The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 29

The beautiful _chatelaine_, the lovely d.u.c.h.ess of Leinster, was walking through the fields one Sunday afternoon with Lord Houghton.

They came to a gate, which he opened, but to her astonishment proceeded to walk through it first himself.

The indignant d.u.c.h.ess haughtily remarked:--

'The Prince of Wales would not think of pa.s.sing through a gate before me.'

'That may be; but I represent the Queen,' replied Lord Houghton, with unruffled imperturbability.

Lord Cadogan and Lord Dudley come so absolutely into contemporary history that on them nothing can here be said, except that their munificence has rendered it impossible for any peer of moderate private means to hold the office.

In sober truth, however, the administration of Government really rests with the Chief Secretary in recent times, although it was not so before the advent of Mr. Foster. Men like Lord Naas, Sir Robert Peel the younger, and Mr. Chichester Fortescue--afterwards Lord Carlingford--were mere official cyphers, but after Mr. Gladstone's 1880 ministry this has never been the case.

Of Sir Robert Peel it was wittily said that when Chief Secretary he went through the country on an outside car, which made him take a one-sided view of the Irish question.

Lord Morris said to an inquiring Scottish M.P.:--

'Did you ever know a Scottish Secretary who was not Scottish, or an Irish Secretary who was Irish?'

'No,' said the Scotsman.

'Well, go home and moralise over that as a possible solution of some Irish difficulties, for may be, if an Irishman was sent over, by accident, to be Chief Secretary, the official would not fall into the mistake of trying to reconcile the irerconcilable.'

And to my mind Lord Morris had the last word in every sense.

Mr. W.E. Forster was far too honest to be the tool of Mr. Gladstone's Hibernian dishonesty. He was perfectly fearless, but, beneath his rugged exterior, deeply sensitive. He winced under 'buckshot,' and many other epithets; but abuse and danger alike never prevented him from doing what he had to do to the best of his ability. His earliest acquaintance with Ireland had been in the famine, when he was one of the deputation of succour organised by the Society of Friends, and everybody who has read Mr. Morley's _Life of Cobden_ will remember the appreciation of their efforts by the great free-trader.

Mr. Forster did not think the Irish administration should be all 'a scuffle and a scramble,' and he inaugurated a reversal of the old balance between Lord-Lieutenants and Chief Secretaries which has never been subsequently changed. Indeed, it is often only the latter who has a seat in the Cabinet. He was the victim of many misapprehensions--the bulk of them wilful--but one which worried him was a widespread conviction that he was a slow man. His delivery was slow, his manner deliberate, and he did not lightly give an opinion. Yet emphatically he was not a slow man, and as an instance may be stated the fact that he elaborated his scheme of decentralising the powers of the Irish Government in a single evening in December 1881. I know he was hara.s.sed, nay, martyrised, beyond endurance, through the evasive volubility of Mr.

Gladstone, which, both by mouth and letter, formed a heavier burden than all the Irish attacks; but he was a just and conscientious man, and I never heard of a case where appeal was made to him on which he did not act as reasonably as was compatible with loyalty to such a Prime Minister.

His courage in walking unarmed and without police escort in Tulla and Athenry was as great as ever was displayed by a knight-errant of old.

The Nationalist papers, no longer able to taunt him with cowardice, took to declaring him to be a person notorious for ferocious brutality.

Sir Wemyss Reid said that in the House of Commons his fellow-members had literally seen his hair whiten during those two years of patriotic martyrdom in Ireland, and I always feel that the inner life of this reticent, commanding statesman would have made a wonderful human doc.u.ment. His capacity, if not his forbearance, has been inherited by his adopted son, Mr. Arnold Forster, the present Secretary for War, who acted as his private secretary in the latter years of his life.

When I read Lord Rosebery's speech advocating a Cabinet of business men, I instinctively thought of the late Mr. W.E. Forster, and it is his heir who is the first ill.u.s.tration of the Liberal Peer's theory. Since Cromwell cleared out the House of Commons, no one has done so much as Mr. Arnold Forster, for he upset the seats of the mighty in the War Office three months after he kissed hands. I wonder how he would have dealt with Parnellism and crime.

Mr. Forster's predecessor, Mr. James Lowther, was an uncommonly capable man, and gifted with a fund of humour which prevented him from taking the Irish too seriously. In 1879 I heard the Irish members in the House of Commons vituperating him after a manner that subsequently became unpleasantly familiar, but was then regarded as a gross breach of the conventions of debate. 'Jim' lay back on the Treasury bench with his hat over his eyes, and to all appearance sound asleep. Never once did he show sign of hearing their verbal tornado; but eventually he sprang to his feet, and with infectious gaiety literally chaffed them to madness.

I have often thought that the long-limbed Tory member for Hertford, who was then private secretary to his uncle, Lord Salisbury, must have taken note of the methods of Mr. Lowther in dealing with the Irish party, for it was absolutely on the same lines that he subsequently developed that superb flow of sarcasm which made him, Mr. A.J. Balfour, the popular idol ten years later.

It has been a practice for many years to appoint a man Chief Secretary for Ireland in order to see if he is fit for anything else. This plan turned out well in the case of Mr. A.J. Balfour, for he knew Ireland better than any other Chief Secretary, and when he came to know it properly he was removed.

His brother did as much harm in Ireland as Mr. Arthur Balfour did good.

Indeed, in the whole nineteenth century no other incompetent Chief Secretary misunderstood Ireland with such complete complacency, and if it had not been for the supervision which 'A.J.' undoubtedly gave, Mr.

Gerald Balfour would have a still worse record.

There was a poem, not particularly brilliant, which may be quoted because it is not widely known:--

'If I had a Balfour who wrong would go, Do you think I'd tolerate him?--No, no, no!

I'd give him coercion in Kilmainham jail, And return him to Arthur, who'd laugh at his wail.'

In fact the impression prevailed that Ireland was then sacrificed to the nepotism of Lord Salisbury, who had inflicted the least capable of the House of Cecil on the distressful country.

When the Duke of York was in Ireland, he stayed with Lord Dunraven, and Mr. Gerald Balfour as Chief Secretary was one of the house-party, and the mother of the Knight of Glin was also there.

A short time before, a chemist from Cork, who had been appointed sub-confiscator, and desired to secure his own position, had heavily cut down the Fitzgerald rents.

Mr. Balfour, by way of making polite conversation, observed to Mrs.

Fitzgerald:--

'I believe your son's property has been a long time in the family.'

'Yes,' she said, 'we got it in the reign of Edward I., and held it until last year, when the Government sent an apothecary from Cork to rob us of it.'

The conversation dropped.

Mr. Arthur Balfour was very plucky, not only personally, but in his legislative efforts, and he did wonders for Ireland--the light railways relieving numbers from starvation, and opening up the country.

An English journalist went down to the West, and tried to make inquiries about the popularity of the Chief Secretary.

He came to the cabin of a man who had been rescued from starvation by getting Government employment, and had thrived so well that he had become possessed of a pig.

This pig, on the appearance of the Englishman, escaped into a potato-field, and he heard the woman of the house shout to her son:--

'Mickey, look sharp and turn out Arthur Balfour before he does any mischief.'

The name of the pig showed the grat.i.tude of the family.

When alluding to Mr. Lowther I omitted to mention that he was always of opinion that a well-planned scheme of education was the best panacea for the Irish troubles, and it certainly would have brought up a generation less keenly sensitive to the exaggerated wrongs of the country to which both s.e.xes are so frantically attached. During his not very lengthy tenure of the office of Chief Secretary it was a.s.serted that Sir George Trevelyan also had some such idea; but whether he went so far as to draft his plan, and it was consigned to some forgotten pigeon-hole by Mr. Gladstone, I cannot say.

When the Duke of Argyll described Sir George Trevelyan as a jelly-fish, he made a comparison which, from my personal experience, I should call particularly apt.

Ireland had very little use for such a flabby politician, and it may be added, he had very little use for Ireland.

He was in such a devil of a fright at being forced to succeed poor Lord Frederick Cavendish that it was some time before the pressure put upon him sufficed to make him accept office, nor would he be induced to go over to Dublin Castle at all until he had been given Cabinet rank. As for the Cabinet, they were so anxious to settle upon a living target for the Home Rulers to practise upon, and so afraid that through his default one of themselves might have to undertake the unpleasant office, that they would have given the prospective victim almost anything he liked, on the principle of letting the condemned criminal choose what he prefers for his final meal before that brief interview with the hangman.

Directly after the formation of the following Radical Government, I met an Englishman of considerable political importance in Pall Mall, and he observed:--

'The new Cabinet is quarrelling among themselves.'

'Who are fighting?' I asked.

'Chamberlain and Trevelyan,' he replied.

'What about?'

'Chamberlain says that he brought the party back into office, and he wants the Colonial Office; but Gladstone insists on his being content with the Local Government Board. Trevelyan says that, as he has for years had experience in naval affairs, he ought to be made First Lord.