Robert Peel might have led
the Tory Party; but Demosthenes was right after all. The graces of
oratory, though delightful for the moment, have no permanent effect. The
perfection of Parliamentary style is to utter cruel platitudes with a
grave and informing air; and, if a little pomposity be superadded, the
House will instinctively recognize the speaker as a Statesman. I have
heard Sir William Harcourt say, "After March, comes April," in a tone
which carried conviction to every heart.

A word must be said about speakers who read their speeches. I do not
think I shall be contradicted if I say that in those distant days Sir
William Harcourt, Sir George Trevelyan, and Mr. Gibson, now Lord
Ashbourne, wrote every word, and delivered their speeches from the
manuscript. In late years, when Harcourt had to pilot his famous Budget
through Committee, he acquired a perfect facility in extempore speech;
but at the beginning it was not so. The Irish are an eloquent nation,
and we are apt to send them rather prosy rulers. "The Honourable Member
for Bletherum was at that time perambulating the district with very
great activity, and, I need not say, with very great ability." Such a
sentence as that, laboriously inscribed in the manuscript of a Chief
Secretary's speech, seems indeed to dissipate all thoughts of oratory.
Mr. Henry Richard, a "Stickit Minister" who represented Merthyr, was the
worst offender against the Standing Order which forbids a Member to read
his speech, though it allows him to "refresh his memory with notes"; and
once, being called to order for his offence, he palliated it by saying
that he was ready to hand his manuscript to his censor, and challenged
him to read a word of it.

The least oratorical of mankind was the fifteenth Lord Derby, whose
formal adhesion to the Liberal Party in 1882 supplied _Punch_ with an
admirable cartoon of a female Gladstone singing in impassioned strain--

"Always the same, Derby my own!
Always the same to your old Glad-stone."

Lord Derby wrote every word of his speeches, and sent them in advance to
the press. It was said that once he dropped his manuscript in the
street, and that, being picked up, it was found to contain such entries
as "Cheers," "Laughter," and "Loud applause," culminating in "'But I am
detaining you too long.' (Cries of 'No, no,' and 'Go on.')"

The mention of Lord Derby reminds me of the much-criticized body to
which he belonged. When I entered P