THE EARL OF ROSEBERYPhotograph copyright by Elliott & FryTHE EARL OF ROSEBERY
Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY
Lord Rosebery was for a prolonged season the man in English political life upon whom the eyes of expectation were turned. He is a younger man than most of his political colleagues and rivals, but it is not because of his comparative youth that the eyes of expectation were and still are turned upon him. Not one of those who stand in the front ranks of Parliamentary life to-day could be called old, as we reckon age in our modern estimate. Palmerston, Gladstone, and Disraeli won their highest political triumphs after they had passed the age which Lord Salisbury and Sir William Harcourt have now reached; Mr. Balfour is still regarded in politics as quite a young man, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has but lately been elected leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. Lord Rosebery has already held the highest political offices. He has been Foreign Secretary and he has been Prime Minister. He has beenleader of the Liberal party. No other public man in England has so many and so varied mental gifts, and no other public man has won success in so many distinct fields. We live in days when, for the time at least, the great political orator seems to have passed out of existence. The last great English orator died at Hawarden a few short years ago. We have, however, several brilliant and powerful Parliamentary debaters, and among these Lord Rosebery stands with the foremost, if he is not, indeed, absolutely the foremost. As an orator on what I may call great ceremonial occasions he is, according to my judgment, the very foremost we now have. As an after-dinner speaker—and after-dinner speaking counts for a great deal in the success of an English public man—he has never had an equal in England during my time. Then Lord Rosebery has delivered lectures or addresses in commemoration of great poets and philosophers and statesmen which may even already be regarded as certain of an abiding place in literature. Lord Rosebery is a literary man, an author as well as a statesman and an orator; he has written a life of Pitt which is already becoming a sort of classic in our libraries. There are profounder students, men more deeply read, than he, but I doubt if there are many men living who have so wide an acquaintance with general literature. He is a lover as well as a student and a connoisseur of art, he is an accomplished yachtsman, has a thorough knowledge of horses, is famous on the turf, and the owner of two horses which won the Derby. The legendary fairy godmother seems to have showered upon him at his birth all her richest and most various gifts, and no malign and jealous sprite appears to have come in, as in the nursery stories, to spoil any of the gifts by a counteracting spell. He was born of great family and born to high estate; he married a daughter of the house of Rothschild; he has a lordly home near Edinburgh in Scotland, a noble house in the finest West End square of London, and a delightful residence in one of our most beautiful English counties.
Lord Rosebery is one of the most charming talkers whom it has ever been my good fortune to meet. He has a keen sense of humor, a happy art of light and delicate satire, and, in private conversation as well as in Parliamentary debate, he has a singular facility for the invention of expressive and successful phrases whichtell their whole story in a flash. One might well be inclined to ask what the kindly fates could have done for Lord Rosebery that they have left undone. Nevertheless, the truth has to be told, that up to this time Lord Rosebery has not accomplished as much of greatness as most of us confidently expected that he would achieve.
I have been, perhaps, somewhat too hasty in saying that no counteracting spell had in any way marred the influence of the gifts which the fairies had so lavishly bestowed on Lord Rosebery. One stroke of ill fortune—ill fortune, that is, for an English political leader—was certainly directed against him. Nature must have meant him to be a successful Prime Minister, and yet fortune denied him a seat in the House of Commons. He succeeded to his grandfather's peerage at an early period of his life, and he had to begin his political career as a member of the House of Lords. He therefore missed all that splendid training for political warfare which is given in the House of Commons. It would not, perhaps, be quite easy for an American reader to understand how little the House of Lords counts for in the education of fighting statesmen.
When Charles James Fox was told in his declining years that the King, as a mark of royal favor, intended to make him a peer and thus remove him from the House of Commons into the House of Lords, he struck his forehead and exclaimed: "Good Heaven! he does not think it has come to that with me, does he?" Fox had had all the training that his genius needed in the House of Commons, and he was not condemned to pass into the House of Lords. Nothing but the inborn consciousness of a genius for political debate can stimulate a man to great effort in the House of Lords. Nothing turns upon a debate in that House. If a majority in the House of Lords were to pass a vote of censure three times a week on the existing Government, that Government would continue to exist just as if nothing had happened, and the public in general would hardly know that the Lords had been expressing any opinion on the subject. An ordinary sitting of the House of Lords is not expected to last for more than an hour or so, and the whole assembly often consists of some half a dozen peers. Now and again, during the course of a session, there is got up what may be called a full-dress debate when some great question is disturbing thecountry, and the peers think that they ought to put on the appearance of being deeply concerned about it, and some noble lord who has a repute for wisdom or for eloquence gives notice of a formal motion, and then there is a lengthened discussion, and perhaps, on some extraordinary occasion, the peers may sit to a late hour and even take a division. But on such remarkable occasions the peer who induces the House to come together and listen to his oration is almost sure to be one who has had his training in the House of Commons and has made his fame as an orator there.
Now, I cannot but regard it as a striking evidence of Lord Rosebery's inborn fitness to be an English political leader that he should have got over the dreary discouragement of such a training-school, and should have practiced the art of political oratory under conditions that might have filled Demosthenes himself with a sense of the futility of trying to make a great speech where nothing whatever was likely to come of it. Lord Rosebery, however, did succeed in proving to the House of Lords that they had among them a brilliant and powerful debater who had qualified himself for success without any help from the school inwhich Lord Brougham and the brilliant Lord Derby, Lord Cairns, and Lord Salisbury had studied and mastered the art of Parliamentary eloquence.
But, indeed, Lord Rosebery appears to have had a natural inclination to seek and find a training-school for his abilities in places and pursuits that might have seemed very much out of the ordinary British aristocrat's way. Until a comparatively recent period, we had nothing that could be called a really decent system of municipal government in the greater part of London. We had, of course, the Lord Mayor and the municipality of the City of London, but then the City of London is only a very small patch in the great metropolis that holds more than five millions of people. London, outside the City, was governed by the old-fashioned parish vestries, and to some extent by a more recent institution which was called the Metropolitan Board of Works. Now, the Metropolitan Board of Works did not manage its affairs very well. There were disagreeable rumors and stories about contracts and jobbing and that sort of thing, and although matters were never supposed to have been quite so bad as they were in New York during days which I canremember well, the days of Boss Tweed, there was enough of public complaint to induce Parliament, at the instigation of Lord Randolph Churchill, to abolish the Board of Works altogether and set up the London County Council, a thoroughly representative body elected by popular suffrage and responsible to its constituents and the public. Lord Rosebery threw himself heart and soul into the promotion of this better system of London municipal government. He became a member of the London County Council, was elected its first Chairman, and later on was re-elected to the same office. Now, I think it would be hardly possible for a man of Lord Rosebery's rank and culture and tastes to give a more genuine proof of patriotic public spirit than he did when he threw himself heart and soul into the work of a municipal council.
Up to that time the business of a London municipality had been regarded as something belonging entirely to the middle class or the lower middle class, something with which peers and nobles could not possibly be expected to have anything to do. A London Alderman had been from time out of mind a sort of figure of fun, a vulgar, fussy kind of person, whobedizened himself in gaudy robes on festive occasions, and was noted for his love of the turtle in quite a different sense from that which Byron gives to the words. Lord Rosebery set himself steadily to the work of London municipal government at a most critical period in its history; his example was followed by men of rank and culture, and some of the most intellectual men of our day have been elected Aldermen of the London County Council. Only think of Frederic Harrison, the celebrated Positivist philosopher, the man of exquisite culture and refinement, the man of almost fastidious ways, the scholar and the writer, becoming an Alderman of the London County Council, and devoting himself to the duties of his position! Lord Rosebery undoubtedly has the honor of having done more than any other Englishman to raise the municipal government of London to that position which it ought to have in the public life of the State.
All that time Lord Rosebery was not neglecting any of the other functions and occupations which had been imposed upon him, or which he had voluntarily taken upon himself. He held the office of First Commissioner of Works in one of Mr. Gladstone's administrations, an officeinvolving the care of all the State buildings and monuments and parks of the metropolis. He was always to be seen at the private views of the Royal Academy and the other great picture galleries of the London season. He was always starting some new movement for the improvement of the breed of horses, and, indeed, there is a certain section of our community among whom Lord Rosebery is regarded, not as a statesman, or a London County Councilor, or a lover of literature, but simply and altogether as a patron of the turf. Meanwhile we were hearing of him every now and then as an adventurous yachtsman, and as the orator of some great commemoration day when a statue was unveiled to a Burke or a Burns.
A more delightful host than Lord Rosebery it would not be possible to meet or even to imagine. I have had the honor of enjoying his hospitality at Dalmeny and in his London home, and I shall only say that those were occasions which I may describe, in the words Carlyle employed with a less gladsome significance, as not easily to be forgotten in this world. No man can command a greater variety of topics of conversation. Politics, travel, art, letters, the life of great cities, the growthof commerce, the tendencies of civilizations, the art of living, the philosophy of life, the way to enjoy life, the various characteristics of foreign capitals—on all such topics Lord Rosebery can speak with the clearness of one who knows his subject and the vivacity of one who can put his thoughts into the most expressive words. I suppose there must be some eminent authors with whose works Lord Rosebery is not familiar, but I can only say that if there be any such, I have not yet discovered who they are—and I have spent a good deal of my time in reading. I have seen Lord Rosebery in companies where painters and sculptors and the writers of books and the writers of plays formed the majority, where political subjects were not touched upon, and I have observed that Lord Rosebery could hold his own with each practitioner of art on the artist's special subject. Lord Rosebery does not profess to be a bookworm or a great scholar, but I do not know any man better acquainted with general literature. Such a man must surely have got out of life all the best that it has to give.
Yet it is certain that the eyes of expectation are still turned upon Lord Rosebery. There is a general conviction that he has somethingyet to do—that, in fact, he has not yet given his measure. He has been Prime Minister, and he has been leader of the English Liberal party, but in neither case had he a chance of proving his strength. When Mr. Gladstone made up his mind to retire finally from political life, the Queen sent for Lord Rosebery and invited him to form an administration. Now, it is no secret that at that time there were men in the Liberal party whose friends and admirers believed that their length of service gave them a precedence of claims over the claims of Lord Rosebery. There were those who thought Sir William Harcourt had won for himself a right to be chosen as the successor to Mr. Gladstone. On the other side—for there was grumbling on both sides—there were members of the Liberal administration who positively declined to continue in office if Sir William Harcourt were made Prime Minister. These men did not object to serve under Sir William Harcourt as leader of the House of Commons, but they objected to his elevation to the supreme place of Prime Minister. Also, there were Liberals of great influence, who, while they had the fullest confidence in Lord Rosebery and were not fanatically devoted to Sir William Harcourt,objected to the idea of having a Prime Minister in the House of Lords, and a Prime Minister, too, who had never sat in the House of Commons. Now, it would be idle to deny that there was some practical reason for this objection. The House of Commons is the field on which political battles are fought and won. The Commander-in-Chief ought always to be within reach. A whole plan of campaign may have to be changed at a quarter of an hour's notice. It must obviously often be highly inconvenient to have a Prime Minister who cannot cross the threshold of the House of Commons in order to get into instant communication with the leading men of his own party who are fighting the battle.
At all events, I am now only concerned to say that these doubts and difficulties and private disputations did arise, and that, although Lord Rosebery did accept the position of Prime Minister, he must have done so with some knowledge of the fact that certain of his colleagues were not quite satisfied with the new conditions. Lord Rosebery had been most successful as Foreign Secretary during each term when he held the office, but it was well known, before Mr. Gladstone's retirement, that therewere some questions of foreign policy on which the old leader and the new were not quite of one opinion. In English political life, and I suppose in the political life of every self-governing country, there are seasons of inevitable action and reaction which must be observed and felt, although they cannot always be explained.
To a distant observer the policy of the Liberal party might have seemed just the same after Mr. Gladstone had retired from politics as it was when he was in the front of political life. But just as the policy which sustained him in his early days as Prime Minister was helped by the reaction which had set in against the aggressive policy of Lord Palmerston, so there came, with the close of Gladstone's Parliamentary career, a kind of reaction against his counsel of peace and moderation. Lord Rosebery was believed to have more of what is called the Imperialist spirit in him than had ever guided the policy of his great leader. Certainly some of Mr. Gladstone's former colleagues in the House of Commons appear to have thought so, and there began to be signs of a growing division in the party. Lord Rosebery's Prime Ministership lasted but a shorttime. The Government sustained one or two Parliamentary discomfitures, and there followed upon these a positive defeat in the nature of a sort of vote of censure carried by a small majority against a department of the administration, on the ground of an alleged insufficiency in some of the supplies of ammunition for military service. Many a Government would have professed to think little of such a defeat, would have treated it only as a mere question of departmental detail, and would have gone on as if nothing had happened. But Lord Rosebery refused to take things so coolly and so carelessly. Probably he was growing tired of his position under the peculiar circumstances. Perhaps he thought the most manly course he could take was to give the constituencies the opportunity of saying whether they were satisfied with his administration or were not. The Government appealed to the country. Parliament was dissolved, and a general election followed. Then was seen the full force of the reaction which had begun to set in against the Gladstone policy of peace, moderation, and justice. The Conservatives came into power by a large majority. Lord Rosebery was now merely the leader of the Liberal party in Opposition. Even this position he did not long retain. Some of the most brilliant speeches he ever made in the House of Lords were made during this time, but somehow people began to think that his heart was not in the leadership, and before long it was made known to the public that he had ceased to be the Liberal Commander-in-Chief.
Everybody, of course, was ready with an explanation as to this sudden act, and perhaps, as sometimes happens in such cases, the less a man really knew about the matter the more prompt he was with his explanation. Two reasons, however, were given by observers who appeared likely to know something of the real facts. One was that Lord Rosebery did not see his way to go as far as some of his colleagues would have gone in arousing the country to decided action against the Ottoman Government because of the manner in which it was allowing its Christian subjects to be treated. The other was that Lord Rosebery was too Imperialistic in spirit for such men as Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley. No one could impugn Lord Rosebery's motives in either case. He might well have thought that too forward a movement against Turkey might only bring on a great European war or leave England isolated to carry out her policy at her own risk, and in the other case he may have thought that the policy bequeathed by Mr. Gladstone was tending to weaken the supremacy of England in South Africa.
Lord Rosebery then ceased to lead a Government or a party, and became for the time merely a member of the House of Lords. I do not suppose his leisure hung very heavy on his hands. I cannot imagine Lord Rosebery finding any difficulty in passing his day. The only difficulty I should think such a man must have is how to find time to give a fair chance to all the pursuits that are dear to him. Lord Rosebery spent some part of his leisure in yachting, gave his usual attention to the turf, was to be seen at picture galleries, and occasionally addressed great public meetings on important questions, and was a frequent visitor to the House of Commons during each session of Parliament. The peers have a space in the galleries of the House of Commons set apart for their own convenience, and, although that space can hold but a small number of the peers, yet on ordinary nights its benches are seldom fully occupied. But when some great debate is coming on, then the peers make a rush forthe gallery space in the House of Commons, and those who do not arrive in time to get a seat have to wait and take their chance, each in his turn, of any vacancy which may possibly occur. I am not a great admirer of the House of Lords as a legislative institution, and I must say that it has sometimes soothed the rancor of my jealous feelings as a humble Commoner to see a string of peers extending across the lobby of the House of Commons, each waiting for his chance of filling some sudden vacancy in the peers' gallery.
Lord Rosebery continued to attend the debates when he had ceased to be Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal party just as he had done before. His fine, clearly cut, closely shaven face, with features that a lady novelist of a past age would have called chiseled, and eyes lighted with an animation that seemed to have perpetual youth in it, were often objects of deep interest to the members of the House, and to the visitors in the strangers' galleries, and no doubt in the ladies' gallery as well. The appearance of Lord Rosebery in the peers' gallery was sure to excite some talk among the members of the House of Commons on the green benches below. We were always readyto indulge in expectation and conjecture as to what Lord Rosebery was likely to do next, for there seemed to be a general consent of opinion that he was the last man in the world who could sit down and do nothing. But what was there left for him to do? He had held various administrative offices: he had twice been Foreign Secretary; he had twice been Chairman of the London County Council; he had been Prime Minister; he had been leader of the Liberal party; he had been President of all manner of great institutions; he had been President of the Social Science Congress; he had been Lord Rector of two great Universities; he had twice won the Derby. What was there left for him to do which human ambition in our times and in the dominions of Queen Victoria could care to accomplish? Yet the general impression seemed to be that Lord Rosebery had not yet done his appointed work, and that impression has grown deeper and stronger with recent events.
Since the day when Lord Rosebery withdrew from the leadership of the Liberal party the division in that party has been growing wider and deeper. The war in South Africa has done much to broaden the gulf of separation.Lord Rosebery is an Imperialist, Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley are not Imperialists. The opponents of Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Morley call them Little Englanders. The opponents of Lord Rosebery and those who think with him would no doubt call them Jingoes. The Imperialist, or, as his opponents prefer to call him, the Jingo, accepts as the ruling principle of his faith the right and the duty of England to spread her civilization and her supremacy as far as she can over all those parts of the world which are still lying in disorganization and in darkness. The Little Englander, as his opponents delight to describe him, believes that England's noblest work for a long time to come will be found in the endeavor to spread peace, education, and happiness among the peoples who already acknowledge her supremacy. I am not going to enter into any argument as to the relative claims of the two political schools. It has been said that a man is born either of the school of Aristotle or of the school of Plato. Perhaps an Englishman of modern times is born a Jingo or a Little Englander. I am not an Englishman, and therefore am not called upon to rank myself on either side of the controversy, but I know fullwell which way my instincts and sympathies would lead me if I were compelled to choose. I could not, therefore, account myself a political follower of Lord Rosebery; and, indeed, on the one great question which concerned me most as a member of the House of Commons, that of Irish Home Rule, Lord Rosebery is not quite so emphatic as I should wish him to be. I am therefore writing the eulogy, not of Lord Rosebery the politician, but of Lord Rosebery the orator, the scholar, the man of letters and arts and varied culture, the man who has done so much for public life in so many ways, the helpful, kindly, generous friend.
The common impression everywhere is that the Conservative Government, as it is now constituted, cannot last very long. The sands of the present Parliament are running out; the next general election may be postponed for some time yet, but it cannot be very far off. Are the Liberals to come back to power with Lord Rosebery at their head? Can the Liberal party become so thoroughly reunited again, Jingoes and Little Englanders, as to make the formation of a Liberal Government a possible event so soon? Or is it possible, as many observers believe, that Lord Rosebery may findhimself at the head of an administration composed of Imperialist Liberals and the more enlightened and generally respected members of the present Government? I shall not venture upon any prediction, having seen the unexpected too often happen in politics to have much faith in political prophecy. I note it as an evidence of the position Lord Rosebery has won for himself that, although he became Prime Minister only to be defeated, and leader of the Liberal party only to resign, he is still one of the public men in England about whom people are asking each other whether the time for him to take his real position has not come at last.
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAINPhotograph copyright by Elliott & FryJOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
Mr. Chamberlain was once described by an unfriendly critic as the Rabagas of English political life. We all remember Rabagas, the hero of Sardou's masterpiece of dramatic satire, who begins his public career and wins fame among certain classes as a leveler and a demagogue of the most advanced views, an unsparing enemy of the aristocracy, a man who will make no terms with the privileged orders, and will bow to no sovereign but the sovereign people. Now, I have said that it was an unfriendly critic who likened Mr. Chamberlain to Sardou's creation, but it was not in the earlier career of the real or the imaginary politician that the resemblance was especially to be traced. Rabagas is brought by tempting conditions under the influence of the privileged classes, the aristocracy, and the reigning sovereign of the small state in which he lives; and his leveling and revolutionary tendencies melt away under the genial influence of his new associations. He becomes, before long, the admirer of the aristocracy and the Prime Minister of the Prince, and is ready to devote all his energies to the defense of the privileged orders, to the repression of the vile democracy, and the silencing of Radical orators.
In this contrast between the earlier and the later parts of the political career the malevolent critic, no doubt, found the materials for his comparison between Rabagas and Mr. Chamberlain. For there can be no denying that Mr. Chamberlain began his public life as an eloquent, an unsparing, and apparently a convinced champion of democracy against the aristocracy, the privileged orders, and the Conservative party, and that he is now a leading member of a Conservative Government, and goes further than most of his colleagues would be likely to go in his hostility to Radical measures and to Radical men.
Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain, who during the earlier part of his public life belonged to the party most strenuously opposed to all unnecessary wars, and especially wars which had annexation for their object, has been the chief Ministerial promoter of the late war in South Africa, a war which had for its object the subjugationof two independent republics in order to bring them under the Imperial flag of England. No one, therefore, could have been much surprised when the unfriendly critic fancied that he could discover at least a certain superficial resemblance between the career of Rabagas and the career of Mr. Chamberlain.
I have been a close observer of much of Mr. Chamberlain's public life, and for some time we were thrown a good deal into Parliamentary and political association. He came into the House of Commons not very long before I had the honor of obtaining a seat there, and his fame had preceded him so far that his entrance into Parliament was looked upon by everybody as a coming event, in the days when he had not yet been elected to represent the constituency of Birmingham. Birmingham was at that time one of the most thoroughly Radical cities in England. John Bright once said that as the sea, wherever you dip a cup into it, will be found to be salt, so the constituency of Birmingham, wherever you test it, will be found to be Radical. Birmingham could claim the merit of being one of the best organized municipalities in England. Its popular educational institutions were excellent; its free librariesmight have won the admiration of a citizen of Boston, Massachusetts; its police arrangements were efficient; its sanitation might well have been the envy of London, and the general intelligence of its citizens was of the highest order. Now, it was in this enlightened, progressive, and capable community that Mr. Chamberlain won his first fame. He is not a Birmingham man by birth. He was, I believe, born and brought up on the south side of London, and was educated at University College School, London. But at an early age he settled in Birmingham, and became a member of his father's manufacturing firm there. Very soon he rose to great distinction as a public speaker and as a member of the local corporation, and three times was elected chief magistrate of Birmingham. We began soon to hear a great deal of him in London. It must have been clear to anybody who knew anything of Birmingham that a man could not have risen to such distinction in that city without great intelligence and a marked capacity for public life. All this time he was known as a Radical of the Radicals. The Liberal party in London began to look upon him as a coming man, and as a coming man who was certain to take his place, andthat probably a leading place, in the advanced Radical division of the Liberals. His political speeches showed him to be a democrat of the leveling order—a democrat, that is to say, of views much more extreme than had ever been professed by John Bright or Richard Cobden. He was an unsparing assailant of the aristocracy and the privileged classes, and, indeed, went so far in his Radicalism that the Conservatives in general regarded him as a downright Republican.
I can well remember the sensation which his first speech in the House of Commons created among the ranks of the Tories after his election to Parliament as one of the representatives of Birmingham. The good Tories made no effort to conceal their astonishment at the difference between the real Chamberlain as they saw and heard him and the Chamberlain of their earlier imaginings. I talked with many of them at the time, and was made acquainted with their emotions. Judging from his political speeches, they had set him down as a wild Republican, and they expected to see a rough and shaggy man, dressed with an uncouth disregard for the ways of society, a sort of Birmingham Orson who would probably scowl fiercely at his opponentsin the House and would deliver his opinions in tones of thunder. The man who rose to address the House was a pale, slender, delicate looking, and closely shaven personage, very neatly dressed, with short and carefully brushed hair, and wearing a dainty eyeglass constantly fixed in his eye. "He looks like a ladies' doctor," one stout Tory murmured. "Seems like the model of a head clerk at a West End draper's," observed another. Certainly there was nothing of the Orson about this well-dressed, well-groomed representative of the Birmingham democracy. Mr. Chamberlain's speech made a distinct impression on the House. It was admirably delivered, in quietly modulated tones, the clear, penetrating voice never rising to the level of declamation, but never failing to reach the ear of every listener. The political opinions which it expressed were such as every one might have expected to come from so resolute a democrat, but the quiet, self-possessed delivery greatly astonished those who had expected to see and hear a mob orator. Mr. Chamberlain's position in the House was assured after that first speech. Even among the Tories everybody felt satisfied that the new man was a man of great ability, gifted with aremarkable capacity for maintaining his views with ingenious and plausible argument, a man who could hold his own in debate with the best, and for whom the clamors of a host of political opponents could have no terrors.
I may say at once that Mr. Chamberlain has, ever since that time, proved himself to be one of the ablest debaters in the House of Commons. He is not and never could be an orator in the higher sense, for he wants altogether that gift of imagination necessary to the composition of an orator, and he has not the culture and the command of ready illustration which sometimes lift men who are not born orators above the mere debater's highest level. But he has unfailing readiness, a wide knowledge of public affairs, a keen eye for all the weak points of an opponent's case, and a flow of clear and easy language which never fails to give expression, at once full and precise, to all that is in his mind. He was soon recognized, even by his extreme political opponents, as one of the ablest men in the House of Commons, and it seemed plain to every one that, when the chance came for the formation of a Liberal Ministry, the country then being in the handsof a Tory Government, Mr. Chamberlain would beyond question find a place on the Treasury Bench.
Meanwhile Mr. Chamberlain's democratic views seemed to have undergone no modification. He was as unsparing as ever in his denunciation of the aristocracy and the privileged classes, and he was especially severe upon the great landowners, and used to propound schemes for buying them out by the State and converting their land into national property. His closest ally and associate in Parliamentary politics was Sir Charles Dilke, who had entered the House of Commons some years before Mr. Chamberlain, and who was then, as he is now, an advanced and determined Radical. Sir Charles Dilke, in fact, was at that time supposed to be something very like a Republican, at least in theory, and he had been exciting great commotion in several parts of the country by his outspoken complaints about the vast sums of money voted every year for the Royal Civil List. It was but natural that Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain should become close associates, and there was a general conviction that the more advanced section of the Liberal partywas destined to take the command in Liberal politics.
Outside the range of strictly English politics there was a question arising which threatened to make a new division in the Liberal party. This was the question of Home Rule for Ireland as it presented itself under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. For years the subject of Home Rule had been the occasion, under the leadership of Mr. Butt, of nothing more formidable to the House of Commons than an annual debate and division. Once in every session Mr. Butt brought forward a motion calling for a measure of Home Rule for Ireland, and, after some eloquent speeches made in favor of the motion by Irish members, a few speeches were delivered on the other side by the opponents of Home Rule, Liberals as well as Tories, and then some leading member of the Government went through the form of explaining why the motion could not be accepted. A division was taken, and Mr. Butt's motion was found to have the support of the very small Irish Nationalist party, as it then was, and perhaps half a dozen English or Scotch Radicals; and the whole House of Commons, except for these, declared against HomeRule. About the time, however, of Mr. Chamberlain's entrance on the field of politics a great change had taken place in the conditions of the Home Rule question. Charles Stewart Parnell had become in fact, although not yet in name, the leader of the Irish National party, and Parnell's tactics were very different indeed from those of his nominal leader, Mr. Butt. Butt was a man who had great reverence for old constitutional forms and for the traditions and ways of the House of Commons, and he had faith in the power of mere argument to bring the House some time or other to see the justice of his cause. Parnell was convinced that there was only one way of compelling the House of Commons to pay any serious attention to the Irish demand, and that was by making it clear to the Government and the House that until they had turned their full attention to the Irish national claims, they should not be allowed to turn their attention to any other business whatever. Therefore he introduced that policy of obstruction which has since become historical, and which for a time literally convulsed the House of Commons. Now, I am not going again into the oft-told tale of Home Rule and the obstruction policy, and I touch upon the subject here only because of its direct connection with the career of Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain supported Mr. Parnell in most of his assaults upon the Tory Government. It was Parnell's policy to bring forward some motion, during the discussion of the estimates for the army and navy or for the civil service, which should raise some great and important question of controversy connected only in a technical sense with the subject formally before the House, and thus to raise a prolonged debate which had the effect of postponing to an indefinite time the regular movement of business. Thus he succeeded in stopping all the regular work of the House until the particular motion in which he was concerned had been fully discussed and finally settled, one way or the other. It was by action of this kind that he succeeded in prevailing upon the House of Commons to condemn the barbarous system of flogging in the army and the navy, and finally to obtain its abolition. In this latter course he was warmly supported by Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, and by many other Liberal members.
But it was not only in obstructive motionswhich concerned the common interests of the country that Parnell obtained the support of Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain. These two men boldly and vigorously maintained him in his policy of obstruction when it only professed to concern itself with Irish national questions. They identified themselves so thoroughly with his Irish policy that it became a familiar joke in the House of Commons to describe Dilke and Chamberlain as the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General of the Home Rule party. I was then a member of the House, and had been elected Vice-President of the Irish party, Parnell being, of course, the President. Naturally, I was brought closely into association with Mr. Chamberlain, and I had for many years been a personal friend of Sir Charles Dilke. Again and again I heard Mr. Chamberlain express his entire approval of the obstructive policy adopted by Parnell, and declare that that was the only way by which Parnell could compel the House of Commons to give a hearing to the Irish claims. Mr. Chamberlain, indeed, expressed, on more than one occasion, in speeches delivered during a debate in the House, just the same opinion as to Parnell's course which I had heard himutter in private conversation. In one of these speeches I remember well his generous declaration that he was sorry he had not had an opportunity of expressing that opinion to the House of Commons long before. Now, of course, I always thought, and still think, that all this was much to the credit of Mr. Chamberlain's political intelligence, courage, and manly feeling, and I regarded him as one of the truest English friends the Home Rule cause had ever made. I had the opportunity, on more than one occasion, of hearing Dilke and Chamberlain define their respective positions on the subject of Home Rule. Dilke regarded Home Rule as an essential part of a federal system, which he believed to be absolutely necessary to the safety, strength, and prosperity of the British Empire. He would have made it a Federal system, by virtue of which each member of the Imperial organization governed its own domestic affairs in its own way, while the common wishes and interests of the Empire were represented, discussed, and arranged in a central Imperial Parliament. Therefore, even if the Irish people had not been themselves awakened to the necessity for a Home Rule Legislature in Ireland, Dilke would have been in favor ofurging on them the advantages of such an arrangement. This, in point of fact, is the system which has made the Canadian and the Australasian provinces what they are at this day, contented, loyal, and prosperous members of the Imperial system. Chamberlain was not so convinced an advocate of the general system of Home Rule as Dilke, but he was always emphatic in his declarations that, if the large majority of the Irish people desired Home Rule, their desire should be granted to them by the Imperial Parliament.
When I first entered the House of Commons, the Conservative party was in office. About a year after, the general election of 1880 came on, almost in the ordinary course of events, and the result of the appeal to the country was that the Liberals came back to power with a large majority. Mr. Gladstone was at the head of the Liberal party, and he became Prime Minister. Everybody assumed that two such prominent Radicals as Dilke and Chamberlain could not be overlooked by the new Prime Minister in his arrangements to form an administration. I think I am entitled to say, as a positive fact, that Dilke and Chamberlain entered into an understanding between themselves that unless one at least of them was offered a place in the Cabinet, neither would accept office of any kind. Of course when a new Government is in process of formation all these arrangements are matters of private discussion and negotiation with the men at the head of affairs; and the result of interchange of ideas in this instance was that Chamberlain became President of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the Cabinet, and Dilke accepted the office of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, without a place in the inner Ministerial circle. This was done, not only with Dilke's cordial consent, but at his express wish, for it was his strong desire that the higher place in the administration should be given to his friend.
Now, at this time Mr. Gladstone was not a convinced Home Ruler. I know that the importance of the question was entering his mind and was absorbing much of his attention. I know that he was earnestly considering the subject, and that his mind was open to conviction; but I know also that he was not yet convinced. Chamberlain, therefore, would apparently have had nothing to gain if he merely desired to conciliate the favor of his leader by still putting himself forward as the friend andthe ally of the Home Rule party. But he continued, when in office, to be just as openly our friend as he had been in the days when he was only an ordinary member of the House of Commons. There were times when, owing to the policy of coercion pursued in Ireland by the then Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, the relations between the Liberal Government and the Home Rule party were severely strained. We did battle many a time as fiercely against Mr. Gladstone's Government as ever we had done against the Government of his Tory predecessor. Yet Mr. Chamberlain always remained our friend and our adviser, always stood by us whenever he could fairly be expected to do so in public, and always received our confidences in private. When Mr. Parnell and other members of our party were thrown into Dublin prison, Mr. Chamberlain did his best to obtain justice and fair treatment for them and for the Home Rule cause and for the Irish people.
Many American readers will probably have a recollection of what was called the Kilmainham Treaty—the "Treaty" being an arrangement which it was thought might be honorably agreed upon between Mr. Gladstone and the leaders of the Irish party, and by virtue of whichan improved system of land-tenure legislation was to be given to Ireland, on the one hand, and every effort was to be made to restore peace to Ireland on the other. I do not intend to go into this old story at any length, my only object being to record the fact that the whole arrangements were conducted between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Parnell, and that Chamberlain was still understood to be the friend of Ireland and of Home Rule. These negotiations led to the resignation of office by the late Mr. William Edward Forster, Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and then came the important question, Who was likely to be put in Mr. Forster's place? I believe that, as a matter of fact, the place was offered, in the first instance, to Sir Charles Dilke, but was declined by him on the ground that he was not also offered a seat in the Cabinet, and Dilke was convinced that unless he had a seat in the Cabinet he could have no chance of pressing successfully on the Government his policy of Home Rule for Ireland.
Mr. Chamberlain then had reason to believe that the office would be tendered to him, and he was willing to accept it and to do the best he could. I know that he believed that theplace was likely to be offered to him and that he was ready to undertake its duties, for he took the very frank and straightforward course of holding a conference with certain Irish Nationalist members to whom he made known his views on the subject. The Irish members whom he consulted understood clearly from him that if he went to Ireland in the capacity of Chief Secretary he would go as a Home Ruler and would expect their co-operation and their assistance. There was no secret about this conference. It was held within the precincts of the House of Commons, and Mr. Chamberlain's action in suggesting and conducting it was entirely becoming and proper under the conditions. For some reason or other, which I at least have never heard satisfactorily explained, the office of Chief Secretary was given, after all, to the late Lord Frederick Cavendish. Then followed the terrible tragedy of the Phoenix Park, Dublin, when Lord Frederick and Mr. Thomas Burke, his official subordinate, were murdered in the open day by a gang of assassins. When the news of this appalling deed reached London, Mr. Parnell and I went at once, and as a matter of course, to consult with Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlainas to the steps which ought to be taken in order to vindicate the Irish people from any charge of sympathy with so wanton and so atrocious a crime. We saw both Dilke and Chamberlain and consulted with them, and I can well remember being greatly impressed by the firmness with which Mr. Chamberlain declared that nothing which had happened would prevent him from accepting the office of Chief Secretary in Ireland if the opportunity were offered to him. I go into all this detail with the object of making it clear to the reader that, up to this time, Mr. Chamberlain had the full confidence of the Irish Nationalist party and was understood by them to be in thorough sympathy with them as to Ireland's demand for Home Rule.
Mr. Chamberlain did not, however, become Irish Secretary, but retained his position as President of the Board of Trade, and many foreign troubles began in Egypt and other parts of the world which diverted the attention of Parliament and the public for a while from questions of purely domestic policy. Mr. Gladstone, however, succeeded in carrying through Parliament a sort of new reform bill which reconstructed the constituencies, expanded theelectorate, and, in fact, set up in the three countries something approaching nearly to the old Chartist idea of equal electoral division and universal suffrage. The foreign troubles, however, were very serious, the Government lost its popularity, and at last was defeated on one of its financial proposals and resigned office. The Tories came into power for a short time. Mr. Chamberlain stumped the country in his old familiar capacity as a Radical politician of the extreme school, and he started a scheme of policy which was commonly described afterwards as the unauthorized programme, in which he advocated, among other bold reforms, a peasant proprietary throughout the country by the compulsory purchase of land, the effect of which would be to endow every deserving peasant with at least three acres and a cow. The Tories were not able to do anything in office, owing to the combined attacks made upon them by the Radicals and the Irish Home Rulers, and in 1886 another dissolution of Parliament took place and a general election came on. The effect of the latest reform measure introduced by Mr. Gladstone now told irresistibly in Mr. Gladstone's favor, and the newly arranged constituencies sent him back into office and intopower. Mr. Chamberlain once again joined Mr. Gladstone's Government, and became President of the Local Government Board.
Then comes a sudden change in the story. The extension of the suffrage gave, for the first time, a large voting power into the hands of the majority of the Irish people, for in Ireland up to that date the right to vote had been enjoyed only by the landlord class and the well-to-do middle class; and the result of the new franchise was that Ireland sent into Parliament an overwhelming number of Home Rule Representatives to follow the leadership of Parnell. Gladstone then became thoroughly satisfied that the vast majority of the Irish people were in favor of Home Rule, and he determined to introduce a measure which should give to Ireland a separate domestic Parliament. Thereupon Mr. Chamberlain suddenly announced that he could not support such a measure of Home Rule, and it presently came out that he could not support any measure of Home Rule. He resigned his place in Mr. Gladstone's Government, and he became from that time not only an opponent of Home Rule but a proclaimed Conservative and anti-Radical. When a Tory Government was formed, after the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule measure, Mr. Chamberlain became a member of the Tory Government, and he is one of the leading members of a Tory Government at this day.
Now, it is for this reason, I suppose, that the unfriendly critic, of whom I have already spoken more than once, thought himself justified in describing Mr. Chamberlain as the Rabagas of English political life. It is, indeed, hard for any of us to understand the meaning of Mr. Chamberlain's sudden change. At the opening of 1886 he was, what he had been during all his previous political life, a flaming democrat and Radical. In the early months of 1886 he was a flaming Tory and anti-Radical. During several years of frequent association with him in the House of Commons I had always known him as an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland, and all of a sudden he exhibited himself as an uncompromising opponent of Home Rule. Many English Liberal members objected to some of the provisions of Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill, but when these objections were removed in Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill they returned at once to their places under his leadership. But Mr. Chamberlain would have nothing to do withany manner of Home Rule measure, and when he visited the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland he delighted all the Ulster Orangemen by the fervor of his speeches against Home Rule. Moreover, it may fairly be asked why an English Radical and democrat of extreme views must needs become an advocate of Toryism all along the line simply because he has ceased to be in favor of Home Rule for Ireland. These are questions which I, at least, cannot pretend to answer.
Of course we have in history many instances of conversions as sudden and as complete, about the absolute sincerity of which even the worldly and cynical critic has never ventured a doubt. There was the conversion of Constantine the Great, and there was the sudden change brought about in the feelings and the life of Ignatius of Loyola. But then somehow Mr. Chamberlain does not seem to have impressed on his contemporaries, either before or after his great change, the idea that he was a man cast exactly in the mold of a Constantine or an Ignatius. Only of late years has he been dubbed with the familiar nickname of "Pushful Joe," but he was always set down as a man of personal ambition, determined to make his way well on in theworld. We had all made up our minds, somehow, that he would be content to push his fortunes on that side of the political field to which, up to that time, he had proclaimed himself to belong, and it never occurred to us to think of him as the associate of Tory dukes, as a leading member of a Tory Government, and as the champion of Tory principles. Men have in all ages changed their political faith without exciting the world's wonder. Mr. Gladstone began as a Tory, and grew by slow degrees into a Radical. Two or three public men in our own days who began as moderate Liberals have gradually turned into moderate Tories. But Mr. Chamberlain's conversion was not like any of these. It was accomplished with a suddenness that seemed to belong to the days when miracles were yet worked upon the earth. Mr. Chamberlain may well feel proud in the consciousness that the close attention of the political world will follow with eager curiosity his further career.