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Originally Posted by bobbyss
Maybe the modern sound bite is important but there is still something fantastic about listening to a great speech and a great speaker. I don't think I ever heard Carson on any audio but if he was a great orator I am thinking he might have sounded like Paisely though he was Dublin born I think so I don't know what accent he would have had. Has there ever been a more resounding public speaker than Paisely in fact?
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I recall reading that Carson had an accent that in England was regarded as very Irish, and in Ireland was regarded as very Anglicised. It's highly possible that he was capable of adapting his speech for either audience, depending on whether he wished to be seen as an insider or an outsider.
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Originally Posted by bobbyss
I do remember John Kelly but I have to say I don't do so with an memory of him as a great speaker. He was always on Seven Days and Feach and very competent in both languages. But I do recall just a monotone. I can't remember any Ard Fheis, for example, where he stood out.
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You wouldn't see his oratory (or anyone else'e) exemplified on the likes of Feach or Seven Days; you'd have to hear him give a speech to an audience. He certainly wasn't a flashy orator, but my memory of him was that he was pretty compelling, he could "read" an audience and take them where he wanted to go.
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Originally Posted by bobbyss
As regards what skills were needed to get to parliament in the 19th century, well very little indeed it seems to me. I don't have much grasp of the electoral system in the UK then (or now) but as far as I can tell any politician can or could be elected to any constituency at all as long as you were of the right party. And money. You could have someone living all his life in Portsmouth getting elected to a seat in Aberdeen for example. Gladstobe himself considered (or perhaps even ran for election I'm not sure) for Portlarington or Thurles or somewhere like that. This doesn't happen here by and large.
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Well, of course, things changed a lot over the course of the nineteenth century. At the start of that century the way to get in to Parliament, mostly, was to buy a seat. They were very expensive, and if you didn't have the money to buy a seat, you had to accept it from interested parties, to whom you were then beholden. Or, if you were bright and ambitious and servile and not averse to brown-nosing, you could simply commend yourself to someone who controlled a seat, and get him to put you in, in which case you were of course beholden to him. Whichever way, oratory didn't come into it.
But with the passage of the various Reform Acts, the widening of the franchise, the abolition of rotten boroughs, etc, etc, this changed. Elections became more and more contested, and the ability to control a crowd did matter. It's probably true that more votes were won by buying drinks than by making arguments but, still, parties preferred to nominate candidates who could perform creditably on the hustings. Plus, any ambitions towards a leading role in the party definitely required the ability to front a public campaign (for the repeal of the Corn Laws, or whatever) plus the ability to command the respect of the House of Commons (where oratory was a definite asset).
Basically, if you wanted a public profile, in the absence of radio and television and aptitude for compelling public speaking was a huge asset.