The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1

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The following notes show the points at which Sir Charles came into touch
with the development of Mr. Errington's 'Mission' to the Vatican. On
December 1st, 1880, Mr. Errington wrote--in pursuance of a conversation of
the previous day--to solicit Sir Charles's offices with the French
Government towards mitigating the severity with which expropriation of the
unauthorized congregations might be carried out under M. Ferry's Article
7. The letter dealt also with the matter on which his 'Mission' was
afterwards based:

"I am constantly receiving news from Ireland of the evil effects
already produced by the temporary success at Rome of Archbishop
Croke"--who represented advanced Nationalism--"and his party. This
would have been quite impossible had any diplomatic relations existed.
Cardinal Jacobini will take care, I am sure, that such a thing does
not occur again. Whether he can undo or counteract the mischief
already done is, I am afraid, doubtful....

"I suppose it would be desirable in the interests of government and
order in Ireland that the Vatican should do all in its power to keep
the clergy from going with or countenancing the Land League."

On December 6th, 1880:

'Errington came to me in Paris, nominally on behalf of the Vatican,
with a view of having negotiations entered upon, and I believe this
was the time at which he obtained, at Lord Spencer's request, some
sort of private commission from Lord Granville. The commission was
afterwards made more definite.'

October 28th, 1881:

'I saw Errington, who was in Paris on his way to Rome with letters
from Lord Granville, based on the request of Spencer and Forster that
he, Errington, should represent the Irish Government at Rome during
its great struggle with Parnell, matters in Ireland being too serious
to make roundabout dealing through Lord Emly [Footnote: An Irish Roman
Catholic M.P. who, after being Postmaster-general, was raised to the
Peerage.] and Cardinal Howard safe; and Errington was to be tried from
October until Easter....

'In the evening of November 10th, at dinner at the Harcourts', Mr.
Gladstone, taking me aside about Errington's mission, told me that he
was bitterly opposed to the notion of reopening relations with the
Papal Court; and there can be no doubt that he assented most
unwillingly to the views of Spencer, Forster, and Harcourt in favour
of the Errington "Mission." He deceived the House of Commons about it,
because he always closed his own eyes to the facts. [Footnote: The
line taken by the Government in the House of Commons was that Mr.
Errington had no formal appointment, and that his communications were
not officially dealt with by the Foreign Office. These diplomatic
explanations only increased the suspicion of the followers of Parnell
and of the Ultra-Protestants led by Sir H. Drummond Wolff.]

'On December 24th, 1881, Lord O'Hagan passed through Paris, despatched
on a secret mission to Rome about Ireland by Forster, who was not
satisfied with the results up to then of the Errington Mission.'

'On December 31st I received a letter from Forster, in which he said
that Lord O'Hagan had returned, and that no notice had been taken by
the papers of his visit to Rome, which was a good thing.'

To the principle of such intermediation Sir Charles had no objection. What
he disliked was that the thing should be done and denied. He himself in
the previous year had written by the Government's request to Cardinal
Manning at Rome for assurance that the future Bishop of a new See in
Canada would be a British subject. Manning also had written to him
concerning the establishment of a new See for Catholics of the Levant,
with its seat in Cyprus, guaranteeing that "the influence of our Bishop
and all about him would be ... strictly in support of the Government," and
asking therefore that, "when the seat of Government for Cyprus had been
fixed, Rome might be informed, as it would be desirable for the Bishop to
be in the same place."

Manning was quite content with the influence that he could wield, and, as
a letter from him in 1885 shows, was strongly against diplomatic relations
between England and the Vatican. Sir Charles, however, did not take that
view:

'Such perpetual applications have to be made to the Court of Rome, not
only (as the public thinks) with regard to Irish affairs, but with
regard to Roman Catholic interests in all parts of the world, that I
have always been favourable to taking the public into our confidence
in the matter and appointing a representative at the Court of Rome. At
one time we used to carry on our affairs with the Papal Court through
Cardinal Howard, an English Cardinal; but the Pope is so anxious to
obtain official representation that he throws difficulties in the way
of ecclesiastics acting as informal representatives. Then Lord O'Hagan
used to go to Rome, at the expense of Irish Secret Service money, as a
private traveller, and he used to carry on negotiations with the
Vatican.'

Sir Charles resented 'the complications that are caused by our having to
do that in fact which we refuse to do in form.' The Errington "Mission,
which was no mission," was an instance.

Though the year drew to its close there was still no decision as to the
means of dealing with obstruction. But approach was being made to a
settled policy.

'On my return to London I found that a Cabinet had been called for
Thursday, November 10th, to deal with the forms of the House, as the
Speaker and Erskine May had been concocting a new code, which, I
added, "is certain to be perfectly useless, as the Speaker is
generally, and May invariably, wrong.... Direct closure is the only
thing of any use. That would be one fight and no more; but the
Speaker-May code would probably take a whole Session to get, and be
useless when we have got it.'

'When Chamberlain came to dinner on November 11th, he left with me till
the next day the "secret" paper printed for the Cabinet as to the forms of
the House, which was written by May and annotated by the Speaker, and I
was glad to find that it included closure.'

In a Parliamentary Session marked by so much that was inconclusive, Sir
Charles had the satisfaction of recording in his diary one piece of
progressive legislation which was his own. By April, 1881, he had got
ready his Bill for putting an end to the Unreformed Municipal
Corporations, and so carrying out the policy which he had recommended
while in Opposition, and it became law.

CHAPTER XXIV

EUROPEAN POLITICS

In 1881 the general European situation was still critical. The Greeks had
seen Montenegro's claim made good while their own pretensions remained
unsatisfied, and at the beginning of the year war between Greece and
Turkey seemed so probable that Lord Houghton was writing anxiously to ask
Sir Charles by what means the antiquities of Athens could be guaranteed
against bombardment.

Sir Charles notes, on January 18th and 21st, conversations between himself
and Mr. Goschen, who had temporarily returned from his mission at
Constantinople, 'as to helping Greece by a naval force, which he and I
both desired.' But Mr. Gladstone refused his sanction to this project, and
Sir Charles for the moment took a very grave view, noting in his diary on
February 1st:

"Lord Granville has now to decide (in two days), before Goschen starts
for Constantinople via Berlin, whether he will disgracefully abandon
Greece or break up the Concert of Europe."

The Concert was kept together, but only upon condition of limiting Greece
to a frontier with which Sir Charles was extremely discontented.

'On March 27th I was in a resigning humour about Greece, but could not
get anybody to agree with me, and Chamberlain said that not even
Liberal public opinion in England would now support isolated action or
Anglo-Italian intervention. Chamberlain thought that in the interest
of Greece herself it was desirable that she should be made to take the
last Turkish offer, which gave her all the revenue-producing country,
and kept from her the costly and the dangerous country.'

A week later he wrote a minute for Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone,
proposing that autonomy should be given to those portions of Epirote
territory which were being withheld from Greece; but this plan was
negatived, and a final settlement was reached on May 17th.

The settlement of 1881 was not a settlement which contented Greece and the
friends of Greece; and it was only a provisional settlement.

But new complications were developing elsewhere.

'On February 1st I wrote to Gambetta by our "bag" to tell him that
Sheffield' (Lord Lyons's secretary) 'would call on him from me to tell
him a secret. This secret was that the Three Emperors' League was
again revived and France once more isolated. But this was such a dead
secret that even our Cabinet were not to know for fear some of them
might talk.' [Footnote: The murder of the Emperor Alexander II. on
March 13th terminated these plans for the time. But out of them
subsequently grew the meeting of the three Emperors at Skierniewice on
September 15th and 16th, 1884; and indirectly Prince Bismarck's
"reinsurance" treaty with Russia, which his successor, Caprivi,
refused to renew in 1890.]

France, though 'isolated,' was beginning to take action which threatened
far-spreading trouble. Mention has been made of her pretension to Tunis,
and of the support to that pretension afforded by a hint of Lord
Salisbury's in 1878. In the early spring of 1881 the first serious step
was taken to threaten the independence or quasi-independence of Tunis.
This development was the more serious because an important dispute was in
progress concerning a Tunisian estate called the Enfida, to which rival
claims were put forward by M. Levy, a British subject, and by a French
company, the Societe Marseillaise. On January 12th M. Levy's
representative, himself also a British subject, was expelled from the
property by agents of the French Consulate.

'On February 3rd there came to me at ten o'clock in my Foreign Office
boxes a telegram from Lord Lyons, which told us that the French had
sent the _Friedland_ from Toulon to Tunis to bully the Bey. I wrote
off by special messenger to Lord Granville that we ought at once to
send the fleet to Tunis unless the _Friedland_ were withdrawn, and
Lord Granville accepted this view, and telegraphed to Lord Lyons to
that effect at noon. [Footnote: 'On February 5th, the Cabinet having
approved our suggestion, we telegraphed for the _Thunderer_ and a
despatch-boat to sail at once for Tunis.']

'Our difficulty was in this matter to avoid acting with Italy. We did
not want to keep the French out of Tunis, but we could not have
ironclads used to force Tunisian law courts into giving decisions
hostile to British subjects. Barrere wrote to me from Paris at
Gambetta's wish saying that I was labouring under a grievous mistake
in thinking that the _Friedland_ was sent to settle the Enfida case
against the English. The ship was sent because the Bey "declines to
sign a treaty of alliance with us." At the same time he went on to say
that the present policy of France would not last longer than six
months, which meant, of course, that Gambetta intended to form a
Government at that time (which as a fact he did), and that "our friend
deplores the present policy of the Government and declines all
responsibility."'

On August 25th Gambetta expressed to Dilke "profound disapprobation of all
that has been done in Tunis," on which is noted: 'Possibly he would have
done the same, but he is very wise after the event.'

'On May 6th Lord Granville, against Tenterden's opinion and my own,
sketched drafts to Germany and Austria as to the position of the
French in Tunis, with a view to raise the Concert of Europe in their
path. We pointed out to him that Germany and Austria would snub us,
and succeeded at last in stopping this precious scheme. The wily
Russian got up the trouble by hinting verbally to Lord Granville that
Russia would act with England and Italy in this matter. A curious
league: England, Russia, and Italy against France; and a queer
Concert. The proposal led to trouble three days later, for, of course,
the Russians told the French in such a way as to make them believe
that the idea was ours.'

On the evening of May eth Sir Charles met Laffitte, "the Comtist Pope," at
the Political Economy Club.

'Frederic Harrison treated him as an old lady of the Faubourg would
treat the Pope or the Comte de Chambord, or both rolled into one. But
Laffitte happening to say that he approved of the French expedition to
Tunis, Harrison's feelings became too much even for his reverence and
his religion. Laffitte's remark, from Laffitte, showed, however, how
unanimous was the French feeling....

'On the 9th the trouble which I had expected broke out. The French
Ambassador (Challemel-Lacour) came to see me in a great rage, and told
me that his Government had heard that we had tried to raise Germany
against France on the Tunis question by an alliance offered at Berlin,
though not through our Ambassador. This particular story was untrue. I
denied it, and I then went to Lord Granville, who denied it.... I then
wrote to Challemel to ask him to give up names; but he declined.'

France was in conflict with the Kroumirs on her Algerian frontier, the
expeditionary force penetrated the interior, and by the middle of June the
Bey had appointed M. Roustan, the French Consul, to represent him in all
matters.

Justifications were put forward, and there was much discussion as to what
Lord Salisbury had said or not said at Berlin in 1878.

'Lord Salisbury had made Wolff withdraw the question, of which
(foolishly from the Conservative point of view) he had given notice,
but the matter having been raised, the Cabinet, on Friday, 13th,
decided to publish a portion of Lord Salisbury's despatches, though
not the worst.... [Footnote: A letter from Lord Granville to Sir
Charles, of May 15th, 1881, shows the difficulty. "I sent, according
to custom, the Salisbury Tunis papers to the Marquis. You will be
surprised to hear that he does not like them. He objects to all, but
principally to the extracts from Lord Lyons' despatch." Lord Granville
goes on to suggest alternative courses, the first being "to consent at
his request to leave out the extracts, with a warning that it is not
likely it will be possible to refuse them later."]

'I wrote to Lord Granville to say that I was sorry there had not been
included in the papers a despatch of July 16th, 1878, giving the
conversation between Lord Lyons and Waddington on Waddington's return
to Paris' (from the Congress of Berlin). 'On the 9th, on the 11th, and
on the 13th July, 1878, Lord Lyons had reported the irritation in
France at the Cyprus Convention. On July 16th Waddington returned to
Paris, and the row in the French Press suddenly ceased. In his
despatch Lord Lyons says that Waddington told him that Lord Salisbury
"had assured him" that "H. M. G. would make no objection if it suited
France to take possession of Tunis." [Footnote: The Life of Lord
Lyons, by Lord Newton, gives, on July 20th, 1878, a letter from Lord
Salisbury which evidently refers to the despatch. In this letter Lord
Salisbury says: "What M. Waddington said to you is very much what he
said to me at Berlin...." A further passage in the letter is: "If
France occupied Tunis tomorrow, we should not remonstrate." See _Life
of Lord Lyons_, vol. ii., p. 152.] Waddington said that he--
Waddington--had pointed out to Lord Salisbury that Italy would object,
and that Lord Salisbury had replied that she must "seek compensation
in Tripoli." Corti had also assured me that Lord Salisbury had said
this to him at the time. I strongly urged the publication of Lord
Lyons' despatch in justice to ourselves, if anything was to be
published. Lord Salisbury undoubtedly, and even by his own admission,
had used most impolitic language, giving up that which was contrary to
British interests to give up and which was not ours to give. (He was
fated to do the same thing in the case of Madagascar.) He had
afterwards denied that he had done anything of the kind. He also had
denied that France had minded our occupation of Cyprus, and doubly
concealed the fact that after making the foolish mistake of taking
Cyprus, he had got out of the difficulty in a still more foolish
fashion.'

This led to correspondence between Count Corti, then Italian Ambassador at
Constantinople, and Sir Charles--a discussion which was renewed later in
conversation:

'He in fact admitted the truth of what I had said, but added that he
disapproved of the Berlin conversations. "At that time everybody was
telling everybody else to take something which belonged to somebody
else. One more powerful than Lord Salisbury, more powerful than Lord
Beaconsfield, advised me to take Tunis. [Footnote: _Life of Lord
Lyons_, vol. ii., p. 224; letter from Lord Lyons to Lord Granville,
May 13th, 1881: "They got Bismarck's leave for this."] Lord Salisbury
advised me to take an island, and Lord Salisbury may have advised me
to take Tripoli." At the State ball in the evening, I told Odo Russell
this. He told me that Lord Salisbury had disgusted Corti by forgetting
him on the occasion when he told the great men at the Congress of
Berlin about the occupation of Cyprus, and that Corti had never
forgiven him.'

Egypt also was now a growing anxiety, made graver by the events in Tunis,
which excited apprehensions of like proceedings elsewhere. In such a
condition of feeling even trifling incidents--as, for example, that of the
Smyrna Quays, where the Porte had violated some rights of an English
company--grew delicate and critical. All such matters and many others had
to be dealt with in the House of Commons by question and answer--a task of
no small difficulty, since the susceptibilities of foreign Powers had to
be considered, while British interests, no less sensitive, could not be
ignored.

The fulfilment of the Treaty of Berlin was meanwhile an enormous addition
to the work of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, especially as it was at
first complicated by the ill will of Russia, which had hoped that the
change of Government might bring about some modifications. It was also
complicated by the Porte's unlimited capacity for wasting time. The topics
regulated by the treaty and its supplementary conventions, when taken in
connection with the Treaties of Paris and London, which it partly
superseded, fell under at least seventeen separate heads; each of these
branched off into numerous divisions and subdivisions, most of which
admitted of possible controversy, while many required executive action by
Commissioners on the spot, [Footnote: Thomas Erskine Holland, _The
European Concert in the Eastern Question_, pp. 222-225.] such as the
delimitation of the boundaries of the new States. Nearly every question
involved communications with the signatory Powers, and each of them had a
long diplomatic history which had to be studied. M. de Courcel told Sir
Charles that in his dreams he always saw a second river flowing by the
side of the Danube, as large and as swift, but black--the river of ink
which had been shed over the Danube question! Sir Julian Pauncefote, the
Permanent Under-Secretary, was credited by Sir Charles with being the only
man in England who then understood it; and the question of the Danube,
after all, was only one of many.

Questions were continually being asked in the House of Commons, where the
expert in foreign affairs was not so rare as he became in a subsequent
period; but the inquiries of inexpert persons were the most troublesome of
all.

Sir Charles's power of terse and guarded reply was universally considered
supreme, and was all the more valuable at a time when the practice had
grown up, then comparatively new and since gradually limited, of asking
questions on foreign and colonial affairs, with the object of embarrassing
Ministers, and without regard to the consequences abroad. It gradually
became a dangerous growth, greatly facilitated by the lax procedure, as it
then existed, of the House of Commons in regard to supplementary
questions. This procedure often allowed question time to degenerate into a
sort of ill-regulated debate. Mr. Gladstone's habit of allowing himself
very frequently to be drawn into giving a further answer, after the
carefully prepared official answer had already been given by the Under-
Secretary, was another complication. The brunt of all these troubles had
to be borne by the representative of the Foreign Office. [Footnote: Sir
Henry Lucy, writing "From the Cross Benches" in this year, discussed
critically the various styles of answering questions:

"Sir Charles Dilke's answers are perfect, whether in regard of manner,
matter, or style. A small grant of public money might be much worse
expended than in reprinting his answer to two questions put last night on
the subject of Anglo-French commercial relations, having them framed and
glazed, and hung up in the bedroom of every Minister. A good test of the
perhaps unconscious skill and natural art with which the answer is drawn
up would be for anyone to take the verbatim report which appears in this
morning's papers and attempt to make it shorter. There is not a word too
much in it. It occupies just twenty-eight lines of print, and it contains
a clear and full account of an exceedingly intricate negotiation. The
majority of the answers given by Ministers in their places in Parliament
appear much better in print than when spoken, redundancies being cut out,
parentheses put straight, and hesitancy of manner not appearing. But to
the orderly mind and clear intelligence which instinctively brings
uppermost and in due sequence the principal points of a question, Sir
Charles Dilke adds a frank manner, a clear voice, and an easy delivery."]

Sir Charles was always a close student of Indian government, and many
notes on it are scattered through his diary. On January 9th, meeting
Mallet at York House with the Grant Duffs, he says: 'I had always held a
strong opinion against the India Council, and Mallet confirmed me in my
view that the existing constitution was bad. He ought to know.' The
Government turned to Dilke for assistance in debates on foreign affairs,
even in a case where the Government of India rather than the Foreign
Office was involved.

By the beginning of 1881 England's policy in Afghanistan had been finally
determined. The evacuation of Kandahar was now definitive, in spite of
opposition from a high quarter. On January 18th 'the Queen telegraphed to
Mr. Gladstone at length in a tone of severe rebuke that all her warnings
as to Kandahar had been disregarded.' On March 8th Sir Charles received a
preliminary warning from Lord Hartington to read up his Central Asian
papers, and--

'the Cabinet of March 19th wrote to me to follow Edward Stanhope as to
Kandahar debate' (who had been Lord Beaconsfield's Under-Secretary of
State for India in 1878, and now naturally led the Tory attack). 'I
had to move the direct negative on behalf of the Government. This was
a great compliment, as the matter was not in my department, and the
only three members of the Government who were to speak were Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Hartington and myself.'

After the debate on March 24th, Lord Granville, having first sent his own
congratulations, wrote to say: "Gladstone expressed himself almost
poetically about the excellence of your speech." [Footnote: "The speech of
the debate was that of Sir Charles Dilke. It was close, cogent, and to the
point throughout. His facts were admirably marshalled, so as to strengthen
without obscuring his arguments. There was no fencing, no rhetoric, no
fighting the air.

He came at once to close quarters with his adversary, and demolished his
arguments one after another by a series of cut-and-thrust rejoinders,
which left but little to be added by those who followed him on the same
side. Mr. Stanhope's attack on the Ministry has been of conspicuous
service to at least one Minister" (_Pall Mall Gazette_, edited by Mr. John
Morley).]

In the course of this year, Sir Charles, once more diverging from Radical
preconceptions, helped Sir Robert Sandeman, who was

'sent over by the Viceroy to state his views. I was able to give him
such assistance with my colleagues as to save the districts (the
Pishin districts and the Khojak frontier) to the Indian Government.'