First, I do not believe there has ever been a country or an epoch when so many distinguished men played so prominent parts in politics.
Second, I do not know of any time or place where we have so much definite, precise and intimate information supplied with so much detail by the leading actors themselves.
Consider the following list of statesmen: Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, Parnell, Morley, Bryce, Campbell-Bannerman, Chamberlain, Balfour, Salisbury, Roseberry, Asquith, McCarthy, Healy, O’Connor, Lloyd George, Haldane, Grey, Birrell, Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill.
Nearly all of these men had a first-class education, were deeply read in the best literature, and many of them were authorities in some field of learning outside their profession as statesmen. It is doubtful if any period of history can show a group of politicians equal in intellectual culture and in high character to these.
Furthermore, to obtain intimate knowledge of the “inside politics” of the last fifty years, we have Morley’s monumental life of Gladstone, Morley’s own Recollections and Memorandum, many Lives of Disraeli and Bright, T. P. O’Connor’s Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, J. A. Spender’s Life of Campbell-Bannerman and his The Public Life, Asquith’s Memories and Reflections, Churchill’s The World Crisis, Swift MacNeill’s What I Have Seen and Heard, Haldane’s Autobiography, Memoirs by Tim Healy, Memoirs by Lord Grey, and many other works.
The history of Charles Stewart Parnell is one of the most thrillingly dramatic and romantic that can be found in either biography or legend. His practical ability as a statesman is summed up in a sentence in the Dictionary of National Biography.
“His influence on the course of English and Irish history may be estimated by the fact that when he entered public life home-rule for Ireland was viewed by English politicians as a wild impracticable dream, while within 11 years he had induced a majority of one of the two great English political parties to treat it as an urgent necessity.”
Without meaning anything derogatory to his character as a public man, the portraits of Parnell, his attitude of command, and the methods by which he controlled his party have always brought to my mind the romantic pirate of melodrama. His bearded impassive face, the greatest “poker face” political history has ever known, his quiet tones, his utterly mysterious personality, his glacial manner, his iron resolution, his rule of his party, every member of which had to sign a pledge of absolute loyalty before he could be elected to Parliament, his intolerance of any partner in leadership, all combined to make him a romantically grim figure, hated and dreaded by his foes, dreaded and idolised by his followers.
They knew he alone could and would lead them to victory; and then, when the ten years in which he emerged from obscurity to dazzling eminence were over, and victory was in his grasp, he and his party went down to ruin through his infatuation for one woman, and in less than a year he was in his grave.
For he was drunk with power as well as with love; had he temporarily withdrawn from leadership, his party would have gone on to triumph, and within a very short period he would undoubtedly have been called back to the throne. But the absolute power he had enjoyed for years made him insensible to the rules of the game of life.