Part 2

For a long time there had been much speculation in these countries concerning the probable successor to Lord Salisbury, whenever Lord Salisbury should make up his mind to resign the position of Prime Minister. We all knew that that resignation was sure to come soon, although very few of us had any idea that it was likely to come quite so soon. The general opinion was that the country would not be expected, for some time at least, to put up again with a Prime Minister in the House of Lords. If, therefore, the new Prime Minister had to be found in the House of Commons, there seemed to be only a choice between two men, Arthur Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain. It would be hard to find two men in the House of Commons more unlike each other in characteristic qualities and in training than these two. They are both endowed with remarkable capacity for political life and for parliamentary debate, "but there," as Byron says concerning two of whom one was a Joseph, "I doubt all likeness ends between the pair." Balfour is an aristocrat of aristocrats; Chamberlain is essentially a man of the British middle class--even what is generally called the lower middle class. Balfour has gone through all the regular course of university education; Chamberlain was for a short time at University College School in London, a popular institution of modern origin which does most valuable educational work, but is not largely patronized by the classes who claim aristocratic position. Balfour is a constant reader and student of many literatures and languages; "Mr. Chamberlain," according to a leading article in a London daily newspaper, "to put it mildly, is not a bookworm." Balfour loves open-air sports and is a votary of athleticism; Chamberlain never takes any exercise, even walking exercise, when he can possibly avoid the trouble. Balfour is an æsthetic lover of all the arts; Chamberlain has never, so far as I know, given the slightest indication of interest in any artistic subject. Balfour is by nature a modest and retiring man; Chamberlain is always "Pushful Joe." The stamp and character of a successful municipal politician are always evident in Chamberlain, while Balfour seems to be above all other things the university scholar and member of high society. I suppose it must have been a profound disappointment to Chamberlain that he was not offered the place of Prime Minister, but it would be hardly fair to expect that such a place would not be offered to the First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Commons, even if that First Lord did not happen to be a nephew of the retiring Prime Minister.

It would be idle just now to enter into any speculation as to whether Mr. Arthur Balfour will long continue to hold the office. If he should make up his mind, as was at one time thought possible by many observers, to accept a peerage and become Prime Minister in the House of Lords, such a step would undoubtedly be a means of pacifying the partisans of Chamberlain, for Chamberlain would then become, almost as a matter of course, the leader of the Conservative government in the House of Commons, and this elevation might well satisfy his ambition and give his pushful energy work enough to do. But the country has of late become less and less satisfied with the practice of having a Prime Minister removed from the centre of active life and hidden away in the enervating atmosphere of the House of Lords. The friends of Mr. Balfour are naturally inclined to hope and believe that he will not bury himself in such a living tomb. His path will in any case be perplexed by many difficulties and obstructions. My own impression is that the inevitable reaction is destined to come before long. The next general election may prove that the country at large is tired of a Conservative administration. The public mind will soon get over the feverish excitement created by the South African war, and people will begin to remember that England had won battles and annexed territory before there ever was a Transvaal Republic, and found then, as she will find now, that successes abroad do not relieve her from the necessity of managing successfully her business at home. It has to be borne in mind, too, that the House of Commons does not really originate anything in the work of important legislation. The best business of the Liberal party begins outside the House of Commons--begins with the people and with those who take an interest in the welfare of the people and have brains and foresight enough to find out how it can be most thoroughly promoted. All great reforms have their origin outside the House of Commons and are only taken up by the House of Commons when it is felt that the popular demand is so earnest that it must receive serious consideration. The country will soon begin to realize the fact that, shamefully mismanaged as the War Department may have been during the recent campaigns, the War Department is not by any means the only national institution which needs the strong hand of reform. The spirited foreign policy has had its innings, and the condition of the people at home must have its turn very soon. The Liberal party has its work cut out for it, and where there is the work to be done a Liberal party will be found to do it. So far as I can read the signs of the times, I am encouraged to hope that a great opportunity is waiting for the Liberal party, and I cannot see the slightest reason to doubt that a Liberal party will be found ready for the opportunity and equal to it. A Tory Prime Minister has, indeed, before now had the judgment and the energy to forestall the Liberal party in the great work of domestic reform, but I do not believe that even the warmest admirers of Mr. Balfour imagine that he is quite the man to undertake such an enterprise. Arthur Balfour is, according to my judgment, the best man for the place to be found in the Conservative ranks at present, but I do not suppose that he is destined just now to be anything more than a stop-gap. I admire his great and varied abilities, I recognize his brilliant debating powers, and I have felt the charm of his genial and graceful manners, but I do not believe him capable of maintaining the present administration against the rising force of a Liberal reaction.

LORD SALISBURY

The retirement of Lord Salisbury from the position of Prime Minister and the leadership of the Conservative Government withdraws into comparative obscurity the most interesting and even picturesque figure in the English Parliamentary life of the present day. Even the most uncompromising opponents of the Prime Minister and of his political party felt a sincere respect for the character, the intellect, and the bearing of the man himself. Every one gave Lord Salisbury full credit for absolute sincerity of purpose, for superiority to any personal ambitions or mere self-seeking, for an almost contemptuous disregard of State honors and political fame.

Yet it was not that Lord Salisbury was habitually careful and measured in his speech, that he was never hurried into rash utterances, that he was guided by any particular anxiety to avoid offending the susceptibilities of others, or, indeed, that, as a rule, he preferred to use soothing words in political controversy. He has, on the contrary, a marvelous gift of sarcasm and of satirical phrase-making, and he was only too ready to indulge occasionally this peculiar capacity at the expense of political friend as well as of political foe. In his early days of public life, when he sat in the House of Commons as a nominal follower of Mr. Disraeli, he was once described in debate by his nominal leader as "a master of flouts and jeers." On another occasion Disraeli spoke of him, although not in Parliamentary debate, as a young man whose head was on fire. In later days, and even when he had held high administrative office, Lord Salisbury often indulged in sudden outbursts of contemptuous humor which for a time seemed likely to provoke indignant remonstrance even from his own followers. One illustration of this unlucky tendency towards contemptuous utterance may be found in his famous allusion several years ago to a native of Hindustan, who had been elected to a seat in the House of Commons, as "a black man." That was a time when every English public man recognized the great importance of indulging in no expression which might seem calculated to wound the susceptibilities of the many races who have been brought under the rule of the Imperial system in the Indian dominions of the sovereign. The member of Parliament thus scornfully alluded to was no more a black man than Lord Salisbury himself. He was one of the Parsee races chiefly found in the Bombay regions, almost European in the color of their skin, and he looked more like a German scholar than a native of any sunburnt land. No one defended Lord Salisbury's rash utterance, but many people excused it on the ground that it was only Lord Salisbury's way; that he never meant any harm, but could not resist the temptation of saying an amusing and sarcastic thing when it came into his mind. The truth is that Lord Salisbury's odd humor is a peculiarity without which he could not be the complete Lord Salisbury, and an unlucky expression was easily forgiven because of the many brilliant flashes of genuine and not unfair sarcasm with which he was accustomed to illumine a dull debate. When he succeeded to his father's title, and had, therefore, to leave the House of Commons and take his place in the House of Lords, every one felt that the representative chamber had lost one of its most attractive figures, and that the hereditary chamber was not exactly the place in which such a man could find his happiest hunting-ground. Yet even in the somber and unimpressive House of Lords, Lord Salisbury was able, whenever the humor took him, to brighten the debates by his apt illustrations and his witty humor.

Lord Salisbury resigns his position as Prime Minister at a time of life when, according to the present standards of age, a man is still supposed to have long years of good work before him. Lord Palmerston's career as Prime Minister was cut short only by his death, an event which occurred when Palmerston was in his eighty-first year. Gladstone was more than ten years older than Lord Salisbury is now when he voluntarily gave up his position as head of a Liberal administration. Lord Beaconsfield's time of birth is somewhat uncertain, but he must have been some seventy-seven years of age and had lost none of his powers as a debater when his brilliant life came to its close. We may take it for granted that Lord Salisbury had been for a long time growing tired of the exalted political position which had of late become uncongenial with his habits and his frame of mind. By the death of his wife he had lost the most loved companion of his home, his intellectual tastes, and his political career. A pair more thoroughly devoted to each other than Lord and Lady Salisbury could hardly have been found even in the pages of romance. The whole story of that marriage and that married life would have supplied a touching and a telling chapter for romance. Early in his public career Lord Salisbury fell in love with a charming, gifted, and devoted woman, whom a happy chance had brought in his way. She was the daughter of an eminent English judge, the late Baron Alderson; and although such a wife might have been thought a suitable match even for a great aristocrat, it appears that the Lord Salisbury of that time, the father of the late Prime Minister, who was then only Lord Robert Cecil, did not approve of the marriage, and the young pair had to take their own way and become husband and wife without regard for the family prejudices. Lord Robert Cecil was then only a younger brother with a younger brother's allowance to live on, and the newly wedded pair had not much of a prospect before them, in the conventional sense of the words. Lord Robert Cecil accepted the situation with characteristic courage and resolve. There seemed at that time no likelihood of his ever succeeding to the title and the estates, for his elder brother was living, and was, of course, heir to the ancestral title and property. Lord Robert Cecil had been gifted with distinct literary capacity, and he set himself down to work as a writer and a journalist. He became a regular contributor to the "Saturday Review," then at the height of its influence and fame, and he wrote articles for some of the ponderous quarterly reviews of the time, brightening their pages by his animated and forcible style. He took a small house in a modest quarter of London, where artists and poets and authors of all kinds usually made a home then, far removed from West End fashion and courtly splendor, and there he lived a happy and productive life for many years. He had obtained a seat in the House of Commons as a member of the Conservative party, but he never pledged himself to support every policy and every measure undertaken by the Conservative leaders, whether they happened to be in or out of office. Lord Robert always acted as an independent member, although he adhered conscientiously to the cardinal principles of that Conservative doctrine which was his political faith throughout his life. He soon won for himself a marked distinction in the House of Commons. He was always a brilliant speaker, but was thoughtful and statesmanlike as well as brilliant. He never became an orator in the higher sense of the word. He never attempted any flights of exalted eloquence. His speeches were like the utterances of a man who is thinking aloud and whose principal object is to hold and convince his listeners by the sheer force of argument set forth in clear and telling language. Many of his happy phrases found acceptance as part of the ordinary language of political and social life and became in their way immortal. Up to the present day men are continually quoting happy phrases drawn from Lord Robert Cecil's early speeches without remembering the source from which they came.

Such a capacity as that of Lord Robert Cecil could not long be overlooked by the leaders of his party, and it soon became quite clear that he must be invited to administrative office. I ought to say that, after Lord Robert had completed his collegiate studies at Oxford, he devoted himself for a considerable time to an extensive course of travel, and he visited Australasia, then but little known to young Englishmen of his rank, and he actually did much practical work as a digger in the Australian gold mines, then newly discovered. He had always a deep interest in foreign affairs, and it was greatly to the advantage of his subsequent career that he could often support his arguments on questions of foreign policy by experience drawn from a personal study of the countries and States forming successive subjects of debate. Suddenly his worldly prospects underwent a complete change. The death of his elder brother made him heir to the family title and the great estates. He became Viscount Cranborne in succession to his dead brother. I may perhaps explain, for the benefit of some of my American readers, that the heir to a peerage who bears what is called a courtesy title has still a right to sit, if elected, in the House of Commons. It is sometimes a source of wonder and puzzlement to foreign visitors when they find so many men sitting in the House of Commons who actually bear titles which would make it seem as if they ought to be in the House of Lords. The eldest sons of all the higher order of peers bear such a title, but it carries with it no disqualification for a seat in the House of Commons, if the bearer of it be duly elected to a place in the representative chamber. When the bearer of the courtesy title succeeds to the actual title belonging to the house, he then, as a matter of course, becomes a peer, has to enter the House of Lords, and would no longer be legally eligible to sit in the representative chamber. Lord Palmerston's presence in the House of Commons was often a matter of wonder to foreign visitors, for in all the days to which my memory goes back, Lord Palmerston seemed too old a man to have a father alive and in the House of Lords. I have had to explain the matter to many a stranger, and it only gives one other illustration of the peculiarities and anomalies which belong to our Parliamentary system. Palmerston's was not a courtesy title; the noble lord was a peer in his own right; but then he was merely an Irish peer, and only a certain number of Irish peers are entitled to sit in the House of Lords. The more fortunate, for so I must describe them, of the Irish peers not thus entitled to sit in the hereditary chamber are free to seek election for an English constituency in the House of Commons and to obtain it, as Lord Palmerston did. Lord Viscount Cranborne, therefore, continued for a time to hold the place in the House of Commons which he had held as Lord Robert Cecil. In 1866 Lord Cranborne entered office, for the first time, as Secretary of State for India during the administration of Lord Derby.

The year following brought about a sort of crisis in Lord Cranborne's political career, and probably showed the general public of England, for the first time, what manner of man he really was. Up to that period he had been regarded by most persons, even among those who habitually gave attention to Parliamentary affairs, as a brilliant, independent, and somewhat audacious free-lance whose political conduct was usually directed by the impulse of the moment, and who made no pretensions to any fixed and ruling principles. That was the year 1867, when the Conservative Government under Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli took it into their heads to try the novel experiment, for a Conservative party, of introducing a Reform Bill to improve and expand the conditions of the Parliamentary suffrage. Disraeli was the author of this new scheme, and it had been suggested to him by Mr. Gladstone's failure in the previous year with his measure of reform. Gladstone's reform measure did not go far enough to satisfy the genuine Radicals, while it went much too far for a considerable number of doubtful and half-hearted Liberals, and it was strongly opposed by the whole Tory party. As usually happens in the case of every reform introduced by a Liberal administration, a secession took place among the habitual followers of the Government. The secession in this case was made famous by the name which Bright conferred upon it as the "Cave of Adullam" party; and by the co-operation of the seceding section with the Tory Opposition, the measure was defeated, and Mr. Gladstone went out of office. Disraeli saw, with his usual sagacity, that the vast mass of the population were in favor of some measure of reform, and when Lord Derby and he came into office he made up his mind that, as the thing had to be done, he and his colleagues might as well have the advantage of doing it. The outlines of the measure prepared for the purpose only shaped a very vague and moderate scheme of reform, but Disraeli was quite determined to accept any manner of compromises in order to carry some sort of scheme and to keep himself and his party in power. But then arose a new difficulty on which, with all his sagacity, he had not calculated. Lord Cranborne for the first time showed that he was a man of clear and resolute political principle, and that he was not willing to sacrifice any of his conscientious convictions for the sake of maintaining his place in a Government. He was sincerely opposed to every project for making the suffrage popular and for admitting the mass of the workingmen of the country to any share in its government. I need hardly say that I am entirely opposed to Lord Cranborne's political theories, but I am none the less willing to render full justice to the sincerity, not too common among rising public men, which refused to make any compromise on a matter of political principle. Lord Cranborne was then only at the opening of his administrative career, and he must have had personal ambition enough to make him wish for a continuance of office in a powerful administration. But he put all personal considerations resolutely aside, and resigned his place in the Government rather than have anything to do with a project which he believed to be a surrender of constitutional principle to the demands of the growing democracy. Lord Carnarvon and one or two other members of the administration followed his lead and resigned their places in the Government. I need not enter into much detail as to the progress of the Disraeli reform measure. It is enough to say that Disraeli obtained the support of many Radicals by the Liberal amendments which he accepted, and the result was that a Tory Government carried to success a scheme of reform which practically amounted to the introduction of household suffrage. Lord Cranborne and those who acted with him held firmly to their principles, and steadily opposed the measure introduced by those who at the opening of the session were their official leaders and colleagues. I am convinced that even the most advanced reformers were ready to give a due meed of praise to the man who had thus made it evident that he preferred what he believed to be a political principle, even though he knew it to be the principle of a losing cause, to any consideration of personal advancement.

Some of us felt sure that we had then learned for the first time what manner of man Lord Cranborne really was. We had taken him for a bold and brilliant adventurer, and we found and were ready to acknowledge that he was a man of deep, sincere, and self-sacrificing convictions. I have never from that time changed my opinions with regard to Lord Cranborne's personal character. His career interested me from the first moment that I had an opportunity of observing it, and I may say that from an early period of my manhood I had much opportunity of studying the ways and the figures of Parliamentary life. But until Lord Cranborne had taken this resolute position on the reform question, I had never given him credit for any depth of political convictions. The impression I formed of him up to that time was that he was merely a younger son of a great aristocratic family, who had a natural aptitude alike for literature and for politics, and that he was following in Parliament the guidance of his own personal humors and argumentative impulses, and that he was ready to sacrifice in debate not only his friends but his party for the sake of saying a clever thing and startling his audience into reluctant admiration. From those days of 1867 I knew him to be what all the world now knows him to be, a man of deep and sincere convictions, ever following the light of what he believes to be political wisdom and justice. I can say this none the less readily because I suppose it has hardly ever been my fortune to agree with any of Lord Salisbury's utterances on questions of political importance.