talked about, since that maiden effort in 1869, was when he had the supreme daring to cross swords with Mr. Gladstone. I have spoken of the first encounter between the maiden speaker and the great statesman. It was one equally creditable to both parties. Mr. Chaplin, though self-possessed' and bold, was courteous and not insensible of the position of the man whom he attacked; and Mr. Gladstone, in paying his young assailant the compliment of immediately answering his arguments, took care not to wound his self-esteem. How completely the scene was changed some seven or eight years later, when the Member for Mid-Lincolnshire went out of his way to charge Mr. Gladstone with something like moral cowardice! In the fact that he made such a charge was to be found the heaviest condemnation of his own sagacity as a poli tician. If there had been in him the 'real grit' of the statesman, he could never have allowed himself to become, as he did upon that occasion, the mere mouth-piece of the fashionable world. He would have known better than to repeat in the House of Commons the silly and spiteful slanders of the clubs and drawing-rooms of the West End. Yet whilst he thus proved his own deficiency in that instinctive tact without which no man can become a successful statesman, he also showed that he had to the full extent the merits as well as the faults of his quality, and that it was through no lack of that pluck which is supposed to be distinctive of the English gentleman that he had failed to make his mark in the House of Commons. Of the punishment which he received I need hardly speak. Though well merited, its severity moved even those who had least sympathy with Mr. Chaplin to something like com passion. But it had manifestly become necessary to make an example; and perhaps no better subject for an example could be found than this dainty, dilettante fine gentleman politician of the salon, who had ventured to cross the path and assail the character of the great representative of that world out of doors to which even Society now-a-days finds itself compelled to do homage. |