he has yet an important career before him may be taken for granted if
only the fates allow him the ordinary length of man's life. Nothing but
absolute retirement from Parliamentary work could reduce such a man to a
position of complete neutrality, or could prevent him from having an
influence which the leaders of both political parties must take into
consideration. He is too strong in debate, too well trained in the
business of administration, and too quick in observing the real import
of growing political changes, and in distinguishing between them and the
mere displays of ephemeral emotion, not to make his influence felt at
any great crisis in the conditions of political parties. I hold,
therefore, to the hope expressed at the opening of this article, that
_il reviendra_--that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will come back before long
to an important place in some administration. The House of Commons could
not afford just now to lose the services of such a man, and I take it
for granted that Hicks-Beach could not remain long in the House of
Commons without being called upon to accept an official position. He is
beyond question one of the very ablest men on the side of the Government
in that House, and his integrity, his moderation, his capacity to
understand the significance of new facts, and his disinterestedness
have won for him the respect of all parties in Parliament and outside
it. We are, to all appearance, on the eve of great changes in the
composition of our political parties. With the close of the war has come
to an end that season of Jingoism which brought so many weak-minded
Liberals into fascinated co-operation with the Tories. The reaction
against Toryism must come, and it will probably bring with it a
reconstitution of both parties on the principles which each may consider
essential to its character at a time when peace at home gives our
legislators a chance of studying the domestic welfare of the people in
these islands. It will not be enough then for a public man to proclaim
himself Imperialist in order to win the votes of a constituency, or to
denounce his rival as a pro-Boer in order to secure defeat for that
unlucky personage. The constituencies will begin to ask what each
candidate proposes to do for the domestic prosperity of our populations
at home, and to demand an explicit answer. Under such conditions,
whatever be the reconstitution of parties, I am strongly of opinion that
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will before long begin a new administrative
career.
[Illustration: Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry
JOHN E. REDMOND]
JOHN E. REDMOND
John Edward Redmond is one of the leading men in the House of Commons
just now. He is one of the very few really eloquent speakers of whom the
House can boast at the present time. His eloquence is, indeed, of a kind
but rarely heard in either House of Parliament during recent years. The
ordinary style of debate in the House of Commons is becoming more and
more of the merely conversational order, and even when the speaker is
very much in earnest, even when he is carried away by the fervor of
debate, his emotion is apt to express itself rather in an elevation of
the voice than in an exaltation of the style. Among members of the House
who may be still regarded as having a career before them I do not think
there are more than three or four who are capable of making a really
eloquent speech--a speech which is worth hearing for its style and its
language as well as for its information and its argument. John Redmond
is one of these gifted few; Lloyd-George is another. I have heard some
critics depreciate John Redmond's eloquence on the ground that it is
rather old-fashioned. If it be old-fashioned to express one's meaning in
polished and well-balanced sentences, in brilliant phrasing, and with
melodious utterance, then I have to admit that John Redmond is not, in
his style of eloquence, quite up to the present fashion, and I can only
say that it is so much the worse for the present fashion. It is quite
certain that Redmond is accepted by the House of Commons in general as
one of its most eloquent speakers and one of its ablest party leaders.
Redmond has already been some twenty years in the House of Commons. He
was a very young man when first chosen to represent an Irish
constituency in the House. I have noticed that our biographical
dictionaries of contemporary life do not agree as to the date of
Redmond's birth. Some of the books set him down as born in 1851, while
others give the year of his birth as 1856. I think I have good reason
for knowing that the latter date is the correct one. Perhaps it ought to
bring a sense of gratification to a public man when a dispute arises as
to the date of his birth. It may give him a complacent reminder of the
fact that certain cities disputed as to Homer's birthplace.
John Redmond comes of a good family, and his father was for a long time
a member of the House of Commons. I can remember the elder Redmond very
well, and he was a man of the most courteous bearing and polished
manners, a man of education and capacity, who, whenever he spoke in
debate, spoke well and to the point, and was highly esteemed by all
parties in the House. John Redmond was educated at Trinity College,
Dublin, studied for the law and was called to the bar, but did not
practice in the profession. He was elected to the House of Commons in
1881, and became a member of that National party which had been formed
not long before under the guidance of Charles Stewart Parnell. From the
time when he first took part in a Parliamentary debate it was evident
that John Redmond had inherited his father's graceful manner of
speaking, and it was soon discovered that he possessed a faculty of
genuine eloquence which had not been displayed by the elder Redmond.
John Redmond had and still has a voice of remarkable strength, volume,
and variety of intonation, and he was soon afforded ample opportunity
of testing his capacity for public speech. It was a great part of
Parnell's policy that there should be a powerful Home Rule organization
extending itself over all parts of Great Britain, founding institutions
in all the principal cities and towns, and addressing audiences indoors
and out on the subject of Ireland's demand for domestic self-government.
John Redmond soon became one of the most effective organizers of this
new movement and one of the most powerful pleaders of the cause on
public platforms. The first time I ever heard him make a speech in
public was at a great open-air meeting held in Hyde Park. He had to
address a vast crowd, and I felt naturally anxious to know what his
success might be under such trying conditions for a young speaker. He
had then but a slender frame, and his somewhat delicately molded
features did not suggest the idea of great lung-power. After his first
sentence I felt no further doubt as to his physical capacity. He had a
magnificent voice, clear, resonant, and thrilling, which made itself
heard all over the crowd without the slightest apparent effort on the
part of the speaker. I could not help being struck at the time by the
seeming contrast between the boyish, delicate figure and the easy
strength of the resonant voice.
During his earlier sessions in the House of Commons Redmond did not
speak very often, but when he did speak he made it clear that he had at
his command a gift of genuine eloquence. He held office as one of the
whips of the Irish National party--that is to say, as one of the chosen
officials whose duty it is to look after the arrangements of the party,
to see that its members are always in their places at the right time, to
settle as to the speakers who are to take part in each debate, and to
enter into any necessary communications with the whips of the other
parties in the House. Redmond was a man admirably suited for such work.
He had had an excellent education; he had the polished manners of good
society; he belonged to what I may call the country gentleman order, and
could ride to hounds with a horsemanship which must have won the respect
of the Tory squires from the hunting counties; and he had an excellent
capacity and memory for all matters of arrangement and detail. He
attended to his duties as one of the party whips with unfailing
regularity, and could exercise with equal skill and effect the
influence of persuasiveness and that of official command.
In the early days of the Parnell party there was not, to be sure, any
great demand on the marshaling power of the whips over the rank and file
of the little army. For a considerable time the whole Parnellite party
did not consist of more than ten or a dozen members. These members,
however, were compelled to do constant duty, and to maintain the great
game of Parliamentary obstruction revived by Parnell at all hours of the
day and the night. It was quite a common thing for a member of the party
to deliver a dozen or fifteen speeches in the course of a single
sitting, and John Redmond had all his work to do in endeavoring to keep
exhausted colleagues up to their business and to see that they did not
leave the precincts of the House until Mr. Speaker should have formally
announced that the day's sitting was over. Redmond's services were of
inestimable value during such a period of trial. As the days went on,
the Irish constituencies became more and more aroused to the necessity
of increasing as far as possible the number of thoroughgoing Parnellites
in the House by getting rid, at every election, of the Irish
members--Irish Whigs as they were called--who did not go in thoroughly,
heart and soul, for the policy of Parnell. Under such conditions the
influence and the eloquence of John Redmond were of the most substantial
service to his party in the work of stirring up the national sentiment
among the Irish populations in the cities and towns of England and
Scotland. Before many years had passed, John Redmond was one of the
whips of an Irish National party in the House of Commons which numbered
nearly ninety members. The increase of official duties thus put upon him
and his brother whips did not seem to trouble him in the slightest
degree. He was always on duty in the House, unless when he had to be on
duty at some public meeting outside its precincts; he was ever in good
spirits; could always give his chief the fullest and most exact
information as to the conditions of each debate, and the best methods of
getting full use of the numbers and the debating strength of the Irish
party at any given moment.
During the greater part of this time he had not had much opportunity of
cultivating his faculty as a debater, for the whip of a party is
understood to be occupied rather in putting other men up to speak than
in displaying eloquence of his own, and it was for several years not
quite understood by the party that John Redmond was qualified to be and
was destined to be one of its most commanding spokesmen. I ought to say
that among other duties discharged by John Redmond was the trying and
responsible task of traveling on more than one occasion over the United
States and Canada and Australia to preach the Home Rule gospel to the
Irish populations in those countries and to all others who would listen,
and thus to obtain the utmost possible support for the great movement at
home. For many sessions, however, John Redmond was regarded by his
colleagues in the House as a speaker best heard to advantage on some
great public platform outside the Parliamentary precincts, and very few
of them indeed had yet formed the idea that he was also qualified to
become one of the foremost orators in the representative chamber itself.
I may mention here that Mr. Redmond's intimate knowledge of the rules
and practices of the House and his thorough acquaintance with its
business ways were, in great measure, due to his having held for a time
a place in one of the offices belonging to the House of Commons. He was
appointed, before he became a member of the House, a clerk in the Vote
Office, a department which has to do with the preparation of
Parliamentary documents, the distribution of Parliamentary papers, and
other such technical work. The clerkships in these offices are in the
gift of the Speaker, are an avenue towards the highest promotions in the
official staff of the House, and are usually given to young men who, in
addition to high education and a promise of capacity, can bring some
Parliamentary or family influence to bear on their behalf. John Redmond
had some experience in this Vote Office, and it made him a thorough
master of Parliamentary business. I had enjoyed his personal
acquaintance for some time before he came into the House as a member,
and I had been in the House myself some two years before his election. I
remember often seeing him and exchanging a word with him as he stood
within the House itself, but just below the line which marks the place
where the bar of the House is erected when there is occasion, for any
public purpose, to admit a stranger thus far and no farther, in order
that he may plead some cause before the House or present some petition.
Officials employed in any of the offices belonging to the House are
allowed the proud privilege of advancing up the floor of the chamber as
far as the chair occupied by the Sergeant-at-Arms, the point at which
the bar would be drawn across if occasion should require. Thus I had the
opportunity of conversing with John Redmond on the floor of the House
itself, before he had yet obtained the right of passing beyond the
sacred line of the bar.
I am quite certain that Parnell himself did not, until the great crisis
came in the Irish National party, fully appreciate the political
capacity of John Redmond. Parnell always regarded him as both useful and
ornamental--useful in managing the business of the party, and ornamental
as a brilliant speaker on a public platform. But he did not appear to
know, and had indeed no means of knowing, that Redmond had in himself
the qualifications of a party leader and the debating power which could
make him an influence in the House of Commons. The speeches which
Redmond made, or rather was "put up" by his leader to make, in the
House, had often for their object merely to fill up time and keep a
debate going until the moment arrived when Parnell thought a division
ought to be taken. But when the great crisis came in the affairs of the
party, then Redmond was soon able to prove himself made of stronger
metal than even his leader had supposed. The crisis was, of course, when
the Parnell divorce case came on, and Gladstone and the Liberal leaders
generally became filled with the conviction that it would be impossible
to carry a measure of Home Rule if Parnell were to retain the leadership
of the Irish National party. I need not go over this old and painful
story again; it is enough to say that the great majority of Parnell's
own followers found themselves compelled to believe that it would be
better for Ireland if Parnell were to resign the leadership and retire
into private life for a certain time. This Parnell refused to do, and,
in opposition to the earnest wishes of the majority of his followers, he
published a sort of manifesto in denunciation of Gladstone. Then came
the famous meetings of the Irish party in Committee-Room No. 15--one of
the committee-rooms belonging to the House of Commons--and, after long
days of angry and sometimes even fierce debate, the great majority of
the party declared that they could no longer follow the leadership of
Parnell. The minority made up their minds to hold with Parnell for good
or evil.
I am willing and always was willing to render full justice to the
motives which inspired the action of the minority. They did not feel
themselves called upon to justify every act of Parnell's private life,
but they took the position that his private life had nothing to do with
his political career, and that they could not abandon the leader who had
done such service to Ireland merely because his name had become
associated with a public scandal. On the other hand, the majority of the
party, of whom I was one, held that their first duty was to their
country, and that if the continued leadership of Parnell rendered it
impossible for Gladstone to carry his Home Rule measure, they had to
think only of their country and its national cause. During all these
debates in Committee-Room No. 15, John Redmond took the leading part on
the side of the minority. He became the foremost champion of Parnell's
leadership. This position seemed to come to him as if in the nature of
things. I well remember the ability and eloquence which he displayed in
these debates, and the telling manner in which he put his arguments and
his appeals. The course he took was all the more to his credit because
Parnell had never singled him out as an object of especial favors and,
indeed, in the opinion of many among us, had not done full justice to
his services in the House of Commons. Then came the formal division of
the party. The majority met together and reconstituted the party with a
new Chairman, while the minority associated themselves with Parnell as
their leader for the purpose of going over to Ireland and endeavoring to
organize the country in his support. When the end of the fierce open
controversy was brought about at last by Parnell's sudden death, John
Redmond was made the leader of the minority, and from that time forth he
began to give more and more distinct evidences of his capacity for a
Parliamentary leader's position. He and his group of followers kept
themselves in the House of Commons entirely apart from their former
colleagues. John Redmond had often to take a part in the debates of the
House, and every one could see that the serious responsibility imposed
on him was developing in him qualities of leadership, and even of
statesmanship, which very few indeed had previously believed to be among
his gifts.
Meanwhile the state of things created in Ireland by the split and the
setting up of two opposing parties was becoming intolerable. Every man
of patriotic feeling on either side of the controversy was coming to see
more keenly every day that the maintenance of such a division must be
fatal to the cause, for at least another generation. Some efforts were
made by the leading men on both sides to bring about a process of
reconciliation. John Dillon on the one side, and John Redmond on the
other, lent every help they could to these patriotic efforts. John
Dillon had by this time become leader of the more numerous party, having
been chosen to that position when the leader elected after the severance
from Parnell had been compelled by ill health to resign the place. Every
reasonable man among the Irish Nationalists, inside and outside
Parliament, was coming more and more to see that there was no longer any
occasion whatever for further severance, and that the country demanded a
return to the old principle of union in the National ranks. John Dillon
became impressed with the conviction that it might tend to smooth
matters and to open a better chance for reconciliation if he, as one of
the most conspicuous anti-Parnellites, were to resign his position, and
to invite the whole party to come together again and elect a leader.
Dillon was strongly of opinion that, as all matter of controversy had
been buried in the early grave of Parnell, it would be better for the
cause of future union that the new leader should be chosen from among
the small number of men who had always adhered to Parnell's side. Dillon
prevailed upon most of his friends to adopt his views on this subject.
It was the custom of the Irish National party--indeed, of both the
parties--to elect their leader at the opening of each session, and John
Dillon had been re-elected more than once to the position of command in
his own party. Accordingly, at the close of a session Dillon announced
his intention to resign the place of leader, and he added to the
announcement that he would not then accept re-election, even if it
should be offered to him by a vote of his party. This patriotic course
of action was most happy in its results. The Irish National members met
together once again as a united party, and the leadership was conferred
on John Redmond as an evidence alike of the confidence which was felt in
his capacity and his sincerity, and a proof of the desire entertained by
the majority for a thorough and cordial reunion of the whole party.
John Redmond was therefore the first leader of the whole party since the
events of Committee-Room No. 15. John Dillon and his immediate
predecessor had been only leaders of a majority, and now John Redmond
was chosen as the leader of the whole party representing the Irish
National cause in the House of Commons. He settled down at once to his
new position with a temper and spirit admirably suited to the work he
had to undertake. He seemed to have put away from his mind all memory of
disunion in the party, and he became once more the friend as well as the
leader of every member enrolled in its ranks. Many of those who formed
the majority had in the first instance only yielded to the persuasion of
John Dillon and others in the election of Redmond as leader merely
because they believed that by such a course the interests of the cause
could best be served just then. But I know that some of these men
accepted with personal reluctance what seemed to be the necessity of the
hour, and looked forward with anything but gratification to the prospect
of having to serve under the new chief. John Redmond, while defending
the cause of the still living Parnell, had shown in the service of his
chief an energy and a passion which few of us could have expected of
him, and was often utterly unsparing in his denunciation of the men who
maintained the other side of the controversy. It was not unnatural that
many of his former opponents should feel some doubt as to the
possibility of working harmoniously under the leadership of a man who
had been but lately so bitter an opponent. I had, at the time of the new
leadership, been compelled by ill health to give up all active part in
public life, but I talked with many members of the majority in the Irish
party who told me frankly that they feared it would not be possible to
get on under the leadership of John Redmond. Before long, however, these
same men spontaneously assured me that they had changed their opinions
on that subject, and were glad to find that they could work with Redmond
in perfect harmony, and that his manner and bearing showed no sign
whatever of any bitter memories belonging to the days of internal
dispute. Redmond devoted himself absolutely to the House of Commons and
the business of leadership, unless indeed when some pressing national
interests compelled him to leave his place in St. Stephen's in order to
see to the organization of the National cause in Ireland or in the
United States. At the time when I am writing this article he has but
lately returned from a visit of that kind to some of the great cities of
the American Republic.
Fortunately for his country as well as for himself, John Redmond is a
man of private means, is not compelled to earn a living, and can devote
the whole of his time to the service of the National cause. He is always
to be found at his post while the House of Commons is sitting, and I
believe that his morning ride in Hyde Park with his wife every day is
one of the few recreations in which he allows himself to indulge. I had
not long ago a visit from a well-known member of the Irish Parliamentary
party who holds one of its official positions and was at the time of the
internal dispute an uncompromising opponent of Parnell's continued rule.
This friend of mine I know was decidedly opposed at first to the
election of John Redmond as leader, for the reason that he did not
believe such an arrangement could possibly work with smoothness and
satisfaction to the party. But when I saw him lately, he assured me that
he had entirely changed his opinions and that he did not believe any
party could possibly have a better leader than John Redmond had already
proved himself to be. He had nothing but praise for Redmond's bearing
and ways, for the manner in which he appeared to have banished from his
mind all memory of past disunion, and for the unremitting attention with
which he devoted himself to the work of the party inside and outside the
House of Commons.