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 Tories, Mr. Chamberlain
denounced as buffoonery.
[Sidenote: The grip of Labby.]
In some respects Mr. Labouchere reminds me of the late Mr. Biggar.
Underneath all his exterior of carelessness, callousness, and flippancy,
there lies a very strong, a very tenacious, and a very clear-sighted
man. There are times--especially when the small hours of the morning are
breaking, and Labby is in his most genial mood--when he is ready to
declare that, after all, he is only a Conservative in disguise, and that
his Radicalism is merely put on for the purpose of amusing and catching
the groundlings.
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