SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT IN HIS GLORY.
" ARMA virumque cano." " My song shall be of mercy and judgment." It is hard to say whether the Roman or the Hebrew poet best expresses the emotions excited by the Parliamentary history of the last fortnight. Perhaps each quotation is in its turn the most appropriate. Arms and the man,—the Tithe Bill and Sir William Har- court. Mercy and judgment,—the two sides of his majestic personality. When we recall his advance against the foe, and the taunts which he launched at the leader of the House, we are reminded of Goliath of Gath ; but for Mr. Smith, less happy in this respect than Saul, there was no David in reserve. Indeed, David, if he was there at all, was not wholly unwilling to see Goliath win. It was not against Sir William Harcourt that Mr. Gray hurled his smooth stone out of the brook in the shape of the memorable instruction on which the Government had a majority of four. Perhaps if Goliath had been more fortunate, he would have been more amiable. At all events, Sir William Harcourt, who on this occasion had everything his own way, showed that when the occasion called for it, he could be very amiable indeed. No doubt it is easy to be in a good humour after a lucky chance has enabled you to be as nasty as you can possibly desire. If Goliath had cut off David's head, he might have been as nice to Saul as Sir William Harcourt was to Mr. Smith. Certainly there was something wonderfully striking in the contrast between Sir William Harcourt's two manners. When he came back from his sylvan home, he found the front Opposition bench deserted, and the Government labouring to pass an iniquitous Bill. Some- how it is impossible to keep away from the Old Testament when speaking of Sir William Harcourt. The feeble phrases of modern life are altogether insufficient to describe him. It is to the book of Job that we naturally turn for a comparison. Sir William Harcourt leading the opposition to the Tithe Bill reminds us of nothing so much as of Leviathan. " His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot : he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He beholdeth all high things ; he is a king over all the children of pride." The parallel is exact. Sir William Harcourt's Parliamentary attitude is foretold in every particular. And this time Leviathan has won, which, great and wonderful as he is, he has not always been able to do. When he came back to Westminster, the Government seemed about to add a Tithe Bill to the successes of the Session. A statesman less elephantine than Sir William Harcourt—less able, that is, to pick up a pin with the same trunk that can uproot an oak—might have missed the occasion from sheer in- ability to see anything in it. It was a very little Bill indeed. It aimed at meeting a particular diffi- culty by a simple amendment in legal procedure. But Sir William Harcourt has not only a bull's faculty of running at a red flag, he can also make-believe that any flag is red. If Mr. Smith had been a grand Inquisitor about to apply the rack and the thumbscrew to every Welsh Noncon- formist, Sir William Harcourt's righteous wrath could not have raged more hotly. Where eyes less acute and imaginative could see only an honest if somewhat feeble attempt to avoid the cost and ill-feeling caused by distraints for tithe, Sir William Harcourt detected a design on the part of the pampered priesthood of an alien Church to ruin the humble tiller of the soil. This was the source of his indignation. Without difficulty and without notice, he created for us a situation which had no counterpart in the world of fact, and yet was as useful for political purposes as though it had had a real existence. Mr. Healy when denouncing Mr. Balfour, never drew such terrible pictures of triumphant crime as Sir William Harcourt when denouncing Mr. Smith. Probably the Leader of the House has learnt by this time to bear his burden of imputed unrighteousness. Yet, when we read the burning speeches in which Sir William Harcourt held up the authors of the Tithe Bill to the repro- bation of God and man, we almost wonder how Mr. Smith could ever have come out from beneath such a geyser of oratorical mud. He did not, indeed, come out unhurt. Sir William Harcourt's strategy had its reward. He looked so horror-stricken at the Ministerial crime, that his followers perhaps almost thought that its enormity was as great as he painted it. To make your party, if not believe you, at least vote as though they believed you, is a genuine triumph of leadership, and this Sir William Harcourt can justly claim. He was helped, no doubt, by secession from the Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists ; but they could not have forced the Government to change their front in presence of the enemy, if that enemy had not been alert and watchful to an extraordinary degree. Sir William Harcourt's claim to the inheritance of Mr. Gladstone has been immensely strengthened by the incidents of the last fortnight. But our song was to be of mercy as well as of judgment. We have as yet dealt with one half only of Sir William Harcourt's merits. He can be as benignant in the hour of victory as he is stern in the hour of combat. The time came when Mr. Smith had no choice but to fall on his knees and acknowledge himself beaten. Until; then Sir William Harcourt had been inflexible. For the hardened sinner he had no pity, since pity that goes in advance of penitence is only weakness under a fine name. But the moment that Mr. Smith's stony heart had melted, the moment that he declared that he would with- draw the Bill, Sir William Harcourt's tone changed. At once the parable of the prodigal son was, so to say, put on the stage, splendidly mounted and admirably cast. When was the part of the relenting father better played ? Never, we should say, on any boards. No sooner had Mr. Smith sat down than• Sir William Harcourt fell on his neck. His wrath, his contempt, his resolution that Ministerial suffering should follow hard on Ministerial wrong-doing, were all forgotten. His one anxiety was that the Government should not misunderstand his object. All he had cared for was that the Bill should be cast in a right mould instead of a wrong one, and if Ministers would in- troduce a new measure on the lines he had already sanc- tioned by anticipation, he would " undertake to do what he could to assist them to pass it." So enthusiastic was he, indeed, that he had to be called to order for travelling into a too general eulogium of a Bill which was not yet in being. But what a picture is thus presented to us, —a tender-hearted leader of Opposition finding the limits prescribed him by the Rules of the House too narrow for his purpose, and this purpose the expression of his eagerness to do the Government a service ! Surely the golden age has returned, and under the mild sway of Harcourt the Magnanimous every sound of strife has been laid to sleep.
It is melancholy to have to add that even while Sir William Harcourt's " gentle voice, soft as the breath of even "—how naturally a hymn comes to our minds when we are writing on such a subject as this !—was calming the fears of Mr. Smith, there was mutiny gathering behind him. When he undertook to do what he could to assist the Government, he did not know how little, how very little, " what he could" would be. After the services he had rendered to the Opposition, it is sad to think of the ingrati- tude showed him in return. Sir William Harcourt can forgive, Sir William Harcourt can forget, Sir William Harcourt can take the penitent to his arms. But Mr. Osborne Morgan cannot lay aside his suspicions ; the old passions rage unsoftened in the breast of Mr. Dillwyn. And without Mr. Osborne Morgan and Mr. Dillwyn, and the votes that their support implies, even Sir William Harcourt is powerless. So, therefore, we leave him,— greater in conception than in execution, equal to all that man can do unaided, but unable to carry with him the votes of men who cannot rise to the height of his clemency. Yet who shall say that his heroism has gone unrewarded ? What can Sir William Harcourt desire better than to com- bine the credit of helping a lame Government over a stile with the comfortable reflection that they are still on the wrong side of it ?
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