COMMONS' LEADERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 166, 15 July 1902, Page 5

COMMONS' LEADERS.

THE MEN OF -TO-DAY AND TOMORROW IN PARLIAMENT.

By CHAELES BENHAM.

A few assiduous hours in the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons is calculated to teach an outside member of the public more about the personalities of Parliament than he will gather from acres of descriptive Press comment anil the most caustic caricatures that accompany the same. THE CHARM OF ME BALPOUB. , To begin with, neither parliamentary sketch-writers nor caricaturists are fair to the very solid influence wielded by the First Lord of the Treasury inside the House. He i.s physically long, and as Ms tLguie lends itself to caricatures of recumbent attitudes between the front bench and the table, he is supposed to be physically languid. So the pictures of him never fail to represent him on the Treasury bench much as though he were an invalid recovering from some fatiguing illness, and an invalid who has a bad habit of put ting- both feet upon a tableThe session is more han a week eld 1 . but so far Mr Half our has adopter! no attitude than the most alert, He is always in his place; sometimes he ia the only Minister in his place, indeed, within the last week it took nothing , short of the terrors of Wednesday's debate upon British trade int-r'ests in Persia to cause him to absent himself. Otherwise he sits and sits and listens and listens while this or that private member stands and stands and talks and talks. He has a smile and a pleasant word for every ofce. The fairies at his birth must hate given him the gift of natural charm. "We do not merely like him,'we love him." a late and most unemotional member of a most marked northern seaport constituency remarked to the present writer some sessions ago. And he gave, his reasons: — "He is the only man I have ever met who can make you feel that he is deeply pleased and interested when he stops to talk with you. It stands to reason he cannot possibly ca*re twopence. No leader could pthssibly concern himself sincerely in the affairs of some three or four hundred followers. But Arthur Balfour makes y..u think he does care, and that is the secret of his success.*' But besides being pleasant and uniformly courteous, he is thoroughly business-like. To see him hurrying , across the lobby to get back to his place in the House, throwing- a word here and a direction there, is to understand the vacuity of much that has been written about his indiffeivDce and listles.sness. AND WHO WILL FOLLOW? And yet it is impossible to sit a.ld watch Mr Bat four's extremely telltale face and not get the conviction that he is nevertheless dead sick of it all. Courteous and gracious, yes and active, as he is, it is no use hiding the fact that he is very Sometimes he allows himself to get legitimately indignant at the remarks made by his opponents. A day or two ago it was Mr Henry Norman who worked upon his feelings sufficiently to make him interject "Rubbish!" in an impatient whisper. Another Liberal member, who claimed that the "Times ,, was the chief supporter of the Government, elicited a very loud "Oh!"' of protest from the Leader of the House. His life in the Lower is not, of course, a matter of months or sessions. Probably the end of the first, o> militant, chapter of the South African problem will comprehend the duration of the present Government. Yet making every allowance for the unexpected, the King's second Parliament, even with a Conservative majority, will see a new leader and many new faces, or rather many bid faces In new places. And who will that new leader be? ME CHAMBERLAIN. Mr Chamberlain is ever young. In his place in Parliamtnt tills session he looks younger tlinn ever. He, no less . than Mr Balfour, is misrepresented by the usual accounts of him that find their way into the papers. There is an outside the House that his corporeal position inside the House is one of vitriolic isolation. That is not by any means the case. He is genial and friendly with most men, even with his most bitter opponents. To see him exchanging' little notes across the table with Mr Morley; to see these twe eminent persons beaming and nodding at one another, is to enter into Mr Pickwick's feelings of indignation when he observed Mr Serjeant Buzf uz hobnobbing with Mr Serjeant Snubbin in the intervals of their Homeric contest over the subject of breach of promise of marriage. "THE NOBLE LORD THE VICEROY." Yet with it all it is improbable that Mr Chamberlain could ever exercise the same personal influence inside the House as does the present First Lord of the Treasury. For one thing, Is It quite certain that he studies sufficiently the little politenesses and prettinesses of life that are the 2niaf armour of leaders and. kings? Jle hesitates but little* in debate, and that *s only to bend clown to his colleagues to ask what constituency '"Mr Charming" or Mr Somebody else belongs to. There—at one fell Mow—gw-tvvb members by whose good -graces .he might - otibEHri se-one day 4iope-io- rude —for the Leader of the House leads not his own party, biit the whole House, and not to know the eonstitu-

ency of the least or the most hostile of' your- followers'is a failing , which, multiplied indefinitely, would, make leadership an impossibility.