Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)O'Connor, T. P. (Thomas Power)
History
Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)
O'Connor, T. P. (Thomas Power)
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons; Home rule -- Ireland
The contrast between the kindliness, the sincere judgment, and the
kindly disposition of Mr. McCarthy and the somewhat raucous and
malevolent accents of Mr. Chamberlain, was very marked. Not that Mr.
Chamberlain was by any means so nasty as usual; it looked as if he had
been taught by the failure of his last utterance into learning at last
that malevolence in the end defeats itself by its very excess, and he
evidently had resolved to put a very severe restraint upon himself, and
attuned his oratory to a very minor key. But this new tone was just as
unsuccessful as the other, and there is a second unsuccessful and flat
speech to be put to his credit. Many of the ideas, many of the phrases,
were repetitions of things he had already said a hundred times over in
the course of the previous debates; in short, the speech was a
revelation of the fact, known to those who have watched Mr. Chamberlain
carefully, that the soil is very barren and very thin; and that after a
few oratorical crops it becomes exhausted. Perhaps the failure of the
speech was also largely due to the fact that the Irish and the Liberal
members, taught by previous experiences, resolved to also put restraint
on themselves. They have learned by this time that interruptions do Mr.
Chamberlain a great deal of good; and that his great nimbleness and
readiness never come out so well as when he has suddenly to answer such
an interruption. Addressing benches--blank, silent and irresponsive, he
laboured rather heavily throughout the whole of his address; and there
was a complete absence even from the Tory benches of that loud and
frequent accompaniment of cheers to which Mr. Chamberlain is usually
treated. In short, it was a dull, ineffective speech, mostly listened to
in silence.
[Sidenote: A coming man.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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