tremendous display, it was Mr. Davitt's fortune to come with his first
speech in Parliament. For hour after hour he had sate, very still, with
deeply-lined face, but with a restless and frequent twist of the heavy
dark moustache, that spoke of the intense nervous strain to which this
weary waiting was subjecting him. Davitt is a man whose face would stand
out in bold relief from any crowd of men, however numerous or
remarkable. He has a narrow face, with high cheek-bones, and the thick,
close black whiskers, beard and moustache, make him look almost as dark
as a Spaniard. The eyes are deep-set, brilliant, restless--with infinite
lessons of hours of agony, of loneliness, torture in all the million
hours which filled up his nine years of endless and unbroken gloom in
penal servitude. The frame is slight, well-knit--the frame of a sturdy
son of the people--kept taut and thin by the restless nervous soul
within. An empty sleeve hanging by his side tells the tale of work in
the factory in childhood's years, and of one of the accidents which too
often maim the children of the poor in the manufacturing districts of
England. The voice is strong, deep, and soft; the delivery slow,
deliberate, the style of the English or American platform rather than of
the Irish gathering by the green hillside.
[Sidenote: Dartmoor.]
Altogether, never did there stand before this British assembly in all
its centuries of history, a figure more interesting, more picturesque,
more touching, above all, more eloquent of a mighty transformation--of a
great new birth and revolution in the history of two nations. Go back in
memory to the day, when with cropped hair--with the broad-arrowed coat,
the yellow stockings--this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the
grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to
taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot--with the very
dregs and scum of our lowest social depths for companions and
colleagues--and then think of this same man standing up before the
supreme and august assembly where the might, sovereignty, power, and
omnipotence of this world-wide empire are centred, and holding it for
more than an hour and a half under a spell of rapt attention that almost
suggested the high-strung devotion of a religious service in place of a
raging political controversy--think of this contrast, and then bless the
day and the policy that have made possible such a transformation.
[Sidenote: Westminster.]
I cannot attempt to give all the strong points of a speech which
bristled with strong points at almost every turn. To the House its
entire character must have come as a surprise. The mass of members that
crowded every bench, and filled the vacancies which Ashmead Bartlett had
made--Mr. Gladstone sitting attentive on the Treasury Bench--Mr. Balfour
listening with evident friendliness and sympathy--all these were enough
to transport any orator into the realms of high stirring rhetoric, and
to attune the nerves to poetic and exalted flight. But Davitt's nerves
stood the test. Slowly, deliberately, patiently, he developed a case for
the Bill, of facts, figures, historical incident, pathetic and swift
pictures of Irish desolation and suffering, which would have been worthy
of a great advocate placing a heavy indictment. Now and then there was
the eloquence of finely chosen language--of a striking fact--even of a
touching personal aside--but, as a whole, the speech was a simple,
weighty, careful case against the Union--based on the eloquent
statistics of diminished population, exiled millions, devastated
homesteads.
[Sidenote: Tragic comedy.]
There were plenty of lighter strains to relieve the deadly earnestness
of a man who had thoroughly thought out his case. And, curiously enough,
these pleasant sallies nearly all had allusion to those tragic nine
years of penal servitude through which Davitt has passed. Mr. Dunbar
Barton, one of the Orange lawyers, had spoken of himself as likely to
spend the remainder of his days in penal servitude. Mr. Davitt put the
threat gently aside, with the assurance that the hon. and learned
gentleman would probably be one day on the bench, and that he would
advise him not to try to reach the bench by the dock. The same gentleman
had expressed a doubt whether any constitutional lawyer would hold that
he was guilty either of treason or treason felony, if he took up arms
against Home Rule after it had been passed by both Houses of Parliament.
"Would," said Mr. Davitt, with quiet pathos, "I had met such a
constitutional authority in the shape of a judge twenty-three long years
ago."
[Sidenote: A vulgar and caddish interruption.]
And, finally, what contributed to the marvellous effect of this speech
was its temper and one interruption. In all the speech there was not one
trace of the bitterness that must often have corroded that poor soul
during the nine years of living death--even the allusions to political
opponents of to-day were kindly and gentle. Above all things, the speech
was one--not merely of an Irish Nationalist, but of a true Democrat--as
desirous of the happiness of other nationalities and other peoples as of
his own. It was while every part of the House was listening to this
beautiful and touching speech, that a gentleman called Brookfield--one
of the most offensive of the narrow and malignant section of
Tories--rose and tried to trip Davitt up, by alleging that he was
reading his speech. I am told that Mr. Balfour sprang in anger from his
seat--there was a significant and a pained silence on the Tory
Benches--there was a loud shout of anger and disgust from the Liberal
and the Irish seats--with William O'Brien's voice shouting hoarsely
above the tempest, "The party of gentlemen!" The Speaker showed what he
thought, in that deadly quiet way with which he can administer a snub,
that will never be forgotten. It was all that was wanted to complete the
success of this wonderful speech.
[Sidenote: Sir John Rigby.]
Then came hand-shakings and clappings on the back, and a light in the
eyes of Irish members that told of a great step forward in the progress
of their cause. To a house thinned by the endless rhodomontade of a dull
Orangeman--with a style of elocution to which the House is unaccustomed,
and which has almost every fault delivery could have--the speech of Sir
John Rigby, the Solicitor-General, was one of the finest and weightiest
utterances delivered on the Bill. The massive head, the fine face, the
rugged sense and leonine strength in face and figure, lent force to a
criticism of extraordinary effectiveness on the attacks levelled against
the Bill. First, the Solicitor-General took up the wild and whirling
statement of one of the opponents of the Bill, and then coolly--as
though it were a pure matter of business--he put in juxtaposition the
enactments of the Bill, and the contrast was as laughter provoking with
all its deadly seriousness, as the conflict between the story of
Falstaff and the contemptuously quiet rejoinder of Prince Hal. Lord
Randolph was taken in hand; he was soon disposed of. Then Mr. Dunbar
Barton was crumpled up and flung away. Sir Edward Clarke ventured an
interruption; he was crushed in a sentence. It was an admirable specimen
of destructive criticism, and it hugely and palpably delighted Mr.
Gladstone.
[Sidenote: Mr. Asquith.]
Mr. Asquith had intended to speak on April 14th, evening, but the
portentous and prolix Courtney had shut him out, and he had to wait till
the following evening. The change was, perhaps, desirable, for Mr.
Asquith had thus the opportunity of addressing the House when it was
fresh, vital, and impressionable. In these long debates the evenings
usually became intolerably dull and oppressive. Though Mr. Asquith was
an untried man when he went into office, in two speeches he succeeded in
placing himself in the very front rank of the debaters and politicians
in the House. Let me say at once that the speech was a remarkable
triumph, and placed Mr. Asquith at a bound amid not only the orators,
but the statesmen of the House of Commons--the men who have nerve,
breadth of view, great courage, enormous resource.
[Sidenote: Joe's dustheap.]
One of the discoveries of the speech must have been particularly
unpleasant to Mr. Chamberlain. The gentleman from Birmingham has at last
found a man who does not fear him--who has a much finer mind--wider
culture--who has judgment, temper, and a vocabulary as copious and as
ready as that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. One had only to look at Mr.
Chamberlain throughout the speech to see how palpable, how painful this
discovery was--especially to a man to whom politics is nothing but a
mere conflict between contending rivalries and malignities. Mr.
Asquith--calm, self-possessed, measured--put Joe on the rack with a
deliberation that was sometimes almost cruel in its effectiveness and
relentlessness; and Joe was foolish enough to point the severity and
success of the attack by losing his self-control. When Mr. Asquith said
that Joe could find no better employment than that of "scavenging"--here
was a word to make Joe wince--"among the dustheaps" of past speeches,
Joe was a sight to see. A "scavenger"--this was the disrespectful way in
which those quotations were described which had often roused the Tory
Benches to ecstasies of delight. Joe was so angered that he could not
get over it for some time. "Dustheaps!" he was heard to be muttering
several times in succession, as if the word positively choked him.
Indeed, throughout Mr. Asquith's speech, whenever the allusions were
made to him, Joe was seen to be muttering under his teeth. It was the
running commentary which he made on the most effective attack that has
been uttered against him; it was the highest tribute to the severity and
success of the assailant.
[Sidenote: Limp Balfour.]
Badly as Mr. Chamberlain bore his punishment, Mr. Balfour was even
worse. It is seldom that the House of Commons has seen a more remarkable
or more effective retort than the happy, dexterous, delightful--from
the literary point of view, unsurpassable--parody which Mr. Asquith made
of Mr. Balfour's flagitious incitements to the men of Belfast. Mr.
Asquith put the case of Mr. Morley going down to a crowd in Cork, and
using the same kind of language. Mr. Balfour, in his speech, had over
and over again used the name of the Deity. "I pray God," said the pious
leader of the Tory party, as he addressed the Orangemen. When, in the
imaginary speech which Mr. Asquith put into the mouth of Mr. Morley, he
recurred again and again to the phrase, "I pray God," there was just the
least lifting of the eyes and lowering of the voice to the sanctimonious
level of the Pharisee which made this part of the speech not merely a
fine piece of oratory, but a splendid bit of acting. Mr. Balfour's
appearance during this portion of Mr. Asquith's speech was pitiable. His
face, with its pallor--look of abashed pain--was tell-tale of the inner
shame which he felt, as thus calmly, coldly, cruelly--with extraordinary
art, and amid a tempest of cheers--he was brought by his opponent face
to face with realities which lay underneath his bland and oily phrases.
[Sidenote: Another unmannerly interruption.]
In the midst of the calm and stately flow of Mr. Asquith's speech, while
the House, spellbound, listened in awe-struck and rapt silence,
suddenly, there was a commotion, a shout, then the roar of many voices.
The whole thing came upon the House with a bewildering and dumbfounding
surprise; it was as if someone had suddenly died, or some other sinister
catastrophe had occurred. In a moment, several Irish members--Mr. Swift
McNeill, Mr. Crilly, and others--were on their feet, shouting in accents
hoarse with anger, inarticulate with rage. The Speaker was also on his
feet, and, for a while, his shouts of "Order! Order!" failed to calm the
sudden, fierce cyclone. Above the din, voices were shouting, "Name!
Name!" with that rancorous and fierce note which the House of Commons
knows so well when passion has broken loose, and all the grim depths of
party hate are revealed. At last, it was discovered that Lord Cranborne
was the culprit, and that when Mr. Asquith, amid universal sympathy and
assent, was alluding to the beautiful speech of Mr. Davitt, this most
unmannerly of cubs had uttered the word, "Murderer."
[Sidenote: A whipped hound.]
If he had not been so unspeakably rude, vulgar, odious, and impertinent,
one might have almost felt sympathy for Lord Salisbury's son in the
position in which he found himself. His face is usually pale, but now it
had the deadly, ghastly, and almost green pallor of a man who is
condemned to die. But, amid all the palpable terror, the Cecil insolence
was still there, and Lord Cranborne declared that, though he had used
the phrase, he had not intended it for the House, and that it was true.
Since his relative, Lord Wolmer, made the lamest and meanest apology the
House of Commons had ever heard, there never had been anything to equal
this. The House groaned aloud in disgust and contempt; even his own side
was as abashed as when Brookfield sought to interrupt Mr. Davitt. The
Speaker, quietly, but visibly moved and disgusted, at once told the
insolent young creature that this was not sufficient, and that an
apology was due--to which the Cecil hopeling proceeded to do with as bad
a grace and in as odious a style as it was possible for it to be done.
Mr. Asquith's splendid self-control and mastery of the House bore the
ordeal of even this odious incident, and he wound up the speech with one
of the finest and most remarkable perorations which has ever been heard
in that great assembly. Calm, self-restrained, almost frigid in
delivery, chaste and sternly simple in language, Mr. Asquith's
peroration reached a height that few men could ever attain. The still
House sate with its members raised to their highest point of endurance,
and it was almost a relief when the stately flow came to an end, and men
were able to relieve their pent-up tide of feeling.
CHAPTER IX.
THE END OF A GREAT WEEK.
[Sidenote: Mr. Goschen.]
The Tories were not in good heart at the beginning of the week which saw
the second reading of the Home Rule Bill carried on April 21st, and
perhaps it was owing to this that they put up one of their very best
men. Mr. Goschen I have always held to be one of the really great
debaters of the House of Commons. It is true that he has almost every
physical disadvantage with which an orator could be cursed. His voice is
hoarse, muffled, raucous, with some reminiscences of the Teutonic
fatherland from which he remotely comes. His shortness of sight amounts
almost to a disability. Whenever he has anything to read he has to place
the paper under his eyes, and even then he finds it very difficult to
read it. His action is like that of a distracted wind-mill. He beats the
air with his whirling arms; he stands several feet from the table, and
moves backwards and forwards in this space in a positively distracting
manner. And yet he is a great debater.
[Sidenote: In Opposition.]
But Mr. Goschen, like every other orator of the Opposition, has fallen
on somewhat evil days, and is not at his very best now. "The world,"
said Thackeray long ago, "is a wretched snob, and is especially cold to
the unsuccessful." This applies to that portion of the world which
changes sides in the House of Commons according to the resolves of the
popular verdict. Mr. Goschen, then, is not seen at his best in these
days when all his arguments can receive the triumphant and unanswerable
retort of a majority in the division lobbies. But still, the speech of
Mr. Goschen on April 17th was an excellent one; it was really the first,
since the beginning of this debate, which struck me as giving something
to answer. Acute, subtle, a dialectician to his finger-tips, Mr. Goschen
is best as a critic, and as a bit of criticism, his attack on the Bill
was excellent. Mr. Morley found himself compelled for the first time for
days to take serious notes; here at last were points which it was
necessary to confront. After all the dreary platitudes of many days,
this was a mercy for which to be thankful.
[Sidenote: Randolph dull.]
Lord Randolph Churchill, rising on the following evening, was not at his
best. He has been passing through what Disraeli once called a campaign
of passion in the provinces; and his speeches have been full of the
wildest fury. But all the fire had become extinguished. When Lord
Randolph Churchill makes up his mind to be rational, few people in the
House of Commons can be more rational; but when he makes up his mind to
throw prudence, sense, and reserve to the winds, nobody can rise to such
heights and descend to such depths of wild, unreasonable, bellowing
Toryism--always, of course, excepting Ashmead-Bartlett. But when he is
rational he is often dull--when he is unreasonable he is often very
entertaining. The speech of April 18th was a rational speech--it was,
therefore, a dull one. Lord Randolph is not what he was. The voice which
was formerly so resonant has become muffled and sometimes almost
indistinct, and the manner has lost all the sprightliness which used to
relieve it in the olden days. The House of Commons is like the
Revolution--it often swallows its own children.
[Sidenote: Father and son.]
Mr. Chamberlain might have been seen in two very different characters in
the course of that same evening. He is not a soft man--amid sympathetic
sniggers from all the House, Mr. Morley at a later stage referred
sarcastically to the "milk of human kindness" which flowed so copiously
in his veins--but he is a man of strong and warm domestic affections. He
has the proud privilege of having in the House of Commons not only a
son, but one who, in many respects, seems the very facsimile of himself,
for the likeness between Mr. Austen Chamberlain and his father is
startlingly close. This likeness is heightened by the similarity of
dress--by the single eyeglass that is worn perennially in both cases,
and, to a certain extent, by the walk. When the son began to speak this
Tuesday night, there was even a stronger sense of the resemblance
between the two. The voice was almost the same, the gestures were the
same--the diction was not unlike--nearly all the tricks and mannerisms
of the elder man were reproduced by the younger. For instance, when he
is going to utter a good point, Mr. Chamberlain makes a pause--the son
does the same: when Mr. Chamberlain is strongly moved, and wishes to
drive home some fierce thrust, there is a deep swell in his otherwise
even voice, and there is the same in the voice of the son. Then there is
the same crisp, terse succession of sentences--altogether the likeness
is wonderful.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain pleased.]
It was pleasant, even to those who do not love Mr. Chamberlain either
personally or politically, to watch him during this episode. When the
son first stood up, the pallor of the face, the unsteadiness of the
voice, the broken and stumbling accents, told of the high state of
nervous strain through which he was passing, and it was easy to see that
the emotions of the son had communicated themselves to the father. Mr.
Chamberlain had his hat low down on his forehead so as to conceal his
face and its tell-tale excitement as much as possible. But it turned out
that he need not have been in the least alarmed. The speech of young Mr.
Chamberlain, for a maiden speech, was really wonderful. It was lucid,
well knit, pointed, cogent. Its delivery was almost perfect; it had the
true House of Commons air and manner. This young man will go far. I
shouldn't be surprised if he became in time even a better debater than
his father. His education, I should say, is broader and deeper, his
mind finer, and his temper sweeter and more under control. During the
latter portion of the speech his father's face had a smile, pleasant to
behold; one could forgive him a great deal of his hardness, rancour,
even ferocity, for this manifestation--open and frank--of kindly
human-feeling.
[Sidenote: And angry.]
But, as I have said, there was another manifestation of Mr. Chamberlain
in the course of this very evening. Shortly before ten o'clock Mr.
Morley rose to make his reply. It was twenty minutes to ten when he
rose. It was close upon midnight when he sate down. And yet there wasn't
one word too many--indeed, Mr. Morley might have gone even longer
without wearying the House, for it was a speech which, although not free
from some of the besetting weaknesses of his oratory, was an eloquent,
impressive and convincing addition to the great argument on the Irish
question. Giving himself a certain freedom--departing from the
over-severe self-restraint which he so often imposes upon
himself--abandoning the frigidity of manner which conceals from so many
people his warmth of heart and of temper, he spoke with a go, a fire and
a force of attack not very common with him. Above all things the speech
gave the impression of one who spoke from the inside--who knew the
subjects of which he was talking, not merely in their general aspects,
but in their dark recesses--in their latent passion--in their awful and
appalling depths. It was while this fine speech was being delivered that
the other and the darker side of Mr. Chamberlain's nature was to be
seen. There are no such enmities as those between relatives or former
friends; and so it apparently is between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.
Morley--though it should be said most of the bitterness of the hatred
seems to be on the one side. While Mr. Morley is speaking there is a
frown on the face of Mr. Chamberlain that never lifts. Now and then, the
sulky and sullen and frowning silence was broken by an observation
evidently of bitter scornfulness addressed to Sir Henry James, and once
there seemed even to be an angry interchange between him and Mr.
Courtney because Mr. Courtney had ventured to put a civil question to
Mr. Morley. Mr. Morley had to address a few words of hearty
congratulation to Mr. Austen Chamberlain on his very successful speech.
He spoke with the slowness, hesitation, and effort that betrayed a
certain glimpse of the pain and grief that the political separations of
life produce in all but the hardest and coldest natures. It was a
graceful, generous, feeling tribute, but it did not soften Mr.
Chamberlain--the same steady unlifting frown was there--the same
"puss"--and when Mr. Morley had finished, there was a repetition of the
evidently scornful comment of Mr. Chamberlain.
[Sidenote: A hit at Mr. Chamberlain.]
But Mr. Morley may well bear all this, for he was able to strike some
very effective blows at Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain for a
hard-hitter has a wonderfully keen appreciation and a very sensitive
skin for anything like a dexterous hit at his own expense. Alluding to
the favourite argument of Mr. Chamberlain, that the speeches of Irish
members in the past may have been deplorable, Mr. Morley asked were they
the only people who had made such speeches? They might be repentant
sinners, but who so great a prodigal as the member for Birmingham? The
loud and triumphant laughter which this produced at the expense of Mr.
Chamberlain, was followed up by another even more victorious thrust. The
Irish members had abandoned prairie value in the same way as the member
for Birmingham had surrendered the doctrines of "ransom" and natural
rights. Mr. Chamberlain was very uncomfortable, and soon showed it by an
interrupting cheer. "Seriously," said Mr. Morley, passing from this
lighter, but very effective vein. And then he was interrupted by his
foe. "Hear, hear," shouted Mr. Chamberlain in that deep, raucous, fierce
note, in which he reveals the fierceness of his hatred, as though to say
that it was time for Mr. Morley to address himself to serious things.
[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton.]
So the debate proceeded during the earlier part of the week; as it
neared its close it increased in brilliancy, until in the last night it
went out in a blaze of splendour and glory. On the Thursday evening Mr.
Sexton was the speaker. He made a speech which was two hours and a half
in duration; it was in my opinion too long--I think that except in the
most exceptional cases no orator ought to speak more than half an hour.
And yet I would not have had the speech shorter by one second; and it is
a singular proof of the extraordinary command which this man holds over
the House of Commons that he kept its attention absolutely without a
moment's pause or cessation, during every bit of this tremendous strain
upon his attention. With the exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sexton is
the one man in the House who is capable of such a feat. This is largely
due not merely to his oratorical powers but to the extraordinary range
of his gifts. To the outside public--even to the House of Commons--he is
chiefly known by his great rhetorical gifts; but this is only a part,
and a small part, of his great mental equipment. His mastery over
figures in its firmness of grasp, its lightning-like rapidity, its
retentiveness, is almost as great as that of a professional calculator.
He has a judgment, cold, equable, far-seeing, and he has a humour that
is kindly but can also be scorching, and that has sometimes been deadly
enough to leave wounds that never healed.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's arithmetic.]
Perhaps not even Mr. Gladstone--certainly not Mr. Goschen--though he,
too, is a past master in figures--is as formidable and destructive a
gladiator in a fight over figures as Mr. Sexton; I pity any mortal who
gets into grips with him on that arena. Mr. Chamberlain was the unhappy
individual whom Mr. Sexton took in hand. Mr. Chamberlain has the
reputation of being a good man of business, he certainly was a most
successful one; and one would expect from him some power, at least, of
being able to state figures correctly. When the figures he had
presented to the country in a recent speech at Birmingham came under
analysis by Mr. Sexton, Mr. Chamberlain was exposed as a bungler as
stupid and dense as one could imagine. Mr. Chamberlain's mighty fabric
of a war indemnity of millions which the financial arrangements of this
Bill would inflict on England, melted before Mr. Sexton's
examination--palpably, rapidly, exactly as though it were a gaudy palace
of snow which the midsummer sun was melting into mere slush. The
cocksureness of Mr. Chamberlain makes his exposure a sort of comfort and
delight to the majority of the House; but still, the sense of his great
powers--of his commanding position as a debater--of his formidableness
as a political and Parliamentary enemy--made the House almost unwilling
to realize that he could be taken up and reprimanded, and birched by
anybody in the House with the completeness with which Mr. Sexton was
performing the task. Mark you, there was nothing offensive--there was
nothing even severe in the language of Mr. Sexton's attack. It was
simply cold, pitiless, courteous but killing analysis--the kind of
analysis which the hapless and fraudulent bankrupt has to endure when
his castles in the air come to be examined under the cold scrutiny of
the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court.
[Sidenote: Johnston of Ballykilbeg.]
A different tone was that which Mr. Sexton assumed to Mr. Johnston of
Ballykilbeg. Mr. Johnston, known to the outer world as a fire-eater of
the most determined order, inside the House is one of the most popular
of men, and with no section of the House is he more popular than with
those Irish Nationalists for whose blood he is supposed to thirst. With
gentle and friendly wit Mr. Sexton dealt with the case of Mr. Johnston
lining the ditch, declaring amid sympathetic laughter that the one
object of any Irish Nationalist who should meet the Orangemen in such a
position would be to take him out, even if he had to carry him to do so.
This reduction of the militancy of Ulster down to the level of playful
satire did much to relieve the House from the tension which the wild
language of Ulsteria had been calculated to provoke. Finally, there came
a beautiful peroration--tender, touching, well sustained--which was
listened to with breathless attention by the House, and produced as
profound a depth of emotion on the Liberal as even on the Irish Benches.
It was a peroration which lifted the great issue to all the heights of
solemnity, nobility, and supreme interest which it reaches in the mouth
of an eloquent orator. This tremendous speech--in its variety, in its
power--in its alternation of scathing scorn, copious analysis, playful
and gentle wit--was perhaps the most remarkable example in our times of
the sway which an orator has over the House of Commons.
[Sidenote: Mr. Carson.]
Mr. Carson was unfortunate in every sense in having to follow an oration
of such extraordinary power, and in having to follow it at that dread
hour when every member of the House of Commons is thinking of his
long-postponed dinner. The audience of "the Sleuth Hound of
Coercion"--as Mr. Carson is usually called--if it was select, was at the
same time, enthusiastic and appreciative. The little band of Unionists,
who get very cold comfort, as a rule, during these hard times, sate
steadily in their seats and eagerly welcomed and warmly cheered Mr.
Carson. Behind him, too, was a pretty strong band of Tories, and Mr.
Balfour sate throughout his entire speech listening to it with the
keenest and most evident appreciation. I have already described the
appearance of Mr. Carson and the impression he makes upon me; curiously
enough, this impression was confirmed by an experience that afternoon. I
happened to stand at a point of the House where I saw Mr. Carson from
profile as he was speaking. He had just got to the point where, with a
hoarse and deep note in his usually cold voice, he said to Mr. Morley
that if the Chief Secretary would move the omission of all the
"safeguards" from the Bill, he would vote along with him. There was a
tone almost of ferocity--the tone which conveyed all the rage and
despair of the Ascendency party in Ireland at the prospect of departing
power--the fury of the Castle official that saw the approaching
overthrow of all the powerful citadel of fraud and cruelty and wrong, of
which he had been one of the chief pillars. And as Mr. Carson was
uttering these words, I saw his profile--which often reveals more of
men's natures than the front face.
[Sidenote: A curious reminiscence.]
I suppose I shall be considered very fantastic--but do you know what I
thought of at that very moment? Some years ago, I stood at Epsom close
to the ropes and saw Fred Archer pass me as he swept like the whirlwind
to the winning-post in the last Derby he ever rode. Between Mr. Carson
and Mr. Fred Archer, especially in the profile, there is a certain and
even a close resemblance; the same long lantern face, the same sunken
cheeks, the same prominent mouth, the same skin dark as the gipsy's.
Never shall I forget the look on Fred Archer's face at the moment when I
saw it--it was but for a second--and yet the impression dwells
ineffaceable upon my memory and imagination. There was a curious mixture
of terror, resolve, hope, despair on the sunken cheeks that was almost
appalling--that look represented, embodied, summed up, as though in some
sudden glimpse of another and a nether world, all the terrible and awful
passions that stormed at the hearts of thousands in the great gambling
panorama all around. And there was something of the same look on the
profile of Mr. Carson--I could almost have pitied him and the party and
traditions and past which he represented as I saw its death-throes
marked on his suffering and fierce face.
But the speech of Mr. Carson was a clever one. Whatever the inner eye
may see in the depths of Mr. Carson's soul, to the outward eye he has an
appearance of a self-possession amounting almost to the offensive. He is
dressed almost as well as Mr. Austen Chamberlain, but, unlike Mr.
Chamberlain's promising lad--who still has much of the graceful shyness
and unsteady nerve of youth--Mr. Carson has all the coolness,
self-assertion, and hardness of the man who has passed through the
fierce and tempestuous conflicts of Irish life. Mr. Carson stands at the
box and leans upon it as though he had been there all his life; he
shoots his cuffs--to use a House of Commons' phrase--as dexterously and
almost as frequently as Mr. Gladstone; his points are stated slowly,
deliberately, with that wary and watchful look of the man who has been
accustomed to utter the words that consigned men to the horrors of
Tullamore. The speech of Thursday evening was a clever speech. It wasn't
broad--it wasn't generous--there was not a note in it above the tone of
the Crown Prosecutor, but it was subtle, well-reasoned--the blows were
happy, and told--and the Tories and Unionists were hugely and justly
delighted.
[Sidenote: The approach of the division.]
At last we are within sight of the end. Friday had come, and everybody
knew that this was the day which would see the division; and, after all,
the division was the event of the debate. In moments such as these you
can hear the quickened throb of the House of Commons, and if you fail to
notice it you soon learn it from the public. In the lobbies outside
stand scores of excited men and women begging, imploring,
threatening--using every means to get admission into the galleries to
witness a historic and immortal scene. Outside there is an even denser
crowd--ready to hoot or cheer their favourites. The galleries are all
crowded; peers stand on each other's toes, and patiently wait for hours.
About ten o'clock a man rushes into the lobby, and there is a movement
that looks most like a scare--as though the messenger were some herald
of disaster. In a few minutes you see a great stir and a curious
suppressed excitement in the lobby, and then you observe that the Prince
of Wales has come down to pay the House one of his rare visitations, and
to take that place above the clock which it is his privilege on these
occasions to occupy.
[Sidenote: Sir Henry James.]
The evening began with a speech of Sir Henry James for the Unionist
party--legal and dry as dust, but, towards the end, reaching a
height--or shall I say a depth--of fierce party passion. In language
more veiled, more deliberate, but as intelligible as Mr. Balfour's and
Lord Randolph Churchill's, the ex-Attorney-General called upon the
Orangemen to rise in rebellion. And, working himself up gradually from
the slow and funereal tones which he usually employs, Sir Henry James
wound up with a fierce, rude, savage gibe at Mr. Gladstone. Almost
shouting out the word, "Betrayed!" he pointed a threatening and scornful
finger at the head of Mr. Gladstone, and the Tories and Unionists
frantically cheered.
It was more than ten o'clock when Mr. Balfour rose. The assembly was
brilliant in its density, its character, its pent-up emotion, and in
many respects the speech was worthy of the occasion. He was wise enough
not to entangle himself in the inextricable network of clauses and
sub-sections. In broad, general lines he assailed the policy of the Bill
and of the Government, and now and then worked up his party to almost
frenzied excitement. The cheers of the Tories were taken up by the
Unionists, who thronged their benches with unusual density of
attendance. Now and then there were fierce protests from the Irish
Benches; but, on the whole, they were patient, self-restrained, and
silent.
[Sidenote: Gladstone.]
Mr. Gladstone, meantime, was down early, after but a short stay for
dinner. His face had that rapt look of reverie which it wears on all
these solemn and great occasions, and there was a slightly deadlier
pallor on the cheek. Mr. Balfour persisted with his speech to the bitter
end, and now and then Mr. Gladstone gave an impatient and anxious look
at the clock. The hands pointed to ten minutes to midnight before this
man of eighty-three was on his legs to address a crowded, hot, jaded
assembly in a speech that would wind up one of the great stages in the
greatest controversy of his life.
[Sidenote: The opening.]
We who love and follow him hold our breaths, and our nervous anxiety
rises almost to terror. Can he stand the strain?--will he break down
from sheer physical fatigue and the exhaustion of long waiting? The
first few notes of the deep voice are reassuring. The opening sentences
also have that full roll which nearly always is inevitable proof that
the great swelling opening will carry him on to the end; and yet there
is anxiety. Those who know him well cannot help observing that there is
just a slight trace of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety in the voice
and manner. He has evidently been put out by the lateness of the hour to
which the speech has been postponed. There is beside him a vast mass of
notes, and then, before he reaches that, there is the long speech to
which he has just listened, many points of which it is impossible to
leave unnoticed. And so the first ten minutes strike me as rather
poor--poor, I mean, for Mr. Gladstone--and my heart sinks. In memory I
go back to that memorable and unforgettable speech on that terrible
night in 1886, when, with dark and disastrous defeat prepared for him in
the lobbies the moment he sat down, Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech,
the echoes of whose beautiful tones--immortal and ineffaceable--still
linger in the ear. And now the moment of Nemesis and triumph has come,
and is he going to fall below the level of the great hour?
Ah! these fears are all vain. The exquisite cadence--the delightful
bye-play--the broad, free gesture--the lofty tones of indignation and
appeal--but, above all, the even tenderness, composure, and charity that
endureth all things--all these qualities range through this magnificent
speech. Thus he wishes to administer to Sir Henry James a well-merited
rebuke for his terrible and flagitious incitements, and, with uplifted
hands, and in a voice of infinite scorn, Mr. Gladstone turns on Sir
Henry, and overwhelms him, amid a tempest of cheers from the delighted
Irishry and Liberals.
[Sidenote: Chamberlain touched.]
But there is another and an even more extraordinary instance of the
power, grace, and mastery of the mighty orator. The G.O.M. had made an
allusion to that pleasant and promising speech of young Austen
Chamberlain, of which I have spoken already. Just by the way, with that
delightful and unapproachable lightness of touch which is the
unattainable charm of Mr. Gladstone's oratory, he alluded to the speech
and to Mr. Chamberlain himself. "I will not enter into any elaborate
eulogy of that speech," said Mr. Gladstone. "I will endeavour to sum up
my opinion of it by simply saying that it was a speech which must have
been dear and refreshing to a father's heart." And then came one of the
most really pathetic scenes I have ever beheld in the House of
Commons--a scene with that touch of nature which makes the whole akin,
and, for the moment, brings the fiercest personal and political foes
into the holy bond of common human feeling. Mr. Chamberlain is
completely unnerved--I should have almost said for the first time in his
life. I have seen this very remarkable man under all kinds of
circumstances--in triumph--in disaster--in rage--in composure--but never
before--not even in the very ecstasy of the hours of party
feeling--never before did I see him lose for a moment his
self-possession. First, he bowed low to Mr. Gladstone in gratitude--and
then the tears sprang to his eyes; his lips trembled painfully, and his
hand sprang to his forehead, as though to hide the woman's tears that
did honour to his manhood. And, curiously enough, the feeling did not
pass away. I know not whether Mr. Chamberlain was out of sorts on this
great night; but his manner was very different on this night of nights;
indeed, from what it has been at every other period of this fierce,
stormy Session. He cheered as loudly and as frequently as the best of
the rank and file--interrupted--in short, manifested all the passions of
the hour. But on that Friday night--specially after this allusion of
Mr. Gladstone's to his son--he sate silent, and in a far-off reverie.
But the Old Man still passes on his triumphant way--now gently, now
stormy--listened to in delight from all parts; and when he is now and
then interrupted by some small and rude Tory, dismissing the
interruption with delightful composure and a good humour that nothing
can disturb. It is only the marvellous powers of the man that can keep
the House patient, for it is pointing to one o'clock, and the division
has not yet come. But at last he is approaching the peroration. It has
the glad note of coming triumph--subdued, however, to the gentle tone of
good taste. It is delivered, like the whole of the speech, with
extraordinary nerve, and without any abatement of the fire, the
vehemence, the sweeping rapidity of the best days. And it ends in notes,
clear, resonant--almost like a peal of joy-bells.
[Sidenote: The division.]
Then there are the shouts of "Aye" and "No," with "Agreed, agreed!" from
some Irish Benches--a humorous suggestion that highly tickles everybody.
Mr. Gladstone is almost the last to enter from the lobby of the
majority. Alone, slowly, with pale face, he walks up the floor. The
significance of the great moment, the long years of struggle, of heroic
courage, of inflexible temerity, of patient and splendid hope, all this
rushes tumultuously to the minds of his friends and followers, and, in a
second, without a word of warning or command, the Liberals and the Irish
have sprung to their feet, and, underneath their cheers--their waving
hats, their uplifted forms--Mr. Gladstone passes through to his seat as
under a canopy.
At last, Tom Ellis, the Junior Liberal Whip, quickly comes up the
floor--the paper is handed to Mr. Marjoribanks--this announces we have
won--a good cheer, but short, for we want to know the numbers--and then
they are read out.
For the second reading 347
Against 304
The majority is 43. The Lord be praised! we have polled all our men! And
then more cheers--taken up outside in the deeper bellow of the big
crowd, and then more waving of hats and another great reception to Mr.
Gladstone. And so, as the streaks of day rose on this hour of Ireland's
coming dawn, we went to our several homes.
CHAPTER X.
THE BUDGET, OBSTRUCTION, AND EGYPT.
[Sidenote: Sir William.]
Sir William Harcourt, on April 24th, had the double honour of speaking
before the smallest audience and making the best Budget speech for many
years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has two manners. He can be as
boisterous, exuberant, and gay, as any speaker in the House, and he can
also be as lugubrious as though his life had been spent in the service
of an undertaker. He was in the undertaker mood this evening. Slowly,
solemnly, sadly, he unfolded his story of the finances of the country.
He had taken the trouble to write down every word of what he had to
say--an evil habit to which he has adhered all his life. But,
notwithstanding these two things--which are both, to my mind, capital
defects in Parliamentary speaking--Sir William put his case with such
extraordinary lucidity, that everybody listened in profound attention to
every word he uttered; and when he sate down, he was almost overwhelmed
with the chorus of praise which descended on his head from all quarters
of the House.
Sir William Harcourt imitated most Chancellors of the Exchequer, in
keeping his secret to the latest possible moment. Like a good dramatist
also, he arranged his figures and the matter of his speech so well that
the final solution became inevitable, and the final solution, of course,
was the addition of a penny to the income-tax. The debate which followed
the Budget speech was quiet, discursive, friendly to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Mr. Picton is a formidable man to Chancellors of the
Exchequer--for he has very strong ideas of reform--especially on the
breakfast-table; but Mr. Picton is rational as well as Radical; and he
cordially acknowledged the duty of postponing even the reforms on which
Radicals have set their hearts until more convenient times and seasons.
[Sidenote: Belfast.]
It was after midnight when a very serious bit of business took place.
The House gets to know beforehand when anything like serious debate is
going to take place--even though there be no notice. Accordingly, in
spite of the lateness of the hour, the House was pretty full, and there
was a preliminary air of expectation and excitement. One of the iron
rules of the House of Commons is that the Speaker cannot leave the chair
until a motion for the adjournment of the House has been carried. This
is always proposed by the senior Government Whip. The motion is usually
carried in dumb show, and with that mumble in which business is carried
through in the House when there is no opposition. But it is one of the
ancient and time-honoured privileges of the House of Commons to raise
almost any question on the motion for the adjournment of the House. The
reason, I assume, is that the representatives of the people--when about
to separate--thought in the olden days that it ought to be their right
to raise any question whatsoever, lest the king in their absence should
take advantage of the situation. Many of the rules of the
House--including several which lend themselves to obstruction--are due
to this feeling of constant vigilance and suspicion towards the Crown.
Mr. Sexton is one of the men whose life is centred in the House of
Commons. He will attend to no other business, except under the direst
pressure--he has no other interests--though he used to be one of the
greatest of readers, and still can quote Shakespeare and other
masterpieces of English literature better than any man in the House
except Mr. Justin McCarthy. Thus, when he rose after midnight, he had
in his notes before him a perfectly tabulated account of the riots in
Belfast, so that every single fact was present to his mind. The story he
had to tell is already known--the attacks on Catholic workmen--on
Catholic boys--on Catholic girls--by the sturdy defenders of law,
loyalty, and order in Belfast. It was not an occasion for strong
speech--the facts spoke with their silent eloquence better than any
tongue could do. The business was all done very quietly--it had the
sombre reticence of all tragic crises; everybody felt the importance of
the affair too deeply to give way to strong manifestation of feeling.
But there were significant and profound, though subdued, marks of
feeling on the Liberal Benches; and everybody could see what names were
in the minds of everybody.
[Sidenote: Mr. Asquith as leader.]
Mr. Asquith was for the moment the leader of the House. Though he has
still some of the ingenuous shyness of youth--though he is modest with
all his honours--though he has charmed everybody by the utter absence of
swagger and side in his dazzling elevation--there is a ready
adaptability about Mr. Asquith to a Parliamentary situation, which is as
astonishing as it is rare in men who have spent their lives in the
atmosphere of the law courts. The aptitude with which the right word
always comes to his lips--his magnificent composure, and, at the same
time, his power of striking the nail right on the head and right _into_
the head--all these things come out on an occasion such as that of April
24th. Very quietly, but very significantly, he told the story of the
riots; and very quietly and very significantly he spoke of the
responsibility of the Salisburys, and the Balfours, and the Jameses,
whose wild and wicked words had led to this outburst of medieval
bigotry.
[Sidenote: Mr. Dunbar Barton.]
Mr. Dunbar Barton made a valiant but vain attempt to stem the tide
against him, but he, like every other Unionist, was weighted down by the
feeling that the Orangemen were doing immense service to the cause of
Home Rule by their brutality. However, the fumes of Unionist oratory
seem to have ascended to the heads of all the excitable young men of the
Tory party. Mr. Dunbar Barton, personally, is one of the gentlest of
men; his manners are kind and good-natured enough to make him a
universal favourite--even with his vehement Nationalist foes; and he
speaks with evident sincerity. But he had so worked himself up that he
babbled blithely of spending a portion of his days in penal
servitude--talked big about a mysterious organization which was being
got ready in Ulster, and declared that the day would come when he would
stand by the side of the Orangemen in the streets of Belfast. He was
listened to for the most part in silence, until he tripped into an
unseemly remark about Mr. Gladstone, when the much-tried Liberals burst
into an angry protest.
[Sidenote: Mr. Arnold Forster.]
Very different was Mr. Arnold Forster. I must be pardoned if, as an
Irishman, I always see something genial and not wholly unlovely even in
the most violent Irish enemy. We all like Johnston of Ballykilbeg--most
of us rather like Colonel Saunderson, and Mr. Dunbar Barton is decidedly
popular. But this Arnold Forster--with his dry, self-complacent,
self-sufficient fanaticism--is intolerable and hateful. He never gets up
without making one angry. There is no man whose genius would entitle him
to half the arrogant self-conceit of this young member. Acrid, venomous,
rasping, he injures his own cause by the very excess of his gall and by
the exuberance of his pretension. He also saw that the riots would do no
good, and he hinted darkly of what he called "ordered resistance,"
whatever that means. But, on the whole, the advocates of the Orangemen
made a very poor show.
[Sidenote: Tory obstruction.]
The Tories thus early developed the policy of preventing the Government
passing any Bill--English or Irish--good or bad. Whenever a good English
Bill stood as the first order--a Bill which they did not dare to
oppose--they found some excuse for moving the adjournment of the House.
This is a privilege which was intended to be used very rarely, but in
the course of the present Session it has been very freely resorted
to--especially when it has afforded a chance of keeping off good
Government business. On Tuesday, April 25th, the excuse given was that
Mr. Bryce had been guilty of political partisanship in adding a batch of
Liberals to the Bench in Lancashire over the head of Lord Sefton--the
Tory or Unionist Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Mr. Legh, a young,
silent, and retiring Tory member, began the attack, and did so in a very
neat, well-worded, and pretty little speech. Mr. Hanbury--who is making
his fame as a champion obstructive--followed this up, and Mr. Curzon
addressed the House in his superior style. Mr. Bryce was able to blow to
pieces the fabric of attack which had been so laboriously erected
against him by stating a few facts, of which these may be given as a
fair specimen. When Mr. Bryce came into office, of the borough
magistrates in Lancashire 507 were Unionists and only 159 were Liberals.
On the county bench there were 522 Unionists and 142 Liberals. This was
a crushing reply, and an even more satisfactory retort came in the shape
of the division, when 260 voted for the Government, and only 186
against.
[Sidenote: Tommy "Burt."]
Nearly three hours of precious public time had been wasted over this
wretched business, and at last, for the third or fourth time, the debate
was resumed on the second reading of the Employers' Liability Bill. An
amendment of Mr. Chamberlain's had been the obstacle which stood in the
way of the Bill all this time. After the debate had gone on for hours,
Mr. Chamberlain got up and declared that his amendment had served its
purpose--an awkward way of putting it, which the Liberals were not slow
to take up. The debate was made remarkable by the first speech of any
importance made by Mr. Burt since he became a member of the Ministry.
Mr. Burt is the most popular of members, and there was a ring of genuine
delight in the welcome given to the honest, modest, genuine working man
standing at the Treasury Bench, and symbolising the revolution of the
times. Mr. Burt spoke ably and well, but it was in a foreign
tongue--which it takes a little time for even a quick linguist to
understand. This Northumbrian burr is the strongest accent in the House;
even the broadest Scotch is less difficult to catch. It is curious how
the different parts of the country betray themselves by their speech.
There are Scotchmen whom it is not easy to follow, and there are very
few of them who speak with anything like an English accent. Even the
most fluent of the Welshmen speak with a certain hesitation, betraying
their bilingual infancy and youth. The Irish have as many accents nearly
as there are members. The Northumbrian burr, however, is a tongue apart.
It has the pleasantness of every foreign tongue, and since Mr. Joseph
Cowen left Parliamentary life, Mr. Burt is the only member who speaks it
in its pristine purity. The Tories were closured finally, though they
had their revenge by preventing the Bill from going to the Grand
Committee, and the work of justice is a little longer postponed.
[Sidenote: Mr. Goschen playful.]
On Thursday, April 27th, the debate began on Sir William Harcourt's
Budget; and it found Mr. Goschen in an unusually playful mood. He had a
task for which his talents eminently fitted him. Irresolute, timid,
changeable, he is the very worst man in the world for constructive
legislation; but give him the opportunity of criticising what somebody
else has proposed, and he is in his real element, and is, perhaps, the
very best man in the House of Commons. There wasn't much to criticise in
the Budget of Sir William Harcourt from the Tory point of view. Finding
himself with a deficit the Liberal leader was unable to go in for any
startling novelty, especially in a Session when everything is to be
opposed in order that Home Rule may be defeated. But one would have
thought that this would have delighted the timid and conservative soul
of Mr. Goschen. Not a bit of it. Taking cleverly the rather auroral
promises of the election period, Mr. Goschen contrasted all these hopes
and glowing prospects with the thin and meagre fare of Sir William's
Budget. It was very well done--full of unwonted fire, of biting and
effective raillery and of excellent party hits; it lit up for a brief
space the sombreness which has fallen so completely on the Tory Benches
in this year of wails and lamentations.
[Sidenote: Sir William as an early Christian.]
But the debate soon relapsed under a soporific speech from Sir John
Lubbock, who made an insinuating proposal to open a discussion on Home
Rule in the midst of the debate on the Imperial Budget. Sir William was
a delight during these proceedings. Everybody knows that he has both a
warm heart and a warm temper, and there have been times when the
collisions between himself and Mr. Goschen have seemed to indicate a
violence of personal as well as of party antagonism. But the duty of
great ministers is to practise the scriptural principle of turning the
other cheek to the smiter. It is wonderful, indeed, to see how humanity
can attune itself to a situation. The most violent and vehement
free-lance below the gangway sobers down in office to politeness, and
peace with all men of good or bad will. Sir William, sitting on the
Treasury Bench that night--beneath the wild tirade of Mr. Goschen--under
the dreary drip of Sir John Lubbock--was a sight that a new Addison
might show to his child; not that he might see how a Christian might
die, but how a great Christian official could suffer with all the
patience of silent and suffering merit. There was a look of almost
dazzling and beatific sanctity on Sir William's face that was perfectly
delightful to behold. And when he got up to reply to Mr. Goschen and to
Sir John Lubbock, whither had departed that splendid rotundity of
voice--that resonant shout of triumph or of defiance? Sir William coo'd
gently as the white-feathered dove; and the Tory Benches, which had been
ebullient with excitement a few moments before, could not find it in
their hearts to do other than listen reverently to this good and holy
man expostulating with heathen foes. And thus the first resolution of
the Budget got quietly through, which was exactly what the Chancellor of
the Exchequer wanted; whereupon there might have been observed, perhaps,
by a close looker-on, a sinking of one of Sir William's eyelids, which
might have suggested in a lesser mortal the wink of the man who takes
off the mask when the comedy is over. Sir William is a splendid artiste.
[Sidenote: A great night.]
It was probably under the influence of Sir William that this turned out
to be the greatest and best night the Government had had so far. The
Railway Servants' Bill got through its third reading amid cheers, and
then, before it knew where it was, the House found itself actually in
the same night discussing a third Ministerial measure--the Scotch
Fisheries Bill. It is one of the privileges of Scotland that nobody
takes the least interest in her measures outside her own
representatives, and that even they are sombre and joyless in the
expression of their delight. The demand for Scotch Home Rule does not
come assuredly from the intervention of English or Irish speech. I have
never seen the House with more than a score or two of members when a
Scotch question is under discussion, and on the rare occasions on which
a Southron does dare to intrude upon the sacred domain, it is with the
most shamefaced looks. And so Sir George Trevelyan and his Scotch
friends were allowed to have their nice little tea-party without any
interruption, and the Bill got very nicely through. Thus ended a
remarkable night.
[Sidenote: The bullet in Downing Street.]
And now I come to the point which, after all, had been the most
interesting during the week, and which, though rarely mentioned, was in
everybody's mind. It was on the Thursday evening that Mr. Sexton got up
quietly to ask whether the reports published in the evening papers were
true, that a man had been arrested the previous night in Downing Street,
who had apparently intended to attempt the assassination of the Prime
Minister. There was death-like stillness all over the House as Mr.
Sexton put his question--picking his words slowly and deliberately. If
men were not so anxious and so shocked there might have been some
demonstration of the vehement anger which was felt in so many breasts as
Mr. Sexton brought out the words which put in collocation in the mind of
the unfortunate lunatic the idea of attempting to kill Mr. Gladstone,
and the phrase of Sir Henry James during the debate on the Home Rule
Bill. But feeling was too intense and solemn for outspoken or loud
utterance, and Mr. Sexton was allowed to put his question to the end
without any interruption from the intensely excited and profoundly
thrilled assembly. This is one of the curiosities of Parliamentary and
British nature--that the moments of tensest feeling are so often those
which, to a stranger, would appear listless, indifferent, impassive. Mr.
Asquith spoke in tones suitable to the temper of the assembly. This was
a very grave matter, he said; but it was for the moment before the
courts of law, and his lips were sealed. And so the subject dropped.
[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone.]
The people were asking themselves what would happen, when Mr. Gladstone
entered the House; but if there had been any desire to mark the
occasion, he himself prevented it. He dropped more quietly into his seat
than usual, and at the moment when, to a thin House, Sir William was
giving one of those gentle and beatific answers to which I have already
alluded. To judge by Mr. Gladstone's quietness of entrance, nothing
unusual had happened to him, and he himself had declined even to talk
about the matter. And yet there was a certain look as of reverie on his
face--as though of a man who had looked into that dark and hideous abyss
called Death. He had not been looking very well for some days, and
perhaps there was not--though imagination saw it--a deadlier pallor than
usual on the face. But it was only when he was sitting on the deserted
bench beside Sir William Harcourt that one had an opportunity of
detecting any difference between his usual appearance and his
appearance at that particular moment. The minute he had any part to take
in the proceedings of the House, he was just as alert, cheerful,
self-composed as ever. This wonderful man is as much a miracle
physically as mentally. The giant intellect is backed by a steady nerve,
the perfect mind by the perfect body. And thus he is able to go through
trials, dangers, fatigues, which would destroy any ordinary man, as
though nothing had occurred. During this week, indeed, he was especially
playful. On the Tuesday night, when the onslaught was being made on Mr.
Bryce, Sir Henry James spoke of Lord Sefton as being a strong Liberal.
Mr. Gladstone uttered a quiet, gentle, deprecatory "Oh!" whereupon Sir
Henry James reiterated his statement with a look of surprise and shock.
Mr. Gladstone didn't depart from his attitude of gentle and almost
plaintive remonstrance. He waved his hand mildly, and with a smile, and
Sir Henry James was allowed to proceed to the solemn end of his solemn
harangue.
[Sidenote: A visit to the Lords.]
It is not often that a rational man takes the trouble of paying a visit
to the House of Lords. But that assembly was certainly worth a visit on
May 1st. When the fight in Woodford, County Galway, was at its height,
and everybody was repeating the name of Lord Clanricarde, people began
to ask if there were ever such a person, or if he were not merely the
creation of some morbid imagination--desirous of conjuring up a human
bogey for the purpose of demonstrating the iniquities of Irish
landlordism. The story on the estate which he owned, and whose destinies
he controlled, was that, on one occasion, a strange spectral figure had
been seen following the coffin of the old Clanricarde to the tomb of his
fathers; that the figure had disappeared as suddenly and as noiselessly
as it had come; that it had not reappeared even on the solemn occasion
when again the historic and century-old vaults of the family graveyard
had opened to receive the late lord's wife and the existing lord's
mother. Writing his missives from afar--invisible, unapproachable,
unknown--or known, rather, only by harsh refusal--by dogged, obdurate
rejection of all terms--save the full pound of flesh--not even rendered
human by passionate and eloquent outburst of remonstrance, but
represented by thin, brief, business-like and curt notes as of a very
crusty solicitor--such Lord Clanricarde appeared to the imaginations of
the people of the district of which he was almost the supreme master.
There were riots--fierce conflicts extending over days--then dreary
sentences of lengthy imprisonments, with gaol tragedies; but still this
strange, dry, inarticulate, obstinate figure remained immutable, always
invisible, unapproachable, obdurate, spectral. Even the Tory leaders
were disgusted and wearied, and Mr. Balfour was careful, in the very
crisis and agony of his fight with the National League, to disavow all
sympathy with the strange being that was bringing to his assistance all
the mighty resources of an Empire's army, an Empire's exchequer, and an
Empire's overwhelming power to crush in blood, in the silence of the
cell and the deeper silence of the tomb, all resistance to his imperious
will.
[Sidenote: Entry of a ghost.]
It must have been with something of a shock that the House of Lords,
with all its well-trained and high-bred self-control, found that this
curious and fateful figure was within its gates. Probably, to scarcely
half-a-dozen of his colleagues and fellow-peers, was this figure
anything but a strange and unexpected incursion from the dim ghost-land,
in which, hermit-like, he seems to dwell. Indeed, the Marquis of
Londonderry was careful to explain that he had no personal acquaintance
with the man whose case he was defending against the action of the
Commission presided over by Mr. Justice Mathew. And it was easy to see,
that Lord Clanricarde was a stranger, and a very lonely one, too, in
that assembly in which he is entitled to sit and vote on the nation's
destinies. On a back seat, on the Liberal side of the House, silent,
forlorn, unspeaking and unspoken to, he sat throughout the long and
tedious debate in which he was a protagonist. There was, indeed,
something shocking to the sense--shocking in being so surprising--that
this should be the figure around which one of the fiercest and most
tragic political struggles of our time should have surged. He is a man
slightly above the middle height, thin in face and in figure. Somehow or
other, there is a general air about him that I can only describe by the
word shabby--I had almost ventured on the term ragged. The clothes hang
somewhat loosely--are of a pattern that recalls a half century ago--and
have all the air of having been worn until they are positively
threadbare. Altogether, there is about this inheritor of a great
name--of vast estates--of a title that in its days was almost kingly--an
air that suggests a combination between the recluse and the poor man of
letters, who makes his home in the reading-room of the British Museum.
It was also a peculiarity of the position that he seemed an almost
unwelcome visitant, even to those who had to defend him. There was an
awful pause when he rose, silently and so spectre-like, from his seat in
the dim land of the back benches, and passed to the seat immediately
behind the Marquis of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury made a very vivid and
amusing speech in the course of the evening, in defence of Lord
Clanricarde and in an attack on Mr. Justice Mathew; but observers
thought they saw a look of palpable discomfort pass across his face at
the approach of the Marquis of Clanricarde. The Lord of Woodford handed
to Lord Salisbury a little bundle of papers; in the distance, the bundle
had an inexpressibly shabby look--the look one might expect on the
bundle which some Miss Flit of the Legislature would bring every day, as
the record of her undetermined claim. Altogether, this appearance of
Lord Clanricarde in the glimpses of the moon, rather added to the
mysterious atmosphere in which he loves to live.
[Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke.]
In the meantime, a very interesting debate was going on in the House of
Commons. I have already remarked that Sir Charles Dilke has, in an
extremely short time, re-established that mastery over the ear and the
mind of the House of Commons which he used to exercise with such
extraordinary power in the old days before misfortune overcame him. It
is a power and mastery derived from a perfect House of Commons mind. Sir
Charles Dilke, doubtless, has written on many subjects outside mere
politics; but in politics his whole heart and soul are concentrated.
There is no man in the House of Commons so thoroughly political. It
would be bewildering to give even the heads of the subjects on which he
has written and in which he is profoundly learned. He has written about
our Army--he could tell you everything about every army corps in the
German Army--he knows all about every fortress on the French
frontier--he can convey to you a photographic picture of every great
public man on the Continent--he would be able in the morning to take
charge of the Admiralty, and over and on top of all this knowledge he
could tell you every detail of the law of registration, of parochial
rating, of vestry work, and all the rest of that curious technical, dry,
detailed information which raises the ire of parish souls, and forms the
fierce conflicts of suburban ratepayers.
[Sidenote: Egypt.]
It could be seen after he had been five minutes on his legs that Sir
Charles Dilke was about to give on Egypt a speech which would suggest
this sense of easy and complete mastery of all the facts, and that,
therefore, the speech would be a thorough success. And so it was--so
successful, indeed, that it was listened to with equal attention by the
Tories as by the Liberals, though nothing could be more abhorrent to the
Tory imagination than the proposal by Sir Charles Dilke of an early
evacuation of Egypt. Perhaps their indignation was a little mitigated by
the fact which Sir Charles Dilke brought out with such clearness, that
Lord Salisbury was just as deeply committed to the eventual evacuation
of Egypt as any other public man.
[Sidenote: An awkward situation.]
It was curious to watch the House of Commons during this debate. There
is no doubt that a very awkward situation was before that assembly. On
the one hand, there were the interests of the country--as they are
understood by the Tory party; on the other, there was a very difficult
party situation--a situation difficult enough to tempt even the most
patriotic, self-denying, and impartial Tory to gaze on the Liberal
leaders opposite with a certain amount of mischievous curiosity. How was
Mr. Gladstone going to make a speech which would fulfil those extremely
diverse purposes? First, leave the door open for a continued stay for
some time longer, and at the same moment for final evacuation; secondly,
please Sir Wm. Harcourt on the one side, and Lord Rosebery on the other;
thirdly, keep together a party which ranges from the strong foreign
policy of moderate men to the ultra-nonintervention of Mr. Labouchere.
Mr. Gladstone had, however, to do a good deal more than this. For it was
easy to see from the condition of the Tory seats, and especially from
the attitude of the front Opposition Bench, that party instinct had
suggested that this was just one of the occasions on which the
Government might be put in a very tight place. Let Mr. Gladstone say
something which would satisfy Mr. Labouchere, and immediately Mr.
Goschen would be down upon him--the late Chancellor of the Exchequer had
the air of a man who was thoroughly primed for damaging criticism and
ardent attack--with a philippic charging him with abandoning the most
sacred interests of the country. Indeed, it was quite evident that Mr.
Gladstone had to face a very ugly little question, and that his
political foes had come down in full force to enjoy the spectacle of a
Christian flung to the lions.
[Sidenote: A historic triumph.]
I cannot tell you how it was done--I have read the speech in the
_Times_ report--and I know that some people brought away from the speech
no other impression than that it was delivered in a low tone of voice,
and was not easily grasped; but the fact is, that judged by results this
little speech, not much above half-an-hour in duration, was one of the
most extraordinary triumphs of Mr. Gladstone's long oratorical life.
What constitutes the greatest of all Parliamentary triumphs? It is that
without abandoning your own principles, you shall so state a case that
even your bitterest political opponents will rest contented with, and be
ready to accept, your speech as the expression of their views. And this
is just what occurred. Mr. Goschen, I have said, came down to the House
chock-full of attack--I have, indeed, heard that he has confessed to
having been prepared to make a speech of some length. On the other side
of the House there sat Labby--full of that dogged, immutable Radicalism
which will make no distinction between Liberal and Tory when his
principles of foreign policy are at stake; and he was ready to pounce
upon the Prime Minister if he had detected any departure from the narrow
and straight path which leads to Radical salvation. In the background
were the dim forces of Unionism, more eager--perhaps even more
reckless--in readiness to attack Mr. Gladstone than his opponents on the
opposite benches. And behind them and above them, in all parts of the
House, was that countless host of busybodies, bores and specialists who
see in Egypt an opportunity of airing fads, fanaticism, or vanities.
[Sidenote: A great eirenicon.]
The paper which contained the list of pairs for the night was crammed
with the names of members from both sides, who, anticipating a debate of
hours' duration, had wisely resolved to spend the interval between the
motion and a division in the bosoms of their families--miles away from
the floor of the House of Commons. The Whips had prepared their
followers for a big division somewhere about midnight. And, lo! on all
this vast and turbulent sea of conflicting waves the Prime Minister
poured half an hour of oratorical oil, and the waters were stilled, and
the great deep at perfect rest. In other words, Mr. Goschen threw away
his notes; Labby advised Sir Charles Dilke not to go to a division; the
debate had not begun and then it was over, and all that followed was
addressed to a House empty of everybody. The Old Man--dexterous, calm,
instinctive--had spoken the right word to meet every view, and there was
nothing more for anybody to say. There is nobody else in the House who
can do it; when his voice is stilled, the greatest of all Parliamentary
secrets will die with him--the secret of saying the exact thing in the
most difficult and embarrassing of situations. To the outside public,
perhaps, this speech appeared nothing remarkable, and the allusions to
it I have seen in the press have been few and perfunctory. You should
hear House of Commons' opinion; you should listen to Unionists who hate
him, to Tories who distrust him, to know what an estimate was formed of
this marvellous speech by House of Commons' opinion.
[Sidenote: The triumph of the miners.]
On the Wednesday, again, Mr. Gladstone gave another example of his
extraordinary dexterity. The miners had come down in full force to
demand a legal eight hours. Sam Woods, of the Ince Division, on the one
side, John Burns, of the Battersea Fields, on the other, frowned on the
Old Man and bade him surrender. Behind him sat the great Princes of
Industry--silent, but none the less militant, fierce, and minatory;
opposite him was Lord Randolph Churchill, ready to raise the flag of
Social Democracy and to wave it before the advancing masses against the
Liberal party. Out of this difficulty, Mr. Gladstone rescued himself
with all that perfect, that graceful ease which he most displays when
situations are most critical. The debate was further made remarkable by
a speech from Lord Randolph Churchill, who, amid the grim and ominous
silence of the Tory Benches, thundered against Capital and Capitalists
in tones for which Trafalgar Square or the Reformers' Tree would be the
appropriate environment; and then came the remarkable division, with 279
for the Bill and 201 against.
[Sidenote: Hull Again.]
This was not the only victory which Labour was able to win in the course
of this week. The House presented a very notable spectacle on May 4th.
It was only by the aid of the Irish members, it is true, that Mr.
Havelock Wilson was able to get the necessary forty to procure the
adjournment of the House for the discussion of the Hull strike; but
then, when Mr. Wilson was enabled to bring the subject before the House,
he was listened to with an attention almost painful in its seriousness
and gravity. Nothing, indeed, shows more plainly the vast social and
political changes of our time, than this transformation in the attitude
of the House of Commons towards labour questions. There was a time--even
in our own memory--when such a question as the strike at Hull would have
been promptly ruled out of order; and when the workmen who rose to call
attention to it would have been coughed or even hooted down; and he
would be certain to receive very rough treatment from the Tory party.
The Tory party still remains the party of the monopolists and the
selfish, but it has learned that household suffrage means a considerable
weapon in the hands of working men, and, accordingly, though it may put
its tongue in its cheek, it keeps that tongue very civil whenever it
begins to utter opinion. To Mr. Wilson, then, the Tories, as well as the
Liberals, listened with respectful and rapt attention as he made his
complaint of employment of the military and naval forces of the Crown
in--as he alleged--the buttressing of the case of the employers. And yet
there was a something lacking. Mr. Asquith was able to show that he had
done no more than he was compelled to do by the obligations of his
office; and entirely repudiated any idea of allowing the forces of the
Empire to be ranged on the one side or the other. Mr. Mundella was able
to make a good defence of his officials against the charge which had
been brought by Mr. Wilson. There was a good speech from John Burns, and
it looked as if not another sympathetic word was going to be said for
those starving men and women, who are making so heroic a fight for the
right to live. Altogether, the situation was awkward and even
distressing. The House, divided between the desire to remain neutral and
to be sympathetic, was puzzled, constrained, and silent. It was at this
moment that Mr. Lockwood made a most welcome and appropriate
intervention. Gathering together the scattered and somewhat tangled
threads of the debate, he put to Mr. Mundella several pertinent
questions--among others, the very relevant one, whether or not the
Shipping Federation had the right to employ sailors, whether they are
not violating the law against "crimping" in so doing. Incidentally, Mr.
Lockwood remarked, amid cheers from the Radical Benches--delighted at
this opportunity of departing from its painful and embarrassed
silence--that Liberal members had been returned to support the cause of
labour, and that they ought to be true to their pledges. Mr. Gladstone
at once grasped the situation with that unerring instinct which he has
displayed so splendidly in the present Session, and at once undertook
that the point raised by Mr. Lockwood should be considered; and so, with
a word of sympathy and hope to the strikers, Mr. Gladstone rescued the
House and himself from a painful situation.
CHAPTER XL.
THE BILL IN COMMITTEE.
[Sidenote: The first fence.]
Yes, there was something intoxicating to an Irish Nationalist--after all
his weary years of waiting--in seeing the House of Commons engaged in
Committee on the Bill which is to restore the freedom of Ireland. And as
I looked across the House on May 8th, with every seat occupied--with
galleries crowded--with that air of tense excitement which betokens the
solemn and portentous occasion--there rose to my brain something of the
exaltation of passion's first hour. The Unionists might rage--the Tories
might obstruct--faction might bellow its throat hoarse--Orangemen swear
that they would die rather than see Home Rule--for all that, nobody
could get over this great fact, of which I saw the palpable evidence at
that solemn and historic hour.
But if for a few brief moments one was inclined to abandon oneself to
the intoxication of this great hour, there was plenty to bring one very
quickly back to solid earth, and to the sense of the long, dreary, and
thorny road which Home Rule has yet to traverse.
Time after time Mr. Chamberlain gets up to continue the obstructive
debate. Gravelled for matter, he clutches any topic as a means of
lengthening the thin chain of his discourse. Mr. Redmond--the Parnellite
leader--happens to be for a few moments out of the House. Here at once,
and with eager welcome, Mr. Chamberlain seizes upon this fact to string
a few sentences together--something after this fashion:--"I observe that
the hon. and learned member for Waterford is not in his place. This is
very remarkable. Indeed, I may go further and say that this is a most
sinister fact. For we all know what the hon. and learned gentleman has
said with regard to the kind of Parliamentary supremacy which alone he
will accept. Well, now we are discussing this very point of the Imperial
supremacy, and the hon. and learned gentleman is not in his place. I
repeat, Mr. Mellor, it is a very remarkable, a very significant, a very
sinister, and instructive fact!" And so on and so on.
[Sidenote: The stony silence of the Irishry.]
This kind of speech had another object--it was to provoke Mr. Redmond
into a speech. For it was all the same to the Obstructives who
spoke--provided only there was a speech. For, first, the speech of the
Irish or the Liberal member consumed so much time in itself--and then
one speech justified another; and thus the speech by the Irishman, or
the Liberal, would give an excellent excuse for another series of
harangues by the Obstructives. And this brings me to describe one of the
portents of the present House of Commons which has excited a great deal
of attention and a great deal of unfeigned admiration. As speakers of
eloquence--as Obstructives--as Parliamentarians of exhaustless
resources--as gladiators, tireless, brave, and cool--and, again, as
stormy Parliamentary petrels--fierce, disorderly, passionate--the Irish
members have been known to the House of Commons and to all the world
during all the long series of years through which they have been
fighting out this struggle. In this Parliament, and at this great hour,
they appear in quite another, and perfectly new character. Amid all the
groups of this House they stand out for their unbroken and unbreakable
silence, for their unshakable self-control. Taunts, insults, gentle and
seductive invitations, are addressed to them--from the front, from
behind, from their side; they never open their lips--the silent, stony,
and eternal silence of the Sphinx is not more inflexible. And similarly
men rage, some almost seem to threaten each other with physical
violence; _they_ sit still--silent, watchful, composed. Not all, of
course. There are the young, and the vehement, and the undisciplined;
but that Old Guard which was created by Parnell--which went with him
through coercion, and the wildest of modern agitations--which contains
men that have lived for years under the shadow of the living death of
penal servitude--men who have passed the long hours of the day--the
longer hours of the night--in the cheerless, maddening, spectral silence
of the whitewashed cells--the Old Parliamentary Guard is silent.
I have been in the House of Commons for upwards of thirteen years; and
in the course of that stormy time have, of course, seen many scenes of
passion, anger, and tumult; but the scene which ensued on May 8th, after
Mr. Morley's motion, was the worst thing I have ever beheld. I am a
lover of the British House of Commons--with all its faults, and
drawbacks, and weaknesses, it is to me the most august assembly in the
world, with the greatest history, the finest traditions, the best
oratory. And, verily, I could have wept as I saw the House that night.
It was not that the passion was greater than I have ever seen, or the
noise even, or the dramatic excitement, it was that for hours, there was
nothing but sheer downright chaos, drivel, and anarchy.
[Sidenote: The unloosing of anarchy.]
It began when Mr. Mellor accepted the motion for closure. At once there
arose from the Tory Benches wild, angry, insulting cries of "Shame!
shame! scandalous! the gag! the gag!" This would have been all right if
it had been addressed to Mr. Gladstone. Party leaders have to give and
take, and in moments of excitement they must not complain if their
political opponents denounce them. But closure is the act of the
presiding officer of the House, and it has been an almost unbroken rule
and tradition of Parliament that the presiding officer shall be
safeguarded against even an approach to attack or insult. It is a
tradition that has its weak side; but, on the whole, it is in accordance
with that great national English characteristic of subordination to
necessary authority and the maintenance of order, decency, and
self-control as the trinity of public virtues and personal demeanour. If
Mr. Peel had been in the chair he would have called those Tories to
order; and if they had persisted as they did, he would have promptly
named the highest among them. Mr. Chamberlain was not ashamed to join in
those hoarse and disorderly shouts; and it was in this temper that the
different sides walked slowly, silently, and frowningly to the division
lobbies.
The moment the division was over, the storm which had been stilled broke
forth again, and with wilder fury. Lord Randolph Churchill, as I have
several times remarked, is not the man he was. I remember the time when
in such a scene he would have been perfectly at home; self-restrained,
vigilant, and effective. But on this night it was nothing above mere
inarticulateness--hoarse and ineffective fury--an almost painful
exhibition. Sometimes his lisp became so strong that he was scarcely
able to utter the words he desired to bring out. The Prime Minister
became "The Primisther," the Chief Secretary the "Cheesesecry," and all
this impotence was made the more manifest by thundering on the box with
his open hand--in short, it was all inarticulate, painful, perplexing
emptiness, weakened and not fortified by prolific tub-thumping. A
poor--sad--nay, a tragic business.
[Sidenote: The young man and the old.]
Such was the young man; and then came the old. To all this inarticulate,
hoarse, stammering passion, Mr. Gladstone opposed a speech gentle,
persuasive, self-possessed; as admirable in its courtesy as in its
reserve of gigantic strength. With the deadly pallor of his face more
remarkable than ever--the white hair shining out, as it were, with the
peaceful suggestion of calm and strong old age--in a voice, low, soft,
gentle--Mr. Gladstone uttered a few words which revealed all the great
depths. In completely quiet, almost inaudible tones, he uttered these
pregnant words: "As to other passages in the noble lord's speech, I do
not know whether he intended to intimidate me; but if he did, I do not
think he will succeed." There they are--these few words--so simple,
plain, even commonplace; but what a history--what a character--what a
grandeur there is behind and beneath them! So splendid are they that
even Lord Randolph is touched to the quick, and he rises to explain. The
Old Man--suave, calm, unutterably courteous--hears him politely; and
then puts the whole case of the Government in a few, dignified, and
tranquil words.
[Sidenote: In the depths.]
But the House, exalted to a higher plane of feeling by this great little
speech, was soon dragged down again to the arena of chaos let loose;
and, of course, Mr. Chamberlain was the person to lead the way to the
dusty pit. Mr. Mellor had very properly attempted to stop the disorderly
discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to
respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of
Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly--with a perky self-satisfaction
painful to witness--he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair--to
trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then
the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells,
protests arose. Member got up after member--here, there,
everywhere--always excepting the sternly silent Irish Bench, where sate
the Irish leaders. A half-dozen men were on their feet--all shouting,
gesticulating, speaking at the same time. In short, it was utterly
unlike anything ever seen before in the House of Commons; it brought
vividly back to the mind the tumultuous French Convention in the days of
the French Revolution.
[Sidenote: Deeper and deeper still.]
It was almost a welcome break in this passionate and scarcely civilized
din that a personal encounter between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Byles for
a moment interrupted the tempest. Mr. Chamberlain, in his
characteristically genial way, had spoken of the Irish members as having
been "squared." The Irish members, habituated to insult--conscious of
Mr. Chamberlain's object--had allowed the observation to pass unnoticed;
but Mr. Byles--ardent, sincere, an enthusiast on the Irish
question--shouted out, "How much would it take to square you?" At once
there rose a fierce tropical storm. There were loud shouts of
approval--equally loud shouts demanding an instant withdrawal; members
rose from every part of the House; in short, it was Bedlam let loose,
and a scene impossible to describe.
This was deep enough, but there was a lower depth still to be sounded;
and again it was Mr. Chamberlain's plummet that descended down to the
unfathomable bottom. "I do not," he said to Mr. Byles, "object to the
question, and I will answer it by saying that it would take a great deal
more than the hon. member for Shipley will ever be able to pay." There
the words stand--in the immensity of their vulgarity, in their
unsurpassable degradation, let them lie.
[Sidenote: The first fence.]
Finally, May 10th saw the first fence taken. The genial and gentle T.W.
Russell proposed the removal from the Bill of the Second Chamber--the
Chamber specially created for the protection of the loyal minority. With
similar and strange unscrupulousness, the Tories all trooped into the
lobby against their own principles. They were accompanied by a few
foolish Radicals--indeed, it was the hope of detaching a sufficient
number of Radicals to place the Government in a minority which produced
the Tory apostasy from their own principles. There was a little
uncertainty as to the result, and everybody expected that the Government
majority would have been reduced to a dangerously low figure. When Mr.
Marjoribanks read out a majority of 51--or a majority bigger than the
usual one--there was a loud halloo of triumph and delighted surprise
from the Liberal and the Irish Benches; and so the first big fence in
the Home Rule Bill was easily taken.
[Sidenote: Obstructive Chamberlain.]
By the middle of the sitting on the following day the House of Commons
stood face to face with the first clause. Under ordinary circumstances,
the clause would have been passed after a few speeches--especially and
definitely directed to the words of the clause; Mr. Chamberlain demanded
the right on this clause to discuss, not only the whole Bill with all
its other clauses, but the past and future of the whole Home Rule
struggle. He quoted passage after passage from speeches delivered by
Irish members years and years ago; in short, he entered upon a survey of
the whole controversy. There were countless interruptions from the Irish
Benches--not in the least because the Irish members cared for Joe's
attacks, but because such a roundabout discussion was altogether a
revolutionary departure from all previous precedents; and would have
been held distinctly out of order by any of the predecessors of Mr.
Mellor in the chair. That good-natured and easy-going official, however,
gave Mr. Chamberlain his head; and so, for an hour, he poured forth a
stream of clever, biting, but mean and irrelevant vituperation.
[Sidenote: The G.O.M.'s greatest speech.]
It was well that it should have been so; for to this speech the House of
Commons owes one of the most remarkable and historic scenes in its long
history. Every reader of Parliamentary reports knows what it means to
speak at eight o'clock. By that time, three out of five at least of the
members of the House have gone to their dinners in all quarters of
London, and the assembly is given up to the faddists and the bores, who
never get another opportunity of delivering themselves. Nothing,
therefore, could have been more unexpected than a speech from Mr.
Gladstone at such an hour, and especially a speech which, in the opinion
of many, leaves far behind anything he ever did. But, indeed, it is
probable that Mr. Gladstone himself had no notion when the sitting
began, or even a few minutes before he rose, that he would say anything
very special. It is one of the peculiarities of this extraordinary man
to be always surprising you. His infinite variety, his boundless
resource, seem to be without any limitations. By this time, you would
have expected that one who had listened to him for nearly twenty years
would imagine that he had no further oratorical worlds to conquer, and
that he certainly would not have waited to his eighty-fourth year to do
something better than ever he had done before. But so it was. In
passion, in destructive sarcasm, in dramatic force, in the rush and
resistless sweep of language, Mr. Gladstone was more potent in the
dinner hour of that Thursday night than he was ever at any other single
moment in his almost sixty years of triumphant oratory.
[Sidenote: His powers as a mimic.]
Observers are divided as to his temper when he rose. Some onlookers,
observing the tremendous force of voice and language--the broad, ample,
and frequent gestures--the tremulousness that sometimes underlies the
swell of passion--the deadly and startling pallor of the face--thought
that he was suffering from excitement almost touching and perhaps
affrighting to behold; while others thought that the chief and most
impressive feature of this perfect tornado of triumphant eloquence, was
the perfect calm that lay in the heart and bosom of all that storm.
There are two things which will tell you of the omnipotence of an
orator--one is the effect of his speech on foes as well as friends, and
the other is its effect upon himself. Both these evidences were present,
for the Tories seemed to have been swept away by the cyclone as
resistlessly as the Liberals and the Irish, and the Tory pæans in honour
of the Old Man which were to be found in the Tory organs next day only
echoed the bounteous and generous recognition of his matchless powers
which one heard from Tories in the lobbies throughout the evening. And
as to the effect of the speech on Mr. Gladstone himself, it was to bring
out a dramatic and mimetic power on which he very rarely ventures, and
which in anybody but a perfect master of the House of Commons might
descend into bad taste and bad tact. I know that Mr. Gladstone is really
triumphant when he brings these qualities into requisition. I remember
the last time he used them with any approach to the abundance of this
occasion was when he was making the great speech which preceded his
defeat in 1885 and the fall of his Government. On that occasion I
remember very well that the Old Man puckered up his forehead into a
thousand wrinkles, turned and twisted that very wonderfully mobile mouth
of his--with its lips so full with strength and at the same time so
sensitive with all the Celtic passion of his Highland ancestry--until
sometimes you almost thought it a pity he had not taken to the Lyceum
and some of the great parts in which Mr. Henry Irving has made his fame.
There was another occasion which dwells in my memory. It was on one of
the nights of the debate on the Coercion Bill. He was describing the
promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish
liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described
restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned
them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof---
as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of
spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and the House
cheered and cheered yet again without any distinction of party--the
friends in admiration of the splendid eloquence of the gesture, the foes
in hearty admiration of the great and perennial spirit of the great Old
Man.
[Sidenote: Comedy.]
But on May 11th there was a new and a bolder departure. Most of my
readers have seen that remarkable little lay written by Mr. Gilbert for
Miss Anderson to display the range and variety of her powers--"Comedy
and Tragedy." Mr. Gladstone gave proof of powers of equally wide
versatility; and all at the expense of poor Joe. First for the Comedy. I
must quote the passage of the speech to explain what I mean:--
"My right hon. friend has a bundle of quotations. He says he has
fortified himself. (Laughter.) He said he had fortified himself against
me when I said there could be no supremacy without the presence of Irish
members in this House. I never asserted anything of the kind. (Cheers.)
'Oh,' he said, 'I have got the papers'--(laughter)--and the party
opposite cheered at the expected triumph. (Laughter.)"
When Mr. Gladstone came to the words. "'Oh,' he said, 'I have got the
papers,'" Mr. Gladstone began fumbling in his pockets, just as Mr.
Chamberlain had done--with that air of distraction and coming despair
which appears on everybody's face when he is anxiously seeking for an
important but mislaid paper; and the resemblance, heightened by just the
least imitation of Mr. Chamberlain's voice, was so striking, so
startling, so melodramatic, that the whole House, Tories and all, joined
in the wild delight of laughter and cheers--laughter at the comic power,
delight at the splendid courage and exuberant spirit of the prancing old
war-horse, delighted, exhilarated, and fortified by the joy of battle
and by the richness of his own powers and courage. Even yet the comic
vein was not exhausted. Mr. Chamberlain--as I have said--had made
copious quotations from past Irish speeches, and asked that they should
be retracted. "If the work of retraction were to begin, is my right hon.
friend," asked Mr. Gladstone, with scorn in every tone, "willing to
submit himself to the same process of examination? If the work of
retraction were to begin he would have a lot to do." And then came the
passage which has already passed into Parliamentary history. "If we are
to stand in white sheets, my right hon. friend would have to wear that
ornamental garment standing in a very conspicuous position."
[Sidenote: and Tragedy.]
And then came the other and the tragic note. Again I have to quote the
exact words to convey the impression and explain the description:--
"If I were in the position of one of those gentlemen--if I had seen the
wrongs and the sufferings of Ireland in former times, if the iron had
entered into my soul as it had entered into theirs, it would have been
impossible. I should not have been more temperate possibly than some of
them under those circumstances of the language I used. (Cheers.)"
It was when he uttered the words, "if the iron had entered into my
soul," that Mr. Gladstone ventured on the bold gesture of striking his
hand against his breast--a simple gesture, and not an uncommon gesture
in itself--but you should have heard the resonant and thrilling
voice--you should have been under the entrancing and almost bewildering
spell beneath which at this moment all the imagination and emotion of
the House lay supine, helpless, and drugged--to have understood the
shiver of feeling which passed through everybody. And so he went
on--rising higher and higher--a deeper harmony in every note--a more
splendid strength in every sentence--till you almost thought you were
looking at some great bird--with the strength and splendour of the
eagle, the full-hearted and passionate melody of the lark--as it soared
on, on its even and well-poised wing, higher and higher to the dim and
blue ether of the upper air.
[Sidenote: A strange scene.]
Right to the last word, there was the same unbroken, passionate strength
and fervour, so that when it was all ended the House gave a start as
though it had to rouse itself from some splendid vision. And then came
that rude and quick awakening which, in the world of actualities, always
bursts in upon the most solemn and moving hours. At about half-past
eight every evening the Speaker or Chairman--whichever is in the
chair--gets up and goes out to tea. Before doing so the presiding
officer calls upon the next speaker, and when the speaker has been
named, cries "Order, order!" and promptly disappears into the room where
his meal is laid. Scarcely had Mr. Gladstone sat down when Mr. Mellor
called upon Sir Richard Temple, then cried "Order, order!" and, almost
within a couple of seconds after Mr. Gladstone had concluded, had
vanished from the House. This was immediately followed by the stampede
of the rest of the House--for by half-past eight everybody was famished
with hunger--and the Chamber was left empty, silent, and dim, with a
suddenness that was startling, disconcerting, and a little
disillusioning. And then it was that the strongest proof was given of
the effect of the speech.
[Sidenote: The outburst.]
The House, I say, became empty--but not altogether. The Irish Benches,
which had become crowded as the great apology for Ireland was being
pronounced, remained still full--full, but silent. There was something
strange, weird, startling in those benches, full and yet silent, amid
all this emptiness and almost audible stillness; and some of the Liberal
members, who had left the House in the mad rush to dinner, quietly stole
back to see what was going to happen. The explanation of the mystery
soon came. After he sat down, ghastly pale, almost painfully panting
after this tremendous effort, Mr. Gladstone tarried a little to recover
himself--to say a few words to Mr. John Morley--to scribble a note. At
last he rose, and then came the moment for which those silent Irish
Benches had been waiting. With one accord, with one quick and
simultaneous spring, the Irish members were on their feet--hats and
handkerchiefs were waved; there was the suggestion of tears under the
swelling cheers. Nor were the Irish left alone. The Liberals who had
slipped back joined in. The effectiveness of their cheers was heightened
by the fact that they were not in their places, but standing on the
floor. From out their cheering ranks stood the splendid figure--the
broad shoulders, the massive head, the shaggy beard and hair, all the
virility and sensitiveness that are found in the splendid form of Mr.
Allen--manufacturer and workman, poet and Radical. The Old Man,
splendidly composed, and yet profoundly moved, looked back, gave a
courtly bow, and then went out. And here it was that a little scene took
place of which the public prints have hitherto contained no mention. In
her corner place in the gallery had sat throughout this dazzling speech
that best of friends and truest of wives, who has been the guardian
angel of Mr. Gladstone's life; and with outstretched hands and dim eyes,
she received her triumphant husband in the corridor, where she had been
waiting for him.
[Sidenote: Deeper and deeper.]
Friday, May 12th, I may dismiss in a few words. As the closure had been
refused on Thursday night, the Obstructives started again on the first
clause on Friday afternoon--Mr. T.W. Russell leading the van. He had
nothing to say beyond what he had said a hundred times already, even in
the course of the present Session; and his speech would have passed
unnoticed had it not been for a brisk but odious and ignoble little
storm which he and the Tories managed to raise between them. Mr. Russell
declared that he heard the phrase across the floor, "What the devil are
you saying?" and stopped as if the heavens and the earth must refuse to
go round on their axes because of this introduction into Parliament of
the negligences of private conversation. Mr. Gibbs--a very pestilent and
very empty member of the young army of silly obstructives--moved that
the words be taken down--an ancient formula not heard of for years till
the present Session, when everything is turned to account for the
purpose of occupying time and breaking down the House of Commons, and at
the same time accused Mr. Swift McNeill of having used the words. Mr.
McNeill indignantly denied the charge: then Mr. Macartney attributed
them to Mr. Sexton--another and equally indignant denial; and then much
uproar and contradictions and apologies--the lubberly and unmannerly
interventions of Lord Cranborne as usual conspicuous--and, finally, the
end of the storm in a teacup. Positively loathsome--the whole business
methods of the Tories to grasp at everything to rouse a storm or provoke
a scene; and altogether disheartening to those who don't wish to see the
House of Commons reduced to the drivel and turbulence and anarchy of a
French Convention. Finally, a little after six o'clock, the first clause
of the Bill had passed, with a majority of 42. The House of Commons had
decided that there shall be established in Ireland a Legislature of two
Chambers. Then in a graceful, well-delivered, and pleasant little
speech, Mr. Victor Cavendish opened the fight on the second clause. The
evening was devoted to the Anti-vaccinationists--answered triumphantly
in an admirable and unanswerable little speech by Sir Walter
Foster--with as many as seventy men voting against vaccination. I had no
idea previously that the proportion of lunatics in the Assembly was so
large.
CHAPTER XII.
RENEWAL OF THE FIGHT.
[Sidenote: A fresh start.]
Nothing of memorable importance occurred during the week before the
Whitsuntide holidays, but with Tuesday, May 30th, came the renewal of
the great battle over Home Rule. The Old Man was first to be observed.
He looked very fresh and sunny, but, at the same time, had that slightly
deepened pallor which he always has on the first day of a Session--the
result of the long day's journey which he has gone through in coming
from his country house. Mr. Balfour was also in his place, looking as
though the open rivalry of Lord Randolph Churchill had not much affected
his spirits. Mr. Chamberlain nearly always looks the same. He has
himself informed the world that he does not take exercise in any shape
or form whatsoever, and there is never therefore, on his cheek that look
of deep-drunk sunshine which marks the cheeks of more active men. But he
was ready for the conflict, and as the night went on showed there was no
decrease in either the venom or the vehemence with which he means to
fight against the Home Rule Bill. On the Irish Benches nearly every man
was in his place, and the Tories had so far benefited by their
buffetings from the _Times_ as to make a braver show than they usually
do in the early days after vacation.
[Sidenote: Home Rule once more.]
When the House separated, the subject under debate was an audacious
proposal to postpone Clause 3. There was nothing whatever to be urged in
favour of such a proposal; it was pure, unadulterated, shameless
obstruction. But Sir Richard Temple is not gifted with a sense of
humour, and on this amendment he wandered and maundered away for the
better part of an hour. The House has yet no power to prevent a bore
from consuming its time; but it is free to save itself from the yoke of
attention. By a sort of general spontaneity, everybody left his seat;
and though hapless Mr. Balfour was forced by the hard necessities of his
official position to remain in his place, nobody else was compelled to
do so; and Sir Richard addressed the general, void, encasing air. There
was some more speech-making of the like kind--still to empty air--when
suddenly and almost unexpectedly the debate was allowed to collapse. At
first, this was unintelligible--for, senseless as was the amendment, it
was no worse than scores of others which the Tories have made the
pretext for endless debates.
[Sidenote: A tight division.]
However, the division revealed the secret. It is one of the
peculiarities of this strangely interesting Session that nearly every
division is a picturesque and portentous event. With a majority so small
as forty, the turnover of a very few votes from one side to the other
may mean the defeat of Home Rule, the downfall of Gladstone and his
Government, and chaos come again. And these accidents are always
possible. Death knocks at the door of the families of members of
Parliament as of other people; and often, when one of the great
divisions is pending, the Whips have to consider the grim and painful
question whether they can allow a man to remain by the rack on which a
wife lies tortured, or receive a loving mother's parting sigh. For some
reason or other, Tuesday was a bad day for the Liberals, and there was a
series of ugly and annoying little mishaps. Thus, in the first division,
which was snatched quickly by the Tories, informed by their scouts of
what was going on, the majority sank to thirty-three. This was a bad
beginning, but worse, as will be seen, remained behind.
[Sidenote: Lord Wolmer.]
The Committee was now on Clause 3. This is the clause which contains the
list of the subjects on which the Irish Legislature is not to have the
right to legislate--such questions as the succession to the Crown,
questions of peace and war, foreign treaties, coinage, copyright, trade,
etc. The list is comprehensive enough, but it was not comprehensive
enough for Lord Wolmer; for he had an amendment to the effect that the
Irish Legislature should not be allowed to pass even resolutions on
these subjects. But even his own amendment did not satisfy him. He
amended the amendment by further proposing that the Irish Legislature
should not be allowed even to "discuss" any of these questions. The
speech in favour of these proposals started from the point of departure
common to all the Unionists, namely, that the Irish people were
hereditary and irreconcilable enemies, and that the moment they had a
native Legislature, it would immediately proceed to make alliances with
every Power in the world which was hostile to the British Empire. There
was France; of course, the Irish Legislature would pass a resolution of
sympathy with France in case there was a war between France and England.
Then there was the United States; what was there to prevent the Irish
Executive from sending an envoy to the United States? And so on, through
all the possibilities and all the insanity and malignity of which an
Irish Legislature could be held capable.
[Sidenote: Sweet and low.]
Mr. Gladstone on one or two points was able to overthrow the whole case
so elaborately made up. The Irish Parliament could not send
representatives to a foreign Power, because they could not vote the
money for such a purpose under the Bill. "Ah, but"--interrupted the
incautious Wolmer--"could they not send envoys who were unpaid?" "No,"
promptly responded the Old Man, "because they had no power under the
Bill to 'accredit' envoys, and a foreign Power could not receive an
envoy who was not accredited." All this argument--broad, acute,
tranquil--was delivered in a voice that now and then was painfully low,
and sometimes you had to strain your ears. But then it was worth your
while to strain your ears, so that you might master all the supremacy of
the art and skill and knowledge of the whole speech.
For instance, he puts the question to Lord Wolmer, if he seriously means
that the Irish Legislature is not to have the right to petition? Lord
Wolmer answers that the Irish members will be in the Imperial
Parliament. "Ah! that's an argument, not an answer," says the Old Man;
and then, with the spring of a tiger, he pounces on the hapless Wolmer
with the question: "Is the right of petition, then, to be taken away in
every case where there is representation?"--a question which, with
petitions pouring in by the thousand to the House of Commons from the
Ulstermen and others, a Unionist like Lord Wolmer finds it impossible to
answer. And it is in connection with this point a little scene occurs
which brings out many of the points in this remarkable speech, which I
have been trying to make clear. Mr. Bryce disappears from the House;
then he returns: Mr. Gladstone asks him a question; the answer is
apparently not satisfactory, for the Old Man lifts his hands to heaven
in playful exaggeration of surprise. The House, puzzled, does not know
what it means; but the Old Man soon explains. He had sent Mr. Bryce to
the Library to get a copy of the recent Life of Lord Sherbrooke--Robert
Lowe, that was--and Mr. Bryce had brought back the discomforting
intelligence that the book was not there. However, with such a memory as
Mr. Gladstone's, this does not matter, for he is able to point out that
an Australian Legislature had at one time passed a resolution, and
agreed on a petition to the Imperial Parliament, in reference to the
Corn Laws. Just fancy the keenness, the omnivorousness, the promptitude
of that marvellous Old Man, who had read one of the most recently
published works, and had promptly seized on a point bearing reference to
a detail in his Bill.
[Sidenote: A pathetic scene.]