Parliamentary Hirtory, L‘d. 26, pt . 2 (2007), pp. 203-224

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87: Principles, Ambitions and Strategies*

A L L E N W A R R E N University .f York

The third marquess of Salisbury has received a lot of attention as a domestic politician over the last 15 years.’ Even so, continuing interpretative difficulties remain in assessing his career as conservative ideologue and leader. First, historians remain uncertain about the relationship between his early journalism and speeches, and the actions of the mature politician after 1881. Second, there is still no agreement about how far Salisbury understood the contemporary changes in British socio-political culture, and from which he and the Conservative party were to take the principal advantage. Third, there is also no consensus on whether Salisbury should be seen as a driving and creative force in Conservative politics, or whether he and his party were the lucky beneficiaries of the towering, but ultimately misguided, moral energies of W.E. Gladstone. As a result, Paul Smith, in the most recent authoritative interpretation, leaves the reader to choose between Salisbury as a cautious materialist dedicated to delaying the new democratic order, or as a risk-taking opportunist prepared to play for the highest stakes and winning, or as just a lucky political leader at the right place at a propitious moment.’

The present article looks at some of these difficulties through the lens of the Irish problem, in many ways the dominant issue within Salisbury’s later domestic politics. It begins with his early apprenticeship as a Conservative M.P. and as a political journalist in the 1860s, and concludes with the consolidation of the unionist alliance, following the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill and the failure of the Liberal round table conference during the first months of 1887. It has three main sections. First, it examines Salisbury’s speeches and writings in the mid 1860s, describing his

* The author would like to thank the following ownen and institutions holding the manuscript sources consulted for this article: his grace the duke of Rutland, the marquess of Salisbury, the marquess of Bath, the earl of Harrowby, W.H. Smith Archive Ltd., the British Library, the National Archives, the Public Record Ofice of Northern Ireland, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Library of Churchill College, Cambridge, the Gloucestershire, Suffolk and West Sussex County Record Offices. He would particularly like to thank Mr Robin Harcourt Williams for his help in checking references and answering his queries on the Salisbury MSS.

‘See Andrew Roberts, Salisbury. Victorian Titan (1999); David Steele, Lord Salisbury. A Political Bio- graphy (1999); Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury’s World. Conservative Environments in Late- Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2001); Richard Shannon, The Age ofSalisbury, 1881- 1902. Unionism and Empire (1996); C.C. Weston, The House ofLord5 and Ideological Politicr. Lord Salisbury’s Re/erendal Theory and the Conservative Party, 1846- 1922 (American Philosophical Society Memoirs CCXV, 1995); Andrew Adonis, Makin2 Aristocracy Work. The Peerage and the Political System in Britain, 1884- 1914 (Oxford, 1993).

O.D.N.B. , X, 761-6.

204 Allen Warren

Irish thinking and how he responded to Gladstone’s early Irish reforms. Second, it studies the years 1880-5, which marked Salisbury’s re-engagement with domestic politics following the defeat of the Beaconsfield government in April 1880, and the place of Ireland in the politics of the years of opposition. Third, it tracks Salisbury’s actions through the thick undergrowth of British politics between 1885 and 1887, asking whether his approach to the defence of the Union offers a perspective on the broader interpretative questions above.

Not expecting to become the head of the Cecil family as a young M.P., Lord Robert Cecil made a career as a political journalist, principally writing for the Suturduy re vie^.^ Although not speaking frequently on Ireland in the Commons, Cecil wrote some 15 anonymous articles on the country’s condition and politics between 1860 and 1865, which form a coherent body of thinking about its history and future development. They contain some surprising elements. In setting a context, Cecil was always clear that Ireland’s own history was the principal factor in determining its presently unique situation as well as its future. Ireland and England had been tied together for some 700 years, dramatically so in the two centuries after 1600, marked as they were by conquest, settlement, penal laws and exploitation. Writing on the ‘Condition of Ireland Question’ in 1864, Cecil asked why the country remained so economically undeveloped. A comparative analysis of Brittany, Belgium and Ulster showed that generic factors of race, religion or natural resources were not sufficient explanations. More convincing were the facts of Irish history in which there had been no reconciliation between the conquering and the conquered. Rather, as a result of English economic exploitation, the restrictions on trade and the debauched lives led by the conquering classes, Ireland had been impoverished throughout the eighteenth century and denied the chance of improvement. As a result of the Union these evils had now passed away and Ireland was now governed by ‘commercial laws’ that were equal and just. But remedies needed time to complete their work and Britain still had to atone for past misdeeds. It should provide strong and vigorous government, not just in order to eliminate agrarian crime, but also to provide an attractive environment for economic development. Direct state intervention was justified through special measures to stimulate prosperity; financial resources siphoned off in the past were needed now to nourish Irish soil if the English were to look the Irish in the face. Cecil repeated the argument a few months later, making the point that Ireland should not be treated simply according to the laws of supply and demand: ‘It can be no breach of any true political economy that England should accept any fitting opportunity of giving back to Ireland a portion of the wealth that she has unjustly taken from her.’4

This historical context underpinned an essentially materialistic contemporary analy- sis. Writing on Irish economic distress in 1863, Cecil identified lack of money, not lack of food, as the key issue. Social and economic confidence needed to be rebuilt so

For Cecil’s journalism and speeches, see Michael Pinto-Dutschinsky, Tlze Political Thought of Lord Salisbury, 1854-68 (1967); Lord Salisbury on Politics. A Selection from his Articles in the Quarterly Review f860-1883, ed. Paul Smith (Cambridge, 1972).

Anon (Lord Robert Cecil), ‘Condition of Ireland Question’, ‘The Irish Dificulty’, Saturday Review, CDLXXXIII (Apr. 1864), 402; DVI (June 1864), 774. Some of Pinto-Dutschinsky’s references have been corrected.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 185947 205 that landlords and businesses would want to invest. For that to occur, law and order had to be maintained, violent agrarian crime checked, and the police made more efficient; otherwise no capitalist would have any incentive to invest, unless, as he put it, ‘the only other place for investment is Dahomey’.’ In this context, emigration was a social good as it was impossible to see any permanent improvement in the country until the ‘population inhabiting it has more or less completely changed’. Emigration helped change attitudes and was ‘equally beneficial to the emigrant and to the country from which he goes’.‘ Similarly, tenant right was no solution to the country’s material condition. Ireland needed capital and security not the re-introduction (as he saw it) of older landed practices that had created the disasters of the super-abundant population ofjust a few years before.’

Cecil brought these historical and materialistic strands together through his support for direct economic intervention by the state. His writings were part of a renewed debate about how Ireland might be improved following a return of distress in the early 1860s. Irish members, including Conservatives, began to scrutinize the effects of Gladstone’s fiscal changes of the 1850s upon the country. Colonel Dunne, the Conservative member for Queen’s County, and his allies forced the government in the face of Gladstone’s opposition to accept a select committee on the issue. Much of the enquiry concentrated on whether Gladstone’s extension of the income tax to Ireland in 1853 and the gradual equalization of the spirit duties had been justified, given that he had not been able to abolish income tax itself as he had intended.8 To the Irish members, it seemed that the fiscal and material exploitation of Ireland in the years before the Union was now being repeated. Second, the appointment of Lord Wodehouse as viceroy in late 1864 prompted renewed attempts by Dublin Castle to persuade the government in London to engage actively in Irish economic development. Cecil commended Wodehouse’s speech at the lord mayor of Dublin’s dinner, and two months later, in one of his rare Irish parliamentary speeches, he attacked Gladstone’s statement that state funds should not be used for economically constructive purposes. England, he continued, had prevented Irish development in the eighteenth century with the consequence that special treatment was now legitimate.’ Little came of these efforts. Gladstone’s personal opposition, Lord Palmerston’s death and the Fenian crisis took the Irish debate in other directions, but it is interesting that Cecil’s writings on Irish economic questions are not inconsistent with the policy of constructive unionism adopted 20 years later.

For the materialist aspect to Salisbury’s thought more generally see Lord Salisbury on Politics, ed. Smith, intro. pp. 1-109; Cecil, ‘Irish Crime’, ’Irish Distress’, Saturday Review, CCCLXXXVII (Mar. 1863). 395, CCCXC @me 1863), 789.

Cecil, ‘Irish Emigration’, Saturday Review, CDXVI (Oct. 1863), 541.

On Select Committee, Hansard, Pad. Debs, 3rd ser., CLXXI, 816 (Dunne), 825 (Gladstone): 12 June

Cecil, ‘The Dublin Banquet’, Saturday Review, CDLXXV (Dec. 1864), 682; Hansard, Parl. Debs., 3rd

’Cecil, ‘Tenant Right’, Saturday Review, CDXLIV (Apr. 1864), 522.

1863; CLXXIII, 1199 (Dunne), 1213, 1218 (Gladstone): 26 Jan. 1864.

ser., CLXXVII, 717: 24 Feb. 1865.

206 Allen Warren

Not surprisingly, Cecil interpreted the revived Fenian threat in late 1865 differently from those who saw Irish grievances in largely religious or national terms.” Fenianism was more ‘an American infection’, not to be taken seriously (a view shared by Wodehouse), and Cecil used all his powers of ridicule to mock those involved, simultaneously showing his hostility to all things American. Doubtless, he added with heavy, but prophetic, irony, Fenian agitators would be heroically represented on the walls of any future congress of the republic of Ireland. Irish grievances were not religious either, but more landed and economic with ‘Yankee agitators’ spreading utopian dreams of an abolition of the landlord class. Only through changed ‘social influences’ could Fenianism be removed. More Irish landlords should live on their estates and Roman catholic clergy should also become landowners, but time was required more than anything else if historic wrongs were to be assuaged - shades of the later 20 years of firm government.”

Religious issues nevertheless had a secondary place in Cecil’s Irish thinking. Again his journalism contains some surprises. In August 1862, he vigorously attacked the militant Protestantism of the new chief secretary, Sir Robert Peel. Secretary Peel’s reckless support of his late father’s ‘Godless Colleges’, his attacks on Arch- bishop MacHale, his abuse of O’Donaghue as a ‘mannikin traitor’, and his snobbish disparagement of Roman catholic processions were as serious as they were reckless, prompting memories of the penal laws. Peel was conducting ‘a government by jeer’, which threatened to unite priests and the revolutionary party, even though their real interests were in conflict. If the policy continued, Cecil commented caustically, it would only show ‘how great a fire even so undistinguished a tongue can kindle’.’‘ Cecil nevertheless recognized that the Church of Ireland was a difficulty. Writing in 1863, he noted that little had been achieved over the previous 100 years in terms of denominational reconciliation. Coercive and conciliatory policies had each failed, and non-denominational education and free trade had made little difference. But it was also difficult to treat Ireland differently in religious matters because of setting possibly dangerous precedents; in relation to the rights of property, for instance. It was a commonplace, Cecil continued, that no sane man would have created the established church as now existed in Ireland, but one could not just redistribute its property to the Roman catholic church, even though more financial support could be given to its ~1ergy . I~ Two years later, he repeated the argument in a vigorous attack on Gladstone’s speech during the debate on L.L. Dillwyn’s motion on the Irish Church, which he characterized as ‘admirably calculated to defeat the only views which any honest government could be expected to entertain’ through its deliberate inflaming of feelings rather than ‘calming agitation and appeasing animosities’. The chancellor’s motives, Cecil continued, were purely opportunistic: as Earl Russell got up the rusty issue of the franchise, so Gladstone wanted ‘a cry of his own’ in

Cecil was distancing himself from those who had supported Dillwyn’s motion on the Irish Church in early 1865, and from the efforts of Wodehouse in trying to reach some kind of agreement with the Roman catholic bishops on Irish university education.

” Cecil, ‘Fenianism’, ‘The Fenians’, Saturday Review, DXVIII (Sept. 1865). 410; DXXV (Nov. 1865), 431.

l 2 Cecil, ‘Extreme Delicacy and Caution’, Saturday Review, CCCLIII (Aug. 1862), 120. l3 Cecil, ‘The Irish Church’, Saturday Review, CCCXCV (May 1863). 646.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 207

order to create a platform for himself should he ever lose of€ice.14 As early as 1865, Cecil saw Gladstone as taking up the question of Ireland for largely selfishly political reasons, breaking the Palmerstonian consensus, an argument that was persistently to feature in his rhetoric after 1868.

Finally, it is interesting to compare Cecil’s writing on Ireland with that on New Zealand. He had visited the country in the early 1850s and it had clearly made an impression. Under his anonymous journalistic cover Cecil used his most savage language about British government policy and its consequences in increasing white colonial authority and subordinating the rights of the Maori people. He condemned the land policies of Colonel Wakefield’s settlement company unreservedly, as brutally abusing native land rights and creating inevitably violent and bloody resistance. Not unlike Irish tenants, the Maori people were passionately attached to their land. Despite knowing this, the governor had continued to allow extensive land grabbing by white settlers in defiance of the treaty of Waitangi. Cecil concluded, ‘Our conduct will scarcely bear comparison even with that of the Austrian g~vernmen t . ”~ Two years later Cecil now likened British policy to that of the Russians in Poland, and predicted that unless halted the Maoris would be ‘reduced to a condition somewhat lower and more wretched than that of the Irishry after the great Protestant confiscations’.‘6

In June 1865 Cecil’s elder brother died, and he succeeded as Viscount Cranborne. On the following 18 October Palmerston also died. Taken together, these events changed Cecil’s position dramatically. No longer an isolated and relatively impov- erished younger son and M.P., he became the heir to a great tory political family, just at a time that the whole temper of politics was changng. No longer needing the income, his journalism largely ceased and he never again wrote an article exclu- sively about Ireland. Up to that point historians have to rely almost exclusively on Cecil’s writing and speeches, there being few surviving personal archives; thereafter it is overwhelmingly personal and o6cial correspondence and public speeches that provide the material on which to work.”

As Paul Smith has shown, Salisbury’s mature political views were forged in the years of reform between the years 1866 and 1868. With franchise extension fundamentally altering the balance of the constitution, parliamentary politics could no longer be conducted on any kind of bi-partisan basis. For Salisbury, the critical question became whether these new political relationships and the popular electoral politics underpinning them could be contained and channelled, ideally for Conservative purpose. It would become the fundamental basis of his domestic politics for the next 15 years. The dilemma became acute from the late 1870s, once Gladstone had

j 4 Cecil, ‘The Irish Church‘, Saturday Review, CDXLII (Apr. 1865), 359. ’’ Cecil, ‘An Expensive Governor’, ‘The Interminable Little War’, Saturday Review, CCLXVII (Dec.

1860), 726; CCCIV (Aug. 1861), 192. Cecil, ‘The War in New Zealand’, Saturday Review, CDXXI (Sept. 1863), 661.

” Mr Robin Harcoun Williams has confirmed that little surviving archival material is to be found in the Salisbury MSS relating to his life before 1865 with the result that the historian has to rely almost exclusively on his writing and speeches. Trying to establish the pattern of his reading, for instance, would be a complex and possibly rather unproductive task. A closer reading of Cecil’s journalism and speeches would certainly provide an interesting critique of the last yean of Palmenton’s dominance, but would not in fact yield much on such issues as the condition of India or political economy that might have determined Salisbury’s later Irish thought.

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re-entered politics with his increasingly manic and irresponsible behaviour. As a result he developed, as a number of historians have noted, a new quasi-constitutional theory to underpin the purposes and authority of the house of lords, in which it was to be the ultimate guardian of the national interest rather than the unpredictable, albeit popularly elected, house of commons. By its potential to create a constitutional crisis, the Lords could force any government to seek a new mandate, and so confirm that it still had popular authority. At first, Salisbury was relatively circumspect in attacking Gladstone’s reforms, but from 1880 onwards he increasingly justified his actions in terms of the fundamental change in politics he saw as the result of 1867and 1868.18

More narrowly Salisbury also saw 1868 as critical in relation to Britain’s relations with Ireland, so every disaster that followed could be explained as the logical outcome of Gladstone’s policies. By way of contrast the years before 1868 in this view of things, could be presented as one of party consensus in relation to the governing of Ireland.

Salisbury did not develop this critique overnight. His own political position after 1868 was uncertain and insecure, his pre-occupations were as much religious as they were Irish, and it was not immediately clear that all of his predictions would come to pass. Nevertheless, his comments upon Gladstone’s Irish policies fiom 1868 until 1873 do build upon his earlier views and he remained deeply sceptical of his motives. Even before the general election of 1868 he did not defend the principle of Irish establishment, and concentrated more upon the threat of disendowment with its implicit threat to property rights more generally. At the same time, while not denying the Church’s unpopularity, he asked whether disestablishment would undermine loyalty, first among Protestants in the north of Ireland or more generally in the other parts of the United Kingdom, where the anglican church was also in a minority. Finally, he repeated that Fenianism had little connexion with the church question, being more a product of agrarian discontents. But should the new electorate endorse the call for disestablishment, it would be the duty of the Lords to give way. Salisbury repeated this mandatory principle after the elections. Voting for the Church Bill on its second reading, he concentrated on trying to limit the damage to the Irish Church’s property, supporting the schemes of the duke of Cleveland for a form of concurrent endowment. l9

O n land reform, Salisbury repeated that Ireland’s main need was the security and financial confidence to encourage investment and material improvement. Anything that undermined property rights generally would make that more dificult. O n the 1870 Land Bill itself, he supported the principle of tenant’s compensation for improvement, and that of land purchase through the Bright clauses. Security would be improved generally if ‘the base of property’ was widened, and he noted that the peasant proprietors in France generally supported the government. But, he also warned, these changes must not undermine property rights as a whole, emphasizing that in Ireland the principles of political economy had been ‘Gladstoneized’ by the government, whereas they were capable of multiple interpretation.

‘‘O.D.N.B., X, 761-3; Weston, House oflords, pp. 1-116. l 9 P.M.H. Bell, Disestablishment in Zreland and Wales (1969), passim. For Salisbury, Hansard, Pad. Debs.,

3rd ser., CXCIII, 79: 26 June 1868; CXCVII, 81, 738, 1065: 17, 29 June, 2 July 1869.

h r d Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 209 Up to this point in his speech, Salisbury had appeared cautiously moderate, but

then in what would become a characteristic rhetorical ploy, he increased the debating temperature by asking why the Liberal government had treated Ireland exceptionally in relation to land. The answer, he continued, was the threat of violence. Salisbury had a visceral fear of agrarian violence, and had always seen the long history of rural ribbonism as a destructively distinctive feature of Irish life. Answering his own question, he described the Land Bill as a measure that ‘compensates the Irish to induce them not to shoot their landlords’. As a result its overall effect would be to worsen relations between landlord and tenant, increase absenteeism and discourage investment in the land. Later in the debates, Salisbury attempted unsuccessfully to reduce the scope of the compensation clauses.20

Unsurprisingly, Salisbury vigorously endorsed government measures to maintain the law, through the Peace Preservation Act of 1870 and the so-called ‘Westmeath Act’ of 1871. But once again his argument is interesting. Fenianism is not the real threat; it can be put down easily. The real danger comes from the long tradition of ribbonism, which would only be defeated if changes in the jury system allowed convictions to be secured. O n law and order Salisbury also introduced a new racial element. In Ireland, it had to be remembered that the government was dealing with ‘a population of a lower civilization in many points than your own’. Following the murders in Westmeath and surrounding counties a year later, his language was more violent: ‘the real difficulty is this - you have got in this country a system ofjudicature framed upon Teutonic stock, and fit for a civilized nation, and you apply it to a Celtic nation, part of which is in the very depths of barbarism . . . the population are unfit for the system that you are trying to thrust upon them’. Salisbury’s conclusion was that the government of India provided a better guide for Ireland than comparisons within the United Kingdom. The famous St James’s Hall speech of 15 May 1886 was to have a deep taproot.’l

For the rest of the decade, Salisbury contributed little on Ireland. O n two occasions he answered for the government, first in 1874 declining to support state aid for further railway construction, and second in 1879 in defence of the government’s very modest reforms of the Irish university system. Both show how di&cult Disraeli’s government found the issues of Ireland. State grants for railways highlighted in English minds the need for Irish local government refom, something on which Irish Conservatives persistently dragged their feet. On the universities, Salisbury reminded peers how

2o Hansard, Pad. Debs., 3rd ser., CCII, 74, 882, 1444: 14, 24 June, 5 July 1870. Ibid., CC, 821: 29 Mar. 1870; C:CVI, 31: 2 May 1871. It might be thought that the relationship

between Salisbury’s Irish thinking and his Indian nunisterial experience and views would be interesting. In fact, what is more striking is how little the two inform one another. Salisbury’s fiat ministerial office was as secretary of state for India in 1866-7 and he never held Irish ofice and he only seems to have made comparisons of a racially rhetorical kind. Although critical of the system of Indian government, he did not view Dublin Castle with similar discernment. His expenrnces at the India Ofice during 1866-7 and 1874-8 did not provide either the content or the language of his critique of Gladstone’s policies in relation to Ireland, and his belief in the value of state intervention in Ireland predates his engagement in state improvement in India. Nor did he consider the position of the Indian princes as in any way comparable to that of the Anglo-Irish governing class. For Salisbury and India, see Paul R. Brumpton, Security and Progress. Lord Salisbury at the India O$ce (Westport, Conn., 2002); A Selectionfrom the India O$ce Correspondence .f Robert Cecil, Third Marquis ofSalisbury, 1866-1867 and 1874-1878, ed. Paul R. Brumpton (New York, 2002).

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troublesome Liberals had found the question in 1873, adding that the days of large and comprehensive Irish education measures were over. As Palmerston had put it, he continued, the ‘bit by bit’ approach was now the only option. In this context, it is worth noting that Salisbury remained conspicuously silent six years later when the earl of Carnarvon and Lord Randolph Churchill once again sought a political rapprochement with the Irish bishops through the university question.22

After the 1868 election Salisbury’s political future had been uncertain. In 1880 the situation was totally different. He was now a central player in Conservative politics, with Beaconsfield regarding him as his successor. Other leading Conservatives were less certain, remembering the younger man. Only recently, party divisions over foreign policy in 1878 had gone very deep with Salisbury seen as one of the most destructive elements, leaving Carnarvon, Derby, and lesser men like the marquess of Bath and the earl of Pembroke fearful about a fracturing of Conservative aristocratic politics in a moderate liberal direction.23 For Salisbury, the scale and nature of the 1880 election defeat and Gladstone’s contribution to it reawakened the fears of 1868 - how were the radical dangers of this new mass politics to be contained, what was the future role of the Conservative party to be, and what position was he to take in it? Each of these questions informs the politics of Conservatism between April 1880 and June 1885, but with no clear outcome before Salisbury unexpectedly takes office. The debates would be multi-stranded and conducted at many levels, and certainly would include Ireland as the earl of Beaconsfield predicted.24

There was no preconceived strategy. Nevertheless Beaconsfield and Salisbury fully expected to use the power of the Lords, an approach the latter outlined publicly in Hackney in November 1880. The Lords, he announced, were not to be a pale shadow of the popularly elected Commons, rather its distinctive responsibility was to represent ‘the more enduring rather than the transient interests of the English people’. Salisbury self-consciously associated the peers’ role with the growing political conservatism of London, a development presented as a direct reaction to the radicalism of Gladstone, and the Liberal party’s moving away from the consensual style of Palmerston. Popular feeling now needed the protection of the peers.25 At Taunton, a few days earlier, Salisbury had anticipated using the Lords’ power to prevent confiscation in the forth- coming Irish land legislation, adding that unless agrarian violence was also suppressed there would be no future investment in the country. At Woodstock ten days later, he again accused Gladstone of abandoning earlier agrarian policies in 1870 that had

22 Hansard, Pad. Debs., 3rd ser., CCXVIII, 1403: 30 Apr. 1874; CCXLVII, 1849: 8 July 1879. For Irish policy under Beaconsfield see Allen Warren, ‘Disraeli, the Conservatives and the Government of Ireland: Part 2, 1868-1881’, ante, XVIII, (1999), 145-68.

23 For Beaconsfield’s hopes, Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, marquess of Salisbury MSS, HH/3M/E: Beaconsfield to Salisbury, 27 Dec. 1880; for those with doubts, B.L., Add. MS 60772, fE 43, 77, 92, 105, 109, 118: Bath to Camarvon, 1 Oct., 23 Nov. 1879, 1 Feb., 19, 23, 28 Apr., 1880; Longleat House, Wiltshire, marquess of Bath MSS, NMR, E12, B(7): Camarvon to Bath, 17 Apr., 14 Nov. 1879; B.L., Add. MS 50063A, f. 324: Iddesleigh diary, 28 Apr. 1880.

24 William FlaveUe Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The rjfe ofBenjamin Disraeli, Earl ofBeacon$eld (rev. edn., 2 vols., 1929). p. 1386: Beaconsfield to Marlborough, 8 Mar.1880.

25 Salisbury-Bahur Correspondence. The Letters Exchanged Between the Third Marquess o f Salisbury and his nephew Arfhurjames Bayour, 1869- 1902, ed. Robin Harcourt Wilhams (Hertfordshire Record Society IV, 1988), pp. 38, 40: Balfour to Salisbury, 8 Apr. 1880; Salisbury to Balfour, 10 Apr. 1880; West Sussex R.O., Goodwood MS 869 c.46: Salisbury to Richmond, 17 Apr.1880; The Times, 20 Nov. 1880, p. IOd.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 21 1 encouraged investment, while increasing fears of confiscation at the same time. O n peasant proprietorship, and before an English rural audience, he was more tentative than he had been previously, asking why should the Irish yeoman be particularly favoured, and at the same time cautioned against radical deviation from economic laws. Salisbury returned to many of these themes in an article in the Quarterly Review the following

Even with an early success through the Lords’ rejection of the government’s Irish Compensation for Disturbance Bill in August 1880, Salisbury’s ambition the following year to limit the scope of the second Irish Land Act was almost completely ineffective, despite the elements of confiscation contained within its principles of the 3Fs (fixity of tenure, fair rents and free sale). There were a number of reasons for this, each suggesting that Salisbury was more concerned about British politics than Irish conditions. First, the bill’s introduction could not have come at a worse time, coinciding as it did with Beaconsfield’s death and the debate over his s ~ c c e s s i o n . ~ ~ Second, Salisbury and Beaconsfield did not understand that many Irish landlords were not necessarily opposed to greater legalization of custom and arbitrated rents, if it secured the rents themselves. From late 1880 Salisbury had begun to realize there was little Irish support for outright resistance, while ineffective tory grandees, like the duke of Richmond, confessed that he had been completely ignorant of the distinctiveness of the Irish land system before his own royal commission had visited the country the previous year.28 Third, English Conservative members had no fight in them. Putting aside whether the party would fare any better if the Lords forced a new election, there was also anxiety among county members about actions that could be seen as hostile to tenant interests generally, including those in their own constituencies. As a result the bill’s second reading was passed by a majority of 176, with some 13 mainly Ulster tories voting in favour and many English county members staying away.29

Anticipating these difficulties, Salisbury and leading colleagues decided finally on amendment rather than outright opposition to the bill in the Commons, with Salisbury reminding an audience in Middlesex in late May that tories had in fact supported Irish land reform as long ago as 1852, provided it did not involve confiscation. But, reform would not end here, he warned, since successful Irish agitations merely encouraged further demands. By late July 1881, it was absolutely clear that the Lords also would

’‘ 77te Times, 27 Oct., 1 Dec. 1880, p. 10a, Anon [Salisbury], ‘Ministerial Embarrassments’, Quarterly Review, CLI (Apr. 1881), 535-67.

27 For continuing uncertainties and divisions over the succession to Beaconsfield, West Sussex KO., MS 870 s.5: Richmond to the queen, 27 Apr. 1881; B.L., Add. MS 50021, f. 137: Cairns to Northcote, 30 Apr. 1881; Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Richmond to Salisbury, 4 May 1881; B.L., Add. MS 60774, ff 6, 13: Pembroke to Carnarvon, 6 May 1881, Carnarvon to Prmbroke, 7 May 1881; Longleat House, NMR. El2 B(31): Bath to Pembroke, 13 May 1881, in which he concludes on his distress at Salisbury’s election as leader in the Lords, ‘It is really too foolish. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.’

28 Bodl., B/XX/Ce/148, 149, 131, B/XX/Ca/272: Salisbury to Beaconsfield, 1, 20 Dec.1880, 2 Jan. 1881, Cairns to Beaconsfield, 3 Dec.1880; T.N.A. (P.R.O.) PRO 30/51/1, f. 171: Beaconsfield to Cairns, 7 Dec.1880; West Sussex R.O., MS 865, w.95: Richmond to Beaconsfield, 9 Dec.1880; Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Beaconsfield to Salisbury, 13, 27 Dec.1880; B.L., Add. MS 60772, f. 150: Bath to Carnarvon, 19 Dec. 1880; Salisbury-Ba@ur Conespondance, ed. Harcourt Williams, p. 82: Salisbury to Balfour, 31 Jan. 1881.

29 For tory voting Annual Refister, 1881, p. 99. Some 70 Conservative members absented themselves, including 30 county members.

212 Allen Warren

not reject the bill, and that there would simply be discussion over the amendments. Despite this softened attitude, Salisbury nevertheless predicted dire consequences, claiming that the bill despatched the principles of political economy to yupiter and Saturn’ by creating dual-ownership in land without compensation. It would not solve the land question either, but simply stimulate further agitation. Landlords with business interests would leave, while those remaining would not receive compensation or have any effective means of selling to their tenants. Sir Stafford Northcote summed up the leadership’s dilemma precisely: ‘Of course, if the Irish landlords, and especially the Ulster members, had taken a decided line against the Bill, we could have stopped it or cut it down to nothing by action in the two Houses. But this was impossible in the face of their determination to pass the measure, and I do not know if that conclusion is to be regretted.’30

Despite this parliamentary ineffectiveness, Salisbury hoped that the 1882 session would be better. In speeches at Newcastle-upon-Tyne (in reply to Gladstone’s famous ‘resources of civilization’ speech at Leeds a few days before) and Bristol, as well as through a public letter to the Blackpool Patriotic Association, he again accused Gladstone of breaking the mid-Victorian consensus after 1868 for opportunistic reasons, thereby setting Ireland on its present disastrous course. By a combination of legislative plunder, governing weakness and anti-landlord prejudice, Gladstone was now driving capital from the country and reducing the value of what remained through the decisions of the land O n the other hand, Salisbury was encouraged by the reformation of the Irish land committee in November under the marquess of Waterford, sending a ‘handsome’ personal subscription, expressing the hope that the Irish landlords would now be more resolute.32

From early 1882 the Conservative leadership’s attack on the Liberal government’s domestic flank was three-pronged. The first tried to undermine confidence in the Land Act itself by subjecting individual decisions to scrutiny through a Lords’ select committee. But again after a showdown with the government, Salisbury had to accept a less corrosive alternative in terms of a more general review of the act’s working.33

30 The Times, 23 May 1881, p. 1Oc; Suffolk R.O., Cranbrook MS, HA43, T501/267: Salisbury to Cranbrook, 25 July 1881; Hansard, Pad. Debs., 3rd ser., CCLXIV, 254: 1 Aug. 1881; Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, duke of Rutland MSS, papers of 7th duke of Rutland: Salisbury to Lady John Manners, 7 Aug. 1881; Lady Victoria Hicks Beach, The Lifi ofsir Michael Hicks Beach (Earl St Aldwyn): (2 vols., 1932): Beach to Lady Caroline Hicks Beach, 12 Aug. 1881. For Northcote’s concluding assessment, The Ashbourne Puperr, ed. A.B. Cooke and A.P.W. Malcolmson (P.R.O.N.I. in association with the House ofLords R.O., 1974), pp. 124-5: Northcote to Gibson, 29 Aug. 1881. ” The Times, 12 Oct., 8, 14 Nov. 1881, pp. 7a, 7f, 7e. 32 Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Lady Waterford to Salisbury, 23 Nov. 1881, Waterford to Salisbury, 28

Dec.1881. 33 B.L., Add. MS 50020, f. 24: Salisbury to Northcote, 13 Dec. 1882; Hansard, Pad. Debs., 3rd ser.,

LXVI, 1510: 24 Feb. 1882; Ashboume Papers, ed. Cooke and Malcolmson, pp. 18-23; The Times, 2 Mar. 1882, p. 9a; The Salisbury-Bafjonr Conespondence, ed. Harcourt Williams, p. 8 0 Salisbury to Balfour 25 Feb. 1882. Even though not achieving its immediate political objectives, the select committee did in fact over the next couple of years gather a substantial body of evidence from relatively disinterested land experts and Dublin Castle officials about the narrow remit of the Land Act as an instrument of social pacification. This material provided some of the fuel for the more wide-ranging re-assessment of the social and economic needs of Ireland that was going on behind the scenes tiom 1884 onwards, and which would be the basis of the Irish policies of Salisbury’s second government, see Allen Warren, ‘Dublin Castle and the formation of Irish policy, 1879-1892’, Irish Historical Studies, XXXIV (2005). 403-30.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 213 The second prong was reflected in the party leadership’s renewed public support for increased peasant proprietorship. Although Salisbury had supported extended ownership in the past, it had been W.H. Smith, who had been its leading tory advocate in 1881, combining it with a demand for government assisted emigration from the overcrowded districts. Salisbury and other Conservative leaders had also been in touch with Irish nationalist opinion as the government ran into difficulties over the routine workings of the Land Act, and more especially in relation to those tenants in arrears excluded from its terms. In the previous November the eccentric home rule member for Dungarvan, F.H. O’Donnell, had endorsed the Conservative candidate in the Londonderry by-election because as he saw it both parties now agreed on a policy of land purchase and peasant proprietorship. More significantly, T.M. Healy, who had acquired parliamentary respect for his detailed knowledge of the workings of the Irish land system, sent Salisbury evidence about the operation of the land commission for the benefit of the Lords’ select committee. Salisbury and Northcote announced their new policy on land in Liverpool in early April 1882. Recognizing there could be no going back on the 1881 Land Act, the Conservative commitment to land purchase represented a desire to extend land ownership in order to free embarrassed owners, at the same time as encouraging greater loyalty to the rights of property, something Salisbury had urged since 1870.34

The third prong in the attack brought together Irish policy, Conservative party tactics and an appeal to a wider popular constituency. Despite the irritation caused to members by Irish parliamentary obstruction, Salisbury decided vigorously to oppose Gladstone’s proposals for the closure. In a series of letters to Conservative constituency associations, many of them in working class districts, Salisbury represented Gladstone as a threat to the Englishman’s constitutional liberties, which it was the duty of the Conservative party to defend in both Commons and Lords. In the Commons, the party arithmetic was there for all to see. In the division on the closure proposals on 31 March some 37 Pamellites voted with the Conservatives, while 16 anti-Pamellites voted with the g ~ v e r n m e n t . ~ ~

The Conservative leadership, therefore, were planning a significant shift in their approach to Ireland in early 1882; an approach that did not principally depend on Irish Conservative support and at least suggested some kind of rapprochement with the Parnellites. Not surprisingly, Salisbury was studiously vague at Liverpool on 12 April about whether there should be renewed coercion on the expiring of the suspension of habeas corpus legislation in June.

These tentative manoeuvrings in early 1882 prefigure closely Salisbury’s approach to Ireland during his first government in 1885. They have not received much atten- tion from historians, overwhelmed as they were by the revelations about the so-called Kilmainham Treaty, and the subsequent Phoenix Park murders. They show that Salisbury was prepared to develop alternative land policies to re-secure the material foundations of Irish society, that he was also prepared to make cautiously tactical

34 The Timer, 26 Nov. 1881, p. l l e : 13 Apr. 1882; Suffolk R.O., HA43, T501/271: Northcote to Cranbrook, 23 Jan. 1882; Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Northcote to Salisbury, 13 Mar. 1882, Healy to Salisbury, 14 Mar. 1882, Salisbury to Healy, 16 Mar. 1882; T.N.A., PRO 30/51/5, f. 51: Northcote to Cairns, 13 Mar. 1882. For Smith’s Irish interests, see Warren, ‘Dublin Castle’.

35 The Timer, 6, 7, 8, 21, 23 Mar., 1 Apr. 1882, pp. 9f, lOc, 12d, 6a, 9e.

214 Allen Warren

adjustments with the Parnellites if they had the effect of undermining Gladstone’s authority, and that he did not see this as in conflict with a Conservative populism, defending customary liberties against the increasing despotism of Gladstonian radi- calism. Whether such flexibility would have survived the necessary debate about law and order policy later in 1882 is doubtful, as a similar political configuration in early 1886 was to show.

In the event, the JSilmainham negotiations and associated resignations of W.E. Forster and Earl Cowper on 30 April made Conservative moves irrelevant, while the Phoenix Park murders on 8 May, paradoxically, resolved the question of law and order politically. The exposure of the government’s conversations with C.S. Parnell usefully obscured the more tentative Conservative communications, even though Conservative backbenchers remained suspicious, again a portent of 1885-6. Peasant proprietorship was put aside and the conservatives had little choice but to support the efforts of Earl Spencer on crime.36

This left Salisbury with only the government’s proposed arrears legislation on which to focus parliamentary opposition. In fact, his situation was not very different to that of 1881, but Salisbury clearly believed it to be much stronger, and that he would be able to force the government to dissolve parliament on the arrears question. Two factors encouraged him. First, he could present resistance by the house of lords to settling arrears by gift as a defence of ordinary people. Speaking to ‘Essex man’ at Stratford on 24 May he attacked Gladstone as weak on Irish crime, while simultaneously imposing extra burdens on honest taxpayers. Why, he asked, should the people of Essex pay the debts of Irish farmers, when they industriously paid their own? The legislation proposed was simply another example of how Irish violence produced concessions. Gladstone’s government no longer represented the interests of the people as a whole, but was simply a puppet in the hands of the caucus.37 Second, Salisbury believed that his own leading colleagues as well as the Irish landlords were behind him. In this he was once again mistaken. Throughout July 1882 he pressed for a political crisis, claiming that without a prior parliamentary dissolution Gladstone would go forward with franchise extension and redistribution, and that the Conservative party would be effaced for a generation. Describing the peers as ‘very warlike’ he was confident they and the Irish landlords would stand firm. Nor did he confine himself to Westminster. Addressing 500 representatives of the London and Westminster Working Men’s Constitutional Association at Hatfield, he declared that payment of debts, large and small, was a pre-condition of social order, without which society itself was undermined. Ireland was a good example of that truth; in that country only disloyalty was now encouraged, a direct result of Liberal policies since 1868.38

While the London workingmen may have been convinced, Salisbury’s leading colleagues were not. The Irish landlords’ representatives quickly worked with the duke of Richmond and Earl Cairns to bring about a rapprochement with the government,

36 B.L., Add. MS 60829, f. 25: Camarvon to W.H. Smith, 2 May 1882; Hatfield House, HH/3M/D12:

37 The Times, 25 May, 8 July 1882, pp. 1212, 12a. 38 For a detailed account of the arrears crisis Andrew Jones, The Politics ojReform, 1884 (Cambridge,

Caims to Salibury, 3 May 1882, Salisbury to Caims, 3, 5 May 1882.

1972), pp. 60-7; The Times, 8 Aug. 1882, p. 6a.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 185947 215 moves supported by the queen. A meeting of some 100 peers showed how divided the party had become. While Salisbury had done some electoral calculations, identifying some 63 marginal seats that might be winnable in an election, John Gorst remained sceptical whether an election would in fact improve the party’s overall numbers.39 Salisbury, feeling betrayed, responded bitterly, not hiding his deep hostility to ‘a most pernicious bill; that is an Act of simple r~bbe ry ’ .~” He disagreed strongly with the conciliatory views of his colleagues, but saw that he was in a small minority and so gave way. Salisbury recognized his own humiliation, seeing his political activity as having been ‘terribly tamed’ by Richmond and Cairns. Two and half years later, he could still state to Cairns that he had kept clear of Ireland since the debacle over the arrears.41

Salisbury was being a little economical with the truth. Certainly, he did not encourage communications with the Parnellites as they tightened their grip on the Irish electoral system, nor did he seek contact with the catholic bishops. Lord George Hamilton’s attempt to revive the land purchase question in mid 1883 turned out to be largely a personal initiative, although Salisbury did support the government’s Irish Labourers’ Bill.42 Crucially, Salisbury stayed clear of any association with Ulster opinion, believing himself to be at odds with Conservative views in the province, and also remaining wary of stirring up the Orangemen. He declined to tour Ulster in 1882, letting Northcote visit the province alone a year later.43

Salisbury did, however, prepare a defence of the Union against the home rule threat in a major speech in Birmingham in March 1883, and in his article on ‘Disintegration’ in the Quarterly Review a few months later. While Salisbury might still have been hoping to exclude Ireland from the anticipated franchise extension, he was absolutely clear that the separatist threat posed by Parnell was very likely to increase, and that the Irish question would become ‘the greatest of today’. But that question would not be resolved at Westminster in his view and any attempt at a bipartisan approach was bound to fail. Rather, it would be through an increase in the tory popular vote in England that Parnell would be contained. Salisbury developed the argument in the Quarterly. Anticipating a more contentious national politics in the future, he repeated that the Commons could no longer discharge its traditional role as arbitrator in national politics, its having become under Gladstone simply a manifestation of the

”B.L., Add. MS 50041, f. 107: Gorst to Northcote, 8 Aug.1882; Add. MS 60762, f. 14: Salisbury to

4” Hansard, Pad. Debs., 3rd ser., CCLXXXIII, 1330: 10 Aug. 1882. 41 Belvoir Castle, 7th duke of Rutland papers: Salisbury to Lady John Manners, 5 Oct. 1882; T.N.A.,

P R O 30/51/6, f. 66: Salisbury to Cairns, 12 Mar. 1885. 42 Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Lord George Hamilton to Salisbury, 15 Mar. 1883; T.N.A., P R O

30/51/13, f. 71: Smith to Cairns, 6 June 1883; Hansard, ParLDebs., 3rd ser., CCLXXXIII, 1485: 21 Aug. 1883.

43 B.L., Add. MS 50020, f. 40: Salisbury to Northcote, 12 Sept. 1882; Salisbury-Bayour Correspondence, ed. Harcourt Williams: Balfour to Salisbury, 19 Sept. 1882; Belvoir Castle, 7th duke of Rutland papers: Salisbury to Lord John Manners, 12 Oct. 1882 (in which Salisbury comments that Caims is in the hand of his Ulster relatives, ‘who twist his tail’). For Northcote’s tour see A.B. Cooke, ‘A Conservative Party Leader in Ulster: Sir Stafford Northcote’s Diary of a Visit to the Province, October 1883’, Proceedings ofthe Royal Irish Academy, LXXV (1975), 61-84; Hatfield House HH/3M/E: Northcote to Salisbury, 5 Sept. 1883; B.L., Add. MS 50063A, f. 406: 7 Sept. 1883. For the rather gloomy state of Ulster Conservative opinion see B.L., Add. MS 60767, f. 146: Northcote to Camarvon, 23 Oct.1883.

Camarvon, 25 Aug. 1882.

216 Allen Warren

current state of the Liberal party. As for Ireland itself, conciliation had clearly failed. Salisbury then asked why conquest had not led to integration over time as might have been expected. His answer, as in the 1860s, was also grounded in history, that a combination of the disastrous experiment of Henry Grattan’s parliament and the adoption by the Whigs of French revolutionary principles in the 1790s had created a fatal inheritance against which the Union had constantly struggled, a predicament made very much worse since Gladstone had set his own course from 1868. What had to be particularly guarded against, Salisbury concluded, was any suggestion of home rule by in~ ta lmen t s .~~

Despite these broad statements, Salisbury did little more than keep a watching brief on Irish affairs in 1883 and 1884, particularly after the basis of Conservative opposition to franchise extension shifted from the attempt to exclude Ireland to that of trying to insist that reform and redistribution should be handled simultaneously. He did not, for instance, spend any time on the Irish land question during 1884, even though the Irish landlords, now led by Lord Castletown, were pressing strongly for government measures to unfreeze the land market. Nor did he pay much attention to local Irish Conservative interests in the details of the redistribution settlement. H e also showed little enthusiasm for Carnarvon’s interest in Gavan D u e ’ s ideas of an Ireland within a federal empire.45

Paradoxically, the crisis over reform and redistribution enhanced Salisbury’s standing as leader, despite his failure again to secure a parliamentary d i s s o l ~ t i o n . ~ ~ But on Ireland, the party had made little progress since 1880 as Lord Randolph Churchill pointed Only at the most strategic level had Salisbury begun to develop an argument and a rhetoric that might be used if the Irish question did become the ‘greatest of today’ after the ele~tion.~’

Taking ofice unexpectedly in June 1885, Salisbury was not well prepared to negotiate the minefield of party politics at Westminster or in the country. The Conservatives had no Irish policies, nor any agreement on how they should handle

44 T h e Times, 30 Mar. 1883, p. 10a; Anon (Salisbury), ‘Disintegration’. Lord Salisbury on Polifics, ed. Paul Smith, pp. 335-76.

45 For details on reform politics see Jones, The Politics of Reform; also Hansard, Pad. Debs., 3rd ser., CCLXXXIV, 5 Feb. 1884; Salisbury on the queen’s speech, on Irish landlords committee, land purchase and freeing the land market; Warren, ‘Dublin Castle’. For Salisbury’s response on Carnarvon’s conversations with Sir Charles Gavan D u g see B.L., Add. MS 60825, E. 7, 10; 60821 ff. 6, 63: Salisbury to Carnarvon, 2 Feb., 21 Mar. 1885, Carnarvon to Gavan D u Q , 18 Mar. 1885, Gavan D u g to Carnarvon, 19 Apr. 1885. For Irish tory members on details of redistribution and their suspicions over the leadership’s collusion with Parnellite members, which led Ulster tones to boycott a Carlton Club meeting on 24 Feb. 1885, P.R.O.N.I., D1939/21/9, f. 25: Salisbury to Crichton, 19 Aug. 1884; Ashbourne Papers, ed. Cooke and Malcolmson, p. 131: Northcote to Gibson, 26 Oct. 1884; Hatfield House, HH/3M/D/27, HH/3M/E: Lord George Hamilton to Salisbury, 18 Dec. 1884, Salisbury to Lord George Hamilton, 21 Dec. 1884, Northcote to Salisbury, 31 Dec. 1884; B.L., Add. MS 50021, f. 110: memo. by Rowland Winn on conversations with Parnell about redistribution, 28 Feb. 1885.

46 Longleat House, NMR, El2 B (31): Pembroke to Bath, 2 Nov. 1885; T.N.A. PRO 30/5/3, f. 215: Richmond to Cairns, 7 Mar. 1885.

47 Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Churchill to Salisbury, 7 May 1885. 48 As noted above Salisbury commented to Cairns that he had largely steered clear of Ireland since the

arrears debacle, and Ireland features hardly at all in his speeches at this time. What does change, however, is his language in public about empire as a noble, civilizing and historic cause transcending party and class, 7he Times, 6 May 1885, p. 10a.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 217

the politics ofa minority ministry prior to an election, which many thought the Liberals were bound to win. Historians have disagreed quite sharply on how Salisbury’s first ministry should be regarded. Professor Richard Shannon, in particular, has described what he calls the ‘ricketiness’ of Salisbury’s leadership, ‘fiddling’ with Ireland in an attempt to reconstruct the pre-1868 political order.49 A different emphasis will be given here. Rather Salisbury is seen more as carefully negotiating an extremely unstable political environment so that he could use the Irish issue, so problematic previously, as the means of containing and controlling the political dynamic created by Parnellite success and Gladstonian renewal. As a result he achieved his three long-standing aims of personal political advancement, Conservative party success and the development of a national popular politics centred on the defence of the Union. This would be a politics identified overwhelmingly with the historic Conservative party and not some new alliance of anti-radical forces. He did this by the use of arguments originally articulated in the 1860s. Centred on an historical analysis of the Irish problem, they combined, as we have seen, a mix of firm, consistent government along with measures for material improvement as the only foundation on which long-term reconciliation might be secured. There were some new elements within the rhetoric, notably a more strident use of racial language on occasion, and a greater emphasis on the imperial framework within which Ireland should now be regarded. But both of these were relatively recent innovations and are indicative, less of a desire on Salisbury’s part to return to a pre-1868 political world, as of his understanding of new socio-cultural preoccupations within educated opinion and, it was hoped, among the electorate more generally.

It is not the intention here to follow in detail the development of Conservative politics between 1885 and 1887; that has been fully done by many other historian^.^" Rather, some key elements in Salisbury’s politics will be identified.

Perhaps the first point to note is Salisbury’s detached, if authoritative, style of leadership in government and opposition. He did not correspond much over matters of detail or short-term political tactics in contrast to both Carnarvon and Churchill, and in March 1886 felt secure enough to go to Monte Carlo for a month. He quickly accepted office on Gladstone’s defeat in June 1885, not following the precedent of 1873. Ironically, it was the precedent of 1867 that seems to have weighed with him on the basis that he was more likely to control events from inside than outside government. Second, his appointment of Carnarvon as viceroy was one of his first decisions. While he may later have thought that Carnarvon had gone beyond his brief, it was an astute move, playing as it did to Carnarvon’s aristocratic vanity, while providing a secure placeman in Dublin who had little wider political influence

49 Richard Shannon, The Age ofsalisbury, 1881-1902. Unionism and Empire (1996), p. 143 Most famously by A.B. Cooke and John Vincent, 7ke Governing Passion. Cabinet Government and Party

Politics, 1885-86 (Brighton, 1974). See also Alan O’llay, Parnell and the First Home Rule Episode, 1884-87 (Dublin, 1986); L.1’. Curtis, Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, 1880- 1892. A Study in conservative Unionism (Princeton, 1963); Peter Marsh, The Discipline .f Popular Gouernmenl. Lord Salisbury’s Domestic Statecr4, 1881- 1902 (Brighton, 1978); T.A. Jenkins, Gladstone, w h i a e r y and the Liberal Party, 1874- 1886 (Oxford, 1988); James Loughlin, Gladstone, Home Rule and the Ulster Question, 1882- 1893 (Dublin, 1986); W.C. Lubenow, Parliamentary Politics m d the Home Rule Crisis. T h e British House of Commons in 1886 (Oxford, 1988); H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1874- 1898 (Oxford, 1995).

218 Allen Warren

within the Conservative leadership. As a result Salisbury had a counterweight to any machinations that Churchill might engineer from his position in the Commons.

Turning to questions of policy, historians and near contemporaries have probably made rather too much of the so-called Carnarvon experiment. Essentially, in the uncertainty of the moment, there were two decisions that Salisbury’s cabinet had to make on taking ofice. First, how to use the remaining weeks of the parliamentary session, and, second, how to approach the general election in the knowledge that almost all Irish Conservative members outside Ulster would be defeated. The government’s answers would also need to be sensitive to the fact that Parnellite influence might affect an uncertain number of mainland seats, although at the risk of damaging the Conservative cause in strongly protestant areas.51

As far as legislation was concerned, there was almost no room for manoeuvre. While the respective whips may have taken soundings about how the normal Irish end of session business should be treated, existing plans were likely to remain in place. O n the critical question of future law and order policy, which had so dominated the final weeks of Gladstone’s government, and putting aside issues of electoral tactics, there was almost no chance of developing a new policy with any chance of its passing in the time available; non-renewal of the Prevention of Crime Act made virtue of a necessity. O n labourers’ legislation and the setting up of an endowed schools commission, earlier Liberal government plans were completed. Even on the question of land purchase, on which Salisbury’s government has often been seen as initiating new policies through the Ashbourne Act, ministers were building on well set plans prepared for Spencer, and which reflected, as I have argued elsewhere, a new consensus on how an experimental scheme might be funded through the mechanism of a vendor’s guarantee. Taken all together, this legislation was certainly inoffensive as far as Irish members were concerned, but not very different from what a Liberal government might have introduced, if Spencer had secured agreement on law and order earlier in the session.52

In the run-up to the election, short-term tactics were always likely to predominate. In early July, for instance, the national league urged Irish voters to support the tory candidate in the Wakefield by-election, and this may have contributed to the Conser- vatives capturing the In Dublin, Carnarvon immediately started his exploration of nationalist and episcopal opinion. He met frequently with representatives of the bishops and initiated a correspondence leading to a meeting on 6 July with Justin MacCarthy and to his unchaperoned meeting on 1 August with Parnell in Hill Street, London. A programme of meetings with E.D. Gray, the influential proprietor of the Freeman’sJournal was also agreed. Similarly Churchill busied himself in trying to create a climate in which relations between the tones and Parnellites might flourish, whatever the outcome of the election. None of this was surprising, as every British government since the mid 1860s had tried to find a formula that would deliver the political support of the Irish bishops through concessions on education, but with depressingly modest results. The same was true on this occasion with the cabinet

51 For the classic account see Curtis, Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, pp. 38-95. 52 Warren, ‘Dublin Castle’. 53 See O’Day, Parnell and the First Home Rule Episode, p. 60.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 21 9

deciding not to supplement the regular grant of funds for catholic university educa- tion, but promising a post-election enquiry instead. The endowed schools legislation did pass, but there were immediately denominational disagreements on who should be appointed as commissioners, a repetition of the rows over the membership of the senate, following the Irish Universities Act in 1879. No extra funds were forthcoming before September, when Carnarvon secured a relatively uncontroversial treasury grant of L7,OOO for industrial schools in the west of Ireland.54

Salisbury took little personal interest in these exchanges, in which political atmo- sphere was almost more important than substance. His main problem was an inability to control his ministerial colleagues in the Commons, most notably Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Michael Hicks Beach. Historians unsurprisingly have focussed most of their interest on Churchill, but in many ways it was Beach as chancellor of the exchequer who proved to be the most surprisingly unpredictable element in a highly unstable situation. Salisbury had every reason to be wary of Churchill, but Beach’s attitude was deeply perplexing. At the centre of both men’s disruptive behaviour, as is well known, was their rebellion against an agreed cabinet line concerning Spencer’s handling of the Maamtrasna murders, an issue being pursued by both nationalists and bishops. Leading tories such as Lord Cranbrook and Lord Harrowby as well as backwoodsmen became deeply uneasy about the party leadership as a result.55

Salisbury might have been able to brush off mercurial conduct from Churchill, but Beach was another matter. As chancellor, he was simultaneously being extremely obstructive over Carnarvon’s unilateral action in shoring up the Irish banking system following the failure of the Munster Bank in July. For the viceroy, the main threat to any reconciliation with Irish political and ecclesiastical opinion was the possibility of a revival of the land war in the south and west resulting from any more general failure of the rural banking system; points which he made in his meetings with E.D. Gray, before and during his own tour of the south and west of Ireland in September. At the same time he was fearful of a simultaneous revival of Orange violence as the election approached. In both situations, he now had only the force of the ordinary law.5h

With all these rumours at Westminster about tory policy and politics, Carnarvon urged an Irish silence on his colleagues from early September, at the same time as

54 On the Irish university question and the cabinet’s decision on 22 July not to provide additional funds prior to the election and following the suspicious reactions of Conservative members to the Maamtrasna debate a few days earlier, see T.N.A., PRO 30/6/58, ff. 132, 133, 135: Ashbourne to Camarvon, 22 July 1885, Hart Dyke to Carnarvon, 22 July 1885, Camarvon to Hart Dyke, 23 July 1885; B.L., Add. MS 60825, f. 41: Camarvon to Salisbury, 23 July 1885; Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Hart Dyke to Salisbury, 21 July 1885; Sandon Hall, Staffordshire, earl ofHarrowby MSS, 3rd ser., L11, f. 130: Carnarvon to Harrowby, 24 July 1885; Hansard, Parl. Debs., 3rd ser., CCC, 326, on industrial schools, see Christopher Howard and Peter Gordon, ‘The Minor Journals of Lord Sandon, 1879-86’. B.I .H.R. , L (1977), 213 : cabinet note, 6 Oct. 1885; T.N.A., PRO 30/6/59, f. 41: memorandum [Fitzgibbon] Educational Endowments [Ireland] Act, 1885, 15 Oct. 1885.

55 On Maamtrasna murders see Curtis, Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, pp. 41 -3; O’Day, Pawtell and the First Home Rule Episode, pp. 70-1; T.N.A., PRO, 30/6/55, ff. 4.8, 10: Sahsbury to Camarvon, 22 July 1885, Harrowby to Camarvon, 22 July 1885, Cranbrook to Carnarvon, 4 Aug. 1885.

5h On the Munster Bank see T.N.A., PRO 30/6/63, E 7, 10, 25, 30/6/55, f. 4: Camarvon to Beach, 17 July 1885, Hamilton minute, 17 July 1885, Beach to Carnarvon, 19 July 1885, Salisbury to Camarvon, 22 July 1885; Gloucestershire R.O., St Aldwyn MS D4255, PCC 54: Camarvon to Salisbury, 17 July 1885, Carnarvon to Beach, 19 July 1885. For conversations with E.D. Gray, B.L., Add. MS. 60825, K. 73, 92: memoranda 10, 27 Sept. 1885.

220 Allen Warren

Beach tried to make amends through expressions of admiration for Spencer and a denial of any alliance between the tories and the Irish. The cabinet agreed, with Churchill later dissenting. Even so, the political situation remained unsatisfactory, with the party having nothing to say about Ireland despite the closeness of the election, something which the earl of Iddesleigh found embarrassing as he prepared to speak at Aberdeen at the end of the month. Beach on the other hand, making up for lost time, repudiated publicly any Parnellite alliance, condemned home rule as independence, and stated that the Irish had no intrinsic interest in local government itself. Not surprisingly, Carnarvon again found Beach’s attitude ~nhelpful.~’

Salisbury kept his own counsel, while remaining in close touch with Carnarvon. He supported the legislative programme, duly amended, and later endorsed the policy of ministerial silence. During September he refused requests for a cabinet discussion prior to his own speech at Newport, and left letters from Lord Randolph Churchill largely unanswered. Historians will disagree on whether such an approach should be seen as indecision or masterly i n a ~ t i v i t y . ~ ~

Salisbury’s speech at Newport on 7 October did not concentrate exclusively on Ireland, but more on how to maximize Conservative political support in Britain. He touched on the difficulties in any local government scheme for Ireland in protecting minority interests, he showed modest interest in imperial federation but excluded Ireland, and he argued that renewal of the Crimes Act would not have helped the government deal with the present rise in agrarian crime. He also discussed the land question but largely in an English context, supported more extensive, but not free, education, and concluded with what was the central plank of all his election speeches on domestic matters with the cry of ‘The Church in Danger’. In a highly fluid political situation of great uncertainty it probably was as good as it might be - certainly tory traditionalists like Cranbrook saw it as more than realizing his expectation^.^^

Thereafter, Salisbury remained silent; at the Guildhall he played down fears about boycotting, refusing to go beyond what he had previously said on larger Irish questions, although highlighting the integrity of the empire as more precious than any other possession. He concluded again on the Liberal threat to Church and State.60 Churchill also towed the line in public, while still pursuing chimerical grand designs based on the rather insubstantial ground of a possible agreement with the bishops on educational endowments.61 But this was the small beer of politics. Parnell for his own part, gwen the lack of any other bid, took the tactical option to urge Irish voters in England to consider voting Conservative. Nobody knew whether it would make any significant difference to the bigger electoral picture. The earl of Harrowby, for

57 The Times, 10 Aug. 1885, p. 6a, 18 Sept. 1885, p. 7b; Hatfield House, HH/3M/E: Churchill to Salisbury, 22 Aug. 1885; B.L., Add. MS 50022, f. 245: Camarvon to Iddesleigh, 12 Sept. 1885; Ashbourne Papers, ed. Cooke and Malcolmson, p. 95: Camarvon to Ashbourne, 18 Sept. 1885.

58 B.L., Add. MS 60825, f. 85: Salisbury to Camarvon, 24 Sept. 1885; Churchill College, Cambridge, Churchill MS, VIW927A Salisbury to Churchill, 29 Sept. 1885.

59 T h e Times, 8 Oct. 1885, p. 7a; T h e Diary of Cathorne Hardy, Later Lord Cranbrook, 1866- 1892. Political Selections, ed. Nancy Johnson (Oxford, 1981), p. 577: 8 Oct. 1885.

6o The Times, 9 Nov. 1885, p. 6e. 61 The Times, 11 Oct. 1885, p. 12a; Winston Spencer Church&, Lord Randolph Churchill (2 vols, 1906),

11, 4: Churchill to Fitzgibbon, 14 Oct. 1885.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 1859-87 22 1 one, believed that it was Salisbury’s concentration on the church question that was bringing in votes from all classes.62 Carnarvon meanwhile continued with his own grand schemes.63

With the election over, political activity went into a new gear. At first, Salisbury expressed dismay at the prospect of having to remain in ofice, given that Gladstone’s and Parnell’s intentions were unclear, but he quickly decided that the Conservatives would convene parliament, recognizing that there was little need for government action until Gladstone made some move. Salisbury saw his priority as keeping the party together.64 He also resisted pressure from Churchill to open negotiations for a broad unionist alliance, reiterating that Gladstone was the driving force in the present circumstances, and it was better to wait and let him make the mistakes.65 In rejecting Carnarvon’s devolution proposals at the cabinet on 14 December and agreeing to parliament meeting in January, Salisbury was acting prudently, a move vindicated by the Hawarden Kite and Gladstone’s offer of support through Arthur Balfour to any tory-led scheme of Irish devolution.66 His reasons were both tactical and strategic. First, it was obviously necessary to see what Gladstone intended and with what likely support. Salisbury was clear that the more extreme and decided Gladstone seemed, the better were the long-term Conservative prospects. Second, he did not want to compromise the Conservative position too early in relation to the defence of the Union, a move that would be likely to enhance Hartington’s position, and that of Churchill, its main proponent. Third, he recognized that much recent political discussion on Ireland had been posturing and that once the elections were concluded all parties, Conservatives, Liberals and Parnellites, would have to decide a law and order policy as well as their attitude to the national league.67 What the period of the Carnarvon experiment had shown, along with all the other party

62 T.N.A., PRO 30/6/55, f. 34: Harrowby to Camarvon, 21 Nov. 1885. ‘3 B.L., Add. MS 60820, f. 47: Camarvon note, 1 Dec. 1885. 64 Hatfield House, HH/3M/D31: Salisbury to Camarvon, 22 Nov. 1885; T.N.A., P R O 30/6/55, f.

35: Salisbury to Camarvon, 25 Nov. 1885; Sandon Hall, 2nd ser., L11, f. 150: Camarvon to Harrowby, 23 Nov. 1885, in which he reports a conversation with Salisbury, in which he affirmed the highest priority as keeping the party together.

65 Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, pp. 14-20: Salisbury to Churchill, 30 Nov. 1885, in which Salisbury declines to open negotiations with dissident Liberals, and that he was not expecting to remain long in office; ibid.: Salisbury to Churchill, 9, 11 Dec. 1885, Churchill to Salisbury, 9 Dec. 1885. Later Salisbury was clear that distance needed to be maintained between himself and Gladstone, Lady Gwendolin Cecil, L$ ofRobert, Marquis o f Salisbury (4 vols, 1921-32), 111, 298: Salisbury to Lady Salisbury, 4 Apr. 1886. Again, after the 1886 election, Salisbury continued to regard Gladstone’s determination to continue with the Irish question as the best way in which to keep the unionists ‘solidly active for the Conservatives’. Lady Frances Balfour, Ne Obliviscaruis (2 vols., 1930), 11, 71: Frances Balfour to Henry Sidgwick, nd. Aug. 1886. “ B.L., Add. MS 51263, f. 107: Salisbury to Cross, 11 Dec. 1885; 60825, f. 154: Salisbury to Camarvon,

12 Dec. 1885; Churchill College X/1213A: Salisbury to Churchill, 26 Dec. 1885; Sandon Hall, 2nd ser., LIII, f. 263: Iddesleigh to Harrowby, 9 Dec. 1885, also in favour of waiting until Gladstone declares his position, and wishing to avoid a repetition of 1867. For Gladstone overtures to Balfour at Eaton Hall, 15 Dec.1885, see Gladstone Diaries, ed. H.C.G. Matthew, XI, 455: Gladstone to Balfour, 20 Dec. 1885. For the correspondence arising from Canon MacColl’s attempt to bring Gladstone and Salisbury together see Malcolm MacColl Memoirs and Cowespondence, ed. G.W.E. Russell (1914), pp. 118-26; B.L., Add. MS 44244, f. 43: MacColl to Gladstone; Hatfield House, HH/3M/D, f. 156: Salisbury to Churchill, 24 Dec. 1885.

67 For Salisbury making it quite clear that party unity was a pre-eminent concern, Cecil, &/isbury, 111, 281: Salisbury to Bath, 27 Dec. 1885, ‘I am quite ofyour mind - and so are members of the government

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manoeuvrings, was that the Conservative party was pretty resistant to deals negotiated at Westminster with Pamell, and was unlikely to prove compliant unless law and order improved dramatically. Nevertheless, coercion was a very difficult issue, as Spencer had found to his cost six months earlier. Even so, Salisbury signalled clearly his own future intentions by asking Cranbrook (the firmest coercionist in the cabinet) to go as viceroy in early January. After he declined on personal grounds, Salisbury turned to W.H. Smith, who combined a belief in coercion and social reconstruction, inviting him to explore the basis for a future policy as a potential chief secretary. Churchill fell into line and a compromise wording agreed on what was to be said in the queen’s speech.68 As is well known, all of these preparations proved unnecessary as the government was defeated on Jesse Collings’s amendment and Salisbury and his colleagues were able to leave office.

In 1883 Salisbury had been clear that home rule would not be defeated in parliament but through an increase in Conservative voters in England. He did not change his view. From June 1885 until January 1886 he had been principally concerned with short-term advantage so as to confirm his own leadership, maintain Conservative unity, and maximize the chances of undermining both Gladstone and Parnell, once the strength of the parties was known. Out of office, Salisbury could defend the Union unencumbered, so that the electorate could ultimately decide the issue after the defeat of any bill, preferably in the Commons, or, if necessary, in the Lords. Either way it was essential that any election should be on the single issue of home rule versus Union.

During 1886 Salisbury’s thinking is most clearly laid out in his speeches. Regularly addressing popular audiences since 1880, he fully understood the importance of public rhetoric within the political culture of the times. Not surprisingly, his opposition to home rule built carefully upon the arguments put together over the previous two decades. His aim was twofold. First, he wished to ensure that defence of the Union was seen as an overwhelmingly Conservative doctrine, which others might support but not own. As a result he sought both to contain Churchill and, at least for the moment, exclude Hartington. Second, he sought at the same time to provide a rhetorical context for that defence that maximized the chances of broad-based political support. If such an approach proved popular, as he hoped, then his object since 1868 of finding a way to contain the destructive potential of a more democratic polity would be realized.

67(Continued) generally. I never admired the political transformations of 1829, 1846 and 1867; and I certainly do not wish to be the chief agent in adding a fourth to the history of the Tory party.’ MacColl repeated much the same argument, following his conversation with Salisbury. On being invited to undertake a large Irish scheme, Salisbury is reported as replying, ‘Perhaps he replied but they would devour me’, Longleat House, NMR, E12, B(25): MacColl to Bath, 22 Dec. 1885. Also Churchdl College, X/1213A: Salisbury to Churchill, 26 Dec. 1885, ‘I am apprehensive of giving any oficial utterance on the subject for fear GOM should be able to use it in some fashion to regain his malcontents. We have nearly a month before us in which GOM will have unlnnited power of deciding them and we shall have very little opportunity of righting ourselves. Who sups with the devil must use a long spoon. A game of chess with Gladstone is heavy work.’ For Iddesleigh again seeing the ghost of 1867, see W.H. Smith Archive Ltd., Swindon, Wilts, PS9/96: Iddesleigh to Smith, 27 Dec. 1885.

68 For the resolution of the law and order question, Cooke and Vincent, Governing Passion, pp. 298-306; Alvin Jackson, The Ulster Party. Zrish Unionists in the House of Commons, 1884- 191 4 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 44-52.

Lord Salisbury and Ireland, 185947 223

Many of his key themes were those already described.69 First, that Ireland’s problems were essentially a matter of history, rather than moral principle, the residue of seven centuries of mutual engagement between England and Ireland. As a consequence, Ireland simply could not be seen in the same way as Canada. Earlier attempts to establish an Irish legislature at the time of Grattan had proved disastrous. Second, that the present crisis was a direct result of the policies irresponsibly pursued by Gladstone since 1868, a progression that now needed to be halted. Ireland needed material improvement, for which firm and consistent government to control agrarian violence was required. Only through increased social and financial confidence could new investment be secured, land ownership extended and useful reconstruction encouraged. Third, that the Conservative party was now the only party with whom the Union was safe, that the Carnarvon experiment including the non-renewal of coercion had been justified in the circumstances of the time, but that he was not going to follow the precedents of 1829, 1846 and 1867 on this fundamental issue.

Other arguments, first given serious expression in the years after 1880, acquired significantly greater prominence. The link between Ireland and imperial destiny was made more forcibly, but ideas of imperial federation discounted. Ireland was not only integral to the future of the Union but also to that of the empire. The idea of Irish nationality, ridiculed when expressed through Fenian agitations in the 1860s, was now directly challenged. Ireland was not one nation but two, and the rights and property of both were matters of vital constitutional significance. Religious and denominational differences, always a less prominent element in Salisbury’s earlier thinking than his economic materialism, were given a new twist. In the early 1860s Salisbury had largely separated religon and politics, while recognizing the depth of sectarian difference in Irish social life. Then he had hoped that a gradual softening of feeling might result from disestablishment, some concurrent endowment and the growth of landowning among the catholic clergy. But the intense difficulty of reconciling the ambitions of the Irish hierarchy with British protestant opinion had also led him to attach little importance to the endless ecclesiastical diplomacy of 1866-8, 1878-80 and 1885. But following Parnell and the national league’s success in the polls, Salisbury saw the situation differently with the hierarchy now choosing to mix secular politics with their spiritual mission. No wonder, he continued, that Ulster Protestants, for whom he had never shown much sympathy previously, were preparing for the worst; resistance must be expected, and not just from the north of Ireland. Finally, there was the argument of race. Salisbury had used the distinction between the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon nations from the 1870s, but relatively infrequently. As we have seeen, racial themes did not appear prominently after 1880. But in 1886, most notoriously in the St James’s Hall speech on 15 May, he deployed racial superiority in a brutal rhetoric in comparing the Irish to the Hottentots. In the same speech he also used the phrase, ‘manacles and Manitoba’, as graphic shorthand for Conservative policy. Salisbury’s language was exceptionally savage and offensive on this occasion. It had

‘’ The following section is based on Salisbury’s major political speeches from late February until July 1886 see The Times, 18 Feb., p. 10a (Hertford); 4 Mar., p. 10a (Crystal Palace); 15 Apr., p. 6a (Her Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket); 17 May, p. 5a (St James’s Hall); 11 May, p. 12d (Merchant Taylors’ Hall); 14 June, p. 8a (Hatfield); 19 June, p. 12a (Leed.); 30 June, p. 14a (St James’s Hall).

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the intention tactically of discouraging too close a liaison between Conservative and Liberal opponents of the bill, as well as highlighting his long-standing horror of social violence, which was also featured prominently in the speech, and as it had done in his speech on the Westmeath Act 15 years earlier.

Following the general election, Salisbury was able to build on these arguments, once it became clear that Hartington would and could not form a broad-based unionist government. Salisbury, of course, continued to have difficulties in managing the politics of his government’s Irish policy, particularly in respect of his dealings with Churchill and Beach, difficulties largely resolved by both men’s resignations, albeit for different reasons. But beyond these familiar problems of personnel, Salisbury could confidently lay out his approach to the Union in two further speeches at the Guildhall and to the National Conservative Club. In both he reaffirmed the critical importance of order and that Britain could not have a hostile power on its doorstep. Denying again the idea of a distinct Irish nationality, he declared that a combination of firm government and prosperity would lead to declining nationalist support. Remedial measures could be introduced, but ‘Law must be master, or no remedial measure will be regarded.’ Ireland’s future and that of the empire were also interconnected. Too much softness had entered our counsels, too many ‘platitudes and rose-water’. His aim was for prosperity and peace without which investment would not occur. It was not noticeably different from what he had been saying as a young man.”

Historians continue to find Salisbury difficult to fathom as we outlined at the beginning of this essay. By an examination of his thinking and actions in relation to Ireland, we have tried to show that Salisbury had developed a relatively coherent view about Ireland and its government by the mid 1860s. Even so, after the crisis of the years 1866-8, he did not anticipate that Ireland would become central to his main concern of finding a way in which the Conservative party might control the radical implications of Gladstone’s popular politics across the United Kingdom as a whole. But in the changed political conditions after 1880, Salisbury used the Irish issue, initially unsuccessfully, as a means of shaking the confidence and authority of Gladstone and the Liberal party, whilst simultaneously establishing himself as sole party leader. Coming into ofice unexpectedly in mid 1885, Salisbury showed considerable skill in negotiating the political complexities of the moment in laying out an anti-populist politics through the commitment to the union of Great Britain and Ireland. Aided admittedly by Gladstone’s own attitude and conduct, Salisbury was able to make unionism an overwhelmingly Conservative doctrine despite its liberal and radical supporters, within which distinctive Conservative policies towards Ireland might be developed, something that had never been achieved under Disraeli. Finally, in looking at those policies of resistance to constitutional change, firm and consistent government, and structural social and economic reform, it is clear that they were largely consistent with the analysis of the young Lord Robert Cecil 20 years earlier.

’O The Times, 10 Nov. 1886, p. 7a, 7 Mar. 1886, p. 7a: Salisbury at the Guildhall and at the National Conservative Club.