It was not merely
that Lord Salisbury proved himself vastly inferior to Lord Rosebery in
mere oratory, but the speech of the Foreign Secretary was that of a
finer speaker, and of a more serious, intellectual, and sagacious
politician.
[Sidenote: A disadvantage conquered.]
Lord Rosebery had the disadvantage of following upon a speaker who had
reduced the House to a state of somnolent despair. Lord Selborne has an
episcopal appearance, the manner of an author of hymns, and the unctuous
delivery of a High Church speaker. But like most of the orators of the
House of Lords, he considered two hours was the minimum which he was
entitled to occupy, and though he spoke with wonderful briskness, for an
octogenarian, at the beginning of his observations, his voice soon
became so exhausted as to be a mere senile and inaudible whisper. Deeper
and deeper it descended, and the House was in the blackest depths when
the Foreign Secretary rose to speak. Everybody knows how embarrassing
and distressing it is to an orator to have to begin by rousing an
assembly that has been thus depressed; and the difficulty was increased
in the case of Lord Rosebery by the fact that he had to address an
audience in which four hundred men were against him and about forty in
his favour; and there is no orator whose nerve is so steady, and whose
self-confidence is so complete, as not to be depressed and weakened by
such a combination of circumstances.
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