1874.

for the city of London by the operation of the minority vote. Mr. Gladstone kept his seat for Greenwich as junior member, a local distiller of gin being at the head of the poll. Mr. Ayrton fortunately disappeared from Parliament and from public life. Two working men were at last returned to the House of Commons. Both were miners, but otherwise there was not much likeness between them. Alexander Macdonald, member for Stafford, though a man of ability, never quite adapted himself to the tone and temper of the House. Thomas Burt, member for Morpeth, gradually acquired the esteem, the good will, even the affection of his colleagues, to a degree not surpassed in his own rank or any other. Two members of the retiring

Government went from the scene of their labours to the place of their repose. Mr. Cardwell accepted a Peerage because he was unwilling either to lead the Opposition in the House of Commons, or to serve under any other leader than Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, having lost his seat for County Louth, was created Lord Carlingford to strengthen the tiny group of Liberal Irishmen in the House of Peers. Mr. Gladstone, always intensely Conservative in matters of constitutional usage, was reluctant to leave office without facing the new House of Commons. He saw clearly enough that the precedent set by Mr. Disraeli in 1868 impaired the authority and disparaged the dignity of the representative chamber. But he yielded to the counsels of his colleagues, who thought less of political theory than of practical convenience, and on the 17th of February 1874 the most laborious of all Cabinets ceased to exist. A shrewd and able man of the world, who had been made SolicitorGeneral during the recess, wrote to a friend two days before: "I have long seen this smash coming.

1 Sir William Harcourt.

There has been a great deal too much want of 1874. common sense in the conduct of the party. We must learn not to bark when we can't bite."1 Sir William Harcourt hit the nail on the head. Mr. Gladstone had the genius of statesmanship in its highest sense. But he was deficient in the smaller, yet indispensable, arts by which the wheels of the executive and legislative machine are made to revolve without needless friction. The offer to abolish the income tax was in the circumstances rational and fair. Yet the same causes which made it feasible as a policy deprived it of its attractions as a bribe. It would not in any case have appealed to working men; and even those who had to keep up appearances on meagre salaries scarcely found threepence in the pound an insupportable burden. Political excitement did not run high. The Radicals had been alienated, and regarded the Cabinet as inaccessible to new ideas. What most people, outside party, wanted was to be let alone. In the month of October 1873 there had been a byelection at Bath, and Mr. Disraeli took the opportunity to write a letter of vehement protest against The Bath a Government which harassed every trade and worried every profession. The country had made up its mind, he said, to stop their career of plundering and blundering. This pompous and wordy epistle became the subject of much ridicule and invective. It failed in its immediate object, for the Bath election, in spite of the Bath letter, resulted in a Liberal victory. At the same time Mr. Disraeli knew what he was about, and wrote for the people of England rather than for the people of Bath. The phrase about "plundering and blundering" stuck. The sardonic epigrammatist who coined it had never been accused of excessive and indiscriminate activity in legislation. His inertness was not 1 Correspondence and Speeches of Peter Rylands, M.P., vol. i. p. 234.

letter.

1874.

altogether his own fault, for though he had
been three times in office he had never yet
been in power.
But it seemed to thousands as
if by substituting him for Mr. Gladstone they
would have rest.

CHAPTER X

THE LIBERAL HERITAGE

1

WHEN Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues laid 1874. down their offices in the month of February 1874, they had the satisfaction of leaving public affairs in the most prosperous and tranquil state both at home and abroad. The industry and enterprise of the country, as the Prime Minister had said himself in a speech at the Mansion House two years before, were advancing "by leaps and bounds." Taxation was lower than it had ever been. Trade, besides being generally sound, had received an especial stimulus from the partial and temporary failure of war-stricken France to supply the neutral markets of the world. Bread was cheap, and farmers could make a good living, although agricultural rents had not been seriously reduced by competition. The only burden of which people articulately complained was the local rates, and over them the Government had no direct control. If these rates fell exclusively upon real property, and if landowners were not allowed the same deduction from income tax for the outlay on their estates as manufacturers received for the expenses of their business, the land tax, which went to the Treasury, had not been in

1"The industry, the enterprise of this country, appear to have advanced within these last few months not by steps, but by strides. not by strides, but by leaps and bounds.". Times, July 25, 1872.

1874.

Capture of
Coomassie.

Feb. 5,

1874.

Russia in

Central
Asia.

substance raised above the point at which it stood in the reign of William the Third. Peace was unbroken, save on the West African coast, where the defeat of the Ashanti chief and the destruction of his capital by Sir Garnet Wolseley immediately followed the dissolution of Parliament. But Sir Garnet was a more economical commander than Lord Napier of Magdala, and his brilliant exploit did not materially diminish the magnificent surplus which Mr. Gladstone bequeathed. A controversy with Russia in Central Ásia, which might have led to far more serious results, was settled in a manner at once honourable and pacific by Lord Granville and Prince Gortschakoff. The Russian expedition to Khiva under General Kaufmann, consummated by the fall of that city on the 15th of June 1873, aroused in England sentiments of suspicious uneasiness, and for the first time an invasion of India by Russia was regarded as a practical possibility. The most nervous citizen could not maintain, with a map in front of him, that, if such an enterprise were undertaken, Khiva would be on the line of march. Nor could any politician not blinded by prejudice deny that Russian rule, with all its defects, was better than the irregular depredations of freebooting Turcomans. But it was argued that Russia, being virtually mistress of Bokhara and Samarkand, might advance to Kashmir and Cabul through Chinese Turkestan, unless she were attacked from the direction of Khiva. For the purpose of soothing British susceptibilities, Count Schouvalow had been sent to England by the Czar at the beginning of 1873, and had given Lord Granville an official explanation of the Khivan campaign. "Its object was to punish acts of brigandage, to recover fifty Russian prisoners, and to teach the Khan that such conduct on his part could not be continued with the