Its importance has
been exaggerated; the grant of Home Rule will not save Ireland;
its refusal will not shame England. Its swollen proportions are
wholly due to the passionate personal feelings which Mr. Gladstone
alone among living statemen inspires. 'He is so powerful that his
thoughts are nearly acts,' as some one has written of him; and at
an age when most men would be wheeled into the chimney-corner, he
is at the head of a precarious majority and still retains enough
force to compel its undivided support.
"Mr. Chamberlain's power springs from the concentration of a
nature which is singularly free from complexity. The range of his
mind is narrow, but up to its horizon the whole is illuminated by
the same strong and rather garish light. The absoluteness of his
convictions is never shaded or softened by any play of imagination
or sympathetic insight. It is not in virtue of any exceptionally
fine or attractive quality, either of intellect or of character,
that Mr. Chamberlain has become a dominant figure. Strength of
will, directness of purpose, an aggressive and contagious belief
in himself: these--which are the notes of a compelling
individuality--made him what he is. On the other hand, culture,
intellectual versatility, sound and practised judgment, which was
tried and rarely found wanting in delicate and even dangerous
situations, did not suffice in the case of Mr. Matthews to redeem
the shortcomings of a diffuse and ineffective personality.
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