Sketches in the House Part 8

Mr. Chamberlain has not a wide range of ideas, and his small stock has not been increased by anything like extensive reading. The House was relieved to find after his return to Westminster on the 10th of April that he had just begun to read Tennyson. It is always easy to know when Mr. Chamberlain is making the acquaintance of an author for the first time. Strictly business-like in even his reading, he apparently first thinks of reading a book when he has somewhere seen a quotation from it which might be worked into a speech; the next and almost immediate process is to transfer it to one of his speeches. This is one of the many differences between him and the exhaustless brain and universal reading of Mr. Gladstone. It was, therefore, not much of a surprise to those who had watched Mr. Chamberlain for years, to see that he was making a very bad and poor speech on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill--a speech certainly far inferior to that which he had delivered on the first reading. He had exhausted the poor soil; he had really no more to say. He was unfortunately helped by Mr. Gladstone, who, instead of listening in silence to attacks grown stale by their infinite repet.i.tion, attempted to correct some of Mr. Chamberlain's statements. This was especially the case in reference to the famous speech in which Mr. Parnell is spoken of as pa.s.sing "through rapine to dismemberment." Mr. Chamberlain wished to insist that the language had been applied to all the Irish leaders: Mr. Gladstone insisted that they were applied to Mr. Parnell alone. This controversy between the Prime Minister and Mr. Chamberlain gave a little life to a speech that hitherto had been falling desperately flat, and as such the interruption was a tactical mistake.

[Sidenote: De mortuis.]

But it brought with curious unexpectedness a scene not without pathos and significance. In the midst of the thrust and ripost of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain, a strange and yet familiar voice was heard to shout out, "They put all the blame on Parnell because he is dead." It was a startling--even an embarra.s.sing interruption. The memory of Parnell is still dear to the vast majority of the old comrades who were compelled to separate themselves from him in the Great Irish Disruption. At the time when Mr. Gladstone made the speech quoted, Mr. Parnell was the loved leader of the whole Irish people and a united Irish party; and the speech was made at a moment particularly solemn and glorious in the strange life and career of Parnell. The great controversy between the English and the Irish leader, which Mr. Chamberlain had raked up from the almost forgotten past, took place at the moment when Mr. Parnell had gone from town to town and county to county in Ireland, in the midst of vast and enthusiastic receptions--imperial demonstrations--with salvoes of cheers, enthusiasm, and auroral hope such as have taken place so often in Irish history on the eve of some mighty victory or hideous disaster. And, then, immediately after came Parnell's imprisonment, which he bore so well--the suppression of the National Land League, and the era of unchecked and ferocious coercion in which the good intentions and kindly feelings of Mr. Forster finally were buried. To separate themselves from Mr. Parnell at that great moment in his and their life, was a thing which none of Parnell's old comrades could do; and when this startling interruption came, it was the spoken utterance of many of their thoughts brought back by Mr. Chamberlain's venomous tongue in painful reverie over a glorious but dead moment, and a tragically wrecked and superb career.

[Sidenote: Crocodile tears.]

There was a painful pause, and then came, however, an antidote. It was not in the Irish Nationalist party--it was not in even his own colleagues in the small band of Parnell's supporters, that Mr. Redmond's observation found a responsive echo. A tempest of cheers broke forth from the Tory Benches--from the backers of the _Times_ and the supporters of Piggott; and to add to the painful and almost hideous irony of the situation, Mr. Chamberlain made unctuous profession of sympathy with the vindication of Parnell's memory. To those who know that of all the fierce animosities and contempts of Parnell, Mr.

Chamberlain's was perhaps the fiercest--to those who remember that strange and almost awful scene when Mr. Parnell--in one of those outbursts of concentrated rage which it was almost appalling to witness--turned and rent Mr. Chamberlain as first false to his colleagues and then false to Parnell himself--to those who remembered that deadly pallor that made even more ghastly the ordinarily pale cheek of Mr. Chamberlain beneath this withering attack--to those, I say, who remembered all this, nothing could be more grotesque than Mr.

Chamberlain shedding a pious tear over Parnell's grave.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone and Parnell.]

The situation pa.s.sed off, but in many b.r.e.a.s.t.s it had left its sadness and its sting behind. And then it was that once more the Old Man brought back the House to the temper from which it had been carried by the malignities of Mr. Chamberlain. Very pale, very calm, and, at the same time, with evident though sternly repressed emotion--even in the very height and ecstasy of Parliamentary pa.s.sion there is a splendid composure and self-command about Mr. Gladstone that conveys an overwhelming sense of the extraordinary masculinity and strength of his nature--very pale, and very calm, Mr. Gladstone stood up. Speaking in low and touching tones he asked to make an explanation, because he feared that some observations of his might have given pain to gentlemen who were deeply attached to the memory of Mr. Parnell. Then he stated that while he had formed an opinion, which might be right or wrong, with regard to Mr. Parnell before his imprisonment in Kilmainham, he had always believed, after his release, that Mr. Parnell was working honestly for the good of Ireland; that he had made a communication to Mr. Parnell to that effect through a friend; and that from that time forward no hard word could be found in his speeches with regard to the Irish leader. This little speech was uttered with exquisite dignity and kindliness, and Mr. Redmond received it with the handsomest acknowledgment of its gentleness and grace.

[Sidenote: No manipulating.]

This episode has made me antic.i.p.ate a little, and almost tempted me to pa.s.s by one of the incidents in the speech of Mr. Chamberlain. But that would have been a mistake, for it is an incident that brings out fully the reason why he is so utterly disliked and distrusted even in those Tory circles which, for the moment, are making use of him. It is an incident that likewise throws a flood of light upon the inner, hidden, dark depths of his sinister nature. He was arguing on the financial aspects of Mr. Gladstone's Bill. Under this portion of the Bill the trader who has residences in both countries is ent.i.tled to make his return for his income-tax in either England or Ireland. Mr. Chamberlain proceeded to put the case of a trader in that position who wished to embarra.s.s the Irish Government, and who would wish accordingly to give England, and not the Irish Exchequer, the advantage of his income-tax.

This he could do, Mr. Chamberlain pointed out, in the easiest manner imaginable; he could "manipulate his books." There it stands; these are the very words he used. Incredible, everybody would say who didn't know Mr. Chamberlain, and wasn't told by the evidence of eyes and ears that the words had actually been uttered. The Irish members were not slow to seize the point, and to shout aloud at this revelation of Mr.

Chamberlain's nature; and even his Tory friends shuddered at such a manifestation of the real kind of man that lies hidden under Mr.

Chamberlain's oily and smooth exterior. At first, he seemed surprised at the visible shock and tremor and involuntary sense of repulsion which this odious suggestion awakened on all sides--then he slowly realized that he had made a mistake; and, for once, this readiest of debaters was nonplussed, and even a little abashed.

[Sidenote: The Irish Members and the Bill.]

Mr. MacCarthy followed Mr. Chamberlain; he spoke just from ten to fifteen minutes--plainly, simply, to the point, and what he had to say was that he and his friends did look on this Bill as a final settlement, which Ireland would be honourably pledged to carry out. Unselfish, straightforward, unpretentious, kindly, Mr. MacCarthy brought into more vivid contrast the personal venom--the ruthless hunger for vengeance and the humiliation of his enemies--which came out with almost painful vividness from the speech to which we had just ceased to listen. Mr.

Gladstone, sitting opposite, attentive and watchful, was evidently much pleased at the heartiness of Mr. MacCarthy's acceptance of his great measure.

[Sidenote: Sir George Trevelyan.]

The night wound up with the very best speech I have ever heard Sir George Trevelyan deliver. Sir George had to answer violent, fierce, almost malignant a.s.sault; but he did so without ever uttering a harsh word--without losing one particle of his courteous and admirable self-control--he raised the debate of a great issue to the high place of difference of principles and convictions, instead of personal bickerings and hideous and revolting personal animosities. It is the vice of Sir George Trevelyan as a speaker that he over-prepares--writing out, as a rule, nearly every word he has to utter, and often some of the very best speeches I have heard him deliver have been spoiled by giving the fatal sense of being spoken essays. The speech was carefully prepared, and, so far as I could observe, was even written out; but its grace of diction, its fine temper, above all, its manly explanation of a change of view and its close-knit reasoning, made it really one of the very finest addresses I have heard in the course of many years' debating.

[Sidenote: Toryism of the gutter.]

And, then, if you wanted to appreciate Sir George Trevelyan the more, you had only to wait for a few moments to hear the man who followed him.

I am told on pretty good authority that, next to Lord Randolph Churchill, the favourite orator of the Tory provincial platform is Sir Ashmead Bartlett. I can well believe it. The empty s.h.i.+bboleths--the loud and blatant voice--the b.u.mptious temper--that make the commoner form of Tory--all are there. He is the dramatically complete embodiment of all the vacuous folly, empty-headed shoutings, and swaggering patriotism which make up the stock-in-trade of most provincial Tories. Poor Mr.

Balfour was caught by Sir Ashmead before he had time to escape, and in sheer decency had to remain while his servile adulator was pouring on him buckets of b.u.t.ter, which must have appalled and disgusted him.

Indeed, the effect of the bellowings of the man from Sheffield could be seen in the bent back, the depressed face, the general air of limpness which overcame the Tory leader--as helpless, dejected, bent double, he looked steadily at the green bench underneath him, and concealed from the House as much as possible the tell-tale horror of his face.

[Sidenote: A portrait of Michael Davitt.]

On an a.s.sembly which had been jaded and almost tortured by this tremendous display, it was Mr. Davitt's fortune to come with his first speech in Parliament. For hour after hour he had sate, very still, with deeply-lined face, but with a restless and frequent twist of the heavy dark moustache, that spoke of the intense nervous strain to which this weary waiting was subjecting him. Davitt is a man whose face would stand out in bold relief from any crowd of men, however numerous or remarkable. He has a narrow face, with high cheek-bones, and the thick, close black whiskers, beard and moustache, make him look almost as dark as a Spaniard. The eyes are deep-set, brilliant, restless--with infinite lessons of hours of agony, of loneliness, torture in all the million hours which filled up his nine years of endless and unbroken gloom in penal servitude. The frame is slight, well-knit--the frame of a st.u.r.dy son of the people--kept taut and thin by the restless nervous soul within. An empty sleeve hanging by his side tells the tale of work in the factory in childhood's years, and of one of the accidents which too often maim the children of the poor in the manufacturing districts of England. The voice is strong, deep, and soft; the delivery slow, deliberate, the style of the English or American platform rather than of the Irish gathering by the green hillside.

[Sidenote: Dartmoor.]

Altogether, never did there stand before this British a.s.sembly in all its centuries of history, a figure more interesting, more picturesque, more touching, above all, more eloquent of a mighty transformation--of a great new birth and revolution in the history of two nations. Go back in memory to the day, when with cropped hair--with the broad-arrowed coat, the yellow stockings--this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot--with the very dregs and sc.u.m of our lowest social depths for companions and colleagues--and then think of this same man standing up before the supreme and august a.s.sembly where the might, sovereignty, power, and omnipotence of this world-wide empire are centred, and holding it for more than an hour and a half under a spell of rapt attention that almost suggested the high-strung devotion of a religious service in place of a raging political controversy--think of this contrast, and then bless the day and the policy that have made possible such a transformation.

[Sidenote: Westminster.]

I cannot attempt to give all the strong points of a speech which bristled with strong points at almost every turn. To the House its entire character must have come as a surprise. The ma.s.s of members that crowded every bench, and filled the vacancies which Ashmead Bartlett had made--Mr. Gladstone sitting attentive on the Treasury Bench--Mr. Balfour listening with evident friendliness and sympathy--all these were enough to transport any orator into the realms of high stirring rhetoric, and to attune the nerves to poetic and exalted flight. But Davitt's nerves stood the test. Slowly, deliberately, patiently, he developed a case for the Bill, of facts, figures, historical incident, pathetic and swift pictures of Irish desolation and suffering, which would have been worthy of a great advocate placing a heavy indictment. Now and then there was the eloquence of finely chosen language--of a striking fact--even of a touching personal aside--but, as a whole, the speech was a simple, weighty, careful case against the Union--based on the eloquent statistics of diminished population, exiled millions, devastated homesteads.

[Sidenote: Tragic comedy.]

There were plenty of lighter strains to relieve the deadly earnestness of a man who had thoroughly thought out his case. And, curiously enough, these pleasant sallies nearly all had allusion to those tragic nine years of penal servitude through which Davitt has pa.s.sed. Mr. Dunbar Barton, one of the Orange lawyers, had spoken of himself as likely to spend the remainder of his days in penal servitude. Mr. Davitt put the threat gently aside, with the a.s.surance that the hon. and learned gentleman would probably be one day on the bench, and that he would advise him not to try to reach the bench by the dock. The same gentleman had expressed a doubt whether any const.i.tutional lawyer would hold that he was guilty either of treason or treason felony, if he took up arms against Home Rule after it had been pa.s.sed by both Houses of Parliament.

"Would," said Mr. Davitt, with quiet pathos, "I had met such a const.i.tutional authority in the shape of a judge twenty-three long years ago."

[Sidenote: A vulgar and caddish interruption.]

And, finally, what contributed to the marvellous effect of this speech was its temper and one interruption. In all the speech there was not one trace of the bitterness that must often have corroded that poor soul during the nine years of living death--even the allusions to political opponents of to-day were kindly and gentle. Above all things, the speech was one--not merely of an Irish Nationalist, but of a true Democrat--as desirous of the happiness of other nationalities and other peoples as of his own. It was while every part of the House was listening to this beautiful and touching speech, that a gentleman called Brookfield--one of the most offensive of the narrow and malignant section of Tories--rose and tried to trip Davitt up, by alleging that he was reading his speech. I am told that Mr. Balfour sprang in anger from his seat--there was a significant and a pained silence on the Tory Benches--there was a loud shout of anger and disgust from the Liberal and the Irish seats--with William O'Brien's voice shouting hoa.r.s.ely above the tempest, "The party of gentlemen!" The Speaker showed what he thought, in that deadly quiet way with which he can administer a snub, that will never be forgotten. It was all that was wanted to complete the success of this wonderful speech.

[Sidenote: Sir John Rigby.]

Then came hand-shakings and clappings on the back, and a light in the eyes of Irish members that told of a great step forward in the progress of their cause. To a house thinned by the endless rhodomontade of a dull Orangeman--with a style of elocution to which the House is unaccustomed, and which has almost every fault delivery could have--the speech of Sir John Rigby, the Solicitor-General, was one of the finest and weightiest utterances delivered on the Bill. The ma.s.sive head, the fine face, the rugged sense and leonine strength in face and figure, lent force to a criticism of extraordinary effectiveness on the attacks levelled against the Bill. First, the Solicitor-General took up the wild and whirling statement of one of the opponents of the Bill, and then coolly--as though it were a pure matter of business--he put in juxtaposition the enactments of the Bill, and the contrast was as laughter provoking with all its deadly seriousness, as the conflict between the story of Falstaff and the contemptuously quiet rejoinder of Prince Hal. Lord Randolph was taken in hand; he was soon disposed of. Then Mr. Dunbar Barton was crumpled up and flung away. Sir Edward Clarke ventured an interruption; he was crushed in a sentence. It was an admirable specimen of destructive criticism, and it hugely and palpably delighted Mr.

Gladstone.

[Sidenote: Mr. Asquith.]

Mr. Asquith had intended to speak on April 14th, evening, but the portentous and prolix Courtney had shut him out, and he had to wait till the following evening. The change was, perhaps, desirable, for Mr.

Asquith had thus the opportunity of addressing the House when it was fresh, vital, and impressionable. In these long debates the evenings usually became intolerably dull and oppressive. Though Mr. Asquith was an untried man when he went into office, in two speeches he succeeded in placing himself in the very front rank of the debaters and politicians in the House. Let me say at once that the speech was a remarkable triumph, and placed Mr. Asquith at a bound amid not only the orators, but the statesmen of the House of Commons--the men who have nerve, breadth of view, great courage, enormous resource.

[Sidenote: Joe's dustheap.]

One of the discoveries of the speech must have been particularly unpleasant to Mr. Chamberlain. The gentleman from Birmingham has at last found a man who does not fear him--who has a much finer mind--wider culture--who has judgment, temper, and a vocabulary as copious and as ready as that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. One had only to look at Mr.

Chamberlain throughout the speech to see how palpable, how painful this discovery was--especially to a man to whom politics is nothing but a mere conflict between contending rivalries and malignities. Mr.

Asquith--calm, self-possessed, measured--put Joe on the rack with a deliberation that was sometimes almost cruel in its effectiveness and relentlessness; and Joe was foolish enough to point the severity and success of the attack by losing his self-control. When Mr. Asquith said that Joe could find no better employment than that of "scavenging"--here was a word to make Joe wince--"among the dustheaps" of past speeches, Joe was a sight to see. A "scavenger"--this was the disrespectful way in which those quotations were described which had often roused the Tory Benches to ecstasies of delight. Joe was so angered that he could not get over it for some time. "Dustheaps!" he was heard to be muttering several times in succession, as if the word positively choked him.

Indeed, throughout Mr. Asquith's speech, whenever the allusions were made to him, Joe was seen to be muttering under his teeth. It was the running commentary which he made on the most effective attack that has been uttered against him; it was the highest tribute to the severity and success of the a.s.sailant.

[Sidenote: Limp Balfour.]

Badly as Mr. Chamberlain bore his punishment, Mr. Balfour was even worse. It is seldom that the House of Commons has seen a more remarkable or more effective retort than the happy, dexterous, delightful--from the literary point of view, unsurpa.s.sable--parody which Mr. Asquith made of Mr. Balfour's flagitious incitements to the men of Belfast. Mr.

Asquith put the case of Mr. Morley going down to a crowd in Cork, and using the same kind of language. Mr. Balfour, in his speech, had over and over again used the name of the Deity. "I pray G.o.d," said the pious leader of the Tory party, as he addressed the Orangemen. When, in the imaginary speech which Mr. Asquith put into the mouth of Mr. Morley, he recurred again and again to the phrase, "I pray G.o.d," there was just the least lifting of the eyes and lowering of the voice to the sanctimonious level of the Pharisee which made this part of the speech not merely a fine piece of oratory, but a splendid bit of acting. Mr. Balfour's appearance during this portion of Mr. Asquith's speech was pitiable. His face, with its pallor--look of abashed pain--was tell-tale of the inner shame which he felt, as thus calmly, coldly, cruelly--with extraordinary art, and amid a tempest of cheers--he was brought by his opponent face to face with realities which lay underneath his bland and oily phrases.

[Sidenote: Another unmannerly interruption.]

In the midst of the calm and stately flow of Mr. Asquith's speech, while the House, spellbound, listened in awe-struck and rapt silence, suddenly, there was a commotion, a shout, then the roar of many voices.

The whole thing came upon the House with a bewildering and dumbfounding surprise; it was as if someone had suddenly died, or some other sinister catastrophe had occurred. In a moment, several Irish members--Mr. Swift McNeill, Mr. Crilly, and others--were on their feet, shouting in accents hoa.r.s.e with anger, inarticulate with rage. The Speaker was also on his feet, and, for a while, his shouts of "Order! Order!" failed to calm the sudden, fierce cyclone. Above the din, voices were shouting, "Name!

Name!" with that rancorous and fierce note which the House of Commons knows so well when pa.s.sion has broken loose, and all the grim depths of party hate are revealed. At last, it was discovered that Lord Cranborne was the culprit, and that when Mr. Asquith, amid universal sympathy and a.s.sent, was alluding to the beautiful speech of Mr. Davitt, this most unmannerly of cubs had uttered the word, "Murderer."

[Sidenote: A whipped hound.]

If he had not been so unspeakably rude, vulgar, odious, and impertinent, one might have almost felt sympathy for Lord Salisbury's son in the position in which he found himself. His face is usually pale, but now it had the deadly, ghastly, and almost green pallor of a man who is condemned to die. But, amid all the palpable terror, the Cecil insolence was still there, and Lord Cranborne declared that, though he had used the phrase, he had not intended it for the House, and that it was true.

Since his relative, Lord Wolmer, made the lamest and meanest apology the House of Commons had ever heard, there never had been anything to equal this. The House groaned aloud in disgust and contempt; even his own side was as abashed as when Brookfield sought to interrupt Mr. Davitt. The Speaker, quietly, but visibly moved and disgusted, at once told the insolent young creature that this was not sufficient, and that an apology was due--to which the Cecil hopeling proceeded to do with as bad a grace and in as odious a style as it was possible for it to be done.

Mr. Asquith's splendid self-control and mastery of the House bore the ordeal of even this odious incident, and he wound up the speech with one of the finest and most remarkable perorations which has ever been heard in that great a.s.sembly. Calm, self-restrained, almost frigid in delivery, chaste and sternly simple in language, Mr. Asquith's peroration reached a height that few men could ever attain. The still House sate with its members raised to their highest point of endurance, and it was almost a relief when the stately flow came to an end, and men were able to relieve their pent-up tide of feeling.

CHAPTER IX.