Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/356

 reluctance he accepted office on 23 June. He was embarrassed as well by his unwillingness to take precedence of Northcote as by Churchill's refusal to serve, if Northcote retained the leadership in the commons, but the pressure put on him by the queen, by the party itself (Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, p. 332), and by the exigencies of the political situation (Life of Sir Stafford Northcote, ii. 210) overcame his disinclination. He decided to take the foreign office himself, thus associating it with the premiership for the first time since it had been a distinct office. To Northcote, who went to the House of Lords as earl of Iddesleigh, he made over the post of first lord of the treasury, which had hitherto gone with that of prime minister. Sir Michael Hicks Beach became leader of the House of Commons.

With the assistance of Lord Dufferin, the Indian viceroy, Salisbury carried forward the Afghan frontier negotiations, which had been interrupted by the Penjdeh incident. All danger of war with Russia was removed by the protocol of 10 Sept. 1885, securing the Zulfikar pass to the Amir, though the final delimitation of the boundary between the Hari Rud and the Oxus was not completed until the treaty of St. Petersburg in July 1887. The eastern frontier of India was similarly secured against French influences by the annexation of Burmah. Other activities included the raising of a long-delayed Egyptian loan and, by a curious irony, the diplomatic support of Prince Alexander's action in uniting Eastern Roumelia to Bulgaria. Salisbury's foreign policy appeared very able to his contemporaries. Cranbrook thought it had secured a European reputation to its author, and Gladstone said that he could not object to one item in it (Life of Lord Cranbrook, ii. 239).

In Parliament Salisbury promoted and passed a bill for the housing of the working classes (based upon the report of a commission for which he had moved on 22 Feb. 1884), by which landlords were penalised for letting insanitary tenements and the local government board empowered to pull down dwellings unfit for habitation. It was a type of the only kind of ordinary legislation in which he really believed [. . . 'Those matters on which parties do not contend we hold ... to be so far from objectionable that they and they alone are the proper work of Parliament, and that it is detained from its normal labours by the perpetual intrusion of revolutionary projects' (Quarterly Review, Oct. 1873, p. 556)]. There is no dispute as to its salutary effect upon urban slums.

More sensational matter, however, occupied the public mind, as Ireland continued to be in a state of unrest. Salisbury dealt with the question at some length on 7 Oct. 1885 at Newport, and from the elaborate disquisition on local government which the speech contains it has been argued that his mind was at this time oscillating towards a home rule policy. This passage of the speech is, however, followed by an explicit repudiation of the federative principle in connection with Ireland, and in his private correspondence there is nothing to show that he ever contemplated anything more than the measure of Irish local government which in fact he afterwards granted. Any shadow of plausibility which the charge possesses is derived solely from the fact that Carnarvon, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, had (with his previous assent and subsequent approval, but without the knowledge of the cabinet) held a secret conversation with Parnell in which, according to Parnell's but not Carnarvon's account, Carnarvon used words favourable to an extensive measure of home rule [see, fourth ]. The general election of December 1885 left the Irish the real masters of the field, since neither side could retain office without their aid. In the course of the next month Gladstone matured his home rule convictions, thus attracting the Irish vote at the same time that the conservatives, contrary to the wishes of Carnarvon, whose resignation was, however, made in accordance with a previous understanding on grounds of health, were repelling it by the project of a coercion bill. The government was defeated on 27 Jan. 1886 and Salisbury resigned on the 28th. Gladstone resumed office, and introduced his first home rule bill in the following April, but the conservatives, materially aided by the secession of Hartington, John Bright, and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, effected its defeat on 8 June. Parliament was dissolved, and the question referred to the country. In strong contrast to Gladstone's sentimental appeal for justice to Ireland Salisbury had declared (15 May 1886, speech at Union of Conservative Associations) for 'twenty years of resolute government,' introducing this statement of policy with the ill-judged remark, not to be forgotten or forgiven, that some races, like the Hottentots and