The gravest trouble of his life arose in connection with legal proceedings which he felt bound to take in the case of a Ritualist clergyman who had persisted in practices apparently illegal. Fraser, though personally the most tolerant of men to those who differed from his own theological views, felt bound to enforce the law, because it was the law, and was at once assailed unjustly, as well as bitterly, by those who sympathised with the offending clergyman, and who could not, or would not, understand that a bishop, like other persons in an official position, may hold it his absolute duty to carry out the directions of the law whether or no he approves the law, and at whatever cost to himself. These attacks were borne with patience and dignity. He was never betrayed into recriminations, and could the more easily preserve his calmness, because he felt no animosity.
A bishop may be a power outside his own religious community even in a country where 209 the clergy are separated as a caste from the lay people. Such men as Dupanloup in France show that. So too he may be a mighty moral and religious force outside his own religious community in a country where there is no church established or endowed by the State. The example of Dr. Phillips Brooks in the United States shows that. But Dupanloup would have been eminent and influential had he not been a clergyman at all; and Dr. Brooks was the most inspiring preacher and the most potent leader of religious thought in America long before, in the last years of his life, he reluctantly consented to accept the episcopal office. Fraser, not so gifted by nature as either of those men, would have had little chance of doing the work he did save in a country where the existence of an ancient establishment secures for one of its dignitaries a position of far-reaching influence. When the gains and losses to a nation of the retention of a church establishment are reckoned up, this may be set down among the gains.
If the Church of England possessed more leaders like Tait, Fraser, and Lightfoot—the statesman, the citizen, and the scholar—in the characters and careers of all of whom one finds the common mark of a catholic and pacific spirit, she would have no need to fear any assaults of political foes, no temptation to ally herself with any party, but might stand as an establishment 210 until, after long years, by the general wish of her own people, as well as of those who are without, she passed peaceably into the position of being the first in honour, numbers, and influence among a group of Christian communities, all equally free from State control.
Fraser’s example showed how much an attitude of unpretending simplicity and friendliness to all sects and classes may do to mitigate the jealousy and suspicion which still embitter the relations of the different religious bodies in England, and which work for evil even in its politics. He created, as Dean Stanley said, a new type of episcopal excellence: and why should not originality be shown in the conception and discharge of an office as well as in the sphere of pure thought or of literary creation?
Sir Stafford Northcote (born 1818, died 1887) belonged to a type of politician less common among us than it used to be, and likely to become still more rare as England grows more democratic—the county gentleman of old family and good estate, who receives and profits by a classical education at one of the ancient universities, who is at an early age returned to Parliament in respect of his social position in his county, who has leisure to cultivate himself for statesmanship, who has tastes and resources outside the sphere of politics. Devonshire, whence he came, has preserved more of the old features of English country life than the central and northern parts of England, where manufactures and the growth of population have swept away the venerable remains of feudalism. In Devonshire the old families are still deeply respected by the people. They are so intermarried that most of them have ties of 212 kinship with all their neighbours. Few rich parvenus have intruded among them; society is therefore exceptionally easy, simple, and unostentatious. There is still a strong local patriotism, which makes every Devonshire man, whatever his political prepossessions, proud of other Devonshire men who rise to eminence, and which exerts a wholesome influence on the tone of manners and social intercourse. Northcote was a thorough Devonshire man, who loved his county and knew its dialect: his Devonshire stories, told with the strong accent he could assume, were the delight of any company that could tempt him to repeat them. He was immensely popular in the county, and had well earned his popularity by his pleasant neighbourly ways, as well as by his attention to county business and to the duties of a landowner.
He had the time-honoured training of the good old English type, was a schoolboy at Eton, went thence to Oxford, won the highest distinctions as a scholar, and laid the foundations of a remarkably wide knowledge of modern as well as ancient literature. He served his apprenticeship to statesmanship as private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, who was then (1843) a member of Sir Robert Peel’s Government. When the great schism in the Tory party took place over the question of free trade in corn, he was not yet in Parliament, and therefore was 213 not driven to choose between Peel and the Protectionists. In 1855, when he first entered the House of Commons, that question was settled and gone, so there was no inconsistency in his entering the Tory ranks although himself a decided Free Trader. He was not a man who would have elbowed his way upward. But elbows were not needed. His abilities, as well as his industry and the confidence he inspired, speedily brought him to the top. He was appointed Secretary to the Treasury in 1859, entered the Cabinet in 1866, when a new Tory Ministry was formed under Lord Derby; and when in 1876 Mr. Disraeli retired to the House of Lords, he became, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, leader of the majority in the House of Commons, while Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the only other person who had been thought of as suitable for that post, received a peerage. Mr. Hardy was a more forcible and rousing speaker, but Northcote had more varied accomplishments and a fuller mastery of official work. Disraeli said that he had “the largest parliamentary knowledge of any man he had met.”
As an administrator, Sir Stafford Northcote was diligent, judicious, and free from any taint of jobbery. He sought nothing for himself; did not abuse his patronage; kept the public interests steadily before his mind. He was considerate to his subordinates, and gracious to all 214 men. He never grudged labour, although there might be no prospect of winning credit by it. Scrupulous in discharging his duties to his party, he overtaxed his strength by speaking constantly at public meetings in the country, a kind of work he must have disliked, and for which he was ill fitted by the moderation of his views and of his language. Parliament is not a good place for the pursuit of pure truth, but the platform is still less favourable to that quest. It was remarked of him that even in party gatherings, where invective against political opponents is apt to be expected and relished, he argued fairly, and never condescended to abuse.
As a Parliamentarian he had two eminent merits—immense knowledge and admirable readiness. He had been all his life a keen observer and a diligent student; and as his memory was retentive, all that he had observed or read stood at his command. In questions of trade and finance, questions which, owing, perhaps, to their increasing intricacy, seem to be less and less frequently mastered by practical politicians in England, he was especially strong. No other man on his own side in politics spoke on such matters with equal authority, and the brunt of the battle fell on him whenever they came up for discussion. As he had now his old master for his chief antagonist, the conflict was no easy one; but he 215 never shrank from it. Not less remarkable was his alertness in debate. His manner was indeed somewhat ineffective, for it wanted both force and variety. Sentence followed sentence in a smooth and easy stream, always clear, always grammatically correct, but with a flow too equably unbroken. There were few impressive phrases, few brilliant figures, few of those appeals to passion with which it is necessary to warm and rouse a large assembly. When the House grew excited at the close of a long full-dress debate, and Sir Stafford rose in the small hours of the morning to wind it up on behalf of his party, men felt that the ripple of his sweet voice, the softness of his gentle manner, were not what the occasion called for. But what he said was always to the point and well worth hearing. No facts or arguments suddenly thrown at him by opponents disconcerted him; for there was sure to be an answer ready. However weak his own case might seem, his ingenuity could be relied upon to strengthen it; however powerfully the hostile case had been presented, he found weak places in it and shook it down by a succession of well-planted criticisms, each apparently small, but damaging when taken all together, because no one of them could be dismissed as irrelevant.
It was interesting to watch him as he sat on the front bench, with his hat set so low on his brow that it hid all the upper part of his face, while the 216 lower part was covered by a thick yellowish-brown beard, perfectly motionless, rarely taking a note of what was said, and, to all appearance, the most indifferent figure in the House. The only sign of feeling which he gave was to be found in his habit of thrusting each of his hands up the opposite sleeve of his coat when Mr. Gladstone, the only assailant whom he needed to fear, burst upon him in a hailstorm of declamation. But when he rose, one perceived that nothing had escaped him. Every point which an antagonist had made was taken up and dealt with; no point that could aid his own contention was neglected; and the fluent grace with which his discourse swept along, seldom aided by a reference to notes, was not more surprising than the unfailing skill with which he shunned dangerous ground, and put his propositions in a form which made it difficult to contradict them. I remember to have heard a member of the opposite party remark, that nothing was more difficult than to defend your argument from Northcote, because he had the art of nibbling it away, admitting a little in order to evade or overthrow the rest.
So much for his parliamentary aptitudes, which were fully recognised before he rose to leadership. But as it was his leadership that has given him a place in history, I may dwell for a little upon the way in which he filled that most trying as well as most honourable post. He led the House—that 217 is to say, the Ministerial majority—for four sessions (1877-1880), and the Tory Opposition for five and a half sessions (1880 to middle of 1885). To lead the House of Commons a man must have, over and above the qualities which make a good debater, an unusual combination of talents. He must be both bold and cautious, combative and cool. He must take, on his own responsibility, and on the spur of the moment, decisions which commit the whole Ministry, and yet, especially if he be not Prime Minister, he must consider how far his colleagues will approve and implement his action. He must put enough force and fire into his speeches to rouse his own ranks and intimidate (if he can) his opponents, yet must have regard to the more timorous spirits among his own supporters, going no further than he feels they will follow, and must sometimes throw a crafty fly over those in the Opposition whom he thinks wavering or disaffected. Under the fire of debate, perhaps while composing the speech he has to make in reply, he must consider not merely the audience before him but also the effect his words will have when they are read next morning in cold blood, and, it may be, the effect not only in England but abroad. Being responsible for the whole conduct of parliamentary business, he must keep a close watch upon every pending bill, and determine how much of Government time shall be 218 allotted to each, and in what order they shall be taken, and how far the general feeling of the House will let him go in seizing the hours usually reserved for private members, and in granting or refusing opportunities for discussing topics he would prefer to have not discussed at all.
So far as prudence, tact, and knowledge of business could enable him to discharge these duties, Northcote discharged them admirably. It was his good fortune to have behind him in Lord Beaconsfield, who had recently gone to the House of Lords, a chief of the whole party who trusted him, and with whom he was on the best terms. The immense authority of that chief secured his own authority. His party was—as the Tory party usually is—compact and loyal; and his majority ample, so he had no reason to fear defeat. In the conflicts that arose over Eastern affairs in 1877-79, affairs at some moments highly critical, he was cautious and adroit, more cautious than Lord Beaconsfield, sometimes repairing by moderate language the harm which the latter’s theatrical utterances had done. When a group of Irish Nationalist members, among whom Mr. Parnell soon came to the front, began to evade the rules and paralyse the action of the House by obstructive tactics, he was less successful. Their ingenuity baffled the Ministry, and brought the House into sore straits. But it may be doubted 219 whether any leader could have overcome the difficulties of the position. It was a new position. The old rules framed under quite different conditions were not fit to check members who, far from regarding the sentiments of the House, avowed their purpose to reduce it to impotence, and thereby obtain that Parliament of their own, which could alone, as they held, cure the ills of Ireland.
After ten years of struggle and experiment, drastic remedies for obstruction were at last devised; but in the then state of opinion within the House, those remedies could not have been carried. Members accustomed to the old state of things could not for a good while make up their minds to sacrifice part of their own privileges in order to deal with a difficulty the source of which they would not attempt to cure. On the whole, therefore, though he was blamed at the time, Northcote may be deemed to have passed creditably through his first period of leadership.
It was when he had to lead his party in Opposition, after April 1880, that his severest trial came. To lead the minority is usually easier than to lead the majority. A leader of the Opposition also must, no doubt, take swift decisions in the midst of a debate, must consider how far he is pledging his party to a policy which they may be required to maintain when next they come into power, must endeavour to 220 judge, often on scanty data, how many of his usual or nominal supporters will follow him into the lobby when a division is called, and how best he can draw off some votes from among his opponents. Still, delicate as this work is, it is not so hard as that of the leader of the Government, for it is rather critical than constructive, and a mistake can seldom do irreparable mischief. Northcote, however, had special difficulties to face. Mr. Gladstone, still full of energy and fire, was leading the majority. After a few months Lord Beaconsfield’s mantle no longer covered Northcote (that redoubtable strategist died in April 1881), and a small but active group of Tory members set up an irregular skirmishing Opposition on their own account, paying little heed to his moderate counsels. The Tory party was then furious at its unexpected defeat at the election of 1880. It was full of fight, burning for revenge, eager to denounce every trifling error of the Ministry, and to give battle on small as well as great occasions. Hence it resented the calm and cautiously critical attitude which Northcote took up. He had plenty of courage; but he thought, as indeed most impartial observers thought, that little was to be gained by incessantly worrying an enemy so superior in force and flushed with victory; that premature assaults might consolidate a majority within which there existed elements of discord; and 221 that it was wiser to wait till the Ministry should begin to make mistakes and incur misfortunes in the natural course of events, before resuming the offensive against them. There is a natural tendency to reaction in English popular opinion, and a tendency to murmur against whichever party may be in power. This tendency must soon have told in favour of the Tories, with little effort on their own part; and when it was already manifest, a Parliamentary attack could have been delivered with effect. Northcote’s view and plan were probably right, but, being too prone to yield to pressure, and finding his hand forced, he allowed himself to be drawn by the clamour of his followers into aggressive operations, which, nevertheless, himself not quite approving them, he conducted in a half-hearted way. He had not Mr. Gladstone’s power of doing excellently what he hated to have to do. And it must be admitted that from 1882 onwards, when troubles in Ireland and oscillations in Egyptian policy had begun to shake the credit of the Liberal Ministry, he showed less fire and pugnacity than the needs of the time required from a party leader. In one thing the young men, who, like Zulu warriors, wished to wash their spears, were right and he was wrong. He conceived that frequent attacks and a resort to obstructive tactics would damage the Opposition in the eyes of the country. Experience has shown that 222 parties do not greatly suffer from the way they fight their Parliamentary battles. Few people follow the proceedings closely enough to know when an Opposition deserves blame for prolonging debate, or a Ministry for abuse of the closure. So, too, in the United States it would seem that neither the tyrannical action of a majority nor filibustering by a minority shocks the nation.
Not only was Northcote’s own temper pacific, but he was too sweetly reasonable and too dispassionate to be a successful leader in Opposition. He felt that he was never quite a party man. His mind was almost too judicial, his courtesy too unfailing, his temper too unruffled, his manner too unassuming. He did not inspire awe or fear. Not only did he never seek to give pain, even where pain might have been a wholesome discipline for pushing selfishness—he seemed incapable of irritation, and bore with vexatious obstruction from some members of the House, and mutinous attacks from others who belonged to his own party, when a spirit less kindly and forgiving might have better secured his own authority and the dignity of the assembly. He proceeded on the assumption, an unsafe one, as he had too much reason to know, that every one else was a gentleman like himself, penetrated by the old traditions of the House of Commons.
While superior to the prejudices of the old-fashioned 223 wing of his party, he was too cautious and conscientious to join those who sought to lead it into demagogic courses. So far as political opinions went, he might, had fortune sent him into the world as the son of a Whig family, have made an excellent Whig, removed as far from high Toryism on the one hand as from Radicalism on the other. There was, therefore, a certain incompatibility between the man and the position. Average partisans felt that a leader so very reasonable was not in full sympathy with them. Even his invincible optimism displeased them. “Hang that fellow Northcote!” said one of them; “he’s always seeing blue sky.” The militant partisans, whatever their opinions, desired a pugnacious chief. That a leader should draw the enemy’s fire does him good with his followers, and makes them rally to him. But the fire of his opponents was hardly ever directed against Northcote, even when controversy was hottest. Had he possessed a more imperious will, he might have overcome these difficulties, because his abilities and experience were of the highest value to his party, and his character stood so high that the mass of sensible Tories all over the country might perhaps have rallied to him, if he had appealed to them against the intrigues by which it was sought to supplant him. He did not lack courage. But he lacked what men call “backbone.” For 224 practical success, it is less fatal to fail in wisdom than to fail in resolution. He had not that unquenchable self-confidence which I have sought to describe in Disraeli, and shall have to describe in Parnell and in Gladstone. He yielded to pressure, and people came to know that he would yield to pressure.
The end of it was that the weakened prestige and final fall of the Liberal Ministry were not credited to his generalship, but rather to those who had skirmished in advance of the main army. That fall was in reality due neither to him nor to them, but partly to the errors or internal divisions of the Ministry itself, partly to causes such as the condition of Ireland and the revolt of Arabi in Egypt, for which Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet was no more, perhaps less, to blame than many of its predecessors. No Ministry of recent years seemed, when it was formed, to have such a source of strength in the abilities of the men who composed it as did the Ministry of 1880. None proved so persistently unlucky.
The circumstances under which Northcote’s leadership came to an end by his elevation to the Upper House (June 1885) as Earl of Iddesleigh, as well as those under which he was subsequently (1887) removed from the post of Foreign Secretary in the then Tory Ministry, evoked much comment at the time, but some of the incidents attending them have not yet been disclosed, and 225 they could not be discussed without bringing in other persons with whom I am not here concerned. Conscious of his own loyalty to his party, and remembering his long and laborious services, he felt those circumstances deeply; and they may have hastened his death, which came very suddenly in February 1887, and called forth a burst of sympathy such as had not been seen since Peel perished by an accident nearly forty years before.
In private life Northcote had the charm of unpretending manners, coupled with abundant humour, a store of anecdote, and a geniality which came straight from the heart. No man was a more agreeable companion. In 1884, when the University of Edinburgh celebrated its tercentenary, he happened to be Lord Rector, and in that capacity had to preside over the festivities. Although a stranger to Scotland, and as far removed (for he was a decided High Churchman) from sympathy with Scottish Presbyterianism as he was removed in politics from the Liberalism then dominant in Edinburgh, he won golden opinions from the Scotch, as well as from the crowd of foreign visitors, by the tact and grace he showed in the discharge of his duties, and the skill with which, putting off the politician, he entered into the spirit of the occasion as a lover of letters and learning. Though political eminence had secured his election to the office, every one felt that it would have been 226 hard to find in the ranks of literature and science any one fitter to preside over such a gathering.
He left behind few in whom the capacities of the administrator were so happily blended with a philosophic judgment and a wide culture. It is a combination which was inadequately appreciated in his own person. Vehemence in controversy, domineering audacity of purpose, the power of moving crowds by incisive harangues, were the qualities which the younger generation seemed disposed to cultivate. They are qualities apt to be valued in times of strife and change, times when men are less concerned to study and apply principles than to rouse the passions and consolidate the organisation of their party, while dazzling the nation by large promises or bold strokes of policy. For such courses Northcote was not the man. Were it to be observed of him that he was too good for the work he had to do, it might be answered that political leadership is work for which no man can be too good, and that it was rather because his force of will and his combativeness were not commensurate with his other gifts, that those other gifts did not have their full effect and win their due success. Yet this at least may be said, that if he had been less amiable, less fair-minded, and less open-minded, he would have retained his leadership to the end.
Though I do not propose to write even the briefest narrative of Parnell’s life, but only to note certain salient features of his intellect and character, it may be well to state a few facts and dates; for in these days of rapid change and hasty reading, facts soon pass out of most men’s memories, leaving only vague impressions behind.[35]
He belonged to a family which, established at Congleton in Cheshire, had at the time of the Restoration migrated to Ireland, had settled on an estate in Wicklow, and had produced in every subsequent generation a person of distinction. Thomas Parnell, the friend of Pope and Swift, is still remembered by his poem of The Hermit. Another Parnell (Sir John) was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in the days of Henry Grattan, whose opinions he shared. Another (Sir Henry) was a leading Irish Liberal member of the House of Commons, and died by his own hand in 1842. Charles’s father and grandfather 228 figured less in the public eye. But his mother was a remarkable woman, and the daughter of a remarkable man, Commodore Charles Stewart, one of the most brilliant naval commanders on the American side in the war of 1812. Stewart was the son of a Scoto-Irishman from Ulster, who had emigrated to America in the middle of the eighteenth century; so there was a strain of Scottish as well as a fuller strain of English blood in the most powerful Irish leader of recent times.
Parnell was born at Avondale, the family estate in Wicklow, in 1846, and was educated mostly at private schools in England. He spent some months at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but, having been rusticated for an affray in the street, refused to return to the College, and finished his education for himself at home. It was a very imperfect education. He cared nothing for study, and indeed showed interest only in mathematics and cricket. In 1874 he stood as a candidate for Parliament, but without success. When he had to make a speech he broke down utterly. In 1875 he was returned as member for the county of Meath, and within two years had made his mark in the House of Commons. In 1880 he was elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, and ruled it and his followers in Ireland with a rod of iron until he was deposed, in 1890, at the instance of the leaders of the English Liberal party, who 229 thought that the verdict against him in a divorce suit in which he was co-respondent had fatally discredited him in the eyes of the bulk of the English Liberal party, and made co-operation with him impossible. Refusing to resign his leadership, he conducted a campaign in Ireland against the majority of his former followers with extraordinary energy till November 1891, when he died of rheumatic fever after a short illness. A constitution which had never been strong was worn out by the ceaseless exertions and mental tension of the last twelve months.
The whole of his political activity was comprised within a period of sixteen years, during ten of which he led the Irish Nationalist party, exercising an authority more absolute than any Irish leader had exercised before.
It has often been observed that he was not Irish, and that he led the Irish people with success just because he did not share their characteristic weaknesses. But it is equally true that he was not English. One always felt the difference between his temperament and that of the normal Englishman. The same remark applies to some other famous Irish leaders. Wolfe Tone, for instance, and Fitzgibbon (afterwards Lord Clare) were unlike the usual type of Irishman—that is, the Irishman in whom the Celtic element predominates; but they were also unlike Englishmen. The Anglo-Irish Protestants, a strong race 230 who have produced a number of remarkable men in excess of the proportion they bear to the whole population of the United Kingdom, fall into two classes—the men of North-Eastern Ulster, in whom there is so large an infusion of Scottish blood that they may almost be called “Scotchmen with a difference,” and the men of Leinster and Munster, who are true Anglo-Celts. It was to this latter class that Parnell belonged. They are a group by themselves, in whom some of the fire and impulsiveness of the Celt has been blended with some of the firmness, the tenacity, and the close hold upon facts which belong to the Englishman. Mr. Parnell, however, though he might be reckoned to the Anglo-Irish type, was not a normal specimen of it. He was a man whom you could not refer to any category, peculiar both in his intellect and in his character generally.
His intellect was eminently practical. He did not love speculation or the pursuit of abstract truth, nor had he a taste for literature, still less a delight in learning for its own sake. Even of the annals of Ireland his knowledge was most slender. He had no grasp of constitutional questions, and was not able to give any help in the construction of a Home Rule scheme in 1886. His general reading had been scanty, and his speeches show no acquaintance either with history, beyond the commonest facts, or with 231 any other subject connected with politics. Very rarely did they contain a maxim or reflection of general applicability, apart from the particular topic he was discussing. Nor did he ever attempt to give to them the charm of literary ornament. All was dry, direct, and practical, without so much as a graceful phrase or a choice epithet. Sometimes, when addressing a great public meeting, he would seek to rouse the audience by vehement language; but though there might be a glow of suppressed passion, there were no flashes of imaginative light. Yet he never gave the impression of an uneducated man. His language, though it lacked distinction, was clear and grammatical. His taste was correct. It was merely that he did not care for any of those things which men of ability comparable to his usually do care for. His only interests, outside politics, lay in mechanics and engineering and in the development of the material resources of his country. He took pains to manage his estate well, and was specially anxious to make something out of his stone quarries, and to learn what could be done in the way of finding and working minerals.
Those who observed that he was almost always occupied in examining and attacking the measures or the conduct of those who governed Ireland were apt to think his talent a purely critical one. They were mistaken. Critical, 232 indeed, it was, in a remarkable degree; keen, penetrating, stringently dissective of the arguments of an opponent, ingenious in taking advantage of a false step in administration or of an admission imprudently made in debate. But it had also a positive and constructive quality. From time to time he would drop his negative attitude and sketch out plans of legislation which were always consistent and weighty, though not made attractive by any touch of imagination. They were the schemes not so much of a statesman as of an able man of business, who saw the facts, especially the financial facts, in a sharp, cold light, and they seldom went beyond what the facts could be made to prove. And his ideas struck one as being not only forcible but independent, the fruit of his own musings. Although he freely used the help of others in collecting facts or opinions, he did not seem to be borrowing the ideas, but rather to have looked at things for himself, and seen them as they actually were, in their true perspective, not (like many Irishmen) through the mists of sentiment or party feeling. The impression made by one of his more elaborate speeches might be compared to that which one receives from a grey sunless day with an east wind, a day in which everything shows clear, but also hard and cold.
To call his mind a narrow one, as people sometimes did, was to wrong it. If the range of his 233 interests was limited, his intelligence was not. Equal to any task it undertook, it judged soundly, appreciating the whole phenomena of the case, men and things that had no sort of attraction for it. There was less pleasure in watching its activities than the observation of a superior mind generally affords, for it was always directed to immediate aims, and it wanted the originality which is fertile in ideas and analogies. It was not discursive, not versatile, not apt to generalise. It did not rejoice in the exercise of thought for thought’s sake, but felt itself to be merely a useful instrument for performing the definite practical work which the will required of it.
If, however, the intellect of the man could not be called interesting, his character had at least this interest, that it gave one many problems to solve, and could not easily be covered by any formulæ. An observer who followed the old method of explaining every man by ascribing to him a single ruling passion, would have said that his ruling passion was pride. The pride was so strong that it almost extinguished vanity. Parnell did not appear to seek occasions for display, frequently neglecting those which other men would have chosen, seldom seeming to be elated by the applause of crowds, and treating the House of Commons with equal coolness whether it cheered 234 him or howled at him. He cared nothing for any social compliments or attentions, rarely accepted an invitation to dinner, dressed with little care and often in clothes whose style and colour seemed unworthy of his position. He was believed to be haughty and distant to his followers; and although he could occasionally be kindly and even genial, scarcely any were admitted to intimacy, and few of the ordinary signs of familiarity could be observed between him and them. Towards other persons he was sufficiently polite but warily reserved, showing no desire for the cultivation of friendship, or, indeed, for any relations but those of business. Of some ordinary social duties, such as opening and answering letters, he was, especially in later years, more neglectful than good breeding permits; and men doubted whether to ascribe this fault to indolence or to a superb disregard of everybody but himself. Such disregard he often showed in greater matters, taking no notice of attacks made upon him which he might have refuted, and intimating to the English his indifference to their praise or blame. On one remarkable occasion, at the beginning of the session of 1883, he was denounced by Mr. W. E. Forster in a long and bitter speech, which told powerfully upon the House. Many instances were given in which Irish members had palliated 235 or failed to condemn criminal acts, and Parnell was arraigned as the head and front of this line of conduct, and thus virtually responsible for the outrages that had occurred. The Irish leader, who had listened in impassive silence, broken only by one interjected contradiction, to this fierce invective, did not rise to reply, and was with difficulty induced by his followers to deliver his defence on the following day. To the astonishment of every one, that defence consisted in a declaration, delivered in a cold, careless, almost scornful way, that for all he said or did in Ireland he held himself responsible to his countrymen only, and did not in the least regard what Englishmen thought of him. It was an answer not of defence but of defiance.
Even to his countrymen he could on occasion be disdainful, expecting them to defer to his own judgment of his own course. He would sometimes remain away from Parliament for weeks together, although important business might be under consideration, perhaps would vanish altogether from public ken. Yet this lordly attitude and the air of mystery which surrounded him did not seem to be studied with a view to effect. They were due to his habit of thinking first and chiefly of himself. If he desired to indulge his inclinations, he indulged them. Some extremely strong motive of passion or interest might 236 interpose to restrain this desire and stimulate him to an unwelcome exertion; but no respect for the opinion of others, nor fear of censure from his allies or friends, would be allowed to do so.
This boundless self-confidence and independence greatly contributed to his success as a leader. His faith in his star inspired a conviction that obstacles whose reality his judgment recognised would ultimately yield to his will, and gave him in moments of crisis an undismayed fortitude which only once forsook him—in the panic which was suddenly created by the Phœnix Park murders of May 1882. The confidence which he felt, or appeared to feel, reacted upon his party, and became a chief ground of their obedience to him and their belief in his superior wisdom. His calmness, his tenacity, his patience, his habit of listening quietly to every one, but deciding for himself, were all evidences of that resolute will which imposed itself upon the Irish masses no less than upon his Parliamentary following, and secured for him a loyalty in which there was little or nothing of personal affection.
In these several respects his overweening pride was a source of strength. In another direction, however, it proved a source of weakness. There are men in whom the want of moral principle, of noble emotions, or of a scrupulous conscience and nice sense of honour, is partly replaced by 237 deference to the opinion of their class or of the world. Such men may hold through life a tolerably upright course, neither from the love of virtue nor because they are ambitious and anxious to stand well with those whom they aspire to influence or rule, but because, having a sense of personal dignity, combined with a perception of what pleases or offends mankind, they are resolved to do nothing whereby their good name can be tarnished or an opening given to malicious tongues. But when pride towers to such a height as to become a law to itself, disregarding the judgment of others, it may not only lead its possessor into an attitude of defiance which the world resents, but may make him stoop to acts of turpitude which discredit his character. Mr. Parnell was certainly not a scrupulous man. Without dwelling upon the circumstances attending the divorce case already referred to, or upon his betrayal of Mr. Gladstone’s confidences, and his reckless appeals during the last year of his life to the most inflammable elements in Ireland, there are facts enough in his earlier career to show that he had little regard for truth and little horror for crime. A revolution may extenuate some sins, but even in a revolution there are men (and sometimes the strongest men) whose moral excellence shines through the smoke of conflict and the mists of detraction. In Mr. Parnell’s nature the moral 238 element was imperfectly developed. He seemed cynical and callous; and it was probably his haughty self-reliance which prevented him from sufficiently deferring to the ordinary moralities of mankind. His pride, which ought to have kept him free from the suspicion of dishonour, made him feel himself dispensed from the usual restraints. Whatever he did was right in his own eyes, and no other eyes need be regarded. Phenomena somewhat similar were observable in Napoleon. But Napoleon, though he came of a good family, was obviously not a gentleman in the common sense of the term. Mr. Parnell was a gentleman in that sense. He had the bearing, the manners, the natural easy dignity of a man of birth who has always moved in good society. He rarely permitted any one to take liberties with him, even the innocent liberties of familiar intercourse. This made his departures from what may be called the inner and higher standard of gentlemanly conduct all the more remarkable.
He has been accused of a want of physical courage. He did no doubt after the Phœnix Park murders ask the authorities in England for police protection, being, not unnaturally, in fear for his life; and he habitually carried firearms. He was at times in danger, and there was every reason why he should be prepared to defend himself. An anecdote was told of another member 239 of the House of Commons whose initials were the same as his own, and who, taking what he supposed to be his own overcoat from the peg on which it hung in the cloakroom of the House, was startled when he put his hand into the pocket to feel in it the cold iron of a pistol. Moral courage he showed in a high degree during his whole public career, facing his antagonists with an unshaken front, even when they were most numerous and bitter. Though he intensely disliked imprisonment, the terms on which he came out of Kilmainham Gaol left no discredit upon him. He behaved with perfect dignity under the attacks of the press in 1887, and in the face of the use made of letters attributed to him which turned out to have been forged by Richard Pigott—letters which the bulk of the English upper classes had greedily swallowed. With this courage and dignity there was, however, little trace of magnanimity. He seldom said a generous word, or showed himself responsive to such a word spoken by another. Accustomed to conceal his feelings, except in his most excited moments, he rarely revealed, but he certainly cherished, vindictive sentiments. He never forgave either Mr. W. E. Forster or Mr. Gladstone for having imprisoned him in 1881;[36] and though 240 he stood in some awe of the latter, whom he considered the only really formidable antagonist he had ever had to confront, he bore a grudge which smouldered under the reconciliation of 1886 and leapt into flame in the manifesto of November 1890.
The union in Mr. Parnell of intense passion with strenuous self-control struck all who watched him closely, though it was seldom that passion so far escaped as to make the contrast visibly dramatic. Usually he was cold, grave, deliberate, repelling advances with a sort of icy courtesy. He hardly ever lost his temper in the House of Commons, even in his last session under the sarcasms of his former friends, though the low, almost hissing tones of his voice sometimes betrayed an internal struggle. But during the electoral campaign in Kilkenny, in December 1890, when he was fighting for his life, he was more than once so swept away by anger that those beside him had to hold him back from jumping off the platform into the crowd to strike down some one who had interrupted him. Suspended for a moment, his mastery of himself quickly returned. Men were astonished to observe how, after some of the stormy passages at the meetings of Irish members held in one of the House of Commons committee-rooms in December 1890, he would address quietly, perhaps lay his hand upon the shoulder of, some one 241 of the colleagues who had just been denouncing him, and on whom he had poured all the vitriol of his fierce tongue. As this could not have been good-nature, it must have been either calculated policy or a pride that would not accept an injury from those whom he had been wont to deem his subjects. Spontaneous kindliness was never ascribed to him; nor had he, so far as could be known, a single intimate friend.
Oratory is the usual avenue to leadership in a democratic movement, and Mr. Parnell is one of the very few who have arrived at power neither by that road nor by military success. So far from having by nature any of the gifts or graces of a popular speaker, he was at first conspicuously deficient in them, and became at last effective only by constant practice, and by an intellectual force which asserted itself through commonplaceness of language and a monotonous delivery. Fluency was wanting, and even moderate ease was acquired only after four or five years’ practice. His voice was neither powerful nor delicate in its modulations, but it was clear, and the enunciation deliberate and distinct, quiet when the matter was ordinary, slow and emphatic when an important point arrived. With very little action of the body, there was often an interesting and obviously unstudied display of facial expression. So far from glittering with the florid rhetoric supposed to 242 characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were singularly plain, bare, and dry. Neither had they any humour. If they ever raised a smile, which seldom happened, it was by some touch of sarcasm or adroit thrust at a point left unguarded by an adversary. Their merit lay in their lucidity, in their aptness to the matter in hand, in the strong practical sense which ran through them, coupled with the feeling that they came from one who led a nation, and whose forecasts had often fulfilled themselves. They were carefully prepared, and usually made from pretty full notes; but the preparation had been given rather to the matter and the arrangement than to the diction, which had rarely any ornament or literary finish. Of late years he spoke infrequently, whether from indolence or from weak health, or because he thought little was to be done in the face of a hostile majority, now that the tactics of obstruction had been abandoned. When he interposed without preparation in a debate which had arisen unexpectedly, he was short, pithy, and direct; indeed, nothing was more characteristic of Parnell than his talent for hitting the nail on the head, a talent which always commands attention in deliberative assemblies. No one saw more clearly or conveyed in terser language the course which the circumstances of the moment required; and as his mastery of parliamentary procedure and practice came next 243 to that of Mr. Gladstone, any advice that he gave to the House on a point of order carried weight. It would indeed be no exaggeration to say that during the sessions of 1889 and 1890 he was distinctly the second man in the House of Commons, surpassed in debating power by five or six others, but inferior to Mr. Gladstone alone in the interest which his speeches excited and in the impression they produced. Along with this access of influence his attitude and the spirit of his policy appeared to rise and widen. There was less of that hard attorneyism which had marked his criticisms of the Tory Government and their measures up to March 1880, and of the Liberal Government and their measures during the five following years. He seemed to grow more and more to the full stature of a statesman, with constructive views and a willingness to make the best of the facts as he found them. Yet even in this later and better time one note of greatness was absent from his speeches. There was nothing genial or generous or elevated about them. They never soared into an atmosphere of lofty feeling, worthy of the man who was by this time deemed to be leading his nation to victory, and who had begun to be admired and honoured by one of the two great historic English parties.
Parnell was not only versed in the rules of parliamentary procedure, but also a consummate 244 master of parliamentary tactics. Soon after he entered the House of Commons he detected its weak point, and perfected a system of obstruction which so destroyed the efficiency of its time-honoured modes of doing business that new sets of rules, each more stringent than the preceding, had to be devised between 1878 and 1888. The skill with which he handled his small but well-disciplined battalion was admirable. He was strict with individuals, requiring absolute obedience to the party rules, but ready to gratify any prevailing current of feeling when he saw that this could be done without harm to the cause. More than once, when English members who happened to be acting with him on some particular question pressed him to keep his men quiet and let a division be taken at once, he answered that they were doubtless right in thinking that the moment for securing a good division had arrived, but that he must not muzzle his followers when they wanted to have their fling. The best proof of the tact with which he ruled a section comprising many men of brilliant talents lies in the fact that there was no serious revolt, or movement towards revolt, against him until the breach of 1890 between himself and the Liberal party had led to the belief that his continued leadership would mean defeat at the polls in Great Britain, and the postponement, perhaps for many years, of Home Rule for Ireland.