Sketches in the House Part 11

It could be seen after he had been five minutes on his legs that Sir Charles Dilke was about to give on Egypt a speech which would suggest this sense of easy and complete mastery of all the facts, and that, therefore, the speech would be a thorough success. And so it was--so successful, indeed, that it was listened to with equal attention by the Tories as by the Liberals, though nothing could be more abhorrent to the Tory imagination than the proposal by Sir Charles Dilke of an early evacuation of Egypt. Perhaps their indignation was a little mitigated by the fact which Sir Charles Dilke brought out with such clearness, that Lord Salisbury was just as deeply committed to the eventual evacuation of Egypt as any other public man.

[Sidenote: An awkward situation.]

It was curious to watch the House of Commons during this debate. There is no doubt that a very awkward situation was before that a.s.sembly. On the one hand, there were the interests of the country--as they are understood by the Tory party; on the other, there was a very difficult party situation--a situation difficult enough to tempt even the most patriotic, self-denying, and impartial Tory to gaze on the Liberal leaders opposite with a certain amount of mischievous curiosity. How was Mr. Gladstone going to make a speech which would fulfil those extremely diverse purposes? First, leave the door open for a continued stay for some time longer, and at the same moment for final evacuation; secondly, please Sir Wm. Harcourt on the one side, and Lord Rosebery on the other; thirdly, keep together a party which ranges from the strong foreign policy of moderate men to the ultra-nonintervention of Mr. Labouchere.

Mr. Gladstone had, however, to do a good deal more than this. For it was easy to see from the condition of the Tory seats, and especially from the att.i.tude of the front Opposition Bench, that party instinct had suggested that this was just one of the occasions on which the Government might be put in a very tight place. Let Mr. Gladstone say something which would satisfy Mr. Labouchere, and immediately Mr.

Goschen would be down upon him--the late Chancellor of the Exchequer had the air of a man who was thoroughly primed for damaging criticism and ardent attack--with a philippic charging him with abandoning the most sacred interests of the country. Indeed, it was quite evident that Mr.

Gladstone had to face a very ugly little question, and that his political foes had come down in full force to enjoy the spectacle of a Christian flung to the lions.

[Sidenote: A historic triumph.]

I cannot tell you how it was done--I have read the speech in the _Times_ report--and I know that some people brought away from the speech no other impression than that it was delivered in a low tone of voice, and was not easily grasped; but the fact is, that judged by results this little speech, not much above half-an-hour in duration, was one of the most extraordinary triumphs of Mr. Gladstone's long oratorical life.

What const.i.tutes the greatest of all Parliamentary triumphs? It is that without abandoning your own principles, you shall so state a case that even your bitterest political opponents will rest contented with, and be ready to accept, your speech as the expression of their views. And this is just what occurred. Mr. Goschen, I have said, came down to the House chock-full of attack--I have, indeed, heard that he has confessed to having been prepared to make a speech of some length. On the other side of the House there sat Labby--full of that dogged, immutable Radicalism which will make no distinction between Liberal and Tory when his principles of foreign policy are at stake; and he was ready to pounce upon the Prime Minister if he had detected any departure from the narrow and straight path which leads to Radical salvation. In the background were the dim forces of Unionism, more eager--perhaps even more reckless--in readiness to attack Mr. Gladstone than his opponents on the opposite benches. And behind them and above them, in all parts of the House, was that countless host of busybodies, bores and specialists who see in Egypt an opportunity of airing fads, fanaticism, or vanities.

[Sidenote: A great eirenicon.]

The paper which contained the list of pairs for the night was crammed with the names of members from both sides, who, antic.i.p.ating a debate of hours' duration, had wisely resolved to spend the interval between the motion and a division in the bosoms of their families--miles away from the floor of the House of Commons. The Whips had prepared their followers for a big division somewhere about midnight. And, lo! on all this vast and turbulent sea of conflicting waves the Prime Minister poured half an hour of oratorical oil, and the waters were stilled, and the great deep at perfect rest. In other words, Mr. Goschen threw away his notes; Labby advised Sir Charles Dilke not to go to a division; the debate had not begun and then it was over, and all that followed was addressed to a House empty of everybody. The Old Man--dexterous, calm, instinctive--had spoken the right word to meet every view, and there was nothing more for anybody to say. There is n.o.body else in the House who can do it; when his voice is stilled, the greatest of all Parliamentary secrets will die with him--the secret of saying the exact thing in the most difficult and embarra.s.sing of situations. To the outside public, perhaps, this speech appeared nothing remarkable, and the allusions to it I have seen in the press have been few and perfunctory. You should hear House of Commons' opinion; you should listen to Unionists who hate him, to Tories who distrust him, to know what an estimate was formed of this marvellous speech by House of Commons' opinion.

[Sidenote: The triumph of the miners.]

On the Wednesday, again, Mr. Gladstone gave another example of his extraordinary dexterity. The miners had come down in full force to demand a legal eight hours. Sam Woods, of the Ince Division, on the one side, John Burns, of the Battersea Fields, on the other, frowned on the Old Man and bade him surrender. Behind him sat the great Princes of Industry--silent, but none the less militant, fierce, and minatory; opposite him was Lord Randolph Churchill, ready to raise the flag of Social Democracy and to wave it before the advancing ma.s.ses against the Liberal party. Out of this difficulty, Mr. Gladstone rescued himself with all that perfect, that graceful ease which he most displays when situations are most critical. The debate was further made remarkable by a speech from Lord Randolph Churchill, who, amid the grim and ominous silence of the Tory Benches, thundered against Capital and Capitalists in tones for which Trafalgar Square or the Reformers' Tree would be the appropriate environment; and then came the remarkable division, with 279 for the Bill and 201 against.

[Sidenote: Hull Again.]

This was not the only victory which Labour was able to win in the course of this week. The House presented a very notable spectacle on May 4th.

It was only by the aid of the Irish members, it is true, that Mr.

Havelock Wilson was able to get the necessary forty to procure the adjournment of the House for the discussion of the Hull strike; but then, when Mr. Wilson was enabled to bring the subject before the House, he was listened to with an attention almost painful in its seriousness and gravity. Nothing, indeed, shows more plainly the vast social and political changes of our time, than this transformation in the att.i.tude of the House of Commons towards labour questions. There was a time--even in our own memory--when such a question as the strike at Hull would have been promptly ruled out of order; and when the workmen who rose to call attention to it would have been coughed or even hooted down; and he would be certain to receive very rough treatment from the Tory party.

The Tory party still remains the party of the monopolists and the selfish, but it has learned that household suffrage means a considerable weapon in the hands of working men, and, accordingly, though it may put its tongue in its cheek, it keeps that tongue very civil whenever it begins to utter opinion. To Mr. Wilson, then, the Tories, as well as the Liberals, listened with respectful and rapt attention as he made his complaint of employment of the military and naval forces of the Crown in--as he alleged--the b.u.t.tressing of the case of the employers. And yet there was a something lacking. Mr. Asquith was able to show that he had done no more than he was compelled to do by the obligations of his office; and entirely repudiated any idea of allowing the forces of the Empire to be ranged on the one side or the other. Mr. Mundella was able to make a good defence of his officials against the charge which had been brought by Mr. Wilson. There was a good speech from John Burns, and it looked as if not another sympathetic word was going to be said for those starving men and women, who are making so heroic a fight for the right to live. Altogether, the situation was awkward and even distressing. The House, divided between the desire to remain neutral and to be sympathetic, was puzzled, constrained, and silent. It was at this moment that Mr. Lockwood made a most welcome and appropriate intervention. Gathering together the scattered and somewhat tangled threads of the debate, he put to Mr. Mundella several pertinent questions--among others, the very relevant one, whether or not the Shipping Federation had the right to employ sailors, whether they are not violating the law against "crimping" in so doing. Incidentally, Mr.

Lockwood remarked, amid cheers from the Radical Benches--delighted at this opportunity of departing from its painful and embarra.s.sed silence--that Liberal members had been returned to support the cause of labour, and that they ought to be true to their pledges. Mr. Gladstone at once grasped the situation with that unerring instinct which he has displayed so splendidly in the present Session, and at once undertook that the point raised by Mr. Lockwood should be considered; and so, with a word of sympathy and hope to the strikers, Mr. Gladstone rescued the House and himself from a painful situation.

CHAPTER XL.

THE BILL IN COMMITTEE.

[Sidenote: The first fence.]

Yes, there was something intoxicating to an Irish Nationalist--after all his weary years of waiting--in seeing the House of Commons engaged in Committee on the Bill which is to restore the freedom of Ireland. And as I looked across the House on May 8th, with every seat occupied--with galleries crowded--with that air of tense excitement which betokens the solemn and portentous occasion--there rose to my brain something of the exaltation of pa.s.sion's first hour. The Unionists might rage--the Tories might obstruct--faction might bellow its throat hoa.r.s.e--Orangemen swear that they would die rather than see Home Rule--for all that, n.o.body could get over this great fact, of which I saw the palpable evidence at that solemn and historic hour.

But if for a few brief moments one was inclined to abandon oneself to the intoxication of this great hour, there was plenty to bring one very quickly back to solid earth, and to the sense of the long, dreary, and th.o.r.n.y road which Home Rule has yet to traverse.

Time after time Mr. Chamberlain gets up to continue the obstructive debate. Gravelled for matter, he clutches any topic as a means of lengthening the thin chain of his discourse. Mr. Redmond--the Parnellite leader--happens to be for a few moments out of the House. Here at once, and with eager welcome, Mr. Chamberlain seizes upon this fact to string a few sentences together--something after this fashion:--"I observe that the hon. and learned member for Waterford is not in his place. This is very remarkable. Indeed, I may go further and say that this is a most sinister fact. For we all know what the hon. and learned gentleman has said with regard to the kind of Parliamentary supremacy which alone he will accept. Well, now we are discussing this very point of the Imperial supremacy, and the hon. and learned gentleman is not in his place. I repeat, Mr. Mellor, it is a very remarkable, a very significant, a very sinister, and instructive fact!" And so on and so on.

[Sidenote: The stony silence of the Irishry.]

This kind of speech had another object--it was to provoke Mr. Redmond into a speech. For it was all the same to the Obstructives who spoke--provided only there was a speech. For, first, the speech of the Irish or the Liberal member consumed so much time in itself--and then one speech justified another; and thus the speech by the Irishman, or the Liberal, would give an excellent excuse for another series of harangues by the Obstructives. And this brings me to describe one of the portents of the present House of Commons which has excited a great deal of attention and a great deal of unfeigned admiration. As speakers of eloquence--as Obstructives--as Parliamentarians of exhaustless resources--as gladiators, tireless, brave, and cool--and, again, as stormy Parliamentary petrels--fierce, disorderly, pa.s.sionate--the Irish members have been known to the House of Commons and to all the world during all the long series of years through which they have been fighting out this struggle. In this Parliament, and at this great hour, they appear in quite another, and perfectly new character. Amid all the groups of this House they stand out for their unbroken and unbreakable silence, for their unshakable self-control. Taunts, insults, gentle and seductive invitations, are addressed to them--from the front, from behind, from their side; they never open their lips--the silent, stony, and eternal silence of the Sphinx is not more inflexible. And similarly men rage, some almost seem to threaten each other with physical violence; _they_ sit still--silent, watchful, composed. Not all, of course. There are the young, and the vehement, and the undisciplined; but that Old Guard which was created by Parnell--which went with him through coercion, and the wildest of modern agitations--which contains men that have lived for years under the shadow of the living death of penal servitude--men who have pa.s.sed the long hours of the day--the longer hours of the night--in the cheerless, maddening, spectral silence of the whitewashed cells--the Old Parliamentary Guard is silent.

I have been in the House of Commons for upwards of thirteen years; and in the course of that stormy time have, of course, seen many scenes of pa.s.sion, anger, and tumult; but the scene which ensued on May 8th, after Mr. Morley's motion, was the worst thing I have ever beheld. I am a lover of the British House of Commons--with all its faults, and drawbacks, and weaknesses, it is to me the most august a.s.sembly in the world, with the greatest history, the finest traditions, the best oratory. And, verily, I could have wept as I saw the House that night.

It was not that the pa.s.sion was greater than I have ever seen, or the noise even, or the dramatic excitement, it was that for hours, there was nothing but sheer downright chaos, drivel, and anarchy.

[Sidenote: The unloosing of anarchy.]

It began when Mr. Mellor accepted the motion for closure. At once there arose from the Tory Benches wild, angry, insulting cries of "Shame!

shame! scandalous! the gag! the gag!" This would have been all right if it had been addressed to Mr. Gladstone. Party leaders have to give and take, and in moments of excitement they must not complain if their political opponents denounce them. But closure is the act of the presiding officer of the House, and it has been an almost unbroken rule and tradition of Parliament that the presiding officer shall be safeguarded against even an approach to attack or insult. It is a tradition that has its weak side; but, on the whole, it is in accordance with that great national English characteristic of subordination to necessary authority and the maintenance of order, decency, and self-control as the trinity of public virtues and personal demeanour. If Mr. Peel had been in the chair he would have called those Tories to order; and if they had persisted as they did, he would have promptly named the highest among them. Mr. Chamberlain was not ashamed to join in those hoa.r.s.e and disorderly shouts; and it was in this temper that the different sides walked slowly, silently, and frowningly to the division lobbies.

The moment the division was over, the storm which had been stilled broke forth again, and with wilder fury. Lord Randolph Churchill, as I have several times remarked, is not the man he was. I remember the time when in such a scene he would have been perfectly at home; self-restrained, vigilant, and effective. But on this night it was nothing above mere inarticulateness--hoa.r.s.e and ineffective fury--an almost painful exhibition. Sometimes his lisp became so strong that he was scarcely able to utter the words he desired to bring out. The Prime Minister became "The Primisther," the Chief Secretary the "Cheesesecry," and all this impotence was made the more manifest by thundering on the box with his open hand--in short, it was all inarticulate, painful, perplexing emptiness, weakened and not fortified by prolific tub-thumping. A poor--sad--nay, a tragic business.

[Sidenote: The young man and the old.]

Such was the young man; and then came the old. To all this inarticulate, hoa.r.s.e, stammering pa.s.sion, Mr. Gladstone opposed a speech gentle, persuasive, self-possessed; as admirable in its courtesy as in its reserve of gigantic strength. With the deadly pallor of his face more remarkable than ever--the white hair shining out, as it were, with the peaceful suggestion of calm and strong old age--in a voice, low, soft, gentle--Mr. Gladstone uttered a few words which revealed all the great depths. In completely quiet, almost inaudible tones, he uttered these pregnant words: "As to other pa.s.sages in the n.o.ble lord's speech, I do not know whether he intended to intimidate me; but if he did, I do not think he will succeed." There they are--these few words--so simple, plain, even commonplace; but what a history--what a character--what a grandeur there is behind and beneath them! So splendid are they that even Lord Randolph is touched to the quick, and he rises to explain. The Old Man--suave, calm, unutterably courteous--hears him politely; and then puts the whole case of the Government in a few, dignified, and tranquil words.

[Sidenote: In the depths.]

But the House, exalted to a higher plane of feeling by this great little speech, was soon dragged down again to the arena of chaos let loose; and, of course, Mr. Chamberlain was the person to lead the way to the dusty pit. Mr. Mellor had very properly attempted to stop the disorderly discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly--with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness--he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair--to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells, protests arose. Member got up after member--here, there, everywhere--always excepting the sternly silent Irish Bench, where sate the Irish leaders. A half-dozen men were on their feet--all shouting, gesticulating, speaking at the same time. In short, it was utterly unlike anything ever seen before in the House of Commons; it brought vividly back to the mind the tumultuous French Convention in the days of the French Revolution.

[Sidenote: Deeper and deeper still.]

It was almost a welcome break in this pa.s.sionate and scarcely civilized din that a personal encounter between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Byles for a moment interrupted the tempest. Mr. Chamberlain, in his characteristically genial way, had spoken of the Irish members as having been "squared." The Irish members, habituated to insult--conscious of Mr. Chamberlain's object--had allowed the observation to pa.s.s unnoticed; but Mr. Byles--ardent, sincere, an enthusiast on the Irish question--shouted out, "How much would it take to square you?" At once there rose a fierce tropical storm. There were loud shouts of approval--equally loud shouts demanding an instant withdrawal; members rose from every part of the House; in short, it was Bedlam let loose, and a scene impossible to describe.

This was deep enough, but there was a lower depth still to be sounded; and again it was Mr. Chamberlain's plummet that descended down to the unfathomable bottom. "I do not," he said to Mr. Byles, "object to the question, and I will answer it by saying that it would take a great deal more than the hon. member for Shipley will ever be able to pay." There the words stand--in the immensity of their vulgarity, in their unsurpa.s.sable degradation, let them lie.

[Sidenote: The first fence.]

Finally, May 10th saw the first fence taken. The genial and gentle T.W.

Russell proposed the removal from the Bill of the Second Chamber--the Chamber specially created for the protection of the loyal minority. With similar and strange unscrupulousness, the Tories all trooped into the lobby against their own principles. They were accompanied by a few foolish Radicals--indeed, it was the hope of detaching a sufficient number of Radicals to place the Government in a minority which produced the Tory apostasy from their own principles. There was a little uncertainty as to the result, and everybody expected that the Government majority would have been reduced to a dangerously low figure. When Mr.

Marjoribanks read out a majority of 51--or a majority bigger than the usual one--there was a loud halloo of triumph and delighted surprise from the Liberal and the Irish Benches; and so the first big fence in the Home Rule Bill was easily taken.

[Sidenote: Obstructive Chamberlain.]

By the middle of the sitting on the following day the House of Commons stood face to face with the first clause. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the clause would have been pa.s.sed after a few speeches--especially and definitely directed to the words of the clause; Mr. Chamberlain demanded the right on this clause to discuss, not only the whole Bill with all its other clauses, but the past and future of the whole Home Rule struggle. He quoted pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage from speeches delivered by Irish members years and years ago; in short, he entered upon a survey of the whole controversy. There were countless interruptions from the Irish Benches--not in the least because the Irish members cared for Joe's attacks, but because such a roundabout discussion was altogether a revolutionary departure from all previous precedents; and would have been held distinctly out of order by any of the predecessors of Mr.

Mellor in the chair. That good-natured and easy-going official, however, gave Mr. Chamberlain his head; and so, for an hour, he poured forth a stream of clever, biting, but mean and irrelevant vituperation.

[Sidenote: The G.O.M.'s greatest speech.]

It was well that it should have been so; for to this speech the House of Commons owes one of the most remarkable and historic scenes in its long history. Every reader of Parliamentary reports knows what it means to speak at eight o'clock. By that time, three out of five at least of the members of the House have gone to their dinners in all quarters of London, and the a.s.sembly is given up to the faddists and the bores, who never get another opportunity of delivering themselves. Nothing, therefore, could have been more unexpected than a speech from Mr.

Gladstone at such an hour, and especially a speech which, in the opinion of many, leaves far behind anything he ever did. But, indeed, it is probable that Mr. Gladstone himself had no notion when the sitting began, or even a few minutes before he rose, that he would say anything very special. It is one of the peculiarities of this extraordinary man to be always surprising you. His infinite variety, his boundless resource, seem to be without any limitations. By this time, you would have expected that one who had listened to him for nearly twenty years would imagine that he had no further oratorical worlds to conquer, and that he certainly would not have waited to his eighty-fourth year to do something better than ever he had done before. But so it was. In pa.s.sion, in destructive sarcasm, in dramatic force, in the rush and resistless sweep of language, Mr. Gladstone was more potent in the dinner hour of that Thursday night than he was ever at any other single moment in his almost sixty years of triumphant oratory.

[Sidenote: His powers as a mimic.]

Observers are divided as to his temper when he rose. Some onlookers, observing the tremendous force of voice and language--the broad, ample, and frequent gestures--the tremulousness that sometimes underlies the swell of pa.s.sion--the deadly and startling pallor of the face--thought that he was suffering from excitement almost touching and perhaps affrighting to behold; while others thought that the chief and most impressive feature of this perfect tornado of triumphant eloquence, was the perfect calm that lay in the heart and bosom of all that storm.

There are two things which will tell you of the omnipotence of an orator--one is the effect of his speech on foes as well as friends, and the other is its effect upon himself. Both these evidences were present, for the Tories seemed to have been swept away by the cyclone as resistlessly as the Liberals and the Irish, and the Tory paeans in honour of the Old Man which were to be found in the Tory organs next day only echoed the bounteous and generous recognition of his matchless powers which one heard from Tories in the lobbies throughout the evening. And as to the effect of the speech on Mr. Gladstone himself, it was to bring out a dramatic and mimetic power on which he very rarely ventures, and which in anybody but a perfect master of the House of Commons might descend into bad taste and bad tact. I know that Mr. Gladstone is really triumphant when he brings these qualities into requisition. I remember the last time he used them with any approach to the abundance of this occasion was when he was making the great speech which preceded his defeat in 1885 and the fall of his Government. On that occasion I remember very well that the Old Man puckered up his forehead into a thousand wrinkles, turned and twisted that very wonderfully mobile mouth of his--with its lips so full with strength and at the same time so sensitive with all the Celtic pa.s.sion of his Highland ancestry--until sometimes you almost thought it a pity he had not taken to the Lyceum and some of the great parts in which Mr. Henry Irving has made his fame.

There was another occasion which dwells in my memory. It was on one of the nights of the debate on the Coercion Bill. He was describing the promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof--- as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and the House cheered and cheered yet again without any distinction of party--the friends in admiration of the splendid eloquence of the gesture, the foes in hearty admiration of the great and perennial spirit of the great Old Man.

[Sidenote: Comedy.]

But on May 11th there was a new and a bolder departure. Most of my readers have seen that remarkable little lay written by Mr. Gilbert for Miss Anderson to display the range and variety of her powers--"Comedy and Tragedy." Mr. Gladstone gave proof of powers of equally wide versatility; and all at the expense of poor Joe. First for the Comedy. I must quote the pa.s.sage of the speech to explain what I mean:--