[Sidenote: Organized for obstruction.]

That all this had produced its effect on the Tory party as well was soon evident. An old campaigner in the House of Commons can soon tell when a party has been organized for the purpose of Obstruction. There is a feverishness; there are ample notes; there is a rising of many members at the same time when the moment comes to catch the Speaker's eye. Other indications presented themselves. Mr. Seton-Karr is, personally, one of the kindliest of men—cheery, good-natured, full of the easy give-and-take of political struggle; but even he himself would not claim to be a Parliamentary orator. But on February 27th, he, as much as everybody else, must have been surprised to find that his utterances, which, in truth, were stumbling enough, should at every point be punctuated by a deep bellow of cheers such as might have delighted the most trained and the most accomplished orators in the House. The House itself was at first taken aback by this outburst of deep-throated and raucous cheers, and after it had sufficiently recovered from its surprise discovered that it all came from one bench—the front bench below the gangway. On this bench there were gathered together a number of the younger members of the Tory party.

[Sidenote: The claque in Parliament.]

At once it was seen what had taken place; the Tories, stung to action by the taunts of their own press, had concerted a new system of tactics. And one portion of these tactics was to introduce into the House of Commons a phenomenon new to even its secular and varied experience—namely, an organized claque. It was really just as if one were in a French theatre. Uniformly, regularly, with a certain mechanical and hollow effect underneath its bellowings, the group below the gangway uttered its war notes. Beyond all question, recognizable by the unmistakable family features, it was there—the organized theatrical claque on the floor of the British House of Commons. There were other indications of the transformation on which the Tories were determined. When Mr. Seton-Karr sate down after a palpably obstructive speech, Mr. Bartley got up, and several other Tories at the same time. Mr. Bartley is not an attractive personality. He has a very strong rather than pleasant or intellectual face. There is plenty of bulldog tenacity in it—plenty of animal courage, plenty of self-confidence; but it has none of the rays of a strong intelligence, and not many glimpses of kindliness or sweetness of nature. It is in the work of obstruction that one sees temperament rather than intellect in the House of Commons. Obstruction does not call for very high intellectual powers, though, undoubtedly, obstruction can at the same time display the highest powers.

[Sidenote: Artists in obstruction.]

For instance, Mr. Sexton made his first reputation in the House of Commons by a speech three hours in duration, which was regarded by the majority as an intentional waste of time and an obstruction of a hateful Bill, but which everybody had to hear from the sheer force of its splendid reasoning, orderly arrangement of material, and now and then bursts of the best form of Parliamentary eloquence. But the obstructionist wants, as a rule, strength of character rather than of oratory—as witness the extraordinary work in obstruction done by the late Mr. Biggar, who, by nature, was one of the most inarticulate of men. It was because Biggar had nerves of steel—a courage that did not know the meaning of fear, and that remained calm in the midst of a cyclone of repugnance, hatred, and menace. Mr. Bartley, then, has the character for the obstructive, and he rose blithely on the waves of the Parliamentary tempest. But he had to face a continuous roar of interruption and hostility from the Irish benches—those converted sinners who have abjured sack, and have become the most orderly and loyal, and steadfast of Ministerialist bulwarks. And now and then when the roar of interruption became loud and almost deafening, there arose from the Tory bench below the gangway that strange new claque which on that Monday night I heard for the first time in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Mr. James Lowther.]

One other figure rose out of the sea of upturned and vehement faces at this moment of stress and storm. When the Irish Members were shouting disapproval there suddenly gleamed upon them a face from the front Opposition bench. It was a startling—I might almost say a menacing exhibition. It was the face of Mr. James Lowther. I find that few people have as keen an appreciation of this remarkable man as I have. In his own party he passes more or less for a mere comedian—indeed, I might say, low comedian, in the professional and not in the offensive sense. His tenure of the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland is looked back upon, in an age that has known Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. John Morley, as a sublime and daring joke by Disraeli which belongs to, and could only happen in an epoch when sober England was ready to allow her Oriental juggler and master to play any kind of Midsummer's Night's Dream pranks even with the sternest realities of human life. Yet sometimes the thought occurs to me that if he were a little more articulate, or, perchance, if the time came when a democracy had to be met, not with bursts of Parliamentary eloquence, but with shot and shell, and the determination to kill or be killed, the leadership of the party of the aristocracy would fall from the effeminate hands of the supersubtle and cultivated Mr. Balfour into the firm and tight grip of the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile—the smile that indicates the absence alike of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that speaks aloud of the unquestioning and dogged resolve of the aristocrat to fight for privilege to the death.

[Sidenote: What a cruel face!]

"Ah, what a cruel face!" exclaimed an Irish Member by my side as Mr. Lowther turned back and shouted, "Order, order!" at the Irish benches—the good-humoured smile absent for a few moments, and revelations given into abyssmal depths. But Mr. Lowther soon recovered himself, smiled with his usual blandness, and once more dropped the hood over his inner nature. But it was a moment which brought its revelations to any keen observer; especially if he could have seen the answering looks from a pair of blazing Celtic eyes—also characteristic in their way of all the passion, rage, and secular intrepidity of the smaller and weaker race that has carried on a struggle for seven centuries—over battlefields strewn with the conquered dead—past gallows stained by heroic blood—past prisons and hulks where noble hearts ate themselves wearily and slowly to death. It was as in one glance all the contrast, the antipathies, the misunderstanding which had separated one type of Irishmen from one type of Englishmen through hundreds of years.

[Sidenote: The bond of the Railway Rates.]

These are somewhat remote reflections from the squat figure, the harsh and grating voice, and the commonplace rhetoric of Mr. Bartley—so far can fancy and insight lead one astray in that great stage of Titanic passions which is spread on the floor of the House of Commons. And what significance of great historic issues and reminiscences there were in the scene were likewise lost on Dr. Hunter. To him the universe at the moment—all the tremendous destinies on the knees of Mr. Gladstone—all the millionfold hopes and hungering longings that were involved—were as nought in comparison with the fact that the motion of Mr. Gladstone deprived him of the opportunity of raising a debate on Railway Rates. Coldly, calmly, self-confidently, Dr. Hunter attacked the Government in its weakest place, and drove the dagger home through the vulnerable side. The weakness of the position was this: there was a strong, vehement, and widespread revolt in the House against the exactions of the railway companies. Liberal members had on the subject exactly the same feelings as Tories; nightly a score of questions were asked on the subject. Altogether, indignation had broken down party lines, and against the railway companies Liberal and Tory made common cause. Unfortunately, Dr. Hunter's case had been strengthened by a somewhat weak yielding of Mr. Gladstone to a demand for a day on Bimetallism. This demand had, it is true, been urged upon him from various parts of the House, including his own, and he seemed to be yielding to a pretty universal demand. But Bimetallism was a craze with no chance of even distant success, while Railway Rates were at that very moment urgently calling for redress from hundreds of threatened industries. It would be seen then what a dexterous weapon for striking the Government the selection of the day for Railway Rates was.

[Sidenote: No Tory Leader.]

The Tories ought to have at once perceived the value of the weapon which a Liberal had thus placed in their hands. Some of them did so, and, undoubtedly, if a man with the Parliamentary instinct of Lord Randolph Churchill had been at their head, they would at once have made deadly and, haply, destructive use of the opportunity. But Mr. Balfour was away. Lord Randolph sate, dark and solitary, at a remote seat, and Mr. Goschen can always be confidently relied upon to do the wrong thing. It will be seen presently how he helped to save the Government it was his duty to destroy. No; the danger of the situation came not from the Tory, but from the Liberal benches. There are in the Liberal, as in every party of the House, a number of young and new members who have not yet learned the secret and personal springs of action, and who, moreover, do not at once realize the vast underlying issues on an apparently small question. To them the Liberal intriguers against the Government had steadily and plausibly addressed themselves, and many of them were under the impression that the question raised by Dr. Hunter would decide nothing more serious than the special purpose to which one day of the Session could be devoted.

[Sidenote: A coming storm.]

But anybody with the slightest acquaintance with the House of Commons would have soon perceived that matter of much greater pith and moment was at stake. The Senior Ministerial Whip is the danger-signal of the House of Commons; and the danger-signal was very much in evidence. Mr. Marjoribanks—of all Whips the most genial, even-tempered, and long-suffering, as well as the most effective—was to be seen, rushing backwards and forwards between the lobby and the Treasury bench, where, with Mr. Gladstone, he held whispered and apparently excited conversations. Meantime, there grew up in the House of Commons that mysterious sense of coming storm which its quick sensibilities always enable it to see from afar. There came a sudden murmuring, and then a strange stillness, and older members almost held their breaths. From the Irish benches not a sound escaped. In most Parliamentary frays—especially when the storm rages—there are certain Irish members who are certain to figure largely and eminently; but on these benches there was a silence, ominous to those who are able to note the signs of the Parliamentary firmament. Anyone looking on could have seen that the silence did not come from inattention or want of interest, for the looks betrayed keen and almost feverish excitement.

[Sidenote: Ireland in danger.]

For what was going on was a fight whether Ireland was to be lost or saved, and lost through the folly, desertion, or levity of some of the men that had sworn to save her. Fortunately, the strains of the most tragic situations have their relief in the invincible irony of life, and there was a welcome break in the appearance on the scene of him whom all men know as "Alpheus Cleophas"—the redoubtable Mr. Morton. Some men are comic by intention, some are comic unconsciously and unintentionally, some men are comic half by intention and half in spite of themselves. To this last class belongs our Alpheus Cleophas. He played his part of comic relief with a certain air of knowing what was expected of him—you see this demoralizing House of Commons makes everybody self-conscious, and one could see that he himself anticipated the roar of laughter with which the House received his statement, "I have now a majority"—by which, for the moment, Alpheus appeared as the leader of the Government, and a party which controlled the destinies of the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Mere comic relief.]

Still, as I have said, this was only comic relief—the jokes, ofttimes mechanical, by which the young men and women downstairs prepare to pass the time which is required for the preparation of the great scene, in which their principals have to enact their great situation. Still, the denouement of the drama was uncertain. Mr. Marjoribanks rushed from lobby to Mr. Gladstone, from Mr. Gladstone to lobby—and still there hung in the air the fatal question: "Was the Government going out?" Ah! think of it. Was Gladstone going to end his days in baffled purpose, in melancholy retirement, with the great last solemn issue of his life ended in puerile fiasco and farcical anarchy, instead of in the picture of two nations reconciled, an empire strengthened and ennobled, all humanity lifted to higher possibilities of brotherhood and concord, by the peaceful close of the bloody and hideous struggle of centuries? Think of it all, I say, and then go also in imagination to the door of the House of Commons, and see a Scotch Liberal fighting for dear life to bring into the Tory lobby the necessary number of misguided and ignorant neophytes to bring down this disastrous catastrophe.

[Sidenote: Why no signal?]

Meantime, confusion still reigned on the Liberal benches. Men were confused, and bewildered, and irresolute, and frightened, conscience of calamitous danger, and yet unable to understand it all. And here let me say that this state of confusion was due partly to bad leadership. There is a want of cohesion—on this day in particular—on the Treasury bench. Mr. Gladstone, like all ardent natures, takes too much on himself. He is, of course, a tower of strength—twenty men are not such as he. But the burden cannot all be borne by one shoulder—especially at a portion of the sitting when, by a strict interpretation of the rules of the House, Mr. Gladstone is allowed to speak but once. Why were these scattered and young and inexperienced troops not told, by their leaders, of the vast issues involved in this coming vote? Why were not all the sophistries brushed away, by which the conspirators against the Government were hiding the real effect and purpose of the votes? Sir William Harcourt is an old Parliamentary hand; Mr. John Morley is excellent when a few words are required to meet a crisis; Mr. Asquith—keen, alert, alive to all that is going on—sits at Mr. Gladstone's side. Why were all these lips dumb? It made one almost rage or weep, to see the uncertain battle thus left unguided and uncontrolled.

[Sidenote: Mr. Goschen to the rescue.]

At last a saviour, but he came from the ranks of the enemy. Mr. Goschen swept away the network of cobwebs under which Liberals had hidden the issues, and boldly declared the real issue. And that issue was, that Mr. Gladstone wanted time to push forward his Home Rule Bill, and that the Tory party was determined to prevent him getting that time if they could manage it. Where be now the hysterics about private members and simple issues and small questions? The issue lies naked and clear before the House. But still victory isn't assured. Mr. Goschen with his thick utterance, his muffled voice, his loss of grip and point, has ceased to be listened to very attentively in the House of Commons; and this speech—the most significant yet delivered—passes almost unnoticed, except by those who know the House of Commons and watch its moods and every word. The last and decisive word has yet to come.

[Sidenote: Mr. Storey's contribution.]

At the same moment as Mr. Morton, Mr. Storey had risen from his seat, and demanded the word. There is a flutter of expectation. On this speech depended, at this moment, the fate of Home Rule and the Gladstone Government. What will it say? Mr. Storey always takes a line of his own; is a strong man with strong opinions, plenty of courage, not altogether free from the tendency of original natures, to break away from the mechanical uniformity of party discipline. Moreover, he is the chief among that sturdy little knot of Radicals below the gangway who are determined to make the Liberal coach go faster than the jog-trot of mere officialism. Will he call upon his friends to stand by the Government or to desert them—it is a most pregnant question.

It is not easy, in the midst of cyclones, to collect one's thoughts—to choose one's words—to hit straight home with short, emphatic blow. But this feat Mr. Storey accomplished. I have never heard, in my thirteen years' experience of the House of Commons, a speech more admirable in form. Not a word too much, and every sentence linked tight to the other—reasoning, cogent, unanswerable, resistless. And the point above all other things laid bare—are you Liberals going to help the Tories to postpone, if not finally overthrow Home Rule, or are you not? This, it will be seen, is but the emphasizing of the lead already given by the maladroit speech of Mr. Goschen. But Mr. Storey, clear, resonant, resolute, speaks to a House that listens with the stillness of great situations. Every word tells. The issue is understood and knit; and now let us troop into the lobbies, and proclaim to the world either our abject unfitness to govern an empire and pass a real statute, or let us stand by our great mission and mighty leader.

[Sidenote: John Burns's penetration.]

Not even yet do levity and faction surrender the final hope of doing mischief. At the door of the House, as I have already said, stands a Scotch Liberal doing the work of Tory Whips, and attempting to capture young members who have smoked their pipes or drank their tea, or wandered up and down the terrace by the peaceful Thames—all unconscious of the great and grim drama going forward upstairs. He catches hold of John Burns, among others—a sturdy son of the soil ready to receive, as might be hoped, anything which calls itself sturdy and independent Radicalism. Over honest John's manly form there is a fight; but he has a strong, clear, practical head over his muscular body, and at once penetrates to the underlying issue, and walks into Gladstone's lobby.

[Sidenote: The division.]

At last the division is nearing its close, and the excitement—perhaps, because it is so painfully repressed—has grown until it has almost become unbearable. Whenever there is a close division like this, several things happen which never happen on other occasions. Members gather round the doors of the division lobbies, listening to the tellers as they count one, two, three, four, and so on, in the mechanical voice of the croupiers, bidding the gamblers to play with the dice of death. The Whips also are narrowly watched to see which return first to the House, for the first return means which lobby has been sooner exhausted, and the lobby sooner exhausted is necessarily the smaller lobby, and, therefore, the lobby of the minority. Mr. Marjoribanks, who has told for the Government at the door of the Tory lobby, has returned to the House first. That's a good sign. But still, if there be a majority, what is it going to be?—disastrously near defeat, or near enough to moral strength as to mean nothing? A few minutes more have to pass before this fateful question is settled. Mr. Thomas Ellis—light, brisk—walks up the floor to the clerk in front of the table. Then the numbers are whispered to Mr. Gladstone. The winning teller always takes the paper from the clerk. It is Mr. Marjoribanks who receives the paper, and the Government has won. A faint cheer, then an immediate hush; we want to know the exact numbers. Mr. Marjoribanks reads them out—a majority of thirty-one. We have won, and we who support the Ministry, cheer; but our majority has been reduced, so the Opposition burst their throats with defiant answer.

Then, with fatuous folly, the Tories insist on another division. Two Irish members, driving straight from Euston station to the House—John Dillon and Mr. Collery—have meantime been added to the Ministerial ranks. Some of the mutineers have come back, and the majority rises to forty-two.

And so ended the great intrigue of the Liberal malcontents against the Gladstone Government.

[Sidenote: Obstruction rampant.]

The word had gone forth—the Home Rule Bill was not to be allowed to pass the second reading before the Easter recess. The slings and arrows of the Tory press had at last begun to have their effect, and obstruction had now been entered upon thoroughly, fiercely, and shamelessly. The first specimen of it was on the following Thursday night, when Mr. T.W. Russell took advantage of an harangue by Mr. Justice O'Brien—those Irish judges are all shameless political partisans—to move the adjournment of the House. Mr. Morley was in excellent fighting form. T.W. Russell is a man peculiarly well calculated to draw out the belligerent spirit of any man, and the Chief Secretary, though he holds himself well under restraint, has plenty of fire and passion in his veins. He let out at T.W. Russell in splendid style, and the more the Tories yelled, the more determinedly did Mr. Morley strike his blows. Russell, he said, had spread broadcast phylacteries, and used his most pharisaical language. At this there were deafening shouts from the Tory benches of "Withdraw! Withdraw!" Mr. Morley's reply was to repeat the words "pharisaical language"—at which there was another storm. Then Mr. Morley quietly observed that if he were out of order, the Speaker was the proper person to call him to account; and as the Speaker made no sign, the Tories were reduced to silence. In a few sentences, Mr. Morley made mince-meat of the whole attack: showing that crime, instead of increasing, had actually diminished in Clare since he had come into office, and that Mr. Balfour and coercion had completely failed to do even as much as he had done. Mr. Balfour made a somewhat feeble reply. And finally, in spite of a strong whip, the Tories were beaten by forty-five—the normal Liberal majority.

[Sidenote: The loosing of the winds.]

But all this was but the preface to uglier and worse work which was to come later on. Supply is the happy hunting-ground of obstructives. The questions there are small, and so easily comprehended, that even the dullest man can talk about them, and it requires—as I have said above—not intellect, but temperament. For nearly four hours there was a discussion on an item of L100, which had been spent on improving the accommodation of the House of Commons. John Burns, disgusted at this palpable waste of time, four times moved the closure. Jimmy Lowther—who has come wonderfully to the front since obstruction and general rowdyism has become the order of the day with the Tories—instantly turned to John with the observation that this was not the County Council; whereupon John promptly retorted, "Nor are you on Newmarket Heath." At last, after the waste of these four mortal hours, the closure was moved, was resisted by the majority of the Tory party, but, at the same time, was so necessary and proper, that several Tories voted in its favour, and some disgusted Unionists actually left the House.

[Sidenote: A criminal combination.]

But even worse was still behind. Mr. Bowles—a new and clever Tory member—was anxious to raise the whole question of Egyptian policy on a small vote for meeting the expense of building a new consular house at Cairo. Thereupon, Mr. Mellor—as he was plainly bound to do—declared that a discussion of the entire Egyptian policy would not be in order on such a vote. Pale, excited, looking his most evil self, Mr. Chamberlain got up to base an attack on Mr. Mellor for this judgment. There was a delighted howl from the young Tory bloods who had been obstructing so shamelessly throughout the evening. Mr. Chamberlain's example was followed by Mr. Balfour, by Sir John Gorst—in short, the whole Tory and Unionist pack were in full cry after the Chairman. The inner meaning of all this, was the desire to discredit the new Chairman, and intimidate him, lest he should show a bold front against the shameless obstruction on which the Tories had resolved. Mr. Sexton put this point neatly. In view, he said, of the combined attempt and evident combination to intimidate and embarrass the Chair—but he could go no further: for at once there was a fierce hurricane of howls, "Withdraw! Withdraw!" and "Shame! Shame!" from the Tories and renegades, which drowned every voice. Tory after Tory got up; shouts deafening, passionate, ferocious, made everything inaudible; Mr. Chamberlain, paler even than usual, shouted with full mouth across the floor; altogether, the scene was one of almost insane excitement. Mr. Mellor—gentle, considerate, conciliatory—reasoned, explained, expostulated. What he should have done, was to have named half-a-dozen Tories, and showed the party of bullies that their day was past.



CHAPTER V.

OBSTRUCTION AND ITS AGENTS.

[Sidenote: The younger Tories.]

Obstruction is a thing rather of temperament than intellect. The occurrences of the early weeks of the Session of 1893 fully confirm this view. The Tory party and the Unionists vowed in their organs, and proved by their conduct in the House, that they determined to try and prevent, by obstruction, the second reading of the Home Rule Bill being taken before Easter. With this design they came down to the House every evening with a plan of attack. The consequences were somewhat serious to some members of the House. I saw young gentlemen suddenly developing activity whom I had beheld in the House for many years in succession without ever suspecting in them either the power or the desire to take any part in Parliamentary debate. The same gentlemen now rushed about with a hurried, preoccupied, and, above all, a self-conscious air that had its disgusting but also its very amusing side. For instance, Mr. Bromley-Davenport, during the six years of Tory Government, never spoke, and rarely even made his appearance in the House of Commons. His voice was as strange to the assembly as though he had never belonged to it. But this Session he is constantly getting up in his seat, and he rushes through the lobbies with the cyclonic movement of a youth bearing on juvenile shoulders a weight too heavy to bear. Mr. Bartley is about as dull a fellow as ever bored a House of Commons, and in the last Parliament even his own friends found him a trial and a nuisance. He has suddenly taken to making the House of Commons familiar with his voice at every sitting. Lord Cranborne has been remarkable for the boorishness and impertinence of his manners—or, perhaps, to be more accurate, want of manners. I have seen him interrupting Mr. Gladstone in the most impudent way with a face you would like to slap, and his hands deep down in the depths of his pockets. Lord Cranborne is now nightly in evidence, and leads the chorus of jeers and cheers by which the more brutal of the Tory youth signalize the opening of the new style of Parliamentary warfare.

[Sidenote: Jimmy.]

But of all the things which indicate the new state of affairs which has arisen, nothing is so significant as the change in the position of Jimmy Lowther. People think that I have attached too much importance to this extraordinary individual, and that he should be taken simply as the frank horse-jockey he looks and seems. I have given my reasons for believing that in a crisis Jimmy would develop a very different side of his character, and that he has in him—latent and disguised for the moment—all the terrible passions and possibilities of the aristocrat at bay. However, let that question rest with history and its future developments; his position at the present moment is very peculiar. There is a report that the desire of his heart is to sit on the first seat on the front bench below the gangway, which for seven years was occupied by Mr. Labouchere, and which for the five years of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry of 1880 to 1885 was occupied by Lord Randolph Churchill when he was the chief of the dead and buried Fourth Party. That seat is the natural point for a sharpshooter and guerilla warrior. Indeed, the first seat below the gangway seems just as marked out by fate for such a man as Jimmy Lowther, as one of the high fortresses on the Rhine for the work of the bold freebooter of the Middle Ages. But for some reason or other, Jimmy did not attain his heart's desire, and he is compelled to sit on the front Opposition bench. This would not seem an affliction to ordinary men. Indeed, the desire to sit on one of the front benches may be regarded as the root of all evil in Parliamentary nature—the desire to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge which is as fatal to nature born without original political sin as that disastrous episode in the annals of our first parents.

[Sidenote: A recollection of Disraeli.]

One of the most curious episodes in the career of Disraeli was that he insisted on sitting on the front Opposition bench before he had ever held office—an act of unprecedented and unjustifiable daring which throws a significant light on that habit of self-assertion to which he owed a good deal of his success in life. For what a seat on the front Opposition bench means is, that the holder thereof has once held office in an administration, and so is justified for the remainder of his days in regarding himself as above the common herd. But Jimmy isn't as ordinary men. A place on the front Opposition bench, with all its advantages, has the countervailing disadvantages of binding to a certain decency and decorum of behaviour, and nothing could be more galling to the free and full soul of the distinguished steward of the Jockey Club. It is said that in the same way his colleagues on the front Opposition bench would prefer Jimmy's room to his company. In Parliamentary politics, as in diplomacy, there is such a thing as having an agent whom you can profit by, and at the same time disavow—just as it may suit you. That is one of the many guileful methods of these crafty men who sit on front benches on both sides of the House. Obstruction is a thing too horrible to be practised by any man who has ever held responsible position, and it is delightful to see how Mr. Balfour repudiates the very idea of anything of the kind. It would, therefore, have suited Mr. Balfour a good deal better if Jimmy could have obstructed from some quarter of the House where his closeness of association would not so largely commit his more responsible colleagues to participation in his iniquities. However, it was not to be managed; and the leaders of the Opposition are bound to put up with the closeness of Jimmy's companionship.

[Sidenote: Mr. Lowther's intellect.]

Again I repeat, obstruction is a matter not of intellect, but temperament. Intellectually, I should put Jimmy in a very low place, even in the ranks of the stupid party. Temperamentally he stands very high. A brief description of his methods of obstruction will bring this home. First, it should be said that he is entirely inarticulate and, beyond rough common sense, destitute of ideas. He has nothing to say, and he cannot say it. There are men in the House of Commons who have plenty of thoughts, and who have plenty of words besides, and could branch out on any subject whatever into a dissertation which would command the interest even of political foes. But Jimmy is not of this class. He is capable, on the contrary, of bringing down the loftiest subject that ever moved human breasts to something stumbling, commonplace and prosaic. When he gets up, then, his speech consists rather of a series of gulps than of articulate or intelligible statements. But then mark the singular courage and audacity of the whole proceeding. There are traditions still in the House of Commons of the marvellously stimulating effect upon followers of leaders, who were proverbial for their oratorical impotence. Everybody remembers the scornful description of Castlereagh which Byron gave to the world; and yet it has been said in some memoirs that the moment Castlereagh stood up and adjusted his waistcoat, there was a thrill in the House of Commons, and his followers bellowed their exultation and delight. In a more recent day, Lord Althorpe was able to bear down the hostility of some of the most powerful orators of his time by a bluff manliness which no rhetoric could withstand. And so also with Jimmy—his sheer audacity carries him along the slow, dull, inept, muddy tide of his inarticulate speech.

[Sidenote: An irrepressible nuisance.]

And curiously enough, it is impossible to put him down. On March 6th he was commenting on some item which he supposed was in a Post-office Estimate. It was pointed out to him that the item to which he alluded was not in that particular vote at all, but in quite another vote, which came later on. Jimmy, nevertheless, went on to discuss the item as if nothing had been said. Then the long-suffering Chairman had to be called in, and he ruled—as every human being would have been bound to rule—that Jimmy was out of order. Was Jimmy put down? Not the least in the world. He made an apology, and, as the apology was ample and his deliverance is slow, the apology enabled him to consume some more minutes of precious Government time. And then, having failed to find fault with the estimate for what it did not contain, he proceeded to assail it for what it did contain. Here again he was out of order, for the estimate was prepared exactly as every other estimate had been prepared for years. This answer was given to him. But Jimmy went on—gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. It is amusing, perhaps, to you who can read this description as part of an after-dinner's amusement, but what is one to think of a Parliamentary institution that can be so flouted, and nullified by mere beef-headed dulness? This is a question to make any one pause who has faith in Parliamentary institutions.

[Sidenote: Mr. Balfour keeps away.]

During all these performances, Mr. Balfour keeps steadily away from the House. He never was a good attendant, even in his best of days, and now that he is relieved of responsibility, he naturally seeks to take advantage of it. But he doesn't take so much advantage as one would expect. He who used to be so indolent, has developed a feverish activity. He seems during some portions of every sitting to be ready to rise to his feet at the smallest provocation, and to interfere in the smallest matter of detail. It is this tendency which has hurried him into some of those ridiculous errors, which he has made so frequently. The explanation of it all, is that curious figure that sits so silent, remote, and friendless on the front Opposition bench. Lord Randolph is still the riddle which nobody can read. Whenever Mr. Balfour appears Lord Randolph does his best to efface himself, even in the places which men select on the front bench. Here is a hint of that eternal conflict and play of ferocious appetites and passions which is going on in the House of Commons. Everybody who has ever visited the House of Commons must have observed that pair of boxes which stand on the table in front of the Speaker's chair. These boxes mark to the outward world the positions of the most important men in the House of Commons—the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Balfour, whenever he is in the House, sits opposite his box, and so proclaims to all the world the lofty post he holds. And when this is the case, it is in almost the very last seat—separated by half a dozen other individuals—Lord Randolph is to be seen. To turn to another part of the House, it is the men in whom Mr. Gladstone most confides who sit on either side of him—Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley. If on any day it were seen that either of these two men had left the side of their leader, and was separated from him by several others, the rumour would run like wildfire through the House of Commons that the relations of the Premier and one of his chief lieutenants were strained.

[Sidenote: Deadly foes.]

So Mr. Balfour watches Lord Randolph and Lord Randolph watches Mr. Balfour, with the deadly vigilance of two men who stand opposite each other in a wood with drawn swords in their hands. There is another gentleman, besides, whom the Tory leader has to watch, and, perhaps, more keenly. Lord Randolph Churchill is not always in his place, and his movements in these days are leisurely—I remember when they were electric in their rapidity and frequency. But Mr. Chamberlain is a distinctly ready man. Whatever gifts he has, are always at his command. He is like the shopman who puts all his goods in the window. The goods are not very fine nor very good, but they are showy and cheap, and, above all things, take the eye. Mr. Chamberlain in his day has been a poor attendant in Parliament—a friend of his used to tell him, when he was supposed to have the reversion of the Liberal leadership, that his inability to remain for hours in succession in the House of Commons would always stand in the way of his being the leader of that assembly. But he turns up now usually after dinner, and from his seat on the third bench below the gangway, on the Liberal side, watches the progress of battle. It is known to the intimates of Mr. Balfour that he has not a particularly high opinion of his partner in the work of obstructing the cause of Home Rule. Indeed, it is impossible that the two men should be really sympathetic with each other. With all his faults, Mr. Balfour does represent the literary and cultured side of political life; while Mr. Chamberlain is illiteracy embodied. Then, Mr. Chamberlain has a knack of attributing every victory to himself—modesty isn't one of his many virtues—and this cannot be particularly agreeable to the real leader of the Opposition. There is thus a constant competition between the two men as to which shall give the marching orders to the enemies of the Government.

[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's slatternly inaccuracy.]

There was a singular scene on March 6th, which brought out the relations of the two in a singular manner. There appeared that day in the congenial columns of the Times a letter, a column in length, and set forth with all the resources of leaded and displayed type which the office could afford. In this letter Joe had lamented the disappearance of those courteous manners of an elder and more Chesterfieldian time, to which he suggested he belonged. The origin of this delicious lament over a venerable and more courteous past by so flagrant a type of modernity, was a statement that Sir William Harcourt had played the dirty trick of putting down a notice to suspend the twelve o'clock rule at a shorter notice than usual. The suspension of the twelve o'clock rule simply means that the Tories shall not be allowed to obstruct by the mere fact that the House is compelled automatically to close at midnight under the existing rules. Joe appeared in his place swelling with visibly virtuous indignation; evidently he had come, ready to bear down on Sir William and the Government generally with the cyclone of attack. But this notable design was prevented by two accidents. First, Sir William Harcourt got up and explained that the notice he had given was exactly the same kind of notice that was always, and had been always, given in like circumstances. Everybody who knows anything about Parliamentary matters knows that this was the literal truth. The dirty trick which Mr. Chamberlain had attributed to Sir William Harcourt existed only in his own uninstructed and treacherous memory; and so he was crushed. Still he wanted to have a word in, and more than once he showed signs of rising to his feet. But he stopped half-way, and, when he did finally get up, Mr. Balfour was before him, and he had to sit down again. Then his opportunity was lost, for Mr. Balfour had declared that he was perfectly satisfied with what Sir William Harcourt had done, and that prevented Joe from entering on the filibustering tactics which apparently he contemplated. This appeared to the whole House to be a very distinct and unpleasant snub for Joseph. A short time afterwards he and Mr. Balfour were seen in the lobby, engaged in a conversation that was apparently vehement, and everybody jumped to the conclusion that they were having it out, and that Joseph was resenting the rejection of his advice with that haughtiness of temper which is so well-known a characteristic of the Radical whom wealth has converted into a leader of the aristocracy. The papers afterwards contained an announcement that the two conspirators against Mr. Gladstone's Government were in the heartiest accord. This was one of the semi-official denials which are generally regarded as the best testimony to the truth of the report denied.

[Sidenote: Mr. Morley.]

If one were on the look-out for dramatic and instructive contrast in the House of Commons, one could not do better than study Mr. Morley and Mr. Chamberlain for a week. Mr. Chamberlain—glib, shallow, self-possessed, well-trained by years of public life—debates admirably. Nobody can deny that—not even those who, like myself, find his speaking exasperatingly empty and superficial and foolish. He is master of all his resources; scarcely ever pauses for a word, and when he is interrupted, can parry the stroke with a return blow of lightning-like rapidity. But when he sits down, is there any human being that feels a bit the wiser or the better for what he has said? And who can get over the idea that it has all been a bit of clever special pleading—such as one could hear in half-a-dozen courts of law any day of the week? And, finally, who is there that can help feeling throughout all the speech that this is a selfish nature—full of venom, ambition, and passion—seeing in political conflict not great principles to advance—holy causes to defend—happiness to extend—but so many enemies' faces to grind to dust?

Mr. Morley is a fine platform speaker, but as yet he is not nearly as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain. He stumbles, hesitates, finds it hard often to get the exact word he wants. And yet who cannot listen to him for ten minutes without a sense of a great mind—and what to me is better, a fine character behind it all? This man has thought out—possibly in travail of spirit—and his creed—though it may not be the exultant cheerfulness of natures richer in muscle than in thought—is one for which he will fight and sacrifice, and not yield. In short, the thinness of Mr. Chamberlain—the depths of Mr. Morley—these are the things which one will learn from hearing them speak even once.

I have said that Mr. Morley is not as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain; but if Mr. Chamberlain be wise, he will call his watch-dogs off Mr. Morley, for he is being badgered into an excellent debater. Every night he improves in his answers to questions. Tersely, frigidly—though there is the undercurrent of scorn and sacred passion in most of what he says—Mr. Morley meets the taunts and charges of the Russells, and the Macartneys, and the Carsons, and never yet has he been beaten in one of those hand-to-hand fights.

[Sidenote: Flagrant obstruction.]

There was a curious but instructive little scene towards the end of a sitting early in March. The Tories—headed by Jimmy Lowther—had been obstructing in the most shameless way for a whole afternoon. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Chamberlain had come down and joined in the fray—lending his authority to tactics which usually had been left to the rag-tag and bobtail of all parties. As I have already said, this kind of intervention had seriously diminished Mr. Chamberlain in the respect of the House. And the way in which he did his work was venomous as well as petty. The vote under discussion was a Supplemental Estimate for Light Railways in Ireland. Everybody knows that light railways were the policy of the late and not of the present Government. A supplemental estimate means simply a smaller sum by which the original estimate has been exceeded. It ought to have been a matter of course that this supplementary estimate should have been agreed to by the Tories, seeing that it was money necessary to carry out the programme passed by their own friends in the previous administration. But the Tories were in no humour to listen to such trifles as these, and carried on lengthy discussions. Mr. Morley, having no responsibility for the policy which rendered such a vote necessary, was away in his room, attending to the duties of his laborious department. Mr. T.W. Russell assumed to be in a great pucker over this absence, and actually tried to stop the proceedings until Mr. Morley came back.

[Sidenote: While a wronged nation waits.]

Mr. Morley did appear in due course, and then there was an attempt to assail him for his absence. There was also an attempt to take advantage of his presence to resume the discussion of the very topics which had already been discussed for many hours in his absence. Mr. Morley refused to fall into the trap. Speaking quietly, but with a deadly blow between every word, he declined to be a party to obstruction by answering again questions which had already been answered many times over. At this, there was a loud shout of approval from the Liberal benches—exasperated almost beyond endurance by the shameless waste of time in which the Tories, aided by Mr. Chamberlain, had indulged in for so many hours. Mr. Chamberlain professed to be greatly shocked. But the House was not in a mood to stand any more nonsense. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Lowther, and the rest of the obstructive gang, had to submit to have the vote taken. In the meantime there stood the business of the country to be done. All its needs, its pressing grievances, its vast chorus of sighs and wails from wasted lives—rose up and called for justice; but tricksters, and self-seekers, and horse-jockeys stopped the way.

[Sidenote: Carlton Club echoes.]

There were signs of the meeting at the Carlton when the House met on Thursday evening, March 9th. The Tory benches were crowded; the young bloods were fuller than ever of that self-consciousness to which I have adverted, and there were signs of movement, excitement, and the spirit of mischief and evil in all their faces and in their general demeanour. There were nearly one hundred questions on the paper—and questions had become a most effective weapon of Obstruction. But there was a certain peculiarity about the questioning on this Thursday evening. A stranger to the House would have remarked that all the questions addressed to Mr. Gladstone were asked last. This was not an accidental arrangement. It was done in the case of every leader of the House, so as to leave him more time before coming down to the House of Commons. It was done in the case of Mr. Balfour when he was leader of the House, with the result that that very limp and leisurely gentleman never came down to his place until the House had been one or two hours at work. There was, of course, much stronger reason for that little bit of consideration in the case of Mr. Gladstone, than in that of a young man like Mr. Balfour.

[Sidenote: The epoch of brutality.]

But the Tories, in the new and brutal mood to which they have worked themselves up, have taken means for depriving Mr. Gladstone of what small benefit he got from this postponement of the questions to him till the end of question time. The puniest whipster of the Tory or the Unionist party now is satisfied with nothing less, if you please, than to have his questions addressed to and answered by Mr. Gladstone himself. One of this impudent tribe is a Scotch Unionist named Cochrane. The Scotch Unionist is one of the most bitter of the venomous tribe to which he belongs. Mr. Gladstone is a man of peace and unfailing courtesy, but the old lion has potentialities of Olympian wrath, and when he is stirred up a little too much his patience gives way, and he has a manner of shaking his mane and sweeping round with his tail which is dangerous to his enemies and a delight and fascination to his friends. He took up the witless and unhappy Cochrane, shook him, and dropped him sprawling and mutilated, in about as limp a condition as the late Lord Wolmer—I call him late in the sense of a person politically dead—when that distinguished nobleman was called to account for his odious calumny on the Irish members.

[Sidenote: Baiting the lion.]

At last, however, the Cochranes and the rest of the gang that had thought it fine fun to bait an old man were silenced; but even yet the ordeal of Mr. Gladstone was only beginning. I have seen many disgusting sights in my time in the House of Commons; but I never saw anything so bad as this scene. Mr. Gladstone looked—as I thought—wan and rather tired. He had been down to Brighton; and I have a profound disbelief in these short hurried trips to the seaside. But Mr. Gladstone seems to like them, and haply they do him good. He looked as if the last trip had rather tired him out. Or was it that he had had to sit for several hours the day before at a Cabinet Council? These Cabinet Councils must often be a great trial to a leader's nerves; for all Councils in every body in the world mean division of opinion, personal frictions, ugly outbursts of temper, from which even the celestial minds of political leaders are not entirely free. Anyhow Mr. Gladstone looked pale, fagged, and even a little dejected. You—simple man—who are only acquainted with human nature in its brighter and better manifestations, would rush to the conclusion that the sight of the greatest man of his time in his eighty-fourth year, thus wan, wearied, pathetic, would appeal to the imaginations or the hearts of even political opponents. Simple man, you know nothing of the ruthless cruelty which dwells in political breasts, of the savagery which lies in the depths of the horse-jockey squire or the overdressed youth—anxious to distinguish himself, if it be only by throwing mud at a stately column—you have no idea of these things.

[Sidenote: The lion lashes out.]

Time after time—again and again—in this form and in that—the Tories, young and old, experienced and senseless, rose to try and corner Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Frank Lockwood, examining a hostile witness in the divorce court, could not have been more persistent than the Lowthers, and the Cranbornes, and even Mr. Balfour. But he was equal to them all—met them man after man, question after question, and, though he had to be on his feet a score of times in the course of a few minutes, was always ready, firm, alert. How we enjoyed the whole splendid display—a brilliant intellect playing with all the ease of its brightest and best powers; but, after all, what a flood of holy rage the whole thing was calculated to rouse in any but rancorous breasts. However, we had our revenge. The resurgence of Jimmy Lowther seems to be a phenomenon, as disturbing to his friends as to his foes. The ugly necessity for sharing responsibility for his vulgar and senseless excesses has come home to Mr. Balfour. There was something very like a scene this night between him and the Newmarket steward. Mr. Balfour was ready to accept the assurances which had been given to him by Mr. Gladstone—assurances which, if anything, erred on the side of conciliation—but Jimmy has entered on the frenzied campaign of obstruction to all and everything which his dull, narrow, and obstinate mind has mistaken for high policy. This led to a strange and striking scene. Mr. Balfour, speaking on some question, was interrupted by Mr. Lowther—and then, in front of the whole House—in words which everybody could hear, with gesture of his whole arm—sweeping, indignant, irritated—the gesture with which a master dismisses an importunate servant—the Tory leader rebuked the interruptions of Mr. Lowther.

[Sidenote: Jimmy flouts Mr. Balfour.]

But Mr. Lowther, in these days, is not to be put down, and doubtless he feels in his inner breast that wrong which has been done for years to his talents and his services; doubtless he remembers the silence and obscurity to which he has been condemned, while Mr. Balfour has been figuring largely before the general public, in the very situation which Jimmy held himself in days when Mr. Balfour stumbled and trembled from his place below the gangway. At all events, Jimmy has determined to revive; and in these sad days, when nothing but the sheer brutality of obstruction is required, he is not a man to be trifled with. And so he defied Mr. Balfour and insisted on a division. Mr. Balfour ostentatiously left the House, but the majority of the Tory party followed Jimmy.

[Sidenote: The pity of it.]

All this resuscitation of obstruction necessitated, on Mr. Gladstone's part, an extreme step. Before this time Mr. Gladstone was very rarely in the House after eight o'clock. About that hour, he silently stole away and left the conduct of the business of the House to Sir William Harcourt. He was thus able to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and to attend during the day to the business of the nation. But when the emergency arises, Mr. Gladstone is never able to listen to the dictates of prudence, or selfishness, or peril. He was determined to show the Tories that if they were going to play the game of obstruction, they would have to count with him more seriously than they imagine. To his friends—who doubtless were aghast at the proposition—he announced that he was going to break through those rules which had been imposed upon him by a watchful physician and by his age. At eleven o'clock he announced he would be in the House again, and accordingly, at eleven o'clock—quietly, unostentatiously, without the welcome of a cheer—he almost stole to his place on the Treasury Bench. Something about the figure of Mr. Gladstone compels the concentration of attention upon him at all times. He seems the soul, the inspiration, the genius of the House of Commons. He was not, as is usually the case with him in the evening, in the swallow-tail and large shirt-front of evening dress; he had the long, black, frock coat, which he usually wears on the great occasions when he has a mighty speech to deliver. Of course, Mr. Gladstone was immediately the observed of every eye; but, as I have said, there was no demonstration—the House of Commons is often silent at its most sublime moments.

[Sidenote: He pounces.]

But if there were silence, it was simply pent-up rage, fierce resolve. When, having brought the discussion down to past midnight, the Tories calmly proposed that the debate should be adjourned, the Old Man got up. He was very quiet, spoke almost in whispered lowliness; but he was unmistakable. The vote would have to be taken. An hour later—when the clock pointed to one—there was a second attempt. There was the same response in the same tone—its quietness, however, fiercely accentuated by Liberal cheers. And then, when the Tories still seemed determined to obstruct, came a division, then the closure, and at one o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone was able to leave the House. Thus was he compelled to waste time and strength, that Mr. Chamberlain might nightly hiss his hate, and Mr. Jimmy Lowther might gulp and obstruct, obstruct and gulp.



CHAPTER VI.

GLADSTONE THE SURVIVAL.

[Sidenote: From the past.]

What I like most about Mr. Gladstone is his antique spirituality. The modern politician is smart, alive, pert, up-to-date; knows everything about registration; hires a good agent; can run a caucus, and receive a deputation. With us, as yet, the modern politician has not wholly abandoned religious faith—as he has done among our neighbours on the Continent—and has not come to regard this solid earth of ours as the one standing-place in a universe alone worthy the consideration of intelligent men. But the English politician is so far suffused with the spirit of modernity as to prefer the newspaper to the book, to regard more closely registration records than the classics, and generally is wide awake rather than steeped in subtler and profounder forms of sagacity and knowledge. The Prime Minister is a Survival. With all his extraordinary adaptiveness, he stands in many respects in sharpest contrast to his environment. I can never forget, as I look at him, all those years he spent in that vanished epoch which knew nothing of evolution or of science at all, and was content to regard a knowledge of the classics as the beginning and the end of a gentleman's education. After reading the life of Lord Aberdeen, I was brought back in spirit to all those years during which Mr. Gladstone was a member of the Tory party, and lived in an atmosphere of proud, scholarly exclusiveness—of distrust of the multitude—of ecclesiasticism in the home, in the forum, and as the foundation of all political controversy. When, therefore, Mr. Gladstone is going through a crisis, it is intensely interesting to me to watch him and to see how he carries himself amid it all; and then it is that this thought occurs to me of how differently and clearly he stands out from all his colleagues and surroundings.

[Sidenote: A reminiscence.]

Different things suggest early associations to different people. Mrs. Solness, in the "Master Builder," could think only of her dolls when she was telling the story of the fire that left her childless for ever. I have heard of a great lady who cannot see a shell without recalling the scenes of her dead youth before her. Next to the railway bridge which spans the river in my native town, there is nothing which brings back the past to me so palpably and so vividly—I might sometimes say, so poignantly—as the echoes of books. One of my clearest recollections is of a little room, looking out on a sunny and, as it appeared to me then, a beautifully-kept garden, with a small but glistening river in the distance, and the air filled, not only with the songs of birds, but all the intoxicating and inaudible music of youth's dreams and visions. All this phantasmagoria of memory is accompanied by the echo of a melodious, rich voice, rising and falling, in the to me unfamiliar but delightful accent of an educated Englishman: and the story of Ancient Greece—sometimes her poetry with the loves of her gods, the fights, the shouts of battle, the exhortations and the groans of her heroes—rises once more before me. Or, again, I hear the tale told anew of that great last immortal day in the life of Socrates, as the great Philosopher sank to rest in a glory of self-sacrificing submission, serenity, and courage—a story which moves the world to tears and admiration, and will continue so to do as long as it endures. The voice of the teacher and the friend still survives, which had this extraordinary power of giving in the very different tongue of England all the glories of the poetry and the prose of Greece; and other youths, doubtless like me, look out under the spell of its music to that same green garden in far-off Galway, by the side of Corrib's stream.

[Sidenote: Gladstone dreams.]

Of all this I sate musing during some idle moments in the middle of March; for, as I looked at Mr. Gladstone, the whole scene was, by a curious trick of memory and association, brought back to me. Everyone who knew the great old Philosopher of Athens, will remember that he had his familiar daemon, and that he believed himself to have constant communication with him. If I remember rightly, there is a good deal about that daemon in his "Phaedo"—that wonderful story to which I have just alluded, and which lives so vividly in my memory. Sometimes I think that Mr. Gladstone has the same superstition. He has moments—especially if there be the stress of the sheer brutality of obstructive and knavish hostility—when he seems to retire into himself—to transfer himself on the wings of imagination to regions infinitely beyond the reach, as well as the ken, of the land in which the Lowthers, the Chamberlains, and the Bartleys dwell. At such moments he gives one the impression of communing with some spirit within his own breast—a familiar daemon, whose voice, though still and silent to all outside, shouts louder than the roar of faction or the shouts of brutish hate. Then it is that I remember what depths of religious fervour there are in this leader of a fierce democracy, and can imagine that ofttimes his communings may, perchance, be silent prayer.

[Sidenote: In contrast with Lowther.]

As I have said, there have been many such moments in those days in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone can be severe—wrathful—even cruel. It is not often that he is so, but sometimes he has, in sheer self-defence, to notice the dogs that yelp at his heels, and to lash out and maul them so as to keep off the rest. Nobody will forget how, in a few words, Mr. Gladstone mercilessly and for ever crushed that impudent young gentleman, who is titled and considered to-day largely because Mr. Gladstone was the patron of his sanctimonious father. Mr. Jesse Collings hides under a painfully extorted smile the agonies he endures on the few occasions when Mr. Gladstone deems it worth his while to scornfully refer to his apostasy. But, speaking generally, Mr. Gladstone uses his giant powers with extraordinary benignity and mercifulness, and is almost tender with even his bitterest opponents. When, therefore, Mr. Gladstone was being baited by beef-headed Lowther, he for the most part looked simply pained; and took refuge in that far-off self-absorption which enabled him to forget the odious reality in front of him. And assuredly, if you looked at the face of Gladstone, and then at the face of Lowther, and thought of the different purposes of the two men, you could not be surprised that Mr. Gladstone should desire to forget the existence of Mr. Lowther. Mr. Lowther's face, with its high cheek-bones, its heavy underhung lip, like the national bulldog in size, and in its impression of brutal, dull, heavy tenacity—its grotesque good-humour—its unrelieved coarseness—brings out into higher contrast and bolder relief the waxen pallor, the beautifully chiselled features, the dominant benignity and refinement of the face of Mr. Gladstone. And, then, think that the one man is fighting to maintain, and the other to put an end, and for ever, to the hateful, bloody, and, it might almost be said, bestial struggle of centuries; and you can understand the feeling of overwhelming loathing which sometimes rises in the breasts of those who see the two men pitted against each other.

[Sidenote: For Jimmy was leader.]

For this was what it had come to in the House of Commons. It was Jimmy Lowther against Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Balfour occasionally dropped in a perfunctory word; now and then even tried to raise the standard of revolt against Mr. Lowther; and, of course, had finally to accept the consequences of Mr. Lowther's acts. Joe was there too; much more active in sympathy with Jimmy than Mr. Balfour. With all his faults, there is a certain saving refinement in Mr. Balfour—it is not a refinement that has restrained him from being cruel with the hysteric violence of the effeminate, but it is a refinement that preserves him from the mere Newmarket horseplay of Jimmy Lowther, and the thin rancour of a Brummagem drummer. Joe, I say, was there, ready to back up Jimmy in his worst exploits, but, after all, Jimmy was the leader. In this mighty struggle—not merely for the reconciliation of England and Ireland, but for the existence of Parliamentary institutions—the stakes are no smaller—the gentlemen of England were represented by Mr. Lowther, and the rude democracy by Mr. Gladstone. Democrats need not feel much ashamed of the contrast.

[Sidenote: The apotheosis of Jimmy.]

But there Jimmy Lowther was, gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. The deadly and almost animal dulness of the performance I must insist on again and again. Mr. Lowther does not speak—he is as inarticulate as one of the prize bulls which, I doubt not, he delights to view at Islington what time the Agricultural Hall opens its portals to fat men and fat beasts. He cannot stand on his legs for five minutes together without saying half-a-dozen times, "I repeat what I have already said;" he has no ideas, no language, nothing except sheer bull-headed power of standing on his legs, and occupying a certain amount of time. Everybody knows that Lowtherism reached its climax on Saturday, March 11th. On that day, men, who had held high office, were not ashamed to resort to so mean and palpable an obstructive expedient as to put on paper twenty-two questions to their successors in office. The previous Friday had been bad enough. That was the day which tried Mr. Gladstone more, perhaps, than any day for many a year; and, indeed, it tried others as much as he, though not everybody bore it with the same iron and inflexible courage. There were large absences—some of the Irish away at conventions in Ireland, others without that legitimate excuse; there were Liberal absentees as well. Obstruction, meantime, stalked triumphantly; and when the divisions came, our strength sank down to almost invisible figures. Ah! it was saddening to look at Mr. Gladstone's face throughout that long morning sitting of Friday, March 10th. There are some days that live in one's memory, not so much as days as nights—with the ghastly spectres of darkness—nightmares—hauntings of a hideous past—anticipations of a joyless future. Such that Friday remains in my memory—with Mr. Gladstone's face standing out from the surrounding figures—pale, remote, pained.

[Sidenote: The G.O.M. as a lecturer.]

The announcement of the following Monday came only as a surprise to those who had not been fully behind the scenes. There were few, who knew the impression that the Friday had made, who did not feel sure that the game of pushing the Home Rule Bill on before Easy Easter was up, and that Mr. Gladstone had been beaten by the sheer brutality of Obstruction. But still hope springs eternal in the Irish breast, and there was still the lingering feeling that Mr. Gladstone would make a further and more desperate effort to break down one of the most shameless crusades of Obstruction on which a great party had ever entered. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone himself was responsible for a rise in the temperature of his own party on the very evening of that fateful and fatal Friday morning, when obstruction and the abandonment of their own friends had so nearly driven the Government out of office. I could scarcely believe my eyes when at nine o'clock on that day I came down to the almost empty House—in these evening sittings the House always looks about as cheerful as a theatre at mid-day—and saw Mr. Gladstone on the Treasury Bench, almost radiant, and evidently full of speech, go, and spirit. There wasn't really the smallest necessity for his presence. Nothing stood on the paper save one of those harmless, futile motions which are discussed with about as much interest by the House generally, as "abstract love"—to use a bold figure of Labby in a recent debate. It was a motion which complained that private members did not get sufficient time. Considering that private members had used their privileges for some two weeks previously to destroy the very foundation of all representative Government—namely, that the majority shall prevail—the complaint seemed a little audacious. Anyhow, a debate upon it could lead nowhere. But the moment the resolution was proposed, up stood the Grand Old Man, and delivered a bright, sparkling little academical address, for all the world like the lecture of a very spirituel French professor to a parcel of boys from the Quartier Latin. For the moment you could actually imagine that the Old Man had forgotten that there were such things in the world as Home Rule, Obstruction, Newmarket Lowther, and Brummagem Joe. And all the time here were we, who could be his sons, grinding our hearts in despair—in futile anger—in melancholy retrospect.

[Sidenote: An hour of gloom.]

With the Monday, however, came a biting frost. The news that Mr. Gladstone had been struck down from the fray, was sufficient to prepare anybody for the final announcement. With him leading the Liberal hosts, one could feel that obstruction could finally be beaten, however obstinate might be its resistance—for he has the faith that moves mountains. Then came the announcement that the second reading of the Home Rule Bill had been postponed till after Easter. The Tories and the Unionists were apparently taken by surprise; so much so that they did not seem to have the power of yelling forth their delight at the triumph of their policy with that full chorus which one would have expected. Altogether, the announcement came upon the House, and passed the House, with a quickness and a greater quietness than one might have expected. The consequences were too serious to be grasped immediately; and men were almost anxious to get to the lobbies for the purpose of discussing it in all its bearings.

The rest of the week was but a poor falling-off after the heroic and tragic fever of its opening, and of the week which preceded it. One could see that in the Liberal ranks there had succeeded to the fierce fighting spirit of the previous days a certain lassitude and disappointment. What their faces told in the House their lips more freely uttered in the lobbies. For a time, indeed, there was a feeling of almost unreasoning despair, and that full, frank, unsparing criticism to which every Government is subject from its friends when the winds blow and the waves are high. It was said that the Government had committed the mistake of making too many targets at once; that they had first infuriated the Church by the Welsh Suspensory Bill; that they had followed this up by infuriating the publicans and the brewers by the Veto Bill; that, meantime, there was very little chance of their being able to obtain the compensatory advantage of getting these Bills passed into law. There were grumblings about the Registration Bill; in short, nothing and nobody were spared in this hour of gloom and disaster.

[Sidenote: "Herr Schloss."]

But the House of Commons—as I have often remarked—is like a barometer in the promptitude of its reflection of every momentary phase, and all these things are duly discounted by old Parliamentary hands accustomed to panics when a check comes to what has been a most successful campaign on the whole. And in the meantime, if there had been any tendency to disintegration, it was soon restored by the conduct of the Tories. For, the old game of obstruction and vituperation went on just as strongly as if no concession had been made, and no victory gained. The Monday night had been reserved for a debate on the Evicted Tenants' Commission. And Mr. T.W. Russell, brimful of notes and venom, sate in his place, as impatient to rise as the captive and exuberant balloon which only strong ropes and the knotted arms of men hold tight to mother earth. Jimmy, however, has a passion for his ignoble calling; he sings at his work like the gravedigger in "Hamlet." And before the inflated Russell was able to explode, Jimmy had an hour or so to himself in the discussion of Mr. Mundella's efforts to deal with labour. It was on this occasion that Jimmy spread something like dismay in the bench on which he sate. Mr. Schloss, who had been appointed as a correspondent by Mr. Mundella, has a name which shows a German origin. Jimmy insisted on speaking of him accordingly as "Herr Schloss." And there, not a yard from Jimmy, sate the Baron de Worms, one of the most portentous and pretentious of English patriots, who bears not only a German name, but a German title. I don't know whether "Herr" Goschen was in the House at the same time; if so, his feelings must have been very poignant. Mr. Mundella doesn't know how to treat these Obstructives. The main thing is not to take them seriously. Jimmy, to tell the truth, makes no pretence of taking himself seriously, and grins through a horse-collar most of the time he is speaking. But the poor President of the Board of Trade is conscious of doing everything man can do to help to the solution of the vexed questions of the time. He cannot avoid allowing himself to be worked up into a frenzy by imputations which he ought to know are simply intended for the purpose of getting him out of temper, and so prolonging debate.

[Sidenote: Sir John Gorst.]

Sir John Gorst is one of the men who have again been brought much into evidence by the turn events have taken. I remember the time when he first made a Parliamentary figure. It was in the days when Lord Randolph Churchill started out on his great and meteoric career, at the beginning of the Parliament of '80. Sir John Gorst was, in many respects, the cleverest of the brilliant little group—at least, at the work which they were then doing. He is cold-blooded, quick, and dexterous, and, above all things, he has supreme pessimism and cynicism. To him, all political warfare is a somewhat squalid struggle, in which everybody is dishonest, and everybody playing for his own hand. It is an advantage in some respects to take that view; it saves a man from anything like unduly passionate convictions—enables him to keep cool even in trying circumstances. I have seen Sir John as cold as ice in the very height and ecstasy of the most passionate moments in the fierce Parliament of 1880 to 1885, and a man who remains so cool is sure to be able to strike his blows deliberately and home. My poor friend, Mr. Mundella, sometimes forgets this. When Sir John Gorst accused him of slighting somebody—I don't know who; and, really, it doesn't matter, for Sir John Gorst knew very well that the charge was entirely unfounded—when, I say, Sir John did this, up jumped honest Mr. Mundella to indignantly deny that he had ever done anything of the kind. Of course, he hadn't, and Sir John Gorst knew that as well as Mr. Mundella. But then, ten minutes were wasted in the encounter; and even ten minutes are not despised by Jimmy and his compeers.

[Sidenote: T.W. Russell.]

At last, this was got over, and the time came for T.W. Russell. There are few men in the House of Commons who excite such violent dislike on Liberal and Irish Benches as this pre-eminently disagreeable personality. The dislike is well founded. It is not because Mr. Russell is rancorous, or has strong opinions; it is because nobody has any faith in his sincerity. For many years of his life he was a paid teetotal lecturer. Teetotalism is a counsel of perfection, and teetotallers are estimable men, but the paid platform advocate of teetotalism is never a very attractive personality. This tendency to shout, and thump the table, and work up the agony—this eternal pitching of the voice to the scream that will terrify the groundlings, appal the sinner, and bring down the house—all these things produce a style of oratory which is about as disagreeable as anything in the shape of oratory can be. Above all things, it is difficult to take the itinerant lecturer seriously, with his smoking meal at home as a reward for his philanthropic efforts. The whole thing produces on the mind the impression of a clap-trap performance, with no heart or soul underneath all its ravings, bellowings, and dervish-like contortions.

Mr. Russell has ceased to be a teetotal lecturer, and has become a stump orator for the Unionist party, but the scent of the teetotal platform hangs round him still. He yells, bellows, and twists himself about, puts all his statements with ridiculous exaggeration—altogether, so overdoes the part that it is only the wildest and emptiest Tory who is taken in by him. What spoils the whole thing to my mind is that it is all so evidently artificial—so palpably pumped up. Clapping his hand on his breast, lifting his shaky fingers to Heaven, Mr. Russell is always in a frenzied protestation of honesty, of rugged and unassailable virtue, of bitter vaticination against the wickedness of the rest of mankind. No man could be as honest as he professes to be, and live. The whole thing would be exquisite acting if, underneath all this conscious exaggeration, you did not see the mere political bravo. You turn sometimes, and sicken as though you were at the country fair, and saw the poor raucous-throated charlatan eating fire or swallowing swords to the hideous accompaniments of the big drum and the deafening cymbal.

[Sidenote: Mr. Carson.]

No—Mr. T.W. Russell is the mere play-actor. If you want one of the real actualities in the more sinister side of Irish life, look at and study Mr. Carson. It is he who winds up the debate on the commission of Mr. Justice Mathew—a debate made memorable by the ablest debating speech Mr. Morley has made in the whole course of his Parliamentary career. I see men talking to Mr. Carson that belong to an opposite side of politics. I confess that I never see him pass without an internal shudder. Just as the sight of an abbe gave M. Homais, in "Madame Bovary," an unpleasant whiff of the winding-sheet, there is something in the whole appearance of Mr. Carson that conveys to me the dank smell of the prison, and the suffocating sense of the scaffold. Do you remember that strange, terrible day in the "Derniere Incarnation de Vautrin," in which Balzac describes Vautrin's passage through the ranks of the gaol-birds and gaol officials among whom he had passed so much of his life? Above all, do you recall that final, and supreme, and awful touch in which, addressing consciously the handler of the guillotine, he professes to take him for the chaplain, and, bringing the poor executioner for once to confusion, is addressed with blushing face and trembling lips with the observation, "Non, Monsieur, j'ai d'autres fonctions"?

[Sidenote: Green Street Court-House.]

Mr. Carson, doubtless, has "autres fonctions" than that of Jack Ketch—who has always been so efficient and constant an instrument of Government in Ireland—but I am never able to regard one part of the official machinery by which wronged nations are held down as very different from the other. Above all, I am unable to make much distinction between the final agent in the gaol and those other actors who play with loaded dice the bloody game in the criminal court with the partisan judge and the packed jury. Doubtless, happy reader, you have never been in a place called Green Street Court-House, in Dublin. If you ever go to the Irish capital, pay that spot a visit. It will compensate you—especially if you can get some cicerone who will tell you some of the associations that cling around the spot. It is in a back street—narrow, squalid, filthy—surrounded by all those signs of crumbling decay which speak more loudly to the visitor to Dublin of the decay and destruction of a nation than fieriest orator or solidest history. And in no part of Dublin have Death's effacing fingers worked with such destructiveness as in all the streets that surround the Green Street Court-House. Palatial mansions are windowless, grimy, hideous—with all the ghastly surroundings of tenement homes of the very poor.

It is in Green Street Court-House that the political offenders in Ireland are tried. Within its narrow and grimy walls I saw many a gallant Irishman, when I was a young reporter, pass through a foregone and prearranged trial to torture, agony, madness, premature death. I can only think of it as of a shambles, or, perhaps, to put it more strongly, but more accurately, as I think of that wooden framework in which I saw the murderer, Henry Wainwright, hanged by the neck one foggy morning years ago, a gallows. The jury was packed, and the judges on the bench were as much a part of the machinery of prosecution as the Counsel for the Crown. The whole thing was a ghastly farce—as ghastly as the private enquiries that intervene between the Russian rebel and the hunger, and solitude, and death of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, or the march to Siberia.

[Sidenote: The lawyer and the hangman.]

In all such squalid tragedies, men of the Carson type are a necessary portion of the machinery, as necessary as the informer that betrays—as the warder who locks the door—as the hangman who coils the rope. Mark you, all the forms—all the precautions—all the outward seeming of English law and liberty—are in these Irish courts. The outside is just the same as in any court that meets in the Old Bailey; but it is all the mask and the drapery, behind which the real figures are the foregone verdict, the partisan judge—the prepared cell or constructed gallows. In the regime of coercion which has just expired, the whole machinery was in motion. The last sentence of the law was not resorted to in political offence, for the days of rebellion in the open field had passed. But there were the Resident Magistrates ready to do their master Balfour's bidding, and to send men to imprisonment, in some cases followed by bread-and-water discipline—by stripping of clothes and other atrocities, which made the court of the Resident Magistrate the antechamber to the cell, and the cell the antechamber to the tomb. In all these ghastly and tragic dramas, enacted all over Ireland, Mr. Carson was the chief figure—self-confident, braggart, deliberate—winding the rope around his victim's neck with all the assured certainty of the British Empire, Mr. Balfour and the Resident Magistrates behind him.

[Sidenote: Mr. Carson's exterior.]

Nature has stamped on Mr. Carson's exterior the full proclamation of his character and career. There is something about his appearance and manner that somehow or other seems to belong rather to the last than the present century. He is a very up-to-date gentleman in every sense of the word—clothes included. But the long, lantern, black-coloured jaws, the protruding mouth, the cavernous eyes, the high forehead with the hair combed straight back—all seem to suggest that he ought to be wearing the wig, the queue, and the sword of the eighteenth century. He looks as though he had come from consultation, not with Mr. Balfour, but Lord Castlereagh, and as if the work he were engaged in was the sending of the Brothers Sheares to Tyburn, not William O'Brien to Tullamore, and as though he had stopped up o' nights to go over again the list of the Irishmen that could be bought or bullied, or cajoled into the betrayal of Ireland's Parliament.

Look at him as he stands at the box. You can see that he has been bred into almost impudent self-confidence, by those coercion tribunals, in which the best men of Ireland lay at the mercy of a creature like Mr. Balfour and the meaner creatures who were ready to do Mr. Balfour's work. Mr. Carson, not a year in the House, places his hands on the box, then on his hips, with all the airs of a man who had been in Parliament for a lifetime—attacks Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley, Mr. Justice Mathew—three of the highest-minded and ablest men of their time—as though he were at Petty Sessions, with Mr. Cecil Roche dispensing justice. It is an odious sight. It makes even Englishmen shudder. But it has its uses. It throws on to the floor of the House of Commons with all the illumination of those great times, the abysses and passions and sinister figures in Ireland's moving tragedy.



CHAPTER VII.

A FORTNIGHT OF QUIET WORK.

[Sidenote: Dulness.]

The House did very good work during the last fortnight in March. This has a corollary more satisfactory to the public than to the journalist; for, whenever business is progressing, it invariably means that the proceedings have been extremely dull. It is a well-known phenomenon of the House of Commons, that the moment there is a chance of anything like a personal scene—though the encounter be of the smallest possible moment and affect nothing beyond two personalities of no particular importance—it is well known that whenever such scene is promised, the benches of the House of Commons prove too small for the huge crowds that rush to them from all parts. Mr. Fowler introduced one of the most revolutionary measures ever brought into the House of Commons—revolutionary I mean, of course, in the good sense—and yet he delivered his new gospel of emancipation to a House that at no period was in the least crowded, and that was never excited. Happy is the country that has no annals, fruitful is the Parliament that has no scenes.

[Sidenote: Uganda again.]

But there were signs of something like storm at certain portions of the sitting on March 20th, for there stood on the paper the Estimate which raised the difficult question of Uganda, and on that question, as everybody knows, there is a yawning gulf between the opinions of Mr. Labouchere and a number of Radicals below the gangway, and the occupants of the Treasury Bench. Of Mr. Labouchere the saying may be used, which is often employed with regard to weak men—Mr. Labouchere is far from a weak man—he is his own worst enemy. His delight in persiflage, his keen wit—his love of the pose of the bloodless and cynical Boulevardier—have served to conceal from Parliament, and sometimes, perhaps, even from himself, the sincerity of his convictions, and the masculine strength and firmness of his will. Somehow or other, he is least effective when he is most serious. His speech on Uganda, for instance, was admirably put together, and chock full of facts, sound in argument, and in its seriousness quite equal to the magnitude of the issues which it raised. But no man is allowed to play "out of his part"—as the German phrase goes. Labby has accustomed the House to expect amusement from him, and it will not be satisfied unless he gives it. When, therefore, he does make a serious speech, the House insists on considering it dull, and rarely lends to him its attentive and serious ear.

[Sidenote: Which is the buffoon?]

Great and yet fatal is the power of oratory. In the course of this same night's debate, Mr. Chamberlain also made a speech. During portions of it he delighted the House, and it was extremely effective as a party speech. In the course of his observations, Mr. Chamberlain, alluding to some jokelet of Labby, declared that a great question like Uganda should not be treated in a spirit of "buffoonery." That observation was rude, and scarcely Parliamentary. But that is not the point—nobody expects gentlemanly feeling or speech from Mr. Chamberlain. The point is that the observation could have been applied with much more truth to the speech of Mr. Chamberlain than to that of Labby; for Mr. Chamberlain's speech consisted, for the most part, of nothing better than the merest party hits—the kind of thing that almost anybody could say—that hundreds of journalists nightly write in their party effusions, and for very modest salaries. But the heart and soul of the question of Uganda were not even touched by Mr. Chamberlain. Labby may have been right or wrong; but Labby's was a serious speech with a serious purpose. Mr. Chamberlain's speech was just a smart bit of party debating. The buffoonery—in the sense of shallowness and emptiness—was really in the speech that everybody took to be grave. The seriousness was in the speech which, amid the delighted applause of the Tories, Mr. Chamberlain denounced as buffoonery.

[Sidenote: The grip of Labby.]

In some respects Mr. Labouchere reminds me of the late Mr. Biggar. Underneath all his exterior of carelessness, callousness, and flippancy, there lies a very strong, a very tenacious, and a very clear-sighted man. There are times—especially when the small hours of the morning are breaking, and Labby is in his most genial mood—when he is ready to declare that, after all, he is only a Conservative in disguise, and that his Radicalism is merely put on for the purpose of amusing and catching the groundlings. As a matter of fact, Labby is by instinct one of the most thorough Radicals that ever breathed. His Radicalism, it is true, is of the antique pattern. He is an individualist without compromise or concession. Life to him is to the strongest; he has no faith save in the gospel of the survival of the fittest. Equable and even cheery, he does not take a particularly joyous view of human existence. I have heard him speak of the emptiness and futilities of human existence in tones, not of gloom, for he is too much of a philosopher to indulge in regrets, but with a hearty sincerity that would do credit to the Trappist monk who found everything vanity of vanities in a sinful world. Despising honours and dignities, he positively loathes outward show; he is a Radical by instinct and nature. Though one of the wealthiest men in the House of Commons, nobody has over known him guilty of one act of ostentation. Probably he loves power. I have not the smallest doubt that he would enjoy very well being a Cabinet Minister. But for social distinction, for the frippery and display of life, he has a positive dislike. He is like Mr. Biggar also in tenacity.

[Sidenote: And the grit.]

It must have been a disappointment to him—it was certainly a disappointment to his many friends—that he was not a member of the Ministry which he did so much to bring into existence. But the very day the House met after the formation of the Government, Labby was in his old place on the front bench below the gangway as if nothing had occurred—just as ready as ever to take his share in the proceedings of the House of Commons. And every succeeding evening saw him in his place—listening with commendable piety to the exhortations of Holy Writ—given forth in the fine resonant voice of Archdeacon Farrar—ready to seize a point—to take advantage of a situation, eagerly interested in everything that is going on. Some people may regard this as a very common gift. It is nothing of the kind. I know no place in the world which is a severer test of a man's tenacity of purpose, than the House of Commons. I suppose it is because we see the men more publicly there than elsewhere; but I know no place where there are so many ups and downs of human destiny as in the House of Commons—no place, at all events, where one is so struck with the changes, and transformations of human destinies. The man who, in one or two Sessions, is on his legs every moment—who takes a prominent part in every debate—who has become one of the notabilities of the House—in a year or two's time has sunk to a silent dweller apart from all the eagerness and fever of debate, sinks into melancholy and listlessness, and is almost dead before he has given up his Parliamentary life. Staying power is the rarest of all Parliamentary powers; Labby has plenty of staying power.

[Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke.]

Another figure which the new House of Commons is gradually beginning to understand is Sir Charles Dilke. He is one of the men who seem to have no interest in life outside politics. When one thinks that he has wealth, an immense number of subjects in which he can find instruction and occupation, that he is familiar with the languages, literature, and life of several countries, it is hard to understand how he could have had the endurance to go through the hurricane of abuse and persecution which he has had to encounter in the last seven years. There are traces in his face of the intense mental suffering through which he has passed; there are more lines about the eyes than should be in the case of a man who is just fifty. But, otherwise, he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor—freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for everything that is going on; and has his eye on subjects as wide apart as the parish councils and Newfoundland, army reform and the occupation of Uganda. It is curious to see, too, how he is regaining that ascendancy over the House of Commons which he exercised formerly. It is an ascendancy not due in the least to oratorical power. Sir Charles Dilke never made a fine sentence or a sonorous peroration in his whole life. It is that power of acquiring all the facts of the case—of being thoroughly up in all its merits—in short, of knowing his business—which impresses the House of Commons, which, after all, though it may cheer the gibes of a smart and pert debater like Mr. Chamberlain, is most happy when it hears a man talking of something which he understands thoroughly.

[Sidenote: Joe as a Jingo.]

Mr. Chamberlain spoke, as I have said, in the debate. It was a very characteristic speech. I know people think I am prejudiced about this gentleman. Not in the least. I recognize that he has many splendid qualities for political life. They are not qualities which I think highest either in the oratorical or the intellectual sense. He also has staying power, and has gone through seven terrible years. There is the trace of all the bitterness of that struggle in his face—which has lost in these years the almost boyish freshness of expression and outline, which bears in every deep line a mark of the ferocity of the passions by which his breast has been torn. He is one of the many men in the House of Commons that give one the impression of being hunted by the worst and most pitiless of all furies—violent personal passion—especially for power, for triumph, for revenge. But still, there he is—ready as ever to take part in the struggle—still holding the position he held seven years ago—with no sign of weakening or repentance, though there be plenty of the hunger of baulked revenge.

[Sidenote: The tragedy of politics.]

What a pity it is we can't see some of those great political figures in the nudity of their souls. They must have many a bitter moment—many an hour of dark and hopeless depression—probably far more than other men; for them emphatically life is a conflict and a struggle. And the conflict and the struggle often kill them long before their time. Was there ever anything much more tragic than the cry of M. Ferry for "le grand Repos," as he lay stifling from the weakening heart which the bullet of a political enemy and the slings and arrows of years of calumny and persecution had at last broken? To any man with ordinary sensitiveness of nerves, a political career is a crucifixion—many times repeated. But Mr. Chamberlain, probably, has not the ordinary sensitiveness of nerves. Combative, masterful, with narrow and concentrated purpose, he pursues the game of politics—not without affliction, but with persistent tenacity and a courage that have rarely shown any signs of faltering or failing.