OUR POLITICAL EXTINGUISHER.
WE do not believe that the House of Lords is un- popular in the country, but we do believe that for the present at least, the mild satisfaction with which it is regarded is mingled with a certain feeling of drowsiness, as if it implied a first stage towards political sleep. It is regarded as a half-alive assembly, an assembly which has just energy enough left to put the extinguisher over measures for Which the country has no mind, but which cannot originate a good law, and dare not stamp out a bad one which happens to be also popular. It is just a political night-cap, as it were, in which men prepare themselves for inaction, and in which measures which we do not want are given a kind of political euthanasia. There is one exception, perhaps, to the rule. It does not extinguish the influence of Prime Ministers, or even of those who are expected to be Prime Ministers. Lord Salisbury is as great a power, even though he sits in the House of Lords, as if he sat in the House of Commons. He has been the most active of Prime Ministers, and it is fully expected that he will be Prime Minister again. He remains a man of wide influence, though he does sit in the half-alive Assembly. With Lord Beacons- Sold it was the same so long as he held the same office and was seen to be the mainspring of the Conservative Party. And we suspect that even Lord Rosebery shares something of the same popularity as being the heir-presumptive to Mr. Gladstone's position in the Liberal Party, whenever Mr. Gladstone himself goes. But in these cases it is the influence he exerts over the leaders of the House of Commons, which secures to the peer his power. Without that, his influence as a member of the Upper House would be almost nil. Look, for instance, at the undue political insignificance from which the Duke of Argyll has suffered all his life, though he is one of the most active-minded writers and best orators of the day. The present writer remembers hearing the late Lord Gran- ville prefer him as an orator even to Mr. Gladstone. Yet would it be possible reasonably to estimate him as having exerted as much as one-twentieth part of Mr. Gladstone's political influence, or anything approaching to it ? For the Duke of Argyll has sat in the House of Lords, and only in the House of Lords, and has never been thought of as Prime Minister. And the consequence is that he has always been regarded as one of the half-alive, though his judgment is strong and sober, his activity incessant, and his eloquence of a masterly and brilliant type. Then, again, take the case • of the present Lord Chancellor, Lord Herschell. He is not .an orator at all in the same sense in which the Duke of Argyll is an orator ; but he is a most lucid and con- vincing speaker, a speaker who knows how to present a case to an English audience in the fashion which most recommends it to their judgments. Yet we venture to say that Lord Herschell was twice the power in the country when he was Solicitor-General that he is now that he sits on the Woolsack as Lord Chancellor. Going to the House of Lords seems to remove a great Commoner like Sir FarrerHerschell into a different region,—a region where, to the imagination of the country, "it is always after- noon,"—a region of trances and shadows and political swoon. It does not hypnotise the man, but it hypnotises the imagination of Englishmen concerning him. And the influence of this effect on the imagination of the country is most remarkable in the case of the Duke of Devon- shire. As Lord Hartington, he was one of the greatest of political personages in the Commons. As the Duke of Devon- shire, we do not hesitate to say that he has exerted himself more and made a larger number of powerful, and almostmore than powerful,—surpassingly able,—political speeches than he ever did during the same length of time as Lord Harting- ton. The two Scotch speeches of last week, for instance, at Edinburgh and Dalkeith, especially the speech at Dal- keith, were speeches which would have been talked of from one end of the country to the other, if they had been delivered by the leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Commons. As Lord Hartington, he had cer- tainly more political influence than Mr. Chamberlain, though Mr. Chamberlain was the more easy and effective orator. As Duke of Devonshire, he has less, not because he has himself lost in vigour or intellectual acumen,—he has, indeed, gained in both,—but because he is no longer credited with the same influence over the House of Commons which he possessed as Lord Harting- ton, while Mr. Chamberlain is credited with much more of that influence than he possessed when Lord Hartington was his chief. To our mind, the Duke of Devonshire has never delivered a speech of such force as that at Dalkeith this day week. The power with which he disposed of the argument that the House of Commons, from want of local knowledge, is not competent to deal with Irish affairs, though the very subjects on which the Dublin Parliament is restrained from legislating for Ireland are precisely those on which local knowledge tells most effectually,— such as religion, education, Free-trade or Protection, and for a time, the Land question,—was so conspicuous that all the country would have rung with it had the Duke still been in the position which Mr. Chamberlain now occupies ; and yet the speech has received exceedingly little notice in the English Press. Again, consider the ability with which he treated the contention that the Irish Members will be no more powerful if they are allowed to vote on all subjects after Home-rule is carried than they are now. The difference is just this, says the Duke, that if now they turn out or bring in a Ministry by their votes, they are responsible to their own constituents for doing so, inasmuch as it is not only a British Ministry, but an Irish Ministry, which they turn out or bring in. But let Home-rule be carried, and it will, in nine cases out of ten, not matter to their constituents at all what the British Ministry is, so long as the Irish Ministry is not changed ; and the consequence will be that they will be able to traffic with British Members for supporting or opposing a British Ministry, by asking for Irish boons as the price of that support or opposition. Has any political critic put the difference with so much force? And yet the Duke's speech has received little notice,—only because it proceeded from a thinker who is supposed to be lost in the lethargy of the House of Lords. It seems to us that there is no statesman in the country so peculiarly English in his strength, though not English in narrowness, as the Duke of Devon- shire. If he could be Prime Minister,—which is, we fear, hardly possible, considering how jealous the Con- servatives are of being led, by any one but a man. of their own larty,—he would be one of the greatest of English Prime Ministers,—cautious, sagacious, bold. But he is partially extinguished by his dukedom. He can no longer influence the House of Commons. And yet he is just the man in whom the House of Commons would place almost unlimited confidence. Perhaps there may be some change of feeling towards the House of Lords after it has rejected the measure which the great majority of English people regard as a sort of nightmare sitting on their chest and giving them evil dreams. After that rejection, the people may begin to regard the House of Lords as something more than a coronetted "nightcap country." But, for the present, we fear, it is regarded chiefly as a dis- tinguished sort of extinguisher for unpopular Bills which it takes no great courage to put an end to, as well as for popular political reputations destined to a premature close.
Previous page
