I knew something about the Houses of Legislature, and had been present at not a few debates, long before I had the high honour of being a Chaplain to the Speaker. Many years ago, when I was a master at Harrow, I had the privilege of knowing the late Lord Charles Russell, whose son, Mr. G. W. E. Russell, was once in my form, and who always treated me with conspicuous kindness. Lord Charles was for a long time the highly popular Serjeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons. There are only two persons who enjoy the privilege of having "private galleries" at their disposal at the end of the House—the Speaker and the Serjeant-at-Arms. Whenever there was likely to be a very important debate, which excited keen public interest, Lord Charles used to offer us two seats in his gallery. I availed myself of this exceptional privilege as often as I could, and in that way I have been present at some of those deeply interesting political and oratorical displays which may almost be said to have become things of the past. The speaking of the most distinguished leaders in the House of Commons is still manly, forcible, and lucid: but I do not think that I am only speaking as a laudator temporis acti, Me puero, when I say that never—or, at any rate, only on the rarest occasions—do we now hear those flashing interchanges of wit, or those utterances of sustained, impassioned, and lofty eloquence which were by no means unfrequent thirty years ago. It may be that the pressure of affairs is greater, owing to the immense and ever-extending interests of the British Empire; or that there is not, at the present moment, the intense political excitement which once prevailed; or that the prevalent taste in such matters is different:—but, whatever be the reason, it would, I think, be generally admitted that, in nine cases out of ten, debates in these days are more unexciting and more severely practical than once they were, so that speeches full of "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" are now rarely delivered before our assembled senators. For that reason the debates are far less interesting and memorable than they were in former times.
There are still many speakers in the House to whom all must listen with pleasure and admiration. Sir W. Harcourt, Sir Henry Fowler, Mr. Morley, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Balfour, always set forth their arguments with force and dignity; and it would, I think, be generally conceded that few speakers could surpass Mr. Chamberlain in the skill and fearless forthrightness with which he enunciates his views. There are still a few debaters who might bear comparison with Sir Robert Peel in the dignified enunciation of views full of sober wisdom; or with Mr. Cobden in his "unadorned eloquence"; or with Lord Palmerston in his unstudied and lively geniality:—but since first Mr. Bright, and then Mr. Gladstone, stepped out of the political arena, anyone who could be called "a great orator" has become very uncommon in Parliamentary debates. No orator in the House has acquired, or perhaps even aims at, the fame for eloquence obtained in the political arena by men like O'Connell, Sheil, Lord Macaulay, Sir Edward Bulwer, Mr. Disraeli, John Bright, Lord Sherbrooke when he was at his best, or William Ewart Gladstone. We do not now have speeches which, like that of Lord Brougham in the House of Lords on the Reform Bill, occupied six hours in the delivery; or, like the famous "Civis Romanus sum" speech of Lord Palmerston in the Don Pacifico debate, are prolonged "from the dusk of a summer evening to the dawn of a summer day."
(Photo: Mendelssohn, Pembridge Cres.)
MR. H. D. ERSKINE.
(The Present Serjeant-at-Arms.)
(From an Engraving by Joseph Brown.)
LORD CHARLES RUSSELL.