of the Treasury Bench. Of Mr. Labouchere the saying may be
used, which is often employed with regard to weak men--Mr. Labouchere is
far from a weak man--he is his own worst enemy. His delight in
persiflage, his keen wit--his love of the pose of the bloodless and
cynical Boulevardier--have served to conceal from Parliament, and
sometimes, perhaps, even from himself, the sincerity of his convictions,
and the masculine strength and firmness of his will. Somehow or other,
he is least effective when he is most serious. His speech on Uganda, for
instance, was admirably put together, and chock full of facts, sound in
argument, and in its seriousness quite equal to the magnitude of the
issues which it raised. But no man is allowed to play "out of his
part"--as the German phrase goes. Labby has accustomed the House to
expect amusement from him, and it will not be satisfied unless he gives
it. When, therefore, he does make a serious speech, the House insists on
considering it dull, and rarely lends to him its attentive and serious
ear.

[Sidenote: Which is the buffoon?]

Great and yet fatal is the power of oratory. In the course of this same
night's debate, Mr. Chamberlain also made a speech. During portions of
it he delighted the House, and it was extremely effective as a party
speech. In the course of his observations, Mr. Chamberlain, alluding to
some jokelet of Labby, declared that a great question like Uganda should
not be treated in a spirit of "buffoonery." That observation was rude,
and scarcely Parliamentary. But that is not the point--nobody expects
gentlemanly feeling or speech from Mr. Chamberlain. The point is that
the observation could have been applied with much more truth to the
speech of Mr. Chamberlain than to that of Labby; for Mr. Chamberlain's
speech consisted, for the most part, of nothing better than the merest
party hits--the kind of thing that almost anybody could say--that
hundreds of journalists nightly write in their party effusions, and for
very modest salaries. But the heart and soul of the question of Uganda
were not even touched by Mr. Chamberlain. Labby may have been right or
wrong; but Labby's was a serious speech with a serious purpose. Mr.
Chamberlain's speech was just a smart bit of party debating. The
buffoonery--in the sense of shallowness and emptiness--was really in the
speech that everybody took to be grave. The seriousness was in the
speech which, amid the delighted applause of the Tor