Chapter V: Part 5

A remarkable evidence was soon to be given of the solid reputation which he had won for himself in public life. A complete change was made by Parliamentary legislation in the whole system of London's municipal government. The vast metropolis which we call London was up to that time under the control for municipal affairs of the various parish boards and local vestries, each of them constructed on some representative system peculiarly its own, and none of them, it may be justly said, under any direct control from the great mass of the community. The greater part of the West End of London was under the management of a body known as the Metropolitan Board of Works; the City of London was dominated by its own historic Corporation; each other district of the metropolis had its governing vestry or some such institution. Apart from all other objections to such a system, one of its obvious defects was that no common principle was recognized in the municipal arrangements of the metropolis; there were no common rules for their regulation of traffic, for the levying of rates, for the management of public institutions, and a Londoner who changed his residence from one part of the town to another, or even from one side of a street to another, might find himself suddenly brought under the control of a system of municipal regulations with which he was totally unfamiliar. Appeals were constantly made by enlightened Londoners for some uniform system of London government, but for a long time nothing was done in the way of reform. At last, however, it happened--luckily, in one sense, for the community--that the Metropolitan Board of Works, which ruled the West End districts, became the cause of much public scandal because of its mistakes and mismanagement, not to use any harsher terms, in the dealing with public contracts. The excitement caused by these discoveries made it impossible for the old system to be maintained any longer, and the result was the passing of an Act of Parliament which created an entirely new governing body for the metropolis. This new governing body was styled the London County Council, and it was to have control of the whole metropolis, with the exception of that comparatively small extent of municipal territory which we know as the City of London. The members of the new County Council were to be chosen, for the most part, as are the members of the House of Commons, by direct popular suffrage. Some of the foremost men in England became members of the new County Council. One of these was Lord Rosebery, another was Sir Thomas Farrer (who has since become Lord Farrer), a third was Frederic Harrison, one of the most eminent writers and thinkers of his time, and another was John Burns, the working engineer. I mention this fact only to show how thoroughly John Burns must have established his reputation as a man well qualified to take a leading place in the municipal government of London. Since that time he has been elected again and again to the same position.

When the great dispute broke out in London between the dock-laborers and the ship-owners, John Burns took an active and untiring part in the endeavor to obtain fair terms for the workers, and by his moderation and judgment, as well as by his inexhaustible energy, he did inestimable service in the bringing about of a satisfactory settlement. The late Cardinal Manning took a conspicuous part in the effort to obtain good terms for the workingmen, and he was recognized on both sides of the dispute as a most acceptable mediator, and I remember that he expressed himself more than once in the highest terms as to the services rendered by John Burns during the whole of the crisis. Burns made one or two unsuccessful attempts to obtain a seat in the House of Commons--or perhaps, to put it more correctly, I should say that he consented, in obedience to the pressure of his friends and followers, to become a candidate for a seat. In 1892 he was elected to Parliament as the representative of that Battersea district where his life began, and he has held the seat ever since. In the House of Commons he has been a decided success. It is only right to say that the workingmen representatives, who now form a distinct and influential section in the House, have fully vindicated their right to hold places there, and have, with hardly any exception, done honor to the choice of their constituents. John Burns is among the foremost, if not the very foremost, of the working class representatives. He has won the good opinions of all parties and classes in the House of Commons. He has won especial merit which counts for much in the House--he never makes a speech unless when he has something to say which has a direct bearing on the debate in progress and which it is important that the House should hear. He is never a mere declaimer, and he never speaks for the sake of making a speech and having it reported in the newspapers. The House always knows that when John Burns rises he has some solid argument to offer, and that he will sit down as soon as he has said his say.

The first time I had the honor of becoming personally acquainted with John Burns was in the House of Commons, shortly after his first election, and I was introduced to him by my friend Michael Davitt. I could not help feeling at the time that it was a remarkable event in one's life to be introduced to John Burns by Michael Davitt. Both these men were then honored members of the House of Commons, and both had for many years been regarded by most of what are called the ruling classes as disturbers of the established order of things and enemies of the British Constitution. Davitt had spent years in prison as a rebel, and Burns had been at least once imprisoned, though but for a short time, as a disturber of public order. Every one came to admit in the end that each man was thoroughly devoted to a cause which he believed rightful, and that the true and lasting prosperity of a State must depend largely on men who are thus willing to make any sacrifice for the maintenance of equal political rights in the community. I have had, since that time, many opportunities of meeting with Burns in public and private and exchanging ideas with him on all manner of subjects, and I can only say that the better I have known him the higher has been my opinion of his intelligence, his sincerity, and his capacity to do the State some service.

John Burns has made himself very useful in the committee work of the House of Commons. The House hands over the manipulation and arrangement of many of its measures on what I may call technical subjects--measures concerning trade and industry, shipping and railways, and other such affairs of business--to be discussed in detail and put into working shape by small committees chosen from among the members; and these measures, when they have passed through this process of examination, are brought up for full and final settlement in the House itself. It will be easily understood that there are many subjects of this order, on which the practical experience and the varied observation of a man like Burns must count for much in the shaping of legislation. Burns has genial, unpretending manners, and although he was born with a fighting spirit, he is not one of those who make it their effort to cram their opinions down the throats of their opponents. Although his views are extreme on most of the questions in which he takes a deep interest, he is always willing to admit that there may be something to be said on the other side of the controversy; he is ever ready to give a full consideration to all the arguments of his fellow-members, and if any one in the committee can show him that he is mistaken on this or that point, he will yield to the force of argument, and has no hesitation about acknowledging a change in his views. Fervent as he is in his devotion to any of the great principles which have become a faith with him, there is nothing of the fanatic about him, and I do not think his enemies would ever have to fear persecution at his hands. There is no roughness in his manners, although he has certainly not been brought up to the ways of what is generally known as good society; and his smile is winning and sweet. He has probably a certain consciousness of mental strength, as he has of physical strength, which relieves him from any inclination towards self-assertion. I should find it as difficult to believe that John Burns countenanced a deed of oppression as I should find it to believe that he sought by obsequiousness the favor of the great.

John Burns was, it is almost needless to say, an opponent from the very beginning of the policy which led to the war against the South African Republics. When the general election came on, about midway in the course of the war, the war passion had come upon the country like an epidemic, and some of the most distinguished English representatives lost their seats in the House of Commons because they refused to sanction the Jingo policy. Many men who were rising rapidly into Parliamentary distinction were defeated at the elections by Imperialist candidates. Nor were the men thus shut out from Parliament for the time all members of the Liberal party. In some instances, although few indeed, there were men belonging to the Conservative, the Ministerial, side, who could not see the justice of the war policy and would not conceal their opinions, and who therefore had to forfeit their seats when some thoroughgoing Tory Imperialists presented themselves as rivals for the favor of the local voters. So great was the influence of the war passion that even among the constituencies where the workingmen were strong there were examples of an Imperialist victory over the true principles of liberty and democracy. But the Battersea constituents of John Burns remained faithful to their political creed and to him, and he was sent back in triumph to the House of Commons to carry on the fight for every good cause there. He took part in many debates during the continuance of the campaign, and he never made a speech on the subject of the war which was not listened to with interest even by those most opposed to his opinions. He has the gift of debate as well as the gift of declamation, and he knows his part in Parliamentary life far too well to substitute declamation for debate. The typical demagogue, as he is pictured by those who do not sympathize with democracy, would on such occasions have merely relieved his mind by repeated denunciations of that war in particular and of wars in general, and would soon have lost any hold on the attention of the House, which is, to do it justice, highly practical in its methods of discussion. John Burns spoke in each debate on the war when he had something to say which could practically and precisely bear on the subject then under immediate consideration--a question connected with the administration of the campaign, with the manner in which the War Office or the Colonial Office was conducting some particular part of its administrative task, with the immediate effects of this or that movement, and in this way he compelled attention and he challenged reply. I remember, for instance, that when the spokesmen of the Government were laying great stress on the severity and injustice of the Boer State's dealings with the native populations of South Africa, John Burns gave from his own experience and observation instances of the manner in which African populations had been dealt with by British authorities, and demanded whether such actions would not have justified the intervention of some European State if the conduct of the Boer Government, supposing it to be accurately described, was a justification for England's invasion of the Boer territory. Whenever he took part in the debate, he met his opponents on their own ground, and he challenged their policy in practical detail, instead of wasting his time in mere declamatory appeals to principles of liberty and justice which would have fallen flat upon the minds of those who held it as their creed that Imperial England was free to dictate her terms to all peoples of inferior strength and less highly developed civilization.

John Burns has fairly won for himself an honorable place in the history of our time. If he had done nothing else, he would have accomplished much by demonstrating in his own person the right of the workingman to have a seat in Parliament. One finds it hard now to understand how the English House of Commons could ever have been regarded as the representative ruling body of England, when it held no members who were authorized by position and by experience to speak for the working populations of the country. I mean no disparagement to the other representatives of the working classes when I say that I regard John Burns as the most distinguished and the most influential among them. Others of the same order have rendered valuable service, not merely to their own class, but to the State in general since they came to hold seats in the House of Commons; some have even held administrative office in a Liberal Government, and have shown themselves well qualified for the duties. Not any of them, so far as I can recollect, has ever shown himself the mere declaimer and demagogue whom so many Conservative observers and critics used to tell us we must expect to meet if the workingmen were enabled to send their spokesmen into the House of Commons. I do not know whether John Burns has any ambition to hold a seat in some future Liberal Ministry, but I venture to think that if such should be his fortune, he will prove himself more useful than ever to the best interests of his country. He has never sought to obtain the favor and the support of his own order by flattering their weaknesses, by encouraging them in their errors, or by allowing them to believe that the right must always be on their side and the wrong on the side of their opponents. I fully believe that he has good and great work yet to do.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH]

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is now, as everybody knows, out of office. _Il reviendra_, no doubt, and in a happier sense, we may trust, than fate allowed to the once famous personage concerning whom the words I have quoted were said and sung throughout France. _Il reviendra_ was the burden of the chant composed to the honor of the late General Boulanger and echoed through all the French music-halls at the time when Boulanger got into trouble with the existing government. But Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is a man of very different order from Boulanger, with whom he has, so far as I know, nothing whatever in common except the fact that they were both born in the same year, 1837.

The admirers of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach may take it for granted that he will some time or other return to a high position in an English administration. Whether that administration is to be Liberal or Conservative we must wait for events to show. One can imagine the formation of a Conservative Government which might rise to the level of Hicks-Beach; or one might imagine the formation of a Liberal Government in which Hicks-Beach could see his way to take office; but I think it would be hard to realize the idea of such a man being left out of office or kept out of office for many years. He was, according to my judgment, the most efficient and capable member of the Conservative Government now in office, the Government from which he felt himself compelled to withdraw, or in which, at all events, he was not pressed to continue. He was not a brilliant figure in that Government. He had not the push and the energy and the impressive debating powers of Mr. Chamberlain, and he had not the culture, the grace, and the literary style of Mr. Arthur Balfour. He made no pretensions whatever to the gift of oratory, although he had some at least of the qualities which are needed for oratorical success. His style of speaking is remarkably clear and impressive. No question, however complex and difficult, seems hard to understand when explained by Hicks-Beach. He compels attention rather than attracts it. There are no alluring qualities in his eloquence, there are no graces of manner or exquisite forms of expression; there is a cold, almost harsh clearness enforcing itself in every speech. The speaker seems to be telling his hearers that, whether they agree with him or not, whether they like him or not, they must listen to what he has to say. There is a certain quality of antagonism in his manner from first to last, and he conveys the idea of one who feels a grim satisfaction in the work of hammering his opinions into the heads of men who would rather be thinking of something else if the choice were left to them. "Black Michael" is the nickname familiarly applied to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach in private conversation by the members of the House of Commons, and the nickname has found its way into the columns of "Punch" and other periodicals. The term "Black Michael" does not, we may assume, refer merely to the complexion of Hicks-Beach, to the color of his hair; but means to suggest a grim dark-someness about his whole expression of countenance and bearing. Certainly any one who watches Sir Michael Hicks-Beach as he sits during a debate in the House of Commons, waiting for his turn to reply to the attacks on some measure of which he is a supporter, will easily understand the significance of the appellation. Hicks-Beach follows every sentence of the speaker then addressing the House with a stern and ironical gaze of intensity which seems already to foredoom the unlucky orator to a merciless castigation. I must say that if I were a member of the House of Commons devoted to the championship of some not quite orthodox financial theory, I should not like to know that my exposition of the doctrine was to be publicly analyzed by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach.

Yet Hicks-Beach is not by any means an ungenial man, according to my observation. Some of his colleagues say that he has a bad temper, or at least a quick temper; and I must say that I can easily understand how a man of vigorous intelligence and expansive views might occasionally be brought into a mood of unphilosophic acrimony by the goings-on of the present Conservative administration. During my many years of service in the House of Commons I had opportunities of coming into personal intercourse with Hicks-Beach, and I have always found him easy of approach and genial in his manners. At different times while he was holding office I had to make representations to him privately with regard to some difficulty arising between an administrative department and certain localities which felt themselves oppressed, or at least put at a disadvantage, by the working of new regulations. I always found Sir Michael Hicks-Beach ready to give a full and fair consideration to every complaint and to exercise his authority for the removal of any genuine grievance. But I can easily understand that observers who have not had personal dealings with Hicks-Beach and have only observed him as he sits silent, dark, and grim during some debate in the House of Commons, may well have formed some very decided impressions as to his habitual moods and tempers. A member of the House once asked me whether I was aware of the fact that a certain line in one of Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome" was supposed to contain a prophetic description of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. I gave up the puzzle, and then my friend told me that the description was contained in the lines describing the Roman trumpet-call which tell that

"The kite knows well the long stern swell."

I hope my American readers will not have quite forgotten the meaning of the term "swell," now somewhat falling into disuse, but at one time very commonly employed in England to describe a member of what would now be called "smart society."

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has held many offices. He has been Under-Secretary for the Home Department, and Secretary to the Poor Law Board; he has been twice Chief Secretary for Ireland, or, to speak more strictly, Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and he has been twice Chancellor of the Exchequer. I need hardly say that he was not able to accomplish much during the periods of his Irish administration. I have said in preceding articles that it is not possible for the Chief Secretary of a Conservative Government to accomplish anything worth attempting in the work of Irish administration. What Ireland demands is the right to manage her own national affairs in her own domestic Parliament, and there is nothing worth doing to be done by any government which will not take serious account of her one predominant claim. No patronage of local charities, local flower shows, and local racecourses, no amount of Dublin Castle hospitalities, no vice-regal visits to public schools and municipal institutions, can bring about any real improvement in the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. I have no doubt that Hicks-Beach did all in his power to see that the business of his department was efficiently and honestly conducted in Dublin Castle, but under the conditions imposed upon him by Conservative principles it was impossible for him to accomplish any success in the administration of Irish affairs. It has often come into my mind that a certain sense of his limitations in this way was sometimes apparent in the bearing and manner of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, when he had to take any prominent part in the business of Dublin Castle. He has an active mind and a ready faculty of initiative, and there was no place for such a man in the sort of administrative work which mainly consists in the endeavor to keep things going as they have been going, and striving after an impossible compromise between despotic principles and a free constitutional system.

Hicks-Beach, of course, was more in his place when at the head of the financial department of the administration. He is admitted to have been one of the most skillful and enlightened among modern Chancellors of the Exchequer. His financial statements were always thoroughly clear, symmetrical, and interesting from first to last. He never got into any entanglement with his figures, and his array of facts was always marshaled with something like dramatic skill. I do not profess to be very strong upon financial questions, but I could always understand and follow with the deepest interest any financial exposition made by Hicks-Beach. He seemed to me to be distinctly above the level of his party and his official colleagues on all such questions, and it has often occurred to me that such a man was rather thrown away upon a Conservative Government. Whatever else might be said against them, it could not be said that his speeches at any time sank to the level of the commonplace. There was something combative in his nature, and his style of speaking, with its clear, strong, and sometimes almost harsh tones, appeared as if it were designed in advance to confront and put down all opposition. The House of Commons had for a long time got into the way of regarding Hicks-Beach as a man in advance of his colleagues on all subjects of financial administration. Every Tory in office, or likely to be in office, now professes himself a free-trader, in the English sense of the phrase, but Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was evidently a genuine free-trader, and never could have been anything else since he first turned his attention seriously and steadily to financial questions. I should describe him as one of the foremost debaters in the House of Commons among the men who made no pretensions to the higher order of eloquence; and probably an additional attraction was given to his speeches by that aggressive and combative tone which I have just noticed. I have sometimes fancied that his combativeness of manner and his dictatorial style were less intended for the discomfiture of his recognized political opponents than for that of his own colleagues in office. Long before there was any rumor of incompatibility between Hicks-Beach and the members of the present Government, I have often found myself wondering how the man who expressed such enlightened ideas on so many financial and political questions could possibly get on with a somewhat reactionary Conservative administration. Of course I have no means of knowing anything beyond that which is known to the general public concerning the causes which led to Hicks-Beach's withdrawal or exclusion from his place in the present Government. Even those London journals which profess to know everything about the inner councils of the Cabinet did not, and do not, tell us anything more on this particular subject than the news, impossible to be concealed, that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had ceased to be a member of the Conservative administration. We were all left to make any conjectures we pleased as to the cause of this remarkable change, and I feel, therefore, no particular diffidence in expounding my own theory. During the long debates on Hicks-Beach's latest Budget proposals, which I had to follow only through the medium of the newspaper reports, I became possessed with the idea that Hicks-Beach was performing reluctantly an uncongenial and almost intolerable task.

Let me recall to the minds of my readers some of the conditions amid which Hicks-Beach found himself compelled of late to carry on his work. It should be said, in the first instance, that he never showed himself, and, as I believe, never could have been, a genuine Tory of the old school. He never exhibited himself as an uncompromising partisan on any of the great subjects which arouse political antagonism. He must have had very little sympathy indeed with the dogmas and the watchwords and the war-cries of old-fashioned militant Toryism. He never identified himself with the cause of the Orangemen in Ireland or the principles of the Jingoes in England. He seldom addressed the House of Commons on any subjects but those which belonged to his own department, and these were for the most part questions of finance. When, however, he had occasionally to take part in debates on subjects connected with England's foreign policy, he generally spoke with an enlightenment, a moderation, and a conciliatory tone which would have done credit to any statesman and seemed little in keeping with the policy and the temper of modern Toryism. But Hicks-Beach had fallen upon evil days for a man of his foresight, his intellect, and his temperament generally who had found a place in a Conservative Cabinet. The policy which led to the outbreak of the war in South Africa aroused a passion in the English public mind which found its utmost fury among the partisans of Toryism. Tory and Jingo became for the time synonymous terms. The man who did not allow his heart and soul to be filled with the war spirit must have seemed to most of his friends unworthy to be called a Conservative. Even among certain sections of the Liberals it required much courage for any man to condemn or even to criticise with severity the policy which had led to the war. Any one who ventured on such a course, whether he were Liberal or Conservative, was straightway branded with the opprobrious epithet of pro-Boer, and that title was supposed to carry his complete condemnation. England had come back suddenly to the same kind of passionate temper which prevailed during the earlier part of the Crimean War. "He who is not with us is against us," cried the professing patriots at both times--he who does not glorify the war is a traitor to his own country and a pro-Boer, or a pro-Russian, as the case might be. This was the temper with which Hicks-Beach found that he had to deal during the later years of his financial administration.

It would be out of place to enter into any speculation as to what Hicks-Beach's own views may have been with regard to the whole policy of the war. It is now well known that Queen Victoria was entirely opposed to that policy, although she did not feel that her position as a constitutional sovereign gave her authority to overrule it by a decision of her own. There is very good reason to believe that peace was brought about at last by the resolute exercise of King Edward's influence. It is at least not unlikely that a man of Hicks-Beach's intellect and temperament may have been opposed at first to the policy which brought on the war, but may have, nevertheless, believed that his most patriotic course would be to remain in the Government and do the best he could for the public benefit. He soon found himself compelled to perform as disagreeable a task as an enlightened financial statesman could have to undertake--the task of extracting from the already overburdened taxpayers the means of carrying on a war of conquest with which he had little sympathy. It was perfectly evident that the needed revenue could not be extracted from the country without some violation of those financial principles to which Hicks-Beach had long been attached. There was no time for much meditation--the money had to be found somehow--and a great part of it could only be found by the imposition of a duty on foreign imports. We now know from public statements made by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach himself that while the war was going on he became impressed with the conviction that the whole administration of the military department was grossly mismanaged, and that the money of the nation was thrown away when the War Office came to spend it. The conviction thus forced upon him could not have tended to make the task of providing means for such further expenditure any the more agreeable to him. We may assume that he saw no other course before him than to make the best of a bad job and try to find in the least objectionable way the amount of money necessary to carry on the business of the State. It was evident to him that the principles of free trade must be put aside for the present, and he found himself driven to the odious necessity of imposing a duty on the importation of foreign corn, a duty which in fact amounted to a tax on bread. Hicks-Beach well knew that no tax could be more odious to the poorer classes of the British Islands; but we may presume that in his emergency he could see no other way of raising the money, and he accepted the situation with a dogged resolve which made no pretense at any concealment of his personal dislike for the task. His manner of delivering the speech in which he set forth his scheme of finance was that of a man who has to discharge an odious duty, or what he finds himself by the force of circumstances compelled to regard as a duty, but will utter no word which might seem to make out that he has any excuse other than that of hateful necessity. The substance of Hicks-Beach's explanations on this part of his budget might be summed up in such words as these: "We have got to pay for this war, and we have no time to spare in finding the money; we must cast aside for the time the principles of free trade; but do not let us further degrade ourselves by hypocritical attempts to make out that what we are doing is in accordance with the free-trade doctrine." I remember well that on reading Hicks-Beach's budget speech I became deeply impressed with the conviction that his task was becoming so intolerable to him that we might expect before long to see a change in the composition of the Government. But it appeared to me that, as the debate went on and the days went on, the position of Hicks-Beach was becoming more and more difficult. Some of the members of the Cabinet became to all appearance suddenly possessed with an inspiration that the time had arrived for a bold movement of reaction against the long-accepted doctrines of free trade. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had already receded so far from the established policy as to propose the imposition of a tax on the imported materials for making bread; and why, therefore, should we not take advantage--thus at least I construed their ideas--of this tempting opportunity to introduce a system of preferential duties and an imitation Zollverein for England and some of her colonies, and to break away from the creed and dogmas of men like Gladstone, Cobden, and Bright? These proposals must have opened to the eyes of Hicks-Beach a vista of financial heresies into which he could not possibly enter. He probably thought that he had gone far enough in the way of compromise when he consented to meet immediate emergencies by the imposition of a bread-tax. Is it possible that he may have felt some compunctious visiting because of his having yielded so far to the necessities of the moment? However that may be, I take it for granted, and took it for granted at the time, that Hicks-Beach found the incompatibility between his own views as to the raising of revenue and the views beginning to be developed by some of his colleagues becoming more and more difficult to reconcile.

Let me venture on an illustration, although it be not by any means photographic in its accuracy, of the difficulty with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself confronted. Let us suppose Hicks-Beach to be the leader of a pledged society of total abstainers. At a moment of sudden crisis he feels called upon to relax so far the rigidity of the society's governing principle as to allow one of its members who is threatened with utter physical prostration a few drops of alcoholic stimulant. He finds his course cordially approved by some of his most influential colleagues, and at first he is proud of their support. But it presently turns out that they regard his reluctant concession as the opening up of a new practice in their regulations, and they press upon him all manner of propositions for the toleration and even the encouragement of what my friend Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the great English champion of total abstinence, would term "moderate drunkenness." Fancy what the feelings of Sir Wilfrid Lawson would be if by some temporary and apparently needful concession he found himself regarded by those around him as an advocate of moderate drunkenness! Such, I cannot help thinking, must have been, in its different way, the condition to which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach felt himself brought down, when he discovered that his introduction of an import duty on foreign grain was believed by his principal colleagues to be but the opening of a reactionary movement against the whole policy of free trade.

The Government of Lord Salisbury seemed to be in the highest good spirits at the prospects before them. Mr. Chamberlain in especial seemed to believe that the time had come for him to develop an entirely new system of his own for the adjustment of import and export duties. For many weeks the English newspapers were filled with discussions on Mr. Chamberlain's great project for the new British Imperial Zollverein, of which England was to be the head. Numbers of Mr. Chamberlain's Conservative admirers were filled with a fresh enthusiasm for the man who thus proposed to reverse altogether the decisions of all modern political economy laid down by Liberal statesmen and Radical writers. Stout old Tory gentlemen representing county constituencies began to be full of hope that the good old times were coming back.

That was the crisis--so far at least as the official career of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was concerned for the time. What may have happened in the private councils of the Government we of the outer world were not and are not permitted to know. All that we actually do know is that Lord Salisbury resigned his place as Prime Minister, that Arthur Balfour was called to succeed him in office, and that a new administration was formed in which the name of Hicks-Beach did not appear. There were other changes also made in the administration, but with these I shall not for the present concern myself. The important fact for this article is that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was no longer Chancellor of the Exchequer. All manner of conjectures were made as to the reasons why Lord Salisbury so suddenly withdrew from the position of Prime Minister, and why he could not be prevailed upon to hold the place even nominally until after King Edward's coronation. I do not suppose that the resignation of Lord Salisbury had anything to do with the fact that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach ceased to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. The vacancies were not made simultaneously, nor did there appear any reason to believe that Hicks-Beach was so closely identified with the political fortunes of Lord Salisbury as to be unable to remain in office when his leader had ceased to hold the place of command. So far as an outsider can judge, it must have been that Hicks-Beach could not get on with the new administration, or that the new administration could not get on with him. My own theory, and I only offer it to my readers as the theory of a mere observer from the outside, is that Hicks-Beach could not stand any more of the reaction towards protection principles--thought he had gone quite as far as any sense of duty to his party could exact from him, and made up his mind that if his colleagues were anxious to go any farther in what he believed to be the wrong direction they must do so without any help or countenance from him.

This theory has taken a firmer hold than ever of my mind since I read the report of a speech lately made by Hicks-Beach weeks and weeks after he had ceased to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. That recent speech might have been made by a member of the Liberal Opposition. Certainly in some of its most important and striking passages it enunciated opinions and laid down doctrines which might have come from almost any of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's colleagues on the front Opposition bench. It denounced extravagant war expenditure at a time when Imperialist politicians were calling out for something very like military conscription, and it insisted that the defense of England by the strength of her navy ought to be the main consideration of English statesmanship. That is a doctrine which used to be proclaimed in distant days by such men as Cobden and Bright, which soon became an accepted principle among all genuine Liberals, but has lately been repudiated by all Imperialists, Liberal or Tory, who seem to think that the one great business of English statesmanship is to turn England into a military encampment. The natural and reasonable conclusion to be drawn from such a speech is that during the last session or two of Parliament Hicks-Beach found it impossible to put up any longer with the reign of Jingo principles in the Cabinet, and made up his mind to set himself free from such a domination. The Tory Government has lost its ablest financial administrator, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has regained his position of independence.

The future must tell the story of Hicks-Beach's remaining career. That he has yet an important career before him may be taken for granted if only the fates allow him the ordinary length of man's life. Nothing but absolute retirement from Parliamentary work could reduce such a man to a position of complete neutrality, or could prevent him from having an influence which the leaders of both political parties must take into consideration. He is too strong in debate, too well trained in the business of administration, and too quick in observing the real import of growing political changes, and in distinguishing between them and the mere displays of ephemeral emotion, not to make his influence felt at any great crisis in the conditions of political parties. I hold, therefore, to the hope expressed at the opening of this article, that _il reviendra_--that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will come back before long to an important place in some administration. The House of Commons could not afford just now to lose the services of such a man, and I take it for granted that Hicks-Beach could not remain long in the House of Commons without being called upon to accept an official position. He is beyond question one of the very ablest men on the side of the Government in that House, and his integrity, his moderation, his capacity to understand the significance of new facts, and his disinterestedness have won for him the respect of all parties in Parliament and outside it. We are, to all appearance, on the eve of great changes in the composition of our political parties. With the close of the war has come to an end that season of Jingoism which brought so many weak-minded Liberals into fascinated co-operation with the Tories. The reaction against Toryism must come, and it will probably bring with it a reconstitution of both parties on the principles which each may consider essential to its character at a time when peace at home gives our legislators a chance of studying the domestic welfare of the people in these islands. It will not be enough then for a public man to proclaim himself Imperialist in order to win the votes of a constituency, or to denounce his rival as a pro-Boer in order to secure defeat for that unlucky personage. The constituencies will begin to ask what each candidate proposes to do for the domestic prosperity of our populations at home, and to demand an explicit answer. Under such conditions, whatever be the reconstitution of parties, I am strongly of opinion that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will before long begin a new administrative career.

JOHN E. REDMOND]

JOHN E. REDMOND

John Edward Redmond is one of the leading men in the House of Commons just now. He is one of the very few really eloquent speakers of whom the House can boast at the present time. His eloquence is, indeed, of a kind but rarely heard in either House of Parliament during recent years. The ordinary style of debate in the House of Commons is becoming more and more of the merely conversational order, and even when the speaker is very much in earnest, even when he is carried away by the fervor of debate, his emotion is apt to express itself rather in an elevation of the voice than in an exaltation of the style. Among members of the House who may be still regarded as having a career before them I do not think there are more than three or four who are capable of making a really eloquent speech--a speech which is worth hearing for its style and its language as well as for its information and its argument. John Redmond is one of these gifted few; Lloyd-George is another. I have heard some critics depreciate John Redmond's eloquence on the ground that it is rather old-fashioned. If it be old-fashioned to express one's meaning in polished and well-balanced sentences, in brilliant phrasing, and with melodious utterance, then I have to admit that John Redmond is not, in his style of eloquence, quite up to the present fashion, and I can only say that it is so much the worse for the present fashion. It is quite certain that Redmond is accepted by the House of Commons in general as one of its most eloquent speakers and one of its ablest party leaders.

Redmond has already been some twenty years in the House of Commons. He was a very young man when first chosen to represent an Irish constituency in the House. I have noticed that our biographical dictionaries of contemporary life do not agree as to the date of Redmond's birth. Some of the books set him down as born in 1851, while others give the year of his birth as 1856. I think I have good reason for knowing that the latter date is the correct one. Perhaps it ought to bring a sense of gratification to a public man when a dispute arises as to the date of his birth. It may give him a complacent reminder of the fact that certain cities disputed as to Homer's birthplace.

John Redmond comes of a good family, and his father was for a long time a member of the House of Commons. I can remember the elder Redmond very well, and he was a man of the most courteous bearing and polished manners, a man of education and capacity, who, whenever he spoke in debate, spoke well and to the point, and was highly esteemed by all parties in the House. John Redmond was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, studied for the law and was called to the bar, but did not practice in the profession. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1881, and became a member of that National party which had been formed not long before under the guidance of Charles Stewart Parnell. From the time when he first took part in a Parliamentary debate it was evident that John Redmond had inherited his father's graceful manner of speaking, and it was soon discovered that he possessed a faculty of genuine eloquence which had not been displayed by the elder Redmond. John Redmond had and still has a voice of remarkable strength, volume, and variety of intonation, and he was soon afforded ample opportunity of testing his capacity for public speech. It was a great part of Parnell's policy that there should be a powerful Home Rule organization extending itself over all parts of Great Britain, founding institutions in all the principal cities and towns, and addressing audiences indoors and out on the subject of Ireland's demand for domestic self-government. John Redmond soon became one of the most effective organizers of this new movement and one of the most powerful pleaders of the cause on public platforms. The first time I ever heard him make a speech in public was at a great open-air meeting held in Hyde Park. He had to address a vast crowd, and I felt naturally anxious to know what his success might be under such trying conditions for a young speaker. He had then but a slender frame, and his somewhat delicately molded features did not suggest the idea of great lung-power. After his first sentence I felt no further doubt as to his physical capacity. He had a magnificent voice, clear, resonant, and thrilling, which made itself heard all over the crowd without the slightest apparent effort on the part of the speaker. I could not help being struck at the time by the seeming contrast between the boyish, delicate figure and the easy strength of the resonant voice.

During his earlier sessions in the House of Commons Redmond did not speak very often, but when he did speak he made it clear that he had at his command a gift of genuine eloquence. He held office as one of the whips of the Irish National party--that is to say, as one of the chosen officials whose duty it is to look after the arrangements of the party, to see that its members are always in their places at the right time, to settle as to the speakers who are to take part in each debate, and to enter into any necessary communications with the whips of the other parties in the House. Redmond was a man admirably suited for such work. He had had an excellent education; he had the polished manners of good society; he belonged to what I may call the country gentleman order, and could ride to hounds with a horsemanship which must have won the respect of the Tory squires from the hunting counties; and he had an excellent capacity and memory for all matters of arrangement and detail. He attended to his duties as one of the party whips with unfailing regularity, and could exercise with equal skill and effect the influence of persuasiveness and that of official command.

In the early days of the Parnell party there was not, to be sure, any great demand on the marshaling power of the whips over the rank and file of the little army. For a considerable time the whole Parnellite party did not consist of more than ten or a dozen members. These members, however, were compelled to do constant duty, and to maintain the great game of Parliamentary obstruction revived by Parnell at all hours of the day and the night. It was quite a common thing for a member of the party to deliver a dozen or fifteen speeches in the course of a single sitting, and John Redmond had all his work to do in endeavoring to keep exhausted colleagues up to their business and to see that they did not leave the precincts of the House until Mr. Speaker should have formally announced that the day's sitting was over. Redmond's services were of inestimable value during such a period of trial. As the days went on, the Irish constituencies became more and more aroused to the necessity of increasing as far as possible the number of thoroughgoing Parnellites in the House by getting rid, at every election, of the Irish members--Irish Whigs as they were called--who did not go in thoroughly, heart and soul, for the policy of Parnell. Under such conditions the influence and the eloquence of John Redmond were of the most substantial service to his party in the work of stirring up the national sentiment among the Irish populations in the cities and towns of England and Scotland. Before many years had passed, John Redmond was one of the whips of an Irish National party in the House of Commons which numbered nearly ninety members. The increase of official duties thus put upon him and his brother whips did not seem to trouble him in the slightest degree. He was always on duty in the House, unless when he had to be on duty at some public meeting outside its precincts; he was ever in good spirits; could always give his chief the fullest and most exact information as to the conditions of each debate, and the best methods of getting full use of the numbers and the debating strength of the Irish party at any given moment.

During the greater part of this time he had not had much opportunity of cultivating his faculty as a debater, for the whip of a party is understood to be occupied rather in putting other men up to speak than in displaying eloquence of his own, and it was for several years not quite understood by the party that John Redmond was qualified to be and was destined to be one of its most commanding spokesmen. I ought to say that among other duties discharged by John Redmond was the trying and responsible task of traveling on more than one occasion over the United States and Canada and Australia to preach the Home Rule gospel to the Irish populations in those countries and to all others who would listen, and thus to obtain the utmost possible support for the great movement at home. For many sessions, however, John Redmond was regarded by his colleagues in the House as a speaker best heard to advantage on some great public platform outside the Parliamentary precincts, and very few of them indeed had yet formed the idea that he was also qualified to become one of the foremost orators in the representative chamber itself.