just the same after Mr. Gladstone had retired from politics as it was
when he was in the front of political life. But just as the policy which
sustained him in his early days as Prime Minister was helped by the
reaction which had set in against the aggressive policy of Lord
Palmerston, so there came, with the close of Gladstone's Parliamentary
career, a kind of reaction against his counsel of peace and moderation.
Lord Rosebery was believed to have more of what is called the
Imperialist spirit in him than had ever guided the policy of his great
leader. Certainly some of Mr. Gladstone's former colleagues in the House
of Commons appear to have thought so, and there began to be signs of a
growing division in the party. Lord Rosebery's Prime Ministership lasted
but a short time. The Government sustained one or two Parliamentary
discomfitures, and there followed upon these a positive defeat in the
nature of a sort of vote of censure carried by a small majority against
a department of the administration, on the ground of an alleged
insufficiency in some of the supplies of ammunition for military
service. Many a Government would have professed to think little of such
a defeat, would have treated it only as a mere question of departmental
detail, and would have gone on as if nothing had happened. But Lord
Rosebery refused to take things so coolly and so carelessly. Probably he
was growing tired of his position under the peculiar circumstances.
Perhaps he thought the most manly course he could take was to give the
constituencies the opportunity of saying whether they were satisfied
with his administration or were not. The Government appealed to the
country. Parliament was dissolved, and a general election followed. Then
was seen the full force of the reaction which had begun to set in
against the Gladstone policy of peace, moderation, and justice. The
Conservatives came into power by a large majority. Lord Rosebery was now
merely the leader of the Liberal party in Opposition. Even this
position he did not long retain. Some of the most brilliant speeches he
ever made in the House of Lords were made during this time, but somehow
people began to think that his heart was not in the leadership, and
before long it was made known to the public that he had ceased to be the
Liberal Commander-in-Chief.
Everybody, of course, was ready with an explanation as to this sudden
act, and perhaps, as sometimes happens in such cases, the less a man
really knew about the matter the more prompt he was with his
explanation. Two reasons, however, were given by observers who appeared
likely to know something of the real facts. One was that Lord Rosebery
did not see his way to go as far as some of his colleagues would have
gone in arousing the country to decided action against the Ottoman
Government because of the manner in which it was allowing its Christian
subjects to be treated. The other was that Lord Rosebery was too
Imperialistic in spirit for such men as Sir William Harcourt and Mr.
John Morley. No one could impugn Lord Rosebery's motives in either case.
He might well have thought that too forward a movement against Turkey
might only bring on a great European war or leave England isolated to
carry out her policy at her own risk, and in the other case he may have
thought that the policy bequeathed by Mr. Gladstone was tending to
weaken the supremacy of England in South Africa.
Lord Rosebery then ceased to lead a Government or a party, and became
for the time merely a member of the House of Lords. I do not suppose his
leisure hung very heavy on his hands. I cannot imagine Lord Rosebery
finding any difficulty in passing his day. The only difficulty I should
think such a man must have is how to find time to give a fair chance to
all the pursuits that are dear to him. Lord Rosebery spent some part of
his leisure in yachting, gave his usual attention to the turf, was to be
seen at picture galleries, and occasionally addressed great public
meetings on important questions, and was a frequent visitor to the House
of Commons during each session of Parliament. The peers have a space in
the galleries of the House of Commons set apart for their own
convenience, and, although that space can hold but a small number of the
peers, yet on ordinary nights its benches are seldom fully occupied. But
when some great debate is coming on, then the peers make a rush for the
gallery space in the House of Commons, and those who do not arrive in
time to get a seat have to wait and take their chance, each in his turn,
of any vacancy which may possibly occur. I am not a great admirer of the
House of Lords as a legislative institution, and I must say that it has
sometimes soothed the rancor of my jealous feelings as a humble Commoner
to see a string of peers extending across the lobby of the House of
Commons, each waiting for his chance of filling some sudden vacancy in
the peers' gallery.
Lord Rosebery continued to attend the debates when he had ceased to be
Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal party just as he had done
before. His fine, clearly cut, closely shaven face, with features that a
lady novelist of a past age would have called chiseled, and eyes lighted
with an animation that seemed to have perpetual youth in it, were often
objects of deep interest to the members of the House, and to the
visitors in the strangers' galleries, and no doubt in the ladies'
gallery as well. The appearance of Lord Rosebery in the peers' gallery
was sure to excite some talk among the members of the House of Commons
on the green benches below. We were always ready to indulge in
expectation and conjecture as to what Lord Rosebery was likely to do
next, for there seemed to be a general consent of opinion that he was
the last man in the world who could sit down and do nothing. But what
was there left for him to do? He had held various administrative
offices: he had twice been Foreign Secretary; he had twice been Chairman
of the London County Council; he had been Prime Minister; he had been
leader of the Liberal party; he had been President of all manner of
great institutions; he had been President of the Social Science
Congress; he had been Lord Rector of two great Universities; he had
twice won the Derby. What was there left for him to do which human
ambition in our times and in the dominions of Queen Victoria could care
to accomplish? Yet the general impression seemed to be that Lord
Rosebery had not yet done his appointed work, and that impression has
grown deeper and stronger with recent events.
Since the day when Lord Rosebery withdrew from the leadership of the
Liberal party the division in that party has been growing wider and
deeper. The war in South Africa has done much to broaden the gulf of
separation. Lord Rosebery is an Imperialist, Sir William Harcourt and
Mr. John Morley are not Imperialists. The opponents of Sir William
Harcourt and Mr. Morley call them Little Englanders. The opponents of
Lord Rosebery and those who think with him would no doubt call them
Jingoes. The Imperialist, or, as his opponents prefer to call him, the
Jingo, accepts as the ruling principle of his faith the right and the
duty of England to spread her civilization and her supremacy as far as
she can over all those parts of the world which are still lying in
disorganization and in darkness. The Little Englander, as his opponents
delight to describe him, believes that England's noblest work for a long
time to come will be found in the endeavor to spread peace, education,
and happiness among the peoples who already acknowledge her supremacy. I
am not going to enter into any argument as to the relative claims of the
two political schools. It has been said that a man is born either of the
school of Aristotle or of the school of Plato. Perhaps an Englishman of
modern times is born a Jingo or a Little Englander. I am not an
Englishman, and therefore am not called upon to rank myself on either
side of the controversy, but I know full well which way my instincts
and sympathies would lead me if I were compelled to choose. I could not,
therefore, account myself a political follower of Lord Rosebery; and,
indeed, on the one great question which concerned me most as a member of
the House of Commons, that of Irish Home Rule, Lord Rosebery is not
quite so emphatic as I should wish him to be. I am therefore writing the
eulogy, not of Lord Rosebery the politician, but of Lord Rosebery the
orator, the scholar, the man of letters and arts and varied culture, the
man who has done so much for public life in so many ways, the helpful,
kindly, generous friend.
The common impression everywhere is that the Conservative Government, as
it is now constituted, cannot last very long. The sands of the present
Parliament are running out; the next general election may be postponed
for some time yet, but it cannot be very far off. Are the Liberals to
come back to power with Lord Rosebery at their head? Can the Liberal
party become so thoroughly reunited again, Jingoes and Little
Englanders, as to make the formation of a Liberal Government a possible
event so soon? Or is it possible, as many observers believe, that Lord
Rosebery may find himself at the head of an administration composed of
Imperialist Liberals and the more enlightened and generally respected
members of the present Government? I shall not venture upon any
prediction, having seen the unexpected too often happen in politics to
have much faith in political prophecy. I note it as an evidence of the
position Lord Rosebery has won for himself that, although he became
Prime Minister only to be defeated, and leader of the Liberal party only
to resign, he is still one of the public men in England about whom
people are asking each other whether the time for him to take his real
position has not come at last.
[Illustration: Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN]
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
Mr. Chamberlain was once described by an unfriendly critic as the
Rabagas of English political life. We all remember Rabagas, the hero of
Sardou's masterpiece of dramatic satire, who begins his public career
and wins fame among certain classes as a leveler and a demagogue of the
most advanced views, an unsparing enemy of the aristocracy, a man who
will make no terms with the privileged orders, and will bow to no
sovereign but the sovereign people. Now, I have said that it was an
unfriendly critic who likened Mr. Chamberlain to Sardou's creation, but
it was not in the earlier career of the real or the imaginary politician
that the resemblance was especially to be traced. Rabagas is brought by
tempting conditions under the influence of the privileged classes, the
aristocracy, and the reigning sovereign of the small state in which he
lives; and his leveling and revolutionary tendencies melt away under the
genial influence of his new associations. He becomes, before long, the
admirer of the aristocracy and the Prime Minister of the Prince, and is
ready to devote all his energies to the defense of the privileged
orders, to the repression of the vile democracy, and the silencing of
Radical orators.
In this contrast between the earlier and the later parts of the
political career the malevolent critic, no doubt, found the materials
for his comparison between Rabagas and Mr. Chamberlain. For there can be
no denying that Mr. Chamberlain began his public life as an eloquent, an
unsparing, and apparently a convinced champion of democracy against the
aristocracy, the privileged orders, and the Conservative party, and that
he is now a leading member of a Conservative Government, and goes
further than most of his colleagues would be likely to go in his
hostility to Radical measures and to Radical men.
Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain, who during the earlier part of his public
life belonged to the party most strenuously opposed to all unnecessary
wars, and especially wars which had annexation for their object, has
been the chief Ministerial promoter of the late war in South Africa, a
war which had for its object the subjugation of two independent
republics in order to bring them under the Imperial flag of England. No
one, therefore, could have been much surprised when the unfriendly
critic fancied that he could discover at least a certain superficial
resemblance between the career of Rabagas and the career of Mr.
Chamberlain.
I have been a close observer of much of Mr. Chamberlain's public life,
and for some time we were thrown a good deal into Parliamentary and
political association. He came into the House of Commons not very long
before I had the honor of obtaining a seat there, and his fame had
preceded him so far that his entrance into Parliament was looked upon by
everybody as a coming event, in the days when he had not yet been
elected to represent the constituency of Birmingham. Birmingham was at
that time one of the most thoroughly Radical cities in England. John
Bright once said that as the sea, wherever you dip a cup into it, will
be found to be salt, so the constituency of Birmingham, wherever you
test it, will be found to be Radical. Birmingham could claim the merit
of being one of the best organized municipalities in England. Its
popular educational institutions were excellent; its free libraries
might have won the admiration of a citizen of Boston, Massachusetts; its
police arrangements were efficient; its sanitation might well have been
the envy of London, and the general intelligence of its citizens was of
the highest order. Now, it was in this enlightened, progressive, and
capable community that Mr. Chamberlain won his first fame. He is not a
Birmingham man by birth. He was, I believe, born and brought up on the
south side of London, and was educated at University College School,
London. But at an early age he settled in Birmingham, and became a
member of his father's manufacturing firm there. Very soon he rose to
great distinction as a public speaker and as a member of the local
corporation, and three times was elected chief magistrate of Birmingham.
We began soon to hear a great deal of him in London. It must have been
clear to anybody who knew anything of Birmingham that a man could not
have risen to such distinction in that city without great intelligence
and a marked capacity for public life. All this time he was known as a
Radical of the Radicals. The Liberal party in London began to look upon
him as a coming man, and as a coming man who was certain to take his
place, and that probably a leading place, in the advanced Radical
division of the Liberals. His political speeches showed him to be a
democrat of the leveling order--a democrat, that is to say, of views
much more extreme than had ever been professed by John Bright or Richard
Cobden. He was an unsparing assailant of the aristocracy and the
privileged classes, and, indeed, went so far in his Radicalism that the
Conservatives in general regarded him as a downright Republican.
I can well remember the sensation which his first speech in the House of
Commons created among the ranks of the Tories after his election to
Parliament as one of the representatives of Birmingham. The good Tories
made no effort to conceal their astonishment at the difference between
the real Chamberlain as they saw and heard him and the Chamberlain of
their earlier imaginings. I talked with many of them at the time, and
was made acquainted with their emotions. Judging from his political
speeches, they had set him down as a wild Republican, and they expected
to see a rough and shaggy man, dressed with an uncouth disregard for the
ways of society, a sort of Birmingham Orson who would probably scowl
fiercely at his opponents in the House and would deliver his opinions
in tones of thunder. The man who rose to address the House was a pale,
slender, delicate looking, and closely shaven personage, very neatly
dressed, with short and carefully brushed hair, and wearing a dainty
eyeglass constantly fixed in his eye. "He looks like a ladies' doctor,"
one stout Tory murmured. "Seems like the model of a head clerk at a West
End draper's," observed another. Certainly there was nothing of the
Orson about this well-dressed, well-groomed representative of the
Birmingham democracy. Mr. Chamberlain's speech made a distinct
impression on the House. It was admirably delivered, in quietly
modulated tones, the clear, penetrating voice never rising to the level
of declamation, but never failing to reach the ear of every listener.
The political opinions which it expressed were such as every one might
have expected to come from so resolute a democrat, but the quiet,
self-possessed delivery greatly astonished those who had expected to see
and hear a mob orator. Mr. Chamberlain's position in the House was
assured after that first speech. Even among the Tories everybody felt
satisfied that the new man was a man of great ability, gifted with a
remarkable capacity for maintaining his views with ingenious and
plausible argument, a man who could hold his own in debate with the
best, and for whom the clamors of a host of political opponents could
have no terrors.
I may say at once that Mr. Chamberlain has, ever since that time, proved
himself to be one of the ablest debaters in the House of Commons. He is
not and never could be an orator in the higher sense, for he wants
altogether that gift of imagination necessary to the composition of an
orator, and he has not the culture and the command of ready illustration
which sometimes lift men who are not born orators above the mere
debater's highest level. But he has unfailing readiness, a wide
knowledge of public affairs, a keen eye for all the weak points of an
opponent's case, and a flow of clear and easy language which never fails
to give expression, at once full and precise, to all that is in his
mind. He was soon recognized, even by his extreme political opponents,
as one of the ablest men in the House of Commons, and it seemed plain to
every one that, when the chance came for the formation of a Liberal
Ministry, the country then being in the hands of a Tory Government, Mr.
Chamberlain would beyond question find a place on the Treasury Bench.
Meanwhile Mr. Chamberlain's democratic views seemed to have undergone no
modification. He was as unsparing as ever in his denunciation of the
aristocracy and the privileged classes, and he was especially severe
upon the great landowners, and used to propound schemes for buying them
out by the State and converting their land into national property. His
closest ally and associate in Parliamentary politics was Sir Charles
Dilke, who had entered the House of Commons some years before Mr.
Chamberlain, and who was then, as he is now, an advanced and determined
Radical. Sir Charles Dilke, in fact, was at that time supposed to be
something very like a Republican, at least in theory, and he had been
exciting great commotion in several parts of the country by his
outspoken complaints about the vast sums of money voted every year for
the Royal Civil List. It was but natural that Sir Charles Dilke and Mr.
Chamberlain should become close associates, and there was a general
conviction that the more advanced section of the Liberal party was
destined to take the command in Liberal politics.
Outside the range of strictly English politics there was a question
arising which threatened to make a new division in the Liberal party.
This was the question of Home Rule for Ireland as it presented itself
under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. For years the subject
of Home Rule had been the occasion, under the leadership of Mr. Butt, of
nothing more formidable to the House of Commons than an annual debate
and division. Once in every session Mr. Butt brought forward a motion
calling for a measure of Home Rule for Ireland, and, after some eloquent
speeches made in favor of the motion by Irish members, a few speeches
were delivered on the other side by the opponents of Home Rule, Liberals
as well as Tories, and then some leading member of the Government went
through the form of explaining why the motion could not be accepted. A
division was taken, and Mr. Butt's motion was found to have the support
of the very small Irish Nationalist party, as it then was, and perhaps
half a dozen English or Scotch Radicals; and the whole House of Commons,
except for these, declared against Home Rule. About the time, however,
of Mr. Chamberlain's entrance on the field of politics a great change
had taken place in the conditions of the Home Rule question. Charles
Stewart Parnell had become in fact, although not yet in name, the leader
of the Irish National party, and Parnell's tactics were very different
indeed from those of his nominal leader, Mr. Butt. Butt was a man who
had great reverence for old constitutional forms and for the traditions
and ways of the House of Commons, and he had faith in the power of mere
argument to bring the House some time or other to see the justice of his
cause. Parnell was convinced that there was only one way of compelling
the House of Commons to pay any serious attention to the Irish demand,
and that was by making it clear to the Government and the House that
until they had turned their full attention to the Irish national claims,
they should not be allowed to turn their attention to any other business
whatever. Therefore he introduced that policy of obstruction which has
since become historical, and which for a time literally convulsed the
House of Commons. Now, I am not going again into the oft-told tale of
Home Rule and the obstruction policy, and I touch upon the subject here
only because of its direct connection with the career of Mr.
Chamberlain. Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain supported Mr. Parnell
in most of his assaults upon the Tory Government. It was Parnell's
policy to bring forward some motion, during the discussion of the
estimates for the army and navy or for the civil service, which should
raise some great and important question of controversy connected only in
a technical sense with the subject formally before the House, and thus
to raise a prolonged debate which had the effect of postponing to an
indefinite time the regular movement of business. Thus he succeeded in
stopping all the regular work of the House until the particular motion
in which he was concerned had been fully discussed and finally settled,
one way or the other. It was by action of this kind that he succeeded in
prevailing upon the House of Commons to condemn the barbarous system of
flogging in the army and the navy, and finally to obtain its abolition.
In this latter course he was warmly supported by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir
Charles Dilke, and by many other Liberal members.