American union if its government had admitted what is called the right of secession. I think we ought to admit, in fairness to the Americans, that there are some things worth fighting for, and that national existence is one of them.' There spoke the man of science as well as the statesman, for the duke was both. When the paper-duty repeal bill was introduced into the Lords, as part of the programme of Gladstone's budget of 1860, the duke warned the peers, though in vain, not to reject a supply bill, or take an action for which there was no precedent since the revolution. Evidently there was a future for such a man, of character as lofty as his lineage, of long and early experience in affairs, and gifted with an austere and commanding eloquence. The way seemed to be clearer before him now that Palmerson was dead and Russell in retirement. It might well be that the thoughts of Gladstone, the new liberal chief and the greatest of the Peelites, would turn with favour upon the posthumous heir of that decaying line.
But from 1866 to 1868 the conservatives were in power, and the two questions of the time were the franchise and the Irish church. The duke spoke with indignation against the conservative reform bill: 'These attempts to bamboozle parliament and to deceive the people are new in the history of English politics. They tend to degrade the noble contests of public life and the honourable rivalries of political ambition.' 'The tones of moral indignation are healthy tones' (Hansard, 13 March 1868). On another occasion he made a declaration of whig ecclesiasticism : 'Tithes are a fund charged upon the land of the country, entirely at the disposal of the supreme legislature of the country. They are not private property, they are not even corporate property; they are not, as Sir James Graham argued in 1835, trust property, but revenue at the disposal of the state' (ib. 24 June 1867). In 1868 Gladstone succeeded the Derby-Disraeli government, and formed his first administration; the duke became secretary of state for India, remaining in that office until the fall of Gladstone's government in 1874. His under-secretary, Sir M. E. Grant Duff, thus writes of his chief: 'he was not only an orator, but an excellent man of business. He had the first merit of a minister in great place and at the head of a huge organisation; he knew what he could leave to others.' 'The ordinary business passed through his hands in a steady and unbroken stream,' but on an occasion great enough to call forth 'the energies of a philosopher' he was great also (Banffshire Journal, 8 May 1900). It was that hour when a foreign policy for India had to be created. India could no longer be another Thibet. Relations were established with Khelat, Afghanistan, Yarkand, Nipal, and Burma; they were to be the free friends of an all-powerful India. Annexations of them by Great Britain, as well as their absorption by Russia, were to cease or to be checked. In finance the policy known to financiers as 'decentralisation' was carried out — that in, the local governments were given an interest in economising the public expenditure and raising the public revenue within their area. There was peace and progress. Later, famine began, but the crisis was not reached during his term of office, and adequate preparations were made for dealing with it. In other directions also he actively supported the government, particularly the measure for Irish church disestablishment. 'We desire,' he said, 'to wipe out the foulest stain upon the name and fame of England — our policy to the Irish people' (Hansard, 18 June 1869).
For twenty-one years, with the exception of the two short Derby ministries, the duke had been in office; now he was to be out from 1874 to 1880, during the conservative administration. The Eastern question shortly became prominent; Gladstone left his tent and put on his armour; so did Argyll. Early in 1877 the latter, now a mature statesman, opened fire on Lord Derby, the foreign secretary, even as in old days as a youth he had scandalised the Lords by opening fire upon the father. The Eastern question presented the problem of the desirability of forcing Turkey to make internal reforms. There were the Bulgarian atrocities. So Lord Derby agreed to the Constantinople conference of December 1876, to put pressure upon the Porte. Russia put pressure of another sort, and in April 1877 began war on Turkey. This was progress of an unacceptable order ; the English government began to think of war with Russia; the fleet was ordered to pass the Dardanelles in January 1878, and England refused to recognise Russia's imposition of terms by her San Stefano treaty with Turkey in March. Accordingly there was the Berlin conference, whence the English plenipotentiaries returned, bringing 'peace with honour.' In May 1879 the duke made perhaps his best speech. Lord Beaconsfield, who had entered the Lords in the autumn of 1876, called it 'a criticism not malevolent but certainly envenomed.' It reviewed the past four years: the nation, though no longer shopkeepers but warriors, thanks to the government's rule, must take stock, for 'even warriors at the end of a campaigrn look
