Letters of Lord Acton to Mary, Daughter of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone

Every year some zealous Frenchman exposes the iniquities of the Tudors, hoping to discredit the Church of England; and Taine fancies that to show the horrors of the Revolution is a good argument against democracy. Pattison must have stood, as to his inner man, nearly on the same level of logic.

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Cannes April 22, 1885

Scherer writes that he is going to publish a new volume, in which his recent essay on the Life of George Eliot will be included. You will read it with interest and surprise at the moral judgment.

He is also the great patron of Amiel, whom I read with delight as having a savour of Vinet – with more serious culture and curiosity, and inferior understanding for religion. There is a plot in Arnold's circle to make him known and popular in England. Nobody thought anything of him in his lifetime, at Geneva.

A careful study of my Pall Mall has left me quite in the dark as to Zulfikar, &c.[²⁵⁸] I thought there was a deliberate intention to force us into war, and I did not imagine that there was any way out of it. To my cheap and pacific mind it seemed a disaster not only without remedy, but without even a remote compensation or consolation, in which victory could do us no good, and in which the mere conflict would degrade us to the brutal level of continental powers.

Nothing has so completely puzzled me for the last two years as the hesitation of Russia to re-open the San Stefano question, while we are not only at Cyprus, but in Egypt, and without any moral vantage ground from which we can resist the overthrow of the European Turk. I would willingly give up the whole country from Bulgaria to the Ægean for a few miles of Afghan desert.

But it would be bad policy to give up both and have to fight for existence in India whenever a capricious bell rings at Petersburgh.

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Cannes April 27, 1885

I cannot imagine Russia drawing back in so supremely favourable a position. What is hard to understand is her having gone so far, and deliberately resolved on war. But I see that there is something in all this that has entirely escaped me. It seems so clear that our policy is to restore Russia to the position she had attained before the Congress of Berlin, that, therefore, we are not only her best, but her only friends – that I am quite bewildered, and half suspect that there has been some tremendous mistake in our management. I should like to have the chance of distracting Mr. Gladstone with various talk, in all this anxiety. Probably I shall be at Carlton H. Terrace on Friday week. Will you tell me there when we can meet? … Tennyson's really profound animosity[²⁵⁹] against the P.M. has long been known to people in his confidence, and has come out at last. It was one reason, but not the only one, of my dislike to his peerage.

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Maine, whose series of articles form in reality an assault on the Government, promises to adopt all my remonstrances in the reprinting of them. These filled twenty-six of my pages, in all; so I count on a considerable modification of the text.

I hope there will be a possible play … when we come to town.

– is very intelligent, agreeable, amiable, a little complex in design; accurate calculation sometimes resides in the corner of her eye, and she knows how to regulate to a hair's breadth, when she smiles, the thin red line of her lips.

Prince's Gate June 20, 1885

No one ever saw Mr. Gladstone in better spirits than he was at dinner yesterday. I hope it was the hitch.[²⁶⁰] It is a bore to be away when the thing is to be decided. May agrees with me, and with that other Radical[²⁶¹] from Cambridge, that even the ingeniously remodelled assurances ought not to be given; when we have preserved peace with so much difficulty, no concession not absolutely required should be made to these dangerous successors.[²⁶²] But it will need great fortitude, and I do not seriously hope for success against the strong wish of so many colleagues.

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April, 1885

I have said that I am divided from G. Eliot by the widest of all political and religious differences, and that political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles. Therefore I cannot be suspected of blindness to her faults. More particularly because I have insisted on another grave delinquency which has struck few persons, her tolerance for Mazzini. That is a criminal matter, independent of the laws of states and churches, which no variety of theological opinion can by any means affect. We must never judge the quality of a teaching by the quality of the Teacher, or allow the spots to shut out the sun. It would be unjust, and it would deprive us of nearly all that is great and good in this world. Let me remind you of Macaulay. He remains to me one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious for certain reasons which you know. And I might say as much of many other men. To be truly impartial, that is, to be truly conscientious and sincere, we must be open equally to the good and evil of character…

Cannes Nov. 11, 1885

I wish I had been with you in Norway or could have seen Hawarden during this most interesting time. Other trouble and travel have made havoc of my correspondence, and when you receive these superfluous lines, the die will have been cast in Midlothian. For I fancy that the enemy's only hope now is that Mr. Gladstone will not be able to address his audience.

Lord Granville has kept me up to the mark as to important matters, and announced the manifesto[²⁶³] in very warm terms; but his abrupt style of composition is not favourable to the more delicate shades of party division. One makes out, from afar, that Chamberlain is going off from the X.P.M.[²⁶⁴] while Goschen is elaborately advancing towards him; also that he, in fact, agrees better with Chamberlain, whilst the policy of the moment draws him to Goschen.

Our Joe ought to know how to bide his time. I suppose he thinks that something must be offered to the new voters that they care for. I imagine that the Church question forms a very real cause of division. Mr. Gladstone's authority will be able to keep it down for the time, and no more.

Let us hope for an utterly overwhelming victory, in spite of some perceptible progress on the part of the Tories. Through a friend I have explained to Bismarck that he must be prepared for this, if only the voice holds. Tories here tell me that they have no real hope. Selborne's name being on the Grey manifesto, I conclude that he will not be Chancellor. It will be possible to strengthen the new Government immensely with new men, but I am afraid a certain friend of ours will claim the Woolsack. The Eastern question makes me very impatient to see Mr. Gladstone in Downing Street again.

If Morier only came to luncheon, you hardly can have seen the change in him. He is a strong man, resolute, ready, well-informed and with some amount of real resource. But ambition long deferred, activity long restrained, a certain coarseness of grain which is coming to the surface, have turned him into a bully, quarrelsome and dangerous. A dexterous Muscovite will always be able to provide an opportunity of putting him in the wrong and getting up an ugly fracas. It is extraordinary what dull men make sufficient diplomatists. Arnold Morley is new to me; I gather from what you say that Russell[²⁶⁵] is sure of his seat. I was disturbed to find the Duke so hard on him, and so little support on the more amiable side of the family.

I quite agree with Chamberlain, that there is latent Socialism in the Gladstonian philosophy. What makes me uncomfortable is his inattention to the change which is going on in those things. I do not mean in European opinion, but in the strict domain of science. A certain conversation that you remember, when Stuart, fresh from the horny hands of Democracy,[²⁶⁶] produced his heresies, was very memorable to me. But it is not the popular movement, but the travelling of the minds of men who sit in the seat of Adam Smith that is really serious and worthy of all attention. Maine tells me that his book, a Manual of unacknowledged Conservatism, is selling well. It is no doubt meant to help the enemy's cause, and more hostile to us than the author cares to appear. For he requested me not to review it. You know that the new Hatzfeldt is the son of the lady who protected Lassalle, and that it is desirable to speak of his wife as little as of his mother. He is a Berlin bureaucrat, pur sang. I have something to write against time, which keeps me at work during the night until the end of November. Don't mind it, but please tell me what happens, and whether I may come and see you re-installed.

Fancy my disappointment: Paget[²⁶⁷] passed under our windows, and Liddon – as he told the World – was at Tegernsee, and I missed them both. The Pagets have set up a delightful daughter-in-law, and a near relation of hers, a Balliol man, son, I believe, of the chief Tory wire-puller in Shropshire, has just come out here…

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La Madeleine Nov. 28, 1885

It was a serious blow to find in your letter that you had no confidence in the election,[²⁶⁸] but I am glad now to think that you were so much better prepared to lose than I was, in spite of what I had also heard about Bright's despondency. I only hope that it has not been a bad time, otherwise, at Dalmeny, and that Mr. Gladstone has not suffered from so much effort.

At this moment I know only the result of the first three days, and have no Scottish news since Goschen got in. I conclude that we are beaten past recovery, and wonder whether the Dark Horse[²⁶⁹] will make the Government independent of their Irish supporters. If not, the rift in the lute will betray itself any time after the first Session.

As I am the only Englishman still so besotted as to feel Salisbury's presence in Downing Street exactly as I should feel Bradlaugh's at Lambeth, I will say nothing about my own sensations to a correspondent necessarily unsympathetic. What strikes me most strongly is the probability of Mr. Gladstone thinking that his release has come, and that he is not bound to embark on a voyage which is very unlikely to lead back to power until he is in his seventy-eighth year. For I suppose that the secret of the situation is that Chamberlain has so far played false, played, I mean, a private game, that he looked far ahead, and did not care to come back to office in the old combination, especially with the prospect of losing Dilke at first. So that, in fact, the Gladstonian influence, which would be unshaken in the country at large, was unable to control his own colleagues, and the old inferiority in the management of men, compared with the management of masses, which Goschen exemplified before, has appeared in the direction of the Radical wing.

As I know his characteristic of caring for measures much more than for the organisation which is to carry them, I conjecture he will say that he is not harnessed for ever to the coach, that he will be grievously tempted to give up leading an active opposition. Of course I should deeply deplore such a decision, but my old arguments, which circumstances did so much to impress, will be weaker now.

Three legitimate causes have told in favour of the Tories. They have not done much to make them odious, and the position abroad is easier, very decidedly, though not very considerably, easier. Then, the case against us in the Soudan is a very strong one. I may say so now that Mr. Gladstone does not really resist it; and you, at any rate, know how strongly I thought so before. That is not a positive recommendation of the Tories, but it does weaken us, and the reproach is not met, in the judgment of impartial men, by saying that the Tories did nothing to restrain or to correct us. Thirdly, the Church argument is logically against us. Mr. Gladstone's attitude gave no security that the Liberals, if they returned strengthened from the poll, would not eventually employ their increased strength to pave the way for disestablishment.

What you say of a flaw in his reckoning is very true indeed. In his literary occupations it appears still more strongly. The grasp is often more remarkable than the horizon. I do not think that it has been much of a drawback in politics, and the minds it would estrange are very few.

You would have written a capital review of Greville.[²⁷⁰] It is very odd that a man should be so shrewd, and so full of experience, and yet so destitute of positive ideas. I see that I thought too much of him, having known him before I knew the difference between common sense and capacity. My friend Maine certainly did not fear that I should spoil his effects, for I should never have found a point of contact with the views of the general reader. I don't think he likes to admit that one can have gone over the same ground, and have come impartially to opposite conclusions. His book is a symptom of the change which is so remarkable in the Times.

Cannes Jan. 1, 1886

It would have been a very great pleasure to be at Hawarden during these festive days; and only very strong local ties oblige me to say that it is impossible. There has never been a time when I was more anxious to learn what is really going on, and to see things from the centre, and it is therefore a disappointment to be away. But there is nothing that I could say or do that would contribute an element to the momentous decisions to be formed. That Mr. Gladstone will, in this great and perhaps final crisis, put himself into the position of Irishmen and view things not only from the point of their present wishes, but with their historic eyes, and that he will hold that the ends of liberty are the true ends of politics, that is the one thing certain and known to all men, and it is the whole of the political baggage with which I set out on the Irish expedition.

I know neither how to resist the claim of the Irish nation to govern themselves nor even their claim to possess the land, and nobody really familiar with the events of this century can say that the one is beyond the resources of political, or the other, of economic science. They are problems which have been solved repeatedly within the experience of two generations. Many experiments have been made, and it is not difficult to determine which solutions have failed, which have succeeded, and to tell the reason why.

I have thought so for twenty years, and now that the question has become perforce a practical one, nobody can be more heartily than I am on the side which I understand to be Mr. Gladstone's, or, to speak definitely, on the Irish side. The claim of duty exactly coincides with the claim of necessity, and that is all about it that one can say from a distance, without having seen what is on paper, or felt pulses all round.

Duty and necessity settle the question, but not as to policy in detail, which I have no right to talk about without hearing more what is said by people on the spot. Only let me say that I would not be influenced by hope of a very brilliant success, even if it is possible to do what would satisfy the better part of the Irish party. The people are so demoralised, both laity and clergy, that we must be prepared to see the best scheme fail. No Irish failure is so bad as the breakdown of parliamentary government, so that even from a sordid point of view that is not insuperable. But I would arm myself against disappointment. There is another point of view from which I see much to apprehend and prepare for. The elections send back Mr. Gladstone to Westminster, and even to Downing Street, with some loss of influence. I see it not only in the reduced majority, but still more in the increase of Conservative minorities at the poll, the infidelity of most important colleagues, and the reluctance with which he will be followed by members under pressure from their constituencies.

We saw the centrifugal forces at work last Session in the Ministry itself. Mr. Gladstone only retained office after the Egyptian vote by the neutrality of Rosebery, and in the question of concession to Parnell he had to yield to the Lords in the Cabinet.

How can they stand by him now, to support measures much more formidable, probably, than that which they rejected last spring? And could not Salisbury dexterously put the question in such a way that their vote then given should disable them altogether?

One sees the danger that Mr. Gladstone would be almost isolated among his friends, even if there is a majority in the House, and I can imagine no way of getting any considerable scheme through the Lords. I wish you would tell me that all this has been provided for, and that very careful negotiations have been carried on. Taking the question grossly, in outline, I can only say that I hope fervently that he will have strength to accomplish the only scheme of policy I can think worthy of his fame.

It seems obvious that, in the mass of letters that afflict your postman, there have been plenty of communications from good men of all sorts in Ireland. I speak of that from a slight, a remote, fear that the study of details, of conflicting and undigested suggestions, may have become distasteful to him. Writing to Lord Granville the other day in answer to a question, I proposed that his former private secretary, Wetherell, should make a tour in Ireland, as he has a very large acquaintance among people who do not clamour in the street. He would bring valuable information to bear. But I hope that there is no lack of information or of advisers.

One has to think of people in the background just because they are the minority. That may justify me in sending you the enclosed letter from a man who had, I think, a good deal of Spencer's confidence and good-will. I would not send it if I thought it could discourage, but Mr. Gladstone has faced heavier artillery every day since Christmas. Happy New Year never meant so much as to-day!..

P.S. – A frightened and discontented voice says, by this day's post, "If there is a vote of censure we must join in it and take the consequences of a majority, for we have no other mandate from our constituents but to bring back Gladstone, and if we abstained from voting we should lose our seats."

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