Asquith by Roy Jenkins

manner of a front bencher and the House accepted him at his own valuation.” a
    He made no speech until he had been a member for nearly nine months. The occasion he then chose was a full-dress debate on a motion to give precedence over all other business to an Irish Crimes Bill. It was Balfour’s first major debate as Chief Secretary. Asquith delivered his maiden speech to a full House late on the third night, March 24th, 1887. It made a profound impression. Haldane refers to it in his Autobiography as “a brilliant maiden speech (which) turned towards him the attention of the public as well as the Liberal leaders in the House. b Immediately afterwards Asquith wrote to his wife:

    House of Commons ,
    24 March 1887

    My dearest love,
    I must just send you a line to say that I took the plunge tonight about 10.30 before a good house, and spoke for about half an hour. I was listened to very well & everyone says it was a great success. Joe Chamberlain who followed was very polite and complimentary—In haste
    Ever yr. own husband,
    Herbert

    Read now, the speech is remarkable more for the note of authority which crept into the phrasing than for the argument, powerful and sustained though that was. Asquith succeeded in assuming—and this is perhaps the main characteristic of a front-bench style—that the interest of a statement lay in the fact that he was making it, and not merely in its own inherent wisdom. His words were obviously carefully prepared, which was not often the case with his later speeches, even on major issues. Both qualities are illustrated by the following passage:

As to the prevalence of crime, having regard to these admitted facts, I say deliberately that this is a manufactured crisis. We know by experience how a case for coercion is made out. The panicmongers of the press—gentlemen to whom every political combination is a conspiracy, and to whom every patriot is a rebel—were the first in the field. They have been most effectively assisted on the present occasion on the other side of the Channel, by the purveyors of loyal fiction and patriotic hysterics, wholesale, retail and for exportation. The truth, whatever truth there is in the stories, is deliberately distorted and exaggerated. Atrocities are fabricated to meet the requirements of the market with punctuality and despatch; and when the home supply fails, the imagination of the inventive journalist wings its flight across the Atlantic and he sets to work to piece together the stale gossip of the drinking saloons in New York and Chicago, and ekes it out with cuttings from obscure organs of the dynamite press. c

    This successful beginning led to no unleashing of Asquith’s parliamentary tongue. He continued throughout the Parliament to speak only two or three times a year, 1 mainly on Irish questions, although occasionally on other ingredients of “ advanced Liberalism ”—the payment of Members of Parliament or the removal of a religious qualification for the Lord Chancellorship, both of England and of Ireland. But he never did any parliamentary drudgery, and Harcourt in 1890 wrote to Morley complaining of “ Asquith who will never do a day’s work for us in the House.” d Even with Harcourt, however, who was a great complainer, there is no evidence that this fastidiousness ever did him any real harm. He spoke in the country rather more often than he did in the House (this indeed was what provoked Harcourt, who had disliked one of his platform pronouncements), and he was skilful in choosing his occasions so as to produce a considerable impact.

1 Rather oddly, in the circumstances, he recalls in the chapter in his memoirs entitled Parliamentary Novitiate , Charles James Fox’s advice that the way to become a good House of Commons speaker was to speak every night on every subject. (Memories and Reflections, 1, p. no). But this was in relation to Balfour. Presumably he thought, quite rightly, that he himself needed neither advice nor the