Sketches in the House Part 13

Some wits ventured on the cry, "Resign! Resign!"--altogether, the Tories had the best quarter of an hour they have enjoyed since that hideous afternoon before the Easter vacation, when, after a prolonged fight, the Old Man had to announce that he could not propose the second reading of the Bill until after Easter. It was all more or less of an accident; there were plenty of things to account for it--a reception at the House of a prominent Liberal lady, and many other explanations: but, all the same, it was a very ugly little incident; and though Mr. Gladstone carried it off with that indomitable courage of his, which doesn't know what a confession of defeat means, one could see that he did not like it; and for the rest of the evening there was a visible gloom in the Liberal ranks.

[Sidenote: Happy again.]

But May 31st brought the Derby, and with the Derby there came upon the Tory Benches one of those moments of temptation which the natural man is utterly unable to resist. The amendments followed each other in rapid succession; division came on top of division; and in them all the Liberals jumped back to their old superiority of numbers. In the earlier part of the day, when the fortunes of Isingla.s.s were still undetermined, the majorities were enormous; and though there was a certain falling off when sporting gentlemen began to get back from the dusty Downs, the average was well kept up; and it was with a distinct rise in the temperature of Liberal hopes and confidence that this stage was reached.

On the following day the lowness of the voice in the Old Man was a little more perceptible, and when it got to midnight, he seemed painfully f.a.gged and exhausted. It was, perhaps, because he was in that mood that he made some concessions to the Unionists, which have been somewhat resented. But as these concessions, according to Mr. Gladstone himself, only carried out what the Government had intended from the first, these things may be pa.s.sed. They had reference chiefly to prohibition of raising in Ireland anything like a military force--even in the shape of a militia or volunteer force. On June 2nd, there was one of those transformations in which the Old Man is constantly surprising friends and foes. He was alert, vigorous, watchful of everything that went on, and the voice rose to its old strength and resonance. It was during that afternoon that there was a slight indication for the first time throughout the progress of the whole Bill of any dissatisfaction on the part of the Irish members. Mr. Byrne--one of the Unionist gang of lawyers--proposed a ridiculous amendment, the effect of which would have been that the Irish Legislature would not have had the right to give a license for a fowling-piece, or to arm their police to meet a rising of the Orangemen.

[Sidenote: Mr. s.e.xton intervenes.]

It was then that Mr. s.e.xton intervened with a word of warning against such a restriction. In burning though carefully restrained language, Mr.

s.e.xton replied to a taunt of Mr. Chamberlain at the silence of the Irish members. Their silence, said Mr. s.e.xton, was due to their knowledge that Mr. Chamberlain and his confederates had entered into a conspiracy to destroy the power of the House of Commons, and to defeat the mandate of the nation by obstructing a Bill they could not otherwise defeat. Spoken with great fire--with splendid choice of language--with biting sarcasm, of which he is a master--the speech was an event. Mr. Gladstone promptly recognized its spirit; thanked the Irish members for their consideration; and then declared, amid a great sniff from Joe's upturned nose, that if the Irish members desired to express their opinions on any amendment, he and his colleagues would wait before expressing their own views. There seemed to be a slight hope among the Tories and the ever-venomous Joe that this meant a rift in the lute between the Irish members and the Government; but they were woefully disappointed--especially when the amendment was indignantly rejected by the House.

[Sidenote: The "Daily News."]

It is the outspoken, rather than the loudly uttered, that is often the important thing in a House of Commons discussion. This was the case with the curious little debate which Mr. Chamberlain initiated on June 6th.

The _Daily News_ had published a little article describing the manner in which the Tories had shouted at--hooted--interrupted--Mr. Gladstone on the Thursday night previous. It may at once be asked why Mr.

Chamberlain should have thought it necessary to notice the article. He boasted that he was not in the habit of noticing what appeared against him in the newspapers--which is not true to a certain extent, or at least is not generally so thought, for it is understood that no man reads more carefully the extracts sent to him by those press-cutting agencies which have added either a new luxury or a new terror to public life. But Mr. Chamberlain's action had many roots. First, like many others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the deeper pallor on the white-complexioned face. When he was a Cabinet Minister he could never, or rarely, be got to remain in the House of Commons during the whole of the evening; and one of the chief reasons, I have heard, he gave for thus absenting himself was that he could not stand the talk from the opposite side--it made him so angry.

[Sidenote: Joe's motives.]

But there were other and more immediate reasons for his anger with the _Daily News_. Joe was conscious of the growth of two feelings--either of which was very perilous to him. First, he began uneasily to feel that the country--watching the struggle between him and the Old Man--was getting a little disgusted at the business; and saw in it a want of that chivalry and fair play which it desires to see even in the fiercest political controversy. This was not a pleasant sentiment to have growing up against one; and Joe felt that it has serious perils to his future political position. And, secondly, he was conscious that the majority of the House of Commons was growing very restive under the desperate obstruction of which he had made himself the champion, and that this feeling might soon become strong enough to carry Mr. Gladstone and the Ministers off their feet, and compel drastic measures which had hitherto been steadily refrained from. This would not suit the book of Joe at all, whose object it was to keep the struggle going as long as he possibly could manage it, careless of the traditions of Parliament, of the dignity and decency of the House of Commons, of the life and strength of Mr. Gladstone, of everything except his own greedy desire for personal revenge and triumph.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's gentleness.]

This was what lay behind the plausible and honeyed words in which Mr.

Chamberlain attacked the article in the _Daily News_. And here a curious difficulty arose which rather helped Joe, and almost enabled him to score a great triumph. Everybody knows that between the temper of Mr.

Gladstone and that of his friends and supporters there is an impa.s.sable gulf. That mastery of a vulnerable temper, which accounted for many of the troubles of his earlier political career, which he himself has acknowledged in many a pathetic pa.s.sage in his correspondence--that mastery of the vulnerable temper is now so complete that the Old Man glides through scenes of insult and pa.s.ses over what the humblest member of the House would often find it hard to endure. There is something indeed strange, wistful, almost uncanny, in the unbreakable gentleness of that white figure, with the ivory complexion, the scant white hair, the large white collar and broad white s.h.i.+rt-front--there is something which becomes almost an obsession to the observer in watching the figure with its strangely tranquil and gentle expression in the heat and centre of all this fierce Parliamentary battle.

[Sidenote: And eagerness.]

And what makes it all the more peculiar is that this strange gentleness does not go side by side with want of interest in the struggle. On the contrary, all those around him and near him declare that never has Mr.

Gladstone been more keen of any subject than he has been on this Home Rule Bill. He thinks of nothing else; he enjoys it all. I saw a curious instance of this intensity of his interest about that time. Having a word to say to one of the Ministers, I was seated for a moment on the Treasury Bench just beside the Chairman--Mr. Mellor. Mr. Gladstone had gone out for a few minutes. Sir William Harcourt was in charge of the Bill, and he was replying to some argument of the Unionists opposite.

Sir William Harcourt has an excellent method of dealing with futile and dishonest amendments. He declines to argue them in detail. With that rich humour of which the public know less than his friends and intimates, Sir William airily dismisses the whole business, and with a laugh brings down s.h.i.+vering to the ground a whole fabric of laboriously constructed nonsense. Well, Sir William was in the middle of a sentence in which he was speaking of the absurd suspicion of the Irish people which was entertained by the Tories--and Mr. Gladstone, entering from behind the Speaker's chair at that very moment, just caught that one phrase. It was impossible for him to hear more than that one word "suspicion"; but at that word he p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, and while he was still walking to his place--before he had seated himself--"Hear, hear,"

he cried. His eagerness would not let him wait till he had taken his seat. His absolute absorption in the Bill before the House was so complete that, as he walked to his seat, you could see the rapt and concentrated look, which showed that, even during the few minutes he had been away, the brain had never left for one second its absorbing theme.

[Sidenote: The consolations of old age.]

But--as I have indicated--this complete subjugation of temper which Mr.

Gladstone has achieved, has its disadvantages when such a conflict is provoked as that with Mr. Chamberlain on the article in the _Daily News_. Mr. Gladstone himself spoke of the consolations of old age; there is one consolation he did not mention. His absorption in the Bill and the slight deafness in one of his ears do not allow him to perceive so plainly the rude noises and interruptions by which he is often a.s.sailed from the Tory Benches. Moreover, the native chivalry of his disposition, the curious simplicity which has remained his central characteristic, in spite of all the experiences of the baser side of human nature which must have been crowded into all that half a century of official and Parliamentary life--that unwillingness to see anything but deplorable error in his most rancorous, meanest, and most malignant opponent--all these things make it difficult for him to understand the ugly realities whose serpent heads show themselves plainly to almost every other eye but his.

There is a dispute among the authorities as to the incidents of that Thursday night--some, even among those friendly to the Prime Minister, declaring that there was nothing unusual in the interruptions of that night. My own recollection is clear that there was a great deal of noise, and that it was so bad that Mr. Chamberlain tried to explain it away, and was careful to absolve himself and his friends from all responsibility for it. In the general body of the Liberal party there is no doubt whatsoever about that business. Liberal after Liberal came up to me afterwards, in allusion to a few remarks I felt it my duty to make, to declare their entire agreement with the view I had put forward--that the description of the _Daily News_, though consciously and obviously written in the vein of parody, was a fair and just description of what had taken place. Sir Henry Roscoe is not an excitable politician, though no man holds to the Liberal faith more firmly. He was met on the following Sunday by a friend, and when asked how he viewed the situation, declared that he was rather "low!" Why? he was asked. Because his heart was saddened and enraged by the treatment of the splendid Old Man by Mr. Chamberlain and the Tories. To a leading Liberal Minister, two Tories privately declared that their pain and shame and disgust with the conduct of their own side to Mr. Gladstone was so profound, that they had to get up and leave the House to control their feelings.

[Sidenote: A complex situation.]

When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain came forward with his audacious complaint, this was the curious situation: that the bulk of the Liberal party, and many even of their opponents, were convinced that the comments of the _Daily News_ were more than justified. The frantic cheers with which each successive sentence of the scathing attack in the description was punctuated by the Liberal and Irish Benches, as Joe, with affected horror, read them out, sufficiently indicated what they thought. And, on the other hand, the man in whose defence this reply to his a.s.sailants was made was just as convinced that his enemies had been unjustly a.s.sailed, and that he himself had been well and courteously treated. In such a situation it was just possible that Mr. Chamberlain would escape from his position with flying colours; would have the _Daily News_ censured for falsehood by a House of Commons that believed in its truth; and have himself declared chivalrous by a Parliament that knows him to be malignant, unscrupulous, and merciless. To prevent such a catastrophe it was a painful but necessary duty to bring out the realities of the case; and not only a painful but also a thankless duty in face of what everybody knew would be the att.i.tude of Mr. Gladstone himself.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone shakes his head.]

For Mr. Gladstone did not delay long in indicating to the House what his att.i.tude would be. When I was speaking and denouncing the rude interruptions of the eventful Thursday night, he shook his head ominously and in contradiction--though manifestations which came from Liberal and Irish Benches showed that he stood alone in his view of the events of that night. And it was no surprise to the House, therefore, when he stood up and said that he entirely disclaimed any feeling of resentment for anything that had been done to him, and that he confessed he had not perceived the interruptions to which the report of the _Daily News_ had called attention. After this, there seemed no more to be said; but the battle was not yet over. The Tories had been charged both by the _Daily News_ and by a speech in the House with want of courtesy to Mr. Gladstone. n.o.body knew better than Mr. Balfour how much ground there was for such a charge; for often in the course of the present Session--with a dark frown on his face, with an almost violent gesture--he has called on his unruly followers behind him to conduct themselves. The effect of what had taken place was to extort from Mr.

Balfour a tribute to the universal respect in which the Prime Minister was held--a tribute which the splendid Old Man acknowledged by a low bow; and, in short, the Tories had to bind themselves over to keep the peace by their professions of a chivalrous desire to respect the person and the feelings of the great Prime Minister. And thus it was that it ended for the moment in a drawn battle--Mr. Chamberlain having to withdraw his motion, and I my amendment.

[Sidenote: Slow progress.]

But in the meantime the progress with the Bill was terribly slow. We were now on the second week with the third clause. Amendments were disposed of one night only to find that the next day the number of amendments, instead of being diminished, had been increased. It would be a sheer waste of time and s.p.a.ce to go into detail about these amendments. The third clause is the clause which deals with the questions that are to be excluded from the Irish Parliament. The list is sufficiently long--peace and war--the Crown--the Lord-Lieutenancy--trade and commerce--the coinage and the currency--copyright and navigation--treason and treason felony. But even this list was not sufficiently long for the Unionists. They propose to increase this list of exemptions until, if they succeeded, the Irish Legislature would have to shut up shop for want of business to attend to. One man gravely proposed that the Irish executive--being made responsible for the peace, order, and good Government of Ireland--should not have the right to settle the procedure in the Irish criminal courts. Another gentleman proposed that all cases referring to criminal conspiracy should be left to the Imperial Government and Parliament. The meaning of all this was that the Unionists wanted to draw a ring fence around the Orangemen of Ulster, who had been threatening rebellion. First, by one set of amendments the Irish Government was not to have a police able to put them down, and then the Irish courts were not to be able to convict them when they broke the law.

[Sidenote: The hours of labour.]

On June 9th the Unionists were on another line. They professed to think that if the Irish Legislature were not compelled to do so they would not prevent overwork and long hours. This led to the proposal that all legislation on hours of labour should be taken out of the hands of the Irish Parliament. Mr. Chamberlain argued this with his tongue in his cheek--professing to dread the unequal compet.i.tion in which poor England would be placed if wealthy Ireland were allowed to compete unfairly by longer hours. He urged this in a speech directed to every absurd prejudice and alarm which the ignorant or the timid could feel--altogether made a most unworthy contribution. John Burns--breezy, outspoken--not friendly to all things done by the Liberals in the past, but firm in his Home Rule faith--went for Mr. Chamberlain in good, honest, sledge-hammer, and workmanlike fas.h.i.+on. The member for Battersea even dared to blaspheme Birmingham--the Mecca of the industrial world--for its notoriously bad record in industrial matters--an attack which Joe seemed in no way to relish. And all the time the Old Man--with his hand to his ear, and sitting on the very end of the Treasury Bench, so as to be nearer the speaker--listened attentively, sympathetically, occasionally uttering that fine leonine cheer of his. It was on this amendment that the Ministerial majority fell, owing to various accidents, to 30, and the Tories cheered themselves into a happy condition of mind for a few minutes.

[Sidenote: The guillotine--but not yet.]

Towards the end of the sitting there was a certain feverishness of expectation. Dr. McGregor, a Scotch Highland member, had announced that at half-past six he would move the closure of the third clause--on which we had now been working for a fortnight. But Mr. Mellor refused to put such a drastic proposal on the suggestion of a private member. There was, however, a very plain intimation that if a Minister were to make such a proposal it might be considered differently; all of which meant that we were approaching--slowly, patiently, forbearingly--but still approaching the moment when drastic steps would be taken to accelerate progress.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE s.e.xTON INCIDENT.

[Sidenote: Mr. s.e.xton.]

The resignation of Mr. s.e.xton, early in June, seemed to point to one of those disastrous splits in the Irish ranks which have always come at the wrong moment to spoil the chances of the Irish cause. There were many whose memories were brought back by the event to that trying and strange time when Mr. Parnell fought his desperate battle for the continuance of his leaders.h.i.+p. But then there were many modifications of the position, and the chief of these was the much greater tranquillity with which the affair was regarded; and the general faith that the Irish members would be wise enough to settle their differences satisfactorily. Still there were some very ugly moments.

[Sidenote: A Conservative opportunity.]

Nothing could be more galling, for instance, to those who had charge of the Home Rule Bill, than to look across at the Irish Benches and see a vast and aching void in the places where the representatives of the people mainly concerned are accustomed to sit. The Tories were not slow to utilise the moment; and if things had been different--if the Home Rule cause had not got so far--they would probably have been able to stop progress with the measure altogether. But fortunately the Home Rule Bill was in committee--and whether men like it or not, it is impossible for them to avoid something like business discussion when a Bill is in committee. There is the clause under discussion; there are the amendments to it, which stand on the paper; the clause and the amendments have to be spoken to; and it is impossible, within the limits of a discussion so defined, to introduce a subject so extraneous as a domestic difficulty in the Irish ranks. But, at the same time, the opportunity was too tempting to be altogether pa.s.sed without notice. Sir John Lubbock has taken a prominent part at times in opposing the Home Rule Bill. Sir John is a most estimable man, has written some very entertaining books, and in the City has appropriate rank as both an erudite and a rich banker. But he does not s.h.i.+ne in the House of Commons. His voice is thin and feeble, and his arguments, somehow or other, always appear wire-drawn. And then the House of Commons is a place, above all others, where physical qualities go largely towards making success or failure. A robustious voice and manner are the very first essentials of Parliamentary success; and no man who is not gifted with these things has really much right to try Parliamentary life.

However, Sir John Lubbock was not strong enough to withstand the temptation of making capital out of Irish misfortunes; and he pointed to the Irish Benches, with their yawning emptiness, as a proof that the Irish members took no interest whatsoever in the Home Bale Bill.

[Sidenote: Irish objections to divorce.]

Meantime, in the House itself the Home Rule Bill was crawling slowly along. The Unionists were at their sinister work of delaying its progress by all kinds of absurd and irrelevant amendments. For instance, one Unionist wished to restrict the Irish Legislature as to the law of marriage and divorce. Mr. Gladstone has over and over again pointed out that, as the Irish have one way of looking at these things, and the English another, it would be absurd not to allow the Irish Legislature to settle such a matter in accordance with Irish feeling. Curiously enough, the Unionists did not receive much encouragement on this point from the Irish branch of the enemies of Home Rule. Mr. Macartney, an Irish Orangeman, proclaimed on the part of his co-religionists that the Irish Protestants had nearly as much objection to divorce as the Irish Catholics; and, so far as that part of the amendment was concerned, he had no desire to see it pressed. What he apprehended was a change in the law for the purpose of prejudicing mixed marriages--marriages between Catholics and Protestants. Mr. Gladstone, it is well known, on the question of divorce is a very sound and very strong Conservative. The st.u.r.dy fight he made against divorce still lives in Parliamentary history, and has often been brought up--sometimes in justification of equally stubborn fights--against him. It is one of the points on which he does not seem to have much modified his opinions, in spite of the advance of time, and all that has taken place in the long stretch of years between now and the day when an unbelieving and pagan minister like Lord Palmerston enabled men and women to get rid of adulterous spouses. But Mr. Gladstone declined to be drawn.

[Sidenote: Disestablishment.]

On June 18th, Mr. Bartley proposed an amendment to a restriction in the Bill with regard to the establishment and endowment of any church. By the Bill--as is pretty well known--the Irish Parliament are forbidden to confer on any church the privilege of State establishment and State endowment. To this restriction no Irish member has ever raised the least objection. It was reserved for Mr. Bartley--one of the most vehement opponents of Irish nationality and an Irish Parliament--to declare that such a restriction would make the Parliament unworthy of the acceptance of a nation of freemen, and to propose that accordingly it should be removed. The position, then, in which the Irish opponents of the Bill were placed, was this--that while denouncing the supremacy and encroachments of the Catholic Church as one of the main objections against the Bill, they proposed that the Irish Parliament should have the right to establish and endow that very Church. Mr. Balfour perceived--under the light thus borne in upon him--that this was not an amendment which the Tory party could safely support; and he accordingly advised Mr. Bartley to withdraw it. Mr. Gladstone made a few scornful observations; and, without a division, the proposal was huddled out of sight. It was almost a pity. It would have been such an instructive spectacle to see the whole Tory party voting that the Catholic Church in Ireland should have the right to be endowed and established; and some of the Irish members felt this so much, that they were very much inclined to force the Tories to a division. But they let the incident pa.s.s.

[Sidenote: The triumph of the tweed coat.]

It is one of the curious things about Parliamentary life in England, that the smallest detail of personal habit attracts the all-searching gaze of the entire world. Let a man change the shape of his hat, the colour of his clothes, the style even of his stockings, and the world knows it all before almost he is himself conscious of the change. And then, though the House of Commons consists for the most part of men well advanced in middle life--men who have made their pile in counting-house or shop, before devoting themselves to a Parliamentary career--it is also a House where wealth and fas.h.i.+on are very largely represented. It is often a very well-dressed body; and in this House of Commons, in particular, there is a very large proportion of well-tailored and well-groomed young men--especially, of course, on the Tory side. The consequence is, that you are able to trace the transformations of fas.h.i.+on, the processions of the seasons, the variety of appropriate garbs which social and other engagements impose, as accurately in the House of Commons as in Rotten Row.

[Sidenote: The old order.]

The ordinary tendency of the Parliamentary man is towards the sombre black, and the solemnity of the long-tailed frock-coat. There have been times when if a member of Parliament did venture to enter the House of Commons in a coat prematurely ending in the short tails of the morning coat, or in the tail-less sack-coat, he would have been called up to the Speaker's chair and as severely reprimanded as though he had committed the most atrocious offence--in those far-off days--of wearing a pot-hat.

But in these democratic times one can do anything; and low-crowned hats, sack-coats, homespun Irish tweeds, affright and shock the old aristocratic Parliamentary eye. When summer approaches, the whole aspect of the House changes. The sombre black is almost entirely doffed; and you look on an a.s.sembly as different in its outward appearance from its antecedent state as the yellow-winged b.u.t.terfly is from the grim grub.

Indeed, members of Parliament seem to take a delight in antic.i.p.ating the change of dress which the change of season imposes. There are members of the House of Commons who can claim to wear the very first white hat of the season. Sir Wilfrid Lawson has a sombre creed and a Baccha.n.a.lian spirit; and, accordingly, the very first time a mere stray gleam of suns.h.i.+ne streaks the wintry gloom Sir Wilfrid wears an audaciously white hat.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's rejuvenescence.]