1895]

FOURTH ELECTION CONTEST

the Government was defeated by seven votes. As a result an immediate dissolution was decided upon and the Government of Lord Rosebery was at an end. "First saw news in the Times at breakfast," writes Ellis, "then called at Downing St. Met J. Morley and A. Acland, who asked my opinion as to resignation or dissolution. I advised first."

On July 6 Ellis issued his fourth election address to the Rushcliffe electors. In it he made special reference to the action of the House of Lords in rejecting or mutilating many of the of the measures measures passed by the Commons. The vital question which he placed before his constituents was whether they wished this power of destruction to remain vested in the peers or to cease. He was opposed by Mr. G. Murray Smith, who stood as a Liberal Unionist, and the contest was marked by more than ordinarily pleasant relations between the two candidates. The poll resulted :

CHAPTER VIII

THE JAMESON RAID

THE General Election had resulted in the return of the Conservatives to power and the new House met on August 12, 1895. The first business was the election. of a Speaker. Speaker. The re-election of Mr. Gully was proposed by Sir John Mowbray and seconded by John Ellis. It had not been certain in the beginning that the Conservatives would support the appointment, but Mr. Balfour soon set such doubts at rest. "Rose after Sir John Mowbray had felicitously moved the re-election. of Mr. Gully," says the diary, "and made what I gathered was considered a happy speech. A very nervous opportunity. So many new members and no Speaker to call to order." Ellis's speech was made in dignified and appropriate language, and expressed his conviction that Mr. Balfour had increased his great claims on the confidence of the House by sanctioning this confirmation of its traditions and precedents. Parliament had only been called together to vote supplies, the estimates for which had been framed by the party now in opposition, so that there was no reason for the session lasting more than a few weeks. Accordingly it was prorogued on September 5.

When Parliament reassembled in February, 1896,

1896]

COMMITTEE ON TRADE

Ellis was appointed chairman of the Standing Committee on Trade. The position was one which he valued very highly, both for its own sake and for the closer insight which it afforded him of the inner working of Parliament. The work was arduous, but it had its compensations, and brought out to the full his powers as an administrator. Several entries in the diary testify to the difficulties he encountered and surmounted. "Room No. 16. A most difficult post presiding over some 70 or 80 of my colleagues. Sat for about two and a half hours. Grand Committee on Trade (Shop Hours Bill). Presided for first timegot through fairly well. One or two minor errors and much wearisome talking on the part of four or five men. Tired, and, I hope, succeeded in being patient and courteous to all." But important to the country as were these proceedings over which Ellis was presiding, other events were taking place at the same time which were vitally affecting the Empire, and in their disentanglement he was destined to take a part of some prominence.

On December 30, 1895, Dr. Jameson, with a force of a few hundred men, had crossed the Transvaal frontier. The ostensible pretext for this raid into the territory of a friendly, and in all essentials a practically free State,1 was that the Uitlanders had been denied the rights and privileges of citizenship by the Boers. Without waiting to discuss the situation with his colleagues in the Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain sent peremptory orders to the High Commissioner at the Cape, Sir Hercules Robinson, commanding the expedition to return, but the message sent by the High Commissioner was disregarded by Dr. Jameson, and his force was out1 "A foreign State in friendly treaty relations" (Mr. Chamberlain). 2 Afterwards Lord Rosmead.

numbered and captured by the Boers near Krügersdorp on January 1. The prisoners were eventually handed over to Sir Hercules Robinson, sent to London, tried, and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. This armed invasion, which became known as the Jameson Raid, had consequences of a far-reaching character, and when Parliament assembled (February 11, 1896) it at once became the central subject of debate. The speech from the Throne announced that "the proceedings would form the subject of a searching inquiry." In the debate which followed, Ellis used these words :"The Secretary for the Colonies had described in an official despatch Dr. Jameson's incursion as 'an act of filibustering,' and therefore he would not dwell further upon it, beyond making the remark that every assistance should be given to the tribunal before which Dr. Jameson was to be tried. But the second point on which he wished to dwell was the future government of the territories from which the filibustering There was need of some principle on which to found action; and the principle which he applied was that there ought to be no mixing of commercial objects and political duties. That was the rock on which the existing arrangements had gone to pieces. . . The history of the East India Company would show that, first, it was a mere trading company, the political element predominating, then the commercial, then the political again, until in 1858 the position had become intolerable.. What took place on the India Bill of 1858 was on a great scale a complete precedent for the present case, where a much smaller matter was concerned. He hoped and expected that, with the help of the trial of Dr. Jameson and a searching Parliamentary inquiry, the clouds which now seemed to surround the

came.

1895]

PARLIAMENT AND THE RAID

matter might be dissipated, and that new arrangements would give to those vast territories a system of good government with all the blessings that implied."1

On May 8 cipher telegrams and letters, which had been found in the baggage of the British South African Company's troops and seized by the Transvaal Government, were published in England. These documents made it clear that in the December previous the reform leaders at Johannesburg were arranging for an invasion of the Transvaal, and that Mr. Rhodes and others at Cape Town were privy to the plot and consented to or even promoted it. Under the circumstances a debate in Parliament was inevitable and Sir William Harcourt, who up to this time had not taken a very active share in the questionings to which the Government had been subjected regarding South Africa, was the spokesman for the Opposition. In a trenchant speech he dealt with the connection of the Chartered Company with the Jameson Raid and Mr. Rhodes's complicity in it. Mr. Chamberlain in his reply said that wider issues were raised than those connected with the cipher telegrams, but the latter, he said, "indicate first that Mr. Rhodes and one, at any rate, of the directors of the Chartered Company knew and approved of the proceedings of the Reform Committee at Pretoria (sic). They indicate, in the second place, that the same gentleman knew and approved of the preparations for the entry into the Transvaal in certain eventualities; and in the third place they seem to me to prove that Mr. Rhodes disapproved and tried to stop the invasion at the moment at which it actually took place." The Colonial Secretary went on to point out that whatever errors Mr. Rhodes might have committed, he had also rendered great 1 Hansard, xxxvi, p. 362.