‘My own remark about Peel,’ Mrs. Dugdale records him as saying, ‘that was the point. I should say it now and may well have said it then. Peel twice committed what seems to me the unforgivable sin. He gave away a principle on which he had come into power—and mind you, neither time had an unforeseen factor come into the case. He simply betrayed his party.’dd
Furthermore, Balfour claimed on this occasion that neither at the time nor in retrospect was he greatly attracted by Lloyd George’s plan on its merits. And his comment on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s personal attitude was sharp:
‘Now isn’t that like Lloyd George. Principles mean nothing to him—never have. His mind doesn’t work that way. It’s both his strength and his weakness. He says to himself at any given moment: “Come on now—we’ve all been squabbling too long, let’s find a reasonable way out of the difficulty”—but such solutions are quite impossible for people who don’t share his outlook on political principles—the great things.’ee
But there were undoubtedly some of Balfour’s followers whose minds and principles were just as flexible in 1910 as were those of Lloyd George. F. E. Smith was the outstanding example. He put his thoughts with great frankness into two letters to Austen Chamberlain, one of which concluded with the urgent but fortunately unheeded instruction: ‘Please burn this.’
Smith looked at political groupings with all the unprejudiced realism of a Talleyrand considering possible alliances. And he was convinced that acceptance of the Lloyd George offer would strengthen the right and weaken the left.
‘I am absolutely satisfied of L.G.’s honesty and sincerity,’ he wrote. ‘He has been taught much by office and is sick of being wagged by a Little England tail. But if he proved in a year or two difficile or turbulent, where is he and where are we? He is done and has sold the pass. We should still be a united party with the exception of our Orangemen: and they can’t stay out long. What allies can they find?’ff
Later, in his second letter, Smith took an even stronger view of the weakness of Lloyd George’s position.
‘I am tempted to say of him,’ he rather surprisingly wrote, ’quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. It seems to me that he is done for ever unless he gradually inclines to our side in all the things that permanently count.’gg
Smith also saw that a coalition would greatly build up the powers of resistance to economic change and weaken the position of the left outside the Liberal Party as well as within it:
‘A great sigh of relief would go up over the whole of business England if a strong and stable Government were formed. … Furthermore such a Government could (1) say to Redmond: thus far and no further, which Asquith standing alone cannot; and (2) absolutely refuse reversal of the Osborne judgment, which Asquith standing alone cannot.’hh
Here, leaving aside the reference to the Irish question, we catch a foretaste of the spirit of the post-1918 coalition. A strong businessman’s Government, a firm front to labour, and compromise on the traditional ‘political’ disputes was to be the recipe which prevailed then even if it failed in 1910. And the response which Lloyd George’s proposals evoked from different politicians in 1910 presaged to a remarkable degree the attitude which they were to take up in 1921 and 1922. The enthusiasm of Lloyd George himself and of F. E. Smith was, as we have seen, undoubted. Mr. Churchill was equally eager. It was a scheme after his own heart.
Austen Chamberlain, to whom Smith’s letters had been addressed, had a less mercurial mind. Unlike Smith and Churchill, he was a little shocked, although not without a touch of pleasure, at the sudden boldness of the plan. ‘What a world we live in, and how the public would stare if they could look into our minds and our letter-bags,’ he wrote. But he also appreciated the solid advantages which might accrue from it:
‘We equally recognise the vast importance of the results which Lloyd George holds out to us. To place the Navy on a thoroughly satisfactory basis, to establish a system of national service for defence, to grant at once preference to the Colonies on the duties immediately available, and to enquire, not with a view to delay but with a view to action at the earliest possible moment, what further duties it is desirable to impose in the interests of the nation and the Empire—these are objects which silence all considerations of personal comfort and all individual preferences or antipathies. And in saying this please understand that I am as assured as you are yourself that Lloyd George has made this proposal in perfect good faith and without any unavowed or unavowable arrière pensée.’ii