Among the papers in the British Library of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth earl of Carnarvon (1831–90), there is a memorandum written in his own hand concerning his six-month period as lord lieutenant of Ireland from June 1885 to January 1886.Footnote 1 Completed some eight months after leaving office, between 3 March and 7 April 1886, the memorandum gives a detailed if one-sided account of his achievements whilst in Ireland. His second wife, Elsie, who co-authored a three-volume biography of Carnarvon in 1926, wrote to Sir Arthur Hardinge, ‘My mind is wholly set on a biography as perfect a picture of a man as can be achieved.’Footnote 2
Carnarvon, whose family seat was at Highclere Castle, Hampshire, had by 1885 made his mark as a Conservative politician in a number of posts. He was appointed under secretary for the colonies in Derby’s government, 1858–9, and became colonial secretary in 1866. A man of fierce independence, he resigned together with Salisbury the following year in protest over the second reform bill. In opposition, Carnarvon participated in debates on the 1870 Irish church bill. With the return of the Conservatives to power in 1874, Carnarvon was once more appointed colonial secretary but resigned for a second time in 1878 in protest at the government’s pro-Turkish stance. Carnarvon’s contact with Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, the Irish patriot, who had published an article in the National Review in February 1885, persuaded Carnarvon to support the possibility of an Irish parliament. When Salisbury formed a government four months later, after the defeat of the Liberals, he pressed Carnarvon to accept the post of lord lieutenant of Ireland with a seat in the cabinet.
According to Carnarvon, Salisbury told him that ‘there was no one to whom he could look to but myself’.Footnote 3 Carnarvon’s reluctance to accept the post was based partly on the possible effect of the Irish climate on his wife’s health. In addition, he claimed that ‘my affections were wholly given to my old Office, and there is at the moment so much Colonially that is deeply interesting to me.’Footnote 4 In Salisbury’s estimation, Carnarvon possessed a number of attributes which qualified him for the post. Carnarvon’s predilection for federation rather than coercion was well known in his previous dealings as colonial secretary with South Africa and Canada and which might be employed in Ireland. As a conscientious landlord with properties of over 35,000 acres in Nottinghamshire, Hampshire, Somerset, Derbyshire and Devon, though none in Ireland, he was placed in the ‘richest’ category of landowners in John Bateman’s 1883 survey.Footnote 5 Carnarvon was equally at home with scholarship, and was the author of several works of Greek and Roman translation. He was an intellectual who proudly commented in his diary on his prowess as a speaker who could, without notes, spontaneously address students in Latin.
After the 1880 general election, Carnarvon had flirted with advances made by Lord Granville, one of the Liberal leaders, to join their ranks. However, by May, Derby commented that ‘Carnarvon has returned to the Conservative Party, frightened by the majority and by the composition of the cabinet. He has done right in his own interests, for the whole turn of his mind make it impossible for him to adopt Liberal ideas as they exist in England.’Footnote 6 A further worry was the agricultural depression which affected the arable parts of south and south-east England in the 1870s, leading to falling rents and bankrupt tenants. Carnarvon’s pessimism on the political situation in England in 1884, particularly the growing radicalism in agricultural areas, led him to draw up instructions for the guidance of his wife ‘in the event of any serious trouble in coming times’, urging her to ‘make investments overseas as a nest egg out of England’ in the contingency of the need ‘to flee across the seas’.Footnote 7
Carnarvon’s published views throughout the agricultural depression were set out in two articles in the National Review in 1884. The first was entitled ‘Letters by Ruricola: a word to country gentlemen by one of themselves’ and the second, a thinly disguised account of a visit to Carnarvon’s property by Joseph Arch, the radical founder of the National Association of Farm Labourers. In the second article, Carnarvon gave advice to landowners, stating that ‘there would be less civil unrest where the squire and the parson had done their duty to agricultural labourers’.Footnote 8
The Conservative Party had been dominated for a decade and a half from the mid-1860s by Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), Lord Beaconsfield. With his support for electoral reform, he had garnered new working-class support for the Tories while pursuing a policy of imperial assertiveness abroad, symbolised in the gaining of control of the Suez Canal for Britain (1875) and the creation of Queen Victoria as empress of India (1877). However, developments abroad, particularly the actions of the Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe, brought the Liberal leader, William Gladstone (1809–98), out of retirement and helped his return to power as prime minister (1880–85) for the second of the four times he would hold that post. Ironically, Gladstone’s government would be buffeted and damaged by foreign entanglements from southern Africa and Afghanistan to Egypt and Sudan. After the death of Disraeli, in 1881, the Conservative Party became somewhat rudderless, with semi-independent leaders in the commons (Sir Stafford Northcote) and in the lords (Lord Salisbury). Eventually, Salisbury emerged as overall leader and managed to survive the difficulties caused for the Conservative Party by Gladstone’s measure of further enfranchisement in 1884, this time of rural workers. Within the Tory party, Salisbury had to contend with a number of forces, not least of which was the so-called ‘fourth party’ of progressive Conservatives among whose leaders was Lord Randolph Churchill.
When it came to Ireland the Conservatives sought to exploit the difficulties that the Liberal government faced in the first half of the 1880s, to the extent even of appearing sympathetic to some of the issues raised by the Irish Parliamentary Party in parliament. The Liberals had come to power as the agitation of the land war was increasing. By 1882 a combination of exceptional criminal powers (generally known as ‘coercion’) and the concessions to tenants of the land act of 1881 had calmed things down, though the crimes act of 1882, which maintained coercion to a degree, remained a bone of contention. Indeed, controversy over its renewal was one of the principal reasons for the fall of the Liberal government in the spring of 1885 and the accession of a minority Conservative government under Salisbury which held office until an election could be held under the newly expanded franchise. Because of the relatively warm relations between the Tories and Irish nationalists it was decided to rule Ireland without coercion, a factor that at least superficially made Carnarvon, as representative of the government in Ireland, a more welcome figure.
The memorandum demonstrates Carnarvon’s sensitivity to criticism and has a bearing on his attitude to Irish affairs. This stemmed from an exalted notion of his ability to influence events and he was often ignored by his cabinet colleagues for his apparent aloofness. Disraeli and others referred to him as ‘Twitters’ in their correspondence because of his touchiness. Sir Henry Ponsonby, Queen Victoria’s private secretary, described him as a man ‘with a nervous manner and a most distressing little cough which always attacks him when you ask him a question’.Footnote 9 However, another cabinet colleague, Sir George Hamilton, considered Carnarvon to be at times erratic, but ‘a man of exceptional ability, with charming manners and an open and receptive mind’.Footnote 10 Carnarvon confessed to an old family friend:
You are, I am afraid, right as to my restlessness, and also in a great measure as to its cause. At the same time you must remember that I have always had the ‘restless’ temper from school days till now, and that it has been to a great degree not least, a secret of whatever little success I have won. It wearies me, it also prevents my rusting, which is a contingency I dread much more.Footnote 11
L. P. Curtis has pointed out that Carnarvon would have been far happier as a Whig living in the age of Melbourne.Footnote 12 After resigning over the 1867 reform bill, Carnarvon declared, ‘I am sadly out of heart and I am thinking of giving up as to politics as far as possible and dividing my time between turnips and literature.’Footnote 13
An interesting aspect of the memorandum is the contrast Carnarvon drew between himself and the outgoing lord lieutenant, John Poyntz, fifth Earl Spencer, holder of the post from 1868 to 1874 and again from 1882 to 1885,Footnote 14 especially in the way they were treated by the Irish during their time as lords lieutenant. Carnarvon believed that Spencer should have retired after the successful prosecution of those responsible for the sensational Phoenix Park murders of two senior government officials on 6 May 1882. Instead, he stayed on and became, in Carnarvon’s words, ‘the object of the most envenomed hatred’. He stirred nowhere without an armed escort, and even Lady Spencer, when she drove into Dublin was exposed to the foulest abuse. In comparison with his own public entry and during his time in Ireland, Carnarvon claimed that he ‘never received one word of disrespect’.Footnote 15 As he told an audience in Dublin, he did not wish ‘to tread the weary round of more coercive repression. I came in the hope that by reverting to the operation of the ordinary law, I might beget confidence in the minds of this people.’Footnote 16
As lord lieutenant, Spencer, with the growing agitation in Ireland, was given the task of carrying out the provisions of the land act of 1881. He had also to deal with secret societies and lawlessness. Spencer believed, like Carnarvon, that pacification could be achieved only by amending the 1881 act as to purchase and sale of land. He was bitterly disappointed when the Liberal cabinet rejected the plan in 1884. Unlike Carnarvon, Spencer’s reserved manner was often mistaken for superiority, and his delivery of speeches was dull. Shortly after his appointment to Ireland, Carnarvon wrote in his diary on 22 June 1885, ‘I hear that the Irish members are well disposed towards us and to me, that they will not give trouble during the winter and that their hatred of Spencer is so great that they are inclined to be civil to me. I hope it may be so, as it may render my task easier.’Footnote 17
Shortly after taking office, there was a banking crisis in Ireland following the fraudulent activities of Irish bankers. At a meeting on 13 July 1885 with Carnarvon, William Shaw, a former director of the Munster Bank, warned him that the bank ‘could not be resuscitated without help, say £300,000 or £400,000’.Footnote 18 Carnarvon, unable to leave Ireland at this crucial stage, had to make his views known to the cabinet through Lord Ashbourne, the Irish lord chancellor. The same day, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Tory leader in the Commons, wrote to Carnarvon, ‘We have nothing yet from you [on Carnarvon’s negotiations] to show its precise character, and therefore I am writing somewhat in the dark.’Footnote 19 Carnarvon’s promise to the shareholders to obtain credit with the Bank of Ireland settled the matter though it was considered too generous by many members of the cabinet.
Carnarvon’s attitude towards his cabinet colleagues is set out in the memorandum. He praised Salisbury’s political judgement though he was unable to persuade him of the benefits of home rule. In a note headed ‘Very private’, Carnarvon had written earlier to Salisbury, ‘For my part, I have little doubt that the general interests of the country and of the Irish Nationalists – whose safety is the great difficulty and the principal consideration to which we are bound in honour and policy – our best and only hope is to come to some fair and reasonable arrangement for Home Rule; with their protection guaranteed as strongly as charters and fundamentalist laws can guarantee it.’Footnote 20 In acknowledging Carnarvon’s ‘most interesting letter’, Salisbury gloomily replied, ‘I am not hopeful, for I have been unable to think of any provision which would answer the above requirement.’Footnote 21 In office some five months later, Carnarvon made his important statement on Ireland and coercion in the Lords on 6 July.Footnote 22
Carnarvon was well aware of the Conservative Party’s fear of a repetition of the political events which had earlier led to a serious split in its ranks. Sir Robert Peel, home secretary in Wellington’s ministry of 1827, was convinced that Catholic emancipation was necessary. It was regarded by fellow Tories as a gross betrayal of principle and led to a Whig victory in the 1830 general election. Salisbury was also haunted by Peel’s part in the repeal of the corn laws in 1843 which was seen as damaging to landlords and resulted in a further defeat for the government in 1845.Footnote 23 Salisbury, in an exchange of letters with Carnarvon shortly before the latter’s death, explained why he had not supported Carnarvon in a debate on his negotiations with Parnell in 1885, which was certainly the most important incident in his short tenure as lord lieutenant. Indeed, Carnarvon’s growing warmth towards the aspirations of Irish nationalists was to prove the principal reason for his eventual estrangement from Salisbury’s government:
You closed your speech with some eloquent expressions of your desire to satisfy the national aspirations of Ireland. Rightly or wrongly, I have not the slightest wish to satisfy the national aspirations of Ireland and I remained silent because if I had spoken I must have spoken to that extent against you.Footnote 24
Lord Randolph Churchill, who in spite of dallying with nationalism was eventually to come forth as a strong supporter of Ulster unionism against home rule too, received only one mention in the memorandum. Painting a fuller picture of their relationship during the time of the caretaker government would not have shown Carnarvon in a particularly good light. Churchill’s leadership of ‘the fourth party’, his disruptive role in the Maamtrasna debate concerning an 1882 Irish murder trial which nationalists held as proof of Spencer’s nefarious administration of justice, and the plotting which saw the overthrow of Northcote as leader of the commons were overlooked by Carnarvon mainly because of his shared belief with Churchill of the necessity for educational reform. Churchill was invited to the vice-regal lodge in October 1885. After the visit, Lady Carnarvon wrote in her diary, ‘After a conversation with him, he said the state of Ireland was quite marvellous to anyone who had seen it in former days.’Footnote 25 On learning of Carnarvon’s recent secret meeting with Parnell, Churchill commented, ‘If that blessed man sets the signal for concession flying, our party will go to pieces, as it did on the Irish Land Act ... unfortunately, Lord Carnarvon has it once more in his power as on two former occasions to disintegrate, demonstrate and shatter.’Footnote 26
Carnarvon was grateful for the detailed knowledge of the political scene provided by the new lord chancellor of Ireland, John George Gibson, in 1885, when he was elevated to the peerage with the title of Lord Ashbourne. Some irritation was caused by Ashbourne’s frequent absences at his Boulogne chateau, especially when there were cabinet meetings which Carnarvon was unable to attend. On one such occasion, Carnarvon wrote to him from Dublin, ‘We will get on here as well as we can and if anything very serious arises we will communicate by telegraph or letter; and when you return to Ireland you will be extremely welcome.’Footnote 27 Ashbourne, encouraged by Carnarvon, was responsible for drafting the land purchase bill, which passed its final stage on 14 August, which set up a £5 million fund for tenants to buy land, and repay it on a monthly basis.Footnote 28 Ashbourne’s act was greeted with suspicion by many Conservatives, who considered that the legislation was an example of Carnarvon’s and Ashbourne’s desire to win over Parnell, coupled with a growing belief that Carnarvon was a convert to home rule.Footnote 29 The chief secretary, who was usually in charge of government political affairs in Ireland, was Sir William Hart Dyke on this occasion. He proved to be a conscientious but colourless colleague who was glad to give up office in January 1886.Footnote 30
What emerges strongly from the memorandum is Carnarvon’s dislike of Michael Hicks Beach, chancellor of the exchequer, leader of the commons, and a former chief secretary of Ireland. Sir Edward Hamilton, Gladstone’s private secretary, commented shortly before the formation of the 1885 government that Beach had never had any aptitude for finance.Footnote 31 For his part, Carnarvon found Beach ‘clear and able, though I think rather rigid’.Footnote 32 This was borne out when Carnarvon negotiated with Beach over financing a number of projects to improve the lives of the Irish poor, such as encouraging the fishing industry and expanding educational facilities, which were resisted by the Treasury. ‘An honourable and upright man, as I believe,’ wrote Carnarvon, ‘he was one of the most disagreeable whom it has ever been my fortune to meet in business.’ In Beach’s defence it must be remembered that his first budget estimates revealed a deficit of £3.8 million and the need to raise a loan of up to £4 million.Footnote 33
Carnarvon’s irritation at Beach’s actions can best be seen in the memorandum’s description of their differing attitudes towards industrial schools. Beach viewed them from the English standpoint, having served on the Industrial Schools Commission when he was under secretary at the Home Department, and Carnarvon, from his Irish experience, praised their good work. Carnarvon recalled in the memorandum that ‘he [Beach] kept on saying with wearisome iteration that he had studied the question then, and that he thought he knew more about it than anyone else … he was as wooden and impenetrable as it was possible to be and I was compelled to bring it before the cabinet and fight it out there.’Footnote 34 Beach was equally dismissive of Carnarvon. It was about this time that a letter from Carnarvon to Beach was annotated with a comment: ‘This may be of interest, as showing his [Carnarvon’s] opinion of the state of Ireland at the time, which was no doubt affected by his own belief in his power of “managing people”.’Footnote 35
Little space is devoted in the memorandum to the reopening of the Maamtrasna case following Parnell’s motion in the commons in July.Footnote 36 Beach and Churchill, much to Carnarvon’s annoyance, sided with Parnell. Carnarvon hedged on the request to reopen the case and to allow appeals where new evidence was forthcoming. With a divided cabinet, Salisbury had to warn Beach not to make promises to the Irish party without the cabinet’s consent.Footnote 37 Carnarvon’s recall of events, particularly Parnell’s advocacy of ‘separation’, was probably the reason for only one mention of Parnell in the memorandum.Footnote 38 It is not surprising that Salisbury had agreed to Carnarvon’s meeting with Parnell to exchange views on Irish matters on condition that he took no part in the proceedings.
Carnarvon found more support outside the cabinet for his conviction that pacification was the obvious solution. The under secretary and thus head of the Irish civil service, Sir Robert Hamilton,Footnote 39 had breakfasted with DuffyFootnote 40 and Sir George Drevar Fottrell,Footnote 41 who was both a Catholic nationalist and a government official, in Dublin on 1 August to discuss a scheme for an Irish parliament, including a second chamber. The same day Carnarvon had held his secret meeting with Parnell in London and a later separate one with Salisbury at his country house, Hatfield. Hamilton claimed that Parnell represented so largely the opinion of Ireland in these matters that he should be included in any council which dealt with this question.Footnote 42 Hamilton sent a copy of their deliberations to Carnarvon. Salisbury summoned a cabinet meeting for 3 August, but to Carnarvon’s annoyance, Ireland was not discussed.
The memorandum contains many references to the lack of support for Carnarvon within the cabinet. It nevertheless reflected his optimism for a successful settlement of the Irish question after his meeting with Parnell. ‘My arrival in Ireland’, he wrote, ‘could only be compared to a transformation scene.’Footnote 43 His visit to the west of Ireland in August convinced him that his commitment to the ending of coercion and his sympathy and practical help for the poor had won him general support among the population. Carnarvon recorded interviews with the inhabitants. On a second tour, in September, he visited the Aran Islands where he met Father Donoghue, who was shortly to become the second archbishop of Melbourne. Donoghue reported that the landlord’s agent levied £1 per ton on the export of stone and refused funds to build a school. Nets were provided for fishing and the work was undertaken in coracles. ‘The cottages are very poor,’ noted Carnarvon, ‘I went into several. The two rooms only, on either floor, sometimes indescribably dirty with fowls and pigs walking about very much at home.’Footnote 44
The determination of Salisbury to stay in office until January 1886 presented Carnarvon with the opportunity to advance his own views. Salisbury’s speech to the National Union Conference on 7 October at Newport did not give rise to optimism and was a masterpiece of ambiguity. Howard Vincent, a Conservative M.P. for Sheffield, reported to Carnarvon after the meeting, ‘the electorate itself is indifferent about Ireland and it was remarkable to see the decline of interest in 800 faces when Lord Salisbury came into that portion of his magnificent speech at Newport’.Footnote 45
Carnarvon’s unhappy frame of mind at this time is borne out in a conversation he had with Frederick Greenwood, journalist and founder of the St James’s Gazette:
I described to him the state of Ireland, the impossibility of maintaining indefinitely the status quo, and I indicated the changes in most general terms which appeared absolutely necessary. He said he believed the Party were not ready for them. He said in answer to a question from me that he could see no course for me but to invite the Cabinet to agree to my view or claim my release. He added that he thought that if in conformity with my letter to Salisbury when I accepted Office, I now claimed that release, no one would misunderstand me – but that he hoped in such case I would take some other office.Footnote 46
By the end of November the general election results were almost complete, with the Liberals holding 323 seats and the Tories 251; the Irish nationalists held the balance with eighty-six seats. Gladstone offered to deal with the Irish question with Liberal support but this was rejected.Footnote 47 Carnarvon came over from Dublin on 11 December for a cabinet meeting the next day, in order to win over members of the cabinet for home rule. After describing the condition of Ireland, Carnarvon suggested to his colleagues three lines of action: first, do nothing; second, undertake measures to win over the Roman Catholics; third, establish a bolder joint committee of both houses to consider the future relations between Ireland and England.Footnote 48
The Carnarvon memorandum reflects the divisions within the cabinet when the future of Ireland was discussed in such matters as boycotting and failed harvests. Ashbourne favoured coercion while Salisbury’s own views were more ambiguous. Beach and Churchill favoured remedial legislation. At this point Carnarvon, determined to draw attention to his Irish proposals, announced his wish to retire from office. The cabinet considered that such a move would be seen as a climb-down by the Conservative Party. Carnarvon’s manoeuvre dismayed many of the cabinet who were not aware of the original terms of his acceptance of the lord lieutenancy.Footnote 49 Realising his bluff had been called, Carnarvon reluctantly agreed to continue in office.
By December Salisbury was confident of his political survival whilst keeping Carnarvon on board. At a long private meeting with Carnarvon at Hatfield, Salisbury deplored Carnarvon’s resignation threat and assured him that no successor to the post had been considered, ‘and that unless I really persuaded him to let me go, he might never get a successor, and if he liked I would take a seat in the cabinet without a portfolio at all events for the present’.Footnote 50 Carnarvon was pleased with this possible solution,Footnote 51 but two days later Salisbury offered the senior Tory, Lord Cranbrook, the post, which he declined.Footnote 52
In the new year with the opening of parliament, Carnarvon attended the cabinet meeting on 15 January when law and order in Ireland and the queen’s speech were discussed. Only John Manners, the postmaster general, supported Carnarvon’s plea for no action beyond existing laws, the majority favouring the suppression of the Parnellite National League.Footnote 53 At the cabinet meeting the following day, eight voted for suppression of the league and four against. Ashbourne was no longer an ally and Dyke unexpectedly had resigned. Carnarvon attended his last cabinet meeting on 18 January. The meeting the following Saturday agreed to a more assertive approach.Footnote 54 Carnarvon was glad to return from Dublin for the last time on 28 January, two days after the government’s defeat in the commons.
In the final section of the memorandum, Carnarvon set out the main issues he had dealt with during his time in office. The poor harvest of 1885 exacerbated the problem of violence and boycotting. The English newspapers, much to Carnarvon’s disappointment, called for more vigorous measures against those involved.Footnote 55 In November, Sir Richard Webster, the Irish attorney general,Footnote 56 whom Carnarvon considered ‘extremely fair and clear in discussion’, agreed with him that boycotting was on the decline ‘and that much of it is now due not so much to agrarian or political causes as individual jealousies, etc’.Footnote 57 This optimistic interpretation was to be followed by positive alternative policies.
However, his cabinet colleagues considered that Carnarvon’s Irish policy and his conciliatory pronouncements did not fully represent their views. For his part, at one stage Carnarvon asked Salisbury to silence his ‘bitter and unscrupulous critics waiting for one small slip’.Footnote 58 He wrote to Hicks Beach: ‘I am bound to add [that] the conduct of landlords in many parts of the country is bad. They seem to think that the Government is to do everything for them, whilst they occasionally act with an amount of harshness and folly that are almost inconceivable.’Footnote 59 Carnarvon informed Edmund Dwyer Gray, the publisher and proprietor of Freeman’s Journal, ‘that he felt that the time was at hand when I should be obliged by every reasonable move in my power to act against boycotting’.Footnote 60
Another positive aspect of Carnarvon’s activities was that of the reform of higher education. The memorandum shows that despite misgivings on the part of his colleagues, Carnarvon had suggested a £6000 grant towards a Roman Catholic university. The request was turned down. In discussing the matter with Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster, in November, Carnarvon spoke of his wish for two universities, one for Protestants and another for Catholics. ‘The truth is,’ Carnarvon wrote, ‘that there are at present some delicate communications to carry on with a Roman Catholic university.’Footnote 61 His claim ‘that the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy were well disposed towards me’ is borne out in his notes of interviews with church leaders such as the independent-minded Manning,Footnote 62 Dr William Delany, the Jesuit educationalist, and Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin, ‘an eager and impulsive man’, who considered ‘that the settlement of the land question was at the root of everything’.Footnote 63 Carnarvon sympathised with the moderate clergy in their endeavours to help large farmers who had for some time been losing money.Footnote 64 On the other hand Carnarvon reported that ‘some landlords and agents are angry with me because they consider me too liberal.’Footnote 65 On his conversation with Manning he noted: ‘In discussing higher education in Ireland, I said that I felt strongly the importance of having two universities, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and not one as Dr Walsh has indicated. He entirely agreed with me; and said he thought the great majority of the Roman Catholic bishops also agreed; this was also the view at Rome, viz denominational education in all its branches.’Footnote 66
Carnarvon highlighted in the memorandum the unrest caused by the establishment of the National League by Parnell in 1882.Footnote 67 The National League was a replacement local political organisation for the suppressed Land League, though more fully under Parnell’s direct control. Carnarvon noted that on his taking office the league had about 1000 branches, and that their number had grown to about 1250 by the time he left. He blamed this situation on his predecessor. The memorandum refuted the claim made especially by English newspapers that the National League was responsible for the instigation of crime. Carnarvon though put the blame less on the National League but rather on local branches, which were chaired by local priests and which fell into the hands of mischief makers. Much of the agricultural agitation was, in his estimation, due to the inflexibility of his predecessor and the low level of prices. Fottrell, in conversation with Carnarvon, believed ‘the Irish labourer will pay if he is able, landlords are very poor and land was difficult to sell’. He warned that if prices did not rise then trouble would be possible.Footnote 68
Carnarvon’s 1886 memorandum on Irish home rule can be read largely as a self-justifying exercise, though its main value lies in the insights it gives into the wide range of political issues which needed to be settled. At the very end of his term of office Carnarvon told one of the few cabinet colleagues who remained loyal to him, that the crimes act was ‘not really at my disposal, that it had virtually lapsed when we came into office’, that he had only the ordinary law to rely on, that there had been no material increase in crime and that the boycotting in July by the National League prevailed, and was in full force and had already passed beyond the provisions of the crimes act.Footnote 69 Privately he felt ‘the time was at hand when I should be obliged by every reasonable mode in my power to act against boycotting as a practice’.Footnote 70 He referred to his endeavours to provide employment and the expansion of educational institutions, often in the teeth of the opposition of various interest groups. This he believed could only be remedied by giving the viceroy financial powers.
There is little doubt from the memorandum that Carnarvon held an exaggerated view of his own importance in the reformulation of Irish policy as the autumn session progressed, and believed himself to be surrounded by lesser colleagues. In late November, on a visit to Windsor, Carnarvon had mentioned his home rule scheme to the queen before the cabinet had come to any conclusions or opinions on it. Salisbury indignantly wrote to Sir Henry Ponsonby, ‘These opinions of Lord Carnarvon had been mentioned at the cabinet; and they were repudiated by all the Ministers who spoke.’Footnote 71
Carnarvon, it is clear, also overrated his influence on Parnell. On the evening of the publication of the Hawarden kite,Footnote 72 an intimation in the press of Gladstone’s possible conversion to home rule, Parnell informed Katharine O’Shea, ‘I have always felt Mr Gladstone is the only living statesman who has both the power and the will to carry a settlement it would be possible for me to accept and work with. I doubt Lord Carnarvon’s power to do so well though I know him to be very well disposed.’Footnote 73
During his time in office, Carnarvon had attempted a series of legislative initiatives, frequently called ‘the Carnarvon experiment’, such as land purchase, labourers’ educational endowments, the promotion of technical education, industrial schools and the development of fisheries and railways. This was an early part of what would become known as the Conservative policy of ‘killing home rule with kindness’ through advocating infrastructure investment in Ireland. He also envisaged an improved relationship between landlord and tenant, announcing that the crimes act would not be renewed under the next Conservative government. However it has been argued that the Carnarvon experiment in legislative terms was simply the Spencer programme relaunched.Footnote 74
Carnarvon’s threat to give up the lord lieutenancy if home rule was not granted isolated him further from his colleagues, especially Salisbury. At his last cabinet, where the Irish paragraph in the queen’s speech was settled, containing a clause against home rule and against the National League, Carnarvon warned that this would be seen as a declaration of war.Footnote 75 With the appointment of the Gladstone government, a few days later, Carnarvon’s political ambition was frustrated and he never took office again. As one contemporary stated, ‘his greatest disappointment was his failure to find a successful solution for Ireland. He was supposed to be that contradiction in terms, a Tory home ruler, but he was only a high-minded gentleman who made a genuine attempt to deal with the Irish problem.’Footnote 76 Carnarvon’s memorandum of his time in office, published here for the first time, gives us fresh insight into a time of possibilities in Irish and British politics, before that rigid alignment of support and opposition to Irish home rule entirely took hold which would remain in place for at least three decades.
Lord Carnarvon’s memoirs relating to his lord lieutenancy, c.29 March–7 April 1886
On each occasion that I have held Office I have on retiring from it regretted that I omitted to draw up some memorandum however brief of what had occurred whilst events were still fresh in my memory. I propose now to state very shortly some at all events of the principal matters connected with my brief tenure of the Office in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, hoping if necessary to comment and revise it when I have more leisure.
I went to Ireland at the very urgent insistence of Salisbury. He pressed it on both public and private grounds, and though no proposal could have been more unexpected or more opposed to my own wishes, I, after taking the afternoon of one day in which to consider it, accepted it.Footnote 77 Salisbury amongst other arguments told me that I should probably be the last Lord Lieutenant. Had he known more of what he was talking about and had I known more of the subject we should both of us have known that this was impossible, for as it turned out in my own case it was not practicable without legislation to carry on the government of Ireland in the permanent absence of a Lord Lieutenant. But though I was not the last Lord Lieutenant,Footnote 78 I was the 15th Viceroy of Ireland of my own family, counting both sides. I ascertained that from Sir B. BurkeFootnote 79 and mentioned it in a Latin speech which I made on receiving an honorary degree at Trinity College.Footnote 80
A more important inducement to accept the Lord Lieutenantcy was the promise that I should receive in every way the fullest support. It was acknowledged that I undertook the duty at a time of almost unmatched difficulty and both from Salisbury and the Cabinet I had assurances of the fullest support. That support was never accorded me. I was left entirely to my own resources and I could never obtain what I considered essential without a wrangle and often my own personal presence in London. The Treasury treated every application, though I wrote with my own hand explaining that the question was one involving the efficiency of the whole police force or the support of the Roman Catholic bishops, or the contentment of a disaffected district just as if there were no difficulty or anxiety of a public nature or as if I were an inexperienced clerk in a Government Office. Beach was, if possible, worse than his department. He was the very embodiment of red tape, and had not even the personal courtesy which I have found in every other Chancellor of the Exchequer with whom I have had to deal. An honourable and upright man, as I believe, he was one of the most disagreeable whom it has ever been my fortune to meet in business.
All this was a great aggravation of a position in itself so difficult as to be almost impossible.
Let me next say a few words as to the position of things when I went to Ireland.
It had been one of bitter exasperation, in which the relations of governors and governed were strained to the utmost. Spencer if he had consulted his own interests, public and private, should in my opinion have retired after the conviction of the Phoenix Park murderers: but he staid on, he had not much tact, he was thought wanting in sympathy, and he became undeservedly the object of the most envenomed hatred. He stirred nowhere without an armed escort and even lady Spencer when she drove into Dublin was occasionally exposed to the foulest abuse.
My arrival in Ireland could only be compared to a transformation scene. My speech in the House of LordsFootnote 81 on the day preceding my public entry had given as much satisfaction in Ireland as it had been little liked by the Irish landlords in the House: and my entry was a great public welcome by all parties. From first indeed to last whilst I was in Ireland I never received one word of disrespect. In Dublin the outward marks of respect grew as time went on; in the wildest and most disaffected parts of the West I was treated with every courtesy and when we made our final departure there was to say the least of it as much kindly feeling as when we arrived.
It is of course impossible to say to what all this may be attributed but I should think it arose mainly from the following causes:
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(1) the total absence of guards and escorts, and the great contrast which this offered to the previous state of things. Open confidence begot confidence and with all their faults the Irish as a people are open to the same better influences as other races.
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(2) the general belief entertained that I had a strong sympathy for the main body of the people and their poverty and my wish to help them in all practicable ways.
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(3) a certain general facility of speech which fortunately enabled me to dispense with written and formal replies to Addresses and allowed me to place myself in relation with my audiences and through them with the people and to take advantage of any passing opportunity.
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(4) lastly and by no means least Lady Carnarvon and the children were a constant help. Her tact and graciousness of manner made many friends and smoothed many difficulties. She was my best counsellor in doubts and troubles, and I believe that the children and the freedom with which they were trusted to the people pleased and conciliated.
I had scarcely taken time to take up the reins of government when I was confronted by a very serious crisis in the banking world. The Munster Bank in which I with all the other Lord Lieutenants for many generations had banked, suddenly broke.Footnote 82 It was a bank in which small farmers, tradesmen etc all through the South and a great part of the West of Ireland were shareholders and depositors and the distress and alarm were very great. The alarm rapidly became a panic. The HibernianFootnote 83 was I soon learnt deeply involved, and the national was in a condition which was clearly very doubtful if a second catastrophe were to occur. The Bank of IrelandFootnote 84 had advanced very heavy loans to stay the disaster and declared they could go no further without some guarantee or aid. The position was really serious as could be imagined for a fresh banking catastrophe must react on the peace and order and government of the country to a degree that none could anticipate. Sir R. Hamilton took the most serious view of the case and agreed with me entirely in believing it necessary that the Government should within certain limits intervene. But nothing would induce the Cabinet to do so. They sent over Sir George KellnerFootnote 85 to ascertain the facts and to advise. Sir George arrived believing that Sir R. Hamilton and I were unduly alarmed and disposed to recommend excessive measures of precaution: he went back in a great measure a convert to our views; but it was of no avail, and on this as on every other occasion that arose I received no assistance from my colleagues. I had however on my own responsibility at the height of the panic said a few words in replying to a deputation that waited on me with regard to another subject to the effect that whatever the Government could properly do they would; and these words exercised so calming an influence that we tided over the period public alarm and secured time for cooler consideration. Finally matters settled down into an attempt at a reconstruction of the Munster Bank and further catastrophes were avoided. I formed however then and I retain the opinion that the banking condition of a great part of Ireland is very unsound.
As regards myself I lost the whole of my outfit money; and for some time it seemed a question whether I should ever get back much of it. At last I sold my claims to a Realisation of Assets Co. at a loss of 25 per cent.Footnote 86
As the summer advanced we made a tour along and through the West coast of Ireland.Footnote 87 The Valorous Footnote 88 was placed at our disposal by the Admiralty. She could with a head wind barely make 4 knots an hour, but she had a very civil Captain who did all that he could. We touched at a variety of places beginning at Galway and ending at Sligo, were brought everywhere into communication with the people, and saw much, that no other Lord Lieutenant had probably ever seen. Everywhere we were well received, in some places extremely well, and perhaps as we went on the reception grew warmer. I have elsewhere made some detailed notes of some of the conversations that I had with various Roman Catholic bishops or priests.
Later in the Autumn we made a more formal progress in the NorthFootnote 89 beginning at Belfast as the guests of Sir Thomas Bateson,Footnote 90 and going from there to Sir Henry Bruce,Footnote 91 Lady Downshire,Footnote 92 the Duke of AbercornFootnote 93 and the old Primate at Armagh,Footnote 94 where however we only lunched. This tour was in many ways very remarkable. The ovation at Belfast was very striking: and the scene in the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Armagh was so extraordinary that Cardinal Manning afterwards said he believed it was unique.Footnote 95
The results of these two tours were certainly remarkable. In the West my personal communications with the clergy and the people gave me a real hold on Bishops and Priests. It inspired them with confidence in me and my intentions, and from time they wrote to me, visited me and supported me in every way. Whatever popularity I gained with the body of the people I won it then, and it was a curious fact that from time to time the more bitter Nationalist Papers ceased, as far as I know, from any personal abuse of me. There was thenceforward a complete truce and if fault was found with the Irish Government I was almost always accepted. This came out in a remarkable way when I confirmed Lord Spencer’s decisions in the famous murder cases for which he had been so bitterly attacked.Footnote 96
The visit to the North was also a success, but it made me no real friends: and in one of many speeches at Belfast in which I gave a warning all round, to the farmers, tenants, landlords alike to be forbearing I gave dire offence to the last class, who would not endure that I should say one word which might imply that they could be wanting in their duties. And yet alas how many instances I had of the most flagrant, discreditable, and cruel disregard of the commonest duties of property!
But they had from the first been suspicious of us; and this made them hostile. The causes perhaps of their enmity may be summed up briefly as follows.
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1. my speech in the House of Lords announcing that the Crimes Act would not be renewed.Footnote 97
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2. my reception by the people generally: and the absence of hostility to me by the Nationalists.
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3. the friendliness of the Roman Catholic clergy.
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4. the Maamtrasna debateFootnote 98 in the House Of Commons in which in spite of my earnest protest to the contrary Sir M. Beach endeavoured to conciliate the Parnellite party and intimated that I should reverse Lord Spencer’s decision, followed as his speech was by a still more injudicious one by Lord R. Churchill or Gorst the Solicitor General.Footnote 99
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5. strange as it may seem my ‘civility to the Roman Catholics’. This was amongst the landlords in the South who made a distinct ground of complaint against me. This last was told me by Captain SlackeFootnote 100 who knows and lives among them.
It is difficult to conceive greater folly. For once they had a Lord Lieutenant – born and bred a landlord, and full of landlord instincts and traditions and who stood between them and their opponents – and yet they stood aloof from him and did their best to thwart him because he was able to keep on good terms with those whom they hated and from whom they had most cause to fear. Some indeed there were who would have acted otherwise and would have been too glad to trust themselves to me and to take advantage of the favourable conjuncture to ascertain at least whether it might not be possible to come to some more or less satisfactory settlement of an intolerable condition of things; some of them talked the whole matter over freely with me though in strict confidence, and one or two even used I know their best endeavours to bring about some such solution; but the general feeling was strongly the other way, that they abandoned the attempt and matter were allowed to drift. And yet I am confident that the conjuncture was a favourable one. I had unusual facilities for gauging opinion in all classes; I had means of knowing what the leaders of the Nationalist Party were thinking and proposing and I believe that from a variety of reasons and motives it might for the first time have been possible to come to some understanding. But as it was with my colleagues who would neither consider nor do anything so was it also with the Irish landlords. They lived in a dream. They had learnt nothing, they had forgot nothing. They yearned after the impossible return of Protestant ascendancy, and if not that then they hoped for a Lord Lieutenant of the type of Lord Spencer who, whatever might be his own feelings, was identified with a policy of repression. And so the opportunity passed by.
As regards myself I cannot see on looking back to my administration that I could make any alteration in what I did or even what I said. I was in intention and I believe in fact absolutely just. I held the scales as evenly as I could, and indeed I had no personal predilection to sway me to the one side rather than the other. I saw the faults of each too plainly: but I also saw with equal clearness the extreme poverty and distress of a large part of the people and I could not help seeing that this in a great measure lay at the door of some at least of the landlords. Absenteeism for generations, everything taken from the land and absolutely nothing returned to it, no improvements made but rent raised on the tenants’ improvements, the people allowed to live in a condition of filthy degradation, some of the commonest rights, such as sites for schools denied, a poverty for which no remedy had been even attempted, all these constitute at least in English eyes a heavy indictment.
On my Western tour I was most cordially received: but I was particularly careful to make no promises. At the same time I was anxious to leave some trace or record of my presence in the shape of permanent good to the different places, for in spite of all that I could say to prevent disappointment I knew that hopes would be raised. I believe I succeeded. The Nationalist Papers generally volunteered statements that every hope had been reasonably satisfied; and some of the Roman Catholic bishops wrote to me to thank me for all I had done. But what I did was almost entirely done out of the very slender means which are at the disposal of a Lord Lieutenant, and in the only case in which public money was involved to any appreciable extent I was obliged to go to London myself, make the question a Cabinet one, and nearly had to quarrel with Sir M. Beach in the carrying of my point!
The first of these public acts and of the most important was the removal of the prisoners from Mountjoy Prison to Galway and the establishment there of convict works in Galway Harbour. It was necessary to find employment for 400 or 450 convicts; none could be given near Dublin and the question therefore was to what part of Ireland they should be sent. I knew that if I were to appoint a Committee or Commission of Enquiry, such as was pressed on me, the investigation would extend over months and in some debated or debatable conclusion. I accordingly brought together a small Committee of those most conversant with the subject, took the chair myself and in one sitting settled the whole matter.Footnote 101 We then appointed a Committee of Experts, with the concurrence of the Admiralty, to examine and determine details on the spot. I took the precaution of securing the assent of the Cabinet, so as to guard myself against Treasury interruptions, and the scheme was launched. A prison must be built and with this end in view I sent an architect from the Board of Works to ascertain whether we could not buy an iron one ready made; and the convicts will commence upon a breakwater in order to create a harbour of refuge. It is estimated that there will be work enough to occupy the present number for 20 or 25 years.
My next and greatest act was the augmentation and the creation of Industrial Schools.Footnote 102 They were the institution which impressed me most during my Western tour, they were the one institution in Ireland which were thoroughly and entirely to be praised and which are the bright spot in a great mass of surrounding darkness. They are entirely worked by the R. Catholic clergy or nuns and are consequently pervaded by the strong religious feeling; and it is just this which makes them such as they are. They must not be confounded or too strictly compared with the schools of a similar designation in England; for they do not really deal with children of the criminal class, though the children that are brought under their influence would if left to their fate fall into the ranks of the disaffected and often the criminal population. But by the care and self-devotion of the exemplary persons who superintend them the children are rescued from a life of the lowest and most demoralizing poverty and within the short space of a few years are converted into intelligent, honest and useful members of society. In my opinion there is no object on which the State can at present lay out money with greater advantage than on these schools.
But it was precisely this to which my colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer took exception. He had been a member of an Industrial Schools CommissionFootnote 103 which he had sat on a few years ago and which had viewed everything from the English standpoint and he kept on saying with wearisome iteration that he had studied the question then and that he thought he knew more about it than anyone else. It was in vain to impress on him that several years had passed and that an entirely new and different condition of things existed in Ireland: he was as wooden and impenetrable as it was possible to be and I was compelled to bring it before the Cabinet and fight it out there. After half an hour’s discussion the matter was settled there as I desired; but this was an instance of what I had to undergo in everything great or little worrisome, ignorant opposition which could only be overcome by my taking a long journey from Dublin to London in cold weather and in the midst of perhaps most pressing business when I could be ill spared.
The details of the schools augmented or created I will give later. Meanwhile it is enough to say that in this I had the hearty concurrence of the Chief Secretary Sir W. Dyke,Footnote 104 who was always most loyal and reliable.
During this same visit to the Western coast my attention was greatly drawn to the condition of the fishing population and the possibilities of creating a fishing industry in that part of Ireland. Lady B. Coutts’Footnote 105 wise liberality at Baltimore had already given an impulse to this and had pointed the way. Lady Carnarvon and I took this up and endeavoured to follow it up in every way. We set on foot a private subscription for the purchase of fishing boats and gear; but I found that owing to the growth of suspicion and dissatisfaction in Ireland with all Irish enterprises very few English subscriptions were to be had. Where a few years ago thousands would have been forthcoming now scarcely anything could be had.
It was necessary therefore to find the means in some other way to start these poor fishermen who had no means of their own, but also had when started by Lady B. Coutts’ fund become prosperous and had faithfully repaid the loan. Under my existing powers (of Act of Parliament) the amount which I could advance for such a purpose was too small and the security required was too stringent. With the concurrence therefore of the Privy Council I made some new rules authorizing a maximum loan of £1000 instead of £500 provided that in all cases where the sum to be lent was in excess of £500 the consent of the Lord Lieutenant should be obtained. As regards security the rules required sureties to join the borrowers in bonds or promissory notes. But the fishermen were generally too poor to give such security, and I accordingly obtained for the Inspectors of Fisheries power to make loans in special cases on the security of the vessels. Under the new rules the borrowers may be supplied with ships instead of money, and the ships will be registered in the names of the Commissioners of Public Works.
But in the state of ignorance and often superstitious ignorance of these Western fishermen, who would not fish till too late, or in a manner which was ineffective, it was necessary to give something beyond even the ships and the fishing gear. Instruction was indispensable, and so I prevailed on the Admiralty to allow one of H. M.’s cutters kept on the coast for the instruction of the Naval Reserve men to take on board a few fishermen at different points along the coast and to teach them how to handle nets and to manage a sailing vessel. A small sum of £150 was necessary in order to provide the nets and fishing gear for this purpose, but this was conceded and it may be hoped that the matter is now so far settled that it will need no further extraneous help…
Next perhaps in importance – and only next – to Industrial Schools was the question of technical education.Footnote 106 It offers one more to the few existing chances which the Irish workman has of raising himself. Whilst I was in Ireland an opening presented itself to make a move in this direction. The Artisans ExhibitionFootnote 107 had just closed and the managing Committee proposed to employ the surplus money on their hands towards technical education. They applied to me and I gave them a very cordial answer, encouraging the scheme, but pointing out that the first condition was to formulate some practical plan of operations. I knew that it was of no use to ask the Treasury for any support. I had had too much experience of the evitability of this; and it must be added that in this case it would be difficult to refuse to England for her technical education anything (in principle at least) conceded to Ireland, but as there indubitably remains a large surplus from the Irish Church Fund I indicated that as a suitable place to which to look. It was clearly in my power to make the suggestion though where the question might arise for action, the concurrence of the Cabinet would be necessary.
My notion, grounded on much discussion with Sir R. Hamilton, was that very much should be left in this matter to the action and decision of the different localities who could best tell what particular form technical education should take with them, and that State interference should be, if possible, limited to securing and paying for excellence in the results achieved. This certainly from every point of view is the wisest and the safest conclusion at which to arrive; whether in so poor a country as Ireland it is practicable is of course a question which perhaps only experience can solve, and which certainly needed a longer time for enquiry than was at my disposal.
But all such questions as these – industrial schools, fisheries, technical education, however important in their general bearing on the prosperity of the people, yielded in consequence to the first and most pressing consideration of all – the proper and efficient organisation of the police force. On my arrival in Ireland I found it very much out of hand. Colonel Bruce,Footnote 108 a gentleman and very worthy man, was unfit for the times. Lord Spencer and Sir R. Hamilton had desired his retirement, but he had been made the object of very unfair attack and he thought that it would look like an admission of failure if he were to give up. But seeing that it was essential I put the matter to him privately in such a way that he agreed to retire; and no one outside I believe knew or suspected that I had had any concern in the change. I then selected an admirable successor in Mr. ReedFootnote 109 who had gone through the police force and had their entire confidence. He soon put matters into a very different condition, and when I left Ireland I was entirely satisfied with the state of things there. I also made some changes in the mode of selecting and appointing Resident Magistrates in order to get the best man and to check as far as possible the canvassing and jobbing which is inherent in all Irish public patronage. But in this I had to contend with the opposition secret avowal of every Irishman and not least with that of Lord H.
Some words are necessary as to the state of the Country on my arrival in Ireland. I very soon saw some of the principal difficulties and at one of the first Cabinets which I attended I laid them as plainly as I could before my colleagues. They may perhaps be very briefly stated as follows:-
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(1) the growth and great power of the National League;
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(2) the practice of boycotting which became under the late Government most serious;
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(3) the want of some few provisions which formed part of the Crimes Act and which could be ill spared;
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(4) the extreme poverty of parts of the population combined with a deep depression of trade and agriculture everywhere.
The case under each of these heads may be briefly and generally stated as follows:
(1) National League
Crime which had risen to a terrible height before the Phoenix Park murdersFootnote 110 had been greatly reduced by the operation of the Crimes Act and perhaps some other agencies. It had reached a certain level which though too high was yet endurable and which remained much the same – at times a little more at times a little less – during my tenure of Office. At one moment the English press tried to make out that it was increasing; but it was not so; and the attempt to show it failed. And the truth was that agrarian crime was really bad only in particular districts, viz: in parts of Kerry, Cork, Clare and Waterford, where either it had existed for some time or where the soil seems to be particularly congenial to it. In other parts of Ireland, with occasional exceptions, everything was quiet and fairly conformable to law.
In connection with all this the influence and attitude of the National League had to be considered.
I do not think it would be fair to say, as so many English papers said, that the National League instigated crime, as its predecessor the Land League did. On the contrary its influence was often used to discourage outrage: but its organization, its great power, its known sympathies, and its very existence, by the side of the Law of the Land and overshadowing that law, all contributed indirectly to make the prevention of agrarian crime more difficult. The central body indeed professed principles that could hardly be said to be unconstitutional, and I believe that on many occasions – especially during the later part of my Vice-royalty – it used its influence to check excessive boycotting. But it then appeared that the local branches which it had called into being were too strong to be controlled and it found itself helpless and impotent in the face of its own children.
The branches varied much in their character. In some they were harmless discharging little more than the duties of a friendly society: in other places they were violent and mischievous, encouraging boycotting, constituting themselves into tribunals of the most partial kind, stirring up tenants against landlords and making themselves a source of real danger. In most cases a priest was the president. Where he was an older and more experienced man I believe his influence was often exercised for good; but where he was a young curate, as was too often the case, he did infinite mischief. I believe that the original cause of the chairmanship of these branches being taken by priests was the hope that they would be able to lead and direct for good and movement: but this expectation was constantly disappointed. The priest fell into the hands of the more violent and unscrupulous members of the League and was led to approve and finally to propose action of the most aggressive and mischievous nature. I think the older and the best priests looked askance on the whole movement: and certainly many of the best bishops did so. Some indeed actually set their faces against it and forbade their clergy to join it.
But the greatest mischief lay in the informal courts which the League established, which assumed to revise and judge the relations of landlord and tenant, to regulate differences between tenants, to decide even beyond these limits upon the right or wrong of boycotting in particular instances. And when I say ‘informal’ courts perhaps I should rather say formal, for they were formal in every respect except that they were secret, which made them all the more dangerous. They were regularly constituted, went into evidence on each side in a regular manner, and under a system of carefully drawn rules, proceeded by written records, and were in complete communication with the central body in Dublin. Through the means of a person who privately undertook some important enquiries for me I saw one of these papers in which the fullest details were required and set forth on paper and where the judgement, curiously enough in that case against the tenant for the landlord, was given. In some instances the landlords themselves, where they were small people, subscribed and became consenting partners; in other cases the practical terrorism which was exercised was almost irresistible, especially with a people like the Irish who are and have so long been under the influence of secret societies.
When I assumed Office the National League numbered somewhat over 1000 branches: when I left, following the rate of increase which had continued during my predecessor’s time it counted about 1250.
I have sometimes asked myself since whether I could have done anything to prevent or counteract this situation; as I was I believe I could not. I set it all before my colleagues within a few weeks of our taking office, and just before the prorogation of Parliament; but no one then was prepared for any strong measure, if indeed any strong measure was practicable, nor was our position as a Government such as to make this possible. The Country was quiet – there was no outrage to warrant such a step – even boycotting was at that moment not openly very bad – and we were a Government confessedly holding office in a temporary manner until the Election should decide the ultimate policy to be pursued to and in Ireland. But there was a further difficulty. It was not legally and constitutionally possible to put down the League. It was not a similar case to the disruption of the old Land League. We had no legal authority and if a drop of blood had been spilt in the attempt those who spilt it would have been responsible in the eye of the law, and (what is not less important) at that time not justified in public opinion by the facts of the case. The feeling which a few months later grew up was the result of some bad boycotting cases and a great deal of writing in the Press.
The real mistake was committed before my accession to Office. Lord Spencer when the Land League was suppressed ought not to have allowed the National League, which was almost the same institution under a slightly altered name and form, to grow up. It might then I think have been prevented; and a far worse mistake was made by Mr. TrevelyanFootnote 111 who either on his own authority against Lord Spencer’s opinion or from some blundering gave an answer in the House of Commons by which the then Government were committed to the fatal error of allowing the police to be withdrawn from the National League meetings and thus making them secret. That gave an incalculable impulse to the terrorism which was exercised and left the Irish Government virtually powerless.
(2) Boycotting
The name of this political weapon was comparatively new: but the practice was very old. It had been recommended in almost identical language in O’Connell’sFootnote 112 time if not before him, and it had its counterpart in the actions of English Trades Unions, no less than in the terrible excommunications of the middle ages. Where indeed the Priest was an active and leading spirit in the League there the boycotting assumed a religious as well as a civil character, and a fresh terror was lent to it; but generally it was political in its colour. But it was of every kind and variety; in some places it was oppressive, crushing and cruel; in others it was slight and almost trumpery.Footnote 113 Where landlords as in one or two cases that came to my knowledge met it betimes with all the energy and means at their disposal, it melted away: but where, as was more commonly the case, it was allowed to grow with only a feeble protest and without active resistance it came to a head which afterwards defied all control.
I think the effect was rather one of indirect influence than of direct power; for considering all that was said and written of it the number of cases, though they had considerably increased, was not really large if measured by the population. At the end of 1885 there were less than 200 cases of persons wholly boycotted, and between 600 and 700 practically placed under this ban. The Irish people from their weakness of character were a singularly unfortunate people on whom to try such an experiment; the landlords were an equally unfortunate class upon whom to depend for any cooperation. They could only look to the ‘Castle’ for help and suggest martial law or other violent and wholly illegal remedies; and with some exceptions – for exceptions there were – did nothing in their own districts.Footnote 114
One illustration of this is enough: but it is a striking one. Boycotting often took the extremely inconvenient form of preventing an innkeeper from supplying boycotted persons or serve the police with cars. We decided at the time when the renewal of licences came on before the magistrates to instruct the police to oppose the renewal of them, where the innkeepers would not give an undertaking that they would in any circumstances supply the cars. At Macroom they received these instructions; we had taken the precaution of sending a good resident magistrate to support the local magistrates, and the cases came on. The first publican accepted the renewal of his licence after some demur on the prescribed conditions. The second did the same, but when the third was subjected to the terms which had been imposed on the two first, three out of the four of the local magistrates actually stultified themselves and did the gross injustice of granting the licence without any undertaking or promise on his part. The resident magistrate protested and was supported by one local magistrate but all in vain. I was indignant when I heard of the case and wished to remove the three offenders from the Commission of the Peace but the Chancellor, Lord Ashbourne, with whom this rested, would neither do this nor anything else to mark the grossness of their conduct. He agreed with me in private, but in public condoned the offence.
If I remember rightly application was made about this time for an addition of magistrates to the Cork bench, on the ground that it was impossible to get a quorum for ordinary business. On enquiry it appeared that there were already no less than 57 in the Commission of the Peace!
One more instance of the same kind. A list of twelve names was submitted to me of men whom it was desirable to put into the Commission in one of the principal towns in Ulster. The list was given by Lewis the M.P.,Footnote 115 and every name was said to be carefully selected. It was then sent by me to the persons on whose local knowledge I was obliged to rely for verification. I think it passed amongst others under the examination of Lord Ashbourne. It was returned as being in all respects satisfactory, and, I was on the point of sanctioning it, when I received a confidential communication from a person in Belfast telling me that some of the names were wholly unworthy: I thought it prudent to make public and private enquiries and I found that one man was tainted with malpractice in trade, that another was very little better, and out of the 12 names I was compelled to omit 3 if not 4. Such were the instruments with which a Lord Lieutenant had to work and such were the counsellors on whom he was often obliged to depend!
I nevertheless very early turned my attention to the best means in our power of coping with the practice of boycotting under the existing law, and I think that we did exert these powers to the full extent. The Attorney General, Holmes,Footnote 116 was very useful. He was acute, industrious, very pleasant to work with, sound I believe in his law and though not always infallible in judgment, a man who publicly and privately grew much upon me as I saw more of him. The Chancellor, Lord Ashbourne, was able, with great local knowledge and much personal popularity and force of character but here I must stop. During all the first part of my tenure of Office when I particularly needed assistance he was absent, amusing himself in France; and when at a later stage he returned I found that he could not be really depended upon. He was essentially an Irishman or what is commonly supposed to be an Irishman. His absence abroad was very severely commented on in Ireland even by his old friends and it was said with some show of reason that having climbed to the top of the tree he could now take no more trouble or do his duty in disagreeable and difficult times, and there was some truth in the charge.
Returning however to the course which we as the Irish Executive took, I think that we did all that was possible under the conditions of the existing law. We prosecuted under the English Conspiracy ActFootnote 117 and also under an old statute of Edward III: we also took action by summary jurisdiction.Footnote 118 In many cases we secured a certain amount of punishment; in other cases we held offenders over to bail; and we returned some cases to the Assize, where an unexpectedly large number of convictions were obtained in Cork at the Winter Assize, the Cork juries doing their work very well.
In fact the law was put into full operation; and on the whole successfully, but some bad cases of boycotting occurred and they were taken up by the Express and blame was thrown on the Irish Executive as if they were negligent. The Express was in close communication with the Times, which dissatisfied from the first now opened upon us and day after day teemed with letters from ‘Loyalists’ and Irish country gentlemen and everyone who desired to see rigorous measures, as they called them, adopted. There was as usual a great mixture of truth and exaggeration in this; for whilst every case of boycotting was made the most of, the Government prosecutions were entirely unmentioned; and so just before the Elections a great storm arose in England. The Cabinet, which up to this time had put aside all consideration of Irish matters as an unclean thing, now awoke and, as is always the case, awoke in a panic, not knowing exactly why, and certainly not knowing what to do.
For the moment the Elections occupied and diverted them; but the moment these were over the difficulty arose in an aggravated form.Footnote 119 Parnell, in order I believe to check and control Mr. DavittFootnote 120 and the extreme section of his followers, held language which was construed into an advocacy, of ‘Separation’. The Papers became once more flooded with letters and articles, the general alarm became a panic; the Cabinet lost its self-possession and was ready to adopt at a moment’s notice and without even allowing time for necessary consideration or discussion any resolutions however extravagant. I have seen this most curious state of things before and I suppose that it is common to Cabinets, when a sudden excitement or terror gets possession of most of the members and when those who had been strongest for moderate counsels advocate the most extreme plans. Such was our case now, and actually when within a few hours of meeting Parliament we were in danger of going to pieces over illegal and unconstitutional proposals.
I do not mean to say that as individuals the various members of the Cabinet lost their heads: but as a body they exhibited that curious condition of mind in which rash or unwise actions are committed. There were indeed one or two who in the general confusion seemed to remain master of their own ideas, but the majority were under the influence of a sort of panic which made them ready to accept any proposal which seemed at the moment plausible. Lord Salisbury kept his head. Nor do I mean that in the position at which matters had now come the fault lay wholly or even mainly on one side. It was pretty evenly divided. Landlords who were incompetent and unreasonable, National League branches who were violent and ready to connive at, if not instigate, outrage, the Irish Government which was armed with utterly inadequate powers and the Irish Parliamentary party, partly flushed with their recent electoral successes, partly pushed on by the extreme section of their followers, a Cabinet that was ignorant of the real state of the case and was in dread of its party in the H. of Commons and a Press which was under many influences, but all averse to anything like a settlement of the great question coming on – all these different parties and elements must share the responsibility of failure. Some will say that it was not well to settle the question: that was the opinion of the majority of the Cabinet. They neither had nor did they desire to find any alternative. But I believe this to have been a mistake, and that it had now become impossible to count indefinitely either upon a repressive policy or the old lines of government in Ireland.
For myself if I had had the free hand which I understood I was to have when I went to Ireland, I could have done much; if I could have had the concurrence of the Cabinet and of the Party in the further scheme of settlement which I think I saw more or less clearly before me, I believe I could have steered the ship safely into harbour. But this was denied.
As regard the free hand I have some right to complain. I was virtually told to make ropes out of sand. I had no weapons of offence, I had no support from home, and on one or two occasions, as in the Maamtrasna debate, I was seriously hampered and crippled by my own colleagues. The Chancellor of the Exchequer refused every application for money, great or small, or gave it only after a long and exhausting correspondence: and even the Prime Minister was very chary in giving the few wretched honours which were needed.Footnote 121
As regards my own larger schemes of settlement I cannot rightly complain that my colleagues did not accept my ideas, and the course afterwards taken by the party and by HartingtonFootnote 122 and the moderate Liberals is a certain justification.
But as regards the Irish Government there was neither failure nor miscarriage in anything that one attempted, and if the general policy was to be one of conciliation, as it was intended that it should be when we entered upon Office, I do not know that there was anything that could have been better done than it was done.
Individually I very early came to the conclusion that the continuance of the attempt to govern Ireland on the existing lines was impracticable, and that either we must go backwards or forwards, the recent legislation and still more the language of Gladstone having brought the mind of the country to a point where it was impossible to stand.
Backwards I believe it was impossible to go. Even if it were possible for a time to suspend the constitution or ordinary constitutional action it could only be for a short time. A reaction must succeed and the condition of things would be even worse. There were no elements of stability, as far as I could see, in a system of continuous and effective repression. The landlords over a great part of Ireland were effaced; Protestant ascendancy was a thing of the past; the factions in and out of Parliament were too strong to allow of the hope of any continuous policy, such as would foster industry, introduce capital, bring back prosperity, being carried out. Apart from Ulster, where the problem again was of a different but a very difficult kind, there were few Conservative influences at present active. The R. Catholic Church was, I believe, in spite of some appearances to the contrary a distinctive Conservative power; but the Bishops had thrown in their lot with the National Party and for the time at least their moderating and healing influence was withdrawn. The Irish Executive was in its organization unequal to such a task as that which I am contemplating and would need to be entirely remoulded for it.
Could we go forward? The prospect was very uncertain, perhaps dark; but it seemed to me to present the one solitary chance of a better state of things. I took every possible means of ascertaining the temper and real disposition of the Nationalist Party. I incurred no little risk in the attempt, and I came to the conclusion on evidence which I could not doubt that from a variety of motives they were so anxious to come to terms they would accept conditions which I had not at first thought possible. It seemed in other words a favourable conjuncture in the midst of that which it was idle to disguise was a political and social revolution.
In these circumstances I felt bound to bring the question clearly before the Cabinet: and this I did on two if not three occasions – once when I made a long statement of which I have elsewhere kept a note – and once in a printed and very confidential memorandum.
I partly worked out a plan of settlement which (1) went far enough I thought to satisfy the moderate Nationalists, (2) would secure rights of property, (3) would maintain the Imperial connection, in order to test the question how far such a scheme would bear discussion. But no one wished to discuss it and I did not therefore lay it before my colleagues. The entire question was repugnant to them.
I had several conversations with Lord Salisbury in private on the subject. Indeed I felt it necessary for my own sake as well as for the sake of the question itself to lay my ideas clearly before him: and I am bound to say that he was consistent in his refusal to entertain them. But his main objection to any such proposals was his fear of repeating the conduct of Sir R. Peel at the time of the Corn Law Repeal.Footnote 123 In addition to this he was so engrossed with the management of the Foreign Office, that it was with very great difficulty that any other subject could be brought before him. It convinced me – had I indeed needed any persuasion on the subject – how great a mistake it is for a Prime Minister in these days to undertake any other Office. If a man can be found with the physical strength, he certainly wants the time.
There was one expedient that might have been tried if I could have persuaded my colleagues to make the experiment: they took alarm too late when it was past hope to look in the direction of palliatives, and this was the expenditure of a considerable sum of money on various Irish interests. This, if combined with a large system of higher education such as I had devised and which would I believe have conciliated the R. Catholic Church, might if attempted at one particular moment when I seemed to stand very well with all or almost all classes and parties might have led to very important results. I put it to Lord Salisbury but he did not enter into it, and unless he as Prime Minister had warmly supported the policy there was no hope for it. Whilst things went on tolerably well Sir M. Beach would not advance £100. When the position became strained and difficult it was too late to do anything.
I became however convinced and I still am that the greatest difficulty of all in Ireland, if not the one real difficulty, was the poverty of the people and country. Lord Chesterfield,Footnote 124 one of the ablest of Irish Viceroys, said so in his day; and it is equally true now. Everywhere except in parts of Ulster there is a look of poverty and slums; and in some parts of Ireland the people are only just above starvation point. This results no doubt from many causes. English fiscal and commercial policy in past times that most cruelly and deliberately destroyed branches of industry, the absence of minerals, the present great depression of agriculture, the mismanagement of Irish landlords, and the faults of Irish character – all these make up a sum total of unfavourable conditions which at all events go far to account for the existing state of the country. Meanwhile little has been done to meet it. Money indeed has been spent on so-called improvements, but it is questionable whether as in the works on the Shannon, where I think nearly £1,000,000 has been expended, a very large part of the expenditure has not been wasted. In 1879 when a very large sum was advanced for seed supply – I think nearly £… -Footnote 125 it was carelessly and badly done as to be in many places useless. Worse than this it was occasionally greatly abused. I heard of one case in the West of Ireland where one of the landlords made a poor collier who could neither read nor write take in an application in his (the collier’s) name for a supply of seed, then appropriated it to himself – the landlord – and left the collier the liability, as he had applied for the seed. These are some of the things which have happened within the last few years; and so full of party and faction and injustice is the whole public atmosphere in Ireland that they are connived at or defended by the class to which the offender may belong!
Again, the light railways which ought to have opened out the poor districts have been so managed that under the recent Act help has been given to the richer districts only, and those where the aid was essential are left neglected.Footnote 126 I endeavoured to persuade the Treasury to spend £1200 as an exceptional experiment on the construction of a road in one of the poorest parts of the West Coast; but I could not succeed.
