Sketches in the House Part 15

Everybody who has ever met Mr. Dillon knows that he has a singularly even and equable temper, except at the moments when he has been stung to pa.s.sion by the sight of some bitter and intolerable wrong. When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain made him the subject of a fierce attack on account of a past utterance, he was dealing with a man who was as little influenced by such attacks as anybody could well be. For days Mr.

Chamberlain had been trying to bait Mr. Dillon into speech; and for days Mr. Dillon had positively refused to be drawn. At last it seemed to some friends of Mr. Dillon that if he did not speak his att.i.tude might be misunderstood, and that he would be supposed to entertain, as part of a settled policy, what he had really uttered on the spur of the moment and under the influence of intolerable wrong and provocation. But when in the last days of June Mr. Chamberlain made his attack, and Mr. Dillon had listened to it and asked for dates, Mr. Dillon thought that the matter would not be worth further attending to, and relapsed into his old att.i.tude of easy contempt.

[Sidenote: The outbreak.]

This will account for what would otherwise be inexplicable; namely, that, having had a week to prepare his defence, Mr. Dillon should on July 3rd have fallen into a dreadful, and, for the moment, disastrous blunder. The truth was, Mr. Dillon had never thought of the subject for more than a few moments between the date of the challenge and Mr.

Chamberlain's renewal of the attack, and, if he had been left free to exercise his own judgment, would have allowed the whole thing to lapse into the nothingness into which every such charge finally falls. On this Monday night Mr. Chamberlain was in his most venomous mood. He had come down to the House with the set determination to get up a row somehow or other. There was evil in his eye; there was rancour in his voice; there was the hoa.r.s.e rage which always shows in him whenever he feels that he has been beaten. His judgment is so shallow--his temper so rash and violent--that some people think he actually counted that the Government would never have dared to interfere with his obstructive plan of campaign, and that he would have been permitted to bury the Bill under the vast hedge of amendments. To him, then, the strong and drastic action of the preceding week had come as a painful and most exasperating surprise.

[Sidenote: Joe's weakness.]

It is one of the many bad turns that Joe's temper does him to always lead him into overdoing his part. The wild outbursts of his venom--the ferocity which he puts into his personal attacks--these things have the effect of producing a certain amount of reaction; and thus his blows often suffer from the very violence with which they are dealt. A real master of Parliamentary craft, like Mr. Gladstone or Mr. s.e.xton, has learned the lesson--the lesson which all orators of all ages have learned--that there is nothing so deadly as moderation; that he destroys the effectiveness of a pa.s.sion by tearing it to pieces, and that you are really effective when you have complete control of your temper, your voice and your language.

[Sidenote: Mitchelstown.]

Mr. Dillon, rising--pale, high-strung, and nervous--was a sympathetic sight, and the House was ready to listen to him with the greatest attention. The Old Man was specially interested. Whenever nowadays, when his hearing has become somewhat defective, he wants particularly to hear a speech, he has to change his place; usually, as everybody knows, he sits exactly opposite the box on the Speaker's table. This evening he went to the last seat on the Treasury Bench--the seat nearest to the spot from which Mr. Dillon was about to speak, and with his hand to his ear he prepared himself to catch every word that Mr. Dillon was about to utter, and the speech of Mr. Dillon was--in spite of the halting tones which excitement, unpreparedness, the sense of his responsibility produced--singularly effective. The pa.s.sionate and transparent sincerity of the man--the sense of all the years of suffering through which he pa.s.sed--the recollection of all the risks he has run in the great contemporary Irish Revolution--all these things spoke in his favour.

Especially was he effective when he described the circ.u.mstances under which he had delivered the speech, a pa.s.sage from which had been incriminated by Mr. Chamberlain. He had been told just half-an-hour before he rose to speak, of how a poor mother had been torn from her babe; how the two had been taken over a long journey together, and had both been finally lodged in the same cell. And he asked with a pa.s.sionate thrill in his voice, that carried away the House with him, whether anybody else under the same circ.u.mstances would not have protested in language of violence and vehemence against the cruelty and official brutality which allowed such things to be. Would not anybody have protested that the officials who were guilty of these things had not to look to reward or promotion from a popular Irish Government.

[Sidenote: The fatal mistake.]

So far, Mr. Dillon had the House completely with him. He also scored for a second or two. He went on to remark that he had been under the influence of the ma.s.sacre at Mitchelstown; but scarcely had these words proceeded from his lips than a look of dismay pa.s.sed over the faces of his Irish colleagues. Close beside him were several men who, like himself, had stood on the platform of the historic square when the police descended upon the meeting, and which ended in the death of three innocent men. They at once perceived that Mr. Dillon, by some break of memory, had made a mistake in his dates. The incriminating speech had been delivered in December, 1886, and the Mitchelstown ma.s.sacre took place in September, 1887. If the Irish members had not perceived this blunder immediately they would soon have been brought to a sense of coming disaster by the movements on the opposite side.

[Sidenote: Chamberlain on the spring.]

Mr. T.W. Russell is always at the service of Mr. Chamberlain at such a moment. A platform speaker by training and by years of professional work, accustomed to make most of his case against Home Rule depend on the characters, the words, the acts of the Irish members, he has, of course, at his fingers' ends, all the useful extracts of the last thirteen years. At once he was seen to rush excitedly from the House.

Every Irishman knew at once that he was going to the library to reinforce his memory with regard to the date of Mitchelstown. A murmur arose on the Irish Benches; slips of paper were pa.s.sed up to Mr. Dillon to recall to him the facts of the case; but, either in the hurry and excitement, or because he did not appreciate the situation immediately, Mr. Dillon went on with his speech--unconscious of the abyss that opened up before him. Meantime, Mr. Chamberlain--pale, excited, his face torn with the workings of gratified hatred and coming triumph--sat forward in his seat, his eyegla.s.s s.h.i.+ning from afar, eagerness in every look, pose, movement.

[Sidenote: Chamberlain pounces.]

At last Mr. Russell was back in his place; it did not require much second sight to see that his quest had been successful, and that he had brought to Mr. Chamberlain the ammunition he required in order to slay John Dillon. The moment Mr. Dillon sat down, Mr. Chamberlain was on his feet. He worked up to the situation with some skill; but, after all, with that overdone pa.s.sion which, as I have already said, spoils some of his greatest effects--he did not expose the mistake in his first few sentences. He worked up the agony, so to speak. First he recalled to the Liberals--whose hatred to him he feels and returns with interest--the fact that they had cheered Mr. Dillon's allusion to the effect Mitchelstown had had on him in provoking the violence of his speech. And then when he had created his situation, he pounced down on the House with the climax--the speech had been delivered in 1886, the Mitchelstown tragedy had taken place in the following year. It would be idle to deny that Mr. Chamberlain had then one of the most triumphant moments of his life. It was a small point, after all, and, as everybody soon knew, it was all the result of a natural and a perfectly honest mistake. But the House of Commons is not particular in weighing things in judicial scales at moments of intense political pa.s.sion. There rose from the Tory and the Unionist Benches one of the longest, fiercest, most triumphant shouts that was ever heard in the House of Commons. But then, as I again must say, and as will soon be seen, the pa.s.sion was overdone, and a swift retribution came by-and-bye. For the moment, however, it was giddily, dazzlingly triumphant, and Joe had one of the few moments of his life which were unrelieved by disaster.

[Sidenote: A diversion.]

It was at this moment--and, curiously enough, his victory was very soon dashed to the ground--that Mr. Harrington, one of the Parnellites, struck in with a blow. In Parliamentary, as in other tactics, one of the wisest expedients--especially if things are going rather wrong with yourself--is to carry the war into the enemies' country. And this is exactly what Mr. Harrington did. He turned upon Joe and denounced him for seeking at one time to obtain the alliance of these very Irish members whom now he was denouncing. He accused him of sending amba.s.sadors to them when they were in prison, and, in short, brought Joe face to face with an almost forgotten period of his history. Then he was almost a Home Ruler in profession, and looked to the Irish members as a portion of the force he would by-and-bye marshal in his own army.

[Sidenote: A quid pro quo.]

Joe grew pale. It is a curious fact that, whenever any allusion is made to this special period of his life, Mr. Chamberlain becomes particularly disturbed; possibly, it is that he is conscious of the rash things he has said at this period; possibly, it is that it can be proved to the world that he was at this period in favour of the principles and the men he now so loudly denounces. Whatever the reason, it is perfectly certain, if you want to put Mr. Chamberlain into a rage, and what sailors call a funk, allude to the period of Parnell's imprisonment in Kilmainham, and Mr. Duignan's letter on the Irish question. The transformation from the exalted look a few moments before to the pale, cowed aspect which Mr. Chamberlain wore was one of the most sudden transformations I have ever seen in the House of Commons. He could scarcely sit in his seat while Mr. Harrington was speaking; again and again he rose to interrupt him altogether, and gave signs of unusual excitement and disturbance. But Mr. Harrington is a deft and tenacious combatant. In spite of all attempts to stop him, in spite of the tremendous uproar raised by the Unionists and Tories, he managed to get out what he had to say. He brought Mr. Chamberlain face to face with this spectre of his dead past.

[Sidenote: Mr. Balfour does not score.]

Meantime, Mr. Balfour made a great mistake. He had listened to the speech of Mr. Chamberlain, and had been one of those who had joined in the cheers at the exposure of Mr. Dillon's accidental mistake. There he should have left it, but, carried away by the hope of driving the point home against a political enemy, he needs must add something to what Mr.

Chamberlain had said. Now Mr. Balfour is in many points very superior to Joe. He should leave personal vituperation to him: he is more active, defter, and more willing to do such dirty work. Moreover, it is in the recollection of the members that, in the Coercionist struggle, Mr.

Balfour seemed to have towards Mr. Dillon an unusual amount of personal animosity. Speaking with want of grace and personal courtesy, which are things, I am bound to say, uncommon with him, he accused Mr. Dillon of deliberate and conscious hypocrisy. This also was a tactical blunder, and will largely account for the transformation following, to which I am going to refer.

[Sidenote: The transformation.]

The House on the following day, July 4th, was very still when Mr. Dillon rose--evidently to refer to the incident of the previous night. His address was quiet, brief, and graceful. With charming modesty, he acknowledged the mistake he had made, and explained how, in running over in memory the hundreds of speeches he had delivered, he had confounded one speech with another. He was unable to understand how his memory, which never before had played him false, had done him this ill turn, and he appealed to the House generally, and declared that there was not even amongst his bitter political foes one who would think him capable of trying to palm off on the House a speech which could be so palpably and so readily exposed. In these few sentences, Mr. Dillon brought before the House his strange, picturesque, and chequered career. His oratory was such that the explanation was considered the best ever given in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Joe is absent.]

This was a recovery of some ground lost on the previous night. But there was even better to come. Mr. Harrington's accuracy and veracity as to Mr. Chamberlain's dealings with the Irish members had been challenged, as I have said, by Mr. Chamberlain, and he now rose to read the historic letter of Mr. Duignan, which, he claimed, justified his account. Several attempts were made to stop Mr. Harrington, and the Tories during this were decidedly annoyed and embarra.s.sed because Mr. Chamberlain happened not to be in his place. But doggedly and persistently Mr. Harrington held to his ground, and at last the Speaker allowed him to read the letter. The reading of the letter led to various scenes, because it was one of those balanced utterances in which Mr. Chamberlain used to try to hold one foot in the Unionist and to place the other in the Home Rule camp. There were speeches about the County Councils, and there had been Unionist and Tory cheers in relief; but when immediately afterwards there were allusions to Home Rule, very little different in scope or character from that proposed by Mr. Gladstone, there was a triumphant rejoinder from the Liberal and Home Rule Benches. Austen Chamberlain, excited, nervous, angered, flitted to and fro in the attempt to gather forces to defend his absent parent. At last Mr. Courtney took up his case. There was not very much in what he said, and while he was speaking Mr. Chamberlain entered the House. He was pale, excited, and unnerved.

He endeavoured to carry the whole thing by a jauntiness which was too easy to see through. Mr. Courtney had been waving furiously a telegram towards the Speaker, and asked that he might have the privilege of reading it. Austen Chamberlain s.n.a.t.c.hed the telegram from Mr. Courtney, and gave it to his father just as he had taken his seat. Mr. Chamberlain had not a moment to spare; he had just time to glance at the contents of the telegram when he rose to speak, and all he did was to read the telegram, which was a confirmation by Mr. Duignan of the general accuracy of the previous evening. This was a score for Joe, and his friends were delighted to recover something of their lost spirit.

[Mr. Conybeare and the Speaker.]

Mr. Conybeare had written a letter to the _Chronicle_ denouncing the Speaker. Mr. Tritton, a Tory member, insisted the letter should be read, and this gave the Speaker one of those few opportunities which his position allows him. In disclaiming this charge he showed his great powers of oratory and the splendid and thrilling notes of his fine voice. He defended himself at once from the charge of undue partiality with strong pa.s.sion and deep emotion, which lie hidden beneath his deep reserve. With a face ghastly almost in its greyness, in its deepening glows and manifest pa.s.sion, he repudiated the charge of unfairness; he vehemently struck his hand on the order paper which he held, and as he neared to the end of his little speech there was a ring in his voice dangerously near a sob or a tear. It is on such occasions that Mr.

Gladstone's sonorous and splendid diction and delivery come most to the front; beginning a little awkwardly, hesitatingly, he warmed as he went along, and there came to him the strange power of collecting his thoughts and measuring his language which long years of Parliamentary training has made a second nature. The House listened--rapt, hushed, spellbound. And then there was no more to be said beyond a few perfunctory observations from Mr. Balfour and the dismissal of the whole subject.

[Sidenote: Another scene.]

And now we were once more in the thick of a fierce and pa.s.sionate encounter. Mr. Arnold Forster had an amendment, the effect of which was to remove the exercise of the prerogative of mercy from the hands of the Irish members to those of the English Secretary of State. Into this innocent amendment he sought to drag discussion of the doings of the Land League twelve years ago, and concentrated on Mr. s.e.xton a violent attack. He was not allowed to proceed to the end of his chapter. The charge was heinous, vile, and such as has rarely been introduced in the House in such a fas.h.i.+on, and soon the temper rose to a fever heat. Mr.

s.e.xton is a dangerous man to tackle in this guise.

In justifiable rage, quivering with wrath, he yet managed to preserve that cold and even tenour of language so perfect to his heart and his words. Again and again the Tory and Unionist party cheer for Mr.

Balfour, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Chamberlain, but Mr. s.e.xton is not a man to suffer such a statement to go unchallenged, and he succeeded in grasping the whole thing and stamped the charge with the terms, base and infamous. This led to other scenes, men rising and talking together.

Mr. Chamberlain turned fierce in fore front. Again and again Mr.

Gladstone arose to try and end the scene, and again and again he was prevented by Mr. T.W. Russell at one point, Mr. Chamberlain at another, and Mr. Balfour at a third, to seek to bring the struggle back to the fierce temper it was about to leave. But the Old Man at last got up, and in measured language and tones which betrayed profound emotion, he scathingly denounced the attack of Mr. Forster as wanton and mischievous. Here again there was another uproar. The Old Man pursued his way, but Mr. Chamberlain again tried to get Mr. s.e.xton called to order, but the charge had been too coa.r.s.e, and Mr. Mellor declined to interfere.

CHAPTER XVI.

REDUCED MAJORITIES.

[Sidenote: The week before.]

On Friday, July 7th, we just entered on the fringe of the ninth clause.

The ninth clause had all along been held to be, perhaps, the very gravest rock ahead of the Government. This is the clause which regulates the position of the Irish members at Westminster after Home Rule has been pa.s.sed. There were as many plans for settling this question as there were members of the House of Commons, and all plans were alike in being illogical, unsymmetrical, and, therefore, liable to attack from a dozen different quarters. Already within a few days of each other, there had been two divisions, on which everybody felt it to be quite possible that the Government would go down, and that we should once more go back face to face with the country and probably with a new and a stronger Tory Government than ever. The first occasion was the clause dealing with a Second Chamber. Then a certain number of irreconcilable Radicals, in their hatred of all Second Chambers, voted against the Government and reduced their majority to 15. This was a very tight squeeze; but, after all, everybody had been prepared for it, and when the hour came, we all knew pretty well where we should be. There might be one or two men more or less in the Tory lobby, but we had sized them up carefully. When, however, July 19th, and the ninth clause came we were face to face with a very different state of affairs. Then we had to face absolute uncertainty--and uncertainty not in one, but almost every part of the House. And the curious thing about it all was, that this uncertainty was aggravated by a little fact which had entered into n.o.body's calculations, and this was the highly technical rule with regard to the manner in which questions are put when the House is in committee.

[Sidenote: Technicalities.]

I despair of ever being able to make this matter clear to an outsider; and, indeed, to be quite honest, I am not always sure that I understand the affair myself. It will probably be sufficient for my purpose if I say that the chairman has to put an amendment in such a way that sometimes you find you are really precluded from voting on the direct question which you wish to challenge. You are within the ring-fence of a technical rule, which compels you to fight your issue there and not one inch outside of it. This often means that questions are raised in the most indirect way--that you seem to be voting for one thing while you really mean another, and that if you do not vote that way, you cannot vote any other. So it happened on this occasion. And we drifted about for the best way of raising the question of the presence of the Irish members, and the Government were for a while in a state of absolute and painful uncertainty. Then came one of those desultory conversations on points of order, in which so large a body as the House of Commons cannot s.h.i.+ne--one man suggesting one method, one man another; half-a-dozen different methods proposed in as many minutes by half-a-dozen different members.

[Sidenote: 103 v. 80.]

At last Mr. Redmond seemed to hit off the situation by a proposal to omit a couple of sub-sections in the ninth clause. But Mr. Redmond had scarcely spoken when the House found itself in an extraordinary and most embarra.s.sing dilemma. The object of Mr. Redmond was plain enough; what he desired to do was to retain the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament in their present, that is to say, in their full, strength--103 they are now, 103 he wanted them to remain. The position of the Government was equally clear. With emphatic language--with a superabundance of argument--Mr. Gladstone stated his conviction that the Irish members should not remain in such large numbers and that the number should be 80. This was all clear enough; but what about the position of all the other parties in the House?

[Sidenote: Tot homines, tot sententiae.]

At first sight, it would appear that this ought to be very clear. The Tories and the Unionists had several amendments on the paper. One wanted the Irish members reduced to 48, one wanted to have them reduced to 40, and several of them desired that they should be reduced still further--in fact, should reach the irreducible minimum of none at all.

It was a.s.sumed, of course, that gentlemen who had thus indicated their desire for the reduction of the Irish members, or for their disappearance altogether, would vote against a proposition which asked that they should remain in full force. If this course were adopted, Mr.

Redmond would be crushed under a combination of the Liberals, who wanted the numbers to be 80, and the Tories who wanted the Irish members to disappear altogether; but in these days, and with such an Opposition as we have now in the House of Commons, it is not possible to make any calculations on what course we would adopt. To the amazement of the House--above all things to the amazement of Mr. Gladstone--who has not yet entirely got over the traditions of the past, and, therefore, over-sanguine expectations as to the scruples of his opponents--Mr.

Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour both announced that they were ready to go into the same lobby as Mr. Redmond. And so those who wanted all the Irish members, and those who wanted none, were both going to vote exactly the same way.

[Sidenote: A bolt from the blue.]