Chapter IV
“The scheme is rash and well may fail;
But ours are not the hearts that quail”
-------------------------------
The above cartoon from "Punch" dates from March 1887. It satirises Joseph Chamberlain’s rhetoric against the growing issue of inefficiency in agriculture, referencing the popular ditty “Sunny Jim.” Chamberlain’s speaking tour of Britain in that year prompted furious criticism from Conservative landowners.
“The so-called “Chaplin Affair” came to epitomise a perceived seediness in Salisbury’s unlamented second administration. Henry Chaplin had entered the Cabinet when the Conservatives had returned to government in 1885, where he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In that position, Chaplin had stood out as being one of the Commons’ most resolute defenders of the Conservative landed gentry. Unyielding on attempts by reformers to force modernisation upon agriculture, Chaplain was nevertheless a vocal supporter of protectionism, something that aroused considerable ire from ‘Free-Traders’ within the Liberal Party.
Although his “Squire Toryism” tended to manifest itself in ways that detractors considered “reactionary” and “Luddite,” Chaplin’s political leanings were not dissimilar from the more Whiggish tendency that still existed amongst certain members on the Opposition benches.
Joe Chamberlain was not one of them, although it is fair to consider the impact that Chaplain was to have upon aspects of his “Radical Program” that was formulated during the mid-1880s. The Tariff Reform Board that was established at the end of the century owed an intellectual debt to Chaplain’s legacy in the Cabinet. Whilst serving under Salisbury, the member for Sleaford had managed to challenge the Orthodoxy that had persisted in British rural politics since the rescindment of the Importation Act some forty years previously.
Documents recently unearthed in the archives of the Ministry of Agriculture in Newcastle demonstrate that Chaplin had already drafted many of policies that would eventually be enacted by Hugh Childers the following decade. Although the two men had very different views as to the purpose of the reforms, with Childers concerned with improving Britain’s agrarian efficiency and Chaplin determined to protect traditional land rights against the threat of foreign imports, the draft proposals of 1887 greatly resemble those that Childers’ “Royal Commission on Agronomic Reform” eventually adopted.
There is no telling what Chaplin would have made of these. Indeed, given the later trajectory of the Liberal and Conservative parties on the issue, it is entirely possible that ‘The Squire” may well have sat in the Cabinet under a different banner.
In the end though, such considerations are entirely hypothetical. Chaplin’s promising Ministerial career was cut short in 1887 owing to his most un-yeomanly dedication to gambling. In the spring of that year, Chaplin’s debts had resulted in such a financial malaise that he was forced into moot the selling of his own country estate of Blankney Hall, something that would have ironically divested him of most of his rural holdings. Originally, the Liberal Earl of Londesborough had been tipped to purchase the property for a sum that would have allowed him to clear most of his arrears. As so often resulted in such matters, the deal fell through when Londesborough was appointed Governor General of Canada, obviously limiting his need for a Lincolnshire estate. When the house was eventually sold in November for a considerably lower sum, Chaplin had already fallen into a deep depression that he would never recover from. He shot himself shortly before Christmas, still owing considerable sums.
-From ‘Land and Property in Late-Victorian Politics’ in “The American Journal of Historical Sociology” by Christina Froom, Princeton University Press 1993
“As far as can be understood, Chamberlain had effectively divested himself from his responsibilities within the Earl of Rosebery’s opposition by the summer of 1887. He was never a man to relish the idea of staying within the confines of the Palace of Westminster and by the time the House returned from recess, his speaking tour had taken him from Truro to Thurso, all the while evangelising a message of “Radicalism at Home, Imperialism Abroad.” One memorable event occurred in June of that year, where at an event in Manchester, the local MP J. F. Hutton denounced Chamberlain’s plans for reforming British holdings in Africa as being “dishonour boarding on treachery” with regards to transferring certain areas in West Africa to Portugal, a matter that Hutton held close to his heart since the Berlin Conference of 1884.
In a theatrical gesture, Hutton unfurled a map that he had brought with him, furiously pointing out that the territorial transfer in question would have rendered moot British ambitions to hold congruous territory along the entire African Continent. Chamberlain took the criticism in his stride and with a wry smile, presented Hutton with a Radical Association membership card and asked him to submit a paper “for general discussion for fellow proponents of Progressive Imperialism.”
Three weeks later, “A Proposal for a ‘Cape to Cairo Railway’ for the Betterment of Economic Development in Africa” was published to the Association newsletter. Co-Authored by Hutton and a young diamond magnate called Cecil Rhodes, it soon became the chief topic of discussion throughout the Foreign Ministries of Europe.”
-From “The Chamberlain Dynasty” by J. E. Powell, Cambridge University Press 1955
“A rare bright-spot buoyed the hope of Salisbury’s government in June 1887 when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee. The event, which was celebrated with all the pomp and ceremony that the Old Empire could bring about, marked her return to public life after a long period in mourning, something that Salisbury personally felt to have been long overdue. The event helped to restore the Queen in the eyes of the public and eradicated the last handful of embryotic republicans that still mooted their ideas from within the Liberal Party.
A huge possession of soldiers from all parts of the British Empire lined the possession root, immortalised by Mark Twain in his well-known account of the occasion, with Salisbury leading the dozen or so Prime Ministers who paid homage to Her Majesty. Well over fifty Indian Princes also joined the possession, with a noteworthy occasion where the Maharaja of Travancore attempted to shiv a waiter who mistakenly attempted to serve him beef at the Thanksgiving Dinner.
Salisbury respected the protocol of the time and refused to impart a political message on the Queen’s Speech to Parliament, which stood as an eminently forgettable polemic on the values of the constitutional role of the monarchy. More interesting was an aborted attempt by errant Irish Home Rulers to assassinate the gathered Houses of Parliament, which was narrowly discovered by the police as the Queen was passing through Horse Guards Parade. Being a far closer miss than the Gunpowder Plot, it is hardly surprising that effigies of Charles Parnell joined Guy Fawkes on bonfires for the next few years. Salisbury, despite egging from the more vehemently Unionist members of his Cabinet, chose not to publicise the incident, with most press outrage being kept out of the newspapers until the festivities were over.
The Prime Minister recorded the events of the long week of national celebration in his diary;
Regardless of the sincerity of Salisbury’s feelings towards the Greek monarch, his government later established a subtle turn towards a more financially interventionist foreign policy. This aside, the government clearly benefited from its association with the Jubilee, holding three by-elections in Basingstoke, Brixton and Hornsey in the face of limp Liberal challenges. The results did little to aide whisperings regarding the leadership of the Earl of Rosebery.
-From “Salisbury: A Life” by Abraham Roberts, MIPS Press 1994
“In the Jubilee Year, Andrew Bonar Law was a man depressed. His business ventures in Glasgow had failed to impart many successes, with attempts to enter the shipbuilding, iron and import-export markets all leading towards increasingly miserable failure. By this time, Bonar Law was short of venture capital and Glaswegian associates. Seemingly unable to make a mark upon the United Kingdom’s second largest city, he allowed his membership of the University Dialectic Society to lapse and considered returning to his native New Brunswick.
According to his memoirs, Bonar Law found that a late-night stroll in Kelvingrove Park in July turned into an excuse for a personal introspective. Miserably looking into the meandering river, he notes that he ideally looked into the night sky, being reminded of the twinkling lights of his homeland. “I was a man affronted by the glow of the night-time lights” he notes in the entry for July 15th, “They seemed to blot out the majesty of Creation, for which I felt a need to escape.”
Three weeks later, Andrew Bonar Law was at Liverpool, where he boarded a liner for New York. Clutching his Second Class ticket in one hand, he presumably must have looked over the shoreline, wondering if he would ever see the country again.”
-From “A New History of Canada” by Heather Jones, Beaver Books 1999
“Satire emerged as an institutional part of the media during the eighties as a far more entrenched phenomena. Politicians had never been especially well treated by the media, as any student of Pitt and Fox would know from their caricatures at the hands of Hogarth. Yet the late-Victorian period sees a rise in the amount to which leading figures were associated with their pet political ambitions. We can take as a typical example the following inane ditty from ‘Punch’ that was published in the 1887 edition of the magazine,
Frivolous and trite though the above ‘poem’ may sound to modern ears, the fundamental ethos of such rhymes hints at a wider link between the world of the ‘singular’ and the ‘public’ spheres that the new satirists thrived upon. Satire diversified beyond the rather clumsy single panel caricatures that had been a fixture of the print media since the reign of George I. An increasingly literate population were hungry for the cheap comics and juvenile journals that were now easily available around the newsvendors and paper-stands that dominated the commuter railway stations.
Such terminals increasingly formed a nexus for the clerks, solicitors and accountants that emerged as a distinct stratum within 19th Century society. Caption cartoons obviously retained their prevailing position in the broadsheet press, but music hall performers (with a hold upon the working-class masses who still lacked access to the tabloids that were to emerge during the fin-de-siècle period) felt even more at ease to make jibes at the at the aristocratic leaders of the major political parties. Salisbury, Rosebery and Derby seemed increasingly out of touch with an electorate that was no longer privy to the mechanisations of the landed gentry.”
-From “Blaggards, Braggards and Blowhards: Satire as an Albertian Institution” by Leopold Sked, Jericho House Press 1987
“As the hubbub of the Jubilee Celebrations began to subside, the issue of Home Rule started to re-emerge. Despite Salisbury’s best intentions, the news of the assassination attempt on the monarch prompted furious responses from the Unionist press and public. The events of “Bloody Week” which emerged three days after the publication of the news resulted in a seven-day period of rioting and chaos in cities throughout the British Isles. Henry Labouchère, the maverick Liberal MP, once again narrowly escaped being torn to shreds, this time by an anti-Irish mob in Coram's Fields. Only a timely intervention by Robert Cunninghame Graham prevented his death, with the Ayrshire eccentric using his links to Joseph Chamberlain to placate the crowd and allow Labouchère to be rescued by the Metropolitan Police.
Well over a hundred civilians were killed in the violence of early July, by the time the authorities restored order, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition had seen their popularity plummet, with Salisbury having to temporarily emulate the Duke of Wellington by installing iron barriers on the windows of his townhouse in Mayfair.
Archibald Primrose lacked this sense of self-preservation, continuing to walk from Berkeley Square to Westminster on a daily basis. All the while, he ambled unaccompanied by the protection squad that senior members of parliament had been entitled to since the Kinsale Incident had made the threat of illegal gun ownership all the more prescient.
On the 7th September 1887, fresh from a holiday to Florence, a tired leader of the Liberal Party was walking into Central Lobby when Patrick Tynan, a young Irish nationalist connected to the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882, stepped out of crowd, produced a purloined Webley Revolver from his coat pocket, and shot the nonplussed Earl of Rosebery through the heart.”
-From “’Ulster Will Fight’: The Irish Question as an Social Construct” by Eoin MacDonagh, Norseman Books 1977
“The scheme is rash and well may fail;
But ours are not the hearts that quail”
-------------------------------
The above cartoon from "Punch" dates from March 1887. It satirises Joseph Chamberlain’s rhetoric against the growing issue of inefficiency in agriculture, referencing the popular ditty “Sunny Jim.” Chamberlain’s speaking tour of Britain in that year prompted furious criticism from Conservative landowners.
“The so-called “Chaplin Affair” came to epitomise a perceived seediness in Salisbury’s unlamented second administration. Henry Chaplin had entered the Cabinet when the Conservatives had returned to government in 1885, where he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In that position, Chaplin had stood out as being one of the Commons’ most resolute defenders of the Conservative landed gentry. Unyielding on attempts by reformers to force modernisation upon agriculture, Chaplain was nevertheless a vocal supporter of protectionism, something that aroused considerable ire from ‘Free-Traders’ within the Liberal Party.
Although his “Squire Toryism” tended to manifest itself in ways that detractors considered “reactionary” and “Luddite,” Chaplin’s political leanings were not dissimilar from the more Whiggish tendency that still existed amongst certain members on the Opposition benches.
Joe Chamberlain was not one of them, although it is fair to consider the impact that Chaplain was to have upon aspects of his “Radical Program” that was formulated during the mid-1880s. The Tariff Reform Board that was established at the end of the century owed an intellectual debt to Chaplain’s legacy in the Cabinet. Whilst serving under Salisbury, the member for Sleaford had managed to challenge the Orthodoxy that had persisted in British rural politics since the rescindment of the Importation Act some forty years previously.
Documents recently unearthed in the archives of the Ministry of Agriculture in Newcastle demonstrate that Chaplin had already drafted many of policies that would eventually be enacted by Hugh Childers the following decade. Although the two men had very different views as to the purpose of the reforms, with Childers concerned with improving Britain’s agrarian efficiency and Chaplin determined to protect traditional land rights against the threat of foreign imports, the draft proposals of 1887 greatly resemble those that Childers’ “Royal Commission on Agronomic Reform” eventually adopted.
There is no telling what Chaplin would have made of these. Indeed, given the later trajectory of the Liberal and Conservative parties on the issue, it is entirely possible that ‘The Squire” may well have sat in the Cabinet under a different banner.
In the end though, such considerations are entirely hypothetical. Chaplin’s promising Ministerial career was cut short in 1887 owing to his most un-yeomanly dedication to gambling. In the spring of that year, Chaplin’s debts had resulted in such a financial malaise that he was forced into moot the selling of his own country estate of Blankney Hall, something that would have ironically divested him of most of his rural holdings. Originally, the Liberal Earl of Londesborough had been tipped to purchase the property for a sum that would have allowed him to clear most of his arrears. As so often resulted in such matters, the deal fell through when Londesborough was appointed Governor General of Canada, obviously limiting his need for a Lincolnshire estate. When the house was eventually sold in November for a considerably lower sum, Chaplin had already fallen into a deep depression that he would never recover from. He shot himself shortly before Christmas, still owing considerable sums.
-From ‘Land and Property in Late-Victorian Politics’ in “The American Journal of Historical Sociology” by Christina Froom, Princeton University Press 1993
“As far as can be understood, Chamberlain had effectively divested himself from his responsibilities within the Earl of Rosebery’s opposition by the summer of 1887. He was never a man to relish the idea of staying within the confines of the Palace of Westminster and by the time the House returned from recess, his speaking tour had taken him from Truro to Thurso, all the while evangelising a message of “Radicalism at Home, Imperialism Abroad.” One memorable event occurred in June of that year, where at an event in Manchester, the local MP J. F. Hutton denounced Chamberlain’s plans for reforming British holdings in Africa as being “dishonour boarding on treachery” with regards to transferring certain areas in West Africa to Portugal, a matter that Hutton held close to his heart since the Berlin Conference of 1884.
In a theatrical gesture, Hutton unfurled a map that he had brought with him, furiously pointing out that the territorial transfer in question would have rendered moot British ambitions to hold congruous territory along the entire African Continent. Chamberlain took the criticism in his stride and with a wry smile, presented Hutton with a Radical Association membership card and asked him to submit a paper “for general discussion for fellow proponents of Progressive Imperialism.”
Three weeks later, “A Proposal for a ‘Cape to Cairo Railway’ for the Betterment of Economic Development in Africa” was published to the Association newsletter. Co-Authored by Hutton and a young diamond magnate called Cecil Rhodes, it soon became the chief topic of discussion throughout the Foreign Ministries of Europe.”
-From “The Chamberlain Dynasty” by J. E. Powell, Cambridge University Press 1955
“A rare bright-spot buoyed the hope of Salisbury’s government in June 1887 when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee. The event, which was celebrated with all the pomp and ceremony that the Old Empire could bring about, marked her return to public life after a long period in mourning, something that Salisbury personally felt to have been long overdue. The event helped to restore the Queen in the eyes of the public and eradicated the last handful of embryotic republicans that still mooted their ideas from within the Liberal Party.
A huge possession of soldiers from all parts of the British Empire lined the possession root, immortalised by Mark Twain in his well-known account of the occasion, with Salisbury leading the dozen or so Prime Ministers who paid homage to Her Majesty. Well over fifty Indian Princes also joined the possession, with a noteworthy occasion where the Maharaja of Travancore attempted to shiv a waiter who mistakenly attempted to serve him beef at the Thanksgiving Dinner.
Salisbury respected the protocol of the time and refused to impart a political message on the Queen’s Speech to Parliament, which stood as an eminently forgettable polemic on the values of the constitutional role of the monarchy. More interesting was an aborted attempt by errant Irish Home Rulers to assassinate the gathered Houses of Parliament, which was narrowly discovered by the police as the Queen was passing through Horse Guards Parade. Being a far closer miss than the Gunpowder Plot, it is hardly surprising that effigies of Charles Parnell joined Guy Fawkes on bonfires for the next few years. Salisbury, despite egging from the more vehemently Unionist members of his Cabinet, chose not to publicise the incident, with most press outrage being kept out of the newspapers until the festivities were over.
The Prime Minister recorded the events of the long week of national celebration in his diary;
“A most impressive display of the pageantry of the Empire today gave thanks to Her Majesty’s fifty years as our monarch. I recalled tales of George III being given homage at a similar celebration over seventy years ago, one that was otherwise rather tinged with sadness at his illness at the time [...] His Majesty, the King of Greece, talked with me at luncheon following the Westminster Abbey Blessing regarding proposals to build a canal between the Isthmus of Corinth, an engineering event that I am informed has the potential to place great strain upon the Greek Exchequer. I feel the need to propose a new funding arrangement by means of preventing a national default. Should such a thing happen, I feel the possibility of Turkish ambitions upon the Aegean.”
-From “Salisbury: A Life” by Abraham Roberts, MIPS Press 1994
“In the Jubilee Year, Andrew Bonar Law was a man depressed. His business ventures in Glasgow had failed to impart many successes, with attempts to enter the shipbuilding, iron and import-export markets all leading towards increasingly miserable failure. By this time, Bonar Law was short of venture capital and Glaswegian associates. Seemingly unable to make a mark upon the United Kingdom’s second largest city, he allowed his membership of the University Dialectic Society to lapse and considered returning to his native New Brunswick.
According to his memoirs, Bonar Law found that a late-night stroll in Kelvingrove Park in July turned into an excuse for a personal introspective. Miserably looking into the meandering river, he notes that he ideally looked into the night sky, being reminded of the twinkling lights of his homeland. “I was a man affronted by the glow of the night-time lights” he notes in the entry for July 15th, “They seemed to blot out the majesty of Creation, for which I felt a need to escape.”
Three weeks later, Andrew Bonar Law was at Liverpool, where he boarded a liner for New York. Clutching his Second Class ticket in one hand, he presumably must have looked over the shoreline, wondering if he would ever see the country again.”
-From “A New History of Canada” by Heather Jones, Beaver Books 1999
“Satire emerged as an institutional part of the media during the eighties as a far more entrenched phenomena. Politicians had never been especially well treated by the media, as any student of Pitt and Fox would know from their caricatures at the hands of Hogarth. Yet the late-Victorian period sees a rise in the amount to which leading figures were associated with their pet political ambitions. We can take as a typical example the following inane ditty from ‘Punch’ that was published in the 1887 edition of the magazine,
"Have you heard tell of ‘Radical Joe’?
I think it is fair he doesn’t know
The passions he is failing to cool
Amongst the men of Brum and L’pool
The ‘Home Rule’ supporters come to fruition
(Accounting for Parnell’s ambition)
To break the Union apart they desire
And their personal mandates to re-acquire”
I think it is fair he doesn’t know
The passions he is failing to cool
Amongst the men of Brum and L’pool
The ‘Home Rule’ supporters come to fruition
(Accounting for Parnell’s ambition)
To break the Union apart they desire
And their personal mandates to re-acquire”
Such terminals increasingly formed a nexus for the clerks, solicitors and accountants that emerged as a distinct stratum within 19th Century society. Caption cartoons obviously retained their prevailing position in the broadsheet press, but music hall performers (with a hold upon the working-class masses who still lacked access to the tabloids that were to emerge during the fin-de-siècle period) felt even more at ease to make jibes at the at the aristocratic leaders of the major political parties. Salisbury, Rosebery and Derby seemed increasingly out of touch with an electorate that was no longer privy to the mechanisations of the landed gentry.”
-From “Blaggards, Braggards and Blowhards: Satire as an Albertian Institution” by Leopold Sked, Jericho House Press 1987
“As the hubbub of the Jubilee Celebrations began to subside, the issue of Home Rule started to re-emerge. Despite Salisbury’s best intentions, the news of the assassination attempt on the monarch prompted furious responses from the Unionist press and public. The events of “Bloody Week” which emerged three days after the publication of the news resulted in a seven-day period of rioting and chaos in cities throughout the British Isles. Henry Labouchère, the maverick Liberal MP, once again narrowly escaped being torn to shreds, this time by an anti-Irish mob in Coram's Fields. Only a timely intervention by Robert Cunninghame Graham prevented his death, with the Ayrshire eccentric using his links to Joseph Chamberlain to placate the crowd and allow Labouchère to be rescued by the Metropolitan Police.
Well over a hundred civilians were killed in the violence of early July, by the time the authorities restored order, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition had seen their popularity plummet, with Salisbury having to temporarily emulate the Duke of Wellington by installing iron barriers on the windows of his townhouse in Mayfair.
Archibald Primrose lacked this sense of self-preservation, continuing to walk from Berkeley Square to Westminster on a daily basis. All the while, he ambled unaccompanied by the protection squad that senior members of parliament had been entitled to since the Kinsale Incident had made the threat of illegal gun ownership all the more prescient.
On the 7th September 1887, fresh from a holiday to Florence, a tired leader of the Liberal Party was walking into Central Lobby when Patrick Tynan, a young Irish nationalist connected to the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882, stepped out of crowd, produced a purloined Webley Revolver from his coat pocket, and shot the nonplussed Earl of Rosebery through the heart.”
-From “’Ulster Will Fight’: The Irish Question as an Social Construct” by Eoin MacDonagh, Norseman Books 1977
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