BOOKS.

THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF MR. CHILDERS.*

COLONEL CHILDERS mentions in the preface to these very interesting volumes that it was his hope that his father's biography would have passed into the experienced hands of Sir George Trevelyan. We should, no doubt, in that case have had a work of much more brilliant portraiture than the present, but we do not think the fact that Sir George Trevelyan was obliged to decline the task has done any real injury to the reputation of Mr. Childers. There is, indeed, something in the simple, quiet, and unostentatious tone of this biography which seems to us peculiarly suited to its subject, and Colonel Childers has performed his work with excellent judgment and taste. He has achieved what in our generation is a rare feat in condensing the career of an active and promi- nent statesman into about six hundred pages. He has embel- lished his volumes by some charming miniatures of members of the family, but he has compressed into narrow limits that family history which in some modern biographies of public men has assumed an utterly disproportionate place. He gives few opinions of his own, and no long dissertations on politics, but he has brought together with brief connecting notices a great number of well-selected letters throwing a clear and authentic light on some of the most important transactions of our times.

The career of Mr. Childers was an eminently successful one ; in the opinion, indeed, of many of his contemporaries successful somewhat out of proportion to his intellectual gifts. He was not an orator or a brilliant debater, or, we think, a statesman of any exceptional originality or power, but he was a man of much business talent, of indefatigable industry and perseverance, and of a turn of character that was admirably adapted for conciliation and co-operation, for making friends and for avoiding enmities. Men of this stamp have always been acceptable in English statesmanship, and perhaps especially so to a leader like Mr. Gladstone, whose masterful and overpowering energy brooked little contra- diction, and who valued pliant and useful instruments more than possible competitors.

The first great good fortune of Mr. Childers was his emi- gration, after leaving the University, to New South Wales. An early marriage and narrow means prompted this step, and he speedily became an inspector of schools. Almost immediately, however, after his arrival the great gold discoveries took place, bringing with them a vast movement of immigration which revolutionised all the conditions of Colonial life and opened out great fields of ambition to men of capacity who were on the spot. The Australian career of Mr. Childers lasted less than seven years, but a year after his arrival he held four offices under the Crown, and he soon rose to the position of Auditor-General at Melbourne, which was equi- valent to that of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became a member both of the Legislative and the Executive Councils, and bore a considerable part in directing the first period of responsible government in the Colony. The experience of these years was of great use to him in his subsequent career. He returned to England as Agent for Victoria in the begin- ning of 1857, at a salary of 21,200 a year. He had also saved a moderate competence, and was entitled to a life pension of 2866 a year. The Agency, it is true, speedily came to an end, though it was afterwards for a short time renewed, but he almost immediately obtained lucrative City business, and in June, 1860, he entered the House of Commons as Member for Pontefract, at the age of thirty-two.

He attached himself to the Liberal party, which was then completely in the ascendant, making his maiden speech in defence of the ballot, and his appetite for official work was soon abundantly gratified. He became a Junior Lord of the Admiralty under Lord Palmerston in 1864, and Secretary to the Treasury in the following year, and at the end of 1868 he entered the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. From this time whenever a Gladstonian Ministry was in power, he held a seat in the Cabinet until the complete breakdown of his

• Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon. Hugh C. E. Chaders, 1827-1896. By his Son, Lieutenant-Colonel Spencer Childers, C.B. 2 vols. London: John Murray. Es.]

health in 1890. He was succeseiVely Chancellor • of thlf Duchy of Lancaster, Secretary of State for War, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and for a brief period Home Secre- tary. During the periods when he was out of office _he travelled much, partly for pleasure, but partly also on matters connected with railway business, with which he was largely concerned. The confidence which was felt in his business capacity is remarkably shown by the fact that Mr. Disraeli offered him the important post of Financial Secretary of India, and that in another interval of Opposition he was selected by Lord Dufferin to adjudicate upon a complicated and difficult question which had arisen about land tenure in the Island of Prince Edward,—a task which he appears to have accomplished with perfect success.

His naval and military administration gave rise to some angry controversy upon which it is not possible for us here to enter, but much correspondence from various quarters is brought together illustrating it. There are several letters from Queen Victoria, and to many they will be a surprise, as showing the minute and intelligent interest she took even in technical questions of naval and military reform. The questions of beards in the Navy, of linked battalions, of the abolition of honorary colonelcies, of flogging in the Army, and of the designation of regiments were all discussed in her letters. When the Egyptian Expedition which ended in Tel-el-Kebir was in contemplation, she wrote desiring that the regiments selected for this duty should all be specified to her ; that she should receive early notice of the intended commander, "so that she may have time for consideration before being asked for her final decision " ; and that "she may be fully informed of each step as matters proceed, and learn confidentially the object and nature of any movements towards the East." She constantly wrote to satisfy herself that all precautions were taken for the health and comfort of her troops, and one day, we are told, brought seventeen letters from her Majesty or her private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby.

The administration of Mr. Childers included one of the most lamentable military failures and one of the most brilliant military successes of the reign, and on both of them these volumes throw considerable light. An interesting series of letters from Sir George Colley carries down the melan- choly history of the Majuba Campaign almost to the last moment. In the light of subsequent events, it is worthy of notice how clearly both Colley and Sir Evelyn Wood insisted on the supreme importance in a Boer war of large numbers of mounted troops, and on the great deficiency of the English in that respect. After the news of the disaster arrived, Mr. Childers appears to have done all in his power to despatch troops at once to South Africa to repair the calamity, and he decided to recommend Sir F. Roberts as Commander. The Queen promptly replied, "Entirely approve—had thought of this myself." The Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, however, decided otherwise, and the peace was made,—with results that are known to all.

The Egyptian Campaign of 1882 added considerably to the popularity of the Administration, and especially to the reputation of Mr. Childers. Great division of opinion had long delayed it, but few English military undertakings were better organised, and under the command of Sir Garnet Wolseley it was carried out with rapid, brilliant, and decisive success. The chief credit, no doubt, belongs to the General, whose letters give an admirable account of the campaign. but Mr. Childers appears to have done everything in his power to support him, and he gave him his full confidence. His mind appears, indeed, to have been fully open to good military advice, and these volumes contain some important letters from Sir F. Roberts on the principles of military reform. The two and a half years spent at the War Office form perhaps the brightest period of Mr. Childers's public career; and the terri- torial organisation of the Army, which was carried out under his direction, made a great change in the English military system.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer he proved himself on the whole a safe and moderate financier ; and though he failed in a scheme for dealing with the losses resulting from light gold coinage, and was not very successful in an attempt to convert a portion of the National Debt, his Budget of 1884 gave little

ground for serious criticism. But troubles of many kinds were now multiplying around the Cabinet. A deep sense of the inadequacy of our naval defence had arisen in the g.ountay, and the Ministers were profoundly divided on the subject, the great influence of Mr. Gladstone being strongly exerted against increased expenditure.

, The troubles in the Soudan broke out, and the death of Gordon left a deep stain upon the reputation of the Ministry. Had the expedition to relieve him been but seventy-two hours earlier, the catastrophe might have been averted, but long weeks had been wasted in idle wrangling about the route to be adopted, and in the words of Lord Hartington, ," We were working at cross-purposes here and in Egypt, and we were endeavouring to perform the impossible task of directing the details of an expedition up the Nile from home." Egypt was bankrupt, and an attempt to come to an arrangement with France about the reduction of her Debt was unsuccessful. There were troubles in Afghanistan, and there was constantly increasing anarchy in Ireland, and though the London Convention settling the finances of Egypt proved in the long run eminently successful, it had the im- mediate effect of adding to the burden of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "The normal work," he wrote, "of Chan- cellor of the Exchequer has been trebled by Egypt." In the Budget of 1885 an additional expenditure of fifteen millions had to be provided for, and in the Cabinet there were pro- found differences of opinion about the principles on which it should be dealt with. The Government, indeed, was in a state approaching to anarchy, and some, at least, of its members were longing for a defeat. Contrary to the wishes of Mr. Childers, the final settlement of the Budget was post- poned to June, and the Government fell on an amendment condemning the increase of the Beer and Spirit duties without any corresponding increase on the Wine-duties, and also the proposed Death-duties.

After this event Mr. Childers was only once more in office, and then only for six months, when he held the post of Home Secretary. It was in that disastrous Ministry in which Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home-rule Bill, and shattered for long years the Liberal party. The part which statesmen took at this crisis affected more than anything else in modern Paiglish politics the estimation in which they were held by their contemporaries, and will probably go very far to deter- mine the verdicts of posterity. Into this stormy controversy we do not here enter. Colonel Childers claims for his father that he was the first responsible Minister who in a public speech advocated the concession of a limited Home-rule for • Ireland, and he states that although this speech was made after consultation with Mr. Gladstone, and although Mr. Gladstone described him as one on whose assistance he speci- ally relied, he was never consulted on the drafting of the Home-rule Bill, and saw it for the first time in print. He found that it contained provisions giving the Irish Par- liament control over the Customs, Excise, and even currency to which he utterly objected, and he threatened to resign • office. At last, however, those clauses were struck out, and

• Mr.. Childers then gave his warm support to the Bill. Colonel Childers notices briefly, but without throwing any fresh light on the subject, the very unpleasant revelations which, by a gross breach of faith, were published shortly after Mr. Childers's death by Mr. Cooper, the editor of the Scotsman. In a book called An Editor's Retrospect he describes the dis- sension of Mr. Childers from Mr. Gladstone, and his manifest dislike of the Home-rule policy he supported, but the part which most painfully affected the readers was the clear statement that immediately after the Cabinet Council of March 27th, when the Home-rule Bill was first produced, Mr. Childers had sent to this newspaper editor its leading clauses, together with some hostile comments upon them. It appears, indeed, that in this Cabinet the obligation to secrecy was strangely little observed, and Mr. Cooper declares that Mr. Childers was not the only Minister who informed him what took place within it.

One would have liked to have had some explanation of this matter from Mr. Childers, but no memorandum bearing upon it was found among his papers. The remaining years of his life need not detain us. In 1890 his health broke down, and in the following year he resigned his seat in Parliament. In 1894, however, when Mr. Gladstone was for the last time in

office, he induced Mr. Childers to undertake the duty of Chairman of the Commission which had been appointed to inquire into the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland. His draft Report was only published after his death, but it sums up with great force and tersenees the argu- ments Of those who maintained that Ireland had been for a long period largely overtaxed, and it has had an important influence on the later phases of Irish polities.

There are many other subjects of interest in this book on which our space forbids us to dwell. Enough, however, has been said to show that without being a work of capital im- portance, it is a contribution of real value to our contem- porary history.