Page images
PDF
EPUB

PERSONALITIES OF THE HOUSE OF

COMMONS.

XI.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY.

MR. HARDY has not been long in following his chief to the more serene and august atmosphere of the Upper House, and he now sits beside him as Secretary for India, under his new title of Viscount Cranbrook. Although no politician has more fairly earned his peerage than Mr. Hardy, and though it was an honour he might justly have claimed sooner or later, there can be little doubt that his sudden exaltation was owing to the late political exigencies which compelled Lord Beaconsfield to reconstruct his Cabinet. The Marquis of Salisbury having succeeded to Lord Derby's post of Foreign Secretary, it followed almost as a natural consequence that Mr. Hardy should undertake the important and responsible task of the administration of India. At the same time, it was advisable that the Secretary of State should have a seat in the Upper House, the Under Secretary being already in the Lower. So the House of Commons has had to part with Mr. Hardy, and in so doing, it has bade adieu to a highly popular personage, an admirable administrator, a most able debater, and one of its most eloquent and agreeable speakers. In debate, particularly, Mr. Hardy was a tower of strength on the Treasury bench. He possessed all that indispensable readiness which could seize upon the weak points of an opponent's argument, and expose a whole series of fallacies, arrayed in a garb of glittering and imposing rhetoric. He was equally formidable in defence as in attack; and his extra-Parliamentary utterances - which, when such efforts proceed from a Cabinet Minister, must of necessity be carefully weighed were just as judicious as happy. His vindication of the Government policy, which he lately made at Bradford, was acknowledged, not only by his own countrymen, but also by the highest authorities in the Foreign press, to be powerful, complete, and tem perate :

"Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full."

Mr. Bright's peevish declaration that the speech was "boisterous, reckless and illogical" would only seem to show that its flavour was stronger than the right honourable gentleman and his friends could relish. Mr. Hardy, we believe, never sat in Parliament for any other constituency than the University of Oxford, in the representation of which he supplanted Mr. Gladstone. Many of the Liberal organs were loud in their expressions of disgust at the event. Choose Mr. Gathorne Hardy in preference to Mr. Gladstone !" they cried. "What atrocious taste! Put the greatest orator of the day on the shelf, and take down Mr. Hardy! A pretty pitch things are coming to! Who is Mr. Hardy?'

In the result it turned out that there was not the slightest need for any of this journalistic fluster, for the newly-elected member very soon showed that he was no nonentity, nor even a mediocrity; and venerable Oxford found, to her satisfaction, that she had not only not disgraced herself, but had made a selection which in every way proved an ornament to her. It was fated, subsequently, that Mr. Hardy should constantly encounter his rival in the arena of the House of Commons, and not unfrequently give him an awkward fall. When Lord Derby's Cabinet was formed in 1866, Mr. Hardy was appointed President of the Poor Law Board; but shortly afterwards, on the resignation of Mr. Walpole, he was promoted to the more considerable office of Home Secretary. In both these capacities he proved himself a wise and efficient administrator; and in his later post of War Minister, he has gilded rather than tarnished his official reputation. During the fulfilment of his various administrative functions, we cannot recollect a single popular outcry against him as having committed a blunder or an indiscretion. In the House of Commons itself he has always given equal satisfaction. His frank address and robust bearing in debate have, from the first, commanded the approval of the House, and his courtesy and heartiness of manner, coupled with a singular ingenuousness of character, have long ago made him a popular personality. In speaking, Mr. Hardy is wonderfully fluent and rapid; he never hesitates for a word, but runs his course with harmonious felicity. His arguments are usually marshalled with great clearness, and put forward with much cogency and real eloquence; but, at the same time, he can scarcely be pronounced an orator of the first water. In controversy he is always healthily practical, and never stoops to the meanness of academical casuistry-a vice to which Mr. Gladstone is prone, and of which Mr. Lowe is the slave. There is one thing very noticeable about Mr. Hardy, he somehow always looks the statesman. Many politicians strike one as business-like, energetic, lawyer-like, and so forth; but a certain subdued grandeur in the port, a certain thoughtful dignity in the expression of the face of the late War Minister, which are quite removed from anything pompous or affected, seem to warrant the truth of the loftier characteristic we have indicated. Mr. Hardy's articulation is clear and agreeable, and the tones of his voice are full and smooth, though not what we would call rounded with passion. We have never seen him rise to the great heights of oratorical indignation; but in replying to Mr. Gladstone in the Ewlme debate, we saw him very sincerely angry, though he chose rather to give vent to his justifiable fury in eloquent reproach than in stormful invective. We are quite sure that in removng to the sublimer abode of the hereditary chamber Lord Cranbrook will continue to sustain, if not to increase, the political reputation of Mr. Gathorne Hardy.

XII.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT.

At the present moment the House of Commons teems with lawyers. Great is the company of authentic "gentlemen of the long robe;" and numerous also are the specimens of that inferior animal-the solicitor There are, of course, lawyers and lawyers. There are lawyers who never get on their legs except to make manifest to the meanest intelligence to what craft they belong; to lead the expectant listener by more or less toilsome and intricate paths into the dismal and unknown region of Nisi Prius. But, on the other hand, there have been lawyers who have soared above the dim and dingy atmosphere of the forum to breathe "an ampler ether, a diviner air ;" who have shown themselves eminent statesmen and dazzling orators-at the very least, brilliant parlimentary advocates. Such were Brougham and Lyndhurst, Scarlet and Follett, Cockburn and Fitzroy Kelly, Whiteside and Cairns. There were giants in those days; but, for the time being, men of ordinary stature seem to have succeeded to the sons of Anak. Both the Treasury and the Opposition benches number among their occupants, able and painstaking lawyers, like the Attorney-General, the SolicitorGeneral, and Sir Henry James, all of whom are likewise strong in debate and clear in speech; but, at the same time, on none of these learned gentlemen does the mantle of any one of their illustrious predecessors seem to have fallen. No one, however, who has been in the habit of attending the debates of the House of Commons, could have failed to remark that Sir William Harcourt, at any rate, would fain be recognised and accepted as something infinitely superior to the mere legal luminary. He is quite conscious that he is an authority on questions of International and Constitutional Law, and he is never backward in giving an opinion or advice when such questions arise; but nevertheless he constantly flies at higher game, and clearly wishes that the lawyer should be forgotten, and that he should be numbered amongst the statesmen and orators of the House.

The learned member for Oxford is one of the tallest men in the House of Commons; and if height, a generally large and stately presence, and a bearing considerably self-sufficient, and which sometimes suggests pomposity, were the only qualifications requisite to enrol a man among the Di majores, Sir William Harcourt would at once be admitted to the blissful seats. But, perhaps, something more is needed. He who would persuade others that he possesses the mind of a statesman must indicate it by the views he takes of questions of Imperial interest and magnitude. Surely there has never been a more crucial question of the kind than what it is customary to style the Eastern Question? Towards the end of the session of 1876, on the last night which saw Mr. Disraeli a member of the House of Commons, Sir William Harcourt delivered a long, carefully-prepared, and what was intended to be a very moving speech on the great topic of the day. Mr.

Disraeli followed, and almost the first thing he did was sarcastically to comment on the wonderful views of the learned gentleman "who, of course, looked forward to being ranked among the Liberal statesmen of the future." "The great question of the hour," said Mr. Disraeli, can never be treated in the way that the honourable gentleman and his friends would have us treat it, unless, indeed, we resolve ourselves into one of those revolutionary committees which can settle everything." It must be confessed that the taunt was deserved. We ourselves listened to the speech in question, and so far from being characterised by statesman-like breadth and impartiality, it seemed, to us, simply, on the one hand, a wild and uncompromising tirade against the "unspeakable Turk ;" and, on the other hand, a lachrymose effusion of sentimentalism over the sorrows of Bulgaria; while, at the same time, the cooker of the dish had not been altogether able to keep his hands off the legal pepper-box. Apart from its views, however, the speech was poor as an oratorical performance, though it was clear the orator had done his utmost to conceive it in a vein of the loftiest eloquence. His elaborate description of the Turk spreading desolation and misery, whereever his impure hoof happened to tread was not really passionate nor even picturesque, but only flowery. His invective against the crimes and follies of the Government was meant to be terrible, but was only wearisome, and a certain lack of imagination in the selection of vitu. perative language was apparent in the "damnable iteration" of the phrase "political and diplomatic incapacity of Her Majesty's Government."

When Sir William Harcourt dons his full regimentals, and buckles on his sword for one of these oratorical field-days, his manner of rising in his place always appears to be charged with tremendous import. His whole air, one might fancy, was meant to announce that the orator was a second Herod, and that the assembled Commons were about to listen to "the voice of a god, and not of a man." His voice has about it a sonorousness commensurate with the physical magnitude of the speaker, and as it proceeds to declaim, in tones of awful solemnity that suggestion of a supernatural presence gains an additional emphasis. But the actual effect of such orations scarcely corresponds to the intended. The hollowness and unreality are too transparent. That laboured solemnity of voice does not impress-those thrills of artificial emotion do not move. The whole thing smacks too much of that forensic trickery which may beguile unsophisticated jurymen, but which can hardly impose on an experienced assemblage of legislators. Nevertheless, it must be owned that these efforts to cast occasionally the slough of the stereotyped lawyer, though not always successful, are in the highest degree creditable. That which tends to free the mind from the mere professional groove, must always be a tendency in the right direction.

When Sir William Harcourt does not come forth in full oratorical court-dress, he is fond of assuming an easy and jocular character, and the House is then enlivened by badinage and jests which, however, are

sometimes a little ponderous, and almost suggest the elephant trying to gambol like the gazelle. This friskiness, if nothing else, is, at any rate, always good-humoured, and the learned member for Oxford is certainly not in bad favour with the House. Of all the actually practising lawyers-and there are many members who have long ago merged the lawyer in the politician-which the House of Commons at present contains, Sir William Harcourt has probably the most defined personality; and, therefore, we have thought that he might most appropriately be chosen as the representative specimen of the species.

XII

MR. W. H. SMITH.

THE career of the present First Lord of the Admiralty is certainly not an illustration of Dr. Johnson's melancholy line

"Slow rises worth by poverty oppressed."

We should imagine that, if Mr. W. H. Smith be oppressed at all, it must be by an embarras de richesses, rather than by a scantiness of them. His worth all will admit; and, we suppose, it will be equally allowed that his merit was of that kind which, if it was given a fair opportunity, could scarcely avoid rising. As a matter of fact, so far as Mr. Smith's political history is concerned, that opportunity was afforded at the dissolution of Parliament, in 1868, when he was returned for the important constituency of Westminster. There is nothing uncomplimentary in saying that, if Mr. Smith's worth had at that period been oppressed by poverty, it might not have succeeded in obtaining the same vantage-ground for rising that it did. During the election to which we have referred, Mr. Smith was by far the most popular candidate, though he had pitted against him the late Mr. John Stuart Mill, the prestige of whose literary and philosophical character was, of course, greatly in his favour, and who, morcover, had been previously elected for Westminster free of expense.

Mr. Smith was known to be the worthy and industrious son of one of that commercial band who are usually styled "self-made men,” a class of individuals who, by their persevering energy and great business capacities, have contributed no small share to the character and material prosperity of their country. It may be said with perfect truth that, once in the House of Commons, the new M.P. for Westminster soon became as popular there as he was with his constituency. He was just the sort of man to gain the ear and the favour of the House at the very first blush, not by any exhibition of brilliant talents, but by his direct and business-like method of handling the subjects which he took in hand, and by the practical tact which he showed in the choice of those subjects. He was not the "transcendental man of business," like Clough, but the man of business pur et simple, with a fine, clear, and fearless way of telling the House what, on a certain point, he wanted to see done, and how he thought it ought to be done. At the same time, Mr. W. Smith was no crotchet-monger, nor hobbyist, nor

« PreviousContinue »