The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 3 (of 3) by John Morley

Author:John Morley [Morley, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Historical, General
ISBN: 9783752438048
Google: n6r3DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Published: 2020-08-15T00:33:53+00:00

April 5.—Wrote to Lord Spencer. The Queen and ministers. Four hours on the matter for my speech. 1-½ hours with Welby and Hamilton on the figures. Saw Lord Spencer, Mr. Morley, Mr. A. M. H. of C., 5-8. Dined at Sir Thomas May's.

1-½ hours with Morley and Parnell on the root of the matter; rather too late for me, 10-½-12. A hard day. (Diary.)

On more than one financial point the conflict went perilously near to breaking down the whole operation. “If we do not get a right budget,” said Mr. Parnell, “all will go wrong from the very first hour.” To the last he held out that the just proportion of Irish contribution to the imperial fund was not one-fourteenth or one-fifteenth, but a twentieth or twenty-first part. He insisted all the more strongly on his own more liberal fraction, as a partial compensation for their surrender of fiscal liberty and the right to impose customs duties. Even an hour or two before the bill was actually to be unfolded to the House, he hurried to the Irish office in what was for him rather an excited state, to make one more appeal to me for his fraction. It is not at all improbable that if the bill had gone forward into committee, it would have been at the eleventh hour rejected by the Irish on this department of it, and then all would have been at an end. Mr. Parnell never concealed this danger ahead.

In the cabinet things went forward with such ups and downs as are usual when a difficult bill is on the anvil. In a project of this magnitude, it was inevitable that some minister should occasionally let fall the consecrated formula that if this or that were done or not done, he must reconsider his position. Financial arrangements, and the protection of the minority, were two of the knottiest points,—the first from the contention raised on the Irish side, the second from misgiving in some minds as to the possibility of satisfying protestant sentiment in England and Scotland. Some kept the colonial type more strongly in view than others, and the bill no doubt ultimately bore that cast.

[pg 307]

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