MR. GATHORNE HARDY.
ecopnislliadrereacindbeyorinnaenr-ystoofnethoef Mil. CGonAsTerHva°tRives toHbAeRtpheY. truis their party. His Conservatism is not moth-eaten by speculative doubts like Mr. Disraeli's, nor dangerously undermined at the most important points by frigid, clear business sense like Lord Stanley's. He is full of an obtuse enthusiasm which renders him deaf to the tendencies and ideas of tin world external to his own habits of mind. He is one of the most fluent speakers in the House of Commons, and in a literary sense, of all fluent speakers he is the least interesting. There is no depth and play in his voice, no flexibility in his thought, no scale in his emphasis, no variety in his manner. He once assailed his favourite enemies, if we may be allowed the expression, the latitudinarians of the Church, amidst the uproarious cheers of the rank and file on his own side, as the advocates of a "misty and muddy" religious system. The words, like most of Mr. Hardy's oratorical adjectives, were singularly ill-adapted to the Church Liberals in general, amongst whom are to be found the men of sharpest and most lucid, even where they not of the deepest and most powerful, thought whom the Church contains. But if these epithets were not descriptive of the men at whom they were cast, they were in a certain sense very expressive of the mind of the speaker who cast them. There is nothing like keenness of discrimination about Mr. Hardy's eloquence. As he warms up into ardour, a thicker film than usual falls upon his intellectual eye. As Mr. Disraeli warms to his work, his phrases are sure to become more delicate and subtle in their wit, so as to imprint themselves on the literary memory. As Lord Stanley warms to his work, his phrases are sure to become more incisive and firmly outlined, so as to imprint themselves on the practical memory. But as Mr. Hardy warms to his work, though the language becomes more vehement, it also becomes less descriptive of anything but the deeply-ingrained habits of his own political nature. He becomes eloquent by becoming more and more self-involved. His force as a speaker is neither in logic nor in imagination. He does not grapple with the reason of his foes ; he does not conjure up a new world before their eyes which shakes the impressions and prepossessions they have formed. He only works himself up into a sort of dull smouldering heat, which is infectious to those who already agree with him, but which has absolutely no power at all over those who differ from him. There is nothing playful, nothing radiant, nothing arresting, nothing comprehensive and large, nothing keen and lucid, nothing kindling about his style. When he moves his own party most, he seems to have attained his fire by a method analogous to that attributed to certain savage tribes of rubbing one piece of wood against another till one of them is kindled. There is something excessively wooden even about his earnestness, which is genuine enough. It seems tobe theearnestneas, not of a contentious reason, nor of an excited imagination, but of a moral habit so tenacious as to be ignited into a sort of slow fire by the attrition of opposition. There is not one of the leaders of the Con
servative party who seems so destitute of the faculty of intellectual survey or wide moral sympathy. Mr. Hardy has more vigour than Sir Stafford Northcote, but Sir Stafford Northcote's intellect is broad and speculative compared with his. Mr. Hardy has more vigour than Sir John Pakington ; but Sir John Pakington's sympathies are wide and generous compared to his. Sir Stafford Northeote has,—one after-dinner speech excepted,—always been moderate and cautious in his defence of ecclesiastical restrictions. Sir John Pakington took up the defence of the Conscience Clause and of a wide educational measure with a warmth that almost alienated a large party of Church Conservatives. But Mr. Hardy, from the beginning of his career as a heaven-born representative of country clergymen to his last great speech on the Irish Church, has never yet betrayed the glimmer of a political mind too wide for his creed, or of a political sympathy that went beyond it. Were he ever to lead the Conservative party, he would be such a leader for them as they have not had since the time of Mr. Perceval. Every one has read Sydney Smith's sketch of Mr. Perceval walking to Hampstead Church in advance of his dozen children, "with their faces washed and their hair pleasingly combed, while all Ireland was ready to rise in exasperation at his treatment of the Roman Catholics." Mr. Gathorne Hardy is the Mr. Perceval of our own time,—no doubt a shade or two more liberal, as the whole atmosphere of political thought is more liberal than it was sixty years since. Like Mr. Perceval, Mr. Gathorne Hardy has "poor powers of reasoning and none of imagination." Like him, he has strong religious convictions, and in "regard to purpose and persistency," is, as Miss Martineau describes Mr. Perceval, "among the few strong members of the Conservative Cabinet." Like him, his political faults arise "from the narrowness of his intellectual range, and by no means from any harshness, hypocrisy, or pride in the temper of the man." Like him, he is upright, honourable, amiable, everything that is worthy outside the intellectual conditions of statesmanship,—look, for instance, at his steadiness in supporting the report of Mr. Justice Martin on the electoral corruption of Norwich last Thursday, against the special pleas of his own party. But like him, too, it seems to us quite possible that if Mr. Gathorne Hardy ever came to rule the country as the head of a powerful Conservative party, he would be quite capable of ruling in so narrow a spirit as to render himself far better hated by the people than the most unprincipled of all the statesmen of our century.
Mr. Gathorne Hardy earned his University seat Mainly perhaps by the very debate by which Mr. Gladstone lost his, though gaining in its place his present great position at the head of the most powerful Liberal Government of this generation,—we refer to the Irish Church debate of 1865, which was the germ and omen of the great conflict now going on. From that speech in March, 1865, to the great speech of March, 1869, Mr. Gathorne Hardy's position has only altered by becoming somewhat narrower, harder, less statesmanlike. Four years ago he did, at least, admit that to establish the Church of a small minority of the people in any land was a great "anomaly." Last week there was not a trace of any such admission ; he could see nothing in Ireland but a large county of the United Kingdom, and denounced Mr. Gladstone's proposal to treat Ireland "differently" from England, as if there were no difference of treatment involved in the supply of the same provision for totally different wants,—as if, for instance, it were treating the deaf man and the weak-sighted man more alike to provide both with an ear-trumpet adapted to the former, or both with a pair of spectacles suited to the latter, than it would be to provide the ear-trumpet only for the one, and the pair of spectacles only for the other. Compare Mr. Hardy's speech of 1865 with his speech of 1869, and though you will see the strong general resemblance, —the identity of fallacies and the unity of prejudice in both,—there is a clear difference in favour of the former, and unfavourable to the latter. Not that we intend to imply for a moment that Mr. Hardy's political creed has changed by one iota. The fixity of the so-called fixed stars is rapid motion in relation to the fixity of Mr. Gathorne Hardy's ecclesiastical politics. The slightly increased rigidity,—the completer petrifaction or ossification of his views since that period,—is not to be ascribed to any change in him, but only to the irritating influence of a suggested practical change upon his political tenacity. What he only earnestly protested against while it was a theoretic suggestion, he hotly condemns as " sacrilegious " when it is practically proposed. While he felt that his views were in easy possession of the field, he was only decided ; now that they are all but dispossessed, he is wroth. All the old party infatuations, fear of the Pope, fear of the priests, jealousy for the land, tenderness for the Queen, and the (very) secret preference of the peasantry for the clergy of a Church they don't attend, were marshalled by Mr. Hardy in somewhat confused order, with a reduplicating and dull enthusiasm against the victorious foe. There was not a word which pointed to the statesman's reluctance to present a dead resistance to "the inevitable,"—not a word which indicated the orator's insight into the strength of the case he was opposing,—not a word which suggested that he cherished even a hesitating regret at endeavouring to disappoint the desire and hope of a great people strong in the belief of the justice of their cause. His whole speech might have been made to a Church Conference in which there was but one view represented, while the other was assumed to be dangerous, indeed, and threatening, but morally beneath contempt. And it was because the speech was of this kind that it gratified so profoundly a party which flinched under Mr. Disraeli's defence, as if it were under a dentist's hand, and which Lord Stanley knew that he could not attempt to represent at all.
We doubt much, therefore, if Mr. Gathorne Hardy has any prospect of higher promotion. As a subaltern officer, so long as he consents to take orders from chiefs of wider mind, he will always be useful to his party,—rallying them with his stentorian, but wooden enthusiasm, to cries which his chiefs will decline to utter for themselves, but are not sorry to find a subordinate at times ready to raise. But the time seems gone by when even the Conservative party can be led by such a chief as Mr. Gathorne Hardy. Perhaps the most remarkable result of the great Reform Act was to make the Conservative leaders see that they must try to appreciate fairly the strength of the popular demand for change. Sir Robert Peel understood it, and hence the moderation of his opposition, and the still greater moderation of his government. Hence, too, his openness to conviction on the subject of free trade. No one understood it better than Mr. Disraeli, who assailed Sir Robert Peel with so much virulence for that openness to conviction which he was the first to imitate after
succeeding to Sir Robert Peel's place. No one understands it better than Lord Stanley. Even Lord Derby tried to understand, and took his 'leap in the dark' on the strength of that partial understanding. But Mr. Gathorne Hardy does not understand. He would be almost false to himself if he could understand. He is a politician who can be sincere only while he is rigid ; impressive, even to his own party, only while he is unchanged. His restlessness and sensitiveness in 1868 under the charge of accepting defeat sooner than quit office, his "yearning" for the moment of dissolution, was very characteristic and estimable. He is the nominee of the country clergymen, and no country clergyman's views were ever more completely stereotyped. Mr. Gathorne Hardy pursuing a tentative policy, Mr. Gathorne Hardy feeling the pulse of the country, Mr. Gathorne Hardy " educating " his party to wider views, are simply impossible and self-contradictory conceptions. A mere earnest and fluent county magistrate, of Tory prepossessions, even though as just as prejudices which never alter by a hair's breadth will allow him to be, can never again, we think, lead even the Conservative party of England for many weeks together, much less the English House of Commons ; and yet this is Mr. Gathorne Hardy, and this is all he will ever have it in his power to be. He is incapable of political development.
Previous page
