It is customary for the parliamentary novice to crave the indulgence of the House for such faults of manner or style as may be the result of youth or inexperience. This modest attitude on the part of a speaker inspires his audience favourably; they become infused with a glow of conscious superiority which is most agreeable and inclines them to listen with a kindly ear to the utterances of the budding politician. Not always, however, is this humility expressed. William Cobbett began his maiden speech on January 29, 1833, by remarking that in the short period during which he had sat in the House he had heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation.[347] Hunt, the Preston demagogue, showed his contempt for the Commons and his own self-assurance by speaking six times on six different subjects on the very first night of his introduction.[348] William Cowper, afterwards Lord Chancellor, addressed the House three times on the day he took his seat.
In the House of Lords, too, can be heard maiden speeches delivered in many varying styles. One perhaps may be made by an ex-Cabinet Minister, a distinguished member of Parliament recently promoted to the Upper House, apologising in abject tones for his lack of experience, and commending his humble efforts to the indulgence of his audience. Another emanates from some youthful nobleman who has just succeeded to a peerage, whose political experience has yet to be won, and who addresses his peers in the didactic fashion of a headmaster lecturing a form of rather unintelligent schoolboys. It is not so very long ago that a young peer—who has since made the acquaintance of most divisions of the Supreme Court, from the Bankruptcy to the Divorce—astonished and entertained his colleagues by closing his peroration with a fervent prayer that God might long spare him to assist in their lordships' deliberations.
There is a golden mean between the two styles, the humble and the haughty, which it is well for the embryo politician to cultivate before he attempts to impress Parliament with his eloquence.
Oratory has been defined in many different ways by many different writers. Lord Chesterfield and Dr. Johnson, respectively, described it as the power of persuading people, or of beating down an adversary's arguments and putting better ones in their place. The business of the orator, according to Sir James Mackintosh, is to state plainly, to reason calmly, to seem transported into vehemence by his feelings, and roused into splendid imagery or description by his subject, but always to return to fact and argument, as that on which alone he is earnestly bent.[349] Gladstone, again, defined oratory as the speaker's power of receiving from his audience in a vapour that which he pours back upon them in a flood.
Oratory is perhaps the gift of the gods, but skill in speaking is undoubtedly an art that can be acquired by practice, if sought diligently and with patience. Demosthenes gloried in the smell of the lamp; Cicero learnt every speech by heart. The former would go down to the seashore on a stormy day, fill his mouth with pebbles, and speak loudly to the ocean, thus accustoming himself to the murmur of popular assemblies; the latter on one occasion rehearsed a speech so diligently that he had little strength left to deliver it on the following day. The sight of a modern politician sitting on the pier at Brighton delivering a marine address as intelligibly as a mouthful of gravel would permit, is one that would only excite feelings of alarm in the bosoms of his friends; the thought of a Cabinet Minister fainting before his looking-glass, as the result of an excessive rehearsal of his peroration, is more pathetic than practical. There is, however, nothing to prevent a member of Parliament from practising his elocution upon the trees of the forest, as Grattan did,[350] or upon the House of Commons itself, and it is thus alone that he will acquire proficiency in that art in which it is so desirable for the statesman to excel. "It is absolutely necessary for you to speak in Parliament," Lord Chesterfield wrote to his long-suffering son. "It requires only a little human attention and no supernatural gifts."[351]
Charles James Fox resolved, when young, to speak at least once every night in the House. During five whole sessions he held manfully to this resolution, with the exception of one single evening—an exception which he afterwards regretted. He thus became the most brilliant debater that ever lived, "vehement in his elocution, ardent in his language, prompt in his invention of argument, adroit in its use."[352] He was, however, too impetuous to be as great an orator as his rival Pitt, whose majestic eloquence was almost divine,[353] and offended continually by the tautology of his diction and the constant repetition of his arguments. The hesitation and lack of grace of his delivery detracted greatly from the force of his speeches; the keenness of his sabre, as Walpole said, was blunted by the difficulty with which he drew it from the scabbard.[354] In a comparison of the two statesmen, Flood calls Pitt's speeches "didactic declamations," and those of Fox "argumentative conversations."[355]
It was said that it required great mental exertion to follow Fox while he was speaking, but none to remember what he had said; but that it was easy to follow Pitt, but hard to remember what there was in his speech that had pleased one. The difference between the two men was the difference between the orator and the debater. It resulted largely from the fact that the one gave much time to the preparation of his speeches, while the other relied upon the inspiration of the moment. Pitt, as Porson says, carefully considered his sentences before he uttered them; Fox threw himself into the middle of his, "and left it to God Almighty to get him out again."[356] If the former was the more dignified as a speaker, the latter scored by being always so terribly in earnest. Grattan, who affirmed that Pitt's eloquence marked an era in the senate, that it resembled "sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music, of the spheres," and admitted that Pitt was right nine times for once that Fox was right, declared that that once of Fox was worth all the other nine times of Pitt.[357]
No doubt the Parliament of those days was not so critical a body as it has since become. Lord Chesterfield, at least, held it in the profoundest contempt. "When I first came into the House of Commons," he says, "I respected that assembly as a venerable one; and felt a certain awe upon me; but, upon better acquaintance, that awe soon vanished; and I discovered that, of the five hundred and sixty, not above thirty could understand reason, and that all the rest were peuple; that those thirty only required plain common-sense, dressed up in good language; and that all the others only required flowing and harmonious periods, whether they conveyed any meaning or not; having ears to hear, but not sense enough to judge."[358] This scathing indictment of the intelligence of the Commons may possibly have been true at the time when it was written: it would certainly not be applicable to-day. Meaningless periods, however harmonious, are no longer tolerated. In Lord Chesterfield's day, however, sound seems to have been more important than sense, as may be gathered from an account he gives elsewhere of a speech made in 1751 in the House of Lords. He was speaking upon a Bill for the Reform of the Calendar, a subject upon which he knew absolutely nothing. To conceal his ignorance he conceived the idea of giving the House an historical account of calendars generally, from Ancient Egyptian to modern times, being particularly attentive to the choice of his words, to the harmony of his periods, and to his elocution. The peers were enchanted. "They thought I informed," he explains, "because I pleased them; and many of them said that I had made the whole very clear to them, when, God knows, I had not even attempted it."[359]
The gift of oratory is most certainly heaven-born, but its development demands a vast amount of purely mundane labour. The best speeches have ever been those in the preparation of which the most time and trouble have been expended. Burke's masterpieces were essays, laboriously constructed in the study; Sheridan's elaborate impromptus were carefully devised beforehand, and, if successful, occasionally repeated.[360] Chatham, whose wonderful dominion over the House does not perhaps appear in his speeches, chose his words with the greatest care, and confided to a friend that in order to improve his vocabulary he had read "Bailey's Dictionary" twice through from beginning to end.
The fervid eloquence of such men as Plunket, Macaulay, Brougham, and Canning—"the last of the rhetoricians"—was the fruit of many an hour of laborious thought and study. Canning especially never spared himself. He would draw up for use in the House a paper, on which were written the heads of the subjects which he intended to touch upon. These heads were numbered, and the numbers sometimes extended to four or five hundred. Lord North, when he lost the thread of his discourse, would look through his notes with the utmost nonchalance, seeking the cue which was to lead him to further flights of eloquence. "It is not on this side of the paper, Mr. Speaker," he would declaim, still speaking in his oratorical tone; "neither is it on the other side!" Then, perhaps, he would suddenly come upon the desired note, and continue his unbroken oration without a sign of further hesitation.[361] Bright used to provide himself with small slips of paper, inscribed with his bon-mots, which he drew from his pocket as occasion required. He excelled, nevertheless, in scathing repartee. Once, during his absence through illness, a noble lord stated publicly that Bright had been afflicted by Providence with a disease of the brain as a punishment for his misuse of his talents. "It may be so," said Bright, on his return to the House, "but in any case it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the noble lord to know that the disease is one which even Providence could not inflict upon him."[362] He did not always get the best of it, however, and when he ridiculed Lord John Manners for the youthful couplet—