R.A.
Black lived in those days in a roomy, old-fashioned house in Camberwell Grove; and here, in course of time, I spent many a pleasant evening with him. His second wife, a charming North-country lady, was, as most now know, the original of "The Princess of Thule," the heroine of the book of that name, and the portrait was far more true to life than most sketches of heroines drawn from reality are. Black"s mother, a kindly old Scotswoman, justly proud of her son, was another inmate of the house. It was from her I learned that Coquette, the bewitching creature who plays the chief part in "A Daughter of Heth," had for her original Black"s first wife. I discovered for myself that the author was the original of "The Whaup," and when I taxed him with it he did not deny the fact. One evening, after dinner at Camberwell Grove, we went for a walk together.
When we reached the top of the Grove he drew my attention to a pleasant little villa standing in its own ground. "James Drummond," he said, "lives there." I wondered who James Drummond was, but said nothing.
By-and-bye, as we pursued our way, he pointed out other houses, and told me the names of their occupants, all utterly unknown to me. At last I said, "Who are these people, Black? I don"t know one of them." "You soon will know them, though, my boy," he answered. "Just wait and see if you don"t." And sure enough, when "Madcap Violet" appeared, all the unknown personages of that night-walk at Camberwell were straightway revealed to me.
Black had an artist"s eye and the soul of a poet. In general company he was shy and ill at ease. If he talked at all to strangers, he talked with nervous volubility, and too often perhaps with little meaning. In this respect he reminded one of Goldsmith. But when he was with a friend, and could open his heart freely, he gave you glimpses of a most beautiful nature, a n.o.ble sense of chivalry, and the keenest eye in the world for catching those gleams of spiritual light that sometimes illuminate even the dullest of the bare realities of life. He was always sketching his friends, and making them figure in his stories; but he did it in such a fashion that the person drawn never recognised his portrait. He once admitted that he had made use of me as a lay-figure in his literary studio, but I was never able to discover by what character I was supposed to be represented. As a rule, he was much too kind to his friends when drawing their portraits, for he liked to think the best and say the best of a man. Only once in my long friendship with him did I know him to exercise his power of making a man whom he disliked appear odious in his pages. But this particular person was so odious in reality that everybody felt that Black had only done him justice. Of course, Black was careful to give no clue to the ident.i.ty of the disagreeable man which could be of the slightest use to the general reader. A few of us knew perfectly well who was meant, but that was all. Unfortunately, the particular story in which this person figured was first published serially in an ill.u.s.trated magazine, and by some extraordinary chance--or mischance--the artist, in depicting the disagreeable man, drew a portrait of the actual original that was positively startling in its likeness. No one who knew him opened the magazine without saying at once, "Why, here"s a portrait of So-and-so." And yet the likeness was absolutely accidental. Black a.s.sured me that the artist knew nothing of the original disagreeable man, and had never even seen him. It was all a freak of the long arm of coincidence.
I do not know whether I may not be boring my readers in telling these little stories about works of fiction which they may never have read or have cared to read. Yet those of us who can recall the refreshment and delight which Black"s earlier books spread amongst us will never allow that the shadow of eclipse that now lies upon his literary fame is either deserved or likely to prove lasting. No novelist of his century--alas!
this new century has begun without William Black--had his power of painting a woman"s heart and soul, or his deft grace in making the portrait at once real and ideal. I do not wish to overpraise, but the man who could draw Coquette, and Sheila, and Madcap Violet was, I hold, a master in his craft. That he was, in a very literal sense, an artist in words, is universally admitted. There are pa.s.sages in his writings which, in their power of conjuring up before the mind of the reader the scenes they describe, are not surpa.s.sed by anything that Ruskin himself ever wrote. The fact is that Black"s sympathies drew him more strongly to art than to literature. If he could have had his way, I think he would rather have been a great painter than a great writer, and certainly he always loved the company of artists better than that of journalists and men of letters. He was most at his ease in the studios of his friends. He was never so full of an eager, effervescent happiness as at the private view at the Academy, when, seizing you by the arm, he would lead you from picture to picture, pointing out the merits of each, and ending up by introducing you to the artist. The artists, on their side, held him in no common esteem, and long regarded him as first of those among the writers of the day who had a real appreciation of and sympathy with art.
I must leave Black for the present, however, and return to Leeds, and the events of 1874. My special wire and London arrangements had not been long in existence before they received a most unexpected justification. One night in February, 1874, when seated in my editor"s room, I received over the private wire a telegram that took my breath away. It was from our London sub-editor, announcing that Parliament was to be dissolved immediately, and that Mr. Gladstone had written a long address to the electors of Greenwich, explaining his policy and intentions. My informant added that this startling news was still a profound secret in London, and that in all probability no other newspaper in Yorkshire would get possession of it. Everybody interested in our political history now knows the story of that bolt from the blue. It came with absolute unexpectedness, and some even of Mr. Gladstone"s own colleagues in the Cabinet were taken by surprise. I know, at all events, of one member of the Ministry who was staying at the time in a country house in Yorkshire, and who, when the _Leeds Mercury_, with its announcement of the dissolution and the long address of Mr. Gladstone to the Greenwich electors, was brought to him, insisted that the paper must have been hoaxed. Mr. Gladstone had kept his secret so well that at six o"clock on the evening of the day on which he penned his manifesto there were not twenty people in all England who knew what was about to happen. So far as the _Leeds Mercury_ was concerned, this startling step ensured for it a great success. No other newspaper in Yorkshire--and, if I remember rightly, only one other provincial paper in England--was able to announce the great event. The _Mercury_ accompanied the manifesto with a "double-leaded" leader, and of course made the most of so precious a piece of news. Those who doubted the wisdom of the increased expenditure to which I had induced the proprietors of the paper to consent, doubted no longer.
The General Election which followed immediately upon the dissolution was a short but very bitter contest. It ended in the rout of the Liberal party, a rout almost as signal and complete as that which befel it twenty-one years later, in 1895. Mr. Disraeli, who had been nowhere at the polls in 1868, was suddenly swept into the highest place by those "hara.s.sed interests" which Mr. Gladstone"s great administration had offended by a policy that Disraeli described as one of "plundering and blundering." It was, in reality, a policy which preferred the interests of the nation to those of the privileged cla.s.ses. In Leeds, where I had now, for the first time as editor of a daily newspaper, to taste the doubtful joys of a General Election, a fight of extraordinary vehemence was waged.
Leeds was one of the three-cornered const.i.tuencies created by the Reform Bill of 1867, and its representatives at the time of the dissolution were Sir Edward Baines, Mr. Carter, an advanced Radical, very popular with the working-cla.s.ses, and Mr. Wheelhouse, a Conservative barrister. Sir Edward Baines was the only one of the three who had achieved a Parliamentary reputation. He had represented Leeds for fifteen years, and he was recognised as its princ.i.p.al citizen by the community at large. He was a total abstainer and an ardent advocate of temperance reform, but in the eyes of the fanatical supporters of the Permissive Bill he had committed the unpardonable sin in giving his adherence to Mr. Bruce"s measure. So, in spite of his character and his public services, they brought out against him one of the agents of the United Kingdom Alliance. The Tories had brought out a local gentleman named Tennant as their second candidate. He was a man of many occupations, including that of a brewer.
The fight which followed was the most bitter in which I have ever been engaged. Practically, Edward Baines stood alone, getting no help from Carter. The Liberal party had fallen to pieces, and Edward Baines, as a supporter of the Government, had to bear the weight of the offence given both to the Radical Nonconformists and to the rabid teetotallers. The Alliance candidate must have known that he had no chance of winning the seat, but he persisted in his opposition to Sir Edward Baines, though the effect of defeating him would be to secure the election of the local brewer. Such are the extremes to which men allow themselves to be carried at times of excitement. The end of the struggle was the defeat of Sir Edward Baines, and the return of Carter, Wheelhouse, and Tennant. What happened in Leeds happened in a great many other places. The teetotallers deliberately wrecked the only Government which was prepared to reform the licensing system. They have had more than a quarter of a century in which to repent their folly.
It was, of course, in the Leeds election that I felt the deepest personal interest; but the _Mercury_ had to take note of all the elections in Yorkshire, and some of these were of special interest. At Sheffield a candidate came forward in the extreme Radical interest whose speeches attracted some notice in Yorkshire, though they pa.s.sed un.o.bserved by the larger public beyond. This was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who now made his first attempt to win Parliamentary honours. Up to that moment I had only known Mr. Chamberlain as a young Birmingham politician who was fond of saying things both bitter and flippant, not only about his political opponents, but about the older members of his own party. He had made himself one of the buglemen in the cry raised against Mr. Forster, towards whom he seemed to entertain a feeling of almost personal antipathy. At Sheffield he made himself conspicuous by his sneers at Mr.
Gladstone and almost all the recognised leaders of Liberalism. His own political opinions appeared to be based upon a crude and intolerant Radicalism of the Socialistic type. He evidently believed that promises of material benefits would enable him to win the support of the ma.s.s of the electors, and he conceived also that the best method of displacing his seniors in the party of which he was a member was to a.s.sail them with a rather coa.r.s.e invective. These methods did not commend themselves to the electors of Sheffield, and Mr. Chamberlain was soundly beaten. But he had great ability, accompanied by great force of character, and all the world knows how his ability and forcefulness have since carried him to one of the highest places in political life. It is, however, not as a Radical, but as a militant Tory that he now figures before the world.
I should not have dwelt upon the Sheffield election of 1874 but for the fact that it was this election which made me one of Mr. Chamberlain"s political opponents. I did not like the way in which he spoke of men who had been serving the country before he himself was born; and, without questioning his honesty, I came to the conclusion that personal ambition played a large part in his political professions. It followed that from 1874 onwards the _Leeds Mercury_ was never friendly to Mr.
Chamberlain, and never gave him its confidence, even at a time when he was the idol of English Radicalism. For years I had to suffer because of this att.i.tude towards the Birmingham politician; and many a time, when I have been sitting on the platform at a political meeting in Leeds, some speaker has inveighed fiercely against me because of my want of faith in Mr. Chamberlain. I had my revenge in 1885, when the Leeds Liberals swung round to my view of that gentleman, and I was hailed--quite undeservedly--as a prophet because I had always distrusted one whom they now not only distrusted, but disliked and despised.
Let me say, before leaving Mr. Chamberlain, that I still consider that the worst blot upon his political career was the manner in which he treated Mr. Forster. No doubt his dislike of Mr. Forster was in the first instance inspired by his repugnance to the Education Act; but I cannot help saying that in later years it degenerated into what, at any rate, looked like a feeling of antipathy towards the man who, at that time, was regarded as standing high in the succession to Mr. Gladstone as leader of the Liberal party. When I come to deal with the events of 1882, I shall have something to say of the part which Mr. Chamberlain played towards Mr. Forster in the painful events which issued in the latter"s withdrawal from Mr. Gladstone"s second Administration.
The Liberals of England were naturally very despondent after the unexpected _debacle_ of 1874. They had believed that the good works of a Government which had wrought so much for the public benefit would have been appreciated by the great ma.s.s of the electors, and they were unfeignedly astonished at the verdict returned by the country. They had not taken into account that swing of the pendulum which has so large an influence in popular const.i.tuencies. Nor had they noted the extent to which the unity of the Liberal party, and its consequent strength, had been impaired by the action of advanced sections, who were so pa.s.sionately bent upon carrying the measures in which they were themselves most deeply interested that they did not stop to count the cost of their proceedings on the fortunes of the party as a whole. It took some little time to recover our spirits after that heavy blow, but soon some of us began to feel that in time "the lopped tree would grow again." I was helped in coming to this conclusion by some words addressed to me by a shrewd old Yorkshire Tory, which I have remembered gratefully ever since. "I suppose you Liberals really think, as the fools of the Tory newspapers seem to do, that your party is finished for ever and a day. Don"t make any such mistake. A Ministry no sooner begins to live than it begins to die. Our people are in the full flush of triumph just now, but already they are beginning to die." The shrewd good sense of my friend has often struck me since, and many a time I have had occasion to notice how quickly the process of decay sets in after the formation of even the strongest Governments.
The chief event in the history of the Liberal party in the year succeeding its great defeat was the unexpected resignation by Mr.
Gladstone of his post of leader. I am not concerned either to defend or to blame this episode in the career of a very great man whom I followed with enthusiasm and an unfaltering devotion for many years, but who had, as I was always conscious, some of the defects of his qualities, and whose action in a given case could never be predicted with confidence.
There is no doubt that Mr. Gladstone, old Parliamentary hand as he was, even in 1875, had a very real dislike for those personal intrigues and jealousies which play so large a part behind the scenes in our public life. It is a curious fact that for nearly forty years no intrigues were more active, and no jealousies more bitter, than those which had relation to Mr. Gladstone himself. There was always someone ready to intrigue against him. There were always those who thought that, if only he could be got out of the way, there might possibly be room for themselves upon the top of the mountain. In 1868 the representatives of this cla.s.s had protested against his being allowed to become Prime Minister. In 1874 they, or their successors, were still louder in their protests against his being allowed ever again to form an administration. He was a defeated Minister, and some of them took care to bring this fact home to him in as unpleasant a way as possible. One, at least, had good reason to repent of his audacity. No one who was in the House of Commons on the memorable afternoon when Sir William Harcourt tried a fall with Mr. Gladstone, and met with such terrific punishment, is ever likely to forget the scene. It was said at the time by a humorous observer describing the debate that when Sir William--"my own Solicitor-General, I believe," as Mr. Gladstone said in describing him--had listened to the speech in which his late chief inflicted due chastis.e.m.e.nt upon him, like one of Bret Harte"s heroes "he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more." Mr. Gladstone"s resignation of the leadership at the beginning of 1875 was not, I think, unconnected with the fact that he knew that there were certain active spirits in the Liberal party who, believing themselves fully equal to any position to which they might be called, were unfeignedly anxious that they should have at least a chance of arriving at the front place.
Yet, when Mr. Gladstone did resign the leadership, no one named any of these intriguers as his possible successor; and it may be noted here that none of the intriguers has even yet secured the reward he coveted. The two names mentioned as those of possible leaders in 1875 were those of Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. I name them in this order because Mr.
Forster was first suggested, and the suggestion came not from any wire-pullers or clique, but from the body of Liberals as a whole. But Mr.
Forster"s enemies on the Opposition benches, though not very numerous, were very bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Social influence counts for a great deal in political life in this country, but there was another factor that also counted in favour of Lord Hartington. This was the fact that he could not sit in the House of Commons after his father"s death, and that, consequently, if he were chosen, he would be more or less of a stopgap. A stopgap is, of course, always popular with the intriguer who knows that he himself has not yet arrived.
A tremendous effort was made on behalf of Lord Hartington. I am doubtful whether it would have succeeded if the struggle had been carried to the end. Mr. Forster"s friends were in earnest, and they comprised the majority of what might be called the Moderate party on the Opposition benches. But Forster himself settled the question by withdrawing from the candidature, and thus prevented an unseemly contest. It is now known that Lord Hartington himself would have taken this course if Forster had not done so. They were two straightforward, honourable rivals, and they acted throughout this business like English gentlemen. That which made the election of Lord Hartington to the leadership bitter to those who, like myself, had strongly advocated the claims of Mr. Forster, was our knowledge of the fact that he had really been defeated by the opposition of the Birmingham League, and of those Radicals who were prepared to sacrifice the larger interests of Liberalism to their own personal antipathies and sectional views.
Indeed, it may be said that with this election of Lord Hartington to the Liberal leadership the reign of the caucus commenced. The dejected Liberals were resolved, if possible, to organise victory, and at Birmingham men were found who were not only prepared to a.s.sist them in the task, but who were quite ready to a.s.sume the lead of the Liberal forces throughout the country. All the talk that one heard in political circles in those days was of caucuses on the Birmingham plan, and of the rise of the National Liberal Federation, the existence of which people were just dimly beginning to recognise. I am not writing the history of the National Liberal Federation, and I pretend to no special knowledge on the subject of its origin. Popular opinion credits Mr. Schnadhorst, the famous organiser, of Birmingham, and subsequently of London, with the authorship of the scheme. But I doubt the truth of this. I knew Mr.
Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for him as a man at once honest, sagacious, and of much simplicity of character. But he was not intellectually great, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli his opponents believed him to be. The Birmingham caucus, which became a model for all other Liberal const.i.tuencies, was probably founded by the joint efforts of several men, among whom Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Powell Williams, as well as Mr. Schnadhorst, were to be counted.
The plan of the caucus was delightfully simple. A const.i.tuency--and those were the days of big const.i.tuencies--was divided into districts, and the Liberals of each district were allotted a certain number of seats on the Central Liberal a.s.sociation. This a.s.sociation generally consisted of so many hundreds of persons, and it thus came to pa.s.s that the a.s.sociation became known as the Huddersfield Two Hundred, the Leeds Four Hundred, the Birmingham Six Hundred, and so on. On a given day in each const.i.tuency, the Liberal electors in the various districts met, and elected their representatives on the Central a.s.sociation. Every known Liberal had a vote, so that the const.i.tution of the central body was, in theory at all events, delightfully democratic. These a.s.sociations were designed to sweep away the old system of Liberal committees, influenced by local magnates, which had prevailed ever since the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill.
There was a strong belief among the inventors of the caucus that by means of this plan they would secure the predominance of the advanced Radical party. The old privileges of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for nothing in the councils of Liberalism. Every man was to have a vote, not merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to select candidates, manage local political affairs, and generally determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the const.i.tuency.
Every year the different Hundreds were to elect representatives who were to act as their delegates at the conferences of the National Liberal Federation; and the Federation itself was to be regarded as the legitimate and indisputable representative of the Liberalism of the country as a whole.
It was a bold and far-reaching scheme, and whatever its effect may have been in temporarily restoring the fortunes of Liberalism, its influence upon the political life of England has been great, and--I fear I must say--has not been beneficial. The founders of the caucus professed to resent the intrusion of the influence of money into political affairs.
Within certain limits this was an admirable att.i.tude. But its practical effect has been to drive the greater proportion of the moneyed cla.s.ses out of the Liberal party. They further professed to wish to put an end to the influence exercised by cliques and privileged cla.s.ses or persons in the party. The majority was to rule under all conceivable circ.u.mstances.
Those who, like myself, have had an active and intimate a.s.sociation with the caucus and the Federation know that in practice the new system, so far from destroying the rule of cliques, merely subst.i.tuted one set of cliques for another. The active busybody, who had little business of his own to attend to, or to whom the position of member of a local committee was one to be striven after for the sake of the dignity attaching to it, became the ruling spirit of the caucus. In thousands of cases the older and more sober Liberals were driven out of the councils of their party in disgust, and more and more the extreme men, who were fighting in earnest for some special object or fad, became the predominant powers in Liberalism. This was the change that was gradually wrought in the Liberal party between 1875 and 1885.
At the outset I was vehemently opposed to the new methods, and protested stoutly against them in the _Leeds Mercury_. It was not very long, indeed, before I had personal experience of the way in which the caucus system worked. Mr. Carter, the Radical, who had been returned for Leeds in 1874, retired from Parliament two years later. It would have been the natural and proper course for the Liberal party to invite its former representative, Sir Edward Baines, to become a candidate for the vacancy.
He was the man who undoubtedly had the chief claim upon the Liberal party in the town. A meeting of the newly-formed Liberal a.s.sociation was called to consider the question of choosing a candidate. As editor of the chief Liberal paper, I had been taken into the counsels of the local Liberal leaders ever since a.s.suming that post, had been invited to attend the meetings of their committee, and found that they were at all times desirous of securing my support. When I spoke to one of the officials of the new a.s.sociation of the meeting that was to be held to choose a candidate, and mentioned my intention of attending, I was bluntly told that I should not be admitted. I had not, it appeared, been elected a member of the Four Hundred. As a matter of fact, very few persons in Leeds had known anything about the election of this body when it took place. It was a startling revelation of the change that had taken place to be thus refused admittance to a body which, in former times, would have been only too anxious to secure my support.
The President of the a.s.sociation, to whom I went to demand admittance, stood upon the strict letter of the law. I had not been elected by my district committee, which held its meetings in a local public-house, and it was therefore impossible that I should be allowed to attend the deliberations of the sacred body. Looking back, I can see that the president was absolutely justified in the line he took. It might seem absurd to shut out from a meeting of Liberals the person who, by reason of his position, had more political influence in Leeds than any other man. But "logic is logic," and under the new system any claim founded upon mere influence, or even upon past services, was inadmissible. I was too young, however, to acknowledge this fact at the time, and I bluntly delivered an ultimatum to the President of the a.s.sociation. "You may hold your caucus meeting," I said, "but if it is to be private so far as I am concerned, it shall be private so far as the reporters of the _Leeds Mercury_ are concerned also. I shall simply ignore your proceedings, and to-morrow the _Leeds Mercury_ will make its own nomination for the vacancy." This was all very wrong, I fear, and most irregular.
Indeed, remembering what power the caucus system subsequently attained, I look back with something like astonishment at my own audacious action.
But the caucus was still in its infancy, and my worthy friend the President, after a hurried consultation with his fellow-officials, capitulated. I was invited to be present at the meeting of the sacred body.
It was the first meeting of that description I had ever attended, but it was typical of many that I have attended since then. As I expected, it was proposed by those who had long been recognised as the leaders of the Liberal party in Leeds that Sir Edward Baines should be the candidate.
Forthwith a most violent opposition was offered to the proposal by men who had never before been heard of in Leeds politics, and some of whom had only been resident in the town for a few months. I remember that the most violent of these gentlemen was a schoolmaster from Birmingham, who denounced Sir Edward Baines for the a.s.sistance he had given in the pa.s.sing of that iniquitous measure, the Education Act. Another gentleman denounced him with equal violence because he was the proprietor of the _Leeds Mercury_, a journal which had dared to speak disrespectfully of the truest and most honest Liberal of the day, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.
That was the first occasion on which my fellow-Liberals in Leeds belaboured me with the name of Mr. Chamberlain. On all sides I heard extreme opinions expressed by men whose faces and names were quite unfamiliar to me, and I found to my dismay that the more extreme the opinions, the warmer was their reception by these representative Liberals. They would hardly listen to their old leaders, who had grown grey in fighting the battles of Liberalism. They treated with contumely any words of soberness or moderation. They applauded even speakers who were palpably selfish and insincere. As I listened to that debate, my eyes were opened, and I realised the fact that a great revolution had been suddenly and silently wrought, and that the control of the Liberal party had, in a great measure, pa.s.sed out of the hands of its old leaders into those of the men who managed the new "machine." If I have been tedious in telling this story of the caucus, it is still, I feel, one that is worth telling, for it ill.u.s.trates one, at least, of the great changes in the political conditions of this country that have happened during my lifetime.
It was not, of course, Sir Edward Baines who was chosen as the Liberal candidate. The choice of the caucus fell upon the worthy President of that body, the late Sir John Barran, an amiable man and a good citizen, though his claims to Parliamentary distinction at that time were certainly unequal to those of Sir Edward Baines. The revolution had taken place, however, and the Liberal party found itself under the command of new masters. For some time after the establishment of the caucus, it pursued a distinctly aggressive course, and inspired all of us with alarm. In course of time, however, I realised the fact that there were certain severe limitations upon its power. It could not stand against the country when the country was in earnest. It could not give that inspiration to a party without which victory cannot be achieved. No amount of organisation, however skilfully devised, could supply the place of a great popular movement. I became reconciled to the caucus when I grasped these facts, and for a time I not only looked upon it as harmless, but gave my a.s.sistance to it, locally in Leeds and, in its national work, in the office of the National Liberal Federation. Yet I am compelled to confess now that, though I have not altered my view as to the limitations of the power of the party machine, I no longer regard it as harmless.
It is, I think, impossible to deny that very great harm has been done, not merely to the spirit of Liberalism, but to the actual fortunes of the Liberal party, by the new system. It has brought a new spirit into the direction of our party, a spirit which is too apt to regard the catching of votes as the one great object to be pursued and attained, no matter by what means. It has given the mere machine man, the intriguer and wire-puller, far greater power than it is right that he should possess, seeing that as a rule his power is not accompanied by a corresponding degree of responsibility. Above all, it has lowered the status of a member of Parliament, and made him more or less of a delegate who is bound to yield to the wishes, not of his const.i.tuents as a whole, but of the party organisation which seeks to usurp the place of the const.i.tuency. The story of the struggles of Mr. Forster with the Bradford caucus is familiar to political students. I was mixed up with all those struggles, and always on the side of Mr. Forster, who stoutly refused to accept the dictation of the caucus and the theory that a member of Parliament was no more than a delegate. He was victorious in his prolonged struggle with the Bradford Radicals, but he only succeeded in virtue of his own strength of character and dogged courage. Weaker men went to the wall by scores, and, as they did so, the caucus, of which Mr.
Chamberlain was at this time the ruling spirit, gained strength, and became the predominant factor in the Liberal party.
In the early autumn of 1876 the most remarkable political agitation I ever witnessed broke over the country with startling suddenness.
Parliament was just on the point of rising when the _Daily News_ published its first account of the hideous crimes which became known as the Bulgarian atrocities. Mr. Disraeli, when questioned in the House of Commons, sneered at the reports in the _Daily News_ as being based upon "coffee-house babble." If he really believed this, he must have been strangely ill-informed. The terrible tale which shocked the civilised world was communicated to the _Daily News_ by its Constantinople correspondent, Mr. Edwin Pears. The man who supplied Mr. Pears with the terrible facts which he gave to the world was Dr. Washbourne, the head of the Robert College at Constantinople. I know both Mr. Pears and Dr.
Washbourne. They are men of the highest honour and integrity, whilst Dr.
Washbourne, who is by birth an American, has been for many years the best authority on the question of the treatment of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire by the Sultan. No one who knew the source from which the _Daily News_ stories emanated could dream of dismissing those stories as coffee-house babble. Mr. Disraeli, as a matter of duty, should have made himself acquainted with the authority on which these stories rested before he took it upon himself to denounce them as sensational fables. But in spite of Mr. Disraeli, who at this very moment blossomed into the Earl of Beaconsfield, an official investigation took place. Mr.
Walter Baring, who was attached to our Constantinople Emba.s.sy, was directed to proceed to the scene of the alleged outrages, and to inquire into the truth of the allegations made in the _Daily News_. Mr.
Baring was an English official of the best stamp. He not only ascertained the truth, but he reported it in plain language to the Home Government.
It was then found that the _Daily News_ had, if anything, understated the case. The ruffianly Bashi-Bazouks, employed by the Sultan to keep down the Christians of European Turkey, had been let loose upon the people of certain villages in Bulgaria and Roumelia, as a pack of wolves might have been let loose upon a flock of sheep.
The crimes that were committed do not admit of description. Thousands of innocent people had been murdered in circ.u.mstances of atrocious cruelty.
Neither age nor s.e.x had been respected. Indeed, children, old men, and women seemed to be the favourite victims of the savages. Upon the women every conceivable outrage was perpetrated before the knife of the a.s.sa.s.sin cut short their misery. It was a story which, when told in the dry, official language of a Foreign Office report, was still sufficient to arouse a pa.s.sion of righteous rage in the breast of any person endowed with the ordinary instincts of humanity. The old fear of Russia as our rival in Eastern Europe still const.i.tuted the chief influence in determining our foreign policy, and the old idea of the Turk as our friend and ally was still popular amongst us. But these revelations for the moment reversed the national feeling on both these points. Mr.
Gladstone, roused to action by his sympathy with the victims of so cruel an oppression, left his retirement at Hawarden and issued a pamphlet on the Bulgarian horrors which raised the feeling of the country to a higher point than I have ever known it reach before or since, except in some crisis affecting our very existence as a State.
That month of September, 1876, saw England and Scotland convulsed with a terrible emotion. The old divisions of parties were effaced, and the Government, because of its suspected sympathy with the Sultan, found itself the object of almost universal execration. Naturally, the less discreet politicians of the day were unable to control themselves under the influence of the prevailing excitement. Many foolish and many dangerous things were uttered at the meetings at which every town and village gave expression to the horror inspired by the Sultan"s crimes.
Mr. Gladstone"s strongest utterances were seized upon by his fervent admirers and were carried to an extreme from which he himself would have shrunk. It was a whirlwind, a tornado of political pa.s.sion that swept over the country during those sunny September weeks. The impulse from which it sprang was just and n.o.ble in itself; but who can hold a whirlwind in check? It is not wonderful that this great outbreak of national indignation did almost as much harm as good.
The whole condition of our domestic politics was changed by this Bulgarian atrocities agitation, as it was called. It riveted the attention of the country upon a great question of foreign policy. It weakened enormously, for the moment, the power of the Tory Government, which still enjoyed so commanding a majority in Parliament. Domestic affairs lost their savour for the ordinary elector, and, writing nearly a quarter of a century after this episode, I am inclined to believe that they have never since regained all that they then lost. In the late autumn, a Conference on the subject of our relations with Turkey was held in St. James"s Hall. This was no demonstration on the part of a caucus, but a gathering of the notables of all the great towns of England. No doubt the majority of those present were Liberals, but a very considerable minority were Conservatives who had hitherto supported the Government. It was my good fortune to be present at that wonderful meeting in St. James"s Hall. Never was there such a political platform seen at a public meeting before. Mr. Gladstone, Lord Shaftesbury, the Dukes of Westminster and Argyll, Mr. Freeman, the historian, the Bishop of Oxford, Henry Fawcett--these are but a few of the names that occur to my memory as I recall the memorable scene. Great Tory n.o.blemen like the Marquess of Bath sat side by side with Radicals from Birmingham, and the pa.s.sionate earnestness, amounting to something more than enthusiasm, that inspired the whole gathering was remarkable. It may be said to have marked the high tide of political agitation in my own experience.
A simple accident had saved me from the full force of the contagion of pa.s.sion that swept over the country in September. I had left Leeds to spend some weeks with my family in a house on the Clyde, where I was far from the sounds of political tumult. Possibly, if I had stayed in Leeds at my post at the _Mercury_ office, I might have gone with the tide, and might have been just as extreme and as reckless as anybody else. But I looked on from a distance, and, as it happened, I was absorbed at the time in other work. The consequence was that I could see the evil, as well as the good, of this extraordinary upheaval of popular emotion, and when I returned later on to my work at Leeds I took a cooler view of the whole question than most Liberal journalists did, and dealt with it, not from the merely emotional standpoint, but from that of our duty and interests as a people. Of course, I was blamed for this by the more fervent, and was suspected of being at heart little better than a philo-Turk. I had, in short, to meet the usual fate of the man who will not cry either black or white when it is his misfortune to see only a confusion of colours. By-and-by, however, when the popular pa.s.sion subsided, and the old alarm about Russia again became rampant, I found myself blamed for precisely the opposite reason. I was no longer a.s.sailed as a philo-Turk, but as a Russophil.
CHAPTER X.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTe LITERATURE.
A Visit to Haworth--Feeling Against the Brontes in Yorkshire--Miss Nussey and her Discontent with Mrs. Gaskell"s "Me"--Publication of "Charlotte Bronte: a Monograph"--Mr. Swinburne"s Appreciation--An Abortive Visit to the Poet--Lecture on Emily Bronte and "Wuthering Heights"--Miss Nussey"s Visit to Haworth after Charlotte"s Marriage.