With the exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sexton is
the one man in the House who is capable of such a feat. This is largely
due not merely to his oratorical powers but to the extraordinary range
of his gifts. To the outside public--even to the House of Commons--he is
chiefly known by his great rhetorical gifts; but this is only a part,
and a small part, of his great mental equipment. His mastery over
figures in its firmness of grasp, its lightning-like rapidity, its
retentiveness, is almost as great as that of a professional calculator.
He has a judgment, cold, equable, far-seeing, and he has a humour that
is kindly but can also be scorching, and that has sometimes been deadly
enough to leave wounds that never healed.
[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's arithmetic.]
Perhaps not even Mr. Gladstone--certainly not Mr. Goschen--though he,
too, is a past master in figures--is as formidable and destructive a
gladiator in a fight over figures as Mr. Sexton; I pity any mortal who
gets into grips with him on that arena. Mr. Chamberlain was the unhappy
individual whom Mr. Sexton took in hand. Mr. Chamberlain has the
reputation of being a good man of business, he certainly was a most
successful one; and one would expect from him some power, at least, of
being able to state figures correctly.
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