"HAUNTED."
Whilst the tone and habit of the House of Commons in matters of humour are to a considerable extent conformable with the idiosyncrasy of its leaders, it will sometimes, in despair of prevailing dulness, assume a joke if it has it not. There is nothing more delightful in the happiest efforts of Mr. Disraeli than the peculiar relations which subsist between the present House of Commons and Mr. W. H. Smith. On one side we have a good, amiable, somewhat pedagogic gentleman, unexpectedly thrust into the seat haunted by the shades of Palmerston and Disraeli. On the other side is the House of Commons, a little doubtful of the result, but personally liking the new Leader, and constitutionally prone to recognise authority.
At first Mr. Smith was voted unbearably dull. His hesitating manner, his painful self-consciousness, his moral reflections, and his all-pervading sense of "duty to his Queen and country" bored the House. In the first few months of his succession to Lord Randolph Churchill, there was seen the unwonted spectacle of members getting up and leaving the House when the Leader presented himself at the table. But Mr. Smith plodded on, patiently, pathetically, trolling out his moral reflections, and tremulously preserving what with full consciousness of the contradiction of words may be described as an air of submissive authority. Members began to perceive, or perhaps to invent, the fun of the thing. Mr. Smith realised their boyhood's idea of Mr. Barlow conversing with his pupils; only he was always benevolent, and though he frequently shook his ferule with threatening gesture, Sandford and Merton felt that the palms of their hands were safe.
"THREE-FOURTHS OF A PARTY."
Mr. Smith is, however, peculiarly a House of Commons' possession. No one out of the House can quite understand how precious he is, how inimitable, how indescribable. To the outsider he makes poor amends for the Irish Members of the Parliament of 1874, or the Fourth Party that played so prominent a rôle in the House that met in 1880. The Fourth Party, like the Major, Mr. Biggar, Mr. Delahunty, Mr. McCarthy Downing, and the famous Lord Mayor of Dublin—who warned Mr. Forster what would happen in the event of an (absolutely uncontemplated) attempt on the part of the Chief Secretary to drag his lordship's spouse out of her bed in the dead of the night—are with us no more. Gone too, faded into dreamland, are the characters who made up the Fourth Party. Happily three of them remain with us, though in strangely altered circumstances. Two sit on the Treasury Bench, and one watches it from behind with friendly concern that adds a new terror to Ministerial office.
"HE WRITHES."
Each in his way brilliantly sustains the reputation of the famous school in which he was trained. There is in the House only one possibly superior combination of debaters to Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, and Sir John Gorst. In the quality of humour especially under consideration, this combination carries away the palm from the other. I think it is untrue to say, as is commonly accepted, that Mr. Gladstone is devoid of the sense of humour, though it must be admitted that it does not predominate in his House of Commons speeches. Mr. Chamberlain is even more conspicuously lacking in this commanding quality. On the other hand, Mr. Balfour in his House of Commons addresses does not shine as a humorist. He is in his public character (in strange contrast, by the way, with his personal habitude) not sufficiently genial. But he has a pretty wit of the sarcastic, poisoned-dagger style, which, differing from the effects of humour, makes everybody laugh, save the object of the attack. He writhes.
Mr. Balfour's Parliamentary style, doubtless unconsciously, perhaps for reasons connected with heredity, is shaped upon his distinguished uncle's. He lacks the grave ponderosity which gives the finishing touch to Lord Salisbury's occasional trifling with public questions. But he is still young, and his style inchoate.