George Nathaniel Curzon

“ Perhaps the most remarkable instance of such an oratorical triumph in modern times was the speech of Mr. Gladstone, when moving a vote of credit in the Russo-Afghan crisis of 1885. I trust, therefore, that no aspirant to a Parliamentary career, and no mourner over the bier of old-world eloquence, will be disheartened by the idea that we live in times when speech is merely a casual accomplishment, like the hitting of a golf ball, or a stroke at cricket, worthy, perhaps, of admiration, but destitute either of real merit or of authority. ”

“ On the platform the orator is addressing, as a rule and in the main, the members of his own political party: they have come to hear him perform, he is the star figure of the scene; he is free from interruption save such as springs from the often useful interjections of scattered opponents, or the undiscriminating enthusiasm of friends. No one can refute him or say him nay. The speech is delivered in the electric atmosphere of great and crowded halls, where the contagion of a multitude, expectant and sympathetic, acts like wine both upon speaker and audience. ”

“ I quote them here because they seem to me to represent better than any explanation or definition could do that which is not rhetoric nor declamation, nor even sermonising, but the purest gold of human eloquence, nay, of eloquence almost divine. Either could be delivered, if a man capable of composing and delivering them were to exist, in any assemblage, before any audience, at any time of the modern world's history, without a suggestion of artifice or incongruity, with an effect inexorably sure and eternally true. ”

“ While, therefore, I have no new definition of oratory or eloquence to offer—for the secret of the finest speaking is in itself undefinable—I shall yet be describing that which all men understand when I say that such and such a man was a real orator, or that such and such a speech was an example of true eloquence. We refer when we use such phrases to no ordinary or commonplace gift. We mean that upon the head of such a man tongues as of fire have descended from heaven; that the silver of ordinary speech is turned into gold on his lips ”

“ Asquith, represents a type of public speaking carried to higher perfection than by anyone else in modern times. Possessed of a copious vocabulary, an extraordinary and effortless command of the right word, a remarkable gift of lucidity and compression, and a resonant voice, he produces an overpowering effect of Parliamentary and forensic strength. Whether in exposition or declamation, in opening or in reply, on a great subject or a small, he never falls below a certain stately level, even though he never soars above it into passion or kindles an audience into flame. ”

“ There is hardly a gift predicable of the orator with which nature or study has not endowed Lord Rosebery; a voice flexible and resonant rather than melodious, gestures, bold and dramatic, perhaps even at times histrionic, a diction both chaste and resplendent, an exhaustive knowledge of all that is pertinent in literature or history, an exuberant fancy, great natural wit, a gift of persiflage, sometimes almost too generously indulged. ”

“ But if any issue arises which requires to be resolved into broad principles, and to be handled by the thinker rather than the politician, the statesman rather than the party man, the House of Commons may look to him with confidence to express its highest ideals. No parliamentary speaker has ever had greater charm of manner or courtesy of address, and the way in which, in 1906-7, he won back the confidence of a new House of Commons, overpoweringly hostile to his political opinions, and distrustful of his dialectical methods, was a triumph without a parallel. ”

“ Is there a single candidate for Parliament who has ever, except of his own initiative, read a speech of Pitt or analysed the methods of Grattan or Canning?" Thus the link of a common education in accepted models has vanished, and the power of speech that a man takes to the House when he enters it is that which has been developed in the college debating society, or on the platform, but not in the study of the past. He need not for that reason be an ineffective speaker—very often quite the reverse; but in so far as knowledge and education can make a man an orator, he is without that resource. ”

“ In the Debate upon the Introduction of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886, to which I have before referred, by far the best speech, greatly transcending that of the trained orator Mr. Gladstone, was delivered by Lord Hartington. No hesitation or drowsiness marred the utterance of the man who felt his most sacred convictions outraged and betrayed. Sincerity and a sæva indignatio endowed him with a noble eloquence, and when he resumed his seat, I recall that members stood up and waved their hats in the air. ”

“ It is scarcely to be conceived that so wretched a speaker as Castlereagh could ever again lead the House of Commons that he should have been preferred to the brilliant Canning is to this hour one of the puzzles of history. I doubt even whether the Duke of Wellington, who had no pretensions to be an orator, could be called either by the favour of the Sovereign or the confidence of the country to the presidency of an administration. The gift of speech in political leaders has become a greater necessity it is really a condition of existence. ”

“ The House of Commons could hardly have made a better or more finished debater of the present Lord Lansdowne. It is true that to a man accustomed to the electric atmosphere of the Lower Chamber, with its cheering and counter-cheering and all the excitement of a popular assembly, the still and motionless firmament of the Upper House, with its austere silences and its rare murmurs of Olympian applause, is like exchanging the temperature of a stokehole for that of a refrigerating chamber. ”

“ Replying at a mass meeting to a speaker who had changed his politics and been rewarded with a post, for the discharge of the duties of which he had acquired a fine house and set up a lightning conductor on the roof, Lincoln, whom the turncoat had taunted with his youth, said, "I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trade of the politician. But whether I live long or die young, I would rather die now than change my politics for an office worth $3,000 a year, and have to erect a lightning rod over my house to protect my conscience from an offended God." ”

“ Gladstone's speeches are of a kind that make it impossible for those who read them in any sense to judge of their excellence. Posterity must take it from us, who heard with our own ears the extraordinary gifts of pathos, humour, invective, detailed exposition, of holding the audience and interesting them in the most intricate and dry matters of administrative and financial detail that they had all these qualities. ”

“ His eloquence has poured over the ordinary boundaries of the political arena, has filled innumerable channels of historical, biographical, social, or literary interest, and has fertilised many and diverse fields. Whatever subject he touches is raised at once out of the commonplace: it is gilded with happy phrases, it sparkles with effervescence and laughter, and it becomes a part of the intellectual capital of the whole community. ”

“ The nervousness of the inexperienced speaker who is waiting to begin is visible in his manner and movements, but even the "old hand" is often some time before he warms to his task. A speaker who has no nerves will probably never attain to the first rank of Parliamentary orators which perhaps may explain why the hero of the platform is so often a failure in the House. On the other hand, I doubt if any considerable speaker is nervous when he has once gained the ear of his audience, while the expert debater, so far from feeling apprehensive, looks forward with eager expectancy to his reply. ”

“ Gladstone would move to the end of the front bench, and with his hand held behind his ear, listen to the freezing but impressive display with rapt attention. Either in the House or outside of it, Parnell appeared an isolated figure; "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," he came in and out without exchanging a word with anyone: the utmost concession that he appeared to make to companionship was when he would be met tramping the lobbies in earnest conversation with one of the few associates whom he deigned to consult. ”

“ Robert Wallace, an Edinburgh minister, professor, and journalist, clothed a biting wit in a literary garb so artistic that he kept the House, in which, by the way, he had a seizure and died, alternately hushed with expectancy and convulsed with laughter. Labouchere was the incurable cynic who mocked, at everybody, including himself. Mr. Birrell, the present Irish Secretary, has an instinctive gift of humour which does not desert him even on serious occasions, and is aided by irreproachable literary form. ”

“ Of the three audiences whom the speaker has to face—the hearers of the moment, the readers of the morrow, and a remote posterity—the first are those in whose hands his fame as an orator really lies. It may be that the highest form of eloquence is the eloquence that can be read with as much pleasure as it was originally heard, and that the greatest masterpieces are those which live again as prose. ”

“ Secondly, for the purpose of modern politics, the one is a much more serviceable asset than the other. The occasions of speech in our public life have so enormously multiplied, parliamentary business lies so much more in debate than in exposition, there is so little leisure on the part, either of speaker or of audience, for sustained display, that the speaker who can improvise has a great advantage over the speaker who requires notice. ”

“ He is too indifferent to the arts of oratory to have enjoyed a platform success at all comparable to his Parliamentary position. But even at mass meetings his logic, his play of humour, his immense resourcefulness, and his felicitous diction, have often won a conspicuous triumph.
I could not pay a higher tribute to Mr. Balfour's versatility than by selecting for quotation a passage from the class of speech from which a priori he would most naturally shrink, but in which his intellectual ascendency and width of outlook have more than once enabled him to excel. ”

“ The foreigner who is accustomed to see a French or Italian orator declaiming in the tribune, rushing up and down, waving his arms, beating the desk, and throwing his body into violent postures, is astonished at the spectacle of the English Parliamentarian standing almost motionless at the table, his hands clinging to the lapels of his coat, or perhaps toying with a pince-nez, his most violent action being in all probability a mild castigation of the brass-bound box in front of him. ”

“ It is not the speeches which read best which are the greatest speeches. Posterity cannot possibly judge of their merit by a mere study of the words used. They must see the man, feel the magnetism of his presence, see his gestures, the flash of his eyes. ... The test of a speaker is the audience he addresses. ”

“ But now that every word is taken down and that the speaker, particularly the prominent or Front Bench speaker, knows that he is addressing, not a private club, but a gathering that may embrace the whole nation, and in the case of Foreign Office debates a much wider audience still, he must walk delicately and measure his paces; he cannot frisk and frolic in the flowery meads of rhetoric; he dare not "let himself go" as Chatham or Fox could afford to do. ”

“ I do not know a single living speaker, with the possible exception of Lord Hugh Cecil, who perorates in Parliament as did Gladstone and Bright. The platform peroration of a sort still lingers in the mouths of those who conclude by adjuring their hearers to hand down undiminished to posterity this great Empire, etc., etc. But with this exception, which is purely conventional, the peroration is almost obsolete, and as it is, or was, the last part of a speech to be delivered, so does it appear to be the last feature of the art of rhetoric that is likely to be revived. ”

“ Winston Churchill.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. Like most talented speakers he is able to adapt himself to the need of the moment, but it may be conjectured that the form of speech which he prefers, and in which also he excels, is that in which structure, diction, and form—not perhaps unflavoured by invective—have been pressed into the service of an artistic whole. On the platform he adopts a double style. ”

“ A priori there can be but one answer to these questions; and, in the art of great orators like Chatham, Gladstone, Daniel O'Connell, or Bright, it is clear that a large part was played by the splendour or harmony of their physical endowment. On the other hand genius is beyond and above the law; and far more common than the spectacle of eloquence reinforced by grace of manner or dignity of person, is that of the orator triumphing over physical obstacles or mannerisms that might be thought fatal to success. Burke was angular and awkward in his gestures ”

“ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which in the Providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? ”

“ The dramatic displays of the great protagonists were always assured of a rapt audience and a befitting arena, for the simple reason that the number of those who could speak was limited, and that the remainder were content to furnish an inarticulate claque in the background. Lord John Russell used to say that there were a dozen men in the days of Fox and Pitt who could make a better speech than anyone living in his time, but that there was not another man in the House who could even understand what they were talking about. ”

“ The supreme masterpieces.In this long review of the Parliamentary achievements of the past, the question may be asked whether any speech or speeches appear to stand out as the best and most perfect examples of the art whose many phases I have examined. It is as impossible to say with confidence of any speech that it was the best ever made, or made in a particular period or country, as to say that any one day was the finest day in the year, or any piece of scenery the finest in this or that continent. ”

“ No obstacles exist to the entry of the labouring classes, who are certain, as time passes, to increase their representation. Thus it has come about that while the types and standards of education that are represented in the House are many and various, the one type which is in the minority is that which was once supreme, viz., that which is based on the continuous study and knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics. How many men are there in the House of Commons who have ever read an oration of Demosthenes, or could translate a speech of Cicero? Thus one class of model has altogether vanished. ”

“ Never was there a time when power of speech was more sure of its reward. It might indeed be argued that it is a disproportionate reward, when we see the back places crowded by the often superior but unserviceable talents of the dumb.
The effect on votes.I should also like to dispel the popular illusion that eloquence, even in the decline of the art, no longer affects votes in Parliament. It is certainly the case that, in the tightening of party bonds, it becomes increasingly difficult for a man to vote against his side, still more to be persuaded by the speech of a political opponent to do so ”