and Mr. Parnell is one of the very few who have arrived at power
neither by that road nor by military success. So far from having by
nature any of the gifts or graces of a popular speaker, he was at
first conspicuously deficient in them, and became at last effective
only by constant practice, and by an intellectual force which asserted
itself through commonplaceness of language and a monotonous delivery.
Fluency was wanting, and even moderate ease was acquired only after
four or five years' practice. His voice was neither powerful nor
delicate in its modulations, but it was clear, and the enunciation
deliberate and distinct, quiet when the matter was ordinary, slow and
emphatic when an important point arrived. With very little action of
the body, there was often an interesting and obviously unstudied
display of facial expression. So far from glittering with the florid
rhetoric supposed to characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were
singularly plain, bare, and dry. Neither had they any humour. If they
ever raised a smile, which seldom happened, it was by some touch of
sarcasm or adroit thrust at a point left unguarded by an adversary.
Their merit lay in their lucidity, in their aptness to the matter in
hand, in the strong practical sense which ran through them, coupled
with the feeling that they came from one who led a nation, and whose
forecasts had often fulfilled themselves. They were carefully
prepared, and usually made from pretty full notes; but the preparation
had been given rather to the matter and the arrangement than to the
diction, which had rarely any ornament or literary finish. Of late
years he spoke infrequently, whether from indolence or from weak
health, or because he thought little was to be done in the face of a
hostile majority, now that the tactics of obstruction had been
abandoned. When he interposed without preparation in a debate which
had arisen unexpectedly, he was short, pithy, and direct; indeed,
nothing was more characteristic of Parnell than his talent for hitting
the nail on the head, a talent which always commands attention in
deliberative assemblies. No one saw more clearly or conveyed in terser
language the course which the circumstances of the moment required;
and as his mastery of parliamentary procedure and practice came next
to that of Mr. Gladstone, any advice that he gave to the House on a
point of order carried weight. It would indeed be no exaggeration to
say that during the sessions of 1889 and 1890 he was distinctly the
second man in the House of Commons, surpassed in debating power by
five or six others, but inferior to Mr. Gladstone alone in the
interest which his speeches excited and in the impression they
produced. Along with this access of influence his attitude and the
spirit of his policy appeared to rise and widen. There was less of
that hard attorneyism which had marked his criticisms of the Tory
Government and their measures up to March 1880, and of the Liberal
Government and their measures during the five following years. He
seemed to grow more and more to the full stature of a statesman, with
constructive views and a willingness to make the best of the facts as
he found them. Yet even in this later and better time one note of
greatness was absent from his speeches. There was nothing genial or
generous or elevated about them. They never soared into an atmosphere
of lofty feeling, worthy of the man who was by this time deemed to be
leading his nation to victory, and who had begun to be admired and
honoured by one of the two great historic English parties.
Parnell was not only versed in the rules of parliamentary procedure,
but also a consummate master of parliamentary tactics. Soon after he
entered the House of Commons he detected its weak point, and perfected
a system of obstruction which so destroyed the efficiency of its
time-honoured modes of doing business that new sets of rules, each
more stringent than the preceding, had to be devised between 1878 and
1888. The skill with which he handled his small but well-disciplined
battalion was admirable. He was strict with individuals, requiring
absolute obedience to the party rules, but ready to gratify any
prevailing current of feeling when he saw that this could be done
without harm to the cause. More than once, when English members who
happened to be acting with him on some particular question pressed him
to keep his men quiet and let a division be taken at once, he answered
that they were doubtless right in thinking that the moment for
securing a good division had arrived, but that he must not muzzle his
followers when they wanted to have their fling. The best proof of the
tact with which he ruled a section comprising many men of brilliant
talents lies in the fact that there was no serious revolt, or movement
towards revolt, against him until the breach of 1890 between himself
and the Liberal party had led to the belief that his continued
leadership would mean defeat at the polls in Great Britain, and the
postponement, perhaps for many years, of Home Rule for Ireland.
Parnell's political views and tendencies were eagerly canvassed by
those who had studied him closely. Many, among both Englishmen and
Irishmen, held that he was at heart a Conservative, valuing strong
government and attached to the rights of property. They predicted that
if an Irish Parliament had been established, as proposed by Mr.
Gladstone in 1886, and an Irish cabinet formed to administer the
affairs of the island, Parnell would have been the inevitable and
somewhat despotic leader of the party of authority and order. His
co-operation with the agrarian agitators from 1879 onwards was in this
view merely a politic expedient to gain support for the Home Rule
campaign. For this theory there is much to be said. Though he came to
lead a revolution, and was willing, as appeared in the last few months
of his life, to appeal to the genuine revolutionary party, Parnell was
not by temper or conviction a revolutionist. Those who were left in
Ireland of the old Fenian group, and especially that section of the
extreme Fenians out of which the secret insurrectionary and dynamitard
societies were formed, never liked or trusted him. The passion which
originally carried him into public life was hatred of England, and a
wish to restore to Ireland, if possible her national independence
(though he rarely if ever avowed this), or at least her own
Parliament. But he was no democratic leveller, and still less
inclined to those socialistic doctrines which the section influenced
by Mr. Davitt had espoused. He did not desire the "extinction of
landlordism," and would probably have been a restraining and
moderating force in an Irish legislature. That he was genuinely
attached to his native country need not be doubted. But his patriotism
had little of a sentimental quality, and seemed to spring as much from
dislike of England as from love of Ireland.
It may excite surprise that a man such as has been sketched, with so
cool a judgment and so complete a self-control, a man (as his previous
career had shown) able to endure temporary reverses in the confidence
of ultimate success, should have committed the fatal error, which
blasted his fame and shortened his life, of clinging to the headship
of his party when prudence prescribed retirement. When he sought the
advice of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, retirement for a time was the counsel he
received. His absence need not have been of long duration. Had he,
after the sentence of the Divorce Court in November 1890, gone abroad
for eight or ten months, allowing some one to be chosen in his place
chairman of the Irish party for the session, he might thereafter have
returned to the House of Commons, and would doubtless, after a short
lapse of time, have naturally recovered the leadership. No one else
could have resisted his claims. Unfortunately, the self-reliant pride
which had many a time stood him in good stead, made him refuse to bow
to the storm. Probably he could not understand the indignation which
the proceedings in the divorce case had awakened in England, being
morally somewhat callous, and knowing that his offence had been no
secret to many persons in the House of Commons. He had been accustomed
to despise English opinion, and had on former occasions suffered
little for doing so. He bitterly resented both Mr. Gladstone's letter
and the movement to depose him which it roused in his own party.
Having often before found defiant resolution lead to success, he
determined again to rely on the maxim which has beguiled so many to
ruin, just because it has so much truth in it--"_De l'audace, encore
de l'audace, toujours de l'audace._" The affront to his pride
disturbed the balance of his mind, and made him feel as if even a
temporary humiliation would destroy the prestige that had been won by
his haughty self-confidence. It was soon evident that he had
overestimated his power in Ireland, but when the schism began there
were many besides Lord Salisbury--many in Ireland as well as in
England--who predicted triumph for him. Nor must it be thought that it
was pure selfishness which made him resolve rather to break with the
English Liberals than allow the Nationalist bark to be steered by any
hands but his own. He was a fatalist, and had that confidence in his
star and his mission which is often characteristic of minds in which
superstition--for he was superstitious--and a certain morbid taint may
be discerned. There were others who believed that no one but himself
could hold the Irish party together and carry the Irish cause to
triumph. No wonder that this belief should have filled and perhaps
disordered his own brain.
The swiftness of his rise is a striking instance of the power which
intellectual concentration and a strenuous will can exert, for he had
no adventitious help from wealth or family connection or from the
reputation of having suffered for his country. _Ergo vivida vis animi
pervicit._ When he entered Parliament he was only thirty, with no
experience of affairs and no gift of speech; but the quality that was
in him of leading and ruling men, of taking the initiative, of seeing
and striking at the weak point of the enemy, and fearlessly facing the
brunt of an enemy's attack, made itself felt in a few months, and he
rose without effort to the first place. With some intellectual
limitations and some great faults, he will stand high in the long and
melancholy series of Irish leaders: less lofty than Grattan, less
romantic than Wolfe Tone, less attractive than O'Connell, less
brilliant than any of these three, yet entitled to be remembered as
one of the most remarkable characters that his country has produced in
her struggle of many centuries against the larger isle.
-----
[35] The _Life of Parnell_, by Mr. R. Barry O'Brien, has taken rank
among the best biographies of the last half-century.
[36] An anecdote was told at the time that when he found himself in
the prison yard at Kilmainham, he said, in a sort of soliloquy,
"I shall live yet to dance upon those two old men's graves."
CARDINAL MANNING
Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal of the
Holy Roman Church, was born in 1808, eight years after Cardinal
Newman, and died in 1892. He was one of the most notable figures of
his generation; and, indeed, in a sense, an unique figure, for he
contributed a new type to the already rich and various ecclesiastical
life of England. If he could scarcely be described as intellectually a
man of the first order, he held a considerable place in the history of
his time, having effected what greater men might perhaps have failed
to effect, for the race is not always to the swift, and time and
chance favoured Manning.
He was the son of wealthy parents, his father a City of London
merchant; was educated at Harrow and at Oxford, where he obtained high
classical honours and a Fellowship at Merton College; was ordained a
clergyman, and soon rose to be Archdeacon of Chichester; and, having
by degrees been led further and further from his original Low Church
position into the Tractarian movement, ultimately, at the age of
forty-three, went over to the Church of Rome. Having some time before
lost his wife, he was at once re-ordained a priest, was appointed
Archbishop of Westminster on Cardinal Wiseman's death in 1865, and
raised to the Cardinalate by Pope Pius IX. in 1875.
He was not a great thinker nor a man of wide learning. His writings
show no trace of originality, nor indeed any conspicuous philosophical
acuteness or logical power. So far as purely intellectual gifts are
concerned, he was not to be named with Cardinal Newman or with several
other of the ablest members of the English Tractarian party, such as
were the two metaphysicians W. G. Ward and Dalgairns, both of whom
passed over to Rome, or such as was Dean Church, an accomplished
historian, and a man of singularly beautiful character, who remained
an Anglican till his death in 1890. Nor, though he had won a high
reputation at his University, was Manning a leading spirit in the
famous "Oxford Movement." It was by his winning manners, his graceful
rhetoric, and his zealous discharge of clerical duties, rather than by
any commanding talents that he rose to eminence in the Church of
England. Neither had his character the same power either to attract or
to awe as that of Newman. Nobody in those days called him great, as
men called Newman. Nobody felt compelled to follow where he led. There
was not, either in his sermons or in his writings, or in his bodily
presence and conversation, anything which could be pronounced
majestic, or lofty, or profound. In short, he was not in the grand
style, either as a man or as a preacher, and wanted that note of
ethereal purity or passionate fervour which marks the two highest
forms of religious character.
Intelligent, however, skilful, versatile he was in the highest degree;
cultivated, too, with a knowledge of all that a highly educated man
ought to know; dexterous rather than forcible in theological
controversy; an admirable rhetorician, handling language with
something of that kind of art which Roman ecclesiastics most
cultivate, and in their possession of which the leading Tractarians
showed their affinity to Rome, an exact precision of phrase and a
subtle delicacy of suggestion. Newman had it in the fullest measure.
Dean Church had it, with less brilliance than Newman, but with no less
grace and dignity. Manning equalled neither of these, but we catch in
him the echo. He wrote abundantly and on many subjects, always with
cleverness and with the air of one who claimed to belong to the _ames
d'elite_, yet his style never attained the higher kind of literary
merit. There was no imaginative richness about it, neither were there
the weight and penetration that come from sustained and vigorous
thinking. Similarly, with a certain parade of references to history
and to out-of-the-way writers, he gave scant evidence of solid
learning. He was an accomplished disputant in the sense of knowing
thoroughly the more obvious weaknesses of the Protestant (and
especially of the Anglican) position, and of being able to contrast
them effectively with the external completeness and formal symmetry of
the Roman system. But he never struck out a new or illuminative
thought; and he seldom ventured to face--one could indeed sometimes
mark him seeking to elude--a real difficulty.
What, then, was the secret of his great and long-sustained reputation
and influence? It lay in his power of dealing with men. For the work
of an ecclesiastical ruler he had three inestimable gifts--a resolute
will, captivating manners, and a tact equally acute and vigilant, by
which he seemed not only to read men's characters, but to discern the
most effective means of playing on their motives. To call him an
intriguer would be unjust, because the word, if it does not imply the
pursuit of some mean or selfish object, does generally connote a
resort to unworthy arts; and the Cardinal was neither dishonourable
nor selfish. But he had the talents which an intriguer needs, though
he used them in a spirit of absolute devotion to the interests of his
Church, and though he was too much of a gentleman to think that the
interests of the Church, which might justify a good deal, could be
made to justify any and every means. In conversation he had the art of
seeming to lay his mind alongside of yours, wishful to know what you
had to say, and prepared to listen respectfully to it, even though you
might be much younger and of no personal consequence. Yet you
sometimes felt, if your own power of observation had not been lulled
to sleep by the winning manner, that he was watching you, and
watching, in conformity to a settled habit, the effect upon you of
whatever he said. It was hard not to be flattered by this air of
kindly deference, and natural to admire the great man who condescended
without condescension, even though one might be secretly disappointed
at the want of freshness and insight in his conversation. Like his
famous contemporary, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Manning was all things
to all men. He was possessed, no doubt, of far less wit and far less
natural eloquence than that brilliant but variable creature. But he
gave a more distinct impression of earnest and unquestioning loyalty
to the cause he had made his own.
In the government of his diocese, Manning showed himself a finished
ruler and manager of men, flexible in his power of adapting himself to
any character or society, yet inflexible when firmness was needed,
usually tactful if not always gentle in his methods, but tenacious in
his purposes, demanding rightfully from others the simplicity of life
and the untiring industry of which he set an example himself. Over
women his influence was still greater than over men, because women are
more susceptible to the charm of presence and address; nor could any
other ecclesiastic count so many conversions among ladies of high
station, his dignified carriage and ascetic face according admirably
with his sacerdotal rank and his life of strict observance. For some
years it was his habit to go to Rome early in Lent and remain till
after Easter. Promising subjects, who had doubts as to their
probabilities of salvation in the Anglican communion, used to be
invited to dinner to meet him, and they fell in swift succession
before his skilful presentation of the peace and bliss to be found
within the Roman fold.
In his public appearances, it was neither the solid substance of his
discourses nor the literary quality of their style that struck one,
but their judicious adaptation to the audience, and the grace with
which they were delivered. For this reason--originality being rarer
and therefore more precious in the pulpit, where well-worn themes have
to be handled, than on a platform, where the topic is one of the
moment--his addresses at public meetings were better than his sermons,
and won for him the reputation of a speaker whom it was well worth
while to secure at any social or philanthropic gathering. At the
Vatican OEcumenical Council of 1870 it was less by his speeches than
by his work in private among the assembled prelates that he served the
Infallibilist cause. Himself devoted, and, no doubt, honestly devoted,
to Ultramontane principles, he did not hesitate to do violence to
history and join in destroying what freedom the Church at large had
retained, in order to exalt the Chair of Peter to a position unheard
of even at Trent, not to say in the Middle Ages. His activity, his
assiduity, and his tireless powers of persuasion contributed largely
to the satisfaction at that Council of the wishes of Pius IX., who
presently rewarded him with the Cardinalate. But the opponents of the
new dogma, who were as superior in learning to the Infallibilists as
they proved inferior in numbers, carried back with them to Germany and
North America an undying distrust of the astute Englishman who had
shown more than a convert's proverbial eagerness for rushing to
extremes and forcing others to follow. I remember to have met some of
the anti-Infallibilist prelates returning to America in the autumn of
1870; and in our many talks on shipboard they spoke of the Archbishop
in terms no more measured than Nestorius may have used of St. Cyril
after the Council of Ephesus.
But Manning's powers shone forth most fully in the course he gave to
his policy as Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Roman
hierarchy in Britain. He had two difficulties to confront. One was the
suspicion of the old English Roman Catholic families, who distrusted
him as a recent recruit from Protestantism, a man brought up in ideas
unfamiliar to their conservative minds. The other was the aversion of
the ruling classes in England, and indeed of Englishmen generally, to
the pretensions of Rome an aversion which, among the Tories, sprang
from deep-seated historical associations, and among the Whigs drew
further strength from dislike to the reactionary tendencies of the
Popedom on the European continent, and especially its resistance to
the freedom and unity of Italy. In 1850 the creation by the Pope of a
Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, followed by Cardinal Wiseman's
letter dated from the Flaminian Gate, had evoked a burst of anti-papal
feeling which never quite subsided during Wiseman's lifetime. Both
these enmities Manning overcame. The old Catholic families rallied to
a prelate who supported with dignity and vigour the pretensions of
their church; while the suspicions of Protestants were largely, if not
universally, allayed when they noted the attitude of a patriotic
Englishman, zealous for the greatness of his country, which the
Archbishop assumed, as well as the heartiness with which he threw
himself into moral and philanthropic causes. Loyalty to Rome never
betrayed him into any apparent disloyalty to England. Too prudent to
avow sympathy with either political party, he seemed less opposed to
Liberalism than his predecessor had been or than most of the English
Catholics were. While, of course, at issue with the Liberal party upon
educational questions, he was believed to lean to Home Rule, and
maintained good relations with the Irish leaders. He joined those who
worked for the better protection of children and the repression of
vice, advocated total abstinence by precept and example, and did much
to promote it among the poorer Roman Catholic population. Discerning
the growing magnitude of what are called labour questions, he did not
recoil from proposals to limit by legislation the hours of toil, and
gladly exerted himself to settle differences between employers and
workmen, showing his own sympathy with the needs and hardships of the
latter. Thus he won a popularity with the London masses greater than
any prelate of the Established Church had enjoyed, while the middle
and upper classes noted with pleasure that, however Ultramontane in
his theology, he always spoke and wrote as an Englishman upon
non-theological subjects.
In this there was no playing of a part, for he sincerely cared about
temperance, the welfare of children, the advancement of the labouring
class, and the greatness of England. But there was also a sage
perception of the incidental service which his attitude in these
matters could render to his church; and he relished opportunities of
proving that a Catholic prelate could be not only a philanthropist but
also a patriot. He saw the value of the attitude, though he used it
honestly, and if he was not artful, he was full of art. Truth, for its
own sake, he neither loved nor sought, but, having once adopted
certain conclusions, doctrinal and practical, subordinated everything
else to them. Power he loved, yet not wholly for the pleasure which he
found in exerting it, but also because he knew that he was fit to use
it, and could use it, to promote the aims he cherished. To his church
he was devoted heart and soul; nor could any one have better served it
so far as England was concerned. No one in our time, hardly even
Cardinal Newman, has done so much to sap and remove the old Protestant
fears and jealousies of Rome, fears and jealousies which had descended
from days when they were less unreasonable than the liberality or
indifference of our times will allow. Truly the Roman Church is a
wonderful institution, fertile beyond any other, since in each
succeeding age she has given birth to new types of force suited to the
conditions she has to deal with. In Manning she developed a figure
full of a kind of charm and strength which could hardly have found due
scope within a Protestant body: a man who never obtruded a claim, yet
never yielded one; who was the loyal servant of a spiritual despotism,
yet apparently in sympathy with democratic ideas and movements;
equally welcome among the poorest Irish of his diocese and at the
gatherings of the great; ready to join in every good work with those
most opposed to his own doctrines, yet standing detached as the
austere and unbending representative of a world-embracing power.
* * * * *
Since these pages were written there has appeared a Life of Cardinal
Manning which, for the variety and interest of its contents, and for
the flood of light which it throws upon its subject, deserves to rank
among the best biographies in the English language. It reveals the
inner life of Manning, his high motives and his tortuous methods, his
piety and his aspirations, his occasional lapses from sincerity and
rectitude, with a fulness to which one can scarcely find a parallel.
As was remarked by Mr. Gladstone, who was so keenly interested in the
book that for months he could talk of little else, it leaves nothing
for the Day of Judgment.
It would be idle to deny that Manning's reputation did in some measure
suffer. Yet it must in fairness be remembered that an ordeal such as
that to which he has been thus subjected is seldom applied, and might,
if similarly applied, have lowered many another reputation. Cicero
has suffered in like manner. We should have thought more highly of
him, though I do not know that we should have liked him better, if his
letters had not survived to reveal weaknesses which other men, or
their biographers, were discreet enough to conceal.