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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

S >> Stuart J. Reid, ed. >> Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885




Yet, when Mr. Gladstone did resign the leadership, no one named any of
these intriguers as his possible successor; and it may be noted here that
none of the intriguers has even yet secured the reward he coveted. The
two names mentioned as those of possible leaders in 1875 were those of
Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. I name them in this order because Mr.
Forster was first suggested, and the suggestion came not from any
wire-pullers or clique, but from the body of Liberals as a whole. But Mr.
Forster's enemies on the Opposition benches, though not very numerous,
were very bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they
could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord
Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no
taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party
in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above
all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Social influence
counts for a great deal in political life in this country, but there was
another factor that also counted in favour of Lord Hartington. This was
the fact that he could not sit in the House of Commons after his father's
death, and that, consequently, if he were chosen, he would be more or
less of a stopgap. A stopgap is, of course, always popular with the
intriguer who knows that he himself has not yet arrived.

A tremendous effort was made on behalf of Lord Hartington. I am doubtful
whether it would have succeeded if the struggle had been carried to the
end. Mr. Forster's friends were in earnest, and they comprised the
majority of what might be called the Moderate party on the Opposition
benches. But Forster himself settled the question by withdrawing from the
candidature, and thus prevented an unseemly contest. It is now known that
Lord Hartington himself would have taken this course if Forster had not
done so. They were two straightforward, honourable rivals, and they acted
throughout this business like English gentlemen. That which made the
election of Lord Hartington to the leadership bitter to those who, like
myself, had strongly advocated the claims of Mr. Forster, was our
knowledge of the fact that he had really been defeated by the opposition
of the Birmingham League, and of those Radicals who were prepared to
sacrifice the larger interests of Liberalism to their own personal
antipathies and sectional views.

Indeed, it may be said that with this election of Lord Hartington to the
Liberal leadership the reign of the caucus commenced. The dejected
Liberals were resolved, if possible, to organise victory, and at
Birmingham men were found who were not only prepared to assist them in
the task, but who were quite ready to assume the lead of the Liberal
forces throughout the country. All the talk that one heard in political
circles in those days was of caucuses on the Birmingham plan, and of the
rise of the National Liberal Federation, the existence of which people
were just dimly beginning to recognise. I am not writing the history of
the National Liberal Federation, and I pretend to no special knowledge on
the subject of its origin. Popular opinion credits Mr. Schnadhorst, the
famous organiser, of Birmingham, and subsequently of London, with the
authorship of the scheme. But I doubt the truth of this. I knew Mr.
Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for him as a man at once
honest, sagacious, and of much simplicity of character. But he was not
intellectually great, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli
his opponents believed him to be. The Birmingham caucus, which became a
model for all other Liberal constituencies, was probably founded by the
joint efforts of several men, among whom Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Powell
Williams, as well as Mr. Schnadhorst, were to be counted.

The plan of the caucus was delightfully simple. A constituency--and those
were the days of big constituencies--was divided into districts, and the
Liberals of each district were allotted a certain number of seats on the
Central Liberal Association. This Association generally consisted of so
many hundreds of persons, and it thus came to pass that the Association
became known as the Huddersfield Two Hundred, the Leeds Four Hundred, the
Birmingham Six Hundred, and so on. On a given day in each constituency,
the Liberal electors in the various districts met, and elected their
representatives on the Central Association. Every known Liberal had a
vote, so that the constitution of the central body was, in theory at all
events, delightfully democratic. These associations were designed to
sweep away the old system of Liberal committees, influenced by local
magnates, which had prevailed ever since the passing of the Reform Bill.
There was a strong belief among the inventors of the caucus that by means
of this plan they would secure the predominance of the advanced Radical
party. The old privileges of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for
nothing in the councils of Liberalism. Every man was to have a vote, not
merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to
select candidates, manage local political affairs, and generally
determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the constituency.
Every year the different Hundreds were to elect representatives who were
to act as their delegates at the conferences of the National Liberal
Federation; and the Federation itself was to be regarded as the
legitimate and indisputable representative of the Liberalism of the
country as a whole.

It was a bold and far-reaching scheme, and whatever its effect may have
been in temporarily restoring the fortunes of Liberalism, its influence
upon the political life of England has been great, and--I fear I must
say--has not been beneficial. The founders of the caucus professed to
resent the intrusion of the influence of money into political affairs.
Within certain limits this was an admirable attitude. But its practical
effect has been to drive the greater proportion of the moneyed classes
out of the Liberal party. They further professed to wish to put an end to
the influence exercised by cliques and privileged classes or persons in
the party. The majority was to rule under all conceivable circumstances.
Those who, like myself, have had an active and intimate association with
the caucus and the Federation know that in practice the new system, so
far from destroying the rule of cliques, merely substituted one set of
cliques for another. The active busybody, who had little business of his
own to attend to, or to whom the position of member of a local committee
was one to be striven after for the sake of the dignity attaching to it,
became the ruling spirit of the caucus. In thousands of cases the older
and more sober Liberals were driven out of the councils of their party in
disgust, and more and more the extreme men, who were fighting in earnest
for some special object or fad, became the predominant powers in
Liberalism. This was the change that was gradually wrought in the Liberal
party between 1875 and 1885.

At the outset I was vehemently opposed to the new methods, and protested
stoutly against them in the _Leeds Mercury_. It was not very long,
indeed, before I had personal experience of the way in which the caucus
system worked. Mr. Carter, the Radical, who had been returned for Leeds
in 1874, retired from Parliament two years later. It would have been the
natural and proper course for the Liberal party to invite its former
representative, Sir Edward Baines, to become a candidate for the vacancy.
He was the man who undoubtedly had the chief claim upon the Liberal party
in the town. A meeting of the newly-formed Liberal Association was called
to consider the question of choosing a candidate. As editor of the chief
Liberal paper, I had been taken into the counsels of the local Liberal
leaders ever since assuming that post, had been invited to attend the
meetings of their committee, and found that they were at all times
desirous of securing my support. When I spoke to one of the officials of
the new Association of the meeting that was to be held to choose a
candidate, and mentioned my intention of attending, I was bluntly told
that I should not be admitted. I had not, it appeared, been elected a
member of the Four Hundred. As a matter of fact, very few persons in
Leeds had known anything about the election of this body when it took
place. It was a startling revelation of the change that had taken place
to be thus refused admittance to a body which, in former times, would
have been only too anxious to secure my support.

The President of the Association, to whom I went to demand admittance,
stood upon the strict letter of the law. I had not been elected by my
district committee, which held its meetings in a local public-house, and
it was therefore impossible that I should be allowed to attend the
deliberations of the sacred body. Looking back, I can see that the
president was absolutely justified in the line he took. It might seem
absurd to shut out from a meeting of Liberals the person who, by reason
of his position, had more political influence in Leeds than any other
man. But "logic is logic," and under the new system any claim founded
upon mere influence, or even upon past services, was inadmissible. I was
too young, however, to acknowledge this fact at the time, and I bluntly
delivered an ultimatum to the President of the Association. "You may hold
your caucus meeting," I said, "but if it is to be private so far as I am
concerned, it shall be private so far as the reporters of the _Leeds
Mercury_ are concerned also. I shall simply ignore your proceedings,
and to-morrow the _Leeds Mercury_ will make its own nomination for
the vacancy." This was all very wrong, I fear, and most irregular.
Indeed, remembering what power the caucus system subsequently attained, I
look back with something like astonishment at my own audacious action.
But the caucus was still in its infancy, and my worthy friend the
President, after a hurried consultation with his fellow-officials,
capitulated. I was invited to be present at the meeting of the sacred
body.

It was the first meeting of that description I had ever attended, but it
was typical of many that I have attended since then. As I expected, it
was proposed by those who had long been recognised as the leaders of the
Liberal party in Leeds that Sir Edward Baines should be the candidate.
Forthwith a most violent opposition was offered to the proposal by men
who had never before been heard of in Leeds politics, and some of whom
had only been resident in the town for a few months. I remember that the
most violent of these gentlemen was a schoolmaster from Birmingham, who
denounced Sir Edward Baines for the assistance he had given in the
passing of that iniquitous measure, the Education Act. Another gentleman
denounced him with equal violence because he was the proprietor of the
_Leeds Mercury_, a journal which had dared to speak disrespectfully
of the truest and most honest Liberal of the day, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.
That was the first occasion on which my fellow-Liberals in Leeds
belaboured me with the name of Mr. Chamberlain. On all sides I heard
extreme opinions expressed by men whose faces and names were quite
unfamiliar to me, and I found to my dismay that the more extreme the
opinions, the warmer was their reception by these representative
Liberals. They would hardly listen to their old leaders, who had grown
grey in fighting the battles of Liberalism. They treated with contumely
any words of soberness or moderation. They applauded even speakers who
were palpably selfish and insincere. As I listened to that debate, my
eyes were opened, and I realised the fact that a great revolution had
been suddenly and silently wrought, and that the control of the Liberal
party had, in a great measure, passed out of the hands of its old leaders
into those of the men who managed the new "machine." If I have been
tedious in telling this story of the caucus, it is still, I feel, one
that is worth telling, for it illustrates one, at least, of the great
changes in the political conditions of this country that have happened
during my lifetime.

It was not, of course, Sir Edward Baines who was chosen as the Liberal
candidate. The choice of the caucus fell upon the worthy President of
that body, the late Sir John Barran, an amiable man and a good citizen,
though his claims to Parliamentary distinction at that time were
certainly unequal to those of Sir Edward Baines. The revolution had taken
place, however, and the Liberal party found itself under the command of
new masters. For some time after the establishment of the caucus, it
pursued a distinctly aggressive course, and inspired all of us with
alarm. In course of time, however, I realised the fact that there were
certain severe limitations upon its power. It could not stand against the
country when the country was in earnest. It could not give that
inspiration to a party without which victory cannot be achieved. No
amount of organisation, however skilfully devised, could supply the place
of a great popular movement. I became reconciled to the caucus when I
grasped these facts, and for a time I not only looked upon it as
harmless, but gave my assistance to it, locally in Leeds and, in its
national work, in the office of the National Liberal Federation. Yet I am
compelled to confess now that, though I have not altered my view as to
the limitations of the power of the party machine, I no longer regard it
as harmless.

It is, I think, impossible to deny that very great harm has been done,
not merely to the spirit of Liberalism, but to the actual fortunes of the
Liberal party, by the new system. It has brought a new spirit into the
direction of our party, a spirit which is too apt to regard the catching
of votes as the one great object to be pursued and attained, no matter by
what means. It has given the mere machine man, the intriguer and
wire-puller, far greater power than it is right that he should possess,
seeing that as a rule his power is not accompanied by a corresponding
degree of responsibility. Above all, it has lowered the status of a
member of Parliament, and made him more or less of a delegate who is
bound to yield to the wishes, not of his constituents as a whole, but of
the party organisation which seeks to usurp the place of the
constituency. The story of the struggles of Mr. Forster with the Bradford
caucus is familiar to political students. I was mixed up with all those
struggles, and always on the side of Mr. Forster, who stoutly refused to
accept the dictation of the caucus and the theory that a member of
Parliament was no more than a delegate. He was victorious in his
prolonged struggle with the Bradford Radicals, but he only succeeded in
virtue of his own strength of character and dogged courage. Weaker men
went to the wall by scores, and, as they did so, the caucus, of which Mr.
Chamberlain was at this time the ruling spirit, gained strength, and
became the predominant factor in the Liberal party.

In the early autumn of 1876 the most remarkable political agitation I
ever witnessed broke over the country with startling suddenness.
Parliament was just on the point of rising when the _Daily News_
published its first account of the hideous crimes which became known as
the Bulgarian atrocities. Mr. Disraeli, when questioned in the House of
Commons, sneered at the reports in the _Daily News_ as being based
upon "coffee-house babble." If he really believed this, he must have been
strangely ill-informed. The terrible tale which shocked the civilised
world was communicated to the _Daily News_ by its Constantinople
correspondent, Mr. Edwin Pears. The man who supplied Mr. Pears with the
terrible facts which he gave to the world was Dr. Washbourne, the head of
the Robert College at Constantinople. I know both Mr. Pears and Dr.
Washbourne. They are men of the highest honour and integrity, whilst Dr.
Washbourne, who is by birth an American, has been for many years the best
authority on the question of the treatment of the Christians of the
Ottoman Empire by the Sultan. No one who knew the source from which the
_Daily News_ stories emanated could dream of dismissing those
stories as coffee-house babble. Mr. Disraeli, as a matter of duty, should
have made himself acquainted with the authority on which these stories
rested before he took it upon himself to denounce them as sensational
fables. But in spite of Mr. Disraeli, who at this very moment blossomed
into the Earl of Beaconsfield, an official investigation took place. Mr.
Walter Baring, who was attached to our Constantinople Embassy, was
directed to proceed to the scene of the alleged outrages, and to inquire
into the truth of the allegations made in the _Daily News_. Mr.
Baring was an English official of the best stamp. He not only ascertained
the truth, but he reported it in plain language to the Home Government.
It was then found that the _Daily News_ had, if anything,
understated the case. The ruffianly Bashi-Bazouks, employed by the Sultan
to keep down the Christians of European Turkey, had been let loose upon
the people of certain villages in Bulgaria and Roumelia, as a pack of
wolves might have been let loose upon a flock of sheep.

The crimes that were committed do not admit of description. Thousands of
innocent people had been murdered in circumstances of atrocious cruelty.
Neither age nor sex had been respected. Indeed, children, old men, and
women seemed to be the favourite victims of the savages. Upon the women
every conceivable outrage was perpetrated before the knife of the
assassin cut short their misery. It was a story which, when told in the
dry, official language of a Foreign Office report, was still sufficient
to arouse a passion of righteous rage in the breast of any person endowed
with the ordinary instincts of humanity. The old fear of Russia as our
rival in Eastern Europe still constituted the chief influence in
determining our foreign policy, and the old idea of the Turk as our
friend and ally was still popular amongst us. But these revelations for
the moment reversed the national feeling on both these points. Mr.
Gladstone, roused to action by his sympathy with the victims of so cruel
an oppression, left his retirement at Hawarden and issued a pamphlet on
the Bulgarian horrors which raised the feeling of the country to a higher
point than I have ever known it reach before or since, except in some
crisis affecting our very existence as a State.

That month of September, 1876, saw England and Scotland convulsed with a
terrible emotion. The old divisions of parties were effaced, and the
Government, because of its suspected sympathy with the Sultan, found
itself the object of almost universal execration. Naturally, the less
discreet politicians of the day were unable to control themselves under
the influence of the prevailing excitement. Many foolish and many
dangerous things were uttered at the meetings at which every town and
village gave expression to the horror inspired by the Sultan's crimes.
Mr. Gladstone's strongest utterances were seized upon by his fervent
admirers and were carried to an extreme from which he himself would have
shrunk. It was a whirlwind, a tornado of political passion that swept
over the country during those sunny September weeks. The impulse from
which it sprang was just and noble in itself; but who can hold a
whirlwind in check? It is not wonderful that this great outbreak of
national indignation did almost as much harm as good.

The whole condition of our domestic politics was changed by this
Bulgarian atrocities agitation, as it was called. It riveted the
attention of the country upon a great question of foreign policy. It
weakened enormously, for the moment, the power of the Tory Government,
which still enjoyed so commanding a majority in Parliament. Domestic
affairs lost their savour for the ordinary elector, and, writing nearly a
quarter of a century after this episode, I am inclined to believe that
they have never since regained all that they then lost. In the late
autumn, a Conference on the subject of our relations with Turkey was held
in St. James's Hall. This was no demonstration on the part of a caucus,
but a gathering of the notables of all the great towns of England. No
doubt the majority of those present were Liberals, but a very
considerable minority were Conservatives who had hitherto supported the
Government. It was my good fortune to be present at that wonderful
meeting in St. James's Hall. Never was there such a political platform
seen at a public meeting before. Mr. Gladstone, Lord Shaftesbury, the
Dukes of Westminster and Argyll, Mr. Freeman, the historian, the Bishop
of Oxford, Henry Fawcett--these are but a few of the names that occur to
my memory as I recall the memorable scene. Great Tory noblemen like the
Marquess of Bath sat side by side with Radicals from Birmingham, and the
passionate earnestness, amounting to something more than enthusiasm, that
inspired the whole gathering was remarkable. It may be said to have
marked the high tide of political agitation in my own experience.

A simple accident had saved me from the full force of the contagion of
passion that swept over the country in September. I had left Leeds to
spend some weeks with my family in a house on the Clyde, where I was far
from the sounds of political tumult. Possibly, if I had stayed in Leeds
at my post at the _Mercury_ office, I might have gone with the tide,
and might have been just as extreme and as reckless as anybody else. But
I looked on from a distance, and, as it happened, I was absorbed at the
time in other work. The consequence was that I could see the evil, as
well as the good, of this extraordinary upheaval of popular emotion, and
when I returned later on to my work at Leeds I took a cooler view of the
whole question than most Liberal journalists did, and dealt with it, not
from the merely emotional standpoint, but from that of our duty and
interests as a people. Of course, I was blamed for this by the more
fervent, and was suspected of being at heart little better than a
philo-Turk. I had, in short, to meet the usual fate of the man who will
not cry either black or white when it is his misfortune to see only a
confusion of colours. By-and-by, however, when the popular passion
subsided, and the old alarm about Russia again became rampant, I found
myself blamed for precisely the opposite reason. I was no longer assailed
as a philo-Turk, but as a Russophil.



CHAPTER X.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTË LITERATURE.

A Visit to Haworth--Feeling Against the Brontës in Yorkshire--Miss Nussey
and her Discontent with Mrs. Gaskell's "Me"--Publication of "Charlotte
Brontë: a Monograph"--Mr. Swinburne's Appreciation--An Abortive Visit to
the Poet--Lecture on Emily Brontë and "Wuthering Heights"--Miss Nussey's
Visit to Haworth after Charlotte's Marriage.


I have said that during the stormy days of the atrocities agitation I was
engaged in other work than that of political writing. This was the
completion of a little book in which I gave my impressions of Charlotte
and Emily Brontë to the public. The story of Charlotte Brontë, as told by
Mrs. Gaskell, had always possessed a great fascination for me. I had been
moved to write to Mrs. Gaskell when her biography of Charlotte appeared,
and I had received from her more than one letter filled with interesting
details about Charlotte's father, and his life after his daughter's
death. When I went to Leeds in 1866, the first pilgrimage I made was to
Haworth. That was less than eleven years after Charlotte's death, and at
a time when there were, of course, many persons still living in the
village who had a perfect recollection of the wonderful sisters. But,
strange to say, Haworth was not in those days a popular "shrine." "Whiles
some Americans come to see the church, but nobody else," was the
statement made to me when I asked the sexton if there were many visitors
to the home of the Brontës.

My visit furnished me with a theme for a descriptive article which was
printed in _Chambers's Journal_ in 1867, and, having written it, I
believed that my connection with the Brontës was at an end. But when I
went back to Leeds in 1870, I was struck by the fact that throughout the
West Riding of Yorkshire there prevailed a widespread feeling that was
nothing less than one of positive antipathy to the works and the story of
the Brontës. Their books, though they dealt with local scenes and
characters, were no longer read. In that respect, however, the West
Riding hardly differed from the rest of England. What was peculiar to
Yorkshire was the fact that, if you mentioned the name of Brontë in any
average company, the chances were in favour of your being met with an
indignant snort from someone who protested that Charlotte's stories were
a disgraceful libel upon the district, and that "Wuthering Heights" was a
book so dreadful in its character that its author would only have met
with her deserts if she had been soundly whipped for writing it. I met
more than one lady who had known the Brontës, and who, in reply to my
eager questioning, spoke of them with undisguised contempt. I was assured
that they were not ladies, that they were not even successful as
governesses, that their father and brother were a pair of reprobates, and
that they themselves, being embittered by the fact that they were not
admitted to the good society of their neighbourhood, had deliberately
revenged themselves by writing scurrilous libels and caricatures in order
to bring Yorkshire men and women into contempt. It all seems incredible
now; yet this was the actual state of feeling prevalent in Yorkshire with
regard to the Brontës thirty years ago.

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