"This is not debate," protested Shaw-Lefevre, sternly! "it is preaching; why cannot a man be concise? Concision, if I may coin a word, is the soul of argument. My old friend Dizzy used to say to me, 'Shaw, what I admire about Lefevre is his terseness. If you want a man to say in twenty minutes everything that, from his point of view, is to be spoken on a given subject, Shaw-Lefevre is the man.' That was, perhaps, a too flattering view to take; but there's something in it, and it makes me, perhaps naturally, impatient of a man who wanders round his subject for an hour and a half."
Business done.—Debate on Compensation opened.
Tuesday.—"Heard something about good man struggling with adversity," said Member for Sark, looking at Rathbone. "Nothing to goody goody man struggling with manuscript of his speech."
Rathbone certainly a melancholy spectacle. Evidently had spent his nights and days in preparation of speech on Compensation Bill; brought it down in large quarto notes. Old Morality glanced across House with sudden access of interest; thought it was a copy-book; Speech evidently highly prized at rehearsals in family circle.
"I think," said Rathbone, complacently, "before I sit down I shall show you that the view I take is correct."
This remark interjected early in speech; proved rather a favourite. Whenever Rathbone got more than usually muddled, looked round nervously at empty Benches, nodded confidentially to Mace, and remarked, "Before I sit down I think I shall show you——" What it was he meant to show, no one quite certain. Elliot Lees, who followed, assumed with reckless light-heartedness of youth, that he meant to show before he sat down, that the more public-houses licensed, the less drunkenness.
"That," said Rathbone, with unaccustomed flash of intelligent speech, "was exactly the reverse of what I undertook to show the House."
Would have gone on pretty well only for (1) the Accountant, and (2) Sinclair. Whatever it was Rathbone was going to show before he sat down, he had fortified himself in his position by opinion of a sworn Accountant. Conversations with this Accountant set forth at length. Rathbone appears to have been kept by the Accountant in state of constant surprise. "Let's take two places in the country," he said, in one of the more lucid passages. "Well, there are only 360 public-houses in Leeds. Sheffield has 400 public-houses in proportion to population, whereas Bradford hasn't 160. Well, I was so much struck with this, that I wanted to know whether there were any reasons for it. So I applied to the Accountant—without telling him my object—which really was," he added, nodding quite briskly at the Mace, "to know whether there was more drunkenness in Leeds or Sheffield. He said at once, that Leeds was the most. Then I said to the Accountant 'I don't care about your individual cases, let's take the average. Let's take Birmingham.'"
