BOOKS.
THE LIFE AND SPEECHES OF THE MARQUIS OF SALISB1TRY.3:
THE writer of this book, of whom we never heard before, has done an unkind service to Lord Salisbury. He makes no attempt at judicial fairness. He is a violent and acrid, and not very scrupulous, partisan from beginning to end. He is, in fact, in a state of rabies against the Liberal Party, and never refers to them without showing his teeth and growling. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright are described as melt " whose idea of patriotism was a Liberal Government in power, and who were [in 1867] chagrined at finding that all the demonstrations they had taken part in" [Mr. Gladstone had not taken part in a single demonstra- tion, and Mr. Bright in hardly any outside his own constituency] "and all the agitation they had fomented during the past months" [they had fomented no agitation, and Mr. Gladstone was abroad] " were not likely to bring them any nearer the paradise of office."
• Locke "On the Understanding," Book II., chap. 10. t St. Augustin, " Contessiones," X., 8-9.
t The Life and Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury, K.G. By F. B. Palling, M.A. 2 vols. London: Sampson Lorf and Co. 1885. Unfortunately for Mr. Palling, the two statesmen whom he has singled out for abase on the ground of their unscrupulous greed of office happen to be just the two men who, in all this century, have shown the utmost scorn for office, except when office could be held with honour to themselves and profit to their country. Mr. Bright, in 1868, refused the distinguished office of Secretary of State for India, because he believed that a better appointment could be made, and took the comparatively humble office of Presi- dent of the Board of Trade. And he resigned even that office on a point of honour. He took office again in 1880, and again resigned it from conscientious convictions. No Minister of this century has resigned office so often as Mr. Gladstone from conscientious scruples—scruples which his colleagues, and Parliament, and his Sovereign, and even his political opponents, have regarded as going beyond the necessities of the case. We may refer to his resignation of office in 1845, in 1854, in 1866, in 1873, and this year. The Conservatives are in office at this moment because of Mr. Gladstone's indifference to office where honour is concerned, and because of their own greed of office. And what does Mr. Pulling think of the Tories' desperate clinging to office in 1868, in spits of overwhelming defeats in the House of Commons ? If Mr. Pulling had more than a rudimentary knowledge of the political period with which he deals he would not have provoked these damaging retorts. But, indeed, there is no end to his misrepresentations. "The raison d'être of the Gladstone Ministry " (1868-74), we are told " was abolition and destruction, work which, though often necessary and beneficial, does not require a very high order of statesmanship, and which, neither in difficulty nor in value, can be compared with that of constructive adaptation, which is the key-note of Conservative policy." We do not quite see how a "constructive adaptation" can be a key-note. But Mr. Palling's similes are as confused as his logic, and we must take him as we find him. But what can be said of the man who sees no trace of constructive statesmanship in the Irish Church Act, in the Land Act of 1870, in the Education Act, in Lord Card- well's Army Reform (to whose constructive statesmanship Lord Cranbrook afterwards bore honourable witness), and in the Irish University Act of 1873, to say nothing of smaller measures ? And where, pray, shall we look for the " constructive adapta- tion which is the key-note of Conservative policy ?" They inherited a surplus of £6,000,000 in 1874, and they left a debt of upwards of £30,000,000. That is a specimen of " constructive adaptation " in which latter-day Tories are certainly adepts, but which requires no very high order of statesmanship. Or shall we seek for a proof of Tory " constructive adaptation " in the Reform Act of 1867? Mr. Pulling characterises the Liberal Reform Bill of 1866 as "a meagre instalment of reform." Is he aware that Mr. Disraeli denounced it, amidst the rapturous cheers of his party, as a measure so extreme that if carried, it would " reduce a first-rate Empire to a third-rate Republic ?" At that time Mr. Disraeli opposed altogether what he called "a vertical extension of the franchise," and insisted on " a lateral extension " only. Within one short year he allowed a Franchise Bill of his own to be entirely transformed by Mr. Gladstone— transformed so completely in all its features that the late Duke of Baccleuch declared that nothing remained of the original Bill " but the first word, Whereas.' " It may be worth while to give a few more specimens of the author's historical accuracy as an example of the volumes of misrepresentation which Tory writers and speakers are now scattering broadcast over the land. " We have Mr. Gladstone's own testimony," says Mr. Pulling, " that it was those terrible events" [i.e., the Fenian outrages] "which suggested to him the advisability of proposing in the House of Commons a series of resolutions affirming the necessity of immediately disestablishing the Irish Church." On the contrary, Mr. Gladstone sacrificed his seat for Oxford University two years before the Fenian outrages jest because he pronounced in favour of the disestablishment of the Irish Church. What Mr. Gladstone said, in the passage which Mr. Pulling has so grossly perverted, was that the Fenian outrages in Manchester and in the heart of London converted public opinion in England to the belief that there was, indeed, an Irish question which needed immediate treatment. Lord Northbrook's resignation of the Indian Viceroyalty is well-known to have been caused by his disagreement with Lord Salisbury's Afghan policy ; yet Mr. Pulling attributes it to a totally different cause. The whole history of the Berlin Memorandum is absurdly mis- stated by Mr. Pulling. So is the history of Mr. Forster's Com-
pensation for Disturbance Bill. " The Home-rulers and their Radical allies rejoiced" over the Bill, says Mr. Palling. The truth is that the Home-rulers really disliked the Bill, but were compelled to support it by their constituents. Mr. Parnell 'ostentatiously withheld his assent to it, and said afterwards that he "left the Lords to kick it out." The fact is that if the Bill had passed into law it would have crippled Mr. Parnell's power, as he very well knew, and would have probably prevented the development of the Land League to the mischievous proportions which it afterwards reached.
"Whenever the Government [of Mr. Gladstone] were content to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors," says Mr. Pulling, "they were successful ; when they struck out new paths for themselves they brought nothing but disgrace and disaster upon England." The truth is literally the reverse of this statement. 'Wherever Mr. Gladstone's Government reversed the policy of their predecessors they have been successful ; wherever they failed to reverse Lord Beaconsfield's policy they failed. Lord Beaconsfield's Government left the Treaty of Berlin unfulfilled as regarded Greece, and Servia, and Mon- tenegro ; and various members of the Governnient declared with cynical frankness that the Government did not intend to enforce the boasted" peace with honour." Mr. Gladstone's Government thus found the embers of what would inevitably have burst into a most dangerous conflagration smouldering within the area of the "peace with honour." They enforced the Treaty of Berlin with firmness and without bloodshed, and thus prevented the perilous reopening of the Eastern Question. They did not suffi- ciently reverse the Beaconsfield policy in South Africa, and the consequence is that there is'trouble still in South Africa. They did not, for they could not, reverse their predecessors' policy in Egypt, and we know the lamentable result. They did completely reverse the policy of the Tories in India, and the consequence is that India is more prosperous and loyal now than it has been -within living memory. They reversed the Tory policy in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan has never been so friendly to England as it is now. When the day of reckoning comes next November, the indictment which the Tories will have to meet • will not be founded on a comparison between the late Liberal and the previous Tory Government, but a comparison between the political legacy which the Tories received in 1874 with that which they handed back in 1880. It will be easy to show that most of the troubles in foreign affairs which have en- compassed the late Liberal Government have been part of the " heritage of woe " which the Tories bequeathed to them. But Mr. Gladstone's Government "had not to encounter," says Mr. Pulling, " the factions attacks and captious criticism of an un- scrupulous Opposition." A writer who writes history backwards after this fashion is beyond the reach of criticism. The nine- teenth century has not witnessed such "factions attacks," such " captions criticism," and so unscrupulous an Opposition as those to which the late Government were exposed for years. Even Lord Randolph Churchill, with a recollection of the con- duct of the Tory Opposition, acknowledged, in one of his lucid intervals, the magnanimity with which the Liberal Opposition chief has rewarded the singularly unscrupulous conduct of the men who are now her Majesty's Ministers.
Lord Salisbury's political career has been a striking one, and affords scope for interesting and picturesque treatment. But the treatment which it receives in these volumes is that of a flippant and ignorant pamphleteer. Scraps of his speeches are selected, not so much with a view to illustrate his character or elucidate an interesting period of political history, as for the purpose of gratifying the writer's political animosities. We believe that Lord Salisbury's influence on English politics, since he succumbed to Lord Beaconsfield's influence, has been, in the main, a sinister one. He has always been imbued with ,an ingrained distrust and dread of the people, and has con- sequently been a steady opponent, as long as he could, of all generous concessions to the masses. But it was his surrender to the dominating will of Lord Beaconsfield that did him the greatest injury in the opinion of the British public. Any one who really intended to do Lord Salisbury a service would have endeavoured to bring into relief those parts of his character and career wherein he differed most from Lord Beaconsfield. Mr. Pulling slurs over or apologises for these, and brings into prominence those points in Lord Salisbury's public life in which he showed his subordination to Lord Beaconsfield. Altogether the book is a trashy scissors-and- paste production, and its English is on a par with its logic and political history. Witness the following :—Mr. Gladstone is accused inaccurately of "proving to his own satisfaction that it was impossible for a Roman Catholic to be a patriot, .a con- clusion which his appointment of Lord Ripon as Viceroy of India was a strange commentary on."
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