Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
Here in New York, where English politics are understood infinitely
better than in Paris, I have noticed not a little of this "Bright and
Beales" classification when people talk of the leaders of English
Liberalism. I have heard, with surprise, this or that respectable member
of Parliament, who never for a moment dreamed of being classed among the
chiefs of his party, exalted to a place of equality with Gladstone or
Bright. In truth the English Liberal party (I mean now the advancing and
popular party--not the old Whigs) has only three men who can be called
leaders. After Gladstone, Bright, and Mill there comes a huge gap--and
then follow the subalterns, of whom one might name half a dozen having
about equal rank and influence, and of whom you may choose any favorite
you like. Take, for example, Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Stansfeld, Mr.
Thomas Hughes, the O'Donoghue, Mr. Coleridge (who, however, is marked
out for the judicial bench, and therefore need hardly be counted), and
one or two others, and you have the captains of the advanced Liberal
party. The Liberals are not rich in rising talent; at least there seems
no man of the younger political generation who gives any promise of
commanding ability. They have many good debaters and clever politicians,
but I see no "pony Gladstone" to succeed him who used to be called the
"pony Peel;" and the man has yet to show himself in whom the House of
Commons can hope for a future Bright. The great Liberals of our day have
apparently not the gift of training disciples in order that the latter
may become apostles in their time. Like Cavour, they are too earnest
about the work and do too much of it themselves to have leisure or
inclination for teaching and pushing others.
Officially Mr. Gladstone has been, of course, for several years the
leader of the party. He is formally invested with all the insignia of
command. He is indeed the only possible leader; for he is the only man
who has the slightest chance just now of commanding the allegiance of
the old Whigs with their dukes and earls, and the young Radicals with
their philosophers, their Comtists, their Irish Nationalists, and their
working men. But the true soul and voice and heart of the Liberal party
pay silent allegiance to John Bright. He is, by universal
acknowledgment, the maker of the Reform agitation and the Reform Bill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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