In the Session of 1873, Sir Charles Dilke had but lately crossed the threshold of manhood, bearing his days before him, and possibly viewing the brilliant career through which for a time he strongly strode. Just thirty, married a year, home from his trip round the world, with Greater Britain still running through successive editions, the young member for Chelsea had the ball at his feet. He had lately kicked it with audacious eccentricity. Two years earlier he had made his speech in Committee of Supply on the Civil List. If such an address were delivered in the coming Session it would barely attract notice any more than does a journey to America in one of the White Star Liners. It was different in the case of Columbus, and in degree Sir Charles Dilke was the Columbus of attack on the extravagance in connection with the Court.
Sir Charles Dilke.
What he said then is said now every Session, with sharper point, and even more uncompromising directness, by Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Storey, and others. It was new to the House of Commons twenty-two years ago, and when Mr. Auberon Herbert (to-day a sedate gentleman, who writes good Tory letters to the Times) seconded the motion in a speech of almost hysterical vehemence, there followed a scene that stands memorable even in the long series that succeeded it in the following Parliament. Mr. James Lowther was profoundly moved; whilst as for Mr. Cavendish Bentinck, his feelings of loyalty to the Throne were so overwrought that, as was recorded at the time, he went out behind the Speaker's chair, and crowed thrice. Amid the uproar, someone, anticipating the action of Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar on another historic occasion, "spied strangers." The galleries were cleared, and for an hour there raged throughout the House a wild scene. When the doors were opened and the public readmitted, the Committee was found placidly agreeing to the vote Sir Charles Dilke had challenged.
Mr. George Dixon.
Mr. George Dixon is one of the members for Birmingham, as he was twenty years ago, but he wears his party rue with a difference. In 1873 he caused himself to be entered in "Dod" as "an advanced Liberal, opposed to the ratepaying clause of the Reform Act, and in favour of an amendment of those laws which tend to accumulate landed property." Now Mr. Dixon has joined "the gentlemen of England," whose tendency to accumulate landed property shocks him no more.
Sir W. Hart Dyke.
Sir William Dyke was plain Hart Dyke in '73; then, as now, one of the members for Kent, and not yet whip of the Liberal Party, much less Minister of Education. Mr. G. H. Finch also then, as now, was member for Rutland, running Mr. Beach close for the prize of modest obscurity.
In the Session of 1873 Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister, sixty-four years of age, and wearied to death. I well remember him seated on the Treasury Bench in those days, with eager face and restless body. Sometimes, as morning broke on the long, turbulent sitting, he let his head fall back on the bench, closing his eyes and seeming to sleep; the worn face the while taking on ten years of added age. In the last two Sessions of the Salisbury Parliament he often looked younger than he had done eighteen or nineteen years earlier. Then, as has happened to him since, his enemies were those of his own household. This Session—of 1873—saw the birth of the Irish University Bill, which broke the power of the strongest Ministry that had ruled in England since the Reform Bill.
