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Character Sketches. 



L— "JOHN BURNS OF BATTERSEA/^ 

 NOW PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. 



•' Mr. Burns," said the editor of the Speaker, when 

 fommenting upon his lirst speech as Cabinet Minis- 

 ter, " is in some respects the most finished orator 

 in England. There is nothing slovenly or ragged 

 or fragmentar}' in his speeches ; they are all models 

 of terse and powerful English. Kobody living 

 wields phrases that are more pointed and piercing, 

 and his admirable style gains not a little of its 

 effect from the fact that 

 none of its energy is 

 wasted on epigrams that 

 ring false or miss their 

 mark. He has nothing 

 in common with the le- 

 gendary demagogue." 



There are not man\ 

 finished orators in Great 

 Britain. Accepting thi- 

 verdict of the Speaker as 

 to John Burns, there ar<-- 

 three, or perhaps four. 

 Each nationality contri- 

 butes one. Lord Hugh 

 Cecil, the son of the late 

 Lord Salisbury, and fu- 

 ture leader of the Con- 

 servative party, stands for 

 England ; Tim Healey for 

 Ireland, Lloyd George 

 for Wales, and John 

 Burns for Scotland. Of 

 the four, the first alone 

 enjoyed the 

 of a university 

 None of the others went 

 to college. So far as 

 their eloquence was not 

 a native wood note wild. 



advantages 

 training. 



the youthful orator off to the cells. At that time 

 he was only locked up for the night. The magis- 

 rate set him free the next morning, and he addressed 

 himself with redoubled energy to the mastery of 

 popular audiences. He had a good carrying voice, 

 a musical voice, which had been trained in melody 

 when he was a chorister boy, an iron constitution, 

 and the instinct of an expert boxer as to the best 



way to reach his adver- 

 sary's head. There was a 

 forthright, downright, up- 

 right style upon the sturdy 

 young engineer, which, 

 combined with a pic- 

 turesque imagination and 

 a great command of 

 vigorous English, soon 



gave him the first place 

 among those who sway 

 the fierce democracy of 

 London on Tower Hill, 

 in Trafalgar Square and 

 in Hyde Park. He was 

 " the man with the Red 

 Flag,' the banner-bearer 

 of the Social Revolution, 

 who. of necessity was be- 

 fore long furnished with 

 the platform from which 

 all adventurous reform- 

 ers axe able to address 

 with the greatest effect 

 the greatest audience. In 

 other words, he was ar- 

 rested and tried for in- 

 citing to riot, for his 

 share in the West End 

 looting of 1886. He was 



they learned it in the rough collegiate course of the triumphantly acquitted, but not before his speech 



workaday world. from the dock made him famous throughout the 



Of the four, John Bums — who is far and away the land. Two years later he was again in the dock, 



most popular of the quartette — had the roughest and this time, despite his masterly vindication of 



training 



E. n. Milh.^ 



Mr. John Burns. 



IPhotO. 



His schooling ended when he was ten, 

 when he was taken from school and put to work at 

 a candle factory to help to keep himself in food and 

 clothing. But from his youth up he practised 

 chieifly in the open air, the fine and difficult art of 

 oratory. His studies were sometimes rudely inter- 

 rupted. Very soon after he attained his majority, 

 he was addressing an open-air demonstration on 

 Clapham Common, when his eloquence was cut short 

 by the police, who broke up the meeting and carried 



the popular right of meeting in Trafalgar Square, 

 he was convicted, and sent to improve his mind by 

 solitary meditation, while he picked oakum as a 

 criminal convict in Pentonville Prison. He came 

 out of prison in jubilant spirits, and called upon 

 me on his way home. As an old gaol-bird. I shared 

 his enthusiasm, and entirely agreed with him when 

 he declared there w-as no better school for training 

 a public man than a public prison, when the im- 

 prisonment is suffered in the service of the people. 



