Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/72

inquired 'Yes,' he said, 'it is worth it, and it might be won in five years by the same agency. But where are the men? I, for one am not ready for another lustrum of toil and sacrifice; it is work for new men!' 'There are new men,' I suggested, 'who I doubt not would act if you encouraged them; but have noted with wonder that you and Mr. Bright trust your opinions and proposals altogether to their intrinsic merit. There is never any muster of your friends, never any whip, never any of the party diplomacy in which Mr. Hayter spends his life.' 'No,' he said, 'there is no attempt to create a party because we have none of the necessary agencies. We have no office or honours to promise, no court holy water to distribute; we can only state our opinions and leave them to take their chance outside the House as well as inside.' I suggested that the old Free Trade party, if he asked them, would insist on members being faithful to them on penalty of dismissal. Irish members of very tepid public spirit were compelled to vote right by national opinion at home. In the late Ecclesiastical Titles contest, for example, some of the men whom we trusted least in Ireland had been kept straight by fear of consequences. 'Yes,' said Bright, 'and by the hope of consequences also; they were associated in that contest with statesmen who were in the habit of carrying their supporters into office.' Cobden observed that Richard Shell's conduct at that time was not edifying; he held his post in the Government during the entire proceedings, making it a point, indeed, to walk conspicuously out of the House on each division. But if he had resigned and led the Irish Party he would have struck terror into the Whigs, and the Bill might have been defeated. Sheil, Cobden added, was a genuine orator, but his speeches will be forgotten in a few years because they were not associated with any great cause, especially with the needs of his country. After a pause he added that he did not recognise much disposition among leading men of Irish birth to acknowledge the claims of their country. 'Look at Palmerston. Whenever any Irish measure was under consideration he was absent, or active on the wrong side.' I said I would never think of citing Palmerston as an Irishman; he was an Englishman born in Ireland and living on the proceeds of a beggarly