My husband’s opponent in this last election was Mr. Saunderson, who
based his claims chiefly on the fact that he was the son of the late
Colonel Saunderson. “Mr. Saunderson,” said my husband, “has protested
so often that he is the son of Colonel Saunderson, that I, for my part,
am inclined to believe him”--a touch of ridicule that went home with an
Irish audience.
He was impatient of bigotry and narrowness and any attempt to stir up
in Ulster the ashes of old hatreds and animosities. Once appealing to
Ulstermen to forego their enthusiasm for William of Orange, he said
with effect: “Why let us quarrel over a dead Dutchman?” His famous
reply to Kipling, who by his doggerel tried to fan the flames of civil
war, is worth quoting--
“The poet, for a coin,
Hands to the gabbling rout
A bucketful of Boyne
To put the sunrise out.”
In Parliament, he was an instant success. He was a born orator and
spoke with all the intensity that passionate conviction lends. In his
book on _Irish Orators_, he wrote: “Without knowledge, sincerity, and
a hearty spiritual commitment to public causes, the crown of oratory,
such as it is, is not to be won.” He had those requisites abundantly.
In this book he gives a definition of an orator than which nothing
could be finer: “The sound and rumour of great multitudes, passions
hot as ginger in the mouth, torches, tumultuous comings and goings,
and, riding through the whirlwind of it all, a personality, with
something about him of the prophet, something of the actor, a touch of
the charlatan, crying out not so much with his own voice as with that
of the multitude, establishing with a gesture, refuting with a glance,
stirring ecstasies of hatred and affection--is not that a common, and
far from fantastic, conception of the orator?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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