The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

At one time the bright-work system was carried to absurd extremes. I have known a ship actually to have a bright cable. I have known another ship with bright hammock hooks. The hatchways of some vessels were polished and decorated with inlay and all kinds of ocean ornament until the ship looked like a lady's boudoir or a transatlantic liner. The custom came in as the old sailing ships gave place to steam ships, when the time hitherto devoted to making a vessel all a-taunto, ropes taut, sail furling and mending and so forth, was given instead to polishing, burnishing and making bright-work shine, until the present system of gunnery and gymnastic training was introduced. Captains and officers used to spend on their ships large sums out of their private income, which very often they could ill afford. "Promotion by paint" was not unknown. A ship ought to be scrupulously clean, but she should have paint wherever possible, and soap and water should replace spit-and-polish.

CHAPTER XIV

POLITICAL EVENTS OF 1873-80 AND POSTSCRIPT

NOTE

The following brief summary of political and international affairs is introduced for convenience of reference. It may be skipped by the reader, should he disdain politics.

The Government of Mr. Gladstone, returned to power in 1868, began to disintegrate in 1873. The proximate cause was the Irish University Education Bill, announced in the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the session on 6th February, 1873. Irish affairs have always been the curse of the Liberal Party. But a popular Government would have survived even the Irish University Education Bill, which, designed to please all parties, failed of course to please any. The truth is that, as people soon or late weary of all administrations, so they turned from the Liberal Government. Mr. Disraeli summarised the history of the Government in a piece of invective which has become classic: "You have had four years of it. You have despoiled churches. You have threatened every corporation and every endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticised every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and no one knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. I believe that the people of this country have had enough of the policy of confiscation."

The Government were beaten on the Irish University Education Bill; Mr. Gladstone resigned; but Mr. Disraeli declined to take office. Mr. Gladstone was therefore compelled to carry on the Government. Early in 1874 he suddenly appealed to the electorate; which, however, chose to give his opponents a majority. Mr. Gladstone resigned, or partly resigned, his leadership, and plunged into the esoteric joys of a controversy dealing with the doctrine of Papal infallibility. It would seem that a great ecclesiastic was sacrificed, when the young Gladstone chose to give to politics talents which would have won him the Archbishopric of Canterbury.

In Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet Lord Cairns was Lord Chancellor; Lord Derby, Foreign Secretary; Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India; Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Cross, Home Secretary; Mr. Gathorne Hardy, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Ward Hunt, First Lord of the Admiralty; Sir Stafford Northcote, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Duke of Richmond, as Lord President of the Council, led the Conservative party in the House of Lords. The Liberal leader, walking in the Gladstonian shadow, was Lord Hartington.

In 1874 the Bill for the Regulation of Public Worship was passed. In the following year Mr. Plimsoll, by the exercise of that dogged determination and gallant defiance of Parliamentary conventions, by means of which Parliament can sometimes be goaded into acts of justice, forced the Government to pass the Merchant Shipping Bill. Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, introduced the useful Artisans' Dwellings Bill, which was passed. Upon 25th November, 1875, the Government, at the suggestion of Mr. Frederic Greenwood, purchased from the Khedive of Egypt, 176,000 Suez Canal shares for the sum of £4,000,000.

In the same year, the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, went to India, whither he was accompanied by Commander Lord Charles Beresford, M.P., as A.D.C. (Lord Charles was promoted to the rank of commander on 2nd November, 1875.) The Prince received a telegram informing him of the purchase of the Suez Canal shares when his ship was passing through the Canal on the way to India. Lord Lytton was appointed Viceroy of India. In 1876 it was announced that the Queen was to assume the additional title of "Empress of India."

In July, 1875, there was trouble in the Near East, which, nearly two years later, in April, 1877, resulted in the declaration by Russia of war against Turkey. The Mediterranean Fleet was ordered to pass the Dardanelles. In March, 1878, Lord Derby resigned, and Lord Salisbury succeeded him at the Foreign Office. Mr. Gathorne Hardy went to the India Office, Colonel Stanley to the War Office, and Mr. James Lowther became Chief Secretary for Ireland. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had already succeeded Lord Carnarvon at the Colonial Office.

In the Parliament of 1875-80, young Mr. Parnell began his career. Indomitable, subtle, cold and inscrutable, he speedily became a power. A Protestant in faith, he had his foot on the necks of the Irish Roman Catholic Nationalist members; half an Englishman by birth, he was an implacable enemy of England. Utilising the tactics of obstruction, he succeeded in bringing discredit upon a Government which was powerless to control him and his led captains. He forced the Government to pass a Bill for University Education in Ireland; and as the measure was no better, if no worse, than the Gladstonian scheme which had been rejected, so the result upon the Conservative administration was equally injurious.

Mr. Gladstone emerged from his studies in Papal infallibility to denounce Bulgarian atrocities and the like. But the country declined to become excited on the subject. In the meantime the Russian army was approaching Constantinople. The British Government took public measures of military and naval precaution clearly implying that Russia would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople. Prince Bismarck thereupon intervened, and invited the nations concerned to discuss matters at Berlin. Lord Beaconsfield (he had received his peerage in 1876) and Prince Bismarck were the two most powerful men in Europe. Beaconsfield chose himself to represent Great Britain at the Congress, which opened at Berlin on 13th June, 1878. Lord Beaconsfield returned in triumph, bearing with him "Peace with Honour."

The advance of Russian influence in Afghanistan induced the British Government, in 1878, to dispatch an expedition to Cabul, which was occupied by British troops, and from which the Amir, Shere Ali, fled. Followed, the signature of the treaty of Gandamak by Yakoob Khan, son and successor of Shere Ali; the treacherous murder of Sir Louis Cavagnan, British Envoy, and the greater number of his staff; and the recapture of Cabul by British troops. The true history of the whole affair, much distorted at the time (and since) by political malice, is lucidly set forth in Lord Roberts's Forty-one Years in India, by the great soldier who took so distinguished a part in it.

Another frontier war broke out in 1879. In South Africa, Sir Theophilus Shepstone had annexed the Transvaal; Sir Bartle Frere, Lord High Commissioner, announcing to the Zulu king Cetewayo, that Cetewayo was entitled to a strip of territory claimed both by Cetewayo and the Transvaal Republic, ordered him to disband his army. The advance of British troops was checked by their total defeat by the Zulus on 22nd January, 1879, at Isandhlwana. Lord Chelmsford the commander-in-chief, prosecuted the campaign, defeated Cetewayo and took him prisoner. During the war the young Prince Louis Napoleon, son of the Empress Eugenie, lost his life.

In the meantime, the trade of the country had been profoundly depressed, with the natural result that there was much discontent. On 24th March, 1880, Parliament was dissolved; and the Liberal party were returned with a majority of some hundred and twenty. The Queen sent for Lord Hartington; sent for Lord Granville; and finally, for Mr. Gladstone.

The Russo-Turkish war of 1877 had brought Russia into opposition to Austria-Hungary, thus destroying the alliance of the three Emperors; and although Bismarck made peace between the two Powers at the Congress of Berlin, Russia became estranged from Germany. In order to restore her security, Germany concluded an alliance with Austria-Hungary and shortly afterwards with Italy, which had quarrelled with France concerning her occupation of Tunis. Thus was formed the Triple Alliance. Its counterpoise was the drawing together of France and Russia, in view of whose possibilities Prince Bismarck in 1887 increased the German Army. In 1900 Germany passed the Navy Law, which ordained that the German Fleet should be so strong that any attack upon it would be dangerous to the attacking party.

Nothing but the strength of the British Fleet, which had been largely increased by the action of Lord Charles Beresford in 1888, and again by the naval programme of 1893, and whose organisation had been brought to a high state of efficiency by Admiral Sir Frederick Richards (afterwards admiral of the Fleet), prevented the outbreak of war between England and France at the time of the Fashoda incident in 1897.

The affair caused both nations to reconsider the situation; with the result that they settled all outstanding difficulties; and the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France and Russia balanced the Triple Alliance. Germany, in 1912, added some 70,000 men to her army, while Austria and Italy increased their fleets. By the time the Allied nations of the Near East had declared war upon the Turkish Empire, in 1912, Russia had recovered from the disastrous results of her war with Japan, so that the Triple Entente once more balanced the Triple Alliance. But the war in the Near East, with the heavy losses it inflicted upon Turkey, had opened anew the whole Eastern question. The settlement concluded at the Berlin Conference thirty-four years previously was abolished in a moment.

It has been thought worth while to trace the main developments of European politics from 1873 to the present time; as it happened to Lord Charles Beresford to be a member of that Parliament which saw the triumph of the Beaconsfield policy in foreign affairs, and to be a member of subsequent Parliaments confronted with the emergence of new and sinister international conditions.

CHAPTER XV

AN IRISH ELECTION AND IRISH POLITICS

The political situation in Ireland at the time when I entered politics was characteristically exemplified in the Kerry election of 1872, in which I took part. It was fought entirely on the Home Rule issue, which had been revived by Isaac Butt when, in 1870, he formed his Home Government Association.

In the Kerry election of 1872, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was opposed to Home Rule. The anti-Home Rule candidate, Mr. Deas, was a Roman Catholic, a local landlord and extremely popular. His opponent, Mr. Blennerhasset, was a Protestant and a stranger to the locality. But because he was a Home Ruler, he was elected in spite of the priests and of the personal claims of Mr. Deas, winning by 839 votes. I may add that he won in spite also of my exertions, which were considerable. I started at two o'clock in the morning with Mr. Harry Herbert of Muckross, and led a band of 350 tenants to the poll. (The Ballot Act was not passed until 18th July of the same year, 1872.)

Having polled the tenants, I was strolling in the street, when I was stopped by one of my grand fellow-countrymen, a huge man of about six feet five.

"Are ye for Home Rule?" says he.

"To hell with your Home Rule!" said I. Whereupon he hit me on the point of the nose, knocking me over backwards, and effectually silencing my arguments for the space of an hour and a half.

The nature of the problem of the land in Ireland may be exemplified from my own experience as a landlord. I came into my property in 1866, and when I returned from the sea two years later, being in need of money, I wrote to my agent, telling him that I intended to inspect the estate. He replied asking me to come as soon as I could, and adding that I should be able to raise the rents all round. I told him to do nothing until my arrival. When I went over, I drove to one of my farms upon which it was proposed to raise the rent. The farm was about 48 acres in extent, situated in the middle of a bog. Here I was entertained by one of the finest old Irishmen I have ever seen, and his three sons. Said I to him:

"I want to talk to you about the rent. I hear that you are paying me only 2s. 6d. an acre, whereas I can get 18s. an acre in the market."

I shall never forget how the poor old man's face fell as he said:

"For the love of God, do not turn me out, Lord Charles, I will give you 12s. an acre sooner than you should turn me out."

And then he told me that he had occupied the farm during 48 years; and in that time he and his sons had raised the original value to 18s. an acre. Of course I told him to stay where he was at the old rent. But by the law of the land I could have turned him out and put in a new tenant who would have paid me 18s. an acre, the increased value being solely due to the exertions of the old man and his sons. Had I been an absentee landlord, it would have been an ordinary matter of business to have instructed my agent to turn the man out and to raise the rent; and that very course was taken in thousands of cases. There was no compensation for tenants' improvements before 1870; and a farmer who did his best for the land, and to whose exertions alone increased value was due, must pay the increased rent or go.

The monstrous land system in Ireland naturally caused the tenants to feel distrust and enmity towards the landlords; for, although not many landlords abused their powers, the knowledge that they could abuse them was alone sufficient to create suspicion and hostility. Again, the great companies which bought land on speculation, exacted rents at the outside market value. A company cannot be expected to make allowances. Nor did the companies know the tenants or care for them. But under the Irish custom they were the tenants who had themselves by their improvements raised the value of the land.

In fairness to the landlords, it should be understood that the tenants objected to the improvement of property by the landlord. "If you, the landlord," the tenant argued, "improve the land, you will be raising the rent on me. I would rather make my own improvements."

The terms of tenure in Ireland were quite different from the terms of tenancy in England, except in the north of Ireland, where was the custom of tenant-right. In the south and west, the majority of tenants had a yearly tenancy, and were liable to six months' notice, known as "the hanging gale." When a landlord desired to get rid of a tenant, he "called in the hanging gale." And a tenant habitually owed six months' rent.

I stood for Waterford at the request of my brother Lord Waterford. That I was elected was due to his great personal popularity as a landlord and as a sportsman and also to the powerful influence of a certain prominent supporter of Home Rule, which he exercised on my behalf because, although I was opposed to Home Rule, I supported denominational education. I believed then, as I believe now, that a man's religion is his own affair, and whatever it may be, it should be respected by those who own another form of faith. I have always held (in a word) that the particular form of a man's religion is necessarily due to his early education and surroundings.

But when in the House of Commons I publicly declared that conviction, I received about four hundred letters of a most violent character, most of which were written by clergymen of my own persuasion. I have never asked a man for his vote in my life. When I stood for Marylebone, in 1885, there was a controversy concerning the Sunday opening of museums and picture galleries. I was in favour of opening them, upon the ground that people who were hard at work all the week might have opportunities for recreation, which I would have extended beyond museums and galleries. But I was waited upon by a solemn deputation of clerical gentlemen of various denominations, who desired to make their support of me conditional upon my acceptance of their views.

"Gentlemen," I said, "has it ever occurred to you that I have never asked you for your vote? Let me tell you that if you disapprove of my opinions, your only honest course is to vote for my opponent."

They were so astonished that they withdrew in shocked silence.

When I was in Parliament, Isaac Butt, who was failing in his endeavour to promote an agitation, begun in 1870, in favour of Home Government, or Home Rule, did his best to persuade me to join the Irish party, and to obtain for it Lord Waterford's influence, because, he said, Lord Waterford was so universally popular and so just. Although I was unable to join the Irish party, I was much impressed with Butt's arguments in so far as the land question was concerned; and I discussed the whole matter with Lord Waterford. I suggested to him that he should form a league of landlords pledged not to rack-rent their tenants; pointing out that if the Irish landlords failed to take the initiative in reform, it was certain that the people would eventually prevail against them, and that the reforms which would be enforced by law would bear hardly upon the good landlords.

Lord Waterford sympathised with my view of the matter; but after long consideration he came to the conclusion that the course I proposed might do more harm than good. The question was inextricably complicated by the fact that many of the landlords who had raised their rents, had been compelled to raise them by force of circumstances; as, for instance, when they had been obliged to pay very high charges upon succeeding to their estates. In his position, Lord Waterford shrank from associating himself with a scheme which must inflict hardship upon landlords poorer than himself. Events took their course, with the result I had foreseen. My proposal was inspired by that sympathy with the demands of the Irish people, and that recognition of their justice, which had been accorded by both great political parties in turn, and which ultimately found expression in the Wyndham Land Purchase Act.

Not long ago I asked one of my tenants, who had bought his holding under the Wyndham Act, and who was a strong Home Ruler:

"Now you own the farm, are you still for Home Rule?"

"Faith, Lord Char-less," said he, "now I have the land behind me, shure if it was a choice I could be given between Home Rule and a bullock, I'd take the bullock."

In recording the beginning of my Parliamentary career, I may say at once that I have always disliked politics, as such. I entered Parliament with the desire to promote the interests of the Service; and in so far as I have been successful, I have not regretted the sacrifices involved.

But in 1874 my approval of denominational education – in other words, my support of the right of every parent to have his child educated in his own religion – outweighed my opposition to Home Rule. One of my principal supporters, himself a Home Ruler, suggested as an ingenious compromise that I should so print my election address that the words Home Rule should appear large and prominent, and the qualification "an inquiry into," very small: a proposal I declined.

My opponents were Mr. J. Esmonde and Mr. Longbottom, who was celebrated for his achievements in finance. He stood for Home Rule. Concerning Mr. Longbottom, a certain parish priest, who was also a Home Ruler, addressed his congregation one Sunday morning as follows: —

"Now, boys," says he, "a few words about th' Election that's pending. First of all, if ye have a vote ye'd give ut to a genuine Home Ruler, if ye had one standing. Ye have not. Secondly, ye'd give it to a good Conservative, if ye had one standing. Well, ye have one in Lord Char-less Beresford, the gr-reat say-captain. And thirdly, ye'd vote for the Divil, but ye'd never vote for a Whig. But as for this Mr. Long-what's-'is-name, I wudn't be dhirtying me mouth by mentioning the latter end of him."

One of my opponent's supporters retorted by urging the boys to "Kape th' bloody Beresford out, for the Beresfords were never known to shmile except when they saw their victims writhin' on th' gibbet": an amiable reference to John Beresford, First Commissioner of Revenue at the period of the passing of the Act of Union, and de facto ruler of Ireland.

Other incidents of that cheery time occur to my recollection. There was the farmer who, ploughing his field, cried to me as I rode by, "Hurroo for Lord Char-less."

I went up to him and asked him whether he really meant anything, and if so, what.

"Will you do anything?" said I.

Said he, "Lord Char-less, if 'tis votes you want me to collect, begob I'll quit th' plough an' travel for a fortnight."

There was the car-boys' race I arranged on Waterford quay. Ten of them started, and I won, because I had taken the precaution to stuff some hay under the pad, which I lit with a match. The horse was stimulated but quite uninjured.

Then there was the affair of the bill-poster. I had been driving round the country all day in a side-car, seeing the boys, and late at night we stopped at a small inn. I was standing in the doorway smoking a pipe, and feeling cold and rather jaded, when I noticed a bill-poster hard at work, pasting placards upon the wall of an adjacent building. I could see that they were the green placards of my opponent, my own colours being blue and white.

I strolled across, and sure enough, there was my bill-poster sticking up "Vote for Longbottom, the Friend of the People."

"And what are ye doing, my fine peacock?" said I.

"Sure I'm posting the bills of Misther Longbottom, the Friend of the People," said he.

"'Tis a grand occupation," said I. "Vote for Longbottom, the Friend of the People, and to hell with Lord Char-less," said I.

"To hell with Lord Char-less," says he.

"Come," says I, "let me show ye the way to paste bills, ye omadhaun."

"And what do ye know about pasting bills?"

"Haven't I been a billposter all me life, then?" says I. "Here, let me get at it, and I'll shew ye the right way to paste the bills of Longbottom, the Friend of the People."

He handed me his long hairy brush, and a pailful of a horrible stinking compound, and I pasted up a bill the way I was born to it.

"Sure," says he, "ye can paste bills with anny man that God ever put two legs under. 'Tis clear ye're a grand bill-poster," says he.

"Didn't I tell ye?" says I.

And with that I caught him a lick with the full brush across the face, so that the hairs flicked all round his head, and with a loud cry he turned and fled away. Armed with the pail and the brush, away I started after him, but my foot caught in the lap of the long coat I had on, and down I came, and knocked my nose on the ground, so that it bled all over me, and I had to go back to the inn. I took the rest of the placards, and the pail and the brush, and drove home, arriving very late. My brother Bill was in bed and sound asleep. Without waking him, I pasted the whole of his room with bills, "Vote for Longbottom, the Friend of the People." I pasted them on the walls, and on the door, and on his bed, and on his towels, and on his trousers, and on the floor. Then I went to bed.

In the morning he awakened me, wearing a pale and solemn countenance.

"Charlie," said he, "there's some bold men among the enemy."

"What do you mean?" said I.

"They are great boys," says he. "Why, one of them got into my room last night."

"Impossible," said I.

"Come and see," said he. "When I woke this morning I thought I had gone mad."

Upon the eve of the election, a man whom I knew to be a Fenian, came up to me and said, "I shall vote for ye, Lord Char-less. I don't agree with your politics, but I shall vote for ye."

"And why would you?" I said. "You that's a Fenian, you should be voting for Mr. Longbottom, the Friend of the People, like an honest man."

"Not at all," says he. "When ye go to the market to buy a horse, or a cow, or a pig, what is it ye look for in 'um? Blood," says he. "An' it's the same in an iliction. Ye are well-bred, annyway," says he, "but as for this Mr. Longwhat's-'is-name, he's cross-bred."