Those Great Victorians
" True Blue."
The Last Victorians. By Arthur A. Baumann. (Benn. 18s.)
ttn.:1. A. BAUMANN is a most accomplished journalist and a book of his may be relied upon to provide good reading.
lie has, too, another great advantage for the writer on 1xplitics : he is an extremist. His Toryism is of the truest blue. 'ow the extremist, who in action is so often a nuisance, is seldom bore in print. His views are clear, logical and consistent. le has a definite standpoint from which he can judge and ipraise the whole scene, and, curiously enough, he has often surer and juster appreciation of the point of view of his sworn opponents than has his more moderate colleague. To cone, therefore, who has real political interests, to whom the controversies of Disraeli and of Gladstone, the fall of Lord indolph, the tragedy of the Chamberlain-Balfour partner- hip are still fresh and new, Mr. Baumann's book will be very welcome.
Ile quotes Disraeli's famous saying that biography is the Int kind of history, and accordingly he casts most of his book biographical form. But there are one or two chapters at he end and at the beginning of more general reflections. He as many phrases which are worth quoting. In discussing he change of tone, to him the deplorable change, which oik place in English politics somewhere about the end of the tat decade of the twentieth century, he says With the remiership of Mr. Asquith the reign of laxity began. Then as the era of Christian names all round."
Like many another " die-hard " he is a laudalor tentporis ii and sees universal decay on every side. Here is his biting at highly amusing account of the present cabinet : " Is it t true that while there are some brilliant, eloquent, wise atriots in both Houses of Parliament, the best are not quite rest men ? Everybody respects, and many admire Mr. ldw•in. He is the kind of Minister who in the eighteenth entury would have been referred to in the Royal closet as noire bon Baldwin." He may be classed with Addington nd Liverpool : but surely not with Canning and Disraeli ? ord Birkenhead and Mr. Churchill excite the daily wonder f the spectators by their feats on the political trapeze : they car without co-rival all the honours of the Parliamentary dd. But how many competent judges would dispute the s'crtion that they are not quite great men ? Is not Lord Word the king of Not-quites, with Mr. Lloyd George ttendant as the great Might-have-been ? " Notre bon " shows a real grasp of an earlier tradition of politics I Mr. Baumann has a good paper on " Disraeli's Meridian." tut then all our political biographers write well on the great harder task is to make the Balfour-Chamberlain rtnership, the days of Goschen and the ministries of the late seal Salisbury interesting to the modern reader. True to he high Tory traditions, he regards Tariff Reform as niething of an innovation, and is at best lukewarm in is support, or at any rate supports it on unusual grounds. pis conclusions are that " The mistake made by the Tariff {dormers was that they rested their - case on economic, teed of on moral and political grounds. Instead of saying '' It is dangerous to rely so largely on foreign supplies r food, we must subsidize agriculture ; and it is madness to absolutely dependent on Germany for chemicals, spelter, -ar, and dyes, we must protect those trades at home." ; hey muddled themselves and their audiences with absurd 21(16th:41S to prove that more money would be made by 4riff Reform than by Free Exchange." in his final chapter on " The Statesman's End," in which he .oninients on the astonishing number of tragedies which have torred to English prime ministers, he tells the well-known on• of Castlereagh's suicide.
lie had been blackmailed for years in connexion with an . .
?)orous misadventure, and he was shaving one morning at s villa near Chislehurst, when he thought he saw his torturers !king up the avenue--they turned out to be ordinary respeat-
ole men.,
This reviewer had always understood that this story. in spite of the wide currency it has attained, is completely imaginary and that when Castlereagh cut his throat he was genuinely insane with pathological melancholia.
While many will enjoy Mr. Baumann's book, there arc few that will not regret some sentences in it, and there are sonic phrases about a still-living statesman which, in our view, would have been better left unwritten.
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