Sketches in the House Part 10

Then there are the shouts of "Aye" and "No," with "Agreed, agreed!" from some Irish Benches--a humorous suggestion that highly tickles everybody.

Mr. Gladstone is almost the last to enter from the lobby of the majority. Alone, slowly, with pale face, he walks up the floor. The significance of the great moment, the long years of struggle, of heroic courage, of inflexible temerity, of patient and splendid hope, all this rushes tumultuously to the minds of his friends and followers, and, in a second, without a word of warning or command, the Liberals and the Irish have sprung to their feet, and, underneath their cheers--their waving hats, their uplifted forms--Mr. Gladstone pa.s.ses through to his seat as under a canopy.

At last, Tom Ellis, the Junior Liberal Whip, quickly comes up the floor--the paper is handed to Mr. Marjoribanks--this announces we have won--a good cheer, but short, for we want to know the numbers--and then they are read out.

For the second reading 347 Against 304

The majority is 43. The Lord be praised! we have polled all our men! And then more cheers--taken up outside in the deeper bellow of the big crowd, and then more waving of hats and another great reception to Mr.

Gladstone. And so, as the streaks of day rose on this hour of Ireland's coming dawn, we went to our several homes.

CHAPTER X.

THE BUDGET, OBSTRUCTION, AND EGYPT.

[Sidenote: Sir William.]

Sir William Harcourt, on April 24th, had the double honour of speaking before the smallest audience and making the best Budget speech for many years. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has two manners. He can be as boisterous, exuberant, and gay, as any speaker in the House, and he can also be as lugubrious as though his life had been spent in the service of an undertaker. He was in the undertaker mood this evening. Slowly, solemnly, sadly, he unfolded his story of the finances of the country.

He had taken the trouble to write down every word of what he had to say--an evil habit to which he has adhered all his life. But, notwithstanding these two things--which are both, to my mind, capital defects in Parliamentary speaking--Sir William put his case with such extraordinary lucidity, that everybody listened in profound attention to every word he uttered; and when he sate down, he was almost overwhelmed with the chorus of praise which descended on his head from all quarters of the House.

Sir William Harcourt imitated most Chancellors of the Exchequer, in keeping his secret to the latest possible moment. Like a good dramatist also, he arranged his figures and the matter of his speech so well that the final solution became inevitable, and the final solution, of course, was the addition of a penny to the income-tax. The debate which followed the Budget speech was quiet, discursive, friendly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Picton is a formidable man to Chancellors of the Exchequer--for he has very strong ideas of reform--especially on the breakfast-table; but Mr. Picton is rational as well as Radical; and he cordially acknowledged the duty of postponing even the reforms on which Radicals have set their hearts until more convenient times and seasons.

[Sidenote: Belfast.]

It was after midnight when a very serious bit of business took place.

The House gets to know beforehand when anything like serious debate is going to take place--even though there be no notice. Accordingly, in spite of the lateness of the hour, the House was pretty full, and there was a preliminary air of expectation and excitement. One of the iron rules of the House of Commons is that the Speaker cannot leave the chair until a motion for the adjournment of the House has been carried. This is always proposed by the senior Government Whip. The motion is usually carried in dumb show, and with that mumble in which business is carried through in the House when there is no opposition. But it is one of the ancient and time-honoured privileges of the House of Commons to raise almost any question on the motion for the adjournment of the House. The reason, I a.s.sume, is that the representatives of the people--when about to separate--thought in the olden days that it ought to be their right to raise any question whatsoever, lest the king in their absence should take advantage of the situation. Many of the rules of the House--including several which lend themselves to obstruction--are due to this feeling of constant vigilance and suspicion towards the Crown.

Mr. s.e.xton is one of the men whose life is centred in the House of Commons. He will attend to no other business, except under the direst pressure--he has no other interests--though he used to be one of the greatest of readers, and still can quote Shakespeare and other masterpieces of English literature better than any man in the House except Mr. Justin McCarthy. Thus, when he rose after midnight, he had in his notes before him a perfectly tabulated account of the riots in Belfast, so that every single fact was present to his mind. The story he had to tell is already known--the attacks on Catholic workmen--on Catholic boys--on Catholic girls--by the st.u.r.dy defenders of law, loyalty, and order in Belfast. It was not an occasion for strong speech--the facts spoke with their silent eloquence better than any tongue could do. The business was all done very quietly--it had the sombre reticence of all tragic crises; everybody felt the importance of the affair too deeply to give way to strong manifestation of feeling.

But there were significant and profound, though subdued, marks of feeling on the Liberal Benches; and everybody could see what names were in the minds of everybody.

[Sidenote: Mr. Asquith as leader.]

Mr. Asquith was for the moment the leader of the House. Though he has still some of the ingenuous shyness of youth--though he is modest with all his honours--though he has charmed everybody by the utter absence of swagger and side in his dazzling elevation--there is a ready adaptability about Mr. Asquith to a Parliamentary situation, which is as astonis.h.i.+ng as it is rare in men who have spent their lives in the atmosphere of the law courts. The apt.i.tude with which the right word always comes to his lips--his magnificent composure, and, at the same time, his power of striking the nail right on the head and right _into_ the head--all these things come out on an occasion such as that of April 24th. Very quietly, but very significantly, he told the story of the riots; and very quietly and very significantly he spoke of the responsibility of the Salisburys, and the Balfours, and the Jameses, whose wild and wicked words had led to this outburst of medieval bigotry.

[Sidenote: Mr. Dunbar Barton.]

Mr. Dunbar Barton made a valiant but vain attempt to stem the tide against him, but he, like every other Unionist, was weighted down by the feeling that the Orangemen were doing immense service to the cause of Home Rule by their brutality. However, the fumes of Unionist oratory seem to have ascended to the heads of all the excitable young men of the Tory party. Mr. Dunbar Barton, personally, is one of the gentlest of men; his manners are kind and good-natured enough to make him a universal favourite--even with his vehement Nationalist foes; and he speaks with evident sincerity. But he had so worked himself up that he babbled blithely of spending a portion of his days in penal servitude--talked big about a mysterious organization which was being got ready in Ulster, and declared that the day would come when he would stand by the side of the Orangemen in the streets of Belfast. He was listened to for the most part in silence, until he tripped into an unseemly remark about Mr. Gladstone, when the much-tried Liberals burst into an angry protest.

[Sidenote: Mr. Arnold Forster.]

Very different was Mr. Arnold Forster. I must be pardoned if, as an Irishman, I always see something genial and not wholly unlovely even in the most violent Irish enemy. We all like Johnston of Ballykilbeg--most of us rather like Colonel Saunderson, and Mr. Dunbar Barton is decidedly popular. But this Arnold Forster--with his dry, self-complacent, self-sufficient fanaticism--is intolerable and hateful. He never gets up without making one angry. There is no man whose genius would ent.i.tle him to half the arrogant self-conceit of this young member. Acrid, venomous, rasping, he injures his own cause by the very excess of his gall and by the exuberance of his pretension. He also saw that the riots would do no good, and he hinted darkly of what he called "ordered resistance,"

whatever that means. But, on the whole, the advocates of the Orangemen made a very poor show.

[Sidenote: Tory obstruction.]

The Tories thus early developed the policy of preventing the Government pa.s.sing any Bill--English or Irish--good or bad. Whenever a good English Bill stood as the first order--a Bill which they did not dare to oppose--they found some excuse for moving the adjournment of the House.

This is a privilege which was intended to be used very rarely, but in the course of the present Session it has been very freely resorted to--especially when it has afforded a chance of keeping off good Government business. On Tuesday, April 25th, the excuse given was that Mr. Bryce had been guilty of political partisans.h.i.+p in adding a batch of Liberals to the Bench in Lancas.h.i.+re over the head of Lord Sefton--the Tory or Unionist Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Mr. Legh, a young, silent, and retiring Tory member, began the attack, and did so in a very neat, well-worded, and pretty little speech. Mr. Hanbury--who is making his fame as a champion obstructive--followed this up, and Mr. Curzon addressed the House in his superior style. Mr. Bryce was able to blow to pieces the fabric of attack which had been so laboriously erected against him by stating a few facts, of which these may be given as a fair specimen. When Mr. Bryce came into office, of the borough magistrates in Lancas.h.i.+re 507 were Unionists and only 159 were Liberals.

On the county bench there were 522 Unionists and 142 Liberals. This was a crus.h.i.+ng reply, and an even more satisfactory retort came in the shape of the division, when 260 voted for the Government, and only 186 against.

[Sidenote: Tommy "Burt."]

Nearly three hours of precious public time had been wasted over this wretched business, and at last, for the third or fourth time, the debate was resumed on the second reading of the Employers' Liability Bill. An amendment of Mr. Chamberlain's had been the obstacle which stood in the way of the Bill all this time. After the debate had gone on for hours, Mr. Chamberlain got up and declared that his amendment had served its purpose--an awkward way of putting it, which the Liberals were not slow to take up. The debate was made remarkable by the first speech of any importance made by Mr. Burt since he became a member of the Ministry.

Mr. Burt is the most popular of members, and there was a ring of genuine delight in the welcome given to the honest, modest, genuine working man standing at the Treasury Bench, and symbolising the revolution of the times. Mr. Burt spoke ably and well, but it was in a foreign tongue--which it takes a little time for even a quick linguist to understand. This Northumbrian burr is the strongest accent in the House; even the broadest Scotch is less difficult to catch. It is curious how the different parts of the country betray themselves by their speech.

There are Scotchmen whom it is not easy to follow, and there are very few of them who speak with anything like an English accent. Even the most fluent of the Welshmen speak with a certain hesitation, betraying their bilingual infancy and youth. The Irish have as many accents nearly as there are members. The Northumbrian burr, however, is a tongue apart.

It has the pleasantness of every foreign tongue, and since Mr. Joseph Cowen left Parliamentary life, Mr. Burt is the only member who speaks it in its pristine purity. The Tories were closured finally, though they had their revenge by preventing the Bill from going to the Grand Committee, and the work of justice is a little longer postponed.

[Sidenote: Mr. Goschen playful.]

On Thursday, April 27th, the debate began on Sir William Harcourt's Budget; and it found Mr. Goschen in an unusually playful mood. He had a task for which his talents eminently fitted him. Irresolute, timid, changeable, he is the very worst man in the world for constructive legislation; but give him the opportunity of criticising what somebody else has proposed, and he is in his real element, and is, perhaps, the very best man in the House of Commons. There wasn't much to criticise in the Budget of Sir William Harcourt from the Tory point of view. Finding himself with a deficit the Liberal leader was unable to go in for any startling novelty, especially in a Session when everything is to be opposed in order that Home Rule may be defeated. But one would have thought that this would have delighted the timid and conservative soul of Mr. Goschen. Not a bit of it. Taking cleverly the rather auroral promises of the election period, Mr. Goschen contrasted all these hopes and glowing prospects with the thin and meagre fare of Sir William's Budget. It was very well done--full of unwonted fire, of biting and effective raillery and of excellent party hits; it lit up for a brief s.p.a.ce the sombreness which has fallen so completely on the Tory Benches in this year of wails and lamentations.

[Sidenote: Sir William as an early Christian.]

But the debate soon relapsed under a soporific speech from Sir John Lubbock, who made an insinuating proposal to open a discussion on Home Rule in the midst of the debate on the Imperial Budget. Sir William was a delight during these proceedings. Everybody knows that he has both a warm heart and a warm temper, and there have been times when the collisions between himself and Mr. Goschen have seemed to indicate a violence of personal as well as of party antagonism. But the duty of great ministers is to practise the scriptural principle of turning the other cheek to the smiter. It is wonderful, indeed, to see how humanity can attune itself to a situation. The most violent and vehement free-lance below the gangway sobers down in office to politeness, and peace with all men of good or bad will. Sir William, sitting on the Treasury Bench that night--beneath the wild tirade of Mr. Goschen--under the dreary drip of Sir John Lubbock--was a sight that a new Addison might show to his child; not that he might see how a Christian might die, but how a great Christian official could suffer with all the patience of silent and suffering merit. There was a look of almost dazzling and beatific sanct.i.ty on Sir William's face that was perfectly delightful to behold. And when he got up to reply to Mr. Goschen and to Sir John Lubbock, whither had departed that splendid rotundity of voice--that resonant shout of triumph or of defiance? Sir William coo'd gently as the white-feathered dove; and the Tory Benches, which had been ebullient with excitement a few moments before, could not find it in their hearts to do other than listen reverently to this good and holy man expostulating with heathen foes. And thus the first resolution of the Budget got quietly through, which was exactly what the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted; whereupon there might have been observed, perhaps, by a close looker-on, a sinking of one of Sir William's eyelids, which might have suggested in a lesser mortal the wink of the man who takes off the mask when the comedy is over. Sir William is a splendid artiste.

[Sidenote: A great night.]

It was probably under the influence of Sir William that this turned out to be the greatest and best night the Government had had so far. The Railway Servants' Bill got through its third reading amid cheers, and then, before it knew where it was, the House found itself actually in the same night discussing a third Ministerial measure--the Scotch Fisheries Bill. It is one of the privileges of Scotland that n.o.body takes the least interest in her measures outside her own representatives, and that even they are sombre and joyless in the expression of their delight. The demand for Scotch Home Rule does not come a.s.suredly from the intervention of English or Irish speech. I have never seen the House with more than a score or two of members when a Scotch question is under discussion, and on the rare occasions on which a Southron does dare to intrude upon the sacred domain, it is with the most shamefaced looks. And so Sir George Trevelyan and his Scotch friends were allowed to have their nice little tea-party without any interruption, and the Bill got very nicely through. Thus ended a remarkable night.

[Sidenote: The bullet in Downing Street.]

And now I come to the point which, after all, had been the most interesting during the week, and which, though rarely mentioned, was in everybody's mind. It was on the Thursday evening that Mr. s.e.xton got up quietly to ask whether the reports published in the evening papers were true, that a man had been arrested the previous night in Downing Street, who had apparently intended to attempt the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Prime Minister. There was death-like stillness all over the House as Mr.

s.e.xton put his question--picking his words slowly and deliberately. If men were not so anxious and so shocked there might have been some demonstration of the vehement anger which was felt in so many b.r.e.a.s.t.s as Mr. s.e.xton brought out the words which put in collocation in the mind of the unfortunate lunatic the idea of attempting to kill Mr. Gladstone, and the phrase of Sir Henry James during the debate on the Home Rule Bill. But feeling was too intense and solemn for outspoken or loud utterance, and Mr. s.e.xton was allowed to put his question to the end without any interruption from the intensely excited and profoundly thrilled a.s.sembly. This is one of the curiosities of Parliamentary and British nature--that the moments of tensest feeling are so often those which, to a stranger, would appear listless, indifferent, impa.s.sive. Mr.

Asquith spoke in tones suitable to the temper of the a.s.sembly. This was a very grave matter, he said; but it was for the moment before the courts of law, and his lips were sealed. And so the subject dropped.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone.]

The people were asking themselves what would happen, when Mr. Gladstone entered the House; but if there had been any desire to mark the occasion, he himself prevented it. He dropped more quietly into his seat than usual, and at the moment when, to a thin House, Sir William was giving one of those gentle and beatific answers to which I have already alluded. To judge by Mr. Gladstone's quietness of entrance, nothing unusual had happened to him, and he himself had declined even to talk about the matter. And yet there was a certain look as of reverie on his face--as though of a man who had looked into that dark and hideous abyss called Death. He had not been looking very well for some days, and perhaps there was not--though imagination saw it--a deadlier pallor than usual on the face. But it was only when he was sitting on the deserted bench beside Sir William Harcourt that one had an opportunity of detecting any difference between his usual appearance and his appearance at that particular moment. The minute he had any part to take in the proceedings of the House, he was just as alert, cheerful, self-composed as ever. This wonderful man is as much a miracle physically as mentally. The giant intellect is backed by a steady nerve, the perfect mind by the perfect body. And thus he is able to go through trials, dangers, fatigues, which would destroy any ordinary man, as though nothing had occurred. During this week, indeed, he was especially playful. On the Tuesday night, when the onslaught was being made on Mr.

Bryce, Sir Henry James spoke of Lord Sefton as being a strong Liberal.

Mr. Gladstone uttered a quiet, gentle, deprecatory "Oh!" whereupon Sir Henry James reiterated his statement with a look of surprise and shock.

Mr. Gladstone didn't depart from his att.i.tude of gentle and almost plaintive remonstrance. He waved his hand mildly, and with a smile, and Sir Henry James was allowed to proceed to the solemn end of his solemn harangue.

[Sidenote: A visit to the Lords.]

It is not often that a rational man takes the trouble of paying a visit to the House of Lords. But that a.s.sembly was certainly worth a visit on May 1st. When the fight in Woodford, County Galway, was at its height, and everybody was repeating the name of Lord Clanricarde, people began to ask if there were ever such a person, or if he were not merely the creation of some morbid imagination--desirous of conjuring up a human bogey for the purpose of demonstrating the iniquities of Irish landlordism. The story on the estate which he owned, and whose destinies he controlled, was that, on one occasion, a strange spectral figure had been seen following the coffin of the old Clanricarde to the tomb of his fathers; that the figure had disappeared as suddenly and as noiselessly as it had come; that it had not reappeared even on the solemn occasion when again the historic and century-old vaults of the family graveyard had opened to receive the late lord's wife and the existing lord's mother. Writing his missives from afar--invisible, unapproachable, unknown--or known, rather, only by harsh refusal--by dogged, obdurate rejection of all terms--save the full pound of flesh--not even rendered human by pa.s.sionate and eloquent outburst of remonstrance, but represented by thin, brief, business-like and curt notes as of a very crusty solicitor--such Lord Clanricarde appeared to the imaginations of the people of the district of which he was almost the supreme master.

There were riots--fierce conflicts extending over days--then dreary sentences of lengthy imprisonments, with gaol tragedies; but still this strange, dry, inarticulate, obstinate figure remained immutable, always invisible, unapproachable, obdurate, spectral. Even the Tory leaders were disgusted and wearied, and Mr. Balfour was careful, in the very crisis and agony of his fight with the National League, to disavow all sympathy with the strange being that was bringing to his a.s.sistance all the mighty resources of an Empire's army, an Empire's exchequer, and an Empire's overwhelming power to crush in blood, in the silence of the cell and the deeper silence of the tomb, all resistance to his imperious will.

[Sidenote: Entry of a ghost.]

It must have been with something of a shock that the House of Lords, with all its well-trained and high-bred self-control, found that this curious and fateful figure was within its gates. Probably, to scarcely half-a-dozen of his colleagues and fellow-peers, was this figure anything but a strange and unexpected incursion from the dim ghost-land, in which, hermit-like, he seems to dwell. Indeed, the Marquis of Londonderry was careful to explain that he had no personal acquaintance with the man whose case he was defending against the action of the Commission presided over by Mr. Justice Mathew. And it was easy to see, that Lord Clanricarde was a stranger, and a very lonely one, too, in that a.s.sembly in which he is ent.i.tled to sit and vote on the nation's destinies. On a back seat, on the Liberal side of the House, silent, forlorn, unspeaking and unspoken to, he sat throughout the long and tedious debate in which he was a protagonist. There was, indeed, something shocking to the sense--shocking in being so surprising--that this should be the figure around which one of the fiercest and most tragic political struggles of our time should have surged. He is a man slightly above the middle height, thin in face and in figure. Somehow or other, there is a general air about him that I can only describe by the word shabby--I had almost ventured on the term ragged. The clothes hang somewhat loosely--are of a pattern that recalls a half century ago--and have all the air of having been worn until they are positively threadbare. Altogether, there is about this inheritor of a great name--of vast estates--of a t.i.tle that in its days was almost kingly--an air that suggests a combination between the recluse and the poor man of letters, who makes his home in the reading-room of the British Museum.

It was also a peculiarity of the position that he seemed an almost unwelcome visitant, even to those who had to defend him. There was an awful pause when he rose, silently and so spectre-like, from his seat in the dim land of the back benches, and pa.s.sed to the seat immediately behind the Marquis of Salisbury. Lord Salisbury made a very vivid and amusing speech in the course of the evening, in defence of Lord Clanricarde and in an attack on Mr. Justice Mathew; but observers thought they saw a look of palpable discomfort pa.s.s across his face at the approach of the Marquis of Clanricarde. The Lord of Woodford handed to Lord Salisbury a little bundle of papers; in the distance, the bundle had an inexpressibly shabby look--the look one might expect on the bundle which some Miss Flit of the Legislature would bring every day, as the record of her undetermined claim. Altogether, this appearance of Lord Clanricarde in the glimpses of the moon, rather added to the mysterious atmosphere in which he loves to live.

[Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke.]

In the meantime, a very interesting debate was going on in the House of Commons. I have already remarked that Sir Charles Dilke has, in an extremely short time, re-established that mastery over the ear and the mind of the House of Commons which he used to exercise with such extraordinary power in the old days before misfortune overcame him. It is a power and mastery derived from a perfect House of Commons mind. Sir Charles Dilke, doubtless, has written on many subjects outside mere politics; but in politics his whole heart and soul are concentrated.

There is no man in the House of Commons so thoroughly political. It would be bewildering to give even the heads of the subjects on which he has written and in which he is profoundly learned. He has written about our Army--he could tell you everything about every army corps in the German Army--he knows all about every fortress on the French frontier--he can convey to you a photographic picture of every great public man on the Continent--he would be able in the morning to take charge of the Admiralty, and over and on top of all this knowledge he could tell you every detail of the law of registration, of parochial rating, of vestry work, and all the rest of that curious technical, dry, detailed information which raises the ire of parish souls, and forms the fierce conflicts of suburban ratepayers.

[Sidenote: Egypt.]