TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND LORD HARTINGTON.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN referred with some humour on Tuesday, at the Liberal Unionist banquet given to Lord Hartington, to the anxiety with which tributes to Lord Harting-ton from the Gladstonian orators had begun to inspire him, lest they should be followed, as they almost always are, by very severe attacks upon himself. The contrast between the willingness to give Lord Hartington credit for the best possible motives, and the unwillingness to give Mr. Chamberlain credit for any but the worst, is certainly very striking. But if we consider a little, we shall see that it is not perhaps, on the whole, without a reasonable explanation, though that reasonable explanation may need. to be supplemented by the reflection that though a moderate amount of reasonableness may be expected in party politics, to look for a large amount of reasonable- ness in party politics is extremely unreasonable. We hold, then, that it is much easier for party men to be reasonable towards those who in a very real sense are not party men, but stand more or less above the wrath of party, than it is for them to be reasonable towards those who are strong party men like themselves, who generally think that they do well to be angry, who hit hard, and do not often, if ever, keep their heads cool and clear from the animus of party strife. There are politicians whose heart is merged in politics, and politicians whose heart is not merged in politics, but more or less detached from politics, who bemoan the necessity of dwelling with Meshech, and having their habitation among the tents of Kedar. Lord Hartington is one of the latter group, Mr. Chamberlain of the former. Lord Harting- ton, we dare say, has often thought within himself that he laboured for peace, but when he spake unto them thereof, they made them ready to battle. Mr. Chamberlain can never have so thought of himself. He has always been in the thick of the battle, and has always rejoiced in the fray. The consequence is, that he has, of course, committed himself to many telling imputations of motive, and effective sarcasms which have left smart pain behind them, not at all likely to reconcile his opponents to any very generous view of his character. Those who like combat so well as Mr. Chamberlain, cannot often expect to forget the heat and dust of the battle. It is much the same with such a chief as Mr. Gladstone himself. He occasionally dilates upon Wedgwood ware, or Homer, or theology, in a strain which nobody would expect from so ardent and eager a politician, just as Mr. Chamberlain sometimes dilates on Oriental jewellery, or the inadequacy of the English appre- ciation of Art, in a strain which nobody would expect from so ardent and eager a politician. But though both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain can occasionally forget the heat of the battle, neither of them can ever speak of the battle itself without something of the roar of the battle in his voice. They are both political warriors to the very marrow of their nature. They cannot see themselves as others see them ; they can only see others exactly as, in their opinion, those others ought to be seen,—in other words, in colours a good deal darker than really belong to them. And the consequence is, that though they inspire a great deal of confidence and courage in their followers, they inspire a great deal of vivid dislike in their opponents. It is not so with Lord Hartington. He stands a little aloof from the passions of the political world, and no doubt would suffer hardly any of the cruel pangs of defeat if the General Election were to shelve him for a time, and he were able to turn from politics to the more congenial subjects in which he loves to plunge. And this is felt by his foes as well as his friends. It is not merely felt that he is per- fectly disinterested, but that political ambitions are hardly a part of his nature, that he forces himself to form judgments on all the principal issues in politics, rather than forms them with that eagerness and vivacity which belong to the party politician ; and consequently he always says what is moderate, and what rouses little or no resentment, though of course, being always as clear and masculine as he is moderate, it excites strong opposition. Where Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain excite wrath, Lord Hartington only suites protest. And but for Mr. Chamberlain, it might have been almost sai4 that the Liberal Unionist Party is made up of eminent Politicians of this detached frame of mind; while but for Lord Herschell, it might almost be said that the Glad-. stonian Party is made up of politicians of the morepassionate- frame of mind. Lord Selborne is not immersed heart and soul in the political fray, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Goschen, nor Sir Henry James. Classify the abler politicians into politicians who show a certain detachment of mind from politics, and politicians who throw themselves into politics as eager investors throw themselves into the study of shares. and stocks, and we shall find that about nine-tenths of the Liberal Unionists belong to the former class, and nine-tenths of the Gladstonians to the latter class. Lord Herschell' is almost as singular and unique a figure among the Gladstonians as Mr. Chamberlain is among the Liberal Unionists ; and hence in some degree, no doubt, the special wrath against Mr. Chamberlain. The Gladstonians have a certain half-feeling that he belongs to them as of right ; that he has no business to throw his considerable gladiatorial power into the Liberal Unionist camp. But for him, they think that they might class all the Liberal Unionists with those with whom the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis used to class himself,—namely, the cold- blooded animals. But whatever Mr. Chamberlain may be- called, no political thinker will class him among the cold-blooded members of the political species. He is one of those whose judgment is apt to be too much swayed by his party prepossessions and his party antipathies, and we should as soon think of regarding Mr. Chamberlain as too frigid a partisan for a genuine Liberal, as we should of regarding Lord Derby as too passionate a partisan for the same position.
It seems to us that nothing could well have proved a greater advantage for the Liberal Unionists than the hearty co-operation of the calm politicians, like Lord Hartington and Sir Henry James, with the fervent politicians, like the late Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain, in resisting Mr. Gladstone's policy. Without Lord Hartington, we should have been almost powerless. But he, who for six long years steadily supported that weight of responsibility as leader of a broken party, which Mr.. Gladstone, who, as Lord Hartington drily remarked, had, not in 1874 recovered so completely as, with the advantage of sixteen years' further experience, he now has recovered, from the feebleness of old age, peremptorily devolved upon him, had both the right and the authority to pronounce an opinion upon the subject of the new policy to which it was the duty of Liberals to listen. Indeed, he hall not only stood in Mr. Gladstone's place, but he had done more ; he had shown his hearty loyalty to Mr. Gladstone by willingly surrendering that place to him, and steadily sustaining him in it, so soon as it became evident that the country wished Mr. Gladstone to return to power, and that Mr. Gladstone himself was prepared to comply with that wish. No more final evidence of Lord Har- tingthn's hearty and disinterested loyalty to his old leader could have been given ; and therefore, when at last he did separate himself from Mr. Gladstone, no one even ventured to say that it was due to any lower motive than a profoundly conscientious conviction that his country's claim upon him was still higher even than Mr. Gladstone's. And the- country knew that no statesman had ever lived who was so little disposed as Lord Hartington to political egotism or fanatical delusions. As he had supported Mr. Gladstone through evil report and good report, he would have willingly, if he could, have supported him to the end. And that being impossible, what his natural disposition would have prompted him to do, would. have been to stand by and simply withdraw his active co- operation. That he did more than this, much more, proved incontestably, as the country knew, that Lord Hartington yielded reluctantly to an overpowering sense of duty ; that his calm and (as many thought) frigid judgment was stirred to its depths ; and that he discerned a grave political calamity in the policy which his chief regarded. as imposed upon him by a higher power. No man who had, not rendered services so prolonged, so staunch, and so disinterested to Mr. Gladstone, could have stemmed the rush of enthusiasm with which the Liberal Party turned at Mr. Gladstone's bidding to retrace their steps. Only the man who had unwillingly taken up and again gladly laid down the leadership at Mr. Gladstone's suggestion, had earned the right to speak with authority in condemning Mr.. Gladstone's abrupt change of purpose. Thus Lord Harting- ton spoke with authority, with an authority that arrested a precipitate decision, and that staggered for a time even the most confident of Mr. Gladstone's followers. But though second in importance to Lord Hartington's peremptory "No," the equally peremptory " No " of such men as the late Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain was only second to it in importance. What they brought to the Unionist protest was a fervent democratic zeal to which Lord Hartington could make no pre- tence. They reinforced his calm and detached judgment with a burst of popular passion, such as only Radicals could have evoked. He showed that a cool and deliberate judgment condemned the new move ; they showed that a deep vein of popular feeling was passionately opposed to it. He condemned it as a Whig; they condemned it as democrats. He persuaded sober Liberals that it would be full of imminent peril to the Constitution ; they persuaded enthusiastic Radicals that it would be the renunciation by the people of popular principles and rights. Between them they have at least gained invaluable time for deliberation and resolve. And when the decision comes, no one at least will be able to deny that if it is a wrong decision, it will be wrong deliberately chosen ; and if right, right secured only by the alliance of the one man who could fairly rival Mr. Gladstone in the right to speak to Liberals with authority, with a party who could justly claim to have expressed year after year a passionate and. even sometimes extravagant sympathy with the sufferings of the industrious poor, and the budding hopes of popular sovereignty and hard-won freedom.
Previous page
