Asquith by Roy Jenkins Page A

of his persistent tendency to be a little too concerned with what may be called “ Athenaeum opinion ” and not sufficiently concerned with a more general and less urbane public. In any event “ Featherstone ” pursued him throughout the middle years of his career and earned him a measure of working class unpopularity much as “ Tonypandy ” did with Winston Churchill nearly a generation later. “ Why did you murder the miners at Featherstone in ’92? ” someone shouted at him at a meeting many years afterwards. “ It was not ’92, it was ’93,” was his characteristic reply.
    The cool determination with which he discharged most of his judicial duties at the Home Office did not extend to his decisions about the reprieve of murderers. To say that he was an “ abolitionist ” Home Secretary would be to misunderstand either the state of public opinion at the time or Asquith’s desire to run ahead of it. He was not a man for the pursuit of hopeless causes. But he disliked the death penalty, both because of its presumptuous finality and because of its ghoulish associations; and his responsibility for the exercise of the prerogative of mercy caused him great unease. One of the most difficult cases concerned a man who was hanged at Liverpool Jail on January 4th, 1893. The nature of the crime was not such as to raise the  question of a reprieve, but there was persistent doubt as to identity. Was the man who was to be hanged the murderer? Asquith wrote Mrs. Horner an anguished letter on January 3rd, but he did not halt the processes of the law. Later, he told his daughter, he received a letter from the priest who had taken the condemned man’s last confession, telling him that he had nothing with which to reproach himself. When this story was published by Lady Violet Bonham Carter f some time after her father’s death, it aroused a storm of Roman Catholic protest. The letter was not left amongst Asquith’s papers.
    Gladstone resigned as Prime Minister on March 3rd, 1894. He had been in dispute with his colleagues since January 9th, when in an argument with Lord Spencer about the size of the naval estimates he had been supported only by Shaw-Lefevre, the First Commissioner of Works. He had then retired to Biarritz for three weeks, but showed no desire to give way while there. Nor did the other ministers. Asquith recorded in his diary for January 13th: 44 Lunch with Harcourts. Talk with H. and Loulou. 1 We agreed that we could make no proposals. Best chance to trust to time and Atlantic breezes.” But the main result of the Atlantic breezes, according to Sir Algernon West, was to produce in Gladstone a growing conviction that all his colleagues, except Shaw-Lefevre, were 44 mad and drunk.” The real cause of the dispute, of course, was something deeper than the question of economy in naval expenditure. Had this been the only point at issue Harcourt would hardly have found himself opposed to the Prime Minister. But on Gladstone’s side there was the constant desire to embroil the Government in a struggle to the death with the House of Lords over Ireland. 44 After breakfast to A. Morley’s, 2 where was A. West just back from Biarritz with Mr. G’s latest,” Asquith wrote in his diary for February 7th. "He proposes an immediate dissolution—pretext being action of H. of Lords on our Bills; we all agreed that this is madness.” 3 On the side of the other ministers there was the growing conviction that Gladstone was no longer either physically or mentally capable of presiding over the Government. The 44 gradual closing of  the doors of the senses,” which he had first mentioned in 1892, was gathering momentum.

1 Lewis (later 1st Viscount) Harcourt, Sir William’s son by his first marriage.
    2 Former Chief Whip and then Postmaster General.
    3 Accusations of insanity were freely exchanged between the Prime Minister and his Cabinet at this stage.

    Asquith wrote later that “ Mr. Gladstone’s resignation was