The Midlothian Book,' which we knew so well
He took, and he tore asunder.

And he said, 'No fall shall sully thee,

Thou record of worth and bravery;

Thy pages were made for the good and the free,
And not for this deep-dyed knavery.'

I said just now that Lawson followed the advanced line of the Liberal party. Not seldom he indicated that line as the right policy for the party, long before the leaders had come to recognize its possibility or its expediency. Thus, in November 1881, when the Liberal Government was imprisoning Parnell without trial, and Gladstone was invoking the 'resources of civilization against its enemies,' and Forster was hunting very unsuccessfully for the Village Ruffians,' whom he had promised to lay by the heels, Lawson made an emphatic declaration in favour of Home Rule. Addressing his constituents at Carlisle, he spoke as follows:

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'I am convinced of one thing-that, as surely as I stand here, a disaffected nation, hating the rule of the nation that governs it, is not a source of strength to that country, but a source of weakness to everyone concerned in the matter. Suppose you had a housemaid who was continually breaking the crockery, who went into hysterics once a week, and had to be put into a strait waistcoat, and three or four policemen brought in to keep her in order, would you keep her? No; you would say, "Wayward sister, go in peace." (Cheers and laughter.) Or my friend Mr. Howard here. He keeps a pack of foxhounds. Suppose he had one abominable hound, always worrying the other hounds, howling and yelling all night, and flying at the huntsman's throat when he went into the kennel, do you think he would keep that hound? Would he say, "I must not have my pack

''Political Speeches in Scotland, November and December, 1879, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.'

6

disintegrated'?" No, he would write to the Master of a pack of harriers, and say, "I beg to make you a present of the most valuable hound in my pack." (Loud laughter).'

There were probably not three other Members of Parliament who at that time would have ventured on that suggestion of Irish policy; and, apart from the singular courage which the speech disclosed, it is worth recalling as a typical instance of the speaker's favourite method. No one ever excelled him in the art of enforcing a serious argument by a humorous illustration; and the allusion to the probable conduct of the disgusted Master of Foxhounds is about as characteristic a touch as any which can be found in all the great array of his collected speeches.

In this particular matter of Home Rule, Lawson was miles ahead of his party. He thought and spoke and acted for himself, and was indeed a pioneer of the new policy. When the strife raged round more ordinary topics, such as the Extension of the Suffrage, the Ballot, Disestablishment, and resistance to the claims of the House of Lords, he marched in the foremost rank. Perhaps, indeed, he outstripped it when, commending the Burials Act of 1880, he declared that the Act, good in itself, was only an instalment of a larger reform, and that the churches as well as the churchyards ought to be thrown open for Nonconformist rites.

When a man's work in life has been done mainly through public speech, it is interesting to know something about his way of speaking. In this respect, as in so many others, Lawson was quite unlike what people who did not know him expected him to be. There was nothing fanatical, fiery, or excited about his style of oratory. He spoke with perfect ease and fluency, but quietly, deliberately, and with complete self-control. He was the master, not the servant, of his oratorical power. As a rule, his speeches were carefully prepared, and he made free use of notes; but he could speak, when necessary,

without premeditation; he was always on the happiest terms with his audience; was quick in reply, clever in dealing with an interruption, and successful in turning the laugh against the interrupter.

James Russell Lowell, referring to his own writings at the time of the American Civil War, remarked that he had been ' able to keep his head fairly clear of passion, when his heart was at boiling-point.' Lawson might have said exactly the same about his political speaking. His heart was always ́ at boiling-point' when he was pleading for the Causes in which he believed; but he contrived to keep his head clear of passion,' and was perfectly prepared to argue the point against adversaries who merely howled and raved.

The aim of Logic, according to the Ancients, is to arrive at truth; the aim of Rhetoric to persuade men. In Lawson's speaking both faculties were combined; and, while he was always ready to give a reason for the faith that was in him, he knew as well as anyone the value of resonant declamation, and the power of finely-chosen words to enforce a moral appeal. It is only natural that his best-remembered speeches should be those connected with the Liquor-Traffic; for that was the subject which lay nearest his heart, and which inspired his most memorable performances in the way of public speaking. Those speeches will not easily perish, for the various organizations which seek to reform the Liquor-Laws, and the host of speakers and writers and compilers of extracts who labour for the same end, will long turn to Lawson for their most effective quotations. Even Canning himself, in his great comparison of a nation at peace to a Man of War riding at anchor,' was not happier than Lawson in this description of the tide which was to carry the Permissive Bill:

'I have alluded to that little sign of progress. I shall be told it is all very well, but you know that all the great statesAt Plymouth in 1823. (Vol. VI. of Canning's 'Speeches.')

2 The passing of the Irish Sunday Closing Bill.

THE TIDE

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men are still dead against your Bill. Of course they are. Why, when the great statesmen have come round, the Bill is as good as carried. Have you seen a flotilla of ships of all sizes riding at anchor in the tideway, and have you seen the tide turn and suddenly begin to flow? Which came round first? The little cock-boats; then the ships a little bigger; then the three-deckers; and then the grand manof-war wheels round along with the others. When the tide is strong enough, the statesmen-the tide-waiters-will come round with it. But don't you hurry these statesmen. They are far cleverer than we are. They won't do the right thing till the right time, and the right time is when you tell them they must do it. Statesmen, indeed! Who pins his faith on statesmen? Not I. I have lived long enough to get over all that.' 2

Lawson's speeches on general politics are perhaps less widely remembered, and it is right to give a specimen of his style when dealing with the moral aspects of a political question. When speaking at Whitehaven in January 1879, he thus denounced the Affghan War, and the episcopal votes by which in the House of Lords it had in the previous December been supported:

'I don't approve of that sort of work; I don't think that the way to convert one nation is to cut the throats of another. There seems to me about that vote of the eight bishops, the other day, in favour of this war, there was something very extraordinary. I think in my time there has been nothing more grotesquely horrible, or more horribly grotesque, than to see those ecclesiastics, who seem to me to be a cross between savages and saints, who one day appear in the House of God as the ministers of peace, and on the next day in the House of Lords go and vote for an unjust and unnecessary war. I know not how this matter may stand in the great Hereafter when

The Permissive Bill.

At Manchester, October, 1876.

Infinite Justice shall strike the balance of all human accounts, but I think there are some of us who would then rather stand in the position of the untutored Affghan killed in the defence of his life, his home, his liberty, and his country, than in that of the erudite and enlightened ecclesiastic, who, from his place of pomp and power, has "cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war" on a mission of rapine, revenge, and cruelty.'

This is a fair specimen of Lawson's graver manner; but he was certainly not less effective when he enlivened a serious discourse with a touch of sarcastic humour. Speaking at Carlisle in January 1883, he thus satirized our recent performances in Egypt, and the public and social celebrations with which the return of Lord Wolseley and his troops had been welcomed:

'It was for this, to crush out the freedom of the Egyptians, that we spent five millions of the hard-earned money of the people of this country; it was for this, that some of the best blood of England was poured out on desert sands; for this that the whole press wrote pæans of delight; for this, that the aristocracy and the London mob joined in high carnival the other day; for this, that the Archbishops and Bishops of the Christian Church sent up to Heaven a thanksgiving for the slaughter which we committed; and it was for this, that the very Quakers themselves, in a paroxysm of patriotism, threw up their hats and shouted for Glory and Gunpowder.'1

The humour of the foregoing passage, though undeniable, is certainly mixed with a certain acridity. No one knew better than Lawson that, if you can make an objectionable policy look ridiculous, you have done more towards killing it than the most thunderous invective can do ; and, when he was thoroughly angry, as he was with our antics in Egypt, his humour gave a keen edge to his rebuke. This was the judgment of Cardinal Manning, a shrewd observer and a man of Some fuller specimens of Lawson's oratory will be found in Appendix I.