Critical Studies

er in a well-known house in Belgrave Square. He was standing, surrounded by the loveliest and most fashionable women of society, who were offering him a homage which must have been deligh

have, and the nose, short and rétroussé, makes plebeian lineaments which might without this defect be sufficiently regular. In these later times he has aged more than his years perhaps justify, and it is said that he suffers from neuralgia and gout. He is always well dressed; 'too well' an ex-Viceroy murmured to me that evening; and he is never

Charles Stewart Parnell, in whom Chamberlain felt an irresistible superiority. If this were the reason, he must now be content, since in his present party he has no rival in the Cabinet, no one ventures to contradict him, and he is de facto, though not yet de jure, the head of the present Government. There have been many men of distinction before him in the somewhat subordinate post of Secretary of the Colonies, notably the late Lord C

o rule and influence the master of Hatfield, as he has succeeded in ruling and influencing all others who sit round the ministerial table in Downing Street. A friend of mine speaking once to me of Lord Salisbury, whom he knew intimately, said, 'He is a fine big cannon, but he won't go off; I doubt if he will ever go off.' It is probable that Chamberlain had the same opinion, and therefore resolved himself to man?uvre and fire the cannon. Anyhow, he has acted well for

e is called inordinately ambitious, but his ambition is essentially practical, not ideal. He wishes for the loaves and fishes; a laurel crown would be to him a useless thing, unless it represented to him solid lucre. Would he have succeeded if he had been born half a century earlier? I doubt it. In the

nd dominate the Salisbury Cabinet. He has been equally happy in the occasions which have presented themselves to him, and in his own capability in using them; in the mediocrity of the men who combine with him, and of the men who oppose him; in his infinite ability in influencing the first, and in intimidating the last; he has been fortunate also in the fact that the English people are less bigoted in religion than of old; for in an earlier time they would have seen with horror a Unitarian entering the Government. But his greatest good fortune of a

nsort has so depressed and preoccupied the Premier that the latter has almost entirely ceased to occupy himself with

Salisbury either dismiss Chamberlain from office, or surrender office himself; for since Chamberlain was allowed virt

ere is some truth, if not an entire truth. As two negatives make an affirmative, perhaps two desertions make a fidelity! It is certain that the Tory Party has forsaken its old paths quite as much as Chamberlain has his, indeed probably

guide and saviour than this consistent Radical? Either the consistent Radical, or the inconsistent Conservative Party, has 'ratted' in the most barefaced manner. One or the other has been false to primal faith; and there is only a very small band of independent thinkers who venture to declare this. For Chamberlain has had the supreme

nglish politics these passages will contribute a chapter which will not edify the readers of the next generation; especially if its climax be, as it will be almost certainly, the apotheosis of Chamberlain after a campaign of aggression and conquest conceived and carried out by him and the Yellow Press which he inspi

nd all possibility of alteration, that the Prime Minister, after long silence, accepted the responsibility of it in his speech at the Guildhall. Lord Salisbury, in that Mansion House speech, of course, denied the allegation then made by the President of the French Chamber of Commerce as to the motives and causes of the war;

at Rhodes was a man whose honour was untarnished! This, more than any other fact, shows to what depths it is now possible to descend in English politics. Certainly, in the time of Peel or of the earlier G

veller not burdened by scruples.' Now, the man of trade may have considerable qualities, great intelligence, and great enterprise, but his mind and his acts are those of a tradesman

atecraft in our day is chiefly 'land-grabbing' and an effort to bridle democracy by taxation. Still it is a different art to the art of the merchant's or manufacturer's office. When Chamberlain endeavours to be diplomatic he becomes inane: a person (who must have been very na?f) wrote to him the other day to ask if it were true that it had always bee

approaches brutality; he loses his temper easily; and the spectator sees by the nerves of his face and the movements of his limbs that he has not the self-control and sang-froid, which are natural gifts of the man of race and breeding. But despite these defects and these offences he has conquered both society and his colleagues, and one sees scholarly and refined men like Mr Arthur Balfour hopelessly and helplessly hypnotised by him. He has taken with him into Downing Street the manners and the methods with which he governed the town councillors of Birmingham; and these succeed equally well in his altered atmosphere. 'We

ated English political and social atmospheres, in their highest strata, as a contagious fever enters and reigns in a district. It was a strange phenomenon, the Venetian Jew leading by the leash the entire English aristocracies. To trace the manifold reasons which enabled a man

Peace with Honour' was an exact sample of his style; the peace was brittle and the honour was dubious, but his manner of presenting them was so magnificent that they were received as though they were gifts from heaven. An able writer has said that the English are deficient in the power of observation, and I believe it is true. They do not examine critically before committing themselves to em

len boaster, bawling of its millions, its might, and its superiority, although surely vanity is no more admirable in a country than in an individual? This alteration in the British temper, which was primarily the work of Disraeli and of the new nobility (chiefly commercial and largely Jewish), which was called into being, prepared the ground for Chamberlain's Imperialism, a much coarse

more to their taste than Lord Salisbury, who is too scholarly, too satirical, and too great a gentleman for them; his health is failing, he speaks rarely, there is a cynical contempt in his occasional speeches which cuts the novi homines like a whip. It is impossible that a man of Lord Salisbury's pride of character and acuteness of intellect should much longer consent to be the mere echo of his Colonial Secretary. There is every sign that his retiremen

n, as an independent Member said a few weeks since in the House of Commons, he should be called to the bar of the House. Parliament, and the nation after it, accept the suppression of despatches and telegrams, the use and abuse of censorship, the denial and interruption of free speech, the closure of debate at the moment when its conti

rving, their fields devastated, their towns beleaguered. They have never seen a battle, a siege, a trench full of dead; therefore they do not know the hideous suffering which they inflict when they let loose, in pride of spirit and lightness of heart and triumphant vanity, the fiends of war upon a distant people and a far-off land. This is the excuse of a large portion of the nation for the present war; but it is at the same time the strongest con