nounced the
abominations of Turkish misrule: he failed when he tried to palliate his
blunders in Egypt, and to force Home Rule down the throat of the
"Predominant Partner." Bright succeeded when he pleaded for the Repeal
of the Corn Laws and the extension of the Suffrage: he failed when he
opposed the Crimean War, and lost his seat when he protested against our
aggression on China. It must often fall to the lot of the patriotic
orator thus to set himself against the drift of national sentiment, and
to pay the penalty. No such perils beset the Demagogue.

I should not ascribe the title of orator to Mr. Chamberlain. He has
nothing of the inspiration, the poetry, the "vision splendid," the
"faculty divine," which make the genuine orator. But as a speaker of the
second, and perhaps most useful, class, he has never been surpassed.
His speaking was the perfection of clearness. Each argument seemed
irresistible, each illustration told. His invective was powerful, his
passion seemed genuine, his satire cut like steel and froze like ice.
His perception of his hearers' likes and dislikes was intuitive, and was
heightened by constant observation. His friends and his enemies were
those whom he esteemed the friends and the enemies of England; and he
never committed the heroic but perilous error of setting himself against
the passing mood of national feeling. He combined in rare harmony the
debating instinct which conquers the House of Commons, with the power of
appeal to popular passion which is the glory of the Demagogue.

The word with which my last sentence closed recalls inevitably the
tragic figure of Lord Randolph Churchill. The adroitness, the courage,
and the persistency with which between 1880 and 1885 he sapped
Gladstone's authority, deposed Northcote, and made himself the most
conspicuous man in the Tory Party, have been described in his Biography,
and need not be recapitulated here. Mr. Chamberlain, who was exactly
qualified to resist and abate him, had not yet acquired a commanding
position in the House of Commons; and on the platform Churchill could
not be beaten. In these two men each party possessed a Demagogue of the
highest gifts, and it would have puzzled an expert to say which was the
better exponent of his peculiar art. In January, 1884, Churchill made a
speech at Blackpool, and thus attacked his eminent rival--"Mr.
Chamberlain a short time ago attempted to hold Lord Salisbury up to the
execration of the people