The Mother of Parliaments Part 22

Although early failure is no sure gauge of a politician's reputation or worth, many a happy first speech has raised hopes that remained eternally unfulfilled. In the eighteenth century James Erskine, Lord Grange, made a brilliant maiden effort in the Commons and was much applauded. But the House soon grew weary of his broad Scots accent, and after hearing him patiently three or four times, gradually ceased to listen to him altogether.[345] William Gerard Hamilton, secretary to Lord Halifax (Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland), and afterwards Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, though not fulfilling Bolingbroke's definition of eloquence,[346] earned the t.i.tle of "single-speech Hamilton" by one display of oratory which was never repeated.

[345] Dr. King's "Anecdotes of His Own Time," p. 114.

[346] "Eloquence," said Bolingbroke, "must flow like a stream that is fed by an abundant spring, and not spout forth a little frothy water on some gaudy day and remain dry the rest of the year."

It is customary for the parliamentary novice to crave the indulgence of the House for such faults of manner or style as may be the result of youth or inexperience. This modest att.i.tude on the part of a speaker inspires his audience favourably; they become infused with a glow of conscious superiority which is most agreeable and inclines them to listen with a kindly ear to the utterances of the budding politician. Not always, however, is this humility expressed. William Cobbett began his maiden speech on January 29, 1833, by remarking that in the short period during which he had sat in the House he had heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation.[347] Hunt, the Preston demagogue, showed his contempt for the Commons and his own self-a.s.surance by speaking six times on six different subjects on the very first night of his introduction.[348] William Cowper, afterwards Lord Chancellor, addressed the House three times on the day he took his seat.

[347] Dalling's "Historical Characters," vol. ii. p. 175.

[348] Barrow's "Mirror of Parliament" (1830).

In the House of Lords, too, can be heard maiden speeches delivered in many varying styles. One perhaps may be made by an ex-Cabinet Minister, a distinguished member of Parliament recently promoted to the Upper House, apologising in abject tones for his lack of experience, and commending his humble efforts to the indulgence of his audience. Another emanates from some youthful n.o.bleman who has just succeeded to a peerage, whose political experience has yet to be won, and who addresses his peers in the didactic fashion of a headmaster lecturing a form of rather unintelligent schoolboys. It is not so very long ago that a young peer--who has since made the acquaintance of most divisions of the Supreme Court, from the Bankruptcy to the Divorce--astonished and entertained his colleagues by closing his peroration with a fervent prayer that G.o.d might long spare him to a.s.sist in their lordships' deliberations.

There is a golden mean between the two styles, the humble and the haughty, which it is well for the embryo politician to cultivate before he attempts to impress Parliament with his eloquence.

Oratory has been defined in many different ways by many different writers. Lord Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson, respectively, described it as the power of persuading people, or of beating down an adversary's arguments and putting better ones in their place. The business of the orator, according to Sir James Mackintosh, is to state plainly, to reason calmly, to seem transported into vehemence by his feelings, and roused into splendid imagery or description by his subject, but always to return to fact and argument, as that on which alone he is earnestly bent.[349] Gladstone, again, defined oratory as the speaker's power of receiving from his audience in a vapour that which he pours back upon them in a flood.

[349] Sir J. Mackintosh's "Memoirs," vol. ii p. 192.

Oratory is perhaps the gift of the G.o.ds, but skill in speaking is undoubtedly an art that can be acquired by practice, if sought diligently and with patience. Demosthenes gloried in the smell of the lamp; Cicero learnt every speech by heart. The former would go down to the seash.o.r.e on a stormy day, fill his mouth with pebbles, and speak loudly to the ocean, thus accustoming himself to the murmur of popular a.s.semblies; the latter on one occasion rehea.r.s.ed a speech so diligently that he had little strength left to deliver it on the following day. The sight of a modern politician sitting on the pier at Brighton delivering a marine address as intelligibly as a mouthful of gravel would permit, is one that would only excite feelings of alarm in the bosoms of his friends; the thought of a Cabinet Minister fainting before his looking-gla.s.s, as the result of an excessive rehearsal of his peroration, is more pathetic than practical. There is, however, nothing to prevent a member of Parliament from practising his elocution upon the trees of the forest, as Grattan did,[350] or upon the House of Commons itself, and it is thus alone that he will acquire proficiency in that art in which it is so desirable for the statesman to excel. "It is absolutely necessary for you to speak in Parliament," Lord Chesterfield wrote to his long-suffering son. "It requires only a little human attention and no supernatural gifts."[351]

[350] Grattan used to walk about the park at Windsor haranguing the oaks in a loud voice. A pa.s.ser-by once found him apostrophising an empty gibbet. "How did you get down?" asked the stranger politely.

O'Flanagan, "Irish Chancellors," vol. ii. p. 416.

[351] Letters, vol. ii. pp. 328-9.

Charles James Fox resolved, when young, to speak at least once every night in the House. During five whole sessions he held manfully to this resolution, with the exception of one single evening--an exception which he afterwards regretted. He thus became the most brilliant debater that ever lived, "vehement in his elocution, ardent in his language, prompt in his invention of argument, adroit in its use."[352] He was, however, too impetuous to be as great an orator as his rival Pitt, whose majestic eloquence was almost divine,[353] and offended continually by the tautology of his diction and the constant repet.i.tion of his arguments. The hesitation and lack of grace of his delivery detracted greatly from the force of his speeches; the keenness of his sabre, as Walpole said, was blunted by the difficulty with which he drew it from the scabbard.[354] In a comparison of the two statesmen, Flood calls Pitt's speeches "didactic declamations,"

and those of Fox "argumentative conversations."[355]

[352] "Lord Colchester's Diary," vol. i. p. 23.

[353] "Pitt spoke like ten thousand angels," wrote Richard Grenville to George Grenville in November, 1742 ("Grenville Papers," vol. i. p.

19).

[354] "Memoirs," vol. i. p. 490.

[355] Prior's "Life of Malone," p. 361.

It was said that it required great mental exertion to follow Fox while he was speaking, but none to remember what he had said; but that it was easy to follow Pitt, but hard to remember what there was in his speech that had pleased one. The difference between the two men was the difference between the orator and the debater. It resulted largely from the fact that the one gave much time to the preparation of his speeches, while the other relied upon the inspiration of the moment.

Pitt, as Porson says, carefully considered his sentences before he uttered them; Fox threw himself into the middle of his, "and left it to G.o.d Almighty to get him out again."[356] If the former was the more dignified as a speaker, the latter scored by being always so terribly in earnest. Grattan, who affirmed that Pitt's eloquence marked an era in the senate, that it resembled "sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music, of the spheres," and admitted that Pitt was right nine times for once that Fox was right, declared that that once of Fox was worth all the other nine times of Pitt.[357]

[356] Samuel Roger's "Recollections," p. 80.

[357] "Memoirs of Thomas Moore," vol. iv. p. 215. (Francis Howard compared Pitt's eloquence to Handel's music, see "Memoirs of Francis Howard," vol. i. p. 149.)

No doubt the Parliament of those days was not so critical a body as it has since become. Lord Chesterfield, at least, held it in the profoundest contempt. "When I first came into the House of Commons,"

he says, "I respected that a.s.sembly as a venerable one; and felt a certain awe upon me; but, upon better acquaintance, that awe soon vanished; and I discovered that, of the five hundred and sixty, not above thirty could understand reason, and that all the rest were _peuple_; that those thirty only required plain common-sense, dressed up in good language; and that all the others only required flowing and harmonious periods, whether they conveyed any meaning or not; having ears to hear, but not sense enough to judge."[358] This scathing indictment of the intelligence of the Commons may possibly have been true at the time when it was written: it would certainly not be applicable to-day. Meaningless periods, however harmonious, are no longer tolerated. In Lord Chesterfield's day, however, sound seems to have been more important than sense, as may be gathered from an account he gives elsewhere of a speech made in 1751 in the House of Lords. He was speaking upon a Bill for the Reform of the Calendar, a subject upon which he knew absolutely nothing. To conceal his ignorance he conceived the idea of giving the House an historical account of calendars generally, from Ancient Egyptian to modern times, being particularly attentive to the choice of his words, to the harmony of his periods, and to his elocution. The peers were enchanted. "They thought I informed," he explains, "because I pleased them; and many of them said that I had made the whole very clear to them, when, G.o.d knows, I had not even attempted it."[359]

[358] "Letters to his Son," vol. ii. p. 329.

[359] "Letters," ii. 121.

The gift of oratory is most certainly heaven-born, but its development demands a vast amount of purely mundane labour. The best speeches have ever been those in the preparation of which the most time and trouble have been expended. Burke's masterpieces were essays, laboriously constructed in the study; Sheridan's elaborate impromptus were carefully devised beforehand, and, if successful, occasionally repeated.[360] Chatham, whose wonderful dominion over the House does not perhaps appear in his speeches, chose his words with the greatest care, and confided to a friend that in order to improve his vocabulary he had read "Bailey's Dictionary" twice through from beginning to end.

[360] "The hon. gentleman has applied to his imagination for his facts, and to his memory for his wit," is a remark he made in different forms on more than one occasion. See Harford's "Wilberforce," p. 167; Brougham's "Sketches," vol. iii. p. 294, etc.

The fervid eloquence of such men as Plunket, Macaulay, Brougham, and Canning--"the last of the rhetoricians"--was the fruit of many an hour of laborious thought and study. Canning especially never spared himself. He would draw up for use in the House a paper, on which were written the heads of the subjects which he intended to touch upon.

These heads were numbered, and the numbers sometimes extended to four or five hundred. Lord North, when he lost the thread of his discourse, would look through his notes with the utmost nonchalance, seeking the cue which was to lead him to further flights of eloquence. "It is not on this side of the paper, Mr. Speaker," he would declaim, still speaking in his oratorical tone; "neither is it on the other side!"

Then, perhaps, he would suddenly come upon the desired note, and continue his unbroken oration without a sign of further hesitation.[361] Bright used to provide himself with small slips of paper, inscribed with his bon-mots, which he drew from his pocket as occasion required. He excelled, nevertheless, in scathing repartee.

Once, during his absence through illness, a n.o.ble lord stated publicly that Bright had been afflicted by Providence with a disease of the brain as a punishment for his misuse of his talents. "It may be so,"

said Bright, on his return to the House, "but in any case it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the n.o.ble lord to know that the disease is one which even Providence could not inflict upon him."[362] He did not always get the best of it, however, and when he ridiculed Lord John Manners for the youthful couplet--

"Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old n.o.bility!"

the author justly retorted that he would far sooner be the foolish young man who wrote those lines than the malignant old man who quoted them.

[361] Stapleton's "Life of Canning," p. 21.

[362] "Men and Manners in Parliament," pp. 56-59.

That speeches should be as effective when read as when delivered is the highest quality of oratory. For this reason, perhaps, some speakers write out their speeches and commit them to memory. Disraeli did so with his more important orations, a fact which greatly enhances the pleasure of their perusal. Macaulay followed the same practice, and, indeed, it is said that the excessive elaboration of his oratory sometimes weakened its effect. Lord Randolph Churchill's earlier speeches were all memorised in this fashion. But it is not every man whose memory is sufficiently retentive to enable him to accomplish this feat, and a breakdown in the very middle of a humorous anecdote thoughtfully interspersed in a speech is a catastrophe which casts ridicule upon the speaker.[363]

[363] Mr. R. Tennant, member for Belfast, in 1834, on O'Connell's motion for a repeal of the Union, made a speech which he had learnt by heart and sent to the papers, which lasted three and a half hours.

Grant's "Recollections," p. 66.

Though matter may be a most important element in parliamentary speaking, manner undoubtedly counts for a good deal. Demosthenes practised declaiming with sharp weapons suspended above him so as to learn to keep still, and, as we have already seen, had some obscure reason for filling his mouth with pebbles. Neither of these practices is to be commended to modern orators, many of whom already speak as though their mouths were filled with hot potatoes, while their habitual gesticulations, if made in the neighbourhood of dependent cutlery, would result in reducing their bodies to one huge wound. Sir Watkin Wynne and his brother were long known in the House of Commons as "Bubble and Squeak," the former's voice being a smothered mumble suggestive of suppressed thunder, the latter's a childish treble.

Mannerisms of gesture, as well as of speech, are easily contracted.

Lord Mahon, "out-roaring torrents in their course," reinforced his stentorian lungs by violent gestures which were at times a source of bodily danger to his friends. Once, when speaking on a Bill he had brought in for the suppression of smuggling, he declared that this crime must be knocked on the head with one blow. To emphasize his meaning, he dealt the unfortunate Pitt, who was sitting just in front of him, a violent buffet on the head, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the House.[364] The gesticulations of Sir Charles Wetherell, the well-known member, were less dangerous, if quainter. He used to unb.u.t.ton his braces in a nervous fashion while addressing the House, leaving between his upper and lower garments an interregnum to which Speaker Manners Sutton once alluded as the honourable gentleman's only lucid interval. The late Lord Goschen would grasp himself firmly by the lapel of his coat, as though (to quote a well-known parliamentary writer) "otherwise he might run away and leave matters to explain themselves."[365]

[364] Wraxall's "Memoirs," vol. iii. p. 402.

[365] "Men and Manners in Parliament," p. 109. (Further on the writer describes the peculiarities of another member who used to fold his arms tightly across his chest when he spoke. Thereafter a constant struggle went on, the arms restlessly battling to get free, and the speaker insisting that they should remain and hear the speech out, p.

130.)

Parliamentary eloquence to-day makes up in quant.i.ty for what it lacks in quality. The number of members who follow the advice of the Psalmist and earn a reputation for wisdom by a continual policy of eloquent silence[366] has dwindled to vanishing point, since to speak in Parliament has come to be regarded as part of a member's duty to his const.i.tuents. In Gladstone's first session, in 1833, less than 6000 speeches were made in the House of Commons; fifty years later the number had increased to 21,000; to-day the steadily growing bulk of each volume of the "Parliamentary Debates" testifies to the swelling flood of oratory which is annually let loose within the precincts of Parliament. And if La Rochefoucauld's maxim be true, that we readily pardon those who bore us, but never those whom we bore, the House of Commons has need of a most forgiving spirit to listen patiently to so much of what can only be described as _vox et praeterea nihil_.

[366] "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

The level of eloquence is, no doubt, higher in the House of Lords than elsewhere. Peers include a greater number of orators among their numbers; opportunities for a display of their talents are more rare; their powers are not dissipated in prolonged debates, as in the Commons, but are reserved for full-dress occasions.

In neither House nowadays is there any exhibition of that old-fashioned rhetoric, florid and flamboyant, which was once so popular. What Mackintosh calls "an elevated kind of after-dinner conversation," such as Lord Salisbury affected so successfully, is the form taken by modern parliamentary eloquence. There are no appeals to sentiment, no quotations from the cla.s.sics, no bombastic declamations.[367] The House of Commons is still "a mob of gentlemen, the greater part of whom are neither without talent nor information,"[368] and with such an audience learned generalities are out of place. Pa.s.sion has to a large extent given way to business, and in Parliament to-day are rarely heard those "splendid common-places of the first-rate rhetorician," which Lord Morley considers necessary to sway a.s.semblies.

[367] "Don't quote Latin. Say what you have to say and then sit down!"

was the Duke of Wellington's excellent advice to a young member.

Walter Bagehot, on the other hand, stated that he had heard an experienced financier say, "If you want to raise a certain cheer in the House of Commons, make a general panegyric on economy; if you want to invite a sure defeat, propose a particular saving!" "The English Const.i.tution," p. 136.

[368] Dalling's "Historical Characters," vol. ii. p. 39.