THESE VITAL SPEECHES

46
CICERO SPEECHWRITING AWARDS
seemed to me the grandest remonstrance
imaginable.”
Lord Randolph was not amused.
He would regularly send his son severe
letters, chiding him for his “total want
of application.” But these parental admonitions
seem to have had little effect
on young Winston’s restless spirit or his
cocky self-assurance.
In short, when Churchill met
Cockran, he rather resembled another
thoroughly exasperating young man,
a character from a play by Bernard
Shaw: “He knows nothing; and thinks
he knows everything. That points
clearly to a political career.”
Nevertheless, Cockran saw in
Churchill the potential that even
his nearest and dearest had missed.
Churchill’s son Randolph, in his massive
biography of his father, said this
about young Winston’s first meeting
with Cockran:
“Bourke Cockran must certainly
have been a man of profound discernment
and judgment of character. As
far as we know, he was the first man
or woman Churchill met on level
terms who really saw his point and his
potentialities… Cockran in some ways
fulfilled a role that Lord Randolph
should have filled if he had survived.”
Churchill was Cockran’s guest for a
week early in November of 1895. According
to Churchill, they had “great
discussions on every conceivable subject
from economics to yacht racing.”
They found that they had certain
principles in common. One was a passionate
love of liberty.
Because they loved liberty, Churchill
and Cockran believed in free trade.
Free trade would be crucial to
Churchill’s career after he was elected
to parliament in 1900. When Churchill
met Cockran, Britain had free trade,
but there were prominent Tories who
wanted to make the British Empire a
self-contained, closed market.
Churchill would leave the Tory
Party over this issue in 1904. He would
return, twenty years later, only when
the Tories themselves had returned to
free trade.
America at that time had staggeringly
high tariffs—nearly 50 percent
on average. Tariffs were favored by
the Republicans, who represented
manufacturing and moneyed interests,
and were opposed by Democrats like
Cockran, who represented the farmers
and the workers.
Churchill and Cockran were free
traders for similar reasons; chief among
them was the fact that free trade meant
lower prices for the working poor.
How much influence did Cockran
have on Churchill’s free trade stand?
Let me quote from a major speech
that Cockran delivered at the National
Liberal Club in London on July 15,
1903. Cockran said: “Since Government
of itself can create nothing, it can
have nothing of its own to bestow on
anybody … If it undertakes to enrich
one man, the thing which it gives to him
it must take from some other man.”
Now let me quote from a speech
that Churchill gave in Birmingham just
four months later.
Churchill said: “Governments create
nothing and have nothing to give but
what they first have taken away—you
may put money in the pocket of one
set of Englishmen, but it will be money
taken from the pockets of another set
of Englishmen ... ”
Was Churchill “plagiarizing” Cockran?
No. Churchill had not been present
at Cockran’s Liberal Club speech
and Cockran did not send him the text
until after Churchill had spoken in
Birmingham. But the striking similarity
between their two speeches demonstrates
just how deeply Churchill had
absorbed Cockran’s arguments.
Churchill left the Tories for the
Liberals at the end of May the following
year. Shortly afterwards he wrote to
Cockran. “I beg you,” he said, “to send
me as much of your political literature
as you can—particularly your own
speeches. As I have told you before you
have powerfully influenced me in the
political conceptions I have formed…”
So Churchill wanted Cockran’s
speeches. What else did he get from
Cockran? How, exactly, did Cockran
help Churchill become one of the
greatest orators of all time?
For one thing, Cockran introduced
Churchill to his own favorite orator—
the great Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund
Burke. Cockran told Churchill
that Burke “mastered the English
language as a man masters a horse.”
Burke was also a man of wide learning.
Churchill’s own education had
been spotty. In 1896, about a year after
meeting Cockran, Churchill was posted
to India. There, he spent much of his
free time trying to fill the gaps in his
knowledge by extensive reading. And
Cockran advised him on what to read.
One biographer has determined that
nearly every book that Churchill read
in India could be found in Cockran’s
own considerable library in New York.
What about rhetorical devices?
Cockran told Churchill that the key
to making a speech or addressing a jury
was this: “Make one simple bold point
and keep pounding on it with many
illustrations and examples.”
Churchill would repeat this admonition
throughout his own career. Once,
he said a speech was like a symphony;
it could have three movements but
must have one dominant theme.
And he would pass on this advice
of Cockran’s to other young, up-andcoming
parliamentarians who were
struggling to find their own voices.
When Harold Macmillan, the future
prime minister, gave his first speech to
the House of Commons in 1923, he
asked Churchill for his opinion.
Churchill replied, ”Harold, everyone
in the gallery is saying, ‘Young Macmillan’s
giving his maiden address.’ Then
they ask, ‘What’s it about?’ And Harold,
no one can say in one sentence what the
speech is about, and if you can’t say in
one sentence what the speech is about, it
is not worth giving.”
What else did Churchill learn from
Cockran?
We get some strong hints from an
unpublished essay that Churchill wrote
in 1897. He called it, “The Scaffolding
of Rhetoric.”
The essay begins: “Of all the talents
bestowed upon men, none is so precious
as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it
wields a power more durable than that
of a great king. He is an independent
force in the world. Abandoned by his
party, betrayed by his friends, stripped
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