Studies in Contemporary Biography

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

It was interesting to watch him as he sat on the front bench, with his hat set so low on his brow that it hid all the upper part of his face, while the 216 lower part was covered by a thick yellowish-brown beard, perfectly motionless, rarely taking a note of what was said, and, to all appearance, the most indifferent figure in the House. The only sign of feeling which he gave was to be found in his habit of thrusting each of his hands up the opposite sleeve of his coat when Mr. Gladstone, the only assailant whom he needed to fear, burst upon him in a hailstorm of declamation. But when he rose, one perceived that nothing had escaped him. Every point which an antagonist had made was taken up and dealt with; no point that could aid his own contention was neglected; and the fluent grace with which his discourse swept along, seldom aided by a reference to notes, was not more surprising than the unfailing skill with which he shunned dangerous ground, and put his propositions in a form which made it difficult to contradict them. I remember to have heard a member of the opposite party remark, that nothing was more difficult than to defend your argument from Northcote, because he had the art of nibbling it away, admitting a little in order to evade or overthrow the rest.

So much for his parliamentary aptitudes, which were fully recognised before he rose to leadership. But as it was his leadership that has given him a place in history, I may dwell for a little upon the way in which he filled that most trying as well as most honourable post. He led the House—that 217 is to say, the Ministerial majority—for four sessions (1877-1880), and the Tory Opposition for five and a half sessions (1880 to middle of 1885). To lead the House of Commons a man must have, over and above the qualities which make a good debater, an unusual combination of talents. He must be both bold and cautious, combative and cool. He must take, on his own responsibility, and on the spur of the moment, decisions which commit the whole Ministry, and yet, especially if he be not Prime Minister, he must consider how far his colleagues will approve and implement his action. He must put enough force and fire into his speeches to rouse his own ranks and intimidate (if he can) his opponents, yet must have regard to the more timorous spirits among his own supporters, going no further than he feels they will follow, and must sometimes throw a crafty fly over those in the Opposition whom he thinks wavering or disaffected. Under the fire of debate, perhaps while composing the speech he has to make in reply, he must consider not merely the audience before him but also the effect his words will have when they are read next morning in cold blood, and, it may be, the effect not only in England but abroad. Being responsible for the whole conduct of parliamentary business, he must keep a close watch upon every pending bill, and determine how much of Government time shall be 218 allotted to each, and in what order they shall be taken, and how far the general feeling of the House will let him go in seizing the hours usually reserved for private members, and in granting or refusing opportunities for discussing topics he would prefer to have not discussed at all.

So far as prudence, tact, and knowledge of business could enable him to discharge these duties, Northcote discharged them admirably. It was his good fortune to have behind him in Lord Beaconsfield, who had recently gone to the House of Lords, a chief of the whole party who trusted him, and with whom he was on the best terms. The immense authority of that chief secured his own authority. His party was—as the Tory party usually is—compact and loyal; and his majority ample, so he had no reason to fear defeat. In the conflicts that arose over Eastern affairs in 1877-79, affairs at some moments highly critical, he was cautious and adroit, more cautious than Lord Beaconsfield, sometimes repairing by moderate language the harm which the latter’s theatrical utterances had done. When a group of Irish Nationalist members, among whom Mr. Parnell soon came to the front, began to evade the rules and paralyse the action of the House by obstructive tactics, he was less successful. Their ingenuity baffled the Ministry, and brought the House into sore straits. But it may be doubted 219 whether any leader could have overcome the difficulties of the position. It was a new position. The old rules framed under quite different conditions were not fit to check members who, far from regarding the sentiments of the House, avowed their purpose to reduce it to impotence, and thereby obtain that Parliament of their own, which could alone, as they held, cure the ills of Ireland.

After ten years of struggle and experiment, drastic remedies for obstruction were at last devised; but in the then state of opinion within the House, those remedies could not have been carried. Members accustomed to the old state of things could not for a good while make up their minds to sacrifice part of their own privileges in order to deal with a difficulty the source of which they would not attempt to cure. On the whole, therefore, though he was blamed at the time, Northcote may be deemed to have passed creditably through his first period of leadership.

It was when he had to lead his party in Opposition, after April 1880, that his severest trial came. To lead the minority is usually easier than to lead the majority. A leader of the Opposition also must, no doubt, take swift decisions in the midst of a debate, must consider how far he is pledging his party to a policy which they may be required to maintain when next they come into power, must endeavour to 220 judge, often on scanty data, how many of his usual or nominal supporters will follow him into the lobby when a division is called, and how best he can draw off some votes from among his opponents. Still, delicate as this work is, it is not so hard as that of the leader of the Government, for it is rather critical than constructive, and a mistake can seldom do irreparable mischief. Northcote, however, had special difficulties to face. Mr. Gladstone, still full of energy and fire, was leading the majority. After a few months Lord Beaconsfield’s mantle no longer covered Northcote (that redoubtable strategist died in April 1881), and a small but active group of Tory members set up an irregular skirmishing Opposition on their own account, paying little heed to his moderate counsels. The Tory party was then furious at its unexpected defeat at the election of 1880. It was full of fight, burning for revenge, eager to denounce every trifling error of the Ministry, and to give battle on small as well as great occasions. Hence it resented the calm and cautiously critical attitude which Northcote took up. He had plenty of courage; but he thought, as indeed most impartial observers thought, that little was to be gained by incessantly worrying an enemy so superior in force and flushed with victory; that premature assaults might consolidate a majority within which there existed elements of discord; and 221 that it was wiser to wait till the Ministry should begin to make mistakes and incur misfortunes in the natural course of events, before resuming the offensive against them. There is a natural tendency to reaction in English popular opinion, and a tendency to murmur against whichever party may be in power. This tendency must soon have told in favour of the Tories, with little effort on their own part; and when it was already manifest, a Parliamentary attack could have been delivered with effect. Northcote’s view and plan were probably right, but, being too prone to yield to pressure, and finding his hand forced, he allowed himself to be drawn by the clamour of his followers into aggressive operations, which, nevertheless, himself not quite approving them, he conducted in a half-hearted way. He had not Mr. Gladstone’s power of doing excellently what he hated to have to do. And it must be admitted that from 1882 onwards, when troubles in Ireland and oscillations in Egyptian policy had begun to shake the credit of the Liberal Ministry, he showed less fire and pugnacity than the needs of the time required from a party leader. In one thing the young men, who, like Zulu warriors, wished to wash their spears, were right and he was wrong. He conceived that frequent attacks and a resort to obstructive tactics would damage the Opposition in the eyes of the country. Experience has shown that 222 parties do not greatly suffer from the way they fight their Parliamentary battles. Few people follow the proceedings closely enough to know when an Opposition deserves blame for prolonging debate, or a Ministry for abuse of the closure. So, too, in the United States it would seem that neither the tyrannical action of a majority nor filibustering by a minority shocks the nation.

Not only was Northcote’s own temper pacific, but he was too sweetly reasonable and too dispassionate to be a successful leader in Opposition. He felt that he was never quite a party man. His mind was almost too judicial, his courtesy too unfailing, his temper too unruffled, his manner too unassuming. He did not inspire awe or fear. Not only did he never seek to give pain, even where pain might have been a wholesome discipline for pushing selfishness—he seemed incapable of irritation, and bore with vexatious obstruction from some members of the House, and mutinous attacks from others who belonged to his own party, when a spirit less kindly and forgiving might have better secured his own authority and the dignity of the assembly. He proceeded on the assumption, an unsafe one, as he had too much reason to know, that every one else was a gentleman like himself, penetrated by the old traditions of the House of Commons.

While superior to the prejudices of the old-fashioned 223 wing of his party, he was too cautious and conscientious to join those who sought to lead it into demagogic courses. So far as political opinions went, he might, had fortune sent him into the world as the son of a Whig family, have made an excellent Whig, removed as far from high Toryism on the one hand as from Radicalism on the other. There was, therefore, a certain incompatibility between the man and the position. Average partisans felt that a leader so very reasonable was not in full sympathy with them. Even his invincible optimism displeased them. “Hang that fellow Northcote!” said one of them; “he’s always seeing blue sky.” The militant partisans, whatever their opinions, desired a pugnacious chief. That a leader should draw the enemy’s fire does him good with his followers, and makes them rally to him. But the fire of his opponents was hardly ever directed against Northcote, even when controversy was hottest. Had he possessed a more imperious will, he might have overcome these difficulties, because his abilities and experience were of the highest value to his party, and his character stood so high that the mass of sensible Tories all over the country might perhaps have rallied to him, if he had appealed to them against the intrigues by which it was sought to supplant him. He did not lack courage. But he lacked what men call “backbone.” For 224 practical success, it is less fatal to fail in wisdom than to fail in resolution. He had not that unquenchable self-confidence which I have sought to describe in Disraeli, and shall have to describe in Parnell and in Gladstone. He yielded to pressure, and people came to know that he would yield to pressure.

The end of it was that the weakened prestige and final fall of the Liberal Ministry were not credited to his generalship, but rather to those who had skirmished in advance of the main army. That fall was in reality due neither to him nor to them, but partly to the errors or internal divisions of the Ministry itself, partly to causes such as the condition of Ireland and the revolt of Arabi in Egypt, for which Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet was no more, perhaps less, to blame than many of its predecessors. No Ministry of recent years seemed, when it was formed, to have such a source of strength in the abilities of the men who composed it as did the Ministry of 1880. None proved so persistently unlucky.

The circumstances under which Northcote’s leadership came to an end by his elevation to the Upper House (June 1885) as Earl of Iddesleigh, as well as those under which he was subsequently (1887) removed from the post of Foreign Secretary in the then Tory Ministry, evoked much comment at the time, but some of the incidents attending them have not yet been disclosed, and 225 they could not be discussed without bringing in other persons with whom I am not here concerned. Conscious of his own loyalty to his party, and remembering his long and laborious services, he felt those circumstances deeply; and they may have hastened his death, which came very suddenly in February 1887, and called forth a burst of sympathy such as had not been seen since Peel perished by an accident nearly forty years before.

In private life Northcote had the charm of unpretending manners, coupled with abundant humour, a store of anecdote, and a geniality which came straight from the heart. No man was a more agreeable companion. In 1884, when the University of Edinburgh celebrated its tercentenary, he happened to be Lord Rector, and in that capacity had to preside over the festivities. Although a stranger to Scotland, and as far removed (for he was a decided High Churchman) from sympathy with Scottish Presbyterianism as he was removed in politics from the Liberalism then dominant in Edinburgh, he won golden opinions from the Scotch, as well as from the crowd of foreign visitors, by the tact and grace he showed in the discharge of his duties, and the skill with which, putting off the politician, he entered into the spirit of the occasion as a lover of letters and learning. Though political eminence had secured his election to the office, every one felt that it would have been 226 hard to find in the ranks of literature and science any one fitter to preside over such a gathering.