Sir Timothy Beeswax
There had lately been a great Conservative reaction in the country,
brought about in part by the industry and good management of
gentlemen who were strong on that side;--but due also in part to the
blunders and quarrels of their opponents. That these opponents should
have blundered and quarrelled, being men active and in earnest, was
to have been expected. Such blunderings and quarrellings have been
a matter of course since politics have been politics, and since
religion has been religion. When men combine to do nothing, how
should there be disagreement? When men combine to do much, how should
there not be disagreement? Thirty men can sit still, each as like the
other as peas. But put your thirty men up to run a race, and they
will soon assume different forms. And in doing nothing, you can
hardly do amiss. Let the doers of nothing have something of action
forced upon them, and they, too, will blunder and quarrel.
The wonder is that there should ever be in a reforming party enough
of consentaneous action to carry any reform. The reforming or Liberal
party in British politics had thus stumbled,--and stumbled till it
fell. And now there had been a great Conservative reaction! Many of
the most Liberal constituencies in the country had been untrue to
their old political convictions. And, as the result, Lord Drummond
was Prime Minister in the House of Lords,--with Sir Timothy Beeswax
acting as first man in the House of Commons.
It cannot be denied that Sir Timothy had his good points as a
politician. He was industrious, patient, clear-sighted, intelligent,
courageous, and determined. Long before he had had a seat in the
House, when he was simply making his way up to the probability of a
seat by making a reputation as an advocate, he had resolved that he
would be more than an Attorney-General, more than a judge,--more,
as he thought it, than a Chief Justice; but at any rate something
different. This plan he had all but gained,--and it must be
acknowledged that he had been moved by a grand and manly ambition.
But there were drawbacks to the utility and beauty of Sir Timothy's
character as a statesman. He had no idea as to the necessity or
non-necessity of any measure whatever in reference to the well-being
of the country. It may, indeed, be said that all such ideas were to
him absurd, and the fact that they should be held by his friends and
supporters was an inconvenience. He was not in accord with those who
declare that a Parliament is a collection of windbags which puff, and
blow, and crack to the annoyance of honest men. But to him Parliament
was a debating place, by having a majority in which, and by no other
means, he,--or another,--might become the great man of the day. By no
other than parliamentary means could such a one as he come to be the
chief man. And this use of Parliament, either on his own behalf or
on behalf of others, had been for so many years present to his mind,
that there seemed to be nothing absurd in an institution supported
for such a purpose. Parliament was a club so eligible in its nature
that all Englishmen wished to belong to it. They who succeeded were
acknowledged to be the cream of the land. They who dominated in it
were the cream of the cream. Those two who were elected to be the
chiefs of the two parties had more of cream in their composition than
any others. But he who could be the chief of the strongest party, and
who therefore, in accordance with the prevailing arrangements of the
country, should have the power of making dukes, and bestowing garters
and appointing bishops, he who by attaining the first seat should
achieve the right of snubbing all before him, whether friends or
foes, he, according to the feelings of Sir Timothy, would have gained
an Elysium of creaminess not to be found in any other position on the
earth's surface. No man was more warmly attached to parliamentary
government than Sir Timothy Beeswax; but I do not think that he ever
cared much for legislation.
Parliamentary management was his forte. There have been various rocks
on which men have shattered their barks in their attempts to sail
successfully into the harbours of parliamentary management. There is
the great Senator who declares to himself that personally he will
have neither friend nor foe. There is his country before him and its
welfare. Within his bosom is the fire of patriotism, and within his
mind the examples of all past time. He knows that he can be just, he
teaches himself to be eloquent, and he strives to be wise. But he
will not bend;--and at last, in some great solitude, though closely
surrounded by those whose love he had neglected to acquire,--he
breaks his heart.
Then there is he who seeing the misfortune of that great one, tells
himself that patriotism, judgment, industry, and eloquence will not
suffice for him unless he himself can be loved. To do great things
a man must have a great following, and to achieve that he must be
popular. So he smiles and learns the necessary wiles. He is all for
his country and his friends,--but for his friends first. He too must
be eloquent and well instructed in the ways of Parliament, must be
wise and diligent; but in all that he does and all that he says he
must first study his party. It is well with him for a time;--but
he has closed the door of his Elysium too rigidly. Those without
gradually become stronger than his friends within, and so he falls.
But may not the door be occasionally opened to an outsider, so that
the exterior force be diminished? We know how great is the pressure
of water; and how the peril of an overwhelming weight of it may be
removed by opening the way for a small current. There comes therefore
the Statesman who acknowledges to himself that he will be pregnable.
That, as a Statesman, he should have enemies is a matter of course.
Against moderate enemies he will hold his own. But when there comes
one immoderately forcible, violently inimical, then to that man he
will open his bosom. He will tempt into his camp with an offer of
high command any foe that may be worth his purchase. This too has
answered well; but there is a Nemesis. The loyalty of officers so
procured must be open to suspicion. The man who has said bitter
things against you will never sit at your feet in contented
submission, nor will your friend of old standing long endure to be
superseded by such converts.
All these dangers Sir Timothy had seen and studied, and for each of
them he had hoped to be able to provide an antidote. Love cannot do
all. Fear may do more. Fear acknowledges a superior. Love desires an
equal. Love is to be created by benefits done, and means gratitude,
which we all know to be weak. But hope, which refers itself to
benefits to come, is of all our feelings the strongest. And Sir
Timothy had parliamentary doctrines concealed in the depths of his
own bosom more important even than these. The Statesman who falls is
he who does much, and thus injures many. The Statesman who stands the
longest is he who does nothing and injures no one. He soon knew that
the work which he had taken in hand required all the art of a great
conjuror. He must be possessed of tricks so marvellous that not even
they who sat nearest to him might know how they were performed.
For the executive or legislative business of the country he cared
little. The one should be left in the hands of men who liked
work;--of the other there should be little, or, if possible, none.
But Parliament must be managed,--and his party. Of patriotism he
did not know the meaning;--few, perhaps, do, beyond a feeling that
they would like to lick the Russians, or to get the better of the
Americans in a matter of fisheries or frontiers. But he invented a
pseudo-patriotic conjuring phraseology which no one understood but
which many admired. He was ambitious that it should be said of him
that he was far-and-away the cleverest of his party. He knew himself
to be clever. But he could only be far-and-away the cleverest by
saying and doing that which no one could understand. If he could
become master of some great hocus-pocus system which could be made to
be graceful to the ears and eyes of many, which might for awhile seem
to have within it some semi-divine attribute, which should have all
but divine power of mastering the loaves and fishes, then would they
who followed him believe in him more firmly than other followers who
had believed in their leaders. When you see a young woman read a
closed book placed on her dorsal vertebræ,--if you do believe that
she so reads it, you think that she is endowed with a wonderful
faculty! And should you also be made to believe that the same young
woman had direct communication with Abraham, by means of some
invisible wire, you would be apt to do a great many things as
that young woman might tell you. Conjuring, when not known to be
conjuring, is very effective.
Much, no doubt, of Sir Timothy's power had come from his praiseworthy
industry. Though he cared nothing for the making of laws, though he
knew nothing of finance, though he had abandoned his legal studies,
still he worked hard. And because he had worked harder in a special
direction than others around him, therefore he was enabled to lead
them. The management of a party is a very great work in itself; and
when to that is added the management of the House of Commons, a man
has enough upon his hands even though he neglects altogether the
ordinary pursuits of a Statesman. Those around Sir Timothy were fond
of their party; but they were for the most part men who had not
condescended to put their shoulders to the wheel as he had done. Had
there been any very great light among them, had there been a Pitt
or a Peel, Sir Timothy would have probably become Attorney-General
and have made his way to the bench;--but there had been no Pitt and
no Peel, and he had seen his opening. He had studied the ways of
Members. Parliamentary practice had become familiar to him. He had
shown himself to be ready at all hours to fight the battle of the
party he had joined. And no man knew so well as did Sir Timothy how
to elevate a simple legislative attempt into a good faction fight. He
had so mastered his tricks of conjuring that no one could get to the
bottom of them, and had assumed a look of preternatural gravity which
made many young Members think that Sir Timothy was born to be a king
of men.
There were no doubt some among his older supporters who felt their
thraldom grievously. There were some lords in the Upper House and
some sons of the lords in the Lower,--with pedigrees going back far
enough for pride,--who found it irksome to recognise Sir Timothy as
a master. No doubt he had worked very hard, and had worked for them.
No doubt he knew how to do the work, and they did not. There was
no other man among them to whom the lead could be conveniently
transferred. But yet they were uncomfortable,--and perhaps a little
ashamed.
It had arisen partly from this cause, that there had been something
of a counter-reaction at the last general election. When the Houses
met, the Ministers had indeed a majority, but a much lessened
majority. The old Liberal constituencies had returned to an
expression of their real feeling. This reassertion of the progress
of the tide, this recovery from the partial ebb which checks the
violence of every flow, is common enough in politics; but at the
present moment there were many who said that all this had been
accelerated by a feeling in the country that Sir Timothy was hardly
all that the country required as the leader of the country party.