The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, vol 2 | Page 8

Acts, and under the Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Acts; and one of the same date to a similar effect went to all urban sanitary districts throughout the country, while a further circular with digests of the laws was sent out on January 7th, 1884. This action was afterwards repeated by Chamberlain and others, and taken for new, and again by Walter Long.'
But, naturally, the first man to do it stirred up a hornets' nest. Punch of the first week in January, 1884, derides the 'Bitter Cry of Bumbledom' against Dilke and Mr. Hugh Owen, [Footnote: Years after Sir Hugh Owen, G.C.B., wrote to Dilke: 'I shall always remember that I owed my first step in the Order of the Bath to you.'] Secretary to the Local Government Board:
'Us to blame? That's a capital notion! Drat them and their "statutes" and "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar--it's mighty obliging--defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded myrmidon OWEN. The public's got Slums on the brain, and with sanitry bunkum's have busted. We make a more wigorous use of the powers with which we're entrusted! Wy, if we are at it all day with their drains, ashpits, roofs, walls, and windies, Wot time shall we 'ave for our feeds and our little porochial shindies! And all for the 'labouring classes'--the greediest, ongratefullest beggars. I tell you these Radical lot and their rubbishy littery eggers, Who talk of neglected old brooms, and would 'ave us turn to at their handles, Are Noosances wus than bad smells and the rest o' their sanitry "scandals."'
Sir Charles's main object in local government was to decentralize, and he sought to move in this direction by stimulating the exercise of existing powers and the habit of responsibility in local popularly elected bodies. But inquiry was also necessary.
'On February 8th, 1884, it had been decided to appoint a Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, and Mr. Gladstone had expressed his wish that I should be chairman of the Commission, on which the Prince of Wales desired to serve.'
'On the 9th it was settled that Bodley, my secretary, should be secretary to the Royal Commission. I immediately wrote to Manning to ask him to serve, and he consented on February 12th.'
Lord Salisbury's name lent another distinction to the list, which was completed by February 16th. [Footnote: In addition to the Prince, the Cardinal, and Lord Salisbury, Dilke's Commission consisted of Lord Brownlow, Lord Carrington, Mr. Goschen, Sir Richard Cross, the Bishop of Bedford (Dr. Walsham How), Mr. E. Lyulph Stanley, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, Mr. Broadhurst, Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. George Godwin, and Mr. Samuel Morley. To these were added later Mr. Dwyer Gray and Sir George Harrison, for Ireland and Scotland respectively.]
'A very difficult question arose about his precedence. I referred it to the Prince of Wales, who said that he thought Manning ought to take precedence, as a Prince, after Princes of the Blood, and before Lord Salisbury.'
The nice question was referred to Lord Salisbury and to many other authorities, and finally to Lord Sydney, who wrote, from the Board of Green Cloth, 'that in 1849, at the Queen's Levee at Dublin Castle, the Roman Catholic Primate followed the Protestant Archbishop, but he was not a Cardinal. A fortiori I presume a Cardinal as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire would have precedence next to the Prince of Wales. It showed, however, extraordinary ignorance on the part of the Lord Steward to suppose that the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal Court were the same thing.' [Footnote: The story of how the question of precedence was settled in Manning's favour is given in detail in Mr. Bodley's _Cardinal Manning, and Other Essays_ (1912).]
'It was on February 12th that I received Sir Henry Ponsonby's letter announcing the approval of the Queen to the Prince serving on the Commission as an ordinary member under my chairmanship, and the Prince of Wales expressed his pleasure at the Queen's approval.'
'On February 22nd the members of the Cabinet present (at a meeting at the Foreign Office) discussed my proposal to put Miss Octavia Hill on my Royal Commission, no woman having ever sat on one; and Harcourt having refused to sign the Commission if it contained a woman's name, Mr. Gladstone, Kimberley, and Northbrook sided with me, and Hartington with Harcourt. Lord Granville said that he was with me on the principle, but