Page:Modern Parliamentary Eloquence.djvu/70

 Both were light-hearted and rather cynical men of the world, and Palmerston's long ascendency was due quite as much to his good humour and jokes and banter as it was to more intellectual qualities.

The above reflections might seem to justify the theory that personal charm is no part of the equipment of a political leader, and that if he plays his part well it does not matter much with what grace or acceptability he plays it. May we not rather seek an explanation in the foibles, not so much of the leader as of the led? May he not be preoccupied or shy where he is thought to be proud or indifferent? May they not be sensitive and over-exacting? After all, the popularity of a leader is usually in the same ratio as his success. Disraeli, who was once the suspect, became the idol of his party. Mr. Gladstone, from being taunted with arrogance, blossomed into the eventide splendour of the Grand Old Man. Popularity, in fact, comes to the leaders who wait long enough and do their work sufficiently well.

Our retrospect will, I think, have shown us that while there is no reason to deplore or to apprehend a cessation in the vogue of fine speaking in this country, its practice has in the passage of time taken on different and less ambitious forms in consonance with the more practical spirit of the age. Perhaps our best criterion will be to imagine the effect of certain of the acknowledged masterpieces of the past if delivered before a modern audience. Could Burke, if he were now living, deliver either in the House of Commons or before a judicial tribunal his wonderful passage about the descent of Hyder Ali on the Carnatic? Could a modern orator, if he were receiving the freedom of the borough of Plymouth, point to the men-of-war lying in the harbour and say, as Canning did, in language of almost sublime grandeur: "You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of these stupendous masses, now reposing on those shadows in perfect stillness how soon upon any call of patriotism or necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage, how quickly would it put