Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)

by T. P. O'Connor

Happy again.

But May 31st brought the Derby, and with the Derby there came upon the Tory Benches one of those moments of temptation which the natural man is utterly unable to resist. The amendments followed each other in rapid succession; division came on top of division; and in them all the Liberals jumped back to their old superiority of numbers. In the earlier part of the day, when the fortunes of Isinglass were still undetermined, the majorities were enormous; and though there was a certain falling off when sporting gentlemen began to get back from the dusty Downs, the average was well kept up; and it was with a distinct rise in the temperature of Liberal hopes and confidence that this stage was reached. On the following day the lowness of the voice in the Old Man was a little more perceptible, and when it got to midnight, he seemed painfully fagged and exhausted. It was, perhaps, because he was in that mood that he made some concessions to the Unionists, which have been somewhat resented. But as these concessions, according to Mr. Gladstone himself, only carried out what the Government had intended from the first, these things may be passed. They had reference chiefly to prohibition of raising in Ireland anything like a military force—even in the shape of a militia or volunteer force. On June 2nd, there was one of those transformations in which the Old Man is constantly surprising friends and foes. He was alert, vigorous, watchful of everything that went on, and the voice rose to its old strength and resonance. It was during that afternoon that there was a slight indication for the first time throughout the progress of the whole Bill of any dissatisfaction on the part of the Irish members. Mr. Byrne—one of the Unionist gang of lawyers—proposed a ridiculous amendment, the effect of which would have been that the Irish Legislature would not have had the right to give a license for a fowling-piece, or to arm their police to meet a rising of the Orangemen.

Mr. Sexton intervenes.

It was then that Mr. Sexton intervened with a word of warning against such a restriction. In burning though carefully restrained language, Mr. Sexton replied to a taunt of Mr. Chamberlain at the silence of the Irish members. Their silence, said Mr. Sexton, was due to their knowledge that Mr. Chamberlain and his confederates had entered into a conspiracy to destroy the power of the House of Commons, and to defeat the mandate of the nation by obstructing a Bill they could not otherwise defeat. Spoken with great fire—with splendid choice of language—with biting sarcasm, of which he is a master—the speech was an event. Mr. Gladstone promptly recognized its spirit; thanked the Irish members for their consideration; and then declared, amid a great sniff from Joe's upturned nose, that if the Irish members desired to express their opinions on any amendment, he and his colleagues would wait before expressing their own views. There seemed to be a slight hope among the Tories and the ever-venomous Joe that this meant a rift in the lute between the Irish members and the Government; but they were woefully disappointed—especially when the amendment was indignantly rejected by the House.

The "Daily News."

It is the outspoken, rather than the loudly uttered, that is often the important thing in a House of Commons discussion. This was the case with the curious little debate which Mr. Chamberlain initiated on June 6th. The Daily News had published a little article describing the manner in which the Tories had shouted at—hooted—interrupted—Mr. Gladstone on the Thursday night previous. It may at once be asked why Mr. Chamberlain should have thought it necessary to notice the article. He boasted that he was not in the habit of noticing what appeared against him in the newspapers—which is not true to a certain extent, or at least is not generally so thought, for it is understood that no man reads more carefully the extracts sent to him by those press-cutting agencies which have added either a new luxury or a new terror to public life. But Mr. Chamberlain's action had many roots. First, like many others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the deeper pallor on the white-complexioned face. When he was a Cabinet Minister he could never, or rarely, be got to remain in the House of Commons during the whole of the evening; and one of the chief reasons, I have heard, he gave for thus absenting himself was that he could not stand the talk from the opposite side—it made him so angry.

Joe's motives.

But there were other and more immediate reasons for his anger with the Daily News. Joe was conscious of the growth of two feelings—either of which was very perilous to him. First, he began uneasily to feel that the country—watching the struggle between him and the Old Man—was getting a little disgusted at the business; and saw in it a want of that chivalry and fair play which it desires to see even in the fiercest political controversy. This was not a pleasant sentiment to have growing up against one; and Joe felt that it has serious perils to his future political position. And, secondly, he was conscious that the majority of the House of Commons was growing very restive under the desperate obstruction of which he had made himself the champion, and that this feeling might soon become strong enough to carry Mr. Gladstone and the Ministers off their feet, and compel drastic measures which had hitherto been steadily refrained from. This would not suit the book of Joe at all, whose object it was to keep the struggle going as long as he possibly could manage it, careless of the traditions of Parliament, of the dignity and decency of the House of Commons, of the life and strength of Mr. Gladstone, of everything except his own greedy desire for personal revenge and triumph.

Mr. Gladstone's gentleness.

This was what lay behind the plausible and honeyed words in which Mr. Chamberlain attacked the article in the Daily News. And here a curious difficulty arose which rather helped Joe, and almost enabled him to score a great triumph. Everybody knows that between the temper of Mr. Gladstone and that of his friends and supporters there is an impassable gulf. That mastery of a vulnerable temper, which accounted for many of the troubles of his earlier political career, which he himself has acknowledged in many a pathetic passage in his correspondence—that mastery of the vulnerable temper is now so complete that the Old Man glides through scenes of insult and passes over what the humblest member of the House would often find it hard to endure. There is something indeed strange, wistful, almost uncanny, in the unbreakable gentleness of that white figure, with the ivory complexion, the scant white hair, the large white collar and broad white shirt-front—there is something which becomes almost an obsession to the observer in watching the figure with its strangely tranquil and gentle expression in the heat and centre of all this fierce Parliamentary battle.