Chapter XIV · LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS (continued 2)

He said he should tell M. de Freycinet all I had said. He asked me if I wished to see M. de Freycinet, to which I replied in the negative.

I thought you would wish to know all this, and I hope you will approve of what I said. I return to town on Tuesday.

Yours very truly, Randolph S. Churchill.

‘You seem to have defended the pass well, and the position you hold is a sound one,’ replied Lord Iddesleigh in a letter which appears to be the last that passed between them.

Short as his absence from England had been, Lord Randolph found some difficulties aggravated on his return. The orthodox portions of the Conservative party had become articulate. Mr. Chaplin was denouncing the Closure by a simple majority as unconstitutional and improper. The Times had made up its mind against such a change, which it regarded as ‘irreconcilably at variance with the fundamental principle of freedom of debate.’ It expressed itself anxious to know what would have been the opinion of the former leader of the Fourth Party on the proposals of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. The ‘Dartford programme,’ as the principles and measures expounded in Kent had already come to be called, notwithstanding the full approval which it had previously received from the Cabinet, had been exposed to various attacks in quarters usually believed to derive their information from official sources. The Carlton Club was reported to be vexed and sulky. Everywhere the question was asked: What would the Chancellor of the Exchequer say to the conference of Conservative Associations at Bradford? Would he be discovered in retreat or standing to his guns? Would he enlarge upon the Dartford programme or would he explain it away?

The conference met at Bradford on October 26. Lord Randolph made three speeches during the day. At the evening meeting he said he was very sorry he had made the Dartford speech. ‘If I had not made it at Dartford three weeks ago, I might have made it here to-night.’ He stood to the policy then declared in every detail. He welcomed Mr. Jesse Collings as an ally in the Allotments Bill. He asserted that Closure by a simple majority was the ‘motor muscle’[56] of any reform in Parliamentary Procedure. He ridiculed the complaints of the Liberal party. ‘All they can do apparently is to exclaim with impotent rage, "How unfair! how shameful! how unprincipled! You have stolen our programme." Why "their programme," I should like to know? Since 1880 they have been in office, and they did not make an attempt to carry out a single item. They tell us that the programme I sketched at Dartford is a Radical programme; that the Tory party have turned their coats and abandoned their principles and adopted the principles of the Radical party; and quantities of sentences of that kind and of equal stupidity. All I know about the programme of policy, foreign and domestic, which I endeavoured to outline at Dartford three weeks ago is this—that it was a mere repetition of the programme of Lord Salisbury at Newport in 1885. All I know about my speech at Dartford which I can say in reply to what I am told as to its being a total adoption of Radical principles and measures is this—that it was a mere reiteration and elaboration of the Queen’s Speech of January last, when Lord Salisbury’s first Government was in office, and of the speeches of the Ministers who supported the policy which was contained in that speech.’

These statements were greeted by the loud and continuous acclamations of an audience of Conservative delegates representing, it was calculated, fully a million and a half electors.

This determined speech and its thunderous endorsement silenced for the moment all hostile criticism. Some of Lord Randolph’s colleagues expressed to him their disapproval of the attacks upon him from within the Conservative ranks. Others assured him of their agreement. Even the Lord Chancellor was satisfied. ‘I have just finished reading your speech at Bradford,’ he wrote (October 27). ‘There is not a word that is not sound, good Toryism—aye, and old Toryism, too. The truth is that the enemy have been so long dressing up a lay figure which they have invested with their notions of what a Tory ought to be, that they do not recognise the genuine article when they see it.’

It is a pity not to end the story here. Lord Randolph Churchill seems at this time to have been separated only by a single step from a career of dazzling prosperity and fame. With a swiftness which in modern Parliamentary history had been excelled only by the younger Pitt, he had risen by no man’s leave or monarch’s favour from the station of a private gentleman to almost the first position under the Crown. Upon the Continent he was already regarded as the future master of English politics. His popularity among the people was unsurpassed. He was steadily gaining the confidence of the Sovereign and the respect and admiration of the most serious and enlightened men of his day. His natural gifts were still ripening and his mind expanding. The House of Commons had responded instinctively to the leadership of ‘a great member of Parliament.’ Alike in the glare and clatter of the platform and in the silent diligence of a public department he was found equal to all the varied tasks which are laid upon an English Minister. If he were thus armed and equipped at thirty-seven, what would he be at fifty? Who could have guessed that ruin, utter and irretrievable, was marching swiftly upon this triumphant figure; that the great party who had followed his lead so blithely, would in a few brief months turn upon him in abiding displeasure; and that the Parliament which had assembled to find him so powerful and to accept his guidance, would watch him creep away in sadness and alone?

Still, for an interval the sun shone fair. The clouds were parted to the right and to the left, and there stepped into the centre of the world’s affairs—amid the acclamations of the multitude and in the hush of European attention—the Grand Young Man.