spectable facility
in purely extemporaneous argument, he was never a great debater. His
speeches were very carefully prepared, and they possessed conspicuous
merits of form as well as of matter, but they were not the speeches of
a brilliant orator. No one could reason more clearly, more powerfully,
or more persuasively. He was a supreme master of terse, luminous,
weighty, and accurate English. He had much skill in bringing into
vivid relief the salient points of an obscure and complicated subject,
condensing an argument into a phrase, and illustrating it by graphic
felicities of language that clung to the memory. But he hated
rhetoric. His enunciation was faulty and unimpressive. He appealed
solely to the reason, and never to passion or to prejudice, and he had
nothing of the fire and temperament of a party orator. Very few
politicians mastered so thoroughly the subjects with which they dealt.
No politician of his time retained so remarkably, amid party
conflicts, the power of judging questions from all their sides; of
balancing judicially opposing considerations; of looking beyond the
passions and interests of the hour; of realising the points of view of
those to whom he was opposed. Declamation, clap-trap, evasion,
ambiguities of thought and expression, empty plausibilities, unfair,
partial, and exaggerated statements, were all essentially repugnant to
that clear and sceptical intellect, to that sound, cautious, practical
judgment. His business talents were very great, and they were
assiduously cultivated. His appetite for work was insatiable. No one
knew better how to administer a great department or preside over a
Parliamentary Committee, or arbitrate in a difficult controversy, or
give wise and timely advice to an inexperienced organisation. It was
in these fields that his influence was, perhaps, most deeply felt. His
success in them did not depend merely on his unflagging industry and
his excellent judgment, it was also largely due to his eminently
conciliatory character. The uniform courtesy which he displayed to men
of all ranks and opinions is happily no rare thing among his class,
but everyone who was brought in contact with Lord Derby soon felt that
he was in the presence of one who tried to understand his position, to
estimate his arguments at their full worth, to find some common ground
of agreement. If it were possible in a bitter controversy to arrive at
reasonable compromise, Lord Derby was most likely to