Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish on
May 6, 1882. We were in London at the time; and the news came
through on a Sunday. Alfred Lyttelton told me that Lady Frederick
Cavendish's butler had broken it to her by rushing into the room
saying:
"They have knifed his lordship!"
The news spread from West to East and North to South; groups of
people stood talking in the middle of the streets without their
hats and every one felt that this terrible outrage was bound to
have consequences far beyond the punishment of the criminals.
These murders in the Phoenix Park tended to confirm Gladstone in
his belief that the Irish were people whom we did not understand
and that they had better be encouraged to govern themselves. He
hoped to convert his colleagues to a like conviction, but Mr.
Chamberlain and he disagreed.
Just as I ask myself what would have been the outcome of the Paris
Conference if the British had made the League of Nations a genuine
first plank in their programme instead of a last postscript, so I
wonder what would have happened if Chamberlain had stuck to
Gladstone at that time. Gladstone had all the playing cards--as
President Wilson had--and was not likely to under-declare his
hand, but he was a much older man and I cannot but think that if
they had remained together Chamberlain would not have been thrown
into the arms of the Tories and the reversion of the Premiership
must have gone to him. It seems strange to me that the leaders of
the great Conservative party have so often been hired bravos or
wandering minstrels with whom it can share no common conviction.
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