Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

The members of our National House of Representatives, however turbulent or disorderly, never would submit to the fashion of treating a speaker whom they do not want to hear which prevails in the House of Commons. When Mr. Gladstone got through, the night was far spent, and the House evidently wanted to hear Disraeli, then vote and go home. Mr. Plunket, a member for the University of Dublin, who seemed an intelligent and sensible man, rose, wishing to correct a statement of Mr. Gladstone's, which he thought had done him an injustice. Disraeli rose about the same time, but bowed and gave way. The House did not like it. Poor Plunket's voice was drowned in the storm of shouts—"Sit down. Sit down. Dizzy, Dizzy," in which my friend, Mr. Hughes, although of Gladstone's party, joined at the top of his lungs. I think the Bedlam lasted five minutes. But Plunket stood his ground and made his correction.

Although Bernal Osborne was a man of great wit and sense, and Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were then, as the latter is now, very eminent characters, yet the only speakers who belonged to the rank of the great orators were Gladstone and Disraeli. I will not undertake to add another description of Gladstone to the many with which every reader of mine is thoroughly familiar. The late Dr. Bellows resembled him very nearly, both in his way of reasoning and his manner of speech. Persons who have heard Dr. Bellows at his best will not deem this comparison unworthy.

Gladstone was terribly in earnest. He began his speech by a compliment to Northcote, his opponent, for whom he had shown his esteem by sending him to the United States as one of the Joint High Commission to make the Alabama Treaty. But when Mr. Gladstone was well under way, Sir Stafford interposed a dissent from something he said by calling out "No, no"— a very frequent practice in the House. Gladstone turned upon him savagely, with a tone of anger which I might almost call furious: "Can the gentleman tolerate no opinion but his own, that he interjects his audible contradiction into the middle of my sentence?" The House evidently did not like it. Hughes, who agreed with Gladstone, said to me: "What a pity it is that he cannot control his temper; that is his great fault."

There are no passages in this speech of Gladstone that can be cited as among the best examples of the great style of the orator. But there are several that give a good idea of his manner, and show something of the argument in two or three sentences: "I am not at all ashamed of having said, and I will say it again, that this is a choice of evils. I do not say that the proposal for a secret ballot is open to no objections whatever. I admit that open voting has its evils as well as its merits. One of these merits is that it enables a man to discharge a noble duty in the noblest possible manner. But what are its demerits? That by marking his vote you expose the voter to be tempted through his cupidity and through his fears. We propose, by secret voting, to greatly diminish the first of these, and we hope to take away the second. We do not believe that the disposition to bribe can operate with anything like its present force when the means of tracing the action of the man bribed are taken away, because men will not pay for that they do not know they will ever receive."

"I think it is too late for the honorable gentleman to say, 'We are passing through an experiment; wait for more experiment.'" "We have already been debating this subject for forty years; we have plenty of time on our hands; it is a Godsend to have anything to fill up our vacant hours; and therefore let us postpone the subject in order that it may be dealt with in future years."

The great quality of Gladstone, as of Sumner, is his profound seriousness. He makes the impression on his hearers, an impression made, but not so strongly, upon his readers, that the matter he is discussing is that upon which the foundations of heaven and earth rest.

It would be a great mistake to hold Disraeli cheap. He turned the tables upon Osborne, who had gone into several, what Disraeli called, archaeological details, with respect to the antiquity of the ballot, and had cited a proclamation of Charles I. prohibiting the ballot in all corporations, either in the city of London or elsewhere, which Disraeli said "was done with the admirable view of identifying the opinions of those who sit on this side of the House with the political sentiments of that monarch. But there was another assertion of the principle that the ballot should be open that the gentleman has not cited. That occurred in the most memorable Parliament that ever sat in England—the Long Parliament . . . . They wished it therefore to be exercised, not to satisfy the self-complacency of the individual, but with due respect for common-sense and the public opinion of the country, and influenced by all those doctrines and all that discipline of party which they believed to be one of the best securities for public liberty."

Gladstone showed in his speech the profounder reflection on the general subject, the more philosophy, and the intenser earnestness; Disraeli showed quickness of wit, a ready command of his resources, ability for subtle distinctions, and glimpses of his almost Satanic capacity for mocking and jeering. He describes Mr. Gladstone most felicitously as "inspired by a mixture of genius and vexation." He speaks of his majority as a "mechanical majority, a majority the result of heedlessness of thought on the part of members who were so full of other questions that they gave pledges in favor of the ballot without due consideration."

He said: "There is a celebrated river, which has been the subject of political interest of late, and with which we are all acquainted. It rolls its magnificent volume, clear and pellucid, in its course; but it never reaches the ocean; it sinks into mud and morass. And such will be the fate of this mechanical majority. The conscience of the country is against it. It is an old-fashioned political expedient; it is not adapted to the circumstances which we have to encounter in the present, and because it has no real foundation of truth or policy, it will meet with defeat and discomfiture."

Gladstone had, what is quite rare, and what no famous American orator that I now think of, except Choate and Evarts, have had—a tendency to diffuse and somewhat involved speech, and at the same time a gift of compact epigrammatic utterance on occasions. When Mr. Evarts, who was my near relative, and a man with whom I could take a liberty, came into the Senate, I said to him that we should have to amend the rules so that a motion to adjourn would be in order in the middle of a sentence; to which he replied that he knew of nobody in this country, who objected to long sentences, except the criminal classes.