THE MYSTERIOUS MAN OF MODERN POLITICS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1583, 1 April 1887, Page 3

THE MYSTERIOUS MAN OF MODERN POLITICS.

After Mr Gladstone, and possibly Lord Randolph Churchhill (says the Mall Pall Gazette) the most remarkable figure in the house of Commons is Mr Parnell, the leader of the Irish party. It is very odd, but it can hardly be regarded as a mere coincidene, that each of the parries has as its popular leader a man *ho reminds us of the general characteristics of the party which he leads by contrariety, rather than by identity. The leader of English democracy—a democracy straightforward and slow of speech — is Mr Gladstone, one of the most garrulous and wily of men. The leader of the English Conservatives, the party of stolidity and of caution, is Lord Randolph Churchill, a political Flibbertygibbet, whose mind is as nimble as a lively mouse in a windy barn, and who is one of the most reckless of political gamblers. And the leader of the Irish people—a race famed for jovial wit, passionate oratory, reckless abandon, and a more than regal generosity—is Mr Parnell, a man who never made a joke in his life, a cold, unimpassioned calculator, who holds himself ;in reserve even with his intimates; and whoee oratory has never been relieved by a single burst of passionate fervour, Mr Gladstone's position i 3 an illustration of the power of unreserve. Mr Parneli's is due more than anything else to the force of restraint It would seem as if nations, like women, sought as masters those who posieesed the qualities of which they felt the lack in their own characters. Hence the emotional Celt has chosen Mr Parnell, who never " lets himself go " even in private life, and the reserved and self-restrained Biglishman selects as his chief one who, if not exactly, " all fire and fickleness," is nevertheless the Rous sean of politics in being the creature of impulse and of rhetosic. Mr Parnell is the mystery-man of modern politics. He is the one man in that windy palaver-house at Westminster who has risen to the front rank by holding his tongue. He speaks |seldom, and when he does not exactly know whatßto say remains silent. Hence' a reputation gained largely by the same Bimple method which led the ancients to select the owl as the bird of the goddess of wisdom. To him almost alone among Parliament-men silence has been golden. Nor is that by any means his only peculiarity. He has dwelt and dwells apart. For many years it was said that he was the only member of the Home of Commons who had no postal address. In former years he used to disappear mysteriously from the haunts of men, and for days and days no one knew where to find him. Then he would reappear ; and so great is the awe that he inspires among his associates that no one ventured to ask him where he had been. This mystery and reserve, maintained studiously for II years on the part of a young man in the heart of the greatest gossiping-shop in all England, is a phenomenon almost without precedent. It has added greatly to his power, and it has enormously increased his influence among the impressionable, superstitious people who have placed their destinies in his hands. Whether he has adopted this attitude from calculation, or whether it is the natural outcome of a suspi* cious, furtive disposition, distrusting itself and therefore distrusting every one else, it is difficult to say. But it has had it* effect. The impenetrable mystery of the man has served his purpose as well as the veil, the silver veil of the prophet-chief, the Great Mokanua, who occupied

That throne to which the blind belief Of millions raised him. But in his cas3 the veil is not of silver so much as of impenetrable brass. Tiiis apartness has oft in been referred to, but seldom has it been mire graphically described thin by D? Schmider, one of the few ambassadors of the press whom Ghrman journalism maintains in London. D)scribing " this ena;iue in the shape of a human being," Dr Schneider says:—" Etrnell watches his mind as if it were a fortress, and no one it allowed to look through the windows of his eyes. His companions are as strange to him today as they were when they met for the fi-st time. They are numbers, power* he kaows where to make use of them in his parliamentary attacks, and peyond that all relations are broken off. In loneliness and silence he goes his way, creating around him a desert, at the edge of which his followers, are patiently awaiting his ! behests." The awe iij which he is held by his followers, even by those who have been in jail with him, is very noticeable. He is the head of the Irish Sept: he must not be spoken of with light irreverence, as if he were but a mortal. His is a sacred name, which it is better not to use. For behind the veil of mystery there is a jealousy even as that of offended Juno, and wre be to the man who gives the Irish chieftain cause to suspect rivalry or lack of supreme devotion to the supreme chief.