The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2

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'My main objection to Mr. Ritchie's scheme was that, whereas in my
scheme the District Councils had been more highly organized than the
County Councils, in his scheme the reverse was the case. [Footnote:
The allusion is here, apparently, to the Bill which Mr. Chamberlain
prepared in 1886, but with considerable help from Sir Charles.]
There was no building up out of the smaller districts, giving the
work as far as possible to the smallest, where the people were at
their homes; but Mr. Ritchie's unit was the county, and the smaller
bodies were neglected.

'The Liberal leaders took a short-sighted course in recommending
their friends to allow the Bill to pass almost without discussion.'
[Footnote: In 1892 he again notes his intervention on this question.
'On November 9th, 1892, I had a long interview at the Local
Government Board with Henry Fowler, the President, at his request,
before I went down to the Chelsea Board of Guardians for the last
time. He consulted me as to all his Bills, especially as to that on
Local Government.']

There were, however, friends who considered that the new institutions
established by Mr. Ritchie's Act opened a way back into public life for
Sir Charles. Among these was Mr. Chamberlain. He was, as usual,
corresponding with Sir Charles, during his absence abroad, on all
matters, and an interesting letter is noted here.

'In, I think, May, 1888, while we were at Royal, I received a letter
from Chamberlain in which he indicated a change in his views upon
the South Africa question. Ultimately he completely turned round
from his old position, which was violently anti-Dutch, and, like
everyone else, fell into line upon the principle of the fusion of
race interests in South Africa.'

'On our return Chamberlain came down to Dockett and spent the
afternoon, bringing Austen with him, and very strongly urged that
the time had now come when I should stand for Parliament. I said
that I thought that the time would come, but that, after India, I
had _Problems of Greater Britain_ to write before I thought about
it. He then urged that I should stand for the County Council in my
absence in India, and as to this point a great difference of opinion
arose, I being inclined to accept his advice, which was also very
strongly pressed upon me by my former colleague Firth; my wife and
G. W. Osborn strongly took the opposite view, to which I yielded. I
afterwards came to think it had been the right view. Chamberlain
pressed his opinion very hotly to the last. I received a deputation
from Fulham which represented the entire Liberal and a portion of
the Conservative party, and the seat would certainly have been won;
but I declined, and Chamberlain then wrote: "You must be the judge,
and are probably the best one. But I yield reluctantly."'

This decision was made public in answer to the Fulham deputation just
before Sir Charles started on a journey to India.

In February, 1889, after his return to England, he was confronted with a
new proposal. The Progressive party now in power on the London County
Council desired to put him forward as one of the first Aldermen. Sir
Charles refused; but a preliminary circular in reference to his
candidature had been issued, and a protest was immediately organized by
the section which desired his permanent ostracism. This opposition was
then formidable in its proportions, and it never wholly disappeared. It
was, however, increasingly clear that a much stronger body of public
opinion desired his return to public and Parliamentary life.

In March, 1889, he was elected Honorary President of the Liberal Four
Hundred in the Forest of Dean. The election did not pass without
challenge, and one of the objectors was the Rector of Newent (Canon
Wood). Sir Charles sent this clergyman the papers in the divorce case,
which had been collected by Mr. Chesson [Footnote: Mr. Chesson had died
earlier in this year; and the token of Sir Charles Dilke's gratitude to
this defender of unpopular causes is commemorated in the High-Altar of
Holy Trinity Church, Upper Chelsea, which he presented in memory of his
friend. Sir Charles wrote: 'He had been for many years a useful man in
politics, and he was to me at this period a very precious friend; one of
the best and truest men I ever knew; he had been the most helpful man in
England to the anti-slavery cause of the Northern Abolitionists, the
working man of the Jamaica Committee, and, many years afterwards, of the
Eastern Question Association, and of the Greek Committee; and since his
death no one has taken his place.'] and his associates, and a study of
them turned the Rector of Newent into a strong supporter of the man whom
he had at first denounced.

Dilke's first visit to the Forest of Dean took place in May, 1889. By
this time it was clear that his absence from Parliament could be
terminated at his own pleasure. Mr. Gladstone had intervened almost
officially in the matter. In June, 1889, he again sent for Sir Henry
James, who transmitted the purport of his talk: which was that, while
Mr. Gladstone was most anxious to see Sir Charles back, his opinion was
that steps should not be too quickly taken. Sir Henry thought that Mr.
Gladstone would willingly give his opinion and advice if Sir Charles
thought that would be of any value to him. A few weeks later Mr.
Gladstone called at 76, Sloane Street, but missed Sir Charles.

'In August he wrote to me in regard to his correspondence with
James. The most important passage in the letter was:

'"I deeply feel the loss we sustain in your absence from public
life, after you had given such varied and conclusive proof of high
capacity to serve your country; and I have almost taken it for
granted that with the end of this Parliament, after anything
approaching the usual full term, the ostracism could die a kind of
natural death. And I heartily wish and hope that you may have lying
before you a happy period of public usefulness."'

Sir Charles was in no hurry. Another invitation had reached him, from
Dundee, and 'on November 4th a unanimous request to contest the borough
of Fulham.'

But his determination was to let nothing interrupt the work on his book;
after that, various promises both of writing and speaking had to be
redeemed.

Meanwhile he remained in touch with the political world. 'I carried on a
controversy with Labouchere about his views in favour of reforming the
House of Lords, to which I was bitterly opposed, preferring, if we could
not get rid of it, to go on as we are.' All Labouchere's letters were
full of references to the position of Chamberlain, and Chamberlain
himself came from time to time to discuss that point.

'On December 2nd, 1889, I saw Chamberlain. On October 10th he had
told me that he was clear that ultimately he should join the
Conservatives, unless Mr. Gladstone were soon to go and a
Rosebery-Harcourt combination would come to terms with him about
Ulster. On December 2nd I found a little change back from his
general attitude, and in face of the probable break-up of the
Parnellite party over the O'Shea case, which was beginning to be
talked of in detail, Chamberlain was undecided, he said, and no
doubt thought, between the two parties. But I noted in my diary:
"Labouchere sets him against the Liberals, and Balfour attracts him
to the Tories." It was clear that I thought that the change was but
a temporary one, and that he was certain to return to his attitude
of October, as in fact he did.'

_Problems of Greater Britain_ appeared at the end of January, 1890, and
within a month the edition was exhausted. In America, Sir Charles,
expecting censure, had arranged to reply in the _North American Review_
to his censors; but there was so little adverse comment that he chose
another subject.

Discussion of military problems abounded in the book, but the 'Problems'
treated were by no means only those which concerned military experts.
Mr. Deakin wrote:

'It will not merely be the one book treating authoritatively of the
Empire, and the one book making it known to Britons in Europe, but
it will also be the first book enabling the various groups of
colonies to understand each other, and their individual relation to
the whole of which they form a part.... Knowing some of the
difficulties you encountered ... I have been completely amazed at
the skill or the intuition with which you have caught the right tone
of local colours and the true tendency of our political and social
life.'

'On July 23rd, 1890, I lunched with McArthur [Footnote: Mr. W. A.
McArthur, Liberal Whip and member of Parliament, who had made Sir
Charles's acquaintance in 1886, and become a warm personal friend.]
to meet Schnadhorst, who had returned from South Africa, and who
warmly pressed my standing at the General Election, and I allowed
myself to be persuaded so far as to promise that I would consider
the matter in connection with the offer of any first-rate seat.'

Different constituencies were mentioned; but in the following October,
when it became known that the then member for the Forest of Dean would
not stand again, Mr. Schnadhorst wrote at once to Sir Charles urging him
to let his name be put forward. He added, as an indication of the
general feeling, that the adjacent constituency of South Monmouthshire
had also sent in a request for Sir Charles's services--'which should
assure you that popular support will overwhelm any other influence.'
Accordingly, at the end of this year Sir Charles saw a deputation of
leading men from the Forest, and fixed a date on which he would give a
reply to a formal invitation. Having spent Christmas in his house at
Toulon, he returned thence in February, 1891, met a further deputation,
and agreed to give his public reply in the Forest in March.

In December, 1890, Chamberlain had concurred in the decision that,
before Dilke accepted any candidature, there should be published a
digest of the case with annotation and with the new evidence, 'which had
grown up out of Chesson's notes, and which was largely the work of Howel
Thomas, Clarence Smith, Steavenson, and McArthur. This was published in
February, 1891, on my return.' [Footnote: In 1886 he had written: 'In
the course of this winter a committee of friends of mine, got together
by Chesson, and containing Steavenson (afterwards Judge Steavenson), and
Howel Thomas of the Local Government Board, but also containing W. A.
McArthur, M.P., Clarence Smith, ex-Sheriff of London and Middlesex,
afterwards M.P., and Canon MacColl, who were mere acquaintances, or
less, had begun to investigate my case with a view of getting further
evidence.']

'The Cinderford meeting (the central town of the Forest) on March
9th, 1891, was unanimous, and after it we remained chiefly in the
Forest of Dean for a long time. I had promised to give my final
reply in June. At the meeting of March I had only stated that if,
after all the attacks which might be made upon me, they should
remain in the same mind, I would accept.'

Sir Charles was fortunate in his new constituency. Throughout England
there was no other so suited to him; he desired contact with large
bodies of labouring men, and the Forest made him a representative of
that great and typical British Labour group, the miners. He loved 'each
simple joy the country yields,' and, whereas almost everywhere else a
mining district is scarred, defaced, and blackened, here pit-shafts were
sunk into glades as beautiful as any park could show, forest stretches
of oak and beech enveloped that ugliness in green and gold, and from
many a rising ground you might look over the broad vale where the wide
Severn sweeps round a horseshoe curve and the little, unspoilt town of
Newnham stands set in beauty, winter or summer.

Newnham was dear to Sir Charles, and there he stayed for visits in
winter. But the place of his most frequent and prolonged abode in his
constituency was the Speech House, built in the very heart of the
woodland, remote from any town, yet at a centre of the communal life;
for outside it, on a wide space of sward, the Forest miners held their
yearly meeting, their 'speech-day.' The miners' interest, which he
represented, was not of recent growth, nor arising out of some great
enterprise of capital; it linked itself with those rights of commonage
of which he had always been a chief champion, and appealed not only to
the radical but to the antiquarian in him. The 'free miners' privileges
marked only one of many ancient customs in that Crown domain which he
studied and guarded.

As in 1867 and 1868 he had made it his business to be sure that the
electors whose votes he sought should know his opinions, so far as
possible, not on one subject, but on all, so now in 1891, at his
meetings throughout the constituency, he unfolded the whole of his
political faith.

He developed in speech after speech the views which he had put forward
in _A Radical Programme_, published in 1890, and in a great speech at
Glasgow on March 11th of that year. His views on Housing, as given in
his Glasgow speech and afterwards dealt with in his Forest campaign,
show how far he was in advance of the recommendations made in the Report
of the Royal Commission on Housing of the Poor.

'As chairman of that Commission, I had to instruct the secretary
working with myself to draw such a report as would at least obtain a
majority upon the Commission, and we succeeded in drawing a report
that obtained a unanimity of votes; but, of course, to do so we had
to put forward the points in which we felt that many would concur,
and to keep out our most extreme suggestions. I personally would go
much farther, and would allow towns to build or hire or buy, and
would encourage them to solve the problem for themselves, and not
ask the State to help them, except by setting free their hands and
allowing them to obtain land cheaply and to tax themselves freely
for the purpose.... Gladly would I see towns armed with the powers
to destroy, without compensation, in extreme cases, filthy
dwellings, where it is proved to the satisfaction of the magistrates
that the owners are in fault, and the sites of such dwellings might
be obtained by a cheap process. In all cases we ought to give powers
to public bodies to take land for public purposes at a fair price
... and by the adoption of the principle of betterment ... owners
would be called upon to make special contribution towards schemes
which would improve their property at large.'

He dwelt on the sufferings of the working classes owing to improvements
which ejected them from their dwellings, and urged that the Local
Authority should in all cases come to terms as to rehousing before
granting any facilities for improvements.

For land he advocated taxation of unearned increment and fixity of
tenure under fair rents fixed by judicial courts, with power to the
community to buy up land at its real price.

He also advocated, not only the limitation of hours of work, a principle
to which he had been converted by the Industrial Remuneration Conference
of 1885, but that the workers should be qualified for the enjoyment of
their leisure by educational opportunities. He urged the example of
Switzerland in making education compulsory up to sixteen years of age,
and that of Ontario in granting free education up to the age of
twenty-one.

He advocated municipal Socialism, by giving to municipalities the widest
possible power to deal with local needs, and, passing from local
expenditure to that of the State, he dealt with the need for graduation
of Imperial taxation, and urged the equalization of the death duties (as
between real and personal estate) and making these duties progressive.
He would raise them gradually to 25 per cent. By such means we should
attain the double purpose of raising money and discouraging the
possession of large estates, which are the cause of the existence of a
too numerous idle class.

Adult suffrage and one man or woman, one vote, was always a part of his
programme.

In his utterances the change from individualism to collectivism is
marked. 'We were all Tory anarchists once,' he used to say in reviewing
economic theories of the sixties, and the change which had come over the
attitude of economists to social questions. His own conversion was so
thorough that in industrial questions he acted often as a pioneer, and
his constituency adopted his views on the limitation of hours by
legislation as in the demand for a legal eight-hour day. [Footnote:
Speeches in Forest of Dean and elsewhere (1890-1891). _Radical
Programme_, 1890.]

He had laid it down as a condition of acceptance of the candidature for
the Forest that there must be 'full and absolute belief' in him and in
his word. Time was given for the personal attack to develop, and it was
made by pamphlet propaganda with unsparing virulence, but entirely
without result. Not a dozen Liberals in the division declared themselves
affected by it; and 'on June 11th, 1891, I gave my consent to stand for
Parliament at a meeting held at Lydney, which was extraordinarily
successful and unanimous.'

The chair was taken by Mr. Thomas Blake, who had been member for the
division, and who in the darkest hour of Sir Charles's political life
had come forward with a proposal to resign and make way for him. He was
there now to say that, if Sir Charles would stand, he himself would act
as unpaid election agent. On the platform were all the leading Liberals
of the Forest, among them Canon Wood of Newent, whose opposition had
been turned into strenuous advocacy. There also was 'Mabon' to speak for
himself and the Welsh miners, and from the outside world Mr. Reginald
McKenna, an inseparable friend. Sir Charles's speech, which he counted
to have been the best of his life, dealt briefly with the leading
political topics of the day--Home Rule and the Radical programme--but
soon passed to the personal issue. He recalled the change from the murky
dreariness of March to the height of summer loveliness which reigned
about them, and the change no less great in the moral atmosphere. He
reviewed the history of the attacks that had been made, the avowed
determination to prevent his being their member; and at the close he
declared himself satisfied that their trust was fully his. 'My
conditions have been fulfilled. I accept the confidence you have reposed
in me. I trust that strength may be given to me to justify that
confidence, and I reply--not for a day, nor for a year, but from this
day forward, for better for worse; and thereto I plight my troth.
To-morrow we go forth from among you and commit our honour to your
charge.'

He was justified in the confidence which he reposed in them. One attempt
was made to raise the personal issue against him; and its result showed
that any man would be imprudent who sought to oppose Sir Charles Dilke
in the Forest of Dean except on strictly political grounds. First and
last no member of Parliament ever got more loyal support; but no man
ever trusted less to personal popularity. He carefully developed the
whole electoral machinery. The month which he spent every autumn in the
Forest was very largely a month of work on the detail of registration,
and the register as he caused it to be kept might be put forward as an
example of perfection unapproached elsewhere in Great Britain.

'A day or two afterwards I received at a public meeting at Chelsea
Town Hall an address signed by 11,000 inhabitants of Chelsea,
congratulating me on my return to public life. It was signed by
persons on both sides of politics. In reply, I made another good
speech; but it was a great occasion.'

Among the letters which reached him from all quarters was one from Sir
Henry Parkes, who wrote:

'Chief Secretary, New South Wales,
'Sydney, _March 9th_, 1891.

'I still hold the belief that few men have before them a broader
path of honourable usefulness than you. May you succeed in nobly
serving the dear old country!'

He received now and henceforward many invitations to address labouring
men, especially from the miners of Great Britain.

At Cannock Chase, in August, 1890, he attended his first miners'
meeting. How rapidly the list increased may be judged by the fact that,
speaking in July, 1891, at Ilkeston, he alluded to his conferences with
miners of Yorkshire, of Lancashire, of Cheshire, Somerset,
Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, Staffordshire, and the Swansea and Neath
districts in England and Wales, and of Fife and Ayrshire in Scotland.
Attempts had not been wanting to stimulate against him the strong
puritanism of these people, especially in South Wales; the answer had
come from men like Tom Ellis, [Footnote: Mr. Thomas E. Ellis was a
Liberal Whip at this time.] who brought him to address the quarrymen of
Blaenau Festiniog, or like Mabon--William Abraham--miner, bard, and
orator, who organized a gigantic torchlight procession of his own
constituents in the Rhondda Valley to welcome Sir Charles and Lady
Dilke, and who, at Lydney, when Sir Charles finally accepted their
invitation, congratulated the Forest of Dean on having secured the
services of 'one who was not only a political leader, but a real Labour
leader.'

Parliamentary action in favour of an Eight Hours Bill formed the burden
of Sir Charles's discourse at all these meetings. Accepting a special
invitation to the annual conference of miners in the beginning of 1892,
he dealt with the proposal, then strongly advocated, of a general
international strike, pointing out that this measure 'should not be even
talked about until they had seen the exhaustion of all other means of
obtaining what they wanted.' It meant civil war; would 'disorganize the
whole economic condition of the country and the trade of the Empire, and
produce also a great feeling of exasperation between classes.' He
pressed them to consider whether, in the event of such an international
conflict, the whole brunt would not fall on Great Britain. In Belgium
and in France there was no such strength of organization as among them;
and a general strike succeeding in Great Britain, but failing on the
Continent, would be a national danger. He proposed, as an alternative,
co-operation with the British representatives of other trades, for whom
also Parliamentary interference was demanded. In the discussion which
followed, the weight of his argument was fully recognized, and a
resolution favouring the international strike was amended into one
calling for Parliamentary action.

In the following June Sir Charles Dilke attended the Miners'
International Congress, and spoke at the banquet given to foreign
delegates. A month later, when the General Election came on, 'thousands
of handbills and posters,' says Mr. Thomas Ashton, 'were sent to the
Forest of Dean by our federation recommending the workers to vote for
the working man's candidate.'

Nor were his public utterances on Labour questions limited to Great
Britain; request came from a society of the Belgian economists for a
lecture on some subject connected with Greater Britain, and he chose the
Australian strike and the position of Labour in the Colonies. This
discourse was delivered by Sir Charles in Brussels on his way back from
France at the beginning of 1891, and he then, he says, 'made the
acquaintance of all the leading people on both sides in that city.'

As early as May, 1891, Dilke had made up his mind (and stated it in a
letter to Count Herbert Bismarck) that the Liberal party would win the
next election. The question of the Leadership was raised at the end of
the session in a letter from Chamberlain:

'I am told that Mr. Gladstone is much shaken by his late illness,
and I cannot see how he can ever lead the House again, though his
name will always be a tower of strength in the constituencies.'

But in December Mr. Chamberlain said that he did not think the prospects
of a General Election were so good for Mr. Gladstone as they had been
six months ago.

'James, dining at my house, had said a long time before this that
the prospects of the Liberals might look rosy, but that they had not
realized the extent to which the Liberal Unionists intended to spend
their money upon Labour candidates;' and this danger 'began to show
itself more clearly about this time.' On December 28th 'I had an
amusing letter from Cyril Flower:

'"Surely for a real good muddle in political affairs, Welsh, Irish,
Scotch, and English, there has never been a bigger, and what with
Pamellites and anti-Parnellites (Christian and anti-Christian)
Whigs, Labour candidates, Radicals, Tories, Jacobites, and Liberal
Unionists, the next House will be as rum a kettle of fish as ever
stewed since George III. The worst of it is, as the House gets more
and more divided (like the French Chambers) into sets, it also
becomes more and more incapable of getting through its business, and
the littleness of the individual members becomes daily more
apparent."'