He has had much experience in State affairs. What
he did at the India Office and as Foreign Secretary is too well known to
the world. Lord Salisbury's oratorical gifts are undeniable. He is one
of a select half-dozen taken from either House who stand first in the
power of moving a popular assembly. Lord Beaconsfield said that he
"wanted finish." The remark was more spiteful than true. Lord Salisbury
could not rival his chief in the neatness and polish of an epigram, but
just as little could Lord Beaconsfield rival him in the unstudied graces
of oratory. His speeches have a freedom and a rhythmical flow which
captivate the hearer. Though he gives full play to his imagination and
recklessly faces the risks to which an impetuous speaker is exposed, he
is seldom stilted, and rarely breaks the neck of a sentence. Here,
perhaps, the favourable side of the catalogue should end. His speeches
have the great blemish of insolence. They are wanting in geniality, and
apparently wanting in reflectiveness. They contain too little thought
and more than enough of gall. Perhaps their cleverness is too obtrusive.
His hearers are pleased, but they suspect a trick, and levy a discount
on his argument. The faults of his speeches are his faults as a
politician. He is headstrong and impulsive. He borrows his ideas from
his passions, and fancies he is sagacious when he is but following the
bent of his uppermost desire. He has but little sympathy with modern
life and but a narrow comprehension of its facts. He is under the spell
of long-descended traditions, and would prefer, if he could have it so,
the England of the Tudors to the England of Victoria. Of the people and
of the spirit which animates them he knows nothing. How should he? Save
the rustics of Hatfield, he has never seen them, except from a platform.
His occasional references to such a subject as English Nonconformity
shows the depth of his benightedness; and his ignorance, the voluntary
and superb ignorance of the aristocrat and the High Churchman, is the
source of many of his blunders. Knowing nothing of the ground in front,
he forces a leap and comes down in the ditch, and his friends with him.

Lord Salisbury is indispensable, and as nothing will cure him of his
faults the only plan is to keep him out of the path of temptation. The
way to do this, we are told, is to fill the front bench in the House of
Commons with the right sort of men. Thus his qualifications for the
leadership