LORD BRASSEY AS A PUBLIC MAN.*
THERE are so few speeches, even by the most distinguished orators and statesmen, which are of sufficient interest in themselves to deserve reproduction in a permanent shape years after their delivery, that we are free to admit having observed with some impatience that a volume of Political and Miscellaneous Addresses and Papers by Lord Brassey, who is a long way off the first class of public speakers, had been added to the volumes of utterances and writings by him on subjects connected with the Navy, the Mercantile Marine, and the Federation of the Empire, already issued by Messrs. Longmans. A candid examination of the book has, however, satisfied us that its publication was more than justified. Not that it has raised our opinion of Lord Brassey's gift for public speech. He has neither eloquence, humour, nor epigrammatic power, so far as we can see, in the least degree. It is prose, plain and unadorned, except by occasional literary allusions, which the reader finds in these Addresses and Papers. But none the less are we able to wish the volume containing them an extensive circulation, especially among politicians of various ages and classes. For it shows, not so much by teaching as by example, how a liberally educated Englishman of good intelligence and sound practical common-sense, but of no commanding abilities, if only he is governed by a sense of duty to his country, may be able to take such enlightened surveys of public affairs as cannot fail to be of service in guiding the judgment of the voters, who in the last resort rule national policy. The reader may agree with or differ from the conclusions arrived at by Lord Brassey in his speeches to his constituents at Hastings and other audiences in the seventies and eighties, of which samples are given in the present volume; but it is, we think, impossible to deny that they were the fruits of careful examination of the subjects treated, in the light of all the varied sources of information open to one possessing the speaker's wealth, leisure, and wide knowledge of the world through travel and reading and social relations, or that they were both honestly designed and distinctly calculated to assist the average elector in forming his own conclusions on the events discussed. Again, although Lord Brassey has always been what we suppose would be called a "good party man," there is a marked and very agreeable absence from his political utterances both of the cocksureness and of the bitterness of the ordinary partisan. Thus he took, and as we think rightly, the Liberal view of Lord Beacons- field's Eastern policy, especially in relation to the .Anglo- Turkish Convention—a view the soundness of which is receiving the most grimly effective illustration at the present moment— but he was perfectly ready to admit that the Conservative Government had been "right in making a stand against Russia," though "wrong in attempting to resuscitate the moribund government of the Porte as a bulwark against the armies of the Czar ; " and while he held that "in their advo- cacy of the claims of the Christian races, now subject to the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, to national independence, Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues had displayed generous sym- pathies and a wiser statesmanship than their opponents," he -avowed a wish that the Opposition leaders had been "more discriminating in their criticism," and more careful to avoid producing anticipations of a volte-face in foreign policy on their return to power. Similar observations apply to the temper in which Lord Brassey treated the Irish ques- tion at various dates, before and after 1886. In this connection, however, it must be remarked that Lord Brassey's speeches, at and after the time of Mr. Glad- stone's great surrender, fail to show by what line of reasoning he persuaded himself that it was his duty to range himself on the Home-rule side. So far as we can make out, he seems to have shared many, if not all, of Lord • Papers and Addresses by Lord Bragsea, K.C.B., D.C.L. Political and Mused- Lamont ; from 1861 fo 1894. Arranged and Edited by Arthur H. Loring. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. Hartington's chief objections to the first Home-rule Bill, to have shared them so strongly, that on May 13th, 1886, he announced that he would make "an earnest appeal to the Government to withdraw the Bills they had introduced, and to await the result of the calm deliberation of the recess," before Parliament was invited to go forward in the task of practical legislation on the momentous issues involved, and yet to have, at the same time, expressed his in- tention to vote for the second reading of the Home-rule Bill, if it were pressed by the Government, as "an asser- tion of principle." This he actually did, and he has since been regarded as one of the recognised supporters, though doubtless a moderate one, of the Home-rule cause. Yet the Home-rule which he expounded in the speech already referred to was a totally different thing from that offered in either of Mr. Gla.dstone's Bills, and we have found no evidence in the later speeches, given in the present volume, of his ever having reconciled himself to the policy really involved in the alliance between the majority of the Liberal party and the Irish Nationalists. The cynical explanation, that the missing link in the train of thought by which Lord Brassey was led to become a Home-ruler was supplied by the offer of a peerage, is in our judgment quite out of harmony with the whole course of his public life. There has always been a similar gap in Lord Spencer's account of the reasons for his own perversion, and the same may be said of Sir George Trevelyan ; but in neither of their cases can it be even suggested that any motive of personal advancement came in. The Irish question must stand by itself, as a discoverer of something akin to geological " faults " in many intellects.
On political questions generally, Lord Brassey's speeches illustrate the excellent traits of mind and character to which we have referred. But it is as a recognised authority on certain classes of subjects that he has done his best work, and that be sets perhaps the most valuable example to other citizens. The volume before us contains a concise summary, drawn up in 1885, of his previous "seventeen years' hard work in and out of Parliament." It is a most honourable record. The subjects to which his energies were specially applied were, as is generally known, those connected with the industrial, maritime, and naval interests of the country, and it is both interesting and surprising to see, especially in the two latter connections, how much of positive service he was able to render as a private Member, and how many reforms of which he was the chief or a very prominent advocate, were carried into effect by one Government after another. Lord Brassey worked so steadily at the questions he had thus made his own, that Members of Parliament and Ministers on both sides re- peatedly recognised his right to speak with authority, and were much influenced by his judgment upon matters of such importance as the decentralisation of dockyard administration, the organisation and development of the Royal Naval Reserve, and the size and armour of ships of war. The present volume also affords evidence, given at large in another book, of the great value which Lord Brassey has always set upon the development of more stable and effective relations for purposes of common defence and otherwise, among the different members of the British Empire. His well-known views and aspirations on this subject, together with his spirited seaman- ship and the great interest he has always shown in the welfare of the Colonies, has done much to secure him the very cordial welcome which he has received as Governor of Victoria. His influence there is sure to be of real value both Imperially and locally. In no part of the Empire can citizens fail to gain much from the presence of a man of station and wealth who has worked for the public, both on general and on special lines, as hard as men commonly work for themselves.
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