Algernon Cecil

“ Five years before (Quarterly Review, April 1860, p. 528) he had approved (in contrast to the then existing policy of non-interference) the 'traditional' part which England had played in Europe 'England did not meddle with other nations' doings when they concerned her not. But she recognised the necessity of an equilibrium and the value of a public law among the states of Europe. When a great Power abused its superiority by encroaching on the frontier of its weaker neighbours, she looked on their cause as her cause and on their danger as the forerunner of her own. ”

“ Deeper differences lay in the antagonism between the spirit of the new tory democracy, of which Churchill was the exponent, and that of the old conservatism of opinion and method, which Salisbury represented. The prime minister made no effort to retain his rebellious lieutenant at the price of concession, and Churchill left the government in December 1886. ”

“ The domestic policy of the liberals was not easy to attack from any popular standpoint, but their conduct of affairs in the Sudan, in Egypt, in Afghanistan, and in Ireland gave Salisbury the opportunity for trenchant criticism. ”

“ It was something of an irony that the largest army England had ever assembled should have been put into the field under the .administration of a man who so earnestly laboured for peace. But to the charge that he ever wavered in his belief in the justice and necessity of the South African war he returned an indignant denial (speech at Albert Hall, 7 May 1902) . He firmly refused to entertain any idea of foreign mediation (statement hi the House of Lords, 15 March 1900) , and his diplomacy was probably never more skilful than during that period of acute European Anglophobia. ”

“ These, though dominant and, as it sometimes seemed during his lifetime, conflicting interests, were curiously blended in the address on 'Evolution' which, as president of the British Association, he delivered at Oxford in 1894. He shows himself there as jealous for the honour of science that no guesses, however plausible, should be taken for solid proof of the theory of natural selection, as, for the honour of theology, that nothing should be allowed to overthrow the argument from design. ”

“ It is plain that here, as well as in respect of the agreements with Germany and Portugal, British diplomacy had got the best of the bargain, and these bloodless African settlements are probably the most enduring monument of Salisbury's skill.
To return to home affairs. In 1888 the prime minister himself introduced in the House of Lords a life peerage bill, empowering the crown to create fifty peers for life, selected from the superior ranks of judges, officers in the army and navy, civil servants, and diplomatists as well as from among ex-colonial governors. ”

“ His distrust of democracy was in fact laid not in any distrust of the poorer classes as such he regarded them as neither better nor worse than other men (speech in the House of Commons, 27 April 1866) but in the belief that the law ought not to expose them to predatory temptations, which poverty encouraged and wisdom was not present to resist, nor to strip their more fortunate neighbours of that influence which was the 'single bulwark' of wealth against the weight of numbers. ”

“ The secret convention with Russia, balanced by the 'Cyprus' convention with Turkey, secured the semblance of a diplomatic success for England at Berlin, and Salisbury, who in company with Lord Beaconsfield, the prime minister, represented this country at the congress (13 June-13 July 1878) , returned bringing in the famous phrase 'peace with honour.' His services were rewarded with the garter, almost the only distinction which he was ever induced to accept (30 July 1878) . ”

“ The general election of December 1885 left the Irish the real masters of the field, since neither side could retain office without their aid. In the course of the next month Gladstone matured his home rule convictions, thus attracting the Irish vote at the same time that the conservatives, contrary to the wishes of Carnarvon, whose resignation was, however, made in accordance with a previous understanding on grounds of health, were repelling it by the project of a coercion bill. The government was defeated on 27 Jan. 1886 and Salisbury resigned on the 28th. ”

“ Salisbury sent an ultimatum to Lisbon, requiring their withdrawal from the British sphere of influence. Portugal was obliged to yield, and shortly afterwards a treaty delimiting the frontiers of Rhodesia was concluded. Trouble had also arisen with France in the same region in 1888, but in 1890 the French protectorate in Madagascar was acknowledged by England in return for a recognition of the English protectorate in Zanzibar. At the same time the British sphere of influence in Bornu was admitted and the French were compensated with the sands of the Sahara. ”

“ After the more definite conservatism of his youth had become a lost cause, he urged the need of restoring 'not laws or arrangements that have passed away, but the earlier spirit of our institutions, which modern theory and crotchet have driven out. . . . The object of our party is not and ought not to be simply to keep things as they are. In the first place the enterprise is impossible. ”

“ A bill to disestablish the Irish Church was then sent up to the lords. Prior to the general election (speech in House of Lords, 26 June 1868) Salisbury had laid down, in words often quoted since, what he conceived to be the function of the peers in the modern state. They must secure for the country, he said, an opportunity of expressing its 'firm, deliberate, and sustained conviction,' whenever that opportunity was denied to it by the lower house. ”

“ His special activities, however, lay at the foreign office, which he again combined with the premiership. Between 1895 and 1900 England found herself on the brink of war with each of the four great powers of the world, but no war occurred. ”

“ Parliament was dissolved, and the question referred to the country. In strong contrast to Gladstone's sentimental appeal for justice to Ireland Salisbury had declared (15 May 1886, speech at Union of Conservative Associations) for 'twenty years of resolute government,' introducing this statement of policy with the ill-judged remark, not to be forgotten or forgiven, that some races, like the Hottentots and the Hindus, were unfit for self-government. The electorate returned a majority of 118 for the maintenance of the union. ”

“ In the hope of including liberal-unionists in the administration, Salisbury expressed his readiness to leave the premiership to Hartington, but the offer was declined. He therefore took office on 26 July 1886, and formed a conservative ministry dependent on a unionist majority. He himself became first lord of the treasury; Iddesleigh foreign secretary under his supervision; and Lord Randolph Churchill, chancellor of the exchequer and, through Sir Michael Hicks Beach's self-abnegation, leader of the House of Commons. ”

“ He was an interested observer of French developments and a careful student of French thought ; his keen taste in literature made him a reader of the finely cut work of Merimee and Feuillet. Yet no man was less of a doctrinaire. He considered questions on their merits, not in the light of a priori ideas. Politics, as he said, speaking on the question of hostile tariffs, were no exact science (speech at Dumfries, 21 Oct. 1884) . He was all in favour of promising experiments, provided they were undertaken with caution. ”

“ Reform, however, was in the air, and as soon as Derby took office on the fall of the Palmerston administration in 1858 a reform bill was adumbrated, which Disraeli introduced in the following year with a view to settling the question on conservative lines. Cecil spoke on 21 March 1859 in favour of the clause depriving the forty-sMlling freeholder, who voted in a borough, of the vote for the county which he had possessed as well. But the new government fell without being able to carry the measure, and from July 1859 to 1866 the conservatives were once more in opposition. ”

“ In October 1869 he had contributed a striking article to the 'Quarterly' on 'The Past and the Future of Conservative Policy.' He started from the thesis that the religious motive in politics, which has hitherto repressed the class motive, had passed away with the struggle over the Irish Church. The contest of the future would be a contest about material things. ”

“ Singularly free of literary artifice as well as of literary allusion, seldom if ever attaining any great height of eloquence, their style has long been recognised as a rare model of restrained, pungent, and vigorous English. ”

“ But the prime minister, even though he had in his own department been content with less interference in the Near East than had commended itself to Iddesleigh, could never be induced to recall him (Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, p. 776) .
More lasting interest attaches to Salisbury's African policy. By granting a royal charter to the British East Africa Co. (1888) , lately founded by Sir William Mackinnon [q. v. Suppl. I] , he recovered for England the hold over the upper sources of the Nile which Iddesleigh by an agreement with Germany in 1886 had nearly lost. ”

“ The July riot in Hyde Park converted the parliamentary agitation for a reform bill into a popular movement, and Disraeli resolved to anticipate his opponents in giving effect to it. He hoped to do so without losing the support of his more conservative colleagues, and two bills, one to establish in the boroughs a conditional household suffrage, the other a 61. rating franchise, were submitted to the cabinet. On 23 Feb. 1867 Disraeli contrived by a judicious manipulation of statistics to get the more radical measure for household suffrage provisionally accepted by the whole cabinet. ”

“ The brilliant effect of the Berlin Congress was even more evanescent than its provisions. Two years later the conservatives were put in a minority by the election of 1880. Beaconsfield only survived his defeat by about a year, and at his death (19 April 1881) Salisbury was chosen (9 May) to lead the opposition in the House of Lords, Sir Stafford Northcote [q. v.] continuing to do so in the House of Commons, and the party being left without any recognised leader in the country. ”

“ The eastern frontier of India was similarly secured against French influences by the annexation of Burmah. Other activities included the raising of a long-delayed Egyptian loan and, by a curious irony, the diplomatic support of Prince Alexander's action in uniting Eastern Roumelia to Bulgaria. Salisbury's foreign policy appeared very able to his contemporaries. ”

“ He had already, in 1884, made a vigorous though, on the whole, unsuccessful attack upon his chiefs with the view of democratising the party organisation, and his attitude had facilitated the passage of the franchise bill through the commons. In the next year he had made his power felt by compelling the withdrawal of Northcote to the House of Lords, and he now took exception to Iddesleigh's foreign policy, threatening to resign unless the military estimates which that policy necessitated were reduced. ”

“ The conservatives therefore could not look for power at all and only for office on the same ignoble terms as those upon which they had obtained it for three short periods during the previous twenty years that is to say, by allying themselves with the radicals to the discomfiture of the whigs. ”

“ It was not, however, from the India office that he was principally to oppose Russian designs and to win in the Tsar's eyes the character of being '1'ennemi acharné de la Russie' (Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, p. 719) . The Eastern question, owing to a rebellion attended by Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria and the adjacent provinces, had become acute in 1876, and a conference between the great powers was arranged to meet in Constantinople. ”

“ He was thus the inveterate enemy of the alliance of 'philosophy and poverty 'against' property.' He believed that the remedy for existing discontents so far as they were susceptible of remedy at all lay in the encouragement of forces diametrically opposed to free thought and legislative confiscation that is in dogmatic religion and in production stimulated by security. ”

“ A compromise, which involved a constitutional innovation, was however eventually arrived at. Salisbury and Northcote were taken into counsel by the ministry, and, to the profound indignation of some members of the conservative party, their leaders privately negotiated the provisions of a redistribution bill, on the understanding that the House of Lords would pass the franchise bill (extending the vote to nearly twice as many persons as was done in 1867) , without forcing an appeal to the country. ”

“ The conclusion therefore was, that 'we must either change enormously or not at all.' Since symmetrical constitutions like that of Sieyes were opposed to human nature, since an educational franchise could not be constructed so as to embody any logical principle, since a wide or 'geographical' franchise imperilled property, the writer expressed himself in favour of leaving things where they were. ”

“ There seemed to be no inclination for any of the thousand forms of recreation which men ordinarily affect. He was accustomed to pass part of the year near the sea, sometimes at Walmer, which came to him in 1895 with the lord wardenship of the Cinque Ports, more usually at his villa in France, first at Puys near Dieppe and afterwards at Beaulieu on the Riviera. ”

“ The Russian reply reserved to Russia the right of excluding from discussion whatever clauses of the treaty it chose. This brought the two Powers to the brink of war, and Derby, who was constitutionally unprepared for that contingency, resigned the foreign secretaryship, under some misapprehension, however, as to the exact intentions of his colleagues, which resulted in a regrettable passage at arms in the House of Lords with his successor (see Life of Lord Cranbrook, ii. 77) . Salisbury was appointed to the vacant office on 1 April 1878. ”