The Act of Union of 1800 was intended to strengthen the connection between Great Britain and Ireland and to promote and secure the essential interests of the two kingdoms. Yet Ireland was never fully integrated into the United Kingdom but remained administered from Dublin Castle by a lord lieutenant, a chief secretary and their officers as if it were some Indian outpost of the British Empire. Instead of binding the two countries together the union only drove them further apart. And this was due largely to the failures of the castle administration.
Ireland's Czar by James H Murphy is a study of the fifth Earl Spencer as lord lieutenant in Gladstone's first government, of 1868-74, and again in 1882-85, during Gladstone's second government. To remedy Irish grievances and win over the Catholic majority, Gladstone's first government disestablished the Church of Ireland, passed the first of his land Acts and attempted to solve the university question. In furthering this agenda Spencer was Gladstone's loyal servant. Any differences between the lord lieutenant and the prime minister tended to be questions of emphasis, not of principle.
Spencer was less liberal than Gladstone on coercion, was slower to release Fenian prisoners and was criticised by cabinet colleagues for banning an amnesty meeting in the Phoenix Park. But these differences emerged mainly in private and were hidden from the public. What this book demonstrates is how little positive input Spencer made to Gladstone’s remedial agenda in the period 1868-74. Unable to halt the progress of Isaac Butt’s Home Rule movement, he remained no more than an “anxious spectator”.
Great rejoicing
His situation changed dramatically, however, during his second period in office. The replacement of Lord Lieutenant Francis Cowper and Chief Secretary William “Buckshot” Forster, by Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish, was welcomed as ushering in a policy of peace and conciliation. The
Freeman’s Journal
reported that the new lord lieutenant was received in Dublin “with great rejoicing”. After his arrival in the Viceregal Lodge, Spencer wrote to his wife, “Just in from certainly the best reception I ever got in Ireland.”
That evening Cavendish and Thomas Burke, permanent undersecretary at the Irish Office, were murdered by the Invincibles in front of the Viceregal Lodge. A shocked government responded with a draconian Crimes Act that William O’Brien described as “a declaration of war on human liberty as savage as anything” in “the annals of English misgovernment of Ireland”.
Security became Spencer’s priority. First, he attended to his personal safety. In his sorties outside the lodge he was surrounded by an armed escort of mounted soldiers and police. When he played cricket he was accompanied by an armed guard. (One notorious breach of security occurred when Anna Parnell grabbed the bridle of his horse on Westmoreland Street and demanded to know why the authorities had demolished huts built by the Land League for evicted families.)
Unease over severity
Second, he was adamant that all crime should be resolutely punished. Parnell said that Spencer administered the Crimes Act “up to the hilt”. Gladstone and Chamberlain expressed unease about its severity; Spencer, defending it as a deterrent, failed to appreciate the way that perceptions can have consequences as significant as any of the realities of coercion. Indeed, it is hard not to agree with Tim Healy’s assessment that Spencer “enforced coercion with high courage and low insight”.
He was slow to push reform, dragged his feet on the land issue, opposed the extension of local government, and resisted the agitation to reprieve prisoners condemned to death. His handling of the case of Myles Joyce, who, as the author acknowledges, was most likely innocent of the notorious Maamtrasna murders in 1882 – Joyce was hanged for his alleged part in the murders of a family of five – attracted fierce criticism. And the Dublin Castle “scandals” involving a homosexual ring among senior officials gave William O’Brien in United Ireland further opportunity for unrelenting and brilliantly vicious attacks on Spencer and his regime.
Universally despised
It was the confluence of the security measures and the severity of the coercion that Parnell addressed when he proclaimed in parliament: “Everything is at the mercy of Lord Spencer, who is just as much an autocrat in Ireland as the czar of Russia is in his imperial dominions. I can see no distinction whatever between the picture presented by Lord Spencer, riding at the head of his dragoons through the streets of Dublin, and that presented by the czar when he goes about accompanied by his military escort.”
John Redmond’s verdict was: “Probably no English administration that ever held sway in Ireland was so universally despised and detested as the present.”
Spencer was nicknamed the Red Earl not because he advocated any socialist doctrines but because of the colour of his beard and the association with blood that the colour evoked.
This book cannot be accused of ignoring the forceful condemnations of the lord lieutenant by the nationalists. For balance, however, the author refers to the extravagance of the denunciations of Spencer, and dismisses William O’Brien as a ruthless politician. He explains the extremely difficult situation in which Spencer found himself, and provides character references from Spencer’s English colleagues that allude to his “discriminating judgment”, “high integrity”, fair-mindedness, impartiality, sense of duty, and unflinching loyalty. His Tory opponent Randolph Churchill privately labelled him “a small-minded, vain, obstinate, dull man”.
The argument of this substantial and authoritative book is that the “bifurcated government” of Ireland from Westminster and Dublin Castle allowed all the odium of coercion to fall on Spencer and the castle while Gladstone was building bridges with the Irish MPs at Westminster.
This was hardly Machiavellian calculation by the prime minister. And it is hardly surprising that nationalists concentrated their attacks on the castle – the most offensive and weakest link in the Union.
To view the problem of ruling Ireland through Spencer’s eyes is a welcome counter to all the opprobrium heaped on him. Nevertheless, one has to agree with Gladstone’s remark that he “could not help thinking he is a little tainted by the malevolent Castle influence”.
During Spencer’s watch the rejection of the Union and of its twin instruments – Dublin Castle and Westminster – reached a crescendo. Ironically, it was the policies adopted by “Ireland’s czar” to protect the Union that had played an important role in its rejection.
After his term of office ended Spencer confessed, “You may put down crime and outrage for a while . . . but you cannot choke or kill the national sentiment.” He converted to self-government for Ireland and strongly supported Gladstone’s crusade for Home Rule. To his erstwhile Irish critics he had become more credible as statesman than he had been as administrator.
