DEBATING IN THE LORDS.
DEBATING in the Lords is becoming as dull as debating in the Commons, and that is saving a good deal. A superstition lingers among us that, although the House of Commons is getting fuller every year of middle-aged local magnates, and men who turn every debate into a serious con- versation on business, the House of Lords retains the tradition of the decaying art. We are told even now, after every protracted debate in the Lords, to admire the way in which the Peers do their work, the closeness of their reasoning, and the interest of their occasional displays of oratory, and a part of these tiresome encomiums are de- served. The Lords have much more time than the Commons, have read all the speeches in the popular House, have no con- stituencies to worry them into "hedging" as they speak, and have usnally made up their minds with more or less decision. Their speeches, therefore, are more coherent, more full, and sometimes a trifle more courageous. They are more im- patient, too, of purposeless speakers, and are not obliged, like the Commons, to let an incompetent speaker intervene because his constituency is interested, or because it is "his subject," or .because he is determined to say whyIreland is injured by the pro- posal before the House. A Lords debate is therefore sometimes better reading than one in the Commons, seems more exhaus- tive—one Peer often uttering all the wisdom which a dozen men in the Commons have poured out in Committee—and is altogether more purpose-like and less desultory. But although there is very fair speaking in the Lords, there is very little debating of the old kind ; and that little is not very good, and tends to become much worse. A Vestry is not the less tiresome because the vestrymen wear coronets. There is not one orator in the old sense left in the House of Lords, not one man who possesses in full measure the art which Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright usually, and one or two more men occasionally —Mr. Sullivan, for example, when he is really excited, or Mr. Lowe, when he loses his intellectual temper—still employ. There is not only no one like Lord Brougham, or Lord Lynd- hurst, or Earl Grey, but there is no one like Lord Derby or Bishop Wilberforce. Lord Salisbury is an orator, and pro- bably would seem one if he sat in the Commons, or could be mentally thrashed every night for a Session in the presence of a great audience, but his powers require provocation, which they do not often receive, everybody being more or less afraid of him ; and there is no one else. Lord Cairns has the forensic readiness of his profession, but no passion ; the Duke of Argyll speaks logically, but with the effect only of a clear-minded professor, to whom the "divine gift" has been conceded, but not the divinus afflatus; Lord Derby is marvellously sensible, and sometimes very terse, but never carried away a human being ; Lord Coleridge's silver tongue is too seldom heard in the House ; Lord Granville only talks well and easily, put- ting a trace of cayenne in his talk ; and Lord Carnarvon is bound by his office to make complicated questions clear, and only glows into orator when the chivalric side of his nature is roused or wounded. Lord Grey retains something of the style of the passed-away orators, and can in a happy mood be persuasive, but his speaking wants rush and heat ; and the Duke of Somerset, telling as his speeches are, is an epigrammatist, not an orator. Most of the young men talk like clever young men, and no more, and Lord Rosebery is the only one among them who says anything people care to read for its own sake. The debating, in fact, though sometimes effective' and once or twice in a Session exciting, from the visible heat of the disputants, grows dull, and threatens to be before long as dull as the debating in the Commons when the leaders are not present.
Orators, of course, like poets, are not made, and no doubt the Peers, like other cultivated persons, share the feeling that oratory—the expression of thought in a way which makes the
form as impressive as the substance—has ceased to be an ac- ceptable weapon in political strife, but we rather wonder that there should be so little either of humour or of wit. Peers are not intolerant of jokes, have rather, like other intelligent but bored people, a special appreciation of that kind of fun which relieves yet advances argument. See them rush in to hear the Irish prelate with an English see, the only Bishop who can be amusing, and who, if he were in the House of Commons, would rise to power by his tongue alone ! But the majority of Peers seem as afraid to be humorous as the ma- jority of clergymen, good stories grow scarcer and scarcer, jests are as rare as Greek quotations, and we positively believe that if Mr. Hardy were raised to the Upper House he would be re- garded as its most humorous member. The Duke of Somerset has no humour, in the sense in which we are using the word, for the laughter or smiles he calls up have always some- thing acrid about them, something which suggests the Roman patrician as he shouted " Habet !" and Lord Granville, humorous when talking at public dinners or at Dover, is rather playful than humorous in the House,—with a playful- ness, too, which is a little like that of a fine cat among the chickens. The victims of his polished chaff, one notices, do not often join in the subdued merriment. Nobody, unless it be Lord Rosebery, when the House will give him time, and he knows his subject, and he does not particularly want to win, ever makes a truly jesting speech ; and on most evenings, the speaking is as little amusing as the speaking in a Synod, where, when a laugh is heard, men look. the text about "the crackling of thorns." It is a little difficult to account for this, except by remembering that the Lords almost always de- bate just before dinner—the last time a humourist would choose to be heard—f or there can be little doubt that a little fun would be very weleorae, and that a refined Mr. Serjeant Dowse in the Peers would have a rewarding weight. Dr. Magee is one, but then it is Mr. Serjeant Dowse arrayed in white swaddling-clothes. Is there no Irish Peer who could fill the ride, or is the Peerage of the Isle too melancholy at the thought of the changes and the prosperity which have come over it ? Perhaps if Lord Dufferin should be lucky enough to have contracted a little healthy vulgarity in Canada, just enough to give his genuine humour a trace more of the full Sheridan flavour, a little more breadth of effect, as it were—he might step into the vacant niche. If he did, he would be the most valuable ally any Ministry could have, for he has knowledge as well as humour, fire as well as fun, and if he would only not be afraid of his own weakness for bedevilment, he would be an admir- able specimen of the lost variety,— the humorous orator. Apart, however, from humour, properly so called, the ab- sence of lightness in the Lords' debating is not a little curious. Is it their marvellous wealth, or fright at the advance of democracy, or stupor at the number of Duke- doms the leader of their House has accumulated on his own head, that makes all the debating Peers so serious about everything? There is a kind of persiflage, a kindly belittling of important things, a gentle suggestiveness that the world will not go to pieces even if the Mayor of Lost- withiel is not sent to the Tower, which, one would think, was exactly within the role of political aristocrats, and which is immensely wanted by a public taught every morning to think that everything is equally important, -till they lose all sense of perspective ; but, except Lord Granville, for a minute or two no Peer ventures on that kind of thing in public. He may think that much ado is made about nothing, and say it, too, pretty loudly ; but he keeps the notion out of his speeches, and talks of everything as he would talk of murrain in the presence of a grazier or of Mr. Clare Read. We suppose it is all very proper, but it is amazingly dull, and a little odd. Why should three or four hundred gentlemen, not liable to be turned out of their seats, and sure of their audience, as no Member of the Commons can be, always assume such solemn airs ? Are they afraid of each other ? No Peer will scold any- body either for telling the truth or for making him laugh. Do they think the public will object ? The public will do nothing of the sort, its air of being always "at meeting," as the Ameri- cans say, being only worn in the absence of any reason for put- ting it off. Or is it the newspaper criticism they fear? Well, journalists are critics by instinct, no doubt, whichis the reason a journalist so seldom becomes a man of action ; but if the Peers only knew how the journalists would thank them for boring them a little less, they would soon lose the mauvaise honte, the intense self-consciousness which, after all, is the main reason why they grow so dulL
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