MR. GLADSTONE AND LORD BEACONSFIELD.
is something a little strange, and perhaps a little pathetic, in the different destinies which the two great Parliamentary chiefs who have so long faced each other in the Lower House are undergoing at this latter end of their political career,—Mr. Gladstone breaking lances with Mr. Chaplin, M.P. for Mid-Lincolnshire, or at least shivering Mr. Chaplin's lance without even splintering his own ; and Lord Beaconsfield brought to book in the calm, cold region of the House of Lords, for all those little not always unpre- meditated blunders which he knew so well how to pass off in the warmer atmosphere of the House of Commons, without being compelled to make humiliating confessions. The scene between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chaplin yesterday week was not, indeed, in its main features pathetic. There may have been a certain pathos in the fact that in political society Mr. Gladstone's name has now so long been a stone of offence and* signal for the voice of the scorner, that even a Member for Mid-Lincolnshire, who had hitherto been known in the House chiefly for the weight of his opinion about horses, should have thought it possible to gain glory by a bitter per- sonal attack on an ex-Prime Minister, who is also incontestably by far the greatest debater in the House of Commons. Times are, changed, indeed, when a county Member of so humble a reputation as Mr. Chaplin could even hope to reap fame from such an encounter, and it cannot be denied that the odium heaped for so many months back on .Mr. Gladstone's name in what is called " society " gave s certain air of plausibility to Mr. Chaplin's ambitious design. But there was nothing pathetic about the issue, except for the few who might have, entered into the hopes of the sanguine "Knight of the Shire." It is saying little to say that none but Ulysses can as yet bend Ulysses' bow, and that Ulysses himself can bend it as easily as ever. Mr. Chaplin was certainly not well advised. There was more pluck than prudence in his effort to say to Mr. Gladstone's face what every one was saying behind his back, for Mr. Chaplin had evidently, not weighed the grounds of the wrath of the "great world" against Mr. Glad- stone in any rational scales, and had no idea how feeble these. grounds would appear when stated by his lips in the House, and how utterly foolish when his charges had once been dealt with by Mr. Gladstone. When the disinherited knight struck the shield of Brian de Bois Gilbert with the sharp end of his lance, he knew, though his antagonist at that time did not, that he was at least the equal of the Templar in the lists. Mr. Chaplin, unfortunately for him, had no such assurance, and before he moved the adjournment of the House, he must have been well aware, if he has anything like the sense for which we give him credit, that he had made a great mistake, and was about to be greatly discomfited. The truth is that his speech was a mere echo of the irrational political antipathy to Mr. Gladstone, his argument lending that antipathy no fresh weight, and supplying it with no intelligible ideas, no "reasonable soul." It assumed, what is obviously an error, that the House of Commons elected three years ago necessarily represents the present opinion of the English people on a subject not then even heard of ; and it assumed further, what is still more ob- viously an error, that what Mr. Gladstone had said and done, and the outbreak of feeling he had elicited, had not seriously modified for the better even the policy of the very Govern- ment he was condemning. To taunt Mr. Gladstone with having mistaken the feeling of the electors in 1874, when there was no response to his appeal, was a curious blunder, at least, by way of showing that he has mistaken the feeling of the country now, when the answer to his appeal has been so enthusiastic. But it was a still greater blunder to call in question his honour, because he has not hastened to ask the present House of Commons, of -which no one can assert that it does represent the country on this question, to en- dorse the opinions he has expressed. In short, Mr. Chaplin had not tested the strength of his own weapons when he made his deadly assault ; and what weapons he had were poorly handled. He relied blindly on a state of feeling which, no doubt, he had found prevalent everywhere in society, to give force to his words. But the moment a full light was brought to bear on that state of feeling, it blanched and faded, and Mr. Chaplinf °null that he had made himself the mouthpiece of a rely irrational kind of sentiment. Mr. Gladstone had not so lost "that ancient vigour, once his pride and boast," as to be unable to make a pitiable spec- tacle of such a champion as this, who certainly as yet under- stands horses better than men. There was &certain pathos in the mere fact that Mr. Gladstone should be challenged to single combat by such a "Knight of the Shire." But there was none of the pathos attaching to the attempts of weakened force to rival the achievements of its earlier days. When Mr. Glad- stone sat down amidst universal cheering, Mr. Chaplin must have become aware that he had but furnished his great antagonist with a new, though not very important triumph.
But there is some true pathos, we think, in Lord Beacons- field's position in the House of Lords, though he is the First Minister of the Crown, and not a private Member, like Mr. Gladstone, and though no Member of the rank and file ven- tures to cross swords with the great guerilla leader. There was a rumour that Lord Beaconsfield was to invent a new style of oratory peculiarly suitable to the House of Lords. But the truth is, that he has only adopted a new style of apology peculiarly suitable to schoolboys who have not said their lesson right, and don't quite like either to acknowledge their errors frankly, or to deny them blankly. There is real pathos about poor Lord Beaconsfield's lame replies to question after question, in which he has been asked to justify the extem- pore rhodomontade so much more easily glossed over in the House of Commons. On the empty benches of the Upper House he sees nothing but bleak indifference to his sallies, .while the experienced officials opposite him ask nasty questions with a horrible accuracy of statement that he does not know how to evade. On Tuesday he made two desperate efforts to extenuate the gross incredulity of the Government on the subject of the Bulgarian atrocities during the last part of last Session. And both efforts only plunged him further into the mud. First, he said that all the Powers of Europe were ignorant of the Bulgarian atrocities at the date of the presents- tien of the Berlin Memorandum, "notwithstanding that all of them had been perpetrated a fortnight or three weeks before it was drawn up." On Thursday he had to admit that none of them were perpetrated till twelve days before it was completed, none of great magnitude till within a week of that date, and some of the worst not till the day on which it was completed, or the previous day. There was, then, no great mystery and no great negligence in the fact that these horrors, having occurred in the rural districts of Bulgaria, were not known in Berlin when the Berlin Memorandum was completed. Next, Lord Beaconsfield apologised for the ignorance of his Government, on the ground that these atrocities had occurred in parts of Bulgaria almost denuded of Consular supervision, the Government of a past day having "cut off all Consular agencies in that part of the Turkish Empire." On Thursday poor Lord Beaconsfield had to admit that he could not point to the abridgment of even a single consular officer through whom information on the subject of these atrocities could by any possibility have been obtained ; and all Lord Beaconsfield could allege was that in one or two cases there had been reductions where atrocities have not occurred, but might have occurred ; and that in that case, we might have been short of information owing to such reductions. A more pitiable attempt- to justify a wholly erroneous statement,— --Lord Beaconsfield had evidently grasped at the first weapon of defence he thought available, without in the least knowing it true character,—was hardly ever made even by a schoolboy to an offended master. But the worst of Lord Beaconsfield's levities in this way has not yet been made the subject of in- terrogation. At theGuildhall his celebrated attack on Russia was as follows. He began by sneering at the Russian " ultimatum ":— " I have heard a good deal about an ultimatum. That is an ugly word, when we are endeavouring to bring about a pacific) settlement. But I believe, my Lord, that the ulti- matum was something in this cage like bringing an action for debt when the whole sum claimed had previously been paid into Court." Subsequently he went on :—" Peace is especially an English policy. She [England] is not an aggressive Power, for there is nothing which she desires. She covets no cities and no provinces. What she wishes is to maintain and to enjoy the unexampled empire which she has built up, and which it is her pride to remember exists as much on sympathy as on force. But although the policy of England is peace, there is no country so well prepared for war as our own. If she enters into conflict in a righteous cause—and I will not believe that England will go to war except for a righteous cause,—if the contest is one which concerns her liberty, her independence, her empire, her re- sources, I feel, are. inexhaustible. She is not a country which, when she enters into a campaign, has to ask herself. whether she can. support a second or a third campaign." Now, observe the aneer at the Russian ultimatum, the insinuation that there were other, Powers, though England was not amongst them, which coveted provinces and cities, and the scoff at the weak financial position of Powers which, though they might undertake one campaign, could not follow it up with others, and then compare with it this account given. by Lord Beaconsfield on Tuesday of his, Guildhall language :—" Why does he not say what my statements were ? I will tell him what they were. I said that the policy of England was a policy of peace, that. there was no country of which peace was more essen- tially the policy than England ; that we coveted nothing, desired no city and no province ; that we wanted none ; but I also said that if we had good reasons for going to war, if there was, •to be a war, and we were unfortunately brought into it, we sheuld enter into that war with .a determination to carry it on till right were done. These were the observations that I made in theGuildhall. These are the observations which I now make in the House- of Lords. I entirely adhere to them. They were no sneer. I was- as unconscious of sneers as ever I was, or as I am in speaking at this moment." If there were no sneer in the language about the ultimatum being an action for debt after. the . money had been paid into Court, what is a sneer ? If there were ne aneer in the sugges- tion of countries which, when they enten on a campaign, have reason to doubt whether, they could. support a. second or third campaign, what is a sneer? These things speak for them- selves,: and, Lord= Beaconafield will still ihaae, wa fear,. ta rectify, liklown report of his own wortie. It is a hard fate for a man accustomed to the popular atmosphere of a House where a sharp saying diverts attention from a multitude of levities and misstatements, to be sunning himself in his old age in the empty splendours of the House of Lords, and trying to find excuses which will not bear a moment's consideration for blunders of which his more accurate opponents coldly and mercilessly convict him. Mr. Gladstone, even if he became the common enemy of a hundred Mr. Chaplins, is surely not in nearly so uncongenial a sphere as Lord Beacons- field at the head of the Treasury Bench, with Lord Granville opposite him to invite accurate references, and blandly thank him for his courtesy in trying to explain what is incapable of explanation.
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