CHAPTER VIII.

PERSONALITIES IN DEBATE.

FOREIGN correspondent of an American journal, who visited the British Parliament a few years ago, strikingly contrasts the courtesy of political opponents in that body with the personalities which are so common in American legislatures. He says that the moment a member rises to address the House of Commons, he seems possessed by the most refined and gentlemanly consideration for others. In speaking of antagonists he carefully guards against the slightest imputation of dishonorable motives; or if, in the heat of debate, a word of oblique significance slips from his tongue, he hastens to withdraw it, and to express his regret; nay, even in his sarcasms and home-thrusts, he is careful to mention something to the credit of the very foeman he is about to scathe. Such a thing as hurling abusive epithets, giving the lie, and, above all, threatening personal violence,practices so common as scarcely to create a sensation in our American legislatures,- would not be tolerated for a moment. When the Earl of Derby, in an attack on Lord John Russell, likened him to "Bottom the weaver," and described his policy by "the two homely words, meddle and muddle," it was feit that he went to the very verge of propriety. Great as was the ascendency of Lord Palmerston in that body, it never enabled him to lord it over his

fellow-Commoners so far as to be uncivil to the least popular members of the House. When, on one occasion, he trespassed so far as to say impatiently of the not-overpopular Joseph Hume, "If the honorable gentleman's understanding is obtuse, it is not my fault," he was instantly brought to his senses by the reproachful murmurs of the House, and was reminded that even Lord Palmerston must respect the fine code of legislative chivalry established there.

What American, unless a politician, will not feel humiliated by the contrast between this picture and the scenes often witnessed in Congress and our State legislatures? How often are epithets applied to each other, by our Senators and Representatives, which a fishwoman in Billingsgate might delight to add to her already sparkling vocabulary, but which

"A beggar in his drink Would not bestow upon his callet."

What must be a foreigner's impression, if, on visiting Congress, he should hear an altercation in which the vocabulary was exhausted by members for foul epithets to fling at each other, and see this followed,—as we have seen it, by one of the pugilists rushing with turned-up sleeves into the arena before the Speaker, and shaking his clenched fist at his antagonist? Not always, however, did the British Senate transfuse debate with those graceful amenities which now do it honor, and which lift its discussions so far above the hot and scurrilous word-brawls which politicians so often substitute for facts and logic. The criminative fury with which Pulteney attacked Walpole, and Walpole attacked Pulteney, is well known to the readers of British history. Nearly all of Lord Chat

ham's most telling replies were bitter personalities, such as that to Walpole, when the latter twitted him of his youth, and the fierce reply to Lord Holland, when, looking him full in the face, he said: "There are some (persons) upon whose faces the hand of Heaven has so stamped the mark of wickedness, that it were impiety not to give it credit." Not less coarse were the invectives of Burke, which sometimes degenerated into positive scurrility. The wisest man of his age, and possessing a profoundly philosophic intellect, he had at the same time so vehement a temperament, so acute a sensibility, and so excitable an imagination, his affections were so warm, and his hatred of wrong so prompt and intense, even to morbidness, that, when his passions were once roused, they raged with a blind fury which mocked at all control. Hence, though naturally generous and forgiving, he pursued an antagonist as he would a criminal, and, while he thought like a philosopher, acted like a heated partisan. Who has forgotten his picture of Lord North: "The noble Lord who spoke last, after extending his right leg a full yard before his left, rolling his flaming eyes, and moving his ponderous frame, has at length opened his mouth.”

Again, who has forgotten the famous quarrel between Fox and Burke, or the Duke of Grafton's taunt at Thurlow's mean extraction, which drew down upon the assailant such a crushing reply; or who is not familiar with Grattan's retort upon Flood, the most artistic and overwhelming invective that has disfigured parliamentary debates? Flood had taunted him with aping the style of Lord Chatham, and denounced him as "a mendicant patriot, subsisting upon the public accounts,-who, bought by his country for a sum of money, then sold his country for prompt pay

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ment." Grattan begins by supposing an imaginary character, whom he invests with all the faults of his opponent, and in whom he traces his history. His evident intention is to keep up the transparent mask to the end of the speech, and then annihilate his rival by a word,-just as Brougham, forty years later, directed a memorable attack upon Canning. But, in the middle of the speech, the orator can restrain his pent-up indignation no longer; the direct hostility which inspires the assault is too powerful to allow the flimsy pretext of an imaginary character, and Grattan bursts into one of those fiery onsets which no man ever led with more terrible effect: "The merchant may say to you, -the constitutionalist may say to you,-the American may say to you, and I, I now say, and say to your beard, sir,you are not an honest man!" Can you believe," wrote General Burgoyne to Charles Fox, that "the House heard this discussion for two hours without interfering? On the contrary, every one seemed to rejoice as his favorite gladiator gave or parried a stroke." Even so late as 1840-41, we find Macaulay, in his Diary, complaining of the bitter personalities in the House of Commons. Speaking of the debate on Stanley's Irish Registration Bill, he says: "I have never seen such unseemly demeanor, or heard such scurrilous language, in Parliament. . . . Lord Maidstone was so ill-mannered that I hope he was drunk. O'Connell was so rudely interrupted that he used the expression 'beastly bellowings.' Then rose such an uproar as no O. P. mob at Covent Garden Theatre, no crowd of Chartists in front of a hustings, ever equaled. Men stood up on both sides, shook their fists, and bawled at the top of their voices. ... O'Connell raged like a mad bull. . . . At last the tumult ended from absolute physical weariness."

The name of Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) is associated with some of the most stinging personalities ever uttered in the British Legislature. One of his Hebrew countrymen declares that "he cannot shine without offensiveness, His passages of arms are not worth commemorating, unless he draws blood." A greater master of cool, polished, searching irony, ridicule, and invective, probably never stood within the walls of St. Stephen. It has been truly said of him, that when he is prepared, not a blow misses; not a sarcasm is impeded by a weakening phrase. His peculiar tones, with his provoking frigidity of manner, and affected contempt for his foe, add much to the effect of his hits. In the Maynooth debate of 1845, he made an attack upon Sir Robert Peel, in which he said that "with him great measures were always rested on small precedents, that he always traced the steam-engine back to the teakettle; that in fact all his precedents were tea-kettle precedents." Again, in a speech made in the House of Commons in 1846, Disraeli advised Peel to stick to quotation, because he never quoted any passage that had not previously received the meed of parliamentary "approbation"; compared him to the Turkish admiral who steered the fleet confided to him straight into the enemy's port; termed the Treasury Bench "political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market and sold us in the dearest"; and compared the conversion of the Peelites to that of the Saxons by Charlemagne, "who, according to the chronicle, were converted in battalions, and baptized in platoons." Peel was the chief target of Disraeli's sarcasms, and so dull and spiritless, comparatively, were his speeches after Peel's death, that Sheil compared him to a dissecting surgeon or anatomist without a corpse. Mr. Roebuck, whose