Westminster Orators
By WILSON HARRIS IN the year 1912 Dr. Montagu Butler, then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, delivered the Romanes Lecture at Oxford on " Lord Chatham as an Orator." In 1913—whether by a coincidence or that the one effort evoked the other—the Chancellor of Oxford, Earl Curzon of Kedleston, reciprocated by delivering the Rede Lecture at Cambridge on " Modern Parliamentary Eloquence." In a week in which a new House of Commons is resounding to eloquence still more modern these appreciations from the past provide basis for com- parisons that may not be uninstructi,ve.
They must, of course, be imperfect comparisons. No man today can really assess the elder Pitt as an orator, for in his day there was no Parliamentary reporting worth the name ; Hansard and his successors belonged to the future. Members' speeches as published were normally the work of Dr. Johnson or some other scribe far less talented who had never heard them. What do remain are the contemporary eulogies, almost hyperbolical in their enthusiasm, of Pitt's speeches in the Commons and later in the Lords, together with -some verbatim passages which presumably the speaker had committed to paper before delivery. They are hardly enough to judge by, but there are flashes that have remained classics in the annals of English oratory—for example these : " I cannot give them [the Ministry of the day] my con-, fidence. Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom ; youth is the season of credulity."
" If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms—never, never, never." To the first of these passages the Commons listened, to the second the Lords.
On paper without doubt the words lose half their force. The universal testimony of Lord Chatham's contemporaries attributes the impression his oratory made at least as much to the moral fervour behind his. diction as to the diction itself. That was as true, if not more true, of a possibly greater speaker, Gladstone. Of him Lord Curzon, who sat in the House with him and heard him often, wrote : " By far the greatest orator whom I personally heard in the House of Commons—indeed almost the only orator—was Mr. Gladstone . . . There was no resource of oratory, intel- lectual, emotional or external, that was not at his command." But he adds that the speeches as printed, the speeches without the visible personality behind them, left readers marvelling how the words could have stirred their hearers, as they did, to the depths.
To discuss adequately what are the constituents of great oratory is not possible here. Let anyone interested read and ponder such an utterance as the Gettysburg speech, and ask himself what it is that makes that immortal. A part of such oratory undoubtedly is the faculty to coin memorable phrases, caustic—like Disraeli's " a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity "- moving and impressive—like Bright's " the angel of death has been abroad throughout the land ; you can almost hear the beating of his wings "—or memorably epigrammatic— like a later but not lesser orator's " never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
It is that orator who bridges the transition from yesterday to today. It is a considerable transition. The House of .
Commons today would have little patience with the grand manner as exemplified by Gladstone, and in no small degree on occasion by Asquith. A Labour majority would regard the classical quotation without which once no notable speech in the House was complete as intellectual snobbery. I can only remember one being ventured in the last Parliament, and the speaker hastened, by a translation, to make it innocuous. Times have changed since the House of Commons was the preserve of the leisured classes, and the leisured classes were nurtured on Greek and Latin. How many people remember the occasion of ex lute lucellum and appreciate its point ?
All this does not mean necessarily that the quality of speeches in the House is lower than a century ago. The general average may well be higher, for if the front benches are less eloquent the back benches are almost certainly more competent. Lord John Russell assessed the intelligence of a House of an earlier day than his own by observing that there were a dozen men in the days of Fox and Pitt who could make a better speech than anyone in his (Lord John's time) but that there was not another man in the House who could even understand what they were talking about.
How completely is that changed. Today hardly a back- bencher who catches the Speaker's eye fails to get his 'meaning across in language which if unpretentious and unambitious is adequate, well-chosen and clear. And once or twice in a Parliament a back-bencher, like Mr. Rosslyn Mitchell in the Prayer-Book debate of 1927, will electrify the House, achieve the rare feat of definitely turning votes and leave an un- forgotten name on the roll of Parliamentary orators.
But the very phrase " Parliamentary oratory " is obsoles- cent. The House frankly does_not want oratory, and rarely gets it. The new Chamber, like the old, has been deliberately constructed to accommodate on its floor no more than two- thirds of its Members, that debate may be intimate and practical, not portentous. I doubt whether Mr. Asquith, to whom Lord Curzon pays just tribute as representing " a type of-public speaking carried to higher perfection than by anyone else in modern times " would be quite at home in the House of Commons today. Sir Edward Grey, with his sincere simplicity, might ; Mr. Attlee at his best (and it is by their best that speakers must be judged) displays many of the same qualities. Mr. Lloyd George, with his infinite adaptability, quite certainly would. That style has not perished. A year or two ago, when Mr. Aneurin Bevan had sent his own side into ecstasies by a speech which in form if not in content was a remarkable tour de force, I was talking to Lady Megan Lloyd-George (herself one of the House's ablest speakers) in the lobby when the Minister for Education came up. " I've been listening to your father this afternoon," he said to Lady Megan. The remark was capable of a double edge, but it was meant as high praise, and it came from a sound critic.
There is only one orator in the House today—and he is by no means consistently that. Lord Curzon, to quote him once more, wrote thirty-seven years ago of a young member of Mr. Asquith's Ministry : One of the few prominent speakers in the House of Commons who still cultivates, I will not say the classical, but the literary style, and at times practises it with great ability, is Mr. Winston Churchill." He cultivates it still and often with great effect, as every reader of his imperishable war-time speeches knows. Mr. Eden, who makes no bad speeches and increasingly often makes very good ones, is in a different category. He never aims beyond his reach, but he can hit hard when he chooses, though never with malice, and his personality commends him as much to opponents as to friends. Sir Stafford Cripps, like too many Ministers, almost always reads his speeches. Whether that disentitles them to rank as oratory, good as they are, is a matter of opinion. • Not' a great deal differ- entiates a read speech from a good essay.
Mr. Morrison rarely reads. *As leader of the House he has plenty of speaking to do, and very good it often is, partic- ularly when he is in the genial, bantering mood that sits so well on him. Yet the adjective one instinctively applies to Mr. Morrison's speaking—rough taken with smooth— is " adroit." Complimentary ? It could be. More, of course, might be said of many speakers. To one at least, the Attorney-General, among the most agreeable in the House in manner and form, a special word of apprec- iation is due—and another to a Member lately riven from the House against his will, who when his theme was something on which he held deep convictions was capable of impressive eloquence. But let no omission here seem invidious. No such article as this can attempt to be comprehensive, and I have heard none of the newcomers to the present Parliament. Now a new chapter is begun in the new Chamber. New reputations will be made and new assessments be called for. The stream of Parliamentary oratory, or eloquence, or speech- making, may change in speed and volume and hue, but it is part of a great historic stream still. le labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum (as no one would dare to say in the House of Commons of 1950).
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