A similar account may be given, in rather less sweep-
ing terms, of Sir William Harcourt. He is a most ac-
complished and capable parliamentarian. He knows,
of course, the procedure. Anybody may master that,
though the degree of mastery is important. It was one
secret of Mr. Parnell's early influence — influence is not
the word, but of his early success in bending the House
to his will against its own. He had brooded over the
rules and standing orders till they became instruments
of policy, fashioned to his hand, and often serving uses
totally irreconcilable with the purposes of their framers.
Only now and then does such a man appear. Sir
William Harcourt is not of the Parnell pattern. He
knows the rules, of course ; the game could not be played
at all without them. But to twist them to his purpose
is not one of his usual resources. He prefers to use
men. He has a knowledge of the weaknesses of men.
He has a whole armoury of fallacies which he can gird
on when they are wanted, and brandish in the face of
a House very apt to take them as the syllogisms of an
invincible logic.
They are not, however, his chief weapons of debate,
nor is it often safe to assume that a strong man habitu-
ally resorts to weak or cheap devices. The value of a
stratagem is in its novelty, its unexpectedness, its rarity.
