Part 10

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 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.