nia
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 6 2 5 8
 
 Pliotograph eupyrif^ht by ElUott & Fry 
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 By JUSTIN McCarthy 
 
 • ' 5 ' J' J J 3 1 
 
 > 5 » 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 
 1903
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 
 Published March, iqoj 
 
 .. . -: 
 
 r • ■ • 
 
 
 ■ « « • • 
 
 » • • • * . 
 
 "• • • * 
 
 • * 
 
 ' 1 • • 
 
 • «• 
 
 • ' .- »
 
 A- 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 1. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR i 
 
 2. L£mD_JALISmiRY 25 
 
 3. LORD ROSEBERY 49 
 
 4. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 73 
 
 5. HENRY LABOUCHERE 99 
 
 6. JOHN MORLEY 125 
 
 7. LORD ABERDEEN 151 
 
 8. JOHN BURNS 177 
 
 9. SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 203 
 
 10. JOHN E. REDMOND 229 
 
 11. SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 255 
 
 12. JAMES BRYCE 281 
 
 13. SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 307 

 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 My first acquaintance with Mr. Arthur J. 
 Balfour, who recently became Prime Minister 
 of King Edward VII., was made in the earliest 
 days of my experience as a member of the 
 House of Commons. The Fourth party, as it 
 was called, had just been formed under the in- 
 spiration of the late Lord Randolph Churchill. 
 The Fourth party was a new political enter- 
 prise. The House of Commons up to that 
 time contained three regular and recognized 
 political parties — the supporters of the Gov- 
 ernment, the supporters of the Opposition, and 
 the members of the Irish Nationalist party, of 
 whom I was one. Lord Randolph Churchill 
 created a Fourth party, the business of which 
 was to act independently alike of the Govern- 
 ment, the Opposition, and the Irish National- 
 ists. At the time when I entered Parliament 
 the Conservatives were in power, and Conserv- 
 ative statesmen occupied the Treasury Bench. 
 The members of Lord Randolph's party were
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 all Conservatives so far as general political 
 principles were concerned, but Lord Randolph's 
 idea was to lead a number of followers who 
 should be prepared and ready to speak and vote 
 against any Government proposal which they 
 believed to be too conservative or not con- 
 servative enough ; to support the Liberal Oppo- 
 sition in the rare cases when they thought the 
 Opposition was in the right; and to support 
 the Irish Nationalists when they believed that 
 these were unfairly dealt with, or when they be- 
 lieved, which happened much more frequently, 
 that to support the Irishmen would be an an- 
 noyance to the party in power. 
 
 The Fourth party was made up of numbers 
 exactly corresponding with the title which had 
 been given to it. Four men, including the 
 leader, constituted the whole strength of this 
 little army. These men were Lord Randolph 
 Churchill, Arthur J. Balfour, John Gorst (now 
 Sir John Gorst), and Sir Henry Drummond 
 Wolff, who has during more recent years with- 
 drawn altogether from parliamentary life and 
 given himself up to diplomacy, in which he has 
 won much honorable distinction. Sir John 
 Gorst has recently held office in the Govern- 
 ment, and is believed to have given and felt
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 little satisfaction in his official career. He is a 
 man of great ability and acquirements, but these 
 have been somewhat thrown away in the busi- 
 ness of administration. 
 
 The Fourth Party certainly did much to 
 make the House of Commons a lively place. Its 
 members were always in attendance — the 
 whole four of them — and no one ever knew 
 where, metaphorically, to place them. They 
 professed and made manifest open scorn for the 
 conventionalities of party life, and the parlia- 
 mentary whips never knew when they could be 
 regarded as supporters or opponents. They 
 were all effective debaters, all ready with sar- 
 casm and invective, all sworn foes to dullness 
 and routine, all delighting in any opportunity 
 for obstructing and bewildering the party which 
 happened to be in power. The members of 
 the Fourth party had each of them a distinct 
 individuality, although they invariably acted to- 
 gether and were never separated in the division 
 lobbies. A member of the House of Commons 
 likened them once in a speech to D'Artagnan 
 and his Three Musketeers, as pictured in the 
 immortal pages of the elder Dumas. John 
 Gorst he described as Porthos, Sir Henry 
 Drummond Wolff as Athos, and Arthur Bal- 
 
 3
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 four as the sleek and subtle Aramis. When I 
 entered Parliament I was brought much into 
 companionship with the members of this inter- 
 esting Fourth party. One reason for this habit 
 of intercourse was that we sat very near to one 
 another on the benches of the House. The 
 members of the Irish Nationalist party then, as 
 now, always sat on the side of the Opposition, 
 no matter what Government happened to be in 
 power, for the principle of the Irish Nationalists 
 is to regard themselves as in perpetual opposi- 
 tion to every Government so long as Ireland is 
 deprived of her own national legislature. Soon 
 after I entered the House a Liberal Govern- 
 ment was the result of a general election, and 
 the Fourth party, as habitually conservative, 
 sat on the Opposition benches. The Fourth 
 party gave frequent support to the Irish Na- 
 tionalists in their endeavors to resist and ob- 
 struct Government measures, and we therefore 
 came into habitual intercourse, and even com- 
 radeship, with Lord Randolph Churchill and 
 his small band of followers. 
 
 Arthur Balfour bore little resemblance, in 
 appearance, in manners, in debating qualities, 
 and apparently in mould of intellect, to any of 
 the three men with whom he was then con- 
 
 4
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 stantly allied. He was tall, slender, pale, grace- 
 ful, with something of an almost feminine 
 attractiveness in his bearing, although he was 
 as ready, resolute, and stubborn a fighter as 
 any one of his companions in arms. He had 
 the appearance and the ways of a thoughtful 
 student and scholar, and one would have asso- 
 ciated him rather with a college library or a 
 professor's chair than with the rough and bois- 
 terous ways of the House of Commons. He 
 seemed to have come from another world of 
 thought and feeling into that eager, vehement, 
 and sometimes rather uproarious political as- 
 sembly. Unlike his uncle. Lord Salisbury, he 
 was known to enjoy social life, but he was 
 especially given to that select order of aesthetic 
 social life which was "sicklied o'er with the 
 pale cast of thought," a form of life which was 
 rather fashionable in society just then. But it 
 must have been clear even to the most super- 
 ficial observer that he had a decided gift of 
 parliamentary capacity. He was a fluent and a 
 ready speaker and could bear an effective part 
 in any debate at a moment's notice, but he 
 never declaimed, never indulged in any flight 
 of eloquence, and seldom raised his clear and 
 musical voice much above the conversational 
 
 5
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 pitch. His choice of language was always 
 happy and telling, and he often expressed him- 
 self in characteristic phrases which lived in the 
 memory and passed into familiar quotation. 
 He had won some distinction as a writer by his 
 " Defense of Philosophic Doubt," by a volume 
 of " Essays and Addresses," and more lately by 
 his work entitled " The Foundations of Belief." 
 The first and last of these books were inspired 
 by a graceful and easy skepticism which had 
 in it nothing particularly destructive to the 
 faith of any believer, but aimed only at the not 
 difficult task of proving that a doubting inge- 
 nuity can raise curious cavils from the practical 
 and argumentative point of view against one 
 creed as well as against another. The world 
 did not take these skeptical ventures very seri- 
 ously, and they were for the most part regarded 
 as the attempts of a clever young man to show 
 how much more clever he was than the ordi- 
 nary run of believing mortals. Balfour's style 
 was clear and vigorous, and people read the 
 essays because of the writer's growing position 
 in political life, and out of curiosity to see how 
 the rising young statesman could display him- 
 self as the avowed advocate of philosophic 
 skepticism. 
 
 6
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 Arthur Balfour took a conspicuous part in 
 the attack made upon the Liberal Government 
 in 1882 on the subject of the once famous Kil- 
 mainham Treaty. The action which he took in 
 this instance was avowedly inspired by a desire 
 to embarrass and oppose the Government be- 
 cause of the compromise into which it had en- 
 deavored to enter with Charles Stewart Parnell 
 for some terms of agreement as to the manner 
 in which legislation in Ireland ought to be ad- 
 ministered. The full history of what was called 
 the Kilmainham Treaty has not, so far as I 
 know, been ever correctly given to the public, 
 and it is not necessary, when surveying the po- 
 litical career of Mr. Balfour, to enter into any 
 lengthened explanation on the subject. Mr. 
 Parnell was in prison at the time when the ar- 
 rangement was begun, and those who were in 
 his confidence were well aware that he was be- 
 coming greatly alarmed as to the state of Ire- 
 land under the rule of the late W. E. Forster, 
 who was then Chief Secretary to the Lord 
 Lieutenant, and under whose operations lead- 
 ing Irishmen were thrown into prison on no 
 definite charge, but because their general con- 
 duct left them open in the mind of the Chief 
 Secretary to the suspicion that their public agi- 
 
 7
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 tation was likely to bring about a rebellious 
 movement. Parnell began to fear that the state 
 of the country would become worse and worse 
 if every popular movement were to be forcibly 
 repressed at the time when the leaders in whom 
 the Irish people had full confidence were kept 
 in prison and their guidance, control, and au- 
 thority withdrawn from the work of pacification. 
 The proposed arrangement, whether begun by 
 Mr. Parnell himself or suggested to him by 
 members of his own party or of the English 
 Radical party, was simply an understanding 
 that if the leading Irishmen were allowed to 
 return to their public work the country might 
 at least be kept in peace while English Liberal- 
 ism was devising some measures for the better 
 government of Ireland. The arrangement was 
 in every sense creditable alike to Parnell and 
 to the English Liberals who were anxious to co- 
 operate with him in such a purpose. But it 
 led to some disturbance in Mr. Gladstone's 
 government and to Mr. Forster's resignation 
 of his office. In 1885, when the Conservatives 
 again came into power and formed a govern- 
 ment, Balfour was appointed President of the 
 Local Government Board and afterwards be- 
 came Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant 
 
 8
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 — in other words, Chief Secretary for Ireland. 
 He had to attempt a difficult, or rather, it should 
 be said, an impossible task, and he got through 
 it about as well as, or as badly as, any other 
 man could have done whose appointed mission 
 was to govern Ireland on Tory principles for 
 the interests of the landlords and by the policy 
 of coercion. 
 
 Balfour, it should be said, was never, even 
 at that time, actually unpopular with the Irish 
 National party. We all understood quite well 
 that his own heart did not go with the sort of 
 administrative work which was put upon him ; 
 his manners were always courteous, agree- 
 able, and graceful ; he had a keen, quiet sense 
 of humor, was on good terms personally with 
 the leading Irish members, and never showed 
 any inclination to make himself needlessly or 
 wantonly offensive to his opponents. He was 
 always readily accessible to any political oppo- 
 nent who had any suggestion to make, and his 
 term of office as Chief Secretary, although of 
 necessity quite unsuccessful for any practical 
 good, left no memories of rancor behind it in 
 the minds of those whom he had to oppose and 
 to confront. More lately he became First Lord 
 of the Treasury and Leader of the House of 
 
 9
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Commons, and the remainder of his public 
 career is too well known to call for any detailed 
 description here. My object in this article is 
 rather to give a living picture of the man him- 
 self as we all saw him in public life than to 
 record in historical detail the successive steps 
 by which he ascended to his present high posi- 
 tion, or rather, it should be said, of the succes- 
 sive events which brought that place within his 
 reach and made it necessary for him to accept 
 it. For it is only fair to say that, so far as 
 outer observers could judge, Mr. Balfour never 
 made his career a struggle for high positions. 
 So clever and gifted a man must naturally have 
 had some ambition in the public field to which 
 he had devoted so absolutely his time and his 
 talents. But he seemed, so far as one could 
 judge, to have in him none of the self-seeking 
 qualities which are commonly seen in the man 
 whose purpose is to make his parHamentary 
 work the means of arriving at the highest post 
 in the government of the State. On the con- 
 trary, his whole demeanor seemed to be rather 
 that of one who is devoting himself unwillingly 
 to a career not quite congenial. He always 
 appeared to me to be essentially a man of lit- 
 erary, scholarly, and even retiring tastes, who 
 
 10
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 has a task forced upon him which he does not 
 feel quite free to decHne, and who therefore 
 strives to make the best of a career which he 
 has not chosen, but from which he does not 
 feel at Hberty to turn away. Most men who 
 have attained the same poHtical position give 
 one the idea that they feel a positive delight 
 in parliamentary life and warfare, and that na- 
 ture must have designed them for that particular 
 field and for none other. The joy in the strife 
 which men like Palmerston, like Disraeli, and 
 like Gladstone evidently felt never showed itself 
 in the demeanor of Arthur Balfour. There was 
 always something in his manner which spoke 
 of a shy and shrinking disposition, and he never 
 appeared to enter into debate for the mere 
 pleasure of debating. He gave the idea of one 
 who would much rather not make a speech 
 were he altogether free to please himself in the 
 matter, and as if he were only constraining 
 himself to undertake a duty which most of 
 those around him were but too glad to have an 
 opportunity of attempting. 
 
 There are instances, no doubt, of men gifted 
 with an absolute genius for eloquent speech 
 who have had no natural inclination for debate 
 and would rather have been free from any ne- 
 
 II
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 cessity for entering into the war of words. I 
 have heard John Bright say that he would 
 never make a speech if he did not feel it a duty 
 imposed upon him, and that he would never 
 enter the House of Commons if he felt free to 
 keep away from its debates. Yet Bright was a 
 born orator and was, on the whole, I think, the 
 greatest public and parliamentary orator I have 
 ever heard in England, not excluding even 
 Gladstone himself. Bright had all the physi- 
 cal qualities of the orator. He had a command- 
 ing presence and a voice of the most marvel- 
 ous intonation, capable of expressing in musical 
 sound every emotion which lends itself to elo- 
 quence — the impassioned, the indignant, the 
 pathetic, the appealing, and the humorous. 
 Then I can recall an instance of another man, 
 not, indeed, endowed with Bright's superb ora- 
 torical gifts, but who had to spend the greater 
 part of his life since he attained the age of 
 manhood in the making of speeches within and 
 outside the House of Commons. I am think- 
 ing now of Charles Stewart Parnell. I know 
 well that Parnell would never have made a 
 speech if he could have avoided the task, and 
 that he even felt a nervous dislike to the mere 
 putting of a question in the House. But no 
 
 12
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 one would have known from Bright's manner 
 when he took part in a great debate that he 
 was not obeying in congenial mood the full 
 instinct and inclination of a born orator. Nor 
 would a stranger have guessed from Parnell's 
 clear, self-possessed, and precise style of speak- 
 ing that he was putting a severe constraint 
 upon himself when he made up his mind to 
 engage in parliamentary debate. There is some- 
 thing in Arthur Balfour's manner as a speaker 
 which occasionally reminds me of Parnell and 
 his style. The two men had the same quiet, 
 easy, and unconcerned fashion of utterance, 
 always choosing the most appropriate word and 
 finding it without apparent difficulty ; each man 
 seemed, as I have already said of Balfour, to be 
 thinking aloud rather than trying to convince 
 the listeners; each man spoke as if resolved 
 not to waste any words or to indulge in any 
 appeal to the mere emotions of the audience. 
 But the natural reluctance to take any part in 
 debate was always more conspicuous in the 
 manner of Balfour than even in that of Parnell. 
 Balfour is a man of many and varied tastes 
 and pursuits. He is an advocate of athleti- 
 cism and is especially distinguished for his de- 
 votion to the game of golf. He obtained at one 
 
 13
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 time a certain reputation in London society 
 because of the interest he took in some pecul- 
 iar phases of fanciful intellectual inventiveness. 
 He was for a while a leading member, if not 
 the actual inventor, of a certain order of psy- 
 chical research whose members were described 
 as The Souls. More than one novelist of the 
 day made picturesque use of this singular order 
 and enlivened the pages of fiction by fancy por- 
 traits of its leading members. Such facts as 
 these did much to prevent Balfour from being 
 associated in the public mind with only the rival- 
 ries of political parties and the incidents of par- 
 liamentary warfare. One sometimes came into 
 social circles where Balfour was regarded chiefly 
 as the man of literary tastes and somewhat 
 eccentric intellectual developments. All this 
 cast a peculiar reflection over his career as a 
 politician and filled many observers with the 
 idea that he was only playing at parliamentary 
 life, and that his other occupations were the 
 genuine realities for him. Even to this day 
 there are some who persist in believing that 
 Balfour, despite his prolonged and unvarying 
 attention to his parliamentary duties, has never 
 given his heart to the prosaic and practical 
 work of administrative office and the business 
 
 14
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 of maintaining his political party. Yet it has 
 always had to be acknowledged that no man 
 attended more carefully and more closely to 
 such work when he had to do it, and that the 
 most devoted worshiper of political success 
 could not have been more regular and constant 
 in his attention to the business of the House 
 of Commons. People said that he was lazy by 
 nature, that he loved long hours of sleep and 
 of general rest, and that he detested the me- 
 thodical and mechanical routine of official work. 
 But I have not known any Minister of State 
 who was more easy of approach and more ready 
 to enter into the driest details of departmental 
 business than Arthur Balfour. I may say, too, 
 that, whenever appeal was made to him to for- 
 ward any good work or to do any act of kind- 
 ness, he was always to be found at his post and 
 was ever ready to lend a helping hand if he 
 could. 
 
 I remember one instance of this kind which 
 I have no hesitation in mentioning, although 
 I am quite sure Mr. Balfour had little inclina- 
 tion for its obtaining publicity. Not very 
 many years ago it was brought to my know- 
 ledge that an English literary woman who had 
 won much and deserved distinction as a novel- 
 
 15
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 writer had been for some time sinking into ill 
 health, had been therefore prevented from going 
 on with her work, and had in the mean time 
 been perplexed by worldly difficulties and em- 
 barrassments which interfered sadly with her 
 prospects and made her a subject of well-merited 
 sympathy. Some friends of the authoress were 
 naturally anxious, if possible, to give her a help- 
 ing hand, and the idea occurred to them that 
 she would be a most fitting recipient of assist- 
 ance to be bestowed by a department of the 
 State. One of her friends, himself a distin- 
 guished novelist, who happened to be also a 
 friend of mine, spoke to me with this object, 
 assuming that, as an old parliamentary hand, 
 I knew more than most writers of books would 
 be likely to know about the manner in which 
 such help might be obtained. There is in Eng- 
 land a fund — a very small fund, truly — at the 
 disposal of the Government for the help of de- 
 serving authors who happen to be in distress. 
 This fund is at the disposal of the First Lord 
 of the Treasury, the office which was then, as 
 now, held by Arthur Balfour. I was still at 
 that time a member of the House of Commons, 
 and my friend suggested that, as I knew some- 
 thing about the whole business, I might be a 
 
 i6
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 suitable person to represent the case to the 
 First Lord of the Treasury and make appeal 
 for his assistance. My friend's belief was that 
 the application might come with more effect 
 from one who had been for a long time a mem- 
 ber of Parliament, and whose name would there- 
 fore be known to the First Lord of the Trea- 
 sury, than from a literary man who had nothing 
 to do with parliamentary life. Nothing could 
 give me greater pleasure than to become the 
 medium through which the appeal might be 
 brought under the notice of the First Lord, but 
 I felt some difficulty and doubt because of the 
 conditions of the time. England was then in 
 the most distracting period of the South African 
 war. We were hearing every day of fresh mis- 
 haps and disasters in the campaign. Arthur 
 Balfour was Leader of the House of Com- 
 mons, and had to deal every day with questions, 
 with demands for explanation, with arguments 
 and debates turning on the events of the war. 
 It seemed to me to be rather a venturesome 
 enterprise to attempt to gain the attention of a 
 minister thus perplexingly occupied for a matter 
 of merely private and individual concern. I 
 feared that an overworked statesman might 
 feel naturally inclined to remit the subject to 
 
 17
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the care of some mere official, and that time 
 might thus be lost and the needed helping hand 
 be long delayed. I undertook the task, how- 
 ever, and I wrote to Mr. Balfour at once. I 
 received the very next day a reply written in 
 Mr. Balfour's own hand, expressing his cordial 
 willingness to consider the subject, his sym- 
 pathy with the purpose of the appeal, and his 
 hope that some help might be given to the dis- 
 tressed novelist. Mr. Balfour promptly took 
 the matter in hand, and the result was that a 
 grant was made from the State fund to secure 
 the novelist against any actual distress. Now, 
 I do not want to make too much of this act of 
 ready kindness done by Mr. Balfour. The 
 appeal was made for a most deserving object ; 
 the fund from which help was to be given was 
 entirely at Mr. Balfour's disposal; and it is 
 probable that any other First Lord in the same 
 circumstances would have come to the same 
 decision. But how easy it would have been 
 for Mr. Balfour to put the whole matter into 
 the hands of some subordinate, and not to add 
 a new trouble to his own intensely busy life at 
 such an exciting crisis by entering into the 
 close consideration of a mere question of State 
 beneficence ! I certainly should not have been 
 
 i8
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 surprised if I had not received an answer to 
 my letter for several days after I had sent it, 
 and if even then it had come from some sub- 
 ordinate in the Government department. But 
 in the midst of all his incessant and distracting 
 occupations at a most exciting period of public 
 business Mr. Balfour found time to consider 
 the question himself, to reply with his own 
 hand, and to see that the desired help was 
 promptly accorded. I must say that I think 
 this short passage of personal history speaks 
 highly for the kindly nature and the sympa- 
 thetic promptitude of Arthur Balfour. 
 
 For a long time there had been much specu- 
 lation in these countries concerning the prob- 
 able successor to Lord Salisbury, whenever 
 Lord Salisbury should make up his mind to 
 resign the position of Prime Minister. We all 
 knew that that resignation was sure to come 
 soon, although very few of us had any idea that 
 it was likely to come quite so soon. The 
 general opinion was that the country would not 
 be expected, for some time at least, to put up 
 again with a Prime Minister in the House of 
 Lords. If, therefore, the new Prime Minister 
 had to be found in the House of Commons, 
 there seemed to be only a choice between two 
 
 19
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 men, Arthur Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain. 
 It would be hard to find two men in the House 
 of Commons more unlike each other in char- 
 acteristic qualities and in training than these 
 two. They are both endowed with remarkable 
 capacity for political life and for parliamentary 
 debate, " but there," as Byron says concerning 
 two of whom one was a Joseph, " I doubt all 
 likeness ends between the pair." Balfour is an 
 aristocrat of aristocrats ; Chamberlain is essen- 
 tially a m.an of the British middle class — even 
 what is generally called the lower middle class. 
 Balfour has gone through all the regular course 
 of university education ; Chamberlain was for a 
 short time at University College School in Lon- 
 don, a popular institution of modern origin 
 which does most valuable educational work, but 
 is not largely patronized by the classes who 
 claim aristocratic position. Balfour is a con- 
 stant reader and student of many literatures 
 and languages; " Mr. Chamberlain," according 
 to a leading article in a London daily newspaper, 
 *' to put it mildly, is not a bookworm." Balfour 
 loves open-air sports and is a votary of athleti- 
 cism; Chamberlain never takes any exercise, even 
 walking exercise, when he can possibly avoid 
 the trouble. Balfour is an aesthetic lover of all 
 
 20
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 the arts; Chamberlain has never, so far as I 
 know, given the sHghtest indication of interest 
 in any artistic subject. Balfour is by nature a 
 modest and retiring man; Chamberlain is al- 
 ways *' Pushful Joe." The stamp and character 
 of a successful municipal politician are always 
 evident in Chamberlain, while Balfour seems to 
 be above all other things the university scholar 
 and member of high society. I suppose it 
 must have been a profound disappointment to 
 Chamberlain that he was not offered the place 
 of Prime Minister, but it would be hardly fair 
 to expect that such a place would not be offered 
 to the First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of 
 the House of Commons, even if that First Lord 
 did not happen to be a nephew of the retiring 
 Prime Minister. 
 
 It would be idle just now to enter into any 
 speculation as to whether Mr. Arthur Balfour 
 will long continue to hold the oiHce. If he 
 should make up his mind, as was at one time 
 thought possible by many observers, to accept 
 a peerage and become Prime Minister in the 
 House of Lords, such a step would undoubtedly 
 be a means of pacifying the partisans of Cham- 
 berlain, for Chamberlain would then become, 
 almost as a matter of course, the leader of the 
 
 21
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Conservative government in the House of Com- 
 mons, and this elevation might well satisfy his 
 ambition and give his pushful energy work 
 enough to do. But the country has of late be- 
 come less and less satisfied with the practice 
 of having a Prime Minister removed from the 
 centre of active life and hidden away in the 
 enervating atmosphere of the House of Lords. 
 The friends of Mr. Balfour are naturally in- 
 clined to hope and believe that he will not bury 
 himself in such a living tomb. His path will 
 in any case be perplexed by many dif^culties 
 and obstructions. My own impression is that 
 the inevitable reaction is destined to come be- 
 fore long. The next general election may 
 prove that the country at large is tired of a 
 Conservative administration. The public mind 
 will soon get over the feverish excitement cre- 
 ated by the South African war, and people will 
 begin to remember that England had won 
 battles and annexed territory before there ever 
 was a Transvaal Republic, and found then, as 
 she will find now, that successes abroad do not 
 relieve her from the necessity of managing 
 successfully her business at home. It has to be 
 borne in mind, too, that the House of Commons 
 does not really originate anything in the work 
 
 22
 
 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 
 
 of important legislation. The best business of 
 the Liberal party begins outside the House of 
 Commons — begins with the people and with 
 those who take an interest in the welfare of the 
 people and have brains and foresight enough to 
 find out how it can be most thoroughly pro- 
 moted. All great reforms have their origin 
 outside the House of Commons and are only 
 taken up by the House of Commons when it is 
 felt that the popular demand is so earnest that 
 it must receive serious consideration. The 
 country will soon begin to realize the fact that, 
 shamefully mismanaged as the War Depart- 
 ment may have been during the recent cam- 
 paigns, the War Department is not by any 
 means the only national institution which needs 
 the strong hand of reform. The spirited foreign 
 policy has had its innings, and the condition of 
 the people at home must have its turn very 
 soon. The Liberal party has its work cut out 
 for it, and where there is the work to be done a 
 Liberal party will be found to do it. So far as 
 I can read the signs of the times, I am encour- 
 aged to hope that a great opportunity is waiting 
 for the Liberal party, and I cannot see the 
 slightest reason to doubt that a Liberal party 
 will be found ready for the opportunity and 
 
 23
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 equal to it. A Tory Prime Minister has, in- 
 deed, before now had the judgment and the 
 energy to forestall the Liberal party in the 
 great work of domestic reform, but I do not 
 believe that even the warmest admirers of Mr. 
 Balfour imagine that he is quite the man to 
 undertake such an enterprise. Arthur Balfour 
 is, according to my judgment, the best man for 
 the place to be found in the Conservative ranks 
 at present, but I do not suppose that he is 
 destined just now to be anything more than a 
 stop-gap. I admire his great and varied abili- 
 ties, I recognize his brilliant debating powers, 
 and I have felt the charm of his genial and 
 graceful manners, but I do not believe him 
 capable of maintaining the present adminis- 
 tration against the rising force of a Liberal 
 reaction. 
 
 24
 
 LORD SALISBURY
 
 From a paintini; In llubt'rt voii lierkomer 
 
 LORD SALISBURY
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 The retirement of Lord Salisbury from the 
 position of Prime Minister and the leadership 
 of the Conservative Government withdraws into 
 comparative obscurity the most interesting and 
 even picturesque figure in the English Parlia- 
 mentary life of the present day. Even the most 
 uncompromising opponents of the Prime Min- 
 ister and of his political party felt a sincere 
 respect for the character, the intellect, and the 
 bearing of the man himself. Every one gave 
 Lord Salisbury full credit for absolute sincerity 
 of purpose, for superiority to any personal am- 
 bitions or mere self-seeking, for an almost 
 contemptuous disregard of State honors and 
 political fame. 
 
 Yet it was not that Lord Salisbury was habit- 
 ually careful and measured in his speech, that 
 he was never hurried into rash utterances, that 
 he was guided by any particular anxiety to avoid 
 offending the susceptibilities of others, or, in- 
 deed, that, as a rule, he preferred to use sooth- 
 
 27
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 ing words in political controversy. He has, on 
 the contrary, a marvelous gift of sarcasm and 
 of satirical phrase-making, and he was only too 
 ready to indulge occasionally this peculiar ca- 
 pacity at the expense of political friend as well 
 as of political foe. In his early days of public 
 life, when he sat in the House of Commons as 
 a nominal follower of Mr. Disraeli, he was once 
 described in debate by his nominal leader as 
 " a master of flouts and jeers." On another oc- 
 casion Disraeli spoke of him, although not in 
 Parliamentary debate, as a young man whose 
 head was on fire. In later days, and even when 
 he had held high administrative office, Lord 
 Salisbury often indulged in sudden outbursts of 
 contemptuous humor which for a time seemed 
 likely to provoke indignant remonstrance even 
 from his own followers. One illustration of this 
 unlucky tendency towards contemptuous utter- 
 ance may be found in his famous allusion sev- 
 eral years ago to a native of Hindustan, who 
 had been elected to a seat in the House of 
 Commons, as " a black man." That was a time 
 when every English public man recognized the 
 great importance of indulging in no expression 
 which might seem calculated to wound the sus- 
 ceptibilities of the many races who have been 
 
 28
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 brought under the rule of the Imperial system 
 in the Indian dominions of the sovereign. The 
 member of Parliament thus scornfully alluded 
 to was no more a black man than Lord Salis- 
 bury himself. He was one of the Parsee races 
 chiefly found in the Bombay regions, almost 
 European in the color of their skin, and he 
 looked more like a German scholar than a na- 
 tive of any sunburnt land. No one defended 
 Lord Salisbury's rash utterance, but many peo- 
 ple excused it on the ground that it was only 
 Lord Salisbury's way; that he never meant any 
 harm, but could not resist the temptation of 
 saying an amusing and sarcastic thing when it 
 came into his mind. The truth is that Lord 
 Salisbury's odd humor is a peculiarity without 
 which he could not be the complete Lord Salis- 
 bury, and an unlucky expression was easily for- 
 given because of the many brilliant flashes of 
 genuine and not unfair sarcasm with which 
 he was accustomed to illumine a dull debate. 
 When he succeeded to his father's title, and 
 had, therefore, to leave the House of Commons 
 and take his place in the House of Lords, every 
 one felt that the representative chamber had 
 lost one of its most attractive figures, and that 
 the hereditary chamber was not exactly the place 
 
 29
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 in which such a man could find his happiest 
 hunting-ground. Yet even in the somber and 
 unimpressive House of Lords, Lord SaHsbury 
 was able, whenever the humor took him, to 
 brighten the debates by his apt illustrations 
 and his witty humor. 
 
 Lord Salisbury resigns his position as Prime 
 Minister at a time of life when, according to 
 the present standards of age, a man is still sup- 
 posed to have long years of good work before 
 him. Lord Palmerston's career as Prime Min- 
 ister was cut short only by his death, an event 
 which occurred when Palmerston was in his 
 eighty-first year. Gladstone was more than ten 
 years older than Lord Salisbury is now when 
 he voluntarily gave up his position as head of 
 a Liberal administration. Lord Beaconsfield's 
 time of birth is somewhat uncertain, but he 
 must have been some seventy-seven years of 
 age and had lost none of his powers as a de- 
 bater when his brilliant life came to its close. 
 We may take it for granted that Lord Salis- 
 bury had been for a long time growing tired of 
 the exalted political position which had of late 
 become uncongenial with his habits and his 
 frame of mind. By the death of his wife he 
 had lost the most loved companion of his home, 
 
 30
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 his intellectual tastes, and his political career. 
 A pair more thoroughly devoted to each other 
 than Lord and Lady Salisbury could hardly 
 have been found even in the pages of romance. 
 The whole story of that marriage and that mar- 
 ried life would have supplied a touching and a 
 telling chapter for romance. Early in his pub- 
 lic career Lord Salisbury fell in love with a 
 charming, gifted, and devoted woman, whom a 
 happy chance had brought in his way. She 
 was the daughter of an eminent English judge, 
 the late Baron Alderson ; and although such a 
 wife might have been thought a suitable match 
 even for a great aristocrat, it appears that the 
 Lord Salisbury of that time, the father of the 
 late Prime Minister, who was then only Lord 
 Robert Cecil, did not approve of the marriage, 
 and the young pair had to take their own way 
 and become husband and wife without regard 
 for the family prejudices. Lord Robert Cecil 
 was then only a younger brother with a younger 
 brother's allowance to live on, and the newly 
 wedded pair had not much of a prospect be- 
 fore them, in the conventional sense of the 
 words. Lord Robert Cecil accepted the situ- 
 ation with characteristic courage and resolve. 
 There seemed at that time no likelihood of his 
 
 31
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 ever succeeding to the title and the estates, 
 for his elder brother was living, and was, of 
 course, heir to the ancestral title and property. 
 Lord Robert Cecil had been gifted with dis- 
 tinct literary capacity, and he set himself down 
 to work as a writer and a journalist. He be- 
 came a regular contributor to the " Saturday 
 Review," then at the height of its influence 
 and fame, and he wrote articles for some of 
 the ponderous quarterly reviews of the time, 
 brightening their pages by his animated and 
 forcible style. He took a small house in a 
 modest quarter of London, where artists and 
 poets and authors of all kinds usually made a 
 home then, far removed from West End fash- 
 ion and courtly splendor, and there he lived a 
 happy and productive life for many years. He 
 had obtained a seat in the House of Commons 
 as a member of the Conservative party, but he 
 never pledged himself to support every policy 
 and every measure undertaken by the Conser- 
 vative leaders, whether they happened to be in 
 or out of office. Lord Robert always acted as 
 an independent member, although he adhered 
 conscientiously to the cardinal principles of that 
 Conservative doctrine which was his political 
 faith throughout his life. He soon won for 
 
 32
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 himself a marked distinction in the House of 
 Commons. He was always a brilliant speaker, 
 but was thoughtful and statesmanlike as well 
 as brilliant. He never became an orator in the 
 higher sense of the word. He never attempted 
 any flights of exalted eloquence. His speeches 
 were like the utterances of a man who is think- 
 ing aloud and whose principal object is to hold 
 and convince his listeners by the sheer force of 
 argument set forth in clear and telling language. 
 Many of his happy phrases found acceptance 
 as part of the ordinary language of political and 
 social life and became in their way immortal. 
 Up to the present day men are continually 
 quoting happy phrases drawn from Lord Robert 
 Cecil's early speeches without remembering 
 the source from which they came.-^ 
 
 Such a capacity as that of Lord Robert Cecil 
 could not long be overlooked by the leaders of 
 his party, and it soon became quite clear that 
 he must be invited to administrative office. I 
 ought to say that, after Lord Robert had com- 
 pleted his collegiate studies at Oxford, he de- 
 voted himself for a considerable time to an 
 extensive course of travel, and he visited Aus- 
 tralasia, then but little known to young Eng- 
 lishmen of his rank, and he actually did much 
 
 33
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 practical work as a digger in the Australian 
 gold mines, then newly discovered. He had 
 always a deep interest in foreign affairs, and 
 it was greatly to the advantage of his subse- 
 quent career that he could often support his 
 arguments on questions of foreign policy by 
 experience drawn from a personal study of the 
 countries and States forming successive sub- 
 jects of debate. Suddenly his worldly prospects 
 underwent a complete change. The death of 
 his elder brother made him heir to the family 
 title and the great estates. He became Viscount 
 Cranborne in succession to his dead brother. 
 I may perhaps explain, for the benefit of some 
 of my American readers, that the heir to a 
 peerage who bears what is called a courtesy 
 title has still a right to sit, if elected, in the 
 House of Commons. It is sometimes a source 
 of wonder and puzzlement to foreign visitors 
 when they find so many men sitting in the 
 House of Commons who actually bear titles 
 which would make it seem as if they ought to 
 be in the House of Lords. The eldest sons of 
 all the higher order of peers bear such a title, 
 but it carries with it no disqualification for a 
 seat in the House of Commons, if the bearer 
 of it be duly elected to a place in the repre- 
 
 34
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 sentative chamber. When the bearer of the 
 courtesy title succeeds to the actual title be- 
 longing to the house, he then, as a matter of 
 course, becomes a peer, has to enter the House 
 of Lords, and would no longer be legally eli- 
 gible to sit in the representative chamber. Lord 
 Palmerston's presence in the House of Com- 
 mons was often a matter of wonder to foreisfn 
 visitors, for in all the days to which my mem- 
 ory goes back, Lord Palmerston seemed too 
 old a man to have a father alive and in the 
 House of Lords. I have had to explain the 
 matter to many a stranger, and it only gives 
 one other illustration of the peculiarities and 
 anomalies which belong to our Parliamentary 
 system. Palmerston's was not a courtesy title ; 
 the noble lord was a peer in his own right; 
 but then he was merely an Irish peer, and only 
 a certain number of Irish peers are entitled to 
 sit in the House of Lords. The more fortu- 
 nate, for so I must describe them, of the Irish 
 peers not thus entitled to sit in the hereditary 
 chamber are free to seek election for an Eng- 
 lish constituency in the House of Commons 
 and to obtain it, as Lord Palmerston did. Lord 
 Viscount Cranborne, therefore, continued for a 
 time to hold the place in the House of Com- 
 
 35
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 mons which he had held as Lord Robert Cecil. 
 In 1866 Lord Cranborne entered office, for the 
 first time, as Secretary of State for India during 
 the administration of Lord Derby. 
 
 The year following brought about a sort of 
 crisis in Lord Cranborne's political career, and 
 probably showed the general public of Eng- 
 land, for the first time, what manner of man he 
 really was. Up to that period he had been 
 regarded by most persons, even among those 
 who habitually gave attention to Parliamentary 
 affairs, as a brilliant, independent, and some- 
 what audacious free-lance whose political con- 
 duct was usually directed by the impulse of the 
 moment, and who made no pretensions to any 
 fixed and ruling principles. That was the year 
 1867, when the Conservative Government under 
 Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli took it into their 
 heads to try the novel experiment, for a Con- 
 servative party, of introducing a Reform Bill 
 to improve and expand the conditions of the 
 Parliamentary suffrage. Disraeli was the author 
 of this new scheme, and it had been suggested 
 to him by Mr. Gladstone's failure in the pre- 
 vious year with his measure of reform. Glad- 
 stone's reform measure did not go far enough 
 to satisfy the genuine Radicals, while it went 
 
 56
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 much too far for a considerable number of 
 doubtful and half-hearted Liberals, and it was 
 strongly opposed by the whole Tory party. As 
 usually happens in the case of every reform 
 introduced by a Liberal administration, a seces- 
 sion took place among the habitual followers of 
 the Government. The secession in this case 
 was made famous by the name which Bright 
 conferred upon it as the " Cave of Adullam " 
 party ; and by the co-operation of the seceding 
 section with the Tory Opposition, the measure 
 was defeated, and Mr. Gladstone went out of 
 i)iHce. Disraeli saw, with his usual sagacity, 
 that the vast mass of the population were in 
 favor of some measure of reform, and when 
 Lord Derby and he came into office he made 
 up his mind that, as the thing had to be done, 
 he and his colleagues might as well have the 
 advantage of doing it. The outlines of the 
 measure prepared for the purpose only shaped 
 a very vague and moderate scheme of reform, 
 but Disraeli was quite determined to accept 
 any manner of compromises in order to carry 
 some sort of scheme and to keep himself and 
 his party in power. But then arose a new diffi- 
 culty on which, with all his sagacity, he had 
 not calculated. Lord Cranborne for the first 
 
 37 
 
 jLi7fW i<'<Li(iNw
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 time showed that he was a man of clear and 
 resolute political principle, and that he was not 
 willing to sacrifice any of his conscientious con- 
 victions for the sake of maintaining his place 
 in a Government. He was sincerely opposer^ 
 to every project for making the suffrage popi- 
 lar and for admitting the mass of the working- 
 men of the country to any share in its govern 
 ment. I need hardly say that I am entire!} 
 opposed to Lord Cranborne's political theories, 
 but I am none the less willing to render full 
 justice to the sincerity, not too common amonj^ 
 rising public men, which refused to make an^ 
 compromise on a matter of political principle. 
 Lord Cranborne was then only at the openin 
 of his administrative career, and he must have 
 had personal ambition enough to make him 
 wish for a continuance of office in a powerful 
 administration. But he put all personal con- 
 siderations resolutely aside, and resigned his 
 place in the Government rather than have any- 
 thing to do with a project which he believed to 
 be a surrender of constitutional principle to the 
 demands of the growing democracy. Lord Car- 
 narvon and one or two other members of the 
 administration foUow^ed his lead and resigned 
 their places in the Government. I need not 
 
 38 
 
 f
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 enter into much detail as to the progress of the 
 Disraeli reform measure. It is enough to say 
 that Disraeli obtained the support of many 
 Radicals by the Liberal amendments which he 
 accepted, and the result was that a Tory Gov- 
 ernment carried to success a scheme of reform 
 which practically amounted to the introduction 
 of household suffraore. Lord Cranborne and 
 those who acted with him held firmly to their 
 principles, and steadily opposed the measure 
 introduced by those who at the opening of the 
 session were their official leaders and colleagues. 
 I am convinced that even the most advanced 
 reformers were ready to give a due meed of 
 praise to the man who had thus made it evi- 
 dent that he preferred what he believed to be a 
 political principle, even though he knew it to 
 be the principle of a losing cause, to any con- 
 sideration of personal advancement. 
 
 Some of us felt sure that we had then learned 
 for the first time what manner of man Lord 
 Cranborne really was. We had taken him for 
 a bold and brilliant adventurer, and we found 
 and were ready to acknowledge that he was a 
 man of deep, sincere, and self-sacrificing convic- 
 tions. I have never from that time changed my 
 opinions with regard to Lord Cranborne's per- 
 
 39
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 sonal character. His career interested me from 
 the first moment that I had an opportunity of 
 observing it, and I may say that from an early 
 period of my manhood I had much opportunity 
 of studying the ways and the figures of ParHa- 
 mentary life. But until Lord Cranborne had 
 taken this resolute position on the reform ques- 
 tion, I had never given him credit for any depth of 
 political convictions. The impression I formed 
 of him up to that time was that he was merely 
 a younger son of a great aristocratic family, who 
 had a natural aptitude alike for literature and for 
 politics, and that he was following in Parliament 
 the guidance of his own personal humors and 
 argumentative impulses, and that he was ready 
 to sacrifice in debate not only his friends but 
 his party for the sake of saying a clever thing 
 and startling his audience into reluctant admi- 
 ration. '.From those days of 1867 I knew him 
 to be what all the world now knows him to be, 
 a man of deep and sincere convictions, ever fol- 
 lowing the light of what he believes to be politi- 
 cal wisdom and justice. I can say this none 
 the less readily because I suppose it has hardly 
 ever been my fortune to agree with any of Lord 
 Salisbury's utterances on questions of political 
 importance, j 
 
 ( 40
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 In 1868 the career of Lord Cranborne in the 
 House of Commons came to an end by the 
 death of his father. He succeeded to the title 
 of Marquis of SaHsbury, and became, as a mat- 
 ter of course, a member of the House of Lords. 
 He was thus withdrawn while still a compar- 
 atively young man from that stirring field of 
 splendid debate where his highest qualities as 
 a speaker could alone have found their fitting 
 opportunity. I need not trace out his subse- 
 quent public career with any sequence of detail. 
 We all know how from that time to this he has 
 held high office, has come to hold the highest 
 offices in the State whenever his political party 
 happened to be in power. He has been For- 
 eign Secretary ; he has been Prime Minister in 
 three Conservative administrations. For a time 
 he actually combined the functions of Prime 
 Minister and those of Foreign Secretary. He 
 was envoy to the great conference at Constan- 
 tinople in 1876 and 1877, and he took part in 
 the Congress of Berlin, that conference which 
 Lord Beaconsfield declared brought to England 
 peace with honor. Everything that a man 
 could have to gratify his ambition Lord Salis- 
 bury has had since the day when he succeeded 
 to his father's title and estates. His own intel- 
 
 41
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 lectual force and his political capacity must 
 undoubtedly have made a way for him to Par- 
 liamentary influence and success even if he had 
 always remained Lord Robert Cecil, and his 
 elder brother had lived to succeed to the title. 
 But from the moment when Lord Robert Cecil 
 became the heir, it was certain that his party 
 could not venture to overlook him. He might 
 have made eccentric speeches, he might have 
 indulged in sarcastic and scornful allusions to 
 his political leaders, he might have allowed ob- 
 trusive scruples of conscience to interfere with 
 the interests of his party, but none the less it 
 became absolutely necessary that the Conserva- 
 tive politicians should accept, when opportunity 
 came, the leadership of the Marquis of Salis- 
 bury. " Thou hast it all " — the words which 
 Banquo applies to Macbeth — might have been 
 said of Lord Salisbury when he became for the 
 first time Prime Minister. 
 
 Lord Salisbury certainly did not achieve his 
 position by any of the arts, even the less cul- 
 pable arts, which for a time secured to Macbeth 
 the hi2:hest reach of his ambition. Lord Salis- 
 bury's leadership came to him and was not 
 sought by him. I cannot help thinking, how- 
 ever, that, after he had once attained that su- 
 
 42
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 preme position in his party, the remainder of 
 his public career has been something in the 
 nature of an anticlimax. Was it that the chill 
 and deadening influence of the House of Lords 
 proved too depressing for the energetic and 
 vivacious spirit which had won celebrity for 
 Lord Robert Cecil in the House of Commons ? 
 Was it that Lord Salisbury, when he had at- 
 tained the height of his ambition, became a 
 victim to that mood of reaction which compels 
 such a man to ask himself whether, after all, 
 the work of ascent was not much better than 
 the attained elevation ? Lord Salisbury's years 
 of high office coming now thus suddenly to an 
 end give to me at least the melancholy impres- 
 sion of an unfulfilled career. The influence of 
 the Prime Minister, so far as mere outsiders 
 can judge of it, has always been exerted in for- 
 eign affairs for the promotion of peace. Even 
 the late war in South Africa is not understood 
 to have been in any sense a war of his seeking. 
 The general belief is that the policy of war was 
 pressed upon him by influences which at the 
 time he was not able to control — influences 
 which would only have become all the stronger 
 if he had refused to accept the responsibility 
 of Prime Minister and had left it to others to 
 
 43
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 carry on the work of government. However 
 this may be, it can hardly be questioned that 
 of late years Lord Salisbury had become that 
 which nobody in former days could ever sup- 
 pose him likely to become, the mere figurehead 
 of an administration. Lord Salisbury's whole 
 nature seems to have been too sincere, too free 
 from mere theatrical arts, to allow him to play 
 the part of leader where he had no heart in the 
 work of leadership. A statesman like Disraeli 
 might have disapproved of a certain policy and 
 done his best to reason his colleagues out of it, 
 but nevertheless, when he found himself likely 
 to be overborne, would have immersed himself 
 deliberately in all the new-born zeal of the con- 
 vert and would have behaved thenceforward as 
 if his whole soul were in the work which had 
 been put upon him to do. Lord Salisbury is 
 most assuredly not a man of this order, and he 
 never would or could put on an enthusiasm 
 which he did not feel in his heart. We can all 
 remember how, at the very zenith of British 
 passion against China during the recent politi- 
 cal convulsions and the intervention of the 
 foreign allies, Lord Salisbury astonished and 
 depressed some of his warmest admirers by a 
 speech which he made at Exeter Hall, a speech 
 
 44
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 which, metaphorically at least, threw the coldest 
 of cold water on the popular British ardor for 
 forcing Western civilization on the Chinese 
 people. 
 
 Lord Salisbury's frame of mind was one which 
 could never allow him to become even for a 
 moment a thorough Jingo, and through all the 
 later years of his power he held the office of 
 Prime Minister at a time when Jingoism was 
 the order of the day among the outside sup- 
 porters of the Conservative Government. He 
 never had a fair chance for the full develop- 
 ment of his intellectual faculties while he re- 
 mained at the head of a Conservative adminis- 
 tration. Under happier conditions he might 
 have been a great Prime Minister and a leading 
 force in political movement, but his intellect, 
 his tastes, and his habits of life did not allow 
 him to pay much deference to the prejudices 
 and passions of those on whom he was com- 
 pelled to rely for support. There was too much 
 in him of the thinker, the scholar, and the recluse 
 to make him a thoroughly effective leader of 
 the party who had to acknowledge his com- 
 mand. He loved reading, he loved literature 
 and art, and he took no delight in the formal 
 social functions which are in our days an im- 
 
 45
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 portant part of successful political administra- 
 tion. He could not be " hail-fellow-well-met " 
 with every pushing follower who made it a 
 pride to be on terms of cqmpanionship with the 
 leader of the party. I have often heard that 
 he had a singularly bad memory for faces, and 
 that many a devoted Tory follower found his 
 enthusiasm chilled every now and then by the 
 obvious fact that the Prime Minister did not 
 seem to remember anything about the identity 
 of his obtrusive admirer. Much the same thing 
 has been said over and over again about Mr. 
 Gladstone, but then Gladstone had the inborn 
 genius of leadership, threw his soul into every 
 great political movement, and did not depend 
 in the slightest degree on his faculty for appre- 
 ciating and conciliating every individual fol- 
 lower. Lord Salisbury's tastes were for the so- 
 ciety of his close personal friends, and I believe 
 no man could be a more genial host in the 
 company of those with whom he loved to asso- 
 ciate ; but he had no interest in the ordinary 
 ways of society and made no effort to conciliate 
 those with whom he found himself in no man- 
 ner of companionship. He did not even take 
 any strong interest in the study of the most 
 remarkable figures in the political world around 
 
 46
 
 LORD SALISBURY 
 
 him, if he did not feel drawn into sympathy 
 with their ways and their opinions. On one 
 occasion, when a report had got about in the 
 newspapers that Lord Sahsbury was often seen 
 in friendly companionship with the late Mr. 
 Parnell in the smoking-room of the House of 
 Commons, Lord Salisbury publicly stated that 
 he had never, to his knowledge, seen Parnell, 
 and had never been once in the House of Com- 
 mons smoking-room. 
 
 No man has been better known, so far as 
 personal appearance was concerned, to the gen- 
 eral English public than Lord Salisbury. He 
 has been as well known as Mr. Gladstone him- 
 self, and one cannot say more than that. He 
 was a frequent walker in St. James's Park and 
 other places of common resort in the neighbor- 
 hood of the Houses of Parliament. Every one 
 knew the tall, broad, stooping figure with the 
 thick head of hair, the bent brows, and the 
 careless, shabby costume. No statesman of his 
 time was more indifferent than Lord Salisbury 
 to the dictates of fashion as regarded dress and 
 deportment. He was undoubtedly one of the 
 worst-dressed men of his order in London. In 
 this peculiarity he formed a remarkable con- 
 trast to Lord Beaconsfield, who down to the 
 
 47
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 very end of his life took care to be always 
 dressed according to the most recent dictates 
 of fashion. All this was strictly in keeping 
 with Lord Salisbury's character and tempera- 
 ment. The world had to take him as he was — 
 he could never bring himself to act any part for 
 the sake of its effect upon the public. My own 
 impression is that when he was removed by the 
 decree of fate into the House of Lords and 
 taken away from the active, thrilling life of the 
 House of Commons, he felt himself excluded 
 from his congenial field of political action and 
 had but little interest in the game of politics 
 any more. He does not seem destined to a 
 place in the foremost rank of English Prime 
 Ministers, even of English Conservative Prime 
 Ministers. But his is beyond all question a 
 picturesque, a deeply interesting, and even a 
 commanding figure in English political history, 
 and the world will have reason to regret if his 
 voluntary retirement from the position of Prime 
 Minister should mean also his retirement from 
 the field of political life. 
 
 48
 
 LORD ROSEBERY
 
 Photograph copyright b\ I limit ^ Fry 
 
 THE p:arl of rosebery
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 Lord Rosebery was for a prolonged season 
 the man in English political life upon whom 
 the eyes of expectation were turned. He is a 
 younger man than most of his political col- 
 leagues and rivals, but it is not because of his 
 comparative youth that the eyes of expectation 
 were and still are turned upon him. Not one 
 of those who stand in the front ranks of Par- 
 liamentary life to-day could be called old, as 
 we reckon age in our modern estimate. Palm- 
 erston, Gladstone, and Disraeli won their high- 
 est political triumphs after they had passed 
 the age which Lord Salisbury and Sir Wil- 
 liam Harcourt have now reached ; Mr. Balfour 
 is still regarded in politics as quite a young 
 man, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has 
 but lately been elected leader of the Liberal 
 party in the House of Commons. Lord Rose- 
 bery has already held the highest political 
 offices. He has been Foreign Secretary and 
 he has been Prime Minister. He has been 
 
 51
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 leader of the Liberal party. No other public 
 man in England has so many and so varied 
 mental gifts, and no other public man has won 
 success in so many distinct fields. We live 
 in days when, for the time at least, the great 
 political orator seems to have passed out of 
 existence. The last great English orator died 
 at Hawarden a few short years ago. We have, 
 however, several brilliant and powerful Parlia- 
 mentary debaters, and among these Lord Rose- 
 bery stands with the foremost, if he is not, 
 indeed, absolutely the foremost. As an orator ' 
 on what I may call great ceremonial occasions 
 he is, according to my judgment, the very fore- 
 most we now have. As an after-dinner speaker 
 — and after-dinner speaking counts for a great 
 deal in the success of an English public man — 
 he has never had an equal in England during 
 my time. Then Lord Rosebery has delivered 
 lectures or addresses in commemoration of great 
 poets and philosophers and statesmen which 
 may even already be regarded as certain of an 
 abiding place in literature. Lord Rosebery is 
 a literary man, an author as well as a states- 
 man and an orator; he has written a life of 
 Pitt which is already becoming a sort of clas- 
 sic in our libraries. There are profounder stu- 
 
 52
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 dents, men more deeply read, than he, but I 
 doubt if there are many men Hving who have 
 so wide an acquaintance with general litera- 
 ture. He is a lover as well as a student and a 
 connoisseur of art, he is an accomplished yachts- 
 man, has a thorough knowledge of horses, is 
 famous on the turf, and the owner of a horse 
 that twice won the Derby. The legendary fairy 
 godmother seems to have showered upon him 
 at his birth all her richest and most various 
 gifts, and no malign and jealous sprite appears 
 to have come in, as in the nursery stories, to 
 spoil any of the gifts by a counteracting spell. 
 He was born of great family and born to high 
 estate ; he married a daughter of the house of 
 Rothschild ; he has a lordly home near Edin- 
 burgh in Scotland, a noble house in the finest 
 West End square of London, and a delightful 
 residence in one of our most beautiful English 
 counties. 
 
 Lord Rosebery is one of the most charming 
 talkers whom it has ever been my good for- 
 tune to meet. He has a keen sense of humor, 
 a happy art of light and delicate satire, and, in 
 private conversation as well as in Parliamentary 
 debate, he has a singular facility for the inven- 
 tion of expressive and successful phrases which 
 
 53
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 tell their whole story in a flash. One might 
 well be inclined to ask what the kindly fates 
 could have done for Lord Rosebery that they 
 have left undone. Nevertheless, the truth has 
 to be told, that up to this time Lord Rosebery 
 has not accomplished as much of greatness as 
 most of us confidently expected that he would 
 achieve. 
 
 I have been, perhaps, somewhat too hasty in 
 saying that no counteracting spell had in any 
 way marred the influence of the gifts which the 
 fairies had so lavishly bestowed on Lord Rose- 
 bery. One stroke of ill fortune — ill fortune, 
 that is, for an English political leader — was 
 certainly directed against him. Nature must 
 have meant him to be a successful Prime Min- 
 ister, and yet fortune denied him a seat in 
 the House of Commons. He succeeded to his 
 grandfather's peerage at an early period of his 
 life, and he had to begin his political career as 
 a member of the House of Lords. He there- 
 fore missed all that splendid training for po- 
 litical warfare which is given in the House of 
 Commons. It would not, perhaps, be quite 
 easy for an American reader to understand 
 how little the House of Lords counts for in the 
 education of fighting statesmen. 
 
 54
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 When Charles James Fox was told in his de- 
 clining years that the King, as a mark of royal 
 favor, intended to make him a peer and thus 
 remove him from the House of Commons into 
 the House of Lords, he struck his forehead and 
 exclaimed : " Good Heaven ! he does not think 
 it has come to that with me, does he ? " Fox 
 had had all the training that his genius needed 
 in the House of Commons, and he was not con- 
 demned to pass into the House of Lords. Noth- 
 ing but the inborn consciousness of a genius for 
 political debate can stimulate a man to great 
 effort in the House of Lords. Nothing turns 
 upon a debate in that House. If a majority in 
 the House of Lords were to pass a vote of 
 censure three times a week on the existing 
 Government, that Government would continue 
 to exist just as if nothing had happened, and 
 the public in general would hardly know that 
 the Lords had been expressing any opinion on 
 the subject. An ordinary sitting of the House 
 of Lords is not expected to last for more than 
 an hour or so, and the whole assembly often 
 consists of some half a dozen peers. Now and 
 again, during the course of a session, there 
 is got up what may be called a full-dress de- 
 bate when some great question is disturbing the 
 
 55
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 country, and the peers think that they ought 
 to put on the appearance of being deeply con- 
 cerned about it, and some noble lord who has a 
 repute for wisdom or for eloquence gives notice 
 of a formal motion, and then there is a length- 
 ened discussion, and perhaps, on some extraor- 
 dinary occasion, the peers may sit to a late hour 
 and even take a division. But on such remark- 
 able occasions the peer who induces the House 
 to come together and listen to his oration is 
 almost sure to be one who has had his training 
 in the House of Commons and has made his 
 fame as an orator there. 
 
 Now, I cannot but regard it as a striking 
 evidence of Lord Rosebery's inborn fitness to 
 be an English political leader that he should 
 have got over the dreary discouragement of 
 such a training-school, and should have prac- 
 ticed the art of political oratory under con- 
 ditions that might have filled Demosthenes 
 himself with a sense of the futility of trying to 
 make a great speech where nothing whatever 
 was likely to come of it. Lord Rosebery, how- 
 ever, did succeed in proving to the House of 
 Lords that they had among them a brilliant 
 and powerful debater who had qualified himself 
 for success without any help from the school in 
 
 56
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 which Lord Brougham and the brilliant Lord 
 Derby, Lord Cairns, and Lord Salisbury had 
 studied and mastered the art of Parliamentary 
 eloquence. 
 
 But, indeed. Lord Rosebery appears to have 
 had a natural inclination to seek and find a 
 training-school for his abilities in places and 
 pursuits that might have seemed very much out 
 of the ordinary British aristocrat's way. Until 
 a comparatively recent period, we had nothing 
 that could be called a really decent system of 
 municipal government in the greater part of 
 London. We had, of course, the Lord Mayor 
 and the municipality of the City of London, 
 but then the City of London is only a very 
 small patch in the great metropolis that holds 
 more than five millions of people. London, out- 
 side the City, was governed by the old-fashioned 
 parish vestries, and to some extent by a more 
 recent institution which was called the Metro- 
 politan Board of Works. Now, the Metropoli- 
 tan Board of Works did not manage its affairs 
 very well. There were disagreeable rumors and 
 stories about contracts and jobbing and that 
 sort of thing, and although matters were never 
 supposed to have been quite so bad as they 
 were in New York during days which I can 
 
 57
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 remember well, the days of Boss Tweed, there 
 was enough of public complaint to induce Par- 
 liament, at the instigation of Lord Randolph 
 Churchill, to abolish the Board of Works alto- 
 gether and set up the London County Council, 
 a thoroughly representative body elected by 
 popular suffrage and responsible to its constit- 
 uents and the public. Lord Rosebery threw 
 himself heart and soul into the promotion of 
 this better system of London municipal govern- 
 ment. He became a member of the London 
 County Council, was elected its first Chairman, 
 and later on was re-elected to the same ofifice. 
 Now, I think it would be hardly possible for a 
 man of Lord Rosebery 's rank and culture and 
 tastes to give a more genuine proof of patriotic 
 public spirit than he did when he threw himself 
 heart and soul into the work of a municipal 
 council. 
 
 Up to that time the business of a London 
 municipality had been regarded as something 
 belonging entirely to the middle class or the 
 lower middle class, something with which peers 
 and nobles could not possibly be expected to 
 have anything to do. A London Alderman 
 had been from time out of mind a sort of figure 
 of fun, a vulgar, fussy kind of person, who 
 
 . 58
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 bedizened himself in gaudy robes on festive 
 occasions, and was noted for his love of the 
 turtle in quite a different sense from that which 
 Byron gives to the words. Lord Rosebery set 
 himself steadily to the work of London munici- 
 pal government at a most critical period in its 
 history; his example was followed by men of 
 rank and culture, and some of the most intellec- 
 tual men of our day have been elected Aldermen 
 of the London County Council. Only think 
 of Frederic Harrison, the celebrated Positivist 
 philosopher, the man of exquisite culture and 
 refinement, the man of almost fastidious ways, 
 the scholar and the writer, becoming an Alder- 
 man of the London County Council, and de- 
 voting himself to the duties of his position ! 
 Lord Rosebery undoubtedly has the honor of 
 having done more than any other Englishman 
 to raise the municipal government of London 
 to that position which it ought to have in the 
 public life of the State. 
 
 All that time Lord Rosebery was not neglect- 
 ing any of the other functions and occupations 
 which had been imposed upon him, or which he 
 had voluntarily taken upon himself. He held 
 the office of First Commissioner of Works in 
 one of Mr. Gladstone's administrations, an office 
 
 59
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 involving the care of all the State buildings 
 and monuments and parks of the metropolis. 
 He was always to be seen at the private views 
 of the Royal Academy and the other great 
 picture galleries of the London season. He 
 was always starting some new movement for 
 the improvement of the breed of horses, and, 
 indeed, there is a certain section of our com- 
 munity among whom Lord Rosebery is re- 
 garded, not as a statesman, or a London County 
 Councilor, or a lover of literature, but simply 
 and altogether as a patron of the turf. Mean- 
 while we were hearing of him every now and 
 then as an adventurous yachtsman, and as the 
 orator of some great commemoration day when 
 a statue was unveiled to a Burke or a Burns. 
 
 A more delightful host than Lord Rosebery 
 it would not be possible to meet or even to 
 imagine. I have had the honor of enjoying 
 his hospitality at Dalmeny and in his London 
 home, and I shall only say that those were 
 occasions which I may describe, in the words 
 Carlyle employed with a less gladsome signifi- 
 cance, as not easily to be forgotten in this 
 world. No man can command a greater vari- 
 ety of topics of conversation. Politics, travel, 
 art, letters, the life of great cities, the growth 
 
 60
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 of commerce, the tendencies of civilizations, the 
 art of living, the philosophy of life, the way to 
 enjoy life, the various characteristics of foreign 
 capitals — on all such topics Lord Rosebery 
 can speak with the clearness of one who knows 
 his subject and the vivacity of one who can put 
 his thoughts into the most expressive words. 
 I suppose there must be some eminent authors 
 with whose works Lord Rosebery is not famil- 
 iar, but I can only say that if there be any 
 such, I have not yet discovered who they are 
 — and I have spent a good deal of my time in 
 reading. I have seen Lord Rosebery in com- 
 panies where painters and sculptors and the 
 writers of books and the writers of plays formed 
 the majority, where political subjects were not 
 touched upon, and I have observed that Lord 
 Rosebery could hold his own with each prac- 
 titioner of art on the artist's special subject. 
 Lord Rosebery does not profess to be a book- 
 worm or a great scholar, but I do not know 
 any man better acquainted with general litera- 
 ture. Such a man must surely have got out 
 of life all the best that it has to give. 
 
 Yet it is certain that the eyes of expectation 
 are still turned upon Lord Rosebery. There 
 is a general conviction that he has something 
 
 6i
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 yet to do — that, in fact, he has not yet given 
 his measure. He has been Prime Minister, 
 and he has been leader of the English Liberal 
 party, but in neither case had he a chance of 
 proving his strength. When Mr. Gladstone 
 made up his mind to retire finally from political 
 life, the Queen sent for Lord Rosebery and 
 invited him to form an administration. Now, 
 it is no secret that at th?t time there were men 
 in the Liberal party whose friends and admirers 
 believed that their length of service gave them 
 a precedence of claims over the claims of Lord 
 Rosebery. There were those who thought Sir 
 William Harcourt had won for himself a right 
 to be chosen as the successor to Mr. Gladstone. 
 On the other side — for there was grumbling 
 on both sides — there were members of the 
 Liberal administration who positively declined 
 to continue in office if Sir William Harcourt 
 were made Prime Minister. These men did 
 not object to serve under Sir William Harcourt 
 as leader of the House of Commons, but they 
 objected to his elevation to the supreme place 
 ,of Prime Minister. Also, there were Liberals 
 of great influence, who, while they had the full- 
 est confidence in Lord Rosebery and were not 
 fanatically devoted to Sir William Harcourt, 
 
 62
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 objected to the idea of having a Prime Minister 
 in the House of Lords, and a Prime Minister, 
 too, who had never sat in the House of Com- 
 mons. Now, it would be idle to deny that there 
 was some practical reason for this objection. 
 The House of Commons is the field on which 
 political battles are fought and won. The Com- 
 mander-in-Chief ought always to be within reach. 
 A whole plan of campaign may have to be 
 changed at a quarter of an hour's notice. It 
 must obviously often be highly inconvenient to 
 have a Prime Minister who cannot cross the 
 threshold of the House of Commons in order 
 to get into instant communication with the 
 leading men of his own party who are fighting 
 the battle. 
 
 At all events, I am now only concerned to 
 say that these doubts and difficulties and pri- 
 vate disputations did arise, and that, although 
 Lord Rosebery did accept the position of Prime 
 Minister, he must have done so with some 
 knowledge of the fact that certain of his col- 
 leagues were not quite satisfied with the new 
 conditions. Lord Rosebery had been most suc- 
 cessful as Foreign Secretary during each term 
 when he held the office, but it was well known, 
 before Mr. Gladstone's retirement, that there 
 
 63
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 were some questions of foreign policy on which 
 the old leader and the new were not quite of 
 one opinion. In English political life, and I 
 suppose in the political life of every self-gov- 
 erning country, there are seasons of inevitable 
 action and reaction which must be observed 
 and felt, although they cannot always be ex- 
 plained. 
 
 To a distant observer the policy of the Lib- 
 eral party might have seemed just the same 
 after Mr. Gladstone had retired from politics 
 as it was when he was in the front of political 
 life. But just as the policy which sustained 
 him in his early days as Prime Minister was 
 helped by the reaction which had set in against 
 the aggressive policy of Lord Palmerston, so 
 there came, with the close of Gladstone's Par- 
 liamentary career, a kind of reaction against 
 his counsel of peace and moderation. Lord 
 Rosebery was believed to have more of what is 
 called the Imperialist spirit in him than had 
 ever guided the policy of his great leader. Cer- 
 tainly some of Mr. Gladstone's former col- 
 leagues in the House of Commons appear to 
 have thought so, and there began to be signs 
 of a growing division in the party. Lord Rose- 
 bery's Prime Ministership lasted but a short 
 
 64
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 time. The Government sustained one or two 
 Parliamentary discomfitures, and there followed 
 upon these a positive defeat in the nature of a 
 sort of vote of censure carried by a small major- 
 ity against a department of the administration, 
 on the ground of an alleged insufficiency in 
 some of the supplies of ammunition for military 
 service. Many a Government would have pro- 
 fessed to think little of such a defeat, would 
 have treated it only as a mere question of de- 
 partmental detail, and would have gone on as 
 if nothing had happened. But Lord Rosebery 
 refused to take things so coolly and so care- 
 lessly. Probably he was growing tired of his 
 position under the peculiar circumstances. Per- 
 haps he thought the most manly course he could 
 take was to give the constituencies the oppor- 
 tunity of saying whether they were satisfied with 
 his administration or were not. The Govern- 
 ment appealed to the country. Parliament was 
 dissolved, and a general election followed. Then 
 was seen the full force of the reaction which 
 had begun to set in against the Gladstone policy 
 of peace, moderation, and justice. The Con- 
 servatives came into power by a large majority. 
 Lord Rosebery was now merely the leader of 
 the Liberal party in Opposition. Even this posi- 
 es
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 tion he did not long retain. Some of the most 
 brilliant speeches he ever made in the House 
 of Lords were made during this time, but some- 
 how people began to think that his heart was 
 not in the leadership, and before long it was 
 made known to the public that he had ceased 
 to be the Liberal Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 Everybody, of course, was ready with an ex- 
 planation as to this sudden act, and perhaps, as 
 sometimes happens in such cases, the less a 
 man really knew about the matter the more 
 prompt he was with his explanation. Two rea- 
 sons, however, were given by observers who 
 appeared likely to know something of the real 
 facts. One was that Lord Rosebery did not see 
 his way to go as far as some of his colleagues 
 would have gone in arousing the country to 
 decided action against the Ottoman Govern- 
 ment because of the manner in which it was 
 allowing its Christian subjects to be treated. 
 The other was that Lord Rosebery was too 
 Imperialistic in spirit for such men as Sir Wil- 
 liam Harcourt and Mr. John Morley. No one 
 could impugn Lord Rosebery's motives in either 
 case. He might well have thought that too 
 forward a movement against Turkey might only 
 bring on a great European war or leave Eng- 
 
 66
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 land isolated to carry out her policy at her own 
 risk, and in the other case he may have thought 
 that the policy bequeathed by Mr. Gladstone 
 was tending to weaken the supremacy of Eng- 
 land in South Africa. 
 
 Lord Rosebery then ceased to lead a Gov- 
 ernment or a party, and became for the time 
 merely a member of the House of Lords. I 
 do not suppose his leisure hung very heavy on 
 his hands. I cannot imagine Lord Rosebery 
 finding any difficulty in passing his day. The 
 only difficulty I should think such a man must 
 have is how to find time to give a fair chance 
 to all the pursuits that are dear to him. Lord 
 Rosebery spent some part of his leisure in 
 yachting, gave his usual attention to the turf, 
 was to be seen at picture galleries, and occa- 
 sionally addressed great public meetings on 
 important questions, and was a frequent visitor 
 to the House of Commons during each session 
 of Parliament. The peers have a space in the 
 galleries of the House of Commons set apart 
 for their own convenience, and, although that 
 space can hold but a small number of the peers, 
 yet on ordinary nights its benches are seldom 
 fully occupied. But when some great debate 
 is coming on, then the peers make a rush for 
 
 6;
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the gallery space in the House of Commons, 
 and those who do not arrive in time to get a 
 seat have to wait and take their chance, each 
 in his turn, of any vacancy which may possibly 
 occur. I am not a great admirer of the House 
 of Lords as a legislative institution, and I must 
 say that it has sometimes soothed the rancor of 
 my jealous feelings as a humble Commoner to 
 see a string of peers extending across the lobby 
 of the House of Commons, each waiting for his 
 chance of filling some sudden vacancy in the 
 peers' gallery. 
 
 Lord Rosebery continued to attend the de- 
 bates when he had ceased to be Prime Minis- 
 ter and leader of the Liberal party just as he 
 had done before. His fine, clearly cut, closely 
 shaven face, with features that a lady novelist 
 of a past age would have called chiseled, and 
 eyes lighted with an animation that seemed to 
 have perpetual youth in it, were often objects 
 of deep interest to the members of the House, 
 and to the visitors in the strangers' galleries, 
 and no doubt in the ladies' gallery as well. The 
 appearance of Lord Rosebery in the peers' gal- 
 lery was sure to excite some talk among the 
 members of the House of Commons on the 
 green benches below. We were always ready 
 
 68
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 to Indulge in expectation and conjecture as to 
 what Lord Rosebery was likely to do next, for 
 there seemed to be a general consent of opinion 
 that he was the last man in the world who could 
 sit down and do nothing. But what was there 
 left for him to do ? He had held various ad- 
 ministrative offices : he had twice been Foreign 
 Secretary ; he had twice been Chairman of the 
 London County Council ; he had been Prime 
 Minister; he had been leader of the Liberal 
 party ; he had been President of all manner of 
 great institutions; he had been President of 
 the Social Science Congress ; he had been Lord 
 Rector of two great Universities ; he had twice 
 won the Derby. What was there left for him 
 to do which human ambition In our times and 
 in the dominions of Queen Victoria could care 
 to accomplish? Yet the general Impression 
 seemed to be that Lord Rosebery had not yet 
 done his appointed work, and that impression 
 has grown deeper and stronger with recent 
 events. 
 
 Since the day when Lord Rosebery withdrew 
 from the leadership of the Liberal party the 
 division in that party has been growing wider 
 and deeper. The war in South Africa has 
 done much to broaden the gulf of separation. 
 
 69
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Lord Rosebery is an Imperialist, Sir William 
 Harcourt and Mr. John Morley are not Imperi- 
 alists. The opponents of Sir William Harcourt 
 and Mr. Morley call them Little Englanders. 
 The opponents of Lord Rosebery and those 
 who think with him would no doubt call them 
 Jingoes. The Imperialist, or, as his opponents 
 prefer to call him, the Jingo, accepts as the 
 ruling principle of his faith the right and 
 the duty of England to spread her civilization 
 and her supremacy as far as she can over all 
 those parts of the world which are still lying in 
 disorganization and in darkness. The Little 
 Englander, as his opponents delight to describe 
 him, believes that England's noblest work for a 
 long time to come will be found in the endea- 
 vor to spread peace, education, and happiness 
 among the peoples who already acknowledge 
 her supremacy. I am not going to enter into 
 any argument as to the relative claims of the 
 two political schools. It has been said that a 
 man is born either of the school of Aristotle or 
 of the school of Plato. Perhaps an English- 
 man of modern times is born a Jingo or a Lit- 
 tle Englander. I am not an Englishman, and 
 therefore am not called upon to rank myself on 
 either side of the controversy, but I know full 
 
 70
 
 LORD ROSEBERY 
 
 well which way my instincts and sympathies 
 would lead me if I were compelled to choose. 
 I could not, therefore, account myself a politi- 
 cal follower of Lord Rosebery ; and, indeed, on 
 the one great question which concerned me 
 most as a member of the House of Commons, 
 that of Irish Home Rule, Lord Rosebery is 
 not quite so emphatic as I should wish him to 
 be. I am therefore writing the eulogy, not of 
 Lord Rosebery the politician, but of Lord Rose- 
 bery the orator, the scholar, the man of letters 
 and arts and varied culture, the man who has 
 done so much for public life in so many ways, 
 the helpful, kindly, generous friend. 
 
 The common impression everywhere is that 
 the Conservative Government, as it is now con- 
 stituted, cannot last very long. The sands of 
 the present Parliament are running out; the 
 next general election may be postponed for 
 some time yet, but it cannot be very far off. 
 Are the Liberals to come back to power with 
 Lord Rosebery at their head ? Can the Lib- 
 eral party become so thoroughly reunited again, 
 Jingoes and Little Englanders, as to make the 
 formation of a Liberal Government a possible 
 event so soon ? Or is it possible, as many ob- 
 servers believe, that Lord Rosebery may find 
 
 71
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 himself at the head of an administration com- 
 posed of Imperialist Liberals and the more en- 
 lightened and generally respected members of 
 the present Government? I shall not venture 
 upon any prediction, having seen the unex- 
 pected too often happen in politics to have 
 much faith in political prophecy. I note it as 
 an evidence of the position Lord Rosebery has 
 won for himself that, although he became Prime 
 Minister only to be defeated, and leader of the 
 Liberal party only to resign, he is still one of 
 the public men in England about whom people 
 are asking each other whether the time for him 
 to take his real position has not come at last. 
 
 72
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 I
 
 Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry 
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain was once described by an 
 unfriendly critic as the Rabagas of English 
 political life. We all remember Rabagas, the 
 hero of Sardou's masterpiece of dramatic satire, 
 who begins his public career and wins fame 
 among certain classes as a leveler and a dema- 
 gogue of the most advanced views, an unspar- 
 ing enemy of the aristocracy, a man who will 
 make no terms with the privileged orders, and 
 will bow to no sovereign but the sovereign peo- 
 ple. Now, I have said that it was an unfriendly 
 critic who likened Mr. Chamberlain to Sardou's 
 creation, but it was not in the earlier career 
 of the real or the imaginary politician that the 
 resemblance was especially to be traced. Ra- 
 bagas is brought by tempting conditions under 
 the influence of the privileged classes, the aris- 
 tocracy, and the reigning sovereign of the small 
 state in which he lives ; and his leveling and 
 revolutionary tendencies melt away under the 
 genial influence of his new associations. He 
 
 75
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 becomes, before long, the admirer of the aris- 
 tocracy and the Prime Minister of the Prince, 
 and is ready to devote all his energies to the 
 defense of the privileged orders, to the repres- 
 sion of the vile democracy, and the silencing 
 of Radical orators. 
 
 In this contrast between the earlier and the 
 later parts of the political career the malevo- 
 lent critic, no doubt, found the materials for his 
 comparison between Rabagas and Mr. Cham- 
 berlain. For there can be no denying thaO/fr. 
 Chamberlain began his public life as an elo- 
 quent, an unsparing, and apparently a convinced 
 champion of democracy against the aristocracy, 
 the privileged orders, and the Conservative 
 party, and that he is now a leading member of 
 a Conservative Government, and goes further 
 than most of his colleagues would be likely to 
 go in his hostility to Radical measures and tb 
 Radical men. 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Chamberlain, who during the 
 earlier part of his public life belonged to the 
 party most strenuously opposed to all unneces- 
 sary wars, and especially wars which had annex- 
 ation for their object, has been the chief Minis- 
 terial promoter of the late war in South Africa, 
 a war which had for its object the subjugation 
 
 76
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 of two independent republics in order to bring 
 them under the Imperial flag of England. No 
 one, therefore, could have been much surprised 
 when the unfriendly critic fancied that he could 
 discover at least a certain superficial resem- 
 blance between the career of Rabagas and the 
 career of Mr. Chamberlain. 
 
 I have been a close observer of much of Mr. 
 Chamberlain's public life, and for some time we 
 were thrown a good deal into Parliamentary 
 and political association. He came into the 
 House of Commons not very long before I had 
 the honor of obtaining a seat there, and his 
 fame had preceded him so far that his entrance 
 into Parliament was looked upon by everybody 
 as a coming event, in the days when he had 
 not yet been elected to represent the constitu- 
 ency of Birmingham. Birmingham was at that 
 time one of the most thoroughly Radical cities 
 in England. John Bright once said that as the 
 sea, wherever you dip a cup into it, will be 
 found to be salt, so the constituency of Bir- 
 mingham, wherever you test it, will be found 
 to be Radical. Birmingham could claim the 
 merit of being one of the best organized muni- 
 cipalities in England. Its popular educational 
 institutions were excellent ; its free libraries 
 
 17
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 might have won the admiration of a citizen of 
 Boston, Massachusetts ; its poHce arrangements 
 were efficient ; its sanitation might well have 
 been the envy of London, and the general intel- 
 ligence of its citizens was of the highest order. 
 Now, it was in this enlightened, progressive, and 
 capable community that Mr. Chamberlain won 
 his first fame. He is not a Birmingham man 
 by birth. He was, I believe, born and brought 
 up on the south side of London, and was edu- 
 cated at University College School, London. 
 But at an early age he settled in Birmingham, 
 and became a member of his father's manufac- 
 turing firm there. Very soon he rose to great 
 distinction as a public speaker and as a mem- 
 ber of the local corporation, and three times 
 was elected chief magistrate of Birmingham. 
 We began soon to hear a great deal of him 
 in London. It must have been clear to any- 
 body who knew anything of Birmingham that 
 a man could not have risen to such distinc- 
 tion in that city without great intelligence and 
 a marked capacity for public life. All this time 
 he was known as a Radical of the Radicals. 
 The Liberal party in London began to look 
 upon him as a coming man, and as a coming 
 man who was certain to take his place, and 
 
 78
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 that probably a leading place, in the advanced 
 Radical division of the Liberals. His political 
 speeches showed him to be a democrat of the 
 leveling order — a democrat, that is to say, of 
 views much more extreme than had ever been 
 professed by John Bright or Richard Cobden. 
 He was an unsparing assailant of the aristo- 
 cracy and the privileged classes, and, indeed, 
 went so far in his Radicalism that the Con- 
 servatives in general regarded him as a down- 
 right Republican. 
 
 I can well remember the sensation which his 
 first speech in the House of Commons created 
 among the ranks of the Tories after his election 
 to Parliament as one of the representatives of 
 Birmingham. The good Tories made no effort 
 to conceal their astonishment at the difference 
 between the real Chamberlain as they saw and 
 heard him and the Chamberlain of their earlier 
 imaginings. I talked with many of them at the 
 time, and was made acquainted with their emo- 
 tions. Judging from his political speeches, they 
 had set him down as a wild Republican, and 
 they expected to see a rough and shaggy man, 
 dressed with an uncouth disregard for the ways 
 of society, a sort of Birmingham Orson who 
 would probably scowl fiercely at his opponents 
 
 79
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 in the House and would deliver his opinions in 
 tones of thunder. The man who rose to address 
 the House was a pale, slender, delicate look- 
 ing, and closely shaven personage, very neatly 
 dressed, with short and carefully brushed hair, 
 and wearing a dainty eyeglass constantly fixed 
 in his eye. " He looks like a ladies' doctor," 
 one stout Tory murmured. " Seems like the 
 model of a head clerk at a West End draper's," 
 observed another. Certainly there was noth- 
 ing of the Orson about this well-dressed, well- 
 groomed representative of the Birmingham 
 democracy. Mr. Chamberlain's speech made a 
 distinct impression on the House. It was ad- 
 mirably delivered, in quietly modulated tones, 
 the clear, penetrating voice never rising to the 
 level of declamation, but never failing to reach 
 the ear of every listener. The political opin- 
 ions which it expressed were such as every one 
 might have expected to come from so reso- 
 lute a democrat, but the quiet, self-possessed 
 delivery greatly astonished those who had ex- 
 pected to see and hear a mob orator. Mr. 
 Chamberlain's position in the House was as- 
 sured after that first speech. Even among the 
 Tories everybody felt satisfied that the new 
 man was a man of great ability, gifted with a 
 
 80
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 remarkable capacity for maintaining his views 
 with ingenious and plausible argument, a man 
 who could hold his own in debate with the 
 best, and for whom the clamors of a host of 
 political opponents could have no terrors. 
 
 I may say at once that Mr. Chamberlain has, 
 ever since that time, proved himself to be one 
 of the ablest debaters in the House of Com- 
 mons. He is not and never could be an orator 
 in the higher sense, for he wants altogether 
 that gift of imagination necessary to the com- 
 position of an orator, and he has not the cul- 
 ture and the command of ready illustration 
 which sometimes lift men who are not born 
 orators above the mere debater's highest level. 
 But he has unfailing readiness, a wide know- 
 ledge of public affairs, a keen eye for all the 
 weak points of an opponent's case, and a flow 
 of clear and easy language which never fails to 
 give expression, at once full and precise, to all 
 that is in his mind. He was soon recognized, 
 even by his extreme political opponents, as one 
 of the ablest men in the House of Commons, 
 and it seemed plain to every one that, when 
 the chance came for the formation of a Liberal 
 Ministry, the country then being in the hands 
 
 8i
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 of a Tory Government, Mr. Chamberlain would 
 beyond question find a place on the Treasury 
 Bench. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Chamberlain's democratic 
 views seemed to have undergone no modifi- 
 cation. He was as unsparing as ever in his 
 denunciation of the aristocracy and the privi- 
 leged classes, and he was especially severe 
 upon the great landowners, and used to pro- 
 pound schemes for buying them out by the 
 State and convertins: their land into national 
 property. His closest ally and associate in 
 Parliamentary politics was Sir Charles Dilke, 
 who had entered the House of Commons some 
 years before Mr. Chamberlain, and who was 
 then, as he is now, an advanced and deter- 
 mined Radical. Sir Charles Dilke, in fact, was 
 at that time supposed to be something very 
 like a Republican, at least in theory, and he 
 had been exciting great commotion in several 
 parts of the country by his outspoken com- 
 plaints about the vast sums of money voted 
 every year for the Royal Civil List. It was 
 but natural that Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. 
 Chamberlain should become close associates, 
 and there was a general conviction that the 
 more advanced section of the Liberal party 
 
 82
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 was destined to take the command in Liberal 
 politics. 
 
 Outside the range of strictly English poli- 
 tics there was a question arising which threat- 
 ened to make a new division in the Liberal 
 party. This was the question of Home Rule 
 for Ireland as it presented itself under the 
 leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. For 
 years the subject of Home Rule had been the 
 occasion, under the leadership of Mr. Butt, 
 of nothing more formidable to the House of 
 Commons than an annual debate and division. 
 Once in every session Mr. Butt brought for- 
 ward a motion calling for a measure of Home 
 Rule for Ireland, and, after some eloquent 
 speeches made in favor of the motion by Irish 
 members, a few speeches were delivered on the 
 other side by the opponents of Home Rule, 
 Liberals as well as Tories, and then some lead- 
 ing member of the Government went through 
 the form of explaining why the motion could 
 not be accepted. A division was taken, and Mr. 
 Butt's motion was found to have the support 
 of the very small Irish Nationalist party, as it 
 then was, and perhaps half a dozen English or 
 Scotch Radicals ; and the whole House of Com- 
 mons, except for these, declared against Home 
 
 83
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Rule. About the time, however, of Mr. Cham- 
 berlain's entrance on the field of politics a 
 great change had taken place in the conditions 
 of the Home Rule question. Charles Stewart 
 Parnell had become in fact, although not yet 
 in name, the leader of the Irish National party, 
 and Parnell's tactics were very different in- 
 deed from those of his nominal leader, Mr. Butt. 
 Butt was a man who had great reverence for 
 old constitutional forms and for the traditions 
 and ways of the House of Commons, and he had 
 faith in the power of mere argument to bring 
 the House some time or other to see the 
 justice of his cause. Parnell was convinced 
 that there was only one way of compelling the 
 House of Commons to pay any serious atten- 
 tion to the Irish demand, and that was by 
 making it clear to the Government and the 
 House that until they had turned their full 
 attention to the Irish national claims, they 
 should not be allowed to turn their attention 
 to any other business whatever. Therefore he 
 introduced that policy of obstruction which 
 has since become historical, and which for a 
 time literally convulsed the House of Com- 
 mons. Now, I am not going again into the 
 oft-told tale of Home Rule and the obstruc- 
 
 84
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 tion policy, and I touch upon the subject here 
 only because of its direct connection with the 
 career of Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Charles Dilke 
 and Mr. Chamberlain supported Mr. Parnell in 
 most of his assaults upon the Tory Govern- 
 ment. It was Parnell's policy to bring forward 
 some motion, during the discussion of the esti- 
 mates for the army and navy or for the civil 
 service, which should raise some great and 
 important question of controversy connected 
 only in a technical sense with the subject for- 
 mally before the House, and thus to raise a 
 prolonged debate which had the effect of post- 
 poning to an indefinite time the regular move- 
 ment of business. Thus he succeeded in stop- 
 ping all the regular work of the House until 
 the particular motion in which he was con- 
 cerned had been fully discussed and finally set- 
 tled, one way or the other. It was by action 
 of this kind that he succeeded in prevailing 
 upon the House of Commons to condemn the 
 barbarous system of flogging in the army and 
 the navy, and finally to obtain its abolition. In 
 this latter course he was warmly supported by 
 Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, and 
 by many other Liberal members. 
 
 But it was not only in obstructive motions 
 
 85
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 which concerned the common interests of the 
 country that Parnell obtained the support of 
 Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain. These 
 -two men boldly and vigorously maintained him 
 in his policy of obstruction when it only pro- 
 fessed to concern itself with Irish national ques- 
 tions. They identified themselves so thoroughly 
 with his Irish policy that it became a familiar 
 joke in the House of Commons to describe 
 Dilke and Chamberlain as the Attorney-Gen- 
 eral and the Solicitor-General of the Home 
 Rule party. I was then a member of the 
 House, and had been elected Vice-President of 
 the Irish party, Parnell being, of course, the 
 President. Naturally, I was brought closely 
 into association with Mr. Chamberlain, and I 
 had for many years been a personal friend of 
 Sir Charles Dilke. Again and again I heard 
 Mr. Chamberlain express his entire approval of 
 the obstructive policy adopted by Parnell, and 
 declare that that was the only way by which 
 Parnell could compel the House of Commons 
 to give a hearing to the Irish claims. Mr. 
 Chamberlain, indeed, expressed, on more than 
 one occasion, in speeches delivered during a 
 debate in the House, just the same opinion 
 as to Parnell's course which I had heard him 
 
 ^6
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 utter in private conversation. In one of these 
 speeches I remember well his generous declara- 
 tion that he was sorry he had not had an oppor- 
 tunity of expressing that opinion to the House 
 of Commons long before. Now, of course, I 
 always thought, and still think, that all this was 
 much to the credit of Mr. Chamberlain's politi- 
 cal intelligence, courage, and manly feeling, 
 and I regarded him as one of the truest Eng- 
 lish friends the Home Rule cause had ever 
 made. I had the opportunity, on more than 
 one occasion, of hearing Dilke and Chamber- 
 lain define their respective positions on the 
 subject of Home Rule. Dilke regarded Home 
 Rule as an essential part of a federal system, 
 which he believed to be absolutely necessary to 
 the safety, strength, and prosperity of the Brit- 
 ish Empire. He would have made it a Federal 
 system, by virtue of which each member of the 
 Imperial organization governed its own domes- 
 tic affairs in its own way, while the common 
 wishes and interests of the Empire were repre- 
 sented, discussed, and arranged in a central 
 Imperial Parliament. Therefore, even if the 
 Irish people had not been themselves awakened 
 to the necessity for a Home Rule Legislature 
 in Ireland, Dilke would have been in favor of 
 
 87
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 urging on them the advantages of such an 
 arrangement. This, in point of fact, is the sys- 
 tem which has made the Canadian and the 
 Australasian provinces what they are at this 
 day, contented, loyal, and prosperous members 
 of the Imperial system. Chamberlain was not 
 so convinced an advocate of the general system 
 of Home Rule as Dilke, but he was always em- 
 phatic in his declarations that, if the large ma- 
 jority of the Irish people desired Home Rule, 
 their desire should be granted to them by the 
 Imperial Parliament. -' 
 
 When I first entered the House of Commons, 
 the Conservative party was in office. About a 
 year after, the general election of 1880 came 
 on, almost in the ordinary course of events, 
 and the result of the appeal to the country was 
 that the Liberals came back to power with a 
 large majority. Mr. Gladstone was at the head 
 of the Liberal party, and he became Prime 
 Minister. Every body assumed that two such 
 prominent Radicals as Dilke and Chamberlain 
 could not be overlooked by the new Prime 
 Minister in his arrangements to form an admin- 
 istration. I think I am entitled to say, as a 
 positive fact, that Dilke and Chamberlain en- 
 tered into an understanding between them- 
 
 88
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 selves that unless one at least of them was 
 offered a place in the Cabinet, neither would 
 accept office of any kind. Of course when a 
 new Government is in process of formation all 
 these arrangements are matters of private dis- 
 cussion and negotiation with the men at the 
 head of affairs; and the result of interchange 
 of ideas in this instance was that Chamberlain 
 became President of the Board of Trade, with 
 a seat in the Cabinet, and Dilke accepted the 
 office of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 
 without a place in the inner Ministerial circle. 
 This was done, not only with Dilke's cordial 
 consent, but at his express wish, for it was his 
 strong desire that the higher place in the 
 administration should be given to his friend. 
 
 Now, at this time Mr. Gladstone was not a 
 convinced Home Ruler. I know that the im- 
 portance of the question was entering his mind 
 and was absorbing much of his attention. I 
 know that he was earnestly considering the 
 subject, and that his mind was open to con- 
 viction ; but I know also that he was not yet 
 convinced. Chamberlain, therefore, would ap- 
 parently have had nothing to gain if he merely 
 desired to conciliate the favor of his leader by 
 still putting himself forward as the friend and 
 
 89
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the ally of the Home Rule party. But he con- 
 tinued, when in office, to be just as openly our 
 friend as he had been in the days when he was 
 only an ordinary member of the House of Com- 
 mons. There were times when, owing to the 
 policy of coercion pursued in Ireland by the 
 then Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 the relations between the Liberal Government 
 and the Home Rule party were severely strained. 
 We did battle many a time as fiercely against 
 Mr. Gladstone's Government as ever we had 
 done against the Government of his Tory pre- 
 decessor. Yet Mr. Chamberlain always remained 
 our friend and our adviser, always stood by us 
 whenever he could fairly be expected to do so 
 in public, and always received our confidences 
 in private. When Mr. Parnell and other mem- 
 bers of our party were thrown into Dublin 
 prison, Mr. Chamberlain did his best to obtain 
 justice and fair treatment for them and for the 
 Home Rule cause and for the Irish people. 
 
 Many American readers will probably have 
 a recollection of what was called the Kilmain- 
 ham Treaty — the " Treaty " being an arrange- 
 ment which it was thought might be honorably 
 agreed upon between Mr. Gladstone and the 
 leaders of the Irish party, and by virtue of which 
 
 90
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 an improved system of land-tenure legislation 
 was to be given to Ireland, on the one hand, 
 and every effort was to be made to restore 
 peace to Ireland on the other. I do not intend 
 to go into this old story at any length, my only 
 object being to record the fact that the whole 
 arrangements were conducted between Mr. 
 Chamberlain and Mr. Parnell, and that Cham- 
 berlain was still understood to be the friend of 
 Ireland and of Home Rule. These negotia- 
 tions led to the resignation of office by the late 
 Mr. William Edward Forster, Chief Secretary 
 to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; and then 
 came the important question. Who was likely 
 to be put in Mr. Forster's place? I believe 
 that, as a matter of fact, the place was offered, 
 in the first instance, to Sir Charles Dilke, but 
 was declined by him on the ground that he was 
 not also offered a seat in the Cabinet, and Dilke 
 was convinced that unless he had a seat in the 
 Cabinet he could have no chance of pressing 
 successfully on the Government his policy of 
 Home Rule for Ireland. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain then had reason to believe 
 that the office would be tendered to him, and 
 he was willing to accept it and to do the best 
 he could. I know that he believed that the 
 
 91
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 place was likely to be offered to him and that 
 he was ready to undertake its duties, for he 
 took the very frank and straightforward course 
 of holding a conference with certain Irish Na- 
 tionalist members to whom he made known 
 his views on the subject. The Irish members 
 whom he consulted understood clearly from 
 him that if he went to Ireland in the capacity 
 of Chief Secretary he would go as a Home 
 Ruler and would expect their co-operation and 
 their assistance. There was no secret about 
 this conference. It was held within the pre- 
 cincts of the House of Commons, and Mr. 
 Chamberlain's action in suggesting and con- 
 ducting it was entirely becoming and proper 
 under the conditions. For some reason or other, 
 which I at least have never heard satisfactorily 
 explained, the office of Chief Secretary was 
 given, after all, to the late Lord Frederick Cav- 
 endish. Then followed the terrible tragedy of 
 the Phoenix Park, Dublin, when Lord Frederick 
 and Mr. Thomas Burke, his official subordinate, 
 were murdered in the open day by a gang of 
 assassins. When the news of this appalling 
 deed reached London, Mr. Parnell and I went 
 at once, and as a matter of course, to consult 
 with Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamberlain 
 
 92
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 as to the steps which ought to be taken in 
 order to vindicate the Irish people from any 
 charge of sympathy with so wanton and so 
 atrocious a crime. We saw both Dilke and 
 Chamberlain and consulted with them, and I 
 can well remember being greatly impressed by 
 the firmness with which Mr. Chamberlain de- 
 clared that nothing which had happened would 
 prevent him from accepting the office of Chief 
 Secretary in Ireland if the opportunity were 
 offered to him. I go into all this detail with 
 the object of making it clear to the reader that, 
 up to this time, Mr. Chamberlain had the full 
 confidence of the Irish Nationalist party and 
 was understood by them to be in thorough sym- 
 pathy with them as to Ireland's demand for 
 Home Rule. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain did not, however, become 
 Irish Secretary, but retained his position as 
 President of the Board of Trade, and' many 
 foreign troubles began in Egypt and other 
 parts of the world which diverted the attention 
 of Parliament and the public for a while from 
 questions of purely domestic policy. Mr. Glad- 
 stone, however, succeeded in carrying through 
 Parliament a sort of new reform bill which re- 
 constructed the constituencies, expanded the 
 
 93
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 electorate, and, in fact, set up in the three coun- 
 tries something approaching nearly to the old 
 Chartist idea of equal electoral division and 
 universal suffrage. The foreign troubles, how- 
 ever, were very serious, the Government lost its 
 popularity, and at last was defeated on one of 
 its financial proposals and resigned office. The 
 Tories came into power for a short time. Mr. 
 Chamberlain stumped the country in his old 
 familiar capacity as a Radical politician of the 
 extreme school, and he started a scheme of 
 policy which was commonly described after- 
 wards as the unauthorized programme, in which 
 he advocated, among other bold reforms, a pea- 
 sant proprietary throughout the country by the 
 compulsory purchase of land, the effect of which 
 would be to endow every deserving peasant 
 with at least three acres and a cow. The Tories 
 were not able to do anything in office, owing 
 to the combined attacks made upon them by 
 the Radicals and the Irish Home Rulers, and 
 in 1886 another dissolution of Parliament took 
 place and a general election came on. The 
 effect of the latest reform measure introduced 
 by Mr. Gladstone now told irresistibly in Mr. 
 Gladstone's favor, and the newly arranged con- 
 stituencies sent him back into office and into 
 
 94
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 power. Mr. Chamberlain once again joined 
 Mr. Gladstone's Government, and became Presi- 
 dent of the Local Government Board. 
 
 Then comes a sudden change in the story. 
 The extension of the suffrage gave, for the 
 first time, a large voting power into the hands 
 of the majority of the Irish people, for in Ire- 
 land up to that date the right to vote had been 
 enjoyed only by the landlord class and the well- 
 to-do middle class ; and the result of the new 
 franchise was that Ireland sent into Parliament 
 an overwhelming number of Home Rule Repre- 
 sentatives to follow the leadership of Parnell. 
 Gladstone then became thoroughly satisfied 
 that the vast majority of the Irish people were 
 in favor of Home Rule, and he determined to 
 introduce a measure which should give to Ire- 
 land a separate domestic Parliament. There- 
 upon Mr. Chamberlain suddenly announced 
 that he could not support such a measure of 
 Home Rule, and it presently came out that he 
 could not support any measure of Home Rule. 
 He resigned his place in Mr. Gladstone's Gov- 
 ernment, and he became from that time not 
 only an opponent of Home Rule but a pro- 
 claimed Conservative and anti-Radical. When 
 a Tory Government was formed, after the de- 
 
 95
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 feat of Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule mea- 
 sure, Mr. Chamberlain became a member of the 
 Tory Government, and he is one of the leading 
 members of a Tory Government at this day. 
 
 Now, it is for this reason, I suppose, that the 
 unfriendly critic, of whom I have already spoken 
 more than once, thought himself justified in 
 describino^ Mr. Chamberlain as the Rabao^as of 
 English political life. y4t is, indeed, hard for 
 any of us to understand the meaning of Mr. 
 Chamberlain's sudden change. } At the open- 
 ing of 1886 he was, what he Tiad been during 
 all his previous political life, a flaming demo- 
 crat and Radical. In the early months of 1886 
 he was a flaming Tory and anti-Radical. Dur- 
 ing several years of frequent association with 
 him in the House of Commons I had always 
 known him as an advocate of Home Rule for 
 Ireland, and all of a sudden he exhibited him- 
 self as an uncompromising opponent of Home 
 Rule. Many English Liberal members ob- 
 jected to some of the provisions of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's first Home Rule Bill, but when these 
 objections were removed in Mr. Gladstone's 
 second Home Rule Bill they returned at once 
 to their places under his leadership. But Mr. 
 Chamberlain would have nothing to do with 
 
 96
 
 JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 any manner of Home Rule measure, and when 
 he visited the province of Ulster in the north 
 of Ireland he delighted all the Ulster Orange- 
 men by the fervor of his speeches against Home 
 Rule. Moreover, it may fairly be asked why 
 an English Radical and democrat of extreme 
 views must needs become an advocate of Tory- 
 ism all along the line simply because he has 
 ceased to be in favor of Home Rule for Ireland. 
 These are questions which I, at least, cannot 
 pretend to answer. 
 
 Of course we have in history many instances 
 of conversions as sudden and as complete, about 
 the absolute sincerity of which even the worldly 
 and cynical critic has never ventured a doubt. 
 There was the conversion of Constantine the 
 Great, and there was the sudden change brought 
 about in the feelings and the life of Ignatius of 
 Loyola, ^ut then somehow Mr. Chamberlain 
 does not 'seem to have impressed on his con- 
 temporaries, either before or after his great 
 change, the idea that he was a man cast exactly 
 in the mold of a Constantine or an Ignatius. 
 Only of late years has he been dubbed with the 
 familiar nickname of " Pushful Joe," but he was 
 always set down as a man of personal ambition, 
 determined to make his way well on in the 
 
 97
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 world. We had all made up our minds, some- 
 how, that he would be content to push his for- 
 tunes on that side of the political field to which, 
 up to that time, he had proclaimed himself to 
 belong, and it never occurred to us to think of 
 him as the associate of Tory dukes, as a lead- 
 ing member of a Tory Government, and as the 
 champion of Tory principles. Men have in all 
 ages changed their political faith without excit- 
 ing the world's wonder. Mr. Gladstone began 
 as a Tory, and grew by slow degrees into a 
 Radical. Two or three public men in our own 
 days who began as moderate Liberals have 
 gradually turned into moderate Tories. But 
 Mr. Chamberlain's conversion was not like any 
 of these. It was accomplished with a sud- 
 denness that seemed to belong to the days 
 when miracles were yet worked upon the earth, 
 Mr. Chamberlain may well feel proud in the 
 consciousness that the close attention of the 
 political world will follow with eager curiosity 
 his further career. 
 
 98
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE
 
 PhntcKiapli copyright by Elliott & Fry 
 
 HENRY LABOUCHKRE
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 Henry Labouchere is the most amusing 
 speaker in the House of Commons. Eclipse 
 is first and there is no second — to adopt the 
 words once used by Lord Macaulay — at least, 
 if there be a second, I do not feel myself quali- 
 fied for the task of designating him. It is 
 hardly necessary to say that whenever Labou- 
 chere rises in the House of Commons — and 
 he rises very often in the course of a session — 
 he is sure of an immediate hearing. He sel- 
 dom addresses himself to any subject with the 
 outward appearance of seriousness. He always 
 puts his argument in jesting form ; sends a 
 shower of sparkling words over the most sol- 
 emn controversy ; puts on the manner of one 
 who has plunged into the debate only for the 
 mere fun of the thing ; and brings his display 
 to an end just at the time when the House 
 hopes that he is only beginning to exert him- 
 self for its amusement. I do not know that he 
 has ever made what could be called a long 
 
 101
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 speech, and I think I may fairly assume that 
 he has never made a speech which his au- 
 dience would not have wished to be a little 
 longer. 
 
 Now, I must say at once that it would be 
 the most complete misappreciation of Henry 
 Labouchere's character and purpose to regard 
 him as a mere jester, or even a mere humor- 
 ist endowed with the faculty of uttering spon- 
 taneous witticisms. Labouchere is very much 
 in earnest even when he makes a joke, and his 
 sharpest cynicism is inspired by a love of jus- 
 tice and a desire to champion the cause of 
 what he believes to be the right. I heard him 
 once make a speech in the House of Com- 
 mons on behalf of some suffering class or 
 cause, and when coming to a close he sud- 
 denly said : " I may be told that this is a sen- 
 timental view of the case ; but, Mr. Speaker, I 
 am a man of sentiment." The House broke 
 into a perfect chorus of laughter at the idea 
 thus presented of Labouchere as a man of sen- 
 timent. Probably many, or most, of his lis- 
 teners thought it was only Labouchere's fun, 
 and merely another illustration of his love for 
 droll paradox. I have no doubt that Labou- 
 chere knew very well in advance what sort of 
 
 102
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 reception was likely to be given to his descrip- 
 tion of himself, and that he heartily enjoyed 
 the effect it produced. But, all the same, there 
 was a good deal of truth in the description. I 
 have always regarded Labouchere as a man 
 of intensely strong opinions, whose peculiar 
 humor it is to maintain these opinions by sar- 
 casm and witticism and seeming paradox. 
 
 Certainly no public man in England has 
 given clearer evidence of his sincerity and 
 disinterestedness in any cause that he advo- 
 cates than Labouchere has done again and 
 again. I remember hearing it said many years 
 ago in New York of my old friend Horace 
 Greeley that whereas some other editors of 
 great newspapers backed up their money with 
 their opinions, Greeley backed up his opinions 
 with his money. The meaning, of course, was 
 that while some editors shaped their opinions 
 in order to make their journals profitable, Hor- 
 ace Greeley was ready to sacrifice his money for 
 the sake of maintaining the newspaper which 
 expressed his sincere convictions. Something 
 of the same kind might fairly be said of Henry 
 Labouchere. He is the proprietor and editor 
 of the weekly newspaper " Truth," in which he 
 expresses his own opinions without the slight- 
 
 103
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 est regard for the commercial interests of the 
 paper, or, indeed, for the political interests of 
 the party which he usually supports in the 
 House of Commons. I believe that, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, " Truth " is a most successful enter- 
 prise, even as a commercial speculation, for 
 everybody wants to know what it is likely to 
 say on this or that new and exciting question, 
 and nobody can tell in advance what view 
 Labouchere's organ may be likely to take. 
 Labouchere has, however, given proof many 
 times that he keeps up his newspaper as the 
 organ of his individual opinions, and not 
 merely as a means of making money or sus- 
 taining the interests of a political party. He 
 has again and again hunted out and hunted 
 down evil systems of various kinds, shams and 
 quacks of many orders, abuses affecting large 
 masses of the poor and the lowly, and has 
 rendered himself liable to all manner of legal 
 actions for the recovery of damages. If, be- 
 cause of some technical or other failure in his 
 defense to one of those legal actions, Labou- 
 chere is cast in heavy damages, he pays the 
 amount, makes a jest or two about it, and goes 
 to work at the collection of better evidence 
 and at the hunting out of other shams with 
 
 104
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 as cheery a countenance as if nothing partic- 
 ular had happened. Fortunately for himself, 
 and, I think, also very fortunately for the pub- 
 lic in general, Labouchere is personally a rich 
 man, and is able to meet without inconvenience 
 any loss which may be brought upon him now 
 and then by his resolute endeavors to expose 
 shams. 
 
 Labouchere spent ten years of his earlier 
 manhood in the diplomatic service, and was 
 attache at various foreign courts and at Wash- 
 ington. He had always a turn for active politi- 
 cal life, and entered the House of Commons in 
 1865, and in 1880 was elected as one of the 
 representatives for the constituency of North- 
 ampton. His colleague at that time in the 
 representation of the constituency was the once 
 famous Charles Bradlaugh. It would not be 
 easy to find a greater contrast in appearance 
 and manners, in education and social bringing 
 up, than that presented by the two representa- 
 tives of Northampton. Labouchere is a man 
 of barely medium stature ; Bradlaugh's propor- 
 tions approached almost to the gigantic. One 
 could not talk for five minutes with Labou- 
 chere and fail to know, even if they had never 
 met before, that Labouchere was a man born 
 
 105
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 and trained to the ways of what is called good 
 society ; Bradlaugh was evidently a child of 
 the people, who had led a hard and rough- 
 ening life, and had had to make his way by 
 sheer toil and unceasing exertion. Bradlaugh 
 as a public speaker was powerful and com- 
 manding in his peculiar style — the style of 
 the workingman's platform and of the open-air 
 meetings in Hyde Park. He had tremendous 
 lungs, a voice of surprising power and volume, 
 and his speeches were all attuned to the tone 
 of open-air declamation. Most observers, even 
 among those who thoroughly recognized his 
 great intellectual power and his command of 
 language, would have taken it for granted be- 
 forehand that he never could suit himself to 
 the atmosphere of the House of Commons. 
 Labouchere's speeches, even when delivered to 
 a large public meeting, were pitched in a con- 
 versational key, and he never attempted a 
 declamatory flight. His speeches within the 
 House of Commons and outside it always 
 sparkled with droll and humorous illustrations, 
 and when he was most in earnest he seemed 
 to be making a joke of the whole business. 
 Bradlaugh was always terribly in earnest, and 
 seemed as if he were determined to bear down 
 
 io6
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 all opposition by the power of his arguments 
 and the volume of his voice. In Labouchere 
 you always found the man accustomed to the 
 polished ways of diplomatic circles ; in Brad- 
 laugh one saw the typical champion of the 
 oppressed working class. Labouchere comes, 
 as his name would suggest, from a French 
 Huguenot family of old standing ; Bradlaugh 
 was thoroughly British in style even when he 
 advocated opinions utterly opposed to those of 
 the average Briton. 
 
 The House of Commons is, on the whole, 
 a fair-minded assembly, and even those who 
 were most uncompromising in their hostility 
 to some of Bradlaugh's views came soon to 
 recognize that by his election to Parliament 
 the House had obtained a new and powerful 
 debater. Both men soon won recognition from 
 the House for their very different character- 
 istics as debaters, and at one time I think that 
 the college-bred country gentlemen of the Tory 
 ranks were inclined, on the whole, to find 
 more fault with Labouchere than with Brad- 
 laugh. They seemed willing to make allow- 
 ances for Bradlaugh which they would not 
 make for his colleague in the representation 
 of Northampton. One can imagine their rea- 
 
 107
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 soning out the matter somewhat in this way : 
 This man Bradlaugh comes from the work- 
 ing class, is not in any sense belonging to our 
 order, and we must take all that into account ; 
 while this other man, Labouchere, is of our 
 own class, has had his education at Eton, has 
 been trained among diplomatists in foreign 
 courts, is in fact a gentleman, and yet is con- 
 stantly proclaiming his hostility to all the 
 established institutions of his native country. 
 Even the Tory country gentlemen, however, 
 found it impossible wholly to resist the wit, 
 the sarcasms, and the droll humors of Labou- 
 chere, and whenever he spoke in the House 
 he was sure to have attentive listeners on all 
 the rows of benches. 
 
 Bradlaugh's actual Parliamentary career did 
 not last very long. When he was first elected 
 for Northampton, he refused to take the oath 
 of allegiance, on the ground that he could not 
 truthfully make that appeal to the higher power 
 with which the oath concludes. He was will- 
 ing to make an affirmation, but the majority of 
 the House would not accept the compromise. 
 A considerable period of struggle intervened. 
 The seat was declared to be vacant, but Mr. 
 Bradlaugh was promptly re-elected by the con- 
 
 io8
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 stituents of Northampton, and then there set 
 in a dispute between the House and the con- 
 stituency something Hke that which, in the 
 days of Daniel O'Connell, ended in Catholic 
 emancipation. Bradlaugh was enabled to enter 
 the House in 1886, and he made himself very 
 conspicuous in debate. His manners were re- 
 markably courteous, and he became popular 
 after a while even among those who held his 
 political and religious opinions in the utmost 
 abhorrence. His career was closed in 1891 by 
 
 death. 
 
 I can well remember my first meeting with 
 Henry Labouchere. It was at a dinner party 
 given by my friend Sir John R. Robinson, then 
 and until quite lately manager of the London 
 " Daily News." The dinner was given at the 
 Reform Club, and took place, I think, some 
 time before Labouchere's election for North- 
 ampton. I had never seen Labouchere before 
 that time, and had somehow failed to learn his 
 name before we sat down to dinner. We were 
 not a large party, and the conversation was 
 general. I was soon impressed by the vivid 
 and unstrained humor of Labouchere's talk 
 and by the peculiarity of his manner. He 
 spoke his sentences in quiet, slow, and even 
 
 109
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 languid tones ; there was nothing whatever of 
 the " agreeable rattle " in his demeanor ; he 
 had no appearance of any determination to be 
 amusing, or even consciousness of any power 
 to amuse. He always spoke without effort and 
 with the air of one who would just as soon 
 have remained silent if he did not happen to 
 have something to say, and whatever he did 
 say in his languorous tones was sure to hold 
 the attention and to delight the humorous fac- 
 ulties of every listener. My curiosity was 
 quickly aroused and promptly satisfied as to 
 the identity of this delightful talker, and thus 
 began my acquaintanceship with Labouchere, 
 which has lasted ever since, and is, I hope, 
 likely to last for some time longer. Labou- 
 chere is a wonderful teller of stories drawn 
 from his various experiences in many parts of 
 the world, and, unlike most other story-tellers, 
 he is never heard to repeat an anecdote, unless 
 when he was especially invited to do so for the 
 benefit of some one who had not had an oppor- 
 tunity of hearing it before. If he were only 
 a teller of good stories and an utterer of witty 
 sayings, he would well deserve a place in the 
 social history of England during our times; 
 but Labouchere's skill as a talker is one of his 
 
 no
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 least considerable claims upon public attention. 
 Nature endowed Labouchere with what might 
 be called a fighting spirit, and I believe that 
 whenever he sees any particular cause or body 
 of men apparently put under conditions of dis- 
 advantage, his first instinctive inclination is to 
 make himself its advocate, so far at least as to 
 insist that the cause or the men must have a 
 fair hearing. 
 
 In the House of Commons it could not have 
 happened very often that Henry Labouchere 
 was found on the side of the strong battalions. 
 I know that during the heaviest and the fier- 
 cest struggles of the Irish National party against 
 coercive laws and in favor of Ireland's demand 
 for Home Rule, Henry Labouchere was always 
 found voting with us in the division lobby. 
 Some of those days were very dark indeed. 
 Before Gladstone had become converted to the 
 principle of Home Rule for Ireland, and before 
 the later changes in the system of Parliamen- 
 tary representation had given an extended pop- 
 ular suffrage to the Irish constituencies, the 
 number of Irish representatives who followed 
 the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell was 
 for many sessions not more than seven or eight. 
 There were some English members who always 
 
 III
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 voted with us, and conspicuous and constant 
 among these were Sir Wilfred Lawson and 
 Henry Labouchere. Unquestionably neither 
 Labouchere nor Lawson had anything what- 
 ever to gain in Parliamentary or worldly sense 
 by identifying himself with our efforts in the 
 House of Commons. As soon as Ireland got 
 her fair share of the popular franchise, Parnell 
 was followed by some eighty or ninety mem- 
 bers out of the hundred and three who consti- 
 tute the whole Irish representation. This was 
 the very fact which first brought Gladstone, 
 as I heard from his own lips, to see that the 
 demand of Ireland was in every sense a thor- 
 oughly national demand, and that the whole 
 principle of the British constitution claimed for 
 it the consideration of genuine statesmanship. 
 Labouchere had identified himself with the 
 national cause in the days before that cause 
 had yet found anything like representation in 
 the House of Commons. Through all his po- 
 litical career he remained faithful to that prin- 
 ciple of nationality, and in the time — I hope 
 not distant — when the Irish claim for Home 
 Rule is recognized and accepted by the British 
 Parliament, Ireland is not likely to forget that 
 Henry Labouchere was one of the very few 
 
 112
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 English members who recognized and champi- 
 oned her claim in the hour when almost every 
 man's hand was against it. 
 
 Perhaps the inborn spirit of adventure which 
 makes itself so apparent in Labouchere's tem- 
 perament and career may have had something 
 to do with his championship of the oppressed. 
 I do not say this with any intention to dispar- 
 age Labouchere's genuine desire to uphold what 
 he believes to be the right, but only to illus- 
 trate the peculiarities of his nature. Certainly 
 his love of adventure has made itself conspicu- 
 ous and impressive at many stages of his varied 
 career. There is a legend to the effect that 
 Labouchere joined at one time the company of 
 a traveling circus in the United States for the 
 novelty and amusement of the enterprise. I 
 do not know whether there is any truth in this 
 story, but I should certainly be quite prepared 
 to believe it on anything like authentic evi- 
 dence. The adventure would seem quite in 
 keeping with the temper of the man. Most of 
 us know what happened when the Germans 
 were besieging Paris during the war of 1870. 
 It suddenly occurred to Labouchere that it 
 would be a most interesting chapter in a man's 
 life if he were to spend the winter in the be- 
 
 113
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 sieged city. No sooner said, or thought, than 
 done. Labouchere was then one of the pro- 
 prietors of the London " Daily News," and he 
 announced his determination to undertake the 
 task of representing that journal in Paris as 
 long as the siege should last. Of course he 
 obtained full authority for the purpose, and he 
 contrived to make his way into Paris, and when 
 there he relieved the regular correspondent of 
 the " Daily News " from his wearisome and 
 perilous work by sending him off, in a balloon, 
 I believe, to Tours, where he was out of the 
 range of the German forces, and could continue 
 his daily survey of events in general. Then 
 Labouchere set himself down to enjoy all the 
 hardships of the siege, to live on the flesh of 
 horse and donkey and even cat and rat, to 
 endure the setting in of utter darkness when 
 once the sun had gone down, and to chronicle 
 a daily account of his strange experiences. This 
 was accomplished in his " Diary of a Besieged 
 Resident," which appeared from day to day in 
 the columns of the " Daily News," and was 
 afterwards published as a volume, and a most 
 entertaining, humorous, realistic, and delight- 
 ful volume it made. The very difficulties of its 
 transmission by means of balloons and pigeons 
 
 114
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 and other such floating or flying agencies must 
 have been a constant source of amusement 
 and excitement to the adventurous besieged 
 resident. 
 
 Labouchere has always been in the habit of 
 seeking excitement by enterprises on the Stock 
 Exchange. I do not believe that these ven- 
 tures have been made with the commonplace 
 desire to make money, but I can quite under- 
 stand that they are prompted by the very same 
 desire for new experiences which prompted the 
 residence in besieged Paris. I remember meet- 
 ing Labouchere one day many years ago in a 
 West End London street, and being told by 
 him that he had just incurred a very heavy loss 
 by one of his financial ventures on the Stock 
 Exchange. He told me in his usual tones of 
 almost apathetic languor the amount of his 
 loss, and it seemed to my modest experiences in 
 money affairs to be a positive fortune sacrificed. 
 He was smiling blandly while recounting his 
 adventure, and I could not help asking him how 
 he had felt when the loss was first made known 
 to him. " Well," he replied, in the same good- 
 humored tone, " it was an experience, like an- 
 other." That, I think, is a fair illustration of 
 Labouchere 's governing mood. The great thing 
 
 115
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 was to get a new sensation. At one time La- 
 bouchere became the founder and the owner of 
 a new theater in London, and he took part in 
 many a newspaper enterprise. He was, as I 
 have said, for a long time one of the proprie- 
 tors of the " Daily News," and he entered into 
 that proprietorship at the very time when the 
 *' Daily News " was making itself most unpop- 
 ular in capitalist circles and in what is known 
 as society, by its resolute and manly adherence 
 to the side of the Federal States during the 
 great American Civil War. It suited Labou- 
 chere's pluck and temper to join in such an 
 undertaking at the time when the odds seemed 
 all against it ; and it is only fair to say that I 
 am sure no love for a new sensation could 
 induce Labouchere to take up any cause which 
 he did not believe to be the cause of right. 
 
 Labouchere was one of those who went in 
 with the late Edmund Yates in founding " The 
 World," then quite a new venture as a society 
 journal. Labouchere, however, did not long 
 remain a sharer in this enterprise. Yates was 
 the editor of the paper, and Yates went in alto- 
 gether for satirical or at least amusing pictures 
 of West End life, and did not care anything 
 about politics and the struggles of this or that 
 
 ii6
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 political movement. Labouchere could not 
 settle down to any interest in a newspaper 
 which dealt only with changes of fashion and 
 the whimsicalities of social life. His close 
 interest in political questions filled him with 
 the resolve to start a journal which, while deal- 
 ing with the personages and the ways of soci- 
 ety, should also be the organ of his own views 
 on graver subjects. He therefore withdrew 
 from all concern in Edmund Yates's " World " 
 and started his own weekly newspaper, " Truth," 
 which has since enjoyed a life of vigor and suc- 
 cess. There is room enough for both papers 
 apparently. The " World " has not lost its 
 circle of readers, while " Truth " is beyond ques- 
 tion a great power in political and financial as 
 well as in social movements. 
 
 One of Labouchere's special delights is to 
 expose in " Truth " some successful adventurer 
 in pretentious financial schemes, some hypo- 
 critical projector of sham philanthropic institu- 
 tions, some charlatan with whom, because of 
 his temporary influence and success, most other 
 people are unwilling to try conclusions. Such 
 an impostor is just the sort of man whom La- 
 bouchere is delighted to encounter. Labou- 
 chere's plan is simple and straightforward. He 
 
 117
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 publishes an article in " Truth " containing the 
 most direct and explicit charges of imposture 
 and fraud against the man whom he has deter- 
 mined to expose, and he invites this man to 
 bring an action against him in a court of law 
 and obtain damages, if he can, for slander. 
 Labouchere usually intimates politely that he 
 will not avail himself of any preliminary and 
 technical forms which might interpose unne- 
 cessary delay, and that he will do all in his 
 power as defendant to facilitate and hasten 
 the trial of the action. It happens in many or 
 most cases that the personage thus invited to 
 appeal to a court of law cautiously refrains 
 from accepting the invitation. He knows that 
 Labouchere has plenty of money, perceives that 
 he is not to be frightened out of his allegations, 
 and probably thinks the safest course is to 
 treat " Truth " and its owner with silent con- 
 tempt. Sometimes, however, the accused man 
 accepts battle in a court of law, and the atten- 
 tion of the public is riveted on the hearing of 
 the case. Perhaps Labouchere fails to make 
 out every one of his charges, and then the re- 
 sult is formally against him and he may be 
 cast in damages, but he cares nothing for the 
 cost and is probably well satisfied with the 
 
 ii8
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 knowledge that he has directed the full criti- 
 cism of the public to the general character of 
 his opponent's doings and has made it impos- 
 sible for the opponent to work much harm in 
 the future. Even the strongest political an- 
 tagonists of Labouchere have been found ready 
 to admit that he has rendered much service 
 to the public by his resolute efforts to expose 
 shams and quackeries of various kinds at what- 
 ever pecuniary risk or cost to himself. 
 
 I do not know whether it would be quite 
 consistent with the realities of the situation if 
 I were to describe Labouchere as a favorite in 
 the House of Commons. He has provoked so 
 many enmities, he has made so many enemies 
 by his sharp sarcasms, his unsparing ridicule, 
 and his sometimes rather heedless personal- 
 ities, that a great many members of the House 
 must be kept in a state of chronic indignation 
 towards him. A man who arouses a feeling of 
 this kind and keeps it alive among a consid- 
 erable number of his brother members could 
 hardly be described with strict justice as a 
 favorite in the House of Commons. Yet it is 
 quite certain that there is no man in the House 
 whose sayings are listened to with a keener 
 interest, and whose presence would be more 
 
 119
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 generally missed if he were to retire from pub- 
 lic life. 
 
 One of the many stories which I have heard 
 about Labouchere's peculiar ways when he was 
 in the diplomatic service is worth repeating 
 here. It has never been contradicted, so far as 
 I know. When Labouchere was attache to the 
 British Legation at Washington — it was then 
 only a Legation — his room was invaded one 
 day by an indignant John Bull, fresh from 
 England, who had some grievance to bring 
 under the notice of the British Minister. That 
 eminent personage was not then in the house, 
 and the man with the grievance was shown into 
 Labouchere's room. Labouchere was smoking 
 a cigarette, according to his custom, and he 
 received the visitor blandly, but without any 
 effusive welcome. John Bull declared that he 
 must see the Minister at once, and Labouchere 
 mildly responded that the British Minister was 
 not in the Legation buildings. "When will 
 he return?" was the next demand, to which 
 Labouchere could only make answer that he 
 really did not know. " Then," declared the 
 resolute British citizen, " I have only to say that 
 I shall wait here until he returns." Labou- 
 chere signified his full concurrence with this 
 
 1 20
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 proposal, and graciously invited his country- 
 man to take a chair, and then went on with his 
 reading and noting of letters and his cigarette 
 just as before. Hours glided away, and no 
 further word was exchanged. At last the hour 
 came for closing the official rooms, and Labou- 
 chere began to put on his coat and make prepa- 
 rations for a speedy departure. The visitor 
 thereupon saw that the time had come for 
 some decided movement on his part, and he 
 sternly put to Labouchere the question, " Can 
 you tell me where the British Minister is just 
 now ? " Labouchere replied, with his usual 
 unruffled composure, " I really cannot tell you 
 exactly where he is just now, but I should 
 think he must be nearly halfway across the 
 Atlantic, as he left New York for England last 
 Saturday." Up rose John Bull in fierce indig- 
 nation, and exclaimed, " You never told me 
 that he had left for England." "You never 
 asked me the question," Labouchere made an- 
 swer, with undisturbed urbanity, and the visitor 
 had nothing for it but to go off in storm. 
 
 Labouchere is the possessor of a beautiful 
 and historic residence on the banks of the 
 Thames — Pope's famous villa at Twickenham. 
 There he is in the habit of entertaining his 
 
 121
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 friends during the summer months, and there 
 one is sure to meet an interesting and amusing 
 company. I have had the pleasure of being 
 his guest many times, and I need hardly say 
 that I have always found such visits delightful. 
 Labouchere is a most charming host, and al- 
 though he is himself a wonderful talker, full 
 of anecdote and reminiscence, he never fails 
 to see that the conversation is thoroughly dif- 
 fused, and that no guest is left out of the 
 talk. In London he always mixes freely with 
 society, and his London home is ever hospi- 
 table. Many of his friends were strongly of 
 opinion that he ought to have been invited to 
 become a member of a Liberal administration. 
 I suppose, however, that most of the solid and 
 steady personages who form a Cabinet would 
 have been rather alarmed at the idea of so 
 daring and damaging a free lance being ap- 
 pointed to a high place in the official ranks of 
 a Government, and it would have been out 
 of the question to think of offering any sub- 
 ordinate position to so brilliant a master of 
 Parliamentary debate. For myself I do not 
 feel any regret that Labouchere, so far, has not 
 taken any place in an administration. He has 
 made his fame as a free lance, and has done 
 
 122
 
 HENRY LABOUCHERE 
 
 efficient public work in that capacity, such as 
 he could hardly have accomplished if he had 
 been set down to the regular and routine duties 
 of an official post. He has made a name for 
 himself by his independent support of every 
 cause and movement which he believed to have 
 justice on its side, and I could not think with 
 any satisfaction of a so-called promotion which 
 must submerge his individuality in the mea- 
 sured counsels and compromises of a number 
 of administrative colleagues. I prefer still to 
 think of him as Henry Labouchere, and not as 
 the Rio^ht Honorable Gentleman at the head 
 of this, that, or the other department of State. 
 
 123
 
 JOHN MORLEY
 
 Photograph copyriL'ht liy London Stereoscopic Co. 
 
 JOHN MORLEY
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 No English public man of the present day 
 has had a more remarkable political career 
 than that of John Morley. Almost everything 
 that could be against success in political life 
 was against John Morley when he arose from 
 the student's desk to take his place on the 
 political platform. I am not now making any 
 allusion to the difficulties set in a man's way 
 by those accidents which the first Lord Lytton 
 described grandiloquently as the " twin gaolers 
 of the human heart, low birth and iron fortune." 
 I am not quite certain what iron fortune may 
 be, but if I assume it to be early poverty I do 
 not regard it as a very formidable obstruction 
 to human genius in our times. We have many 
 successful men in public life just now who 
 were born in humble station and had to strug- 
 gle hard for a long time against poverty. John 
 Morley was not born in humble life, as the 
 phrase goes, and had not, so far as I know, to 
 struggle against early poverty. He had an 
 
 127
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Oxford University education and was called 
 to the bar, but did not make any effort after 
 success in that profession. The difficulties to 
 which I have alluded as standing in his way 
 when he determined to seek a career in politi- 
 cal and Parliamentary life had nothing to do 
 with birth and with poverty — they were of 
 quite a different order. 
 
 Morley had taken to literature as a profes- 
 sion, and had made for himself a distinguished 
 name as a writer of books and an editor of 
 reviews and newspapers before he obtained a 
 seat in the House of Commons. Now, there 
 is, or used to be, a sort of fixed belief in the 
 British public mind that a literary man is not, 
 in the nature of things, qualified for success in 
 Parliamentary work. We are somewhat getting 
 over this idea of late, and indeed there were 
 at all times living evidences enough to shake 
 such a faith. The generation which recog- 
 nized the success won in Parliamentary debate 
 by a Macaulay, a Disraeli, and a Bulwer-Lytton 
 might well have got over the notion that liter- 
 ary men cannot succeed in Parliament; but 
 even up to the time of John Morley 's election 
 to the House of Commons the idea found still 
 a very general acceptation. Another and much 
 
 128
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 more serious difficulty in John Morley's way 
 was the fact that he was a proclaimed agnostic 
 in questions of religious faith. Now, the aver- 
 age Englishman can hardly be described as 
 one imbued with profound and exalted religious 
 convictions, but it may be taken for granted 
 that he thinks every respectable person who is 
 fit to be a member of Parliament ought to con- 
 form to some recognized creed and to attend 
 some authorized place of worship. John Mor- 
 ley was at one time not merely an agnostic, but 
 an avowed and somewhat aggressive agnostic, 
 and his brilliant pen had often been employed 
 to deal satirically with some established doc- 
 trine. 
 
 In England there is little or no general ob- 
 jection to freedom of opinion so long as it is 
 a question merely of opinion. We may know 
 that a man holds free-thinking opinions, but we 
 feel no wish to inflict any manner of punish- 
 ment or deprivation on him so long as he keeps 
 his opinions to himself and does not endeavor 
 to make them prevail with others. This, how- 
 ever, was what John Morley had got into the 
 way of doing. When he felt a strong con- 
 viction on any subject which seemed to him 
 important, he always endeavored to justify his 
 
 129
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 faith by argument and to bring others round 
 to his views of the question. 
 
 I can well remember that many of Morley's 
 admirers and friends were but little gratified 
 when it was first made known that he intended 
 to seek for a seat in the House of Commons. 
 Their impression was that he was just then 
 doing in effective and admirable style the very 
 kind of work for which he was best qualified, 
 and that it was a pity he should run the risk of 
 marring such a career for the sake of entering 
 a political field in which he might possibly win 
 no success, and in which success, even if won, 
 would be poor compensation for the sacrifice 
 of better work. Morley, however, seems to 
 have made up his mind, even at an early period 
 of his career, that he would try his chance in 
 Parliament. So long ago as 1865 he became a 
 candidate for a constituency in the North of 
 England, but was not successful ; and in 1880, 
 after he had won genuine celebrity by his 
 biography of Edmund Burke, that of Voltaire, 
 that of Rousseau, and other books of the same 
 order, he became a candidate for the great 
 metropolitan division of Westminster. Here 
 again he was unsuccessful, and it was only in 
 1883 that he first obtained a seat in the House 
 
 130
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 of Commons as the representative of Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne. I can well remember listening with 
 the deepest interest to his maiden speech in 
 the House of Commons. The general impres- 
 sion of the House was that the speech would 
 prove a failure, for only too many members had 
 already made up their minds, according to the 
 usual fashion of the day, that a successful liter- 
 ary man was not likely to become a Parliamen- 
 tary success. There was a common impression 
 also that, despite his great gifts as a writer and 
 his proved capacity as a journalist and editor, 
 John Morley must be an impracticable sort of 
 person. He had been at one time well known 
 as an associate of the famous Positivist order 
 of thinkers — the order to which men like 
 Frederic Harrison and Richard Congreve be- 
 longed. The average member of Parliament 
 could see no chance for a disciple of that 
 school, which this average member regarded 
 merely as a group of dreamers, to make any 
 mark in a practical assembly where the routine 
 business of legislation had to be carried on. 
 Morley 's speech was, however, a distinct and 
 unmistakable success. 
 
 What first impressed the House of Commons 
 was the ready, quiet force of Morley's delivery. 
 
 131
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 He had a fine, clear voice, he spoke without 
 notes and without any manifest evidence of 
 preparation, every sentence expressed without 
 effort the precise meaning which he wished to 
 convey, and his style had an eloquence pecu- 
 liarly its own. What most men expected of 
 him was the philosophical discourse of a student 
 and a thinker no longer in his fitting place, and 
 what was least expected of him was just that 
 which he delivered, a ready, telling, and power- 
 ful Parliamentary speech. He had some un- 
 expected difficulties to encounter, because he 
 gave out his opinions so forcibly and so boldly 
 that their utterance called forth frequent inter- 
 ruptions — an unusual event in the case of a 
 maiden speech, which is generally regarded as 
 a mere introductory ceremonial and is taken 
 politely as a necessary matter of form. The 
 House soon found, however, that John Morley's 
 speech did not by any means belong to the 
 ordinary category of maiden performances, and 
 the very interruptions were therefore a positive 
 tribute to the importance of the new member's 
 argument. The interruptions were in every 
 sense fortunate for Morley, because they en- 
 abled him at this very first opportunity to prove 
 his ready capacity for debate. He replied on 
 
 132
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 the spur of the moment to every interruption 
 and every interjected question, and he showed 
 all the composure, all the promptitude and the 
 command, of a practiced Parliamentary de- 
 bater. Every man in the House whose opinion 
 was worth having at once recognized the fact 
 that a new force had come up in Parliamentary 
 debate, and when John Morley resumed his 
 seat he must have known that he had accom- 
 plished a complete success. From that time 
 onward John Morley has always been recog- 
 nized as one of the most powerful speakers in 
 the House of Commons. His voice is clear, 
 resonant, and musical, the light of intellect 
 gleams in his earnest eyes, his argument is 
 always well sustained and set off with varied 
 and appropriate illustration, and whenever he 
 rises to speak he is sure to have a deeply atten- 
 tive audience. 
 
 Morley is not in the highest sense one of the 
 orators of Parliament. He is not to be classed, 
 and has never sought to be classed, with such 
 men as Gladstone and Bright. But, short of 
 the highest gift of eloquence, he has every 
 quality needed to make a great Parliamentary 
 debater. When he addresses the House of 
 Commons, one ceases to think of him merely 
 
 133
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 as the scholar and the author, and he becomes 
 the man who can command the House by 
 the arguments and the eloquence which the 
 House best understands. There are many men 
 of high intellectual capacity who occasionally 
 take part in a Parliamentary debate and who 
 are always regarded as in the House but not 
 of it. John Morley proved from his very first 
 effort that he was of the House as well as in it. 
 I have heard him make great platform speeches, 
 and I think he comes nearer to the highest 
 order of eloquence when addressing an ordinary 
 political meeting than even when addressing the 
 House, but it is quite certain that at the present 
 time the House of Commons has no member 
 who can more completely command its atten- 
 tion. It must be said, too, that the character of 
 the man himself, his transparent sincerity, his 
 absolute devotedness to principle, his fearless 
 and unselfish consistency, count for much in 
 the commanding position which he has obtained. 
 The integrity of Morley's career is absolutely 
 beyond criticism or cavil. It never entered 
 into the mind of his bitterest opponent to sus- 
 pect for a moment that Morley could be in- 
 fluenced by any personal consideration in the 
 course which he took or the words which he 
 
 134
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 uttered. Other men of high position in ParHa- 
 ment are commonly set down as having taken 
 this or that course, modified or suppressed this 
 or that opinion, for the sake of personal ad- 
 vancement, or at least for the sake of maintain- 
 ing the interests of a party. But everybody 
 knows that John Morley has never sought for 
 office, and could never be induced to make any 
 compromise of political principle even for the 
 sake of maintaining in power the political party 
 to which he belongs. The universal recogni- 
 tion of that great quality in him has added 
 unspeakably to his influence in Parliament. 
 He was not at any time a frequent speaker in 
 the House of Commons, and of course he never 
 was a mere talker. He speaks only when he 
 has something to say which he believes ought 
 to be said and to be said by him, and he never 
 seems to have any temptation to enter into 
 debate for the mere pleasure of taking part in 
 the controversy. If a man is really a good 
 speaker, the House is always ready to listen to 
 him no matter how often he may speak, for the 
 plain reason that debate has to go on for a cer- 
 tain number of hours each day, and it is more 
 pleasant to listen to a member who talks well 
 than to one who talks badly. But, no matter 
 
 135
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 how effective and eloquent a speaker may be, 
 it is quite certain that the House will give him 
 a more attentive ear if it knows beforehand 
 that whenever he rises to take part in debate 
 it is sure to hear something which up to that 
 moment has not been spoken. John Morley, 
 therefore, very soon became one of that small 
 body of men in the House of Commons whose 
 rising to speak is always regarded as an event 
 of interest and importance. 
 
 In the retrospect of John Morley 's career one 
 is brought up with something approaching to 
 a shock of surprise when he remembers that at 
 the opening of Morley's Parliamentary life he 
 was closely associated with Joseph Chamber- 
 lain. I remember having heard people say at 
 the time that Chamberlain took much credit to 
 himself on the ground that he had urged and 
 prevailed upon John Morley to persevere in 
 seeking a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. 
 Chamberlain was at that time an extreme and 
 uncompromising Radical. He was an avowed 
 and constant supporter of the Home Rule 
 party ; was in close alliance with Parnell ; took 
 a leading part in the arrangement of the 
 so-called Kilmainham Treaty, and delivered 
 a warm panegyric on Parnell himself and Par- 
 
 136
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 nell's policy to a crowded and for the most 
 part an indignant House of Commons. There 
 was, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact 
 that Morley and Chamberlain were at that 
 time friends and allies in political affairs, nor 
 had any one then the faintest reason to be- 
 lieve that Chamberlain was ever destined to 
 undergo a sudden and miraculous conversion 
 to ultra-Tory principles. When Mr. Gladstone 
 came into office in 1886 with what was known 
 to be a Home Rule administration, John Mor- 
 ley obtained the position of Chief Secretary to 
 the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with a seat in 
 the Cabinet. It is not by any means a matter 
 of course that the Irish Chief Secretary should 
 be a Cabinet Minister. Sometimes the Lord- 
 Lieutenant himself has a place in the Cabinet 
 and the Chief Secretary is merely an ordi- 
 nary member of the Government; sometimes, 
 when the Chief Secretary is regarded as a 
 very strong man, he is invited to a seat in the 
 Cabinet and his official master remains out- 
 side. John Morley was recognized from the 
 first by Gladstone as a man of the highest 
 political capacity and character, and when the 
 new administration came to be formed Glad- 
 stone made evident this estimate of Morley 
 
 137
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 by offering him a place in the Cabinet. The 
 keenest interest was felt alike both by politi- 
 cal friends and political enemies in Morley's 
 manasrement of Irish affairs. The new Secre- 
 tary for Ireland was entering bravely on an 
 enterprise the immediate success of which was, 
 under the conditions, absolutely impossible. I 
 have no doubt whatever that success could 
 have been easily and completely accomplished 
 if John Morley had been allowed his own way 
 in dealing with the whole Irish question — 
 if, for instance, he had been placed in such 
 a position of dictatorship as that which was 
 given to Lord Durham when Durham was 
 sent out to deal with the rebellion in Can- 
 ada. Durham saw but one remedy for the 
 long discontents and troubles of the Canadian 
 populations, and that remedy he found in the 
 system of Home Rule which has since made 
 Canada peaceful, prosperous, and well content 
 with the place she holds in the British Em- 
 pire. If John Morley could have been invested 
 with such powers as those given to Lord 
 Durham, he might have made of Ireland 
 another prosperous and contented Canada. 
 But Morley had to administer the affairs of 
 Ireland at a time when the opinion of the 
 
 138
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 English majority had not yet risen to the prin- 
 ciple of Home Rule, at least so far as Ireland 
 was concerned, and without such recognition 
 it was beyond the reach of statesmanship to 
 satisfy the national demands of the Irish peo- 
 ple. Every Irish Nationalist knew perfectly 
 well that John Morley's heart and intellect 
 alike were with the cause of Irish Home Rule. 
 All that Morley could do to mitigate the trou- 
 bles of the country and the people he did 
 bravely and steadfastly. Ireland was then the 
 victim of an accumulation of coercion laws 
 which made almost every popular movement, 
 every attempt to maintain an oppressed tenant 
 against an oppressive landlord, every protest 
 against despotic legislation, liable to be treated 
 as an offense calling for the interference of 
 the police. John Morley did all that could be 
 done to mitigate the rigors of such a system, 
 and to administer Ireland on something like 
 the principles of civilization and freedom. He 
 had in this task the full support, encourage- 
 ment, and sympathy of the statesman who was 
 then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland — the Earl 
 of Aberdeen, a man of the most thoroughly 
 Liberal principles and a sincere friend to Ire- 
 land. But, of course, neither Lord Aberdeen 
 
 139
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 nor John Morley could abolish at a word of 
 command a whole system of penal legislation, 
 and all that could be done was to take care 
 that the laws should be administered in a 
 temperate and reasonable spirit, and that the 
 rulers of Ireland should show themselves to be 
 at heart the friends of Ireland. 
 
 There comes back to my memory a some- 
 what curious illustration of the difficulties 
 which then stood in the way of any cordial 
 intercourse between the representatives of 
 English rule in Ireland and the representa- 
 tives of the Irish national cause, and I cannot 
 resist the temptation to tell the story here. 
 During Morley's first term of office as Chief 
 Secretary I made some visits to Dublin. I 
 had many meetings with Morley, of course, 
 and he invited me to dine wi.th him at the 
 Chief Secretary's Lodge in Phoenix Park. 
 Now, there had been during all my time a 
 rigorous rule among Irish Nationalists not to 
 accept any of the hospitalities of those who 
 exercised imperial authority in Dublin. No 
 true Nationalist would make one at any social 
 gathering in the official residence of the Vice- 
 roy or the Chief Secretary. There were more 
 than merely sentimental reasons for such a 
 
 140
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 principle. In former days the Irish people 
 had in several well-remembered instances seen 
 some vehement advocate of the Irish National 
 cause won over by the promises and the bland- 
 ishments of Dublin Castle to take office under 
 the Government and to renounce the political 
 faith the profession of which had won for him 
 his seat in Parliament. Therefore it was above 
 all things necessary, in order to maintain the 
 confidence of the Irish people, that the national 
 representatives should show themselves deter- 
 mined not to be drawn into any familiar social 
 relations with the representatives of English 
 rule in Ireland. This was especially a part of 
 Parnell's policy, and on it Parnell laid much 
 stress. John Morley came over to Ireland in 
 a spirit of full friendship towards the Irish 
 people, and he had every reason to believe 
 that the Irish people thoroughly understood 
 his feelings and his hopes. He and I had 
 known each other during many years in Lon- 
 don, and when we met in Dublin, he, being 
 still new to the conditions of the place, invited 
 me to dine with him. I explained to him that, 
 however delighted I should be to dine with 
 my friend John Morley, it was quite impossible 
 that I should dine with the Chief Secretary 
 
 141
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 at his official residence in Dublin. I assured 
 him that if I were to accept such an invitation 
 the Tory papers of Dublin would be certain 
 to make characteristic comments on the fact 
 that the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant and the Vice-Chairman of the Irish Par- 
 liamentary party had been dining together in 
 the Chief Secretary's official home, and that 
 we should both alike find ourselves the objects 
 of something approaching to a public scandal. 
 Morley was surprised at first and then a good 
 deal amused, but he accepted my explanation, 
 and thoroughly understood that it was not any 
 want of friendly feeling which led me to decline 
 his invitation. So we parted as good friends 
 as ever. We still met frequently and talked 
 over questions relating to Irish administration. 
 One day Morley came to see me at the Shel- 
 burne Hotel, which was then my home in Dub- 
 lin. We had a long talk, and, as the hour was 
 growing late, I asked him to stay and dine 
 with me, not remembering at the time that the 
 eye of the public was supposed to be on our 
 movements. One of Morley 's happiest gifts is 
 a delightful sense of humor. He rose to the 
 situation at once. Addressing me in solemn 
 tones, but with a gleam of the comic in his 
 
 142
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 eyes, he informed me that if my principles did 
 not allow me to dine with the Chief Secretary 
 in Dublin, so neither did the Chief Secretary's 
 principles allow him to dine there with me. 
 Thus, as some newspaper writers would say, 
 the incident terminated, and we made no fur- 
 ther effort at convivial meetings in Dublin. 
 
 John Morley's quick sense of humor is not 
 one of the qualities which a stranger would 
 naturally look for in him. Those who have 
 not met him and have known him only through 
 his writings are apt to think of him as a grave 
 and even an austere man, a man wholly im- 
 mersed in the serious contemplation of life and 
 history, and, if endowed with any sense of hu- 
 mor, only with a sense of its more grim and 
 saturnine aspects. The man himself is alto- 
 gether and curiously unlike the impression thus 
 formed of him very commonly by those to whom 
 he is not personally known. John Morley has 
 a quick, keen, and delightful sense of humor. 
 He can talk on any subject from grave to gay, 
 from lively to severe. He is one of the most 
 charming of companions, and he is a great fa- 
 vorite among women, even among those who do 
 not greatly concern themselves with the ques- 
 tion of woman's political emancipation. There 
 
 143
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 is nothing of the stern philosopher about his 
 manner of comporting himself in social life. 
 Indeed, for all the clear composure of his philo- 
 sophic contemplations, he has a temperament 
 far too quick and sensitive to allow of his meet- 
 ing all life's vexatious questions in the mood of 
 stoical endurance. He is by nature somewhat 
 nervous, is decidedly quick in temper, frankly 
 acknowledges that he is rather impatient of 
 contradiction, and is likely to become over- 
 heated in the course of an eager argument. I 
 feel the less hesitation in noticing these little 
 peculiarities on the part of my friend because I 
 have heard Morley himself speak of them with 
 perfect frankness as some of his troubles in 
 political controversy. I must say that, so far 
 as I know, these unphilosophical qualities of 
 Morley's temperament only tend to make him 
 all the more a charming friend to his friends. 
 We may admire the marble-like composure of 
 the stern philosopher who yields to no passing 
 human weaknesses of temper, but it must be 
 very hard to keep always on friendly terms with 
 so superhuman a personage. 
 
 Mr. Morley goes into society a good deal in 
 London, is often to be seen at the theaters on 
 first nights, seems to enjoy a dinner party or 
 
 144
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 an evening party as well as the most common- 
 place among us might do, but I do not believe 
 that he has any liking for great shows and 
 pompous celebrations and the other formal de- 
 monstrations of Court festivity and Ministerial 
 display. In his quiet London home he leads 
 the life of a man of culture, a scholar and a 
 writer, so far as his political and Parliamentary 
 engagements allow him leisure for such recrea- 
 tion, and he neither seeks the madding crowd 
 nor shuns it. It has always been a wonder to 
 me how such a man can find time for his many 
 and diverse studies and occupations, and should 
 never either neglect the work of his life or shut 
 himself away from its reasonable enjoyments. 
 John Morley is indeed a rare and almost unique 
 combination of the philosophical thinker, the 
 vivid biographer, the Parliamentary debater, 
 and the practical administrator. His life of 
 Richard Cobden is one of the most complete 
 and characteristic pieces of biography accom- 
 plished during our time. There would not 
 seem to have been much that was congenial 
 between the temperament of Richard Cobden 
 and that of John Morley. Cobden was not a 
 laborious student of the past ; he had no wide- 
 spread and varied literary or artistic sympa- 
 
 145
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 thies; he did not concern himself much with 
 any scientific studies except those which have 
 to do with the actual movements of man's work- 
 ing lifetime ; he was a great practical reformer, 
 not a scholar, a philosopher, or even a devoted 
 lover of books. I do not know that John Mor- 
 ley was personally well acquainted with Cob- 
 den, and I am rather inclined to believe that in 
 his biography of the great free-trader he relied 
 mainly on Cobden's correspondence and on the 
 information given to him by members of Cob- 
 den's family. Yet he has created a perfect liv- 
 ing picture of Cobden as Cobden's friends all 
 knew him, and he has shown to coming gener- 
 ations, not merely what Cobden said and did, 
 what great reforms he accomplished, and what 
 further reforms he ever had in view, but he has 
 shown what Cobden actually was, and made the 
 man himself a familiar figure to all who read 
 the book. So far as I can judge, he has 
 achieved the same success when telling us of 
 Burke, of Voltaire, and of Rousseau, and has 
 made us feel that with his guidance we come 
 to know the men themselves as well as the 
 parts they performed in politics or in literature. 
 Morley has for a long time been engaged in 
 preparing his life of Gladstone, and the mind 
 
 146
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 of England, which has lately been distracted 
 by the vicissitudes of war, is now free to turn 
 to quieter thoughts, and to look with eager ex- 
 pectation for the completion of the book. No 
 other living man could have anything like John 
 Morley's qualifications as the biographer of 
 Gladstone. He is one of the greatest masters 
 of lucid and vigorous English prose. He has 
 been what I may call a professional student of 
 the lives of great men ; he is a profound politi- 
 cal thinker ; and he has the faculty of describ- 
 ing to the life and making his subject live 
 again. In addition to all these claims to the 
 position of Gladstone's authorized biographer 
 comes the fact that Morley was for many years 
 intrusted with Gladstone's fullest confidence. 
 To no one did Gladstone make his feelings and 
 his purposes on all political questions more 
 fully known than to John Morley; and I think 
 I am justified in saying that at more than one 
 critical period in his later political history Glad- 
 stone chose Morley as his especial and, for the 
 time, his only confidant. I can say of my own 
 knowledge that in the later years of Gladstone's 
 active political life there were momentous occa- 
 sions when John Morley acted as the one sole 
 medium of private communication between 
 
 147
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Gladstone and the leaders of the Irish party. 
 I know, too, how careful and methodical Mor- 
 ley showed himself on all such occasions, and 
 with what ample and accurate notes he pre- 
 served the exact record of every day's inter- 
 communications. This is, indeed, one of 
 Morley's characteristic peculiarities — the com- 
 bination of exalted thought with the most minute 
 attention to the very routine of practical work. 
 That combination of qualities will display itself, 
 I feel quite certain, with complete success in 
 Morley's history of Gladstone's life. John Mor- 
 ley has still, we may well hope, a long political 
 career before him. When the Liberal party 
 next comes into power, John Morley will un- 
 questionably have one of its most commanding 
 offices placed at his disposal. Meanwhile he 
 has ample work on hand even for his energy 
 and perseverance. He is just finishing his life 
 of Gladstone, and is to take charge of the mag- 
 nificent library which belonged to the late Lord 
 Acton, the greatest English scholar and book- 
 lover of our time. Mr. Carnegie's gift of this 
 great library, lately bought by him, to John 
 Morley, is an act which does honor to the intel- 
 lect as well as to the heart of the generous 
 donor. Whatever positions, honors, or respon- 
 
 148
 
 JOHN MORLEY 
 
 sibilities maybe yet before John Morley, It may 
 be taken for granted that he has already won 
 for himself a secure place in the literature and 
 the political life of his country, and that his 
 name will live in its history. 
 
 149
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN
 
 Photograph hy Williniii X.iti v ^ n 
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen will always be asso- 
 ciated in my mind with a most hopeful season 
 of our political life, a season none the less 
 cherished in memory and none the less auspi- 
 cious because its hopes were doomed to tempo- 
 rary disappointment. That bright season was 
 the time when Mr. Gladstone was endeavoring 
 to carry out his policy of Home Rule for Ire- 
 land. I need hardly tell my American readers 
 that Gladstone's policy was condemned to fail- 
 ure, partly because of a secession of Liberals 
 who went over to the Conservative ranks for 
 the purpose of opposing the measure, and then 
 because of the attitude taken by the House of 
 Lords, who, thus encouraged, rejected the bill 
 after it had passed the House of Commons. 
 The season, therefore, which I am now recalling 
 to memory was that which came between Mr. 
 Gladstone's promulgation of his Home Rule 
 policy and the rejection of his second measure 
 of Home Rule. The interval was one full of 
 
 153
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the brightest hopes for all true British Liberals 
 and all Irish Nationalists. For the first time 
 during my recollection, British Liberalism and 
 Irish Nationalism were in true companionship 
 and concord. We fraternized as English and 
 Irish politicians had probably never fraternized 
 before. On both sides we were filled with the 
 fond belief that the disunion of Great Britain 
 and Ireland was soon to come to an end, and 
 that the true and lasting union of the two 
 peoples would be accomplished by Gladstone's 
 policy of giving to Ireland her national self- 
 government. It was a season of much festivity 
 in London, and the Irish Nationalist members 
 of Parliament were welcome guests in all the 
 great Liberals' houses. No figures are more 
 thoroughly associated in my memory with that 
 time than those of Lord Aberdeen and his 
 gifted and noble-minded wife. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen is the grandson of that Earl 
 of Aberdeen whose coalition ministry, a luck- 
 less effort at a temporary compromise between 
 hostile political forces, came to a disastrous end 
 during the Crimean War. The present Earl 
 succeeded to the title in 1870. He was edu- 
 cated at the University of St. Andrews, in 
 Scotland, and afterwards at University College, 
 
 154
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 Oxford. Lord Aberdeen was a Conservative 
 in his political principles when he entered the 
 House of Lords. But he had too much intellect 
 and too much independence of mind to remain 
 long in subserviency to the traditional creed of 
 a mere party. He differed from his leaders on 
 several important questions before he had fully 
 seen his way to take up his position as a 
 recognized member of the Liberal organiza- 
 tion. Most of us who had followed his career 
 thus far with any attention felt sure that the 
 Conservatives would not long be able to keep 
 such a man among their slow-going and unen- 
 lightened ranks, and no surprise was felt on 
 either side when he took his natural place as 
 a follower of Mr. Gladstone. Lord Aberdeen 
 became an earnest advocate of the Home Rule 
 policy, and all the noble influence that he 
 and his wife could bring to bear publicly and 
 privately was exerted in support of the cause. 
 Then it was that I first came to know Lord 
 and Lady Aberdeen. I have before me just 
 now a book called " Notables of Britain," de- 
 scribed on its title-page as " An Album of 
 Portraits and Autographs of the Most Eminent 
 Subjects of Her Majesty in the Sixtieth Year 
 of Her Reign." This book was published at 
 
 155
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the office of the " Review of Reviews," and was 
 understood to be the production of Mr. W. T. 
 Stead. It contains an excellent full-length 
 photograph of Lord Aberdeen, who, I may say, 
 has a face and figure well worthy to be pre- 
 served by painter and photographer for the 
 benefit of those who in coming days are inter- 
 ested in the notables of Britain. The portrait, 
 like all the other portraits in the volume, is 
 accompanied by an autograph line or two. 
 Lord Aberdeen's written words seem to me 
 peculiarly characteristic of the writer's bright 
 and hopeful spirit. I quote his words — the 
 writing is clear and well formed : — 
 
 I think this is a good motto : 
 " Transeunt nubes — manet coelutn." 
 
 Aberdeen. 
 
 The temper in which Lord Aberdeen con- 
 ducted all his political intercourse during this 
 period of promise was one of unchanging cour- 
 age and hopefulness. He was one of the most 
 active and ready am^ong the supporters of Mr. 
 Gladstone, and he found an untiring and invalu- 
 able companion in his charming wife. At that 
 time we used to hold political gatherings in 
 private houses as well as in public halls, and I 
 have taken part in more than one Home Rule 
 
 156
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 demonstration held in the private dwellings of 
 some of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues in office. 
 We used to have many social meetings for the 
 purpose of bringing Englishmen and Irishmen 
 into close association. Even Parnell himself 
 was prevailed upon to abandon for the time his 
 rule of seclusion from society, and to meet Mr. 
 Gladstone and Lord Spencer and other leading 
 Englishmen at private dinner parties. Lord 
 Aberdeen was one of the most conspicuous 
 and one of the most attractive figures in these 
 political and social gatherings, and I could not, 
 indeed, recall that period to memory for a mo- ■ 
 ment without finding his figure photographed 
 prominently in it. It was an interesting sight 
 during all that time to see some of the most 
 extreme and most aggressive members of the 
 Irish Parliamentary party mingling in social life 
 with British peers and magnates who only a 
 few years before would probably have regarded 
 those Irish members as traitors to the Queen 
 and fitting inmates of the prison cell. On the 
 other hand, too, it must be said that only a very 
 few years before the Irish Nationalist member 
 who was known to make his appearance in the 
 London drawing-rooms of English aristocracy 
 would have been set down by the majority of 
 
 157
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 his countrymen as a flunkey in spirit and a 
 traitor to his cause. There was a time not 
 long before when an Irish Nationalist member 
 would have needed some courage to enable 
 him to meet his constituents on election day 
 if the local papers had made it known that 
 he was in the habit of showing himself in 
 the drawing-rooms of English peers. All this 
 sudden and complete change had been brought 
 about by the genius and policy of Gladstone 
 when he came to see the true meaning and the 
 true claims of the demand for Irish Home 
 Rule. My memory goes back with a some- 
 what melancholy pleasure to those days of 
 hope and confidence when the true union of 
 Great Britain and Ireland seemed actually on 
 the verge of consummation. Nor have I the 
 slightest doubt that the lessons taught during 
 that season will have their full influence once 
 again when the period of reaction is over, and 
 that Gladstone's policy of 1886 will come to life 
 again before very long and will accomplish its 
 work once for all. 
 
 In that year, 1886, Gladstone appointed Lord 
 Aberdeen to the offlce of Lord-Lieutenant of 
 Ireland. The position was given to Lord Aber- 
 deen with the frankly proclaimed purpose that 
 
 158
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 he was to be the Lord-Lieutenant of a Home 
 Rule policy, and, indeed, on no other condi- 
 tions would Lord Aberdeen have consented to 
 accept the office. Lord Aberdeen's short term 
 of rule in Ireland was a complete success. 
 There was not much that the most Liberal 
 Lord-Lieutenant could do in the way of posi- 
 tive administration for the benefit of the island. 
 There was already in existence a whole code of 
 repressive legislation compiled during successive 
 ages of despotic government, and this existing 
 code it was not in the power of Lord Aberdeen 
 or any other Viceroy to abolish or even to 
 modify. All that the new Lord-Lieutenant 
 could do in the way of political relief to the 
 Irish people was to discourage as much as 
 possible the too frequent application of the 
 coercive laws and to make it known that the 
 sympathies of the new Government were in 
 favor of political freedom for Ireland, as well 
 as for England and Scotland. Lord Aberdeen 
 fulfilled this part of his public duty with a 
 brave heart and with all the success possible to 
 the task. Every one who had any acquaintance 
 with the state of Ireland at the time must have 
 known what difficulties were likely to be set in 
 the way of Lord Aberdeen's endeavor to miti- 
 
 159
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 gate the seventies of the coercion system. The 
 most serious of those difficulties would in all 
 probability have come from the permanent offi- 
 cial staff in Dublin Castle. American readers 
 in general can have but little idea as to the 
 peculiarities of that singular institution Dublin 
 Castle, the center and fortress of Irish govern- 
 ment. It has become, from generations of 
 usage, a very bulwark against the progress of 
 Irish national sentiment. The fresh current 
 of feeling from the outside seems to make little 
 impression on its stagnant and moldy atmos- 
 phere. It is ruled by tradition, and to that 
 tradition belongs the rule of hostility to every 
 popular feeling and every national demand. 
 Lord Aberdeen had to encounter all the resist- 
 ance which the dead weight of Dublin Castle's 
 antiquated systems could bring to bear against 
 his liberal and enlightened efforts at the pacifi- 
 cation of the country. He carried out his 
 purpose with unffinching resolve and unruffled 
 temper, and, so far as the existing laws allowed 
 him, he mitigated the harshnesses of the system 
 under which Ireland had been governed since 
 the Act of Union. But there was, of course, 
 much more within Lord Aberdeen's capacity to 
 accomplish than the mere mitigation of exist- 
 
 i6o
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 ing laws which it was not in his power to 
 abolish. His presence and the entire conduct 
 of his viceroyalty were as a proclamation to the 
 Irish people that the whole sympathies of the 
 Gladstone Government went with the national 
 demands. 
 
 Then, indeed, a strange sight was to be seen 
 in Dublin — the sight of a thoroughly popular 
 welcome, a national welcome, given to the re- 
 presentative of English rule in Ireland. A new 
 chapter in Irish history seemed to open, and 
 the heart of Ireland was filled with hope. It 
 is told of Swift that when Carteret, Earl Gran- 
 ville, was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland 
 — Swift afterwards became one of Granville's 
 close friends — he exclaimed in his sarcastic 
 fashion that he could not understand why such 
 a man should be appointed to such an office, 
 and he thought the Government ought to keep 
 on sending its bullies and blockheads just as 
 before. A satirical Nationalist might have been 
 expected to break forth into a similar expres- 
 sion of wonder when a man like Lord Aber- 
 deen was sent to Ireland to carry on the rule 
 of Dublin Castle. Lord Aberdeen and his wife 
 made themselves popular everywhere among 
 the Irish people, showed a living and a con- 
 
 i6i
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 stant interest in everything that concerned the 
 welfare of the population, and did all they could 
 to break down the long-existing barricades 
 which made England and Ireland hostile na- 
 tions. When Mr. Gladstone failed in carrying 
 his Home Rule Bill through the House of Com- 
 mons and his Government came to an end, Lord 
 Aberdeen took his leave of Ireland amid demon- 
 strations of popular regard, affection, and regret 
 which must have deeply touched his generous 
 heart. In 1893, when the Liberals were again 
 in power, Lord Aberdeen was made Governor- 
 General of Canada, and he held that position 
 until 1898. His term of service in Canada 
 was as successful as might have been expected, 
 and the French as well as the other provinces 
 looked up to him with admiration and grati- 
 tude. Then, for the time, his official career 
 came to an end. In the interval between the 
 Irish and the Canadian appointment Lord Aber- 
 deen and his wife made a tour round the world, 
 visiting on their way India and most of the 
 British colonies. The name of Lady Aberdeen 
 is associated with all great movements which 
 have to do with the education and the general 
 advancement of women, and with many good 
 works undertaken for the benefit of the Irish 
 
 162
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 peasantry. Lady Aberdeen, it should be said, 
 is the youngest daughter of the first Lord 
 Tweedmouth, and is sister of the Lord Tweed- 
 mouth who, as Edward Marjoribanks, was so 
 well known for a long time as one of the lead- 
 ing Whips of the Liberal party. Lady Aber- 
 deen's name is Ishbel Maria, and I may ask my 
 American readers not to make the mistake, 
 sometimes made even in England, of assuming 
 her name to be the more familiar one of Isabel. 
 She has always been one of the most promi- 
 nent, influential, and graceful figures in Eng- 
 lish society, and every charitable association 
 which deserves her support has the advantage 
 of her help, her protection, and her guidance. 
 I know from my own experience what valu- 
 able and untiring service she has given to the 
 promotion of the lace-making and the cottage 
 industries of Ireland. I had the great honor 
 of being associated with her in some of these 
 efforts, and I never can forget her unsparing 
 devotion to the best interests of every such 
 effort. I have among my books a series of 
 large and handsome volumes devoted to a re- 
 cord of the proceedings which took place at the 
 International Council of Women held in Lon- 
 don during July of 1899 and presided over by 
 
 163
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the Countess of Aberdeen. This series, pub- 
 lished by Mr. Fisher Unwin, is edited by Lady 
 Aberdeen and has an introduction written by 
 her. I may quote the closing paragraph of the 
 introduction : — 
 
 It is a great inspiration to be bound together in the 
 pursuance of high ideals ; it is also a grave responsibility 
 — and during our recent Council meeting both these 
 thoughts have been made very real to us. I pray God 
 that they may abide within the hearts of all who, in every 
 country, are the guardians of the honor of our Council, so 
 that it may prove true to the lofty profession it has made. 
 
 The series contains seven volumes, every one 
 of which has been carefully edited by Lady 
 Aberdeen, and is enriched with many commen- 
 taries of her own. One can easily imagine the 
 amount of time and trouble which such a work 
 must have imposed on a busy woman, and 
 those who know anything of her will know the 
 thought and care and devotion which she must 
 have given to such a labor of love. 
 
 Not a few persons are still apt to associate 
 the idea of a woman advocating the advance- 
 ment of women with something unfeminine, 
 ungracious, self-assertive, and overbearing. 
 When Lady Aberdeen first began to be known 
 in social movements, the memory of the late 
 
 164
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 Mrs. Lynn Linton's diatribes about "the Shriek- 
 ing Sisterhood " was still fresh in the public 
 mind, and much prejudice yet lingered against 
 the women who publicly devoted themselves 
 to the advancement of their sex. Lady Aber- 
 deen might have seemed as if she were specially 
 created to be a living refutation of all such 
 absurd ideas. No fashionable woman given up 
 to social success and distinction in drawing- 
 rooms, dining-rooms, balls, and Court ceremo- 
 nials could have been more feminine, graceful, 
 and charming in her ways and her demeanor 
 than this noble-hearted woman, who was not 
 afraid to advocate the genuine rights of women, 
 and who stood by her husband's side in all his 
 efforts for political reform. One might adopt 
 the words which Sheridan has made the open- 
 ing of a song in " The Duenna," and proclaim 
 that a pair was never seen more justly formed 
 to meet by nature than Lord and Lady Aber- 
 deen. Such an impression was assuredly formed 
 in Ireland and in Canada, and indeed in every 
 place where Lord and Lady Aberdeen were 
 able to assert their unostentatious and most 
 beneficent influence. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen succeeded to the title and its 
 responsibilities at too early an age to allow him 
 
 165
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 any opportunity of proving his capacity for Par- 
 liamentary life in the House of Commons. His 
 elder brother was drowned on a voyage from 
 Boston to Melbourne, and the subject of this 
 article then became Earl of Aberdeen, with, as 
 a matter of course, a seat in the House of 
 Lords. There is nothing like a real Parliamen- 
 tary career to be found in the House of Lords. 
 A man of great natural gifts can, of course, 
 give evidence even there that he is born for 
 statesmanship and can command attention by 
 his eloquence. Lord Aberdeen made it cer- 
 tain even in the House of Lords that he was 
 endowed with these rare qualifications. But 
 the House of Lords has no influence over the 
 country, unless, indeed, when it exerts itself to 
 stay for the time the progress of some great and 
 popular measure. Even this is only for the 
 time, and if the measure be really one of na- 
 tional benefit and deserving of public support, 
 it is sure to be carried in the end, and the 
 Lords have to give in and to put up with their 
 defeat. But the hereditary chamber is not even 
 a commanding platform from which an elo- 
 quent speaker can address and can influence 
 the whole country, and the temptations there 
 to apathy and indolence must often be found 
 
 i66
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 to be almost irresistible. On rare occasions, 
 two or three times in a session, perhaps, there 
 comes off what is popularly called a full-dress 
 debate, and then the red benches of the House, 
 on which the peers have their seats, are sure 
 to be crowded, and the galleries where mem- 
 bers of the House of Commons are entitled to 
 sit and the galleries allotted to strangers are 
 also well occupied. The Lords have even the 
 inspiriting advantage, denied to the House of 
 Commons, of open galleries where ladies can 
 sit in the full glare of day or of gaslight, and 
 can encourage an orator by their presence and 
 their attention. In the House of Commons, as 
 everybody knows, the small number of ladies 
 for whom seats are provided are secreted behind 
 a thick grating, and thus become an almost 
 invisible influence, if, indeed, they can hope to 
 be an influence at all. Yet even this inspira- 
 tion does not stir the peers to anything more 
 than the rarest attempts at a great debate. On 
 ordinary occasions — and these ordinary occa- 
 sions constitute nearly the whole of a session 
 — the peers sit for only an hour or so every 
 day, and then mutter and mumble through 
 some formal business, and the outer public 
 does not manifest the slightest interest in what 
 
 167
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 they are doing or trying to do. There are 
 many men now in the House of Lords who 
 proved their eloquence again and again during 
 some of the most important and exciting de- 
 bates in the representative chamber, and who 
 now hardly open their lips in the gilded cham- 
 ber, as the House of Lords has been grandilo- 
 quently titled. A rising member of the House 
 of Commons succeeds to the family title and 
 estates, and as a matter of course he is trans- 
 ferred to the House of Lords, and there, in 
 most cases, is an end to his public career. Or 
 perhaps a rising member of the House of Com- 
 mons has in some way or other made himself 
 inconvenient to his leading colleagues who 
 have now come into power and are forming 
 an administration, and as they do not know 
 how to get rid of him gracefully in any other 
 way, they induce the Sovereign to confer on 
 him a peerage, and so he straightway goes 
 into the House of Lords. Perhaps, as he had 
 been an active and conspicuous debater in the 
 House of Commons, he cannot bring himself 
 to settle down into silence when he finds him- 
 self among the peers. So he delivers a speech 
 every now and then on what are convention- 
 ally regarded in the House of Lords as great 
 
 i68
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 occasions, but his career is practically at an 
 end all the same. I have in my mind some 
 striking instances of this curious transition 
 from Parliamentary prominence in the House 
 of Commons to Parliamentary nothingness in 
 the House of Lords. I know of men who 
 were accounted powerful and brilliant debaters 
 in the House of Commons, where debates are 
 sometimes great events, who, when, from one 
 cause or other, translated to the House of 
 Lords, were hardly ever heard of as debaters 
 any more. Probably there seemed no motive 
 for taking the trouble to seek the opportunity 
 of delivering a speech in the hereditary assem- 
 bly, where nothing particular could come of 
 the speech when delivered, and the new peer 
 allows the charms of public speaking to lose 
 their hold over him, to pass with the days and 
 the dreams of his youth. 
 
 Lord Aberdeen would in all probability have 
 made a deep mark as a Parliamentary debater 
 if the kindly fates had left to him the possi- 
 bility of a career in the House of Commons. 
 He has a fine voice, an attractive presence, 
 and a fluent delivery ; he has high intellectual 
 capacity, wide and varied .culture, and much 
 acquaintance with foreign States and peoples. 
 
 169
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Probably the best services which Lord Aber- 
 deen could render to his country would be 
 found in such offices as Ireland and Canada 
 gave him an opportunity of undertaking ; vice- 
 royalty of some order, it would seem, must be 
 the main business of his career. But I must 
 say that I should much like to see his great 
 intellectual qualities, his varied experience, and 
 his noble humanitarian sympathies provided 
 with some opportunity of exercising themselves 
 in the work of domestic government. I may 
 explain that I do not call the administration of 
 Ireland under the old conditions a work of 
 domestic government in the true sense. The 
 vice-regal system in Ireland is a barbaric ana- 
 chronism, and the abilities and high purposes 
 of a man like Lord Aberdeen were wholly 
 thrown away upon such work. There is much 
 still in the social condition of England which 
 could give ample occupation to the adminis- 
 trative abilities and the philanthropic energies 
 of Lord Aberdeen. The work of decentral- 
 ization in England is rapidly going on. The 
 development of local self-government is be- 
 coming one of the most remarkable phenom- 
 ena of our times. Parliament is becoming 
 more and more the fount and origin of na- 
 
 170
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 tional rule, but it is wisely devoting its energies 
 to the creation of a system which shall leave 
 the working out of that national rule more and 
 more to localities and municipalities. At one 
 time, and that not very long ago, it was be- 
 lieved even by many social reformers that, while 
 self-government might easily be developed in 
 the cities and towns, it would not be possible, 
 during the present generation at least, to infuse 
 any such principle of vitality into the country 
 districts. 
 
 Of late years, however, it is becoming more 
 and more apparent that the principle of local 
 government is developing itself rapidly and 
 effectively in the rural districts, and that the 
 good old times when the squire and the rector 
 could manage by divided despotism the whole 
 business of a parish are destined soon to be- 
 come a curious historical memory. The sys- 
 tem of national education, established for the 
 first time in England by Gladstone's Govern- 
 ment in 1870, has naturally had much to do 
 with the quickening of intelligent activity all 
 over the British Islands. A new generation has 
 grown up, in which localities are no longer con- 
 tent to have all their business managed for 
 them by their local magnates, and the recent 
 
 171
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 statutes passed by Parliament for the extension 
 everywhere of the local government principle 
 are a direct result of the legislation which has 
 made education compulsory in these countries. 
 All over the agricultural districts we now find 
 county boards and parish councils conducting 
 by debates and divisions the common business 
 of each district, just as it is done in the great 
 cities and towns. It seems to me that this 
 spread of the principle of local self-government 
 opens a most appropriate field for the intellect 
 and the energies of such statesmen as Lord 
 Aberdeen. Only in recent times have great 
 noblemen condescended to trouble themselves 
 much, so far at least as their Parliamentary ca- 
 reers were concerned, with municipal or other 
 local affairs. A peer, if he happened to have 
 any taste or gift for Parliamentary and official 
 work, was willing to become Foreign Secretary, 
 Viceroy of India, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 
 or Governor of a Colony. Not infrequently, 
 too, he consented to devote his energies to 
 the office of Postmaster-General. But he was 
 not likely to see any scope for a Parliamentary 
 career in the management of local business. 
 In his own particular district, no doubt, he was 
 accustomed to direct most of the business in 
 
 172
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 his own way and might be a local benefactor 
 or a local mis-manager, according as his tastes 
 and judgment qualified him. But the general 
 business of localities did not create any Par- 
 liamentary department which seemed likely to 
 deserve his attention. The condition of things 
 is very different now, and Lord Aberdeen is 
 one of the men to whom the country is mainly 
 indebted for that quickening and outspreading 
 of the local self-governing principle which is 
 so remarkable and so hopeful a phenomenon 
 of our national existence at present. In every 
 movement which pretends to the development 
 and the strengthening of that principle Lord 
 Aberdeen has always taken a foremost part. 
 
 I am not myself an unqualified admirer of 
 that part of the British constitutional system 
 which makes the House of Lords one of three 
 great ruling powers. I should very much doubt 
 whether Lord Aberdeen himself, if he were 
 set to devise a constitutional system for these 
 countries, would make the House of Lords as 
 at present arranged a component part of our 
 legislative system. But I am quite willing to 
 admit that, since we have a House of Lords 
 and while we have a House of Lords, a man 
 like the Earl of Aberdeen does all that can be 
 
 173
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 done to turn the existing constitution to good 
 account and make it in some degree worthy 
 of national toleration. While there exists an 
 aristocracy of birth, even the most uncompro- 
 mising advocate of democracy and the equal 
 rights of men might freely admit that a ca- 
 reer like the political and social career of Lord 
 Aberdeen does much to plead in defense of 
 the system. Lord Aberdeen has always proved 
 that he thoroughly understands the responsi- 
 bilities as well as the advantages of his high 
 position. Not one of the Labor Members, as 
 they are called, of the House of Commons 
 — the chosen representatives of the working 
 classes — could have shown a deeper and more 
 constant sympathy with every measure and 
 every movement which tends to improve the 
 condition and expand the opportunities of 
 those who have to make a living by actual 
 toil. Lord Aberdeen has yet, I trust, a long 
 and fruitful career before him. The states- 
 manship of England will soon again have to 
 turn its attention to the social movements 
 which concern the interests of the lowly-born 
 and the hard-working in these islands. If a 
 better time is coming for the statesmen of 
 England, whether in office or in opposition, 
 
 174
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 who love peace and who yearn to take a part 
 in measures which lead to genuine national 
 prosperity, we may safely assume that in such 
 a time Lord Aberdeen will renew his active 
 career, to the benefit of the people whom he 
 has served so faithfully and so well. 
 
 175
 
 JOHN BURNS
 
 Photograph pojivri-ht by W. & I). Diiwm-v 
 
 JOHN liURNS
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 John Burns stands out a distinct and pecu- 
 liar figure in the House of Commons. He is 
 the foremost representative of that working 
 class which is becoming so great a power in 
 the organization of English political and indus- 
 trial life. " Be not like dumb driven cattle," 
 says Longfellow in his often-quoted lines — 
 " Be a hero in the strife." The British work- 
 ingmen were until very lately little better than 
 dumb driven cattle; in our days and under 
 such leadership as that of John Burns they have 
 proved themselves capable of bearing heroic 
 part in the struggle for great reforms. I can 
 remember the time when the House of Com- 
 mons had not in it any member actually belong- 
 ing to the working classes. At that time the 
 working classes had no means of obtaining 
 Parliamentary representation, for it may be said 
 with almost literal exactness that no working- 
 man had a vote, or the means of obtaining a 
 vote, at a Parliamentary election. The condi- 
 
 179
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 tions of the franchise were too limited in the 
 constituencies to enable men who worked for 
 small daily or weekly wages to become voters 
 at elections. In order to become a voter a man 
 must occupy a house rated at a certain yearly 
 amount, and he must have occupied it for a 
 specified and considerable space of time, and 
 there were very few indeed of the working class 
 who could hope to obtain such legal qualifica- 
 tions. In more recent days the great reformers 
 of these islands have succeeded in establishing 
 what may be fairly described as manhood suf- 
 frage in these countries, and have also secured 
 a lodger franchise ; have established the secret 
 ballot as the process of voting ; and by these 
 and other reforms have put the workingman on 
 a level with his fellow-citizens as a voter at 
 Parliamentary elections. My own recollection 
 goes back to the time when the law in Great 
 Britain and Ireland insisted on what was called 
 a " property qualification " as an indispensable 
 condition to a candidate's obtaining a seat in 
 the House of Commons. I have known scores 
 of instances in which clever and popular can- 
 didates got over this difficulty by prevailing on 
 some wealthy relative or friend to settle legally 
 on them an amount of landed property neces- 
 
 i8o
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 sary to qualify them for a seat in the House. 
 It was perfectly well known to every one that 
 this settlement was purely a formal arrange- 
 ment, and that the new and nominal possessor 
 of the property was no more its real owner 
 than the child who is allowed for a moment to 
 hold his father's watch in his hand becomes 
 thereby the legal owner of the valuable time- 
 piece. In our days no property qualification 
 of any kind is needed either for a vote at a 
 Parliamentary election or for a seat in the 
 House of Commons, and therefore the work- 
 ingmen form an important proportion of the 
 voters at Parliamentary elections and are en- 
 abled in certain constituencies to choose men 
 of their own class to represent them in the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 I have thought it well to make the short 
 explanation of the changes which have taken 
 place in the condition of the British working- 
 men during recent years as a prelude to what 
 I have to say concerning that foremost of Brit- 
 ish workingmen, John Burns. It is only fair 
 to say that the workingmen of these countries 
 have made judicious and praiseworthy use of 
 the new political powers confided to them, and 
 have almost invariably sent into Parliament 
 
 i8i
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 as the representatives of their class men of un- 
 doubted ability and of the highest character, 
 men who win the respect of all parties in the 
 House of Commons. Of these men John 
 Burns is the most conspicuous. He has never, 
 indeed, held a place in an administration, as 
 two, I think, of his order have already done ; 
 but then John Burns is a man of resolutely 
 independent character, and it would not be 
 easy thus far to form even a Liberal Govern- 
 ment which should be quite up to the level of 
 his views on many questions of domestic and 
 foreign policy. 
 
 John Burns would liardly be taken person- 
 ally as a typical representative of the British 
 workingman. He is short in stature, very dark 
 in complexion and in the color of his hair, and 
 a stranger seeing him for the first time might 
 take him for an Italian or a Spaniard. His 
 physical strength is something enormous, and 
 I have seen him perform with the greatest 
 apparent ease some feats of athletic vigor which 
 might have seemed to demand the proportions 
 of a giant. His whole frame is made up of 
 bone and muscle, and although he is broadly 
 and stoutly built, he does not appear to have 
 any superfluous flesh. If I had to make my 
 
 182
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 way through a furious opposing crowd, I do 
 not know of any leader whom I should be more 
 glad to follow than John Burns. But although 
 Burns is physically made for a fighting man, 
 there is nothing pugnacious or aggressive in 
 his temperament. He is by nature kind, con- 
 ciliatory, and generous, tolerant of other men's 
 opinions, and only anxious to advance his own 
 by fair argument and manly appeals to men's 
 sense of humanity and justice. I have seen 
 him carry a great big elderly man who had 
 fainted at a public meeting and take him to a 
 quiet spot with all the ease and tenderness of 
 a mother carrying her child. But if I were an 
 overbearing giant who was trying his strength 
 upon a weaker mortal, I should take good care 
 not to make the experiment while John Burns 
 was anywhere within reach. He is an adept 
 at all sorts of athletic sports and games, skat- 
 ing, rowing, foot-racing, boxing, cricket, and I 
 know not what else. He is essentially a man 
 of the working class, and has, I believe, some 
 Scottish blood in his veins, but he is a Londoner 
 by birth, and passed all his early life in a Lon- 
 don district. He was born to poverty, and 
 received such education as he had to begin 
 
 183
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 with at a humble school in the Battersea region 
 on the south side of London. 
 
 Now, I should think that a boy born in 
 humble life who had in him any gift of imagi- 
 nation and any faculty for self-improvement 
 could hardly have begun life in a better place 
 than Battersea. The Battersea region lies south 
 of the Thames, and is a strange combination of 
 modern squalidness and picturesque historical 
 associations and memorials. The homes of the 
 working class poor stand under the very shadow 
 of that famous church in Old Battersea where 
 Bolingbroke, the high-born, one of the most 
 eloquent orators known to English Parliamen- 
 tary life, and one of the most brilliant writers 
 who adorn English literature, lies buried, and 
 where strangers from all parts of the world go 
 to gaze upon his tombstone. Everywhere 
 throughout the little town or village one comes 
 upon places associated with the memory of 
 Bolinorbroke and of other men famous in his- 
 tory. Cross the bridge that spans the Thames 
 and you are in the Chelsea region, which is 
 suffused with historical and literary associa- 
 tions from far-off days to those recent times 
 when Thomas Carlyle had his home in one 
 of its quiet streets. To a boy with any turn 
 
 184
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 for reading and any taste for history and litera- 
 ture, all that quarter of London on both sides 
 of the Thames must have been filled with 
 inspiration. John Burns had always a love of 
 reading, and I can easily fancy that the memo- 
 ries of the place must have been a constant 
 stimulant and inspiration to his honorable 
 ambition for self-culture. His school days fin- 
 ished when he was hardly ten years old, and 
 then he was set to earn a living, first in a 
 candle factory and afterwards in the works of 
 an engineer. Thus he toiled away until he had 
 reached manhood's age, and all the time he was 
 steadily devoting his spare hours or moments 
 to the task of self-education. He read every 
 book that came within his reach, and studied 
 with especial interest the works of men who 
 set themselves to the consideration of great 
 social problems. 
 
 Burns naturally became very soon impressed 
 with the conviction that all could not be quite 
 right under a political and social system which 
 made the workingman a mere piece of living 
 mechanism and gave him no share whatever in 
 the constitutional government of the country. 
 At that time there was no system of national 
 education in England, and the child of poor 
 
 185
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 parents had to get his teaching through some 
 charitable institution, or to go without any 
 teaching whatever. So far as the education of 
 the poorest classes was concerned, England 
 was at that time far below Scotland, below 
 Germany and Holland, and below the United 
 States. 
 
 As regards the political system, a man of the 
 class to which John Burns was born had little 
 chance indeed of obtaining the right to vote at 
 a Parliamentary election, which was given only 
 to men who had certain qualifications of income 
 and of residence not often to be found amone 
 the working classes. The English system of 
 national education is little more than thirty 
 years old, and the extension of the voting power 
 which makes it now practically a manhood suf- 
 frage is likewise of very modern date. It was 
 natural that an intelligent and thoughtful boy 
 like John Burns should, under such conditions, 
 become filled with socialistic doctrines and 
 should find himself growing into a mood of 
 impatience and hostility towards the rule of 
 aristocrats, landlords, and capitalists, by which 
 the country was then dominated. Soon after 
 he had reached his twenty-first year he obtained 
 employment as a foreman engineer on the Niger 
 
 1 86
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 in Africa, and there he had his first experience 
 of a climate and a hfe totally unlike to anything 
 that could be found in the Battersea regions. 
 I have often heard it said that during his em- 
 ployment in English steamers on the Niger he 
 was known among his British companions as 
 " Coffee-pot Burns," in jocular recognition of 
 his devotion to total abstinence principles. He 
 spent about a year in his African occupation, 
 and during that time he had managed to save 
 up a considerable amount of his pay, a saving 
 which we may be sure was in great measure 
 due to his practice of total abstinence from any 
 drinks stronger than that which was properly 
 contained in the coffee-pot. When he left 
 Africa, he invested his savings in a manner 
 which I cannot but regard as peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of him, and which must have given to 
 such a man a profitable return for his invest- 
 ment — he spent his savings, in fact, on a tour 
 of several months throughout Europe. Thus 
 he acquired an invaluable addition to his stock 
 of practical observation and a fresh impulse to 
 his studies of life and of books. He settled 
 down in England as a working engineer, and 
 he soon began to take a deep interest and an 
 active share in every movement which had for 
 
 187
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 its object the welfare of the classes who live by 
 daily labor. 
 
 Obviously, there are many improvements in 
 the condition of such men which could only 
 be brought about by legislation, and John Burns 
 therefore became a political agitator. His voice 
 was heard from the platforms of great popular 
 meetings held in and around London and in 
 many other parts of the country, and he was 
 one of the leaders of the great agitation which 
 secured for the public the right of holding open- 
 air meetings in Trafalgar Square. John Burns 
 was meant by nature to be a popular orator. 
 He has a physical frame which can stand any 
 amount of exertion, and his voice, at once 
 powerful and musical, can make itself heard to 
 the farthest limit of the largest outdoor meeting 
 in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square. But he is 
 in no sense whatever a mere declaimer. He 
 argues every question out in a practical and 
 reasonable way, and although he has some views 
 on political and industrial subjects which many 
 of his opponents would condemn as socialistic, 
 there is nothing in him of the revolutionist or 
 the anarchist. His object is to bring about by 
 free and lawful public debate those reforms in 
 the political and industrial systems which he 
 
 1 88
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 regards as essential to the well-being of the 
 whole community. The Conservative party in 
 this country used to have for a long time one 
 particular phrase which was understood to em- 
 body the heaviest accusation that could be 
 brought against a public man. To say that 
 this or that public speaker was endeavoring to 
 " set class against class " was understood to 
 mean his utter condemnation in the minds of 
 all well-behaved citizens. We do not hear so 
 much of this accusation in later days, partly 
 because some of the very measures demanded 
 by those setters of class against class have been 
 adopted by Conservative Governments and car- 
 ried into law by Conservative votes. But there 
 was a period in the life of John Burns when 
 he must have found himself denounced almost 
 every day in speech or newspaper article as 
 one whose main endeavor was to set class 
 against class. John Burns does not seem to 
 have troubled himself much about the accusa- 
 tion. Perhaps he reasoned within himself that 
 if the endeavor to obtain for workingmen the 
 right of voting at elections and the right to 
 form themselves into trades-unions for the pur- 
 pose of bettering their lives were the endeavor 
 to set class against class, then there is nothing 
 
 189
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 for it but to go on setting class against class 
 until the beneficent result be obtained. So 
 John Burns went on setting class against class, 
 with the result that he became recognized all 
 over the country as one of the most eloquent, 
 capable, and judicious leaders whom the work- 
 ingmen could show, and his unselfishness and 
 integrity were never disparaged even by his 
 most extreme political opponents. 
 
 A remarkable evidence was soon to be given 
 of the solid reputation which he had won for 
 himself in public life. A complete change was 
 made by Parliamentary legislation in the whole 
 system of London's municipal government. The 
 vast metropolis which we call London was up 
 to that time under the control for municipal 
 affairs of the various parish boards and local 
 vestries, each of them constructed on some re- 
 presentative system peculiarly its own, and none 
 of them, it may be justly said, under any direct 
 control from the great mass of the community. 
 The greater part of the West End of London 
 was under the management of a body known 
 as the Metropolitan Board of Works ; the City 
 of London was dominated by its own historic 
 Corporation ; each other district of the metro- 
 polis had its governing vestry or some such 
 
 190
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 institution. Apart from all other objections to 
 such a system, one of its obvious defects was 
 that no common principle was recognized in 
 the municipal arrangements of the metropolis ; 
 there were no common rules for their regula- 
 tion of traffic, for the levying of rates, for the 
 management of public institutions, and a Lon- 
 doner who changed his residence from one 
 part of the town to another, or even from one 
 side of a street to another, might find himself 
 suddenly brought under the control of a system 
 of municipal regulations with which he was 
 totally unfamiliar. Appeals were constantly 
 made by enlightened Londoners for some uni- 
 form system of London government, but for a 
 long time nothing was done in the way of 
 reform. At last, however, it happened — luckily, 
 in one sense, for the community — that the 
 Metropolitan Board of Works, which ruled the 
 West End districts, became the cause of much 
 public scandal because of its mistakes and mis- 
 management, not to use any harsher terms, 
 in the dealing with public contracts. The 
 excitement caused by these discoveries made it 
 impossible for the old system to be maintained 
 any longer, and the result was the passing of 
 an Act of Parliament which created an entirely 
 
 191
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 new governing body for the metropolis. This 
 new governing body was styled the London 
 County Council, and it was to have control of 
 the whole metropolis, with the exception of that 
 comparatively small extent of municipal terri- 
 tory which we know as the City of London. 
 The members of the new County Council were 
 to be chosen, for the most part, as are the 
 members of the House of Commons, by direct 
 popular suffrage. Some of the foremost men 
 in England became members of the new County 
 Council. One of these was Lord Rosebery, 
 another was Sir Thomas Farrer (who has since 
 become Lord Farrer), a third was Frederic 
 Harrison, one of the most eminent writers and 
 thinkers of his time, and another was John 
 Burns, the working engineer. I mention this 
 fact only to show how thoroughly John Burns 
 must have established his reputation as a man 
 well qualified to take a leading place in the 
 municipal government of London. Since that 
 time he has been elected again and again to 
 the same position. 
 
 When the great dispute broke out in London 
 between the dock-laborers and the ship-owners, 
 John Burns took an active and untiring part 
 in the endeavor to obtain fair terms for the 
 
 192
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 workers, and by his moderation and judgment, 
 as well as by his inexhaustible energy, he did 
 inestimable service in the bringing about of 
 a satisfactory settlement. The late Cardinal 
 Manning took a conspicuous part in the effort 
 to obtain good terms for the workingmen, and 
 he was recognized on both sides of the dispute 
 as a most acceptable mediator, and I remember 
 that he expressed himself more than once in 
 the highest terms as to the services rendered 
 by John Burns during the whole of the crisis. 
 Burns made one or two unsuccessful attempts 
 to obtain a seat in the House of Commons — 
 or perhaps, to put it more correctly, I should 
 say that he consented, in obedience to the pres- 
 sure of his friends and followers, to become a 
 candidate for a seat. In 1892 he was elected 
 to Parliament as the representative of that Bat- 
 tersea district where his life began, and he has 
 held the seat ever since. In the House of 
 Commons he has been a decided success. It 
 is only right to say that the workingmen 
 representatives, who now form a distinct and 
 influential section in the House, have fully vin- 
 dicated their right to hold places there, and 
 have, with hardly any exception, done honor to 
 the choice of their constituents. John Burns 
 
 193
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 is among the foremost, if not the very foremost, 
 of the working class representatives. He has 
 won the good opinions of all parties and classes 
 in the House of Commons. He has won espe- 
 cial merit which counts for much in the House 
 — he never makes a speech unless when he 
 has something to say which has a direct bearing 
 on the debate in progress and which it is im- 
 portant that the House should hear. He is 
 never a mere declaimer, and he never speaks 
 for the sake of making a speech and having it 
 reported in the newspapers. The House always 
 knows that when John Burns rises he has some 
 solid argument to offer, and that he will sit 
 down as soon as he has said his say. 
 
 The first time I had the honor of becoming 
 personally acquainted with John Burns was in 
 the House of Commons, shortly after his first 
 election, and I was introduced to him by my 
 friend Michael Davitt. I could not help feel- 
 ing at the time that it was a remarkable event 
 in one's life to be introduced to John Burns by 
 Michael Davitt. Both these men were then 
 honored members of the House of Commons, 
 and both had for many years been regarded by 
 most of what are called the ruling classes as 
 disturbers of the established order of things and 
 
 194
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 enemies of the British Constitution. Davitt 
 had spent years In prison as a rebel, and Burns 
 had been at least once imprisoned, though but 
 for a short time, as a disturber of public order. 
 Every one came to admit in the end that each 
 man was thoroughly devoted to a cause which 
 he believed rightful, and that the true and last- 
 ing prosperity of a State must depend largely 
 on men who are thus willing to make any 
 sacrifice for the maintenance of equal political 
 rights in the community. I have had, since 
 that time, many opportunities of meeting with 
 Burns In public and private and exchanging 
 ideas with him on all manner of subjects, and I 
 can only say that the better I have known him 
 the higher has been my opinion of his intelli- 
 gence, his sincerity, and his capacity to do the 
 State some service. 
 
 John Burns has made himself very useful in 
 the committee work of the House of Commons. 
 The House hands over the manipulation and 
 arrangement of many of Its measures on what 
 I may call technical subjects — measures con- 
 cerning trade and Industry, shipping and rail- 
 ways, and other such affairs of business — to 
 be discussed In detail and put into working 
 shape by small committees chosen from among 
 
 195
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the members ; and these measures, when they 
 have passed through this process of examina- 
 tion, are brought up for full and final settlement 
 in the House itself. It will be easily under- 
 stood that there are many subjects of this order, 
 on which the practical experience and the varied 
 observation of a man like Burns must count for 
 much in the shaping of legislation. Burns has 
 genial, unpretending manners, and although he 
 was born with a fighting spirit, he is not one of 
 those who make it their effort to cram their 
 opinions down the throats of their opponents. 
 Although his views are extreme on most of the 
 questions in which he takes a deep interest, 
 he is always willing to admit that there may be 
 something to be said on the other side of the 
 controversy ; he is ever ready to give a full con- 
 sideration to all the arguments of his fellow- 
 members, and if any one in the committee can 
 show him that he is mistaken on this or that 
 point, he will yield to the force of argument, 
 and has no hesitation about acknowledging a 
 change in his views. Fervent as he is in his 
 devotion to any of the great principles which 
 have become a faith with him, there is nothing 
 of the fanatic about him, and I do not think his 
 enemies would ever have to fear persecution at 
 
 196
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 his hands. There is no roughness in his man- 
 ners, although he has certainly not been brought 
 up to the ways of what is generally known as 
 good society; and his smile is winning and 
 sweet. He has probably a certain conscious- 
 ness of mental strength, as he has of physical 
 strength, which relieves him from any inclina- 
 tion towards self-assertion. I should find it as 
 difficult to believe that John Burns counte- 
 nanced a deed of oppression as I should find it 
 to believe that he sought by obsequiousness 
 the favor of the great. 
 
 John Burns was, it is almost needless to say, 
 an opponent from the very beginning of the 
 policy which led to the war against the South 
 African Republics. When the general election 
 came on, about midway in the course of the 
 war, the war passion had come upon the coun- 
 try like an epidemic, and some of the most 
 distinguished English representatives lost their 
 seats in the House of Commons because they 
 refused to sanction the Jingo policy. Many 
 men who were rising rapidly into Parliamen- 
 tary distinction were defeated at the elections 
 by Imperialist candidates. Nor were the men 
 thus shut out from Parliament for the time 
 all members of the Liberal party. In some 
 
 197
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 instances, although few indeed, there were men 
 belonging to the Conservative, the Ministerial, 
 side, who could not see the justice of the war 
 policy and would not conceal their opinions, 
 and who therefore had to forfeit their seats 
 when some thoroughgoing Tory Imperialists 
 presented themselves as rivals for the favor of 
 the local voters. So great was the influence of 
 the war passion that even among the constitu- 
 encies where the workingmen were strong there 
 were examples of an Imperialist victory over 
 the true principles of liberty and democracy. 
 But the Battersea constituents of John Burns 
 remained faithful to their political creed and to 
 him, and he was sent back in triumph to the 
 House of Commons to carry on the fight for 
 every good cause there. He took part in many 
 debates during the continuance of the cam- 
 paign, and he never made a speech on the 
 subject of the war which was not listened to 
 with interest even by those most opposed to his 
 opinions. He has the gift of debate as well as 
 the gift of declamation, and he knows his part 
 in Parliamentary life far too well to substitute 
 declamation for debate. The typical dema- 
 gogue, as he is pictured by those who do not 
 sympathize with democracy, would on such 
 
 198
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 occasions have merely relieved his mind by 
 repeated denunciations of that war in particular 
 and of wars in general, and would soon have 
 lost any hold on the attention of the House, 
 which is, to do it justice, highly practical in its 
 methods of discussion. John Burns spoke in 
 each debate on the war when he had something 
 to say which could practically and precisely 
 bear on the subject then under immediate 
 consideration — a question connected with the 
 administration of the campaign, with the man- 
 ner in which the War Office or the Colonial 
 Office was conducting some particular part 
 of its administrative task, with the immediate 
 effects of this or that movement, and in this 
 way he compelled attention and he challenged 
 reply. I remember, for instance, that when 
 the spokesmen of the Government were laying 
 great stress on the severity and injustice of the 
 Boer State's dealings with the native popula- 
 tions of South Africa, John Burns gave from 
 his own experience and observation instances 
 of the manner in which African populations 
 had been dealt with by British authorities, 
 and demanded whether such actions would not 
 have justified the intervention of some Euro- 
 pean State if the conduct of the Boer Govern- 
 
 199
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 ment, supposing it to be accurately described, 
 was a justification for England's invasion of 
 the Boer territory. Whenever he took part 
 in the debate, he met his opponents on their 
 own ground, and he challenged their policy in 
 practical detail, instead of wasting his time in 
 mere declamatory appeals to principles of lib- 
 erty and justice which would have fallen flat 
 upon the minds of those who held it as their 
 creed that Imperial England was free to dictate 
 her terms to all peoples of inferior strength 
 and less highly developed civilization. 
 
 John Burns has fairly won for himself an 
 honorable place in the history of our time. If 
 he had done nothing else, he would have ac- 
 complished much by demonstrating in his own 
 person the right of the workingman to have a 
 seat in Parliament. One finds it hard now to 
 understand how the English House of Com- 
 mons could ever have been regarded as the 
 representative ruling body of England, when 
 it held no members who were authorized by 
 position and by experience to speak for the 
 working populations of the country. I mean 
 no disparagement to the other representatives 
 of the working classes when I say that I regard 
 John Burns as the most distinguished and the 
 
 200
 
 JOHN BURNS 
 
 most influential among them. Others of the 
 same order have rendered valuable service, not 
 merely to their own class, but to the State in 
 general since they came to hold seats in the 
 House of Commons ; some have even held 
 administrative office in a Liberal Government, 
 and have shown themselves well qualified for 
 the duties. Not any of them, so far as I can 
 recollect, has ever shown himself the mere de- 
 claimer and demagogue whom so many Con- 
 servative observers and critics used to tell us 
 we must expect to meet if the workingmen 
 were enabled to send their spokesmen into the 
 House of Commons. I do not know whether 
 John Burns has any ambition to hold a seat in 
 some future Liberal Ministry, but I venture to 
 think that if such should be his fortune, he will 
 prove himself more useful than ever to the best 
 interests of his country. He has never sought 
 to obtain the favor and the support of his 
 own order by flattering their weaknesses, by 
 encouraging them in their errors, or by allow- 
 ing them to believe that the right must always 
 be on their side and the wrong on the side of 
 their opponents. I fully believe that he has 
 good and great work yet to do. 
 
 201
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH
 
 Photograph copyright by W. & D. Downey 
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is now, as every- 
 body knows, out of office. // reviendra, no 
 doubt, and in a happier sense, we may trust, 
 than fate allowed to the once famous personage 
 concerning whom the words I have quoted were 
 said and sung throughout France. // reviendra 
 was the burden of the chant composed to the 
 honor of the late General Boulanger and echoed 
 through all the French music-halls at the time 
 when Boulanger got into trouble with the ex- 
 isting government. But Sir Michael Hicks- 
 Beach is a man of very different order from 
 Boulanger, with whom he has, so far as I know, 
 nothing whatever in common except the fact 
 that they were both born in the same year, 
 
 1837. 
 
 The admirers of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach 
 
 may take it for granted that he will some time 
 or other return to a high position in an English 
 administration. Whether that administration 
 is to be Liberal or Conservative we must wait 
 
 205
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 for events to show. One can imagine the for- 
 mation of a Conservative Government which 
 might rise to the level of Hicks-Beach ; or one 
 might imagine the formation of a Liberal Gov- 
 ernment in which Hicks-Beach could see his 
 way to take office ; but I think it would be hard 
 to realize the idea of such a man being left out 
 of office or kept out of office for many years. 
 He was, according to my judgment, the most 
 efficient and capable member of the Conserva- 
 tive Government now in office, the Government 
 from which he felt himself compelled to with- 
 draw, or in which, at all events, he was not 
 pressed to continue. He was not a brilliant 
 figure in that Government. He had not the 
 push and the energy and the impressive debat- 
 ing powers of Mr. Chamberlain, and he had not 
 the culture, the grace, and the literary style of 
 Mr. Arthur Balfour. He made no pretensions 
 whatever to the gift of oratory, although he had 
 some at least of the qualities which are needed 
 for oratorical success. His style of speaking is 
 remarkably clear and impressive. No question, 
 however complex and difficult, seems hard to 
 understand when explained by Hicks-Beach. 
 He compels attention rather than attracts it. 
 There are no alluring qualities in his eloquence, 
 
 206
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 there are no graces of manner or exquisite forms 
 of expression ; there is a cold, almost harsh 
 clearness enforcing itself in every speech. The 
 speaker seems to be telling his hearers that, 
 whether they agree with him or not, whether they 
 like him or not, they must listen to what he has 
 to say. There is a certain quality of antagon- 
 ism in his manner from first to last, and he 
 conveys the idea of one who feels a grim satis- 
 faction in the work of hammering his opinions 
 into the heads of men who would rather be 
 thinking of something else if the choice were 
 left to them. " Black Michael " is the nick- 
 name familiarly applied to Sir Michael Hicks- 
 Beach in private conversation by the members 
 of the House of Commons, and the nickname 
 has found its way into the columns of " Punch " 
 and other periodicals. The term " Black Mi- 
 chael " does not, we may assume, refer merely 
 to the complexion of Hicks-Beach, to the color 
 of his hair ; but means to suggest a grim dark- 
 someness about his whole expression of coun- 
 tenance and bearing. Certainly any one who 
 watches Sir Michael Hicks-Beach as he sits 
 during a debate in the House of Commons, 
 waiting for his turn to reply to the attacks on 
 some measure of which he is a supporter, will 
 
 207
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 easily understand the significance of the appel- 
 lation. Hicks-Beach follows every sentence of 
 the speaker then addressing the House with a 
 stern and ironical gaze of intensity which seems 
 already to foredoom the unlucky orator to a 
 merciless castigation. I must say that if I were 
 a member of the House of Commons devoted 
 to the championship of some not quite ortho- 
 dox financial theory, I should not like to know 
 that my exposition of the doctrine was to be 
 publicly analyzed by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. 
 Yet Hicks- Beach is not by any means an un- 
 genial man, according to my observation. Some 
 of his colleagues say that he has a bad temper, 
 or at least a quick temper ; and I must say that 
 I can easily understand how a man of vigorous 
 intelligence and expansive views might occa- 
 sionally be brought into a mood of unphilo- 
 sophic acrimony by the goings-on of the present 
 Conservative administration. During my many 
 years of service in the House of Commons I 
 had opportunities of coming into personal in- 
 tercourse with Hicks- Beach, and I have always 
 found him easy of approach and genial in his 
 manners. At different times while he was 
 holding ollfice I had to make representations 
 to him privately with regard to some difficulty 
 
 208
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 arising between an administrative department 
 and certain localities which felt themselves 
 oppressed, or at least put at a disadvantage, 
 by the working of new regulations. I always 
 found Sir Michael Hicks-Beach ready to give 
 a full and fair consideration to every complaint 
 and to exercise his authority for the removal of 
 any genuine grievance. But I can easily un- 
 derstand that observers who have not had per- 
 sonal dealings with Hicks-Beach and have only 
 observed him as he sits silent, dark, and grim 
 during some debate in the House of Commons, 
 may well have formed some very decided im- 
 pressions as to his habitual moods and tempers. 
 A member of the House once asked me whether 
 I was aware of the fact that a certain line in 
 one of Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome " 
 was supposed to contain a prophetic description 
 of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. I gave up the 
 puzzle, and then my friend told me that the 
 description was contained in the lines describ- 
 ing the Roman trumpet-call which tell that 
 
 " The kite knows well the long stern swell." 
 
 I hope my American readers will not have 
 quite forgotten the meaning of the term " swell," 
 now somewhat falling into disuse, but at one 
 
 209
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 time very commonly employed in England to 
 describe a member of what would now be called 
 " smart society." 
 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has held many 
 offices. He has been Under-Secretary for the 
 Home Department, and Secretary to the Poor 
 Law Board ; he has been twice Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland, or, to speak more strictly. Chief Sec- 
 retary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; and 
 he has been twice Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 I need hardly say that he was not able to accom- 
 plish much during the periods of his Irish ad- 
 ministration. I have said in preceding articles 
 that it is not possible for the Chief Secre- 
 tary of a Conservative Government to accom- 
 plish anything worth attempting in the work of 
 Irish administration. What Ireland demands 
 is the right to manage her own national affairs 
 in her own domestic Parliament, and there is 
 nothing worth doing to be done by any govern- 
 ment which will not take serious account of her 
 one predominant claim. No patronage of local 
 charities, local flower shows, and local race- 
 courses, no amount of Dublin Castle hospitali- 
 ties, no vice-regal visits to public schools and 
 municipal institutions, can bring about any real 
 improvement in the relations between Great 
 
 2IO
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 Britain and Ireland. I have no doubt that 
 Hicks-Beach did all in his power to see that 
 the business of his department was efficiently 
 and honestly conducted in Dublin Castle, but 
 under the conditions imposed upon him by 
 Conservative principles it was impossible for 
 him to accomplish any success in the adminis- 
 tration of Irish affairs. It has often come into 
 my mind that a certain sense of his limitations 
 in this way was sometimes apparent in the bear- 
 ing and manner of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, 
 when he had to take any prominent part in the 
 business of Dublin Castle. He has an active 
 mind and a ready faculty of initiative, and there 
 was no place for such a man in the sort of ad- 
 ministrative work which mainly consists in the 
 endeavor to keep things going as they have 
 been going, and striving after an impossible 
 compromise between despotic principles and a 
 free constitutional system. 
 
 Hicks-Beach, of course, was more in his 
 place when at the head of the financial depart- 
 ment of the administration. He is admitted to 
 have been one of the most skillful and enlight- 
 ened among modern Chancellors of the Ex- 
 chequer. His financial statements were always 
 thoroughly clear, symmetrical, and interesting 
 
 211
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 from first to last. He never got into any en- 
 tanglement with his figures, and his array of 
 facts was always marshaled with something like 
 dramatic skill. I do not profess to be very 
 strong upon financial questions, but I could 
 always understand and follow with the deepest 
 interest any financial exposition made by Hicks- 
 Beach. He seemed to me to be distinctly above 
 the level of his party and his official colleagues 
 on all such questions, and it has often occurred 
 to me that such a man was rather thrown away 
 upon a Conservative Government. Whatever 
 else might be said against them, it could not be 
 said that his speeches at any time sank to the 
 level of the commonplace. There was some- 
 thing combative in his nature, and his style of 
 speaking, with its clear, strong, and sometimes 
 almost harsh tones, appeared as if it were de- 
 signed in advance to confront and put down all 
 opposition. The House of Commons had for 
 a long time got into the way of regarding Hicks- 
 Beach as a man in advance of his colleagues on 
 all subjects of financial administration. Every 
 Tory in office, or likely to be in office, now pro- 
 fesses himself a free-trader, in the English sense 
 of the phrase, but Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was 
 evidently a genuine free-trader, and never could 
 
 212
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 have been anything else since he first turned 
 his attention seriously and steadily to financial 
 questions. I should describe him as one of the 
 foremost debaters in the House of Commons 
 among the men who made no pretensions to 
 the higher order of eloquence ; and probably an 
 additional attraction was given to his speeches 
 by that aggressive and combative tone which I 
 have just noticed. I have sometimes fancied 
 that his combativeness of manner and his dic- 
 tatorial style were less intended for the discom- 
 fiture of his recognized political opponents than 
 for that of his own colleagues in office. Long 
 before there was any rumor of incompatibility 
 between Hicks-Beach and the members of the 
 present Government, I have often found myself 
 wondering how the man who expressed such 
 enlightened ideas on so many financial and 
 political questions could possibly get on with a 
 somewhat reactionary Conservative administra- 
 tion. Of course I have no means of knowing 
 anything beyond that which is known to the 
 general public concerning the causes which led 
 to Hicks-Beach's withdrawal or exclusion from 
 his place in the present Government. Even 
 those London journals which profess to know 
 everything about the inner councils of the 
 
 213
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Cabinet did not, and do not, tell us anything 
 more on this particular subject than the news, 
 impossible to be concealed, that Sir Michael 
 Hicks-Beach had ceased to be a member of the 
 Conservative administration. We were all left 
 to make any conjectures we pleased as to the 
 cause of this remarkable change, and I feel, 
 therefore, no particular diffidence in expound- 
 ing my own theory. During the long debates 
 on Hicks-Beach's latest Budget proposals, 
 which I had to follow only through the medium 
 of the newspaper reports, I became possessed 
 with the idea that Hicks-Beach was performing 
 reluctantly an uncongenial and almost intoler- 
 able task. 
 
 Let me recall to the minds of my readers 
 some of the conditions amid which Hicks- 
 Beach found himself compelled of late to carry 
 on his work. It should be said, in the first 
 instance, that he never showed himself, and, as 
 I believe, never could have been, a genuine 
 Tory of the old school. He never exhibited 
 himself as an uncompromising partisan on any 
 of the great subjects which arouse political 
 antagonism. He must have had very little 
 sympathy indeed with the dogmas and the 
 watchwords and the war-cries of old-fashioned 
 
 214
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 militant Toryism. He never identified himself 
 with the cause of the Orangemen in Ireland or 
 the principles of the Jingoes in England. He 
 seldom addressed the House of Commons on 
 any subjects but those which belonged to his 
 own department, and these were for the most 
 part questions of finance. When, however, he 
 had occasionally to take part in debates on sub- 
 jects connected with England's foreign policy, 
 he generally spoke with an enlightenment, a 
 moderation, and a conciliatory tone which would 
 have done credit to any statesman and seemed 
 little in keeping with the policy and the temper 
 of modern Toryism. But Hicks-Beach had 
 fallen upon evil days for a man of his foresight, 
 his intellect, and his temperament generally 
 who had found a place in a Conservative Cab- 
 inet. The policy which led to the outbreak 
 of the war in South Africa aroused a passion 
 in the English public mind which found its 
 utmost fury among the partisans of Toryism. 
 Tory and Jingo became for the time synony- 
 mous terms. The man who did not allow 
 his heart and soul to be filled with the war 
 spirit must have seemed to most of his friends 
 unworthy to be called a Conservative. Even 
 among certain sections of the Liberals it re- 
 
 215
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 quired much courage for any man to condemn 
 or even to criticise with severity the poHcy 
 which had led to the war. Any one who ven- 
 tured on such a course, whether he were Lib- 
 eral or Conservative, was straightway branded 
 with the opprobrious epithet of pro-Boer, and 
 that title was supposed to carry his complete 
 condemnation. England had come back sud- 
 denly to the same kind of passionate temper 
 which prevailed during the earlier part of the 
 Crimean War. " He who is not with us is 
 against us," cried the professing patriots at 
 both times — he who does not glorify the war 
 is a traitor to his own country and a pro-Boer, 
 or a pro-Russian, as the case might be. This 
 was the temper with which Hicks-Beach found 
 that he had to deal during the later years of 
 his financial administration. 
 
 It would be out of place to enter into any 
 speculation as to what Hicks-Beach's own views 
 may have been with regard to the whole policy 
 of the war. It is now well known that Queen 
 Victoria was entirely opposed to that policy, 
 although she did not feel that her position as a 
 constitutional sovereign gave her authority to 
 overrule it by a decision of her own. There is 
 very good reason to believe that peace was 
 
 216
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 brought about at last by the resolute exercise 
 of King Edward's influence. It is at least not 
 unHkely that a man of Hicks-Beach's intellect 
 and temperament may have been opposed at 
 first to the policy which brought on the war, 
 but may have, nevertheless, believed that his 
 most patriotic course would be to remain in 
 the Government and do the best he could for 
 the public benefit. He soon found himself 
 compelled to perform as disagreeable a task as 
 an enlightened financial statesman could have 
 to undertake — the task of extracting from the 
 already overburdened taxpayers the means of 
 carrying on a war of conquest with which he 
 had little sympathy. It was perfectly evident 
 that the needed revenue could not be extracted 
 from the country without some violation of 
 those financial principles to which Hicks-Beach 
 had long been attached. There was no time 
 for much meditation — the money had to be 
 found somehow — and a great part of it could 
 only be found by the imposition of a duty on 
 foreign imports. We now know from public 
 statements made by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach 
 himself that while the war was going on he 
 became impressed with the conviction that the 
 whole administration of the military department 
 
 217
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 was grossly mismanaged, and that the money 
 of the nation was thrown away when the War 
 Office came to spend it. The conviction thus 
 forced upon him could not have tended to make 
 the task of providing means for such further 
 expenditure any the more agreeable to him. 
 We may assume that he saw no other course 
 before him than to make the best of a bad job 
 and try to find in the least objectionable way 
 the amount of money necessary to carry on the 
 business of the State. It was evident to him 
 that the principles of free trade must be put 
 aside for the present, and he found himself 
 driven to the odious necessity of imposing a 
 duty on the importation of foreign corn, a duty 
 which in fact amounted to a tax on bread. 
 Hicks-Beach well knew that no tax could be 
 more odious to the poorer classes of the Brit- 
 ish Islands; but we may presume that in his 
 emergency he could see no other way of raising 
 the money, and he accepted the situation with a 
 dogged resolve which made no pretense at any 
 concealment of his personal dislike for the task. 
 His manner of delivering the speech in which 
 he set forth his scheme of finance was that of a 
 man who has to discharge an odious duty, or 
 what he finds himself by the force of circum- 
 
 218
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 stances compelled to regard as a duty, but will 
 utter no word which might seem to make out 
 that he has any excuse other than that of hate- 
 ful necessity. The substance of Hicks-Beach's 
 explanations on this part of his budget might 
 be summed up in such words as these : " We 
 have got to pay for this war, and we have no 
 time to spare in finding the money ; we must 
 cast aside for the time the principles of free 
 trade ; but do not let us further degrade our- 
 selves by hypocritical attempts to make out 
 that what we are doing is in accordance with 
 the free-trade doctrine." I remember well that 
 on reading Hicks-Beach's budget speech I 
 became deeply impressed with the conviction 
 that his task was becoming so intolerable to 
 him that we might expect before long to see a 
 change in the composition of the Government. 
 But it appeared to me that, as the debate went 
 on and the days went on, the position of Hicks- 
 Beach was becoming more and more difficult. 
 Some of the members of the Cabinet became 
 to all appearance suddenly possessed with an 
 inspiration that the time had arrived for a bold 
 movement of reaction against the long-accepted 
 doctrines of free trade. The Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer had already receded so far from the 
 
 219
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 established policy as to propose the imposition 
 of a tax on the imported materials for making 
 bread ; and why, therefore, should we not take 
 advantage — thus at least I construed their 
 ideas — of this tempting opportunity to intro- 
 duce a system of preferential duties and an 
 imitation Zollverein for England and some of 
 her colonies, and to break away from the creed 
 and dogmas of men like Gladstone, Cobden, and 
 Bright ? These proposals must have opened to 
 the eyes of Hicks-Beach a vista of financial 
 heresies into which he could not possibly enter. 
 He probably thought that he had gone far 
 enough in the way of compromise when he 
 consented to meet immediate emergencies by 
 the imposition of a bread-tax. Is it possible 
 that he may have felt some compunctious visit- 
 ing because of his having yielded so far to the 
 necessities of the moment ? However that may 
 be, I take it for granted, and took it for granted 
 at the time, that Hicks-Beach found the incom- 
 patibility between his own views as to the 
 raising of revenue and the views beginning to 
 be developed by some of his colleagues becom- 
 ing more and more difficult to reconcile. 
 
 Let me venture on an illustration, although 
 it be not by any means photographic in its 
 
 220
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 accuracy, of the difficulty with which the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer found himself con- 
 fronted. Let us suppose Hicks-Beach to be 
 the leader of a pledged society of total abstain- 
 ers. At a moment of sudden crisis he feels 
 called upon to relax so far the rigidity of the 
 society's governing principle as to allow one of 
 its members who is threatened with utter physi- 
 cal prostration a few drops of alcoholic stimu- 
 lant. He finds his course cordially approved 
 by some of his most influential colleagues, and 
 at first he is proud of their support. But it 
 presently turns out that they regard his reluc- 
 tant concession as the opening up of a new 
 practice in their regulations, and they press 
 upon him all manner of propositions for the 
 toleration and even the encouragement of what 
 my friend Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the great Eng- 
 lish champion of total abstinence, would term 
 " moderate drunkenness." Fancy what the feel- 
 ings of Sir Wilfrid Lawson would be if by some 
 temporary and apparently needful concession 
 he found himself regarded by those around 
 him as an advocate of moderate drunkenness ! 
 Such, I cannot help thinking, must have been, 
 in its different way, the condition to which 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach felt himself brought 
 
 221
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 down, when he discovered that his introduction 
 of an import duty on foreign grain was believed 
 by his principal colleagues to be but the open- 
 ing of a reactionary movement against the 
 whole policy of free trade. 
 
 The Government of Lord Salisbury seemed to 
 be in the highest good spirits at the prospects be- 
 fore them. Mr. Chamberlain in especial seemed 
 to believe that the time had come for him to 
 develop an entirely new system of his own for 
 the adjustment of import and export duties. 
 For many weeks the English newspapers were 
 filled with discussions on Mr. Chamberlain's 
 great project for the new British Imperial Zoll- 
 verein, of which England was to be the head. 
 Numbers of Mr. Chamberlain's Conservative 
 admirers were filled with a fresh enthusiasm 
 for the man who thus proposed to reverse 
 altogether the decisions of all modern political 
 economy laid down by Liberal statesmen and 
 Radical writers. Stout old Tory gentlemen 
 representing county constituencies began to 
 be full of hope that the good old times were 
 coming back. 
 
 That was the crisis — so far at least as the 
 official career of Sir Michael Hicks- Beach was 
 concerned for the time. What may have hap- 
 
 222
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 pened in the private councils of the Govern- 
 ment we of the outer world were not and are 
 not permitted to know. All that we actually 
 do know is that Lord Salisbury resigned his 
 place as Prime Minister, that Arthur Balfour 
 was called to succeed him in office, and that 
 a new administration was formed in which the 
 name of Hicks-Beach did not appear. There 
 were other changes also made in the adminis- 
 tration, but with these I shall not for the 
 present concern myself. The important fact 
 for this article is that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach 
 was no longer Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 All manner of conjectures were made as to 
 the reasons why Lord Salisbury so suddenly 
 withdrew from the position of Prime Minister, 
 and why he could not be prevailed upon to 
 hold the place even nominally until after King 
 Edward's coronation. I do not suppose that 
 the resignation of Lord Salisbury had any- 
 thing to do with the fact that Sir Michael 
 Hicks-Beach ceased to be Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. The vacancies were not made 
 simultaneously, nor did there appear any reason 
 to believe that Hicks-Beach was so closely 
 identified with the political fortunes of Lord 
 Salisbury as to be unable to remain in office 
 
 223
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 when his leader had ceased to hold the place 
 of command. So far as an outsider can judge, 
 it must have been that Hicks-Beach could not 
 get on with the new administration, or that the 
 new administration could not get on with him. 
 My own theory, and I only offer it to my read- 
 ers as the theory of a mere observer from the 
 outside, is that Hicks-Beach could not stand 
 any more of the reaction towards protection 
 principles — thought he had gone quite as far 
 as any sense of duty to his party could exact 
 from him, and made up his mind that if his 
 colleagues were anxious to go any farther in 
 what he believed to be the wrong direction 
 they must do so without any help or counte- 
 nance from him. 
 
 This theory has taken a firmer hold than 
 ever of my mind since I read the report of a 
 speech lately made by Hicks-Beach weeks and 
 weeks after he had ceased to be Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer. That recent speech might have 
 been made by a member of the Liberal Opposi- 
 tion. Certainly in some of its most important 
 and striking passages it enunciated opinions 
 and laid down doctrines which might have come 
 from almost any of Sir Henry Campbell-Ban- 
 nerman's colleagues on the front Opposition 
 
 224
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 bench. It denounced extravagant war expendi- 
 ture at a time when ImperiaHst poUticians were 
 calling out for something very like military 
 conscription, and it insisted that the defense of 
 England by the strength of her navy ought to 
 be the main consideration of English states- 
 manship. That is a doctrine which used to 
 be proclaimed in distant days by such men as 
 Cobden and Bright, which soon became an ac- 
 cepted principle among all genuine Liberals, but 
 has lately been repudiated by all Imperialists, 
 Liberal or Tory, who seem to think that the 
 one great business of English statesmanship is 
 to turn England into a military encampment. 
 The natural and reasonable conclusion to be 
 drawn from such a speech is that during the 
 last session or two of Parliament Hicks-Beach 
 found it impossible to put up any longer with 
 the reign of Jingo principles in the Cabinet, 
 and made up his mind to set himself free from 
 such a domination. The Tory Government 
 has lost its ablest financial administrator, and 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has regained his 
 position of independence. 
 
 The future must tell the story of Hicks- 
 Beach's remaining career. That he has yet an 
 important career before him may be taken for 
 
 225
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 granted if only the fates allow him the ordinary 
 length of man's life. Nothing but absolute 
 retirement from Parliamentary work could re- 
 duce such a man to a position of complete 
 neutrality, or could prevent him from having 
 an influence which the leaders of both poHtical 
 parties must take into consideration. He is 
 too strong in debate, too well trained in the 
 business of administration, and too quick in 
 observing the real import of growing political 
 changes, and in distinguishing between them 
 and the mere displays of ephemeral emotion, 
 not to make his influence felt at any great crisis 
 in the conditions of political parties. I hold, 
 therefore, to the hope expressed at the opening 
 of this article, that il reviendra — that Sir 
 Michael Hicks-Beach will come back before 
 long to an important place in some adminis- 
 tration. The House of Commons could not 
 afford just now to lose the services of such a 
 man, and I take it for granted that Hicks- 
 Beach could not remain long in the House of 
 Commons without being called upon to accept 
 an official position. He is beyond question 
 one of the very ablest men on the side of the 
 Government in that House, and his integrity, 
 his moderation, his capacity to understand the 
 
 226
 
 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH 
 
 significance of new facts, and his disinterested- 
 ness have won for him the respect of all parties 
 in Parliament and outside it. We are, to all 
 appearance, on the eve of great changes in the 
 composition of our political parties. With the 
 close of the war has come to an end that sea- 
 son of Jingoism which brought so many weak- 
 minded Liberals into fascinated co-operation 
 with the Tories. The reaction against Toryism 
 must come, and it will probably bring with it 
 a reconstitution of both parties on the prin- 
 ciples which each may consider essential to its 
 character at a time when peace at home gives 
 our legislators a chance of studying the domes- 
 tic welfare of the people in these islands. It 
 will not be enough then for a public man to 
 proclaim himself Imperialist in order to win 
 the votes of a constituency, or to denounce his 
 rival as a pro- Boer in order to secure defeat for 
 that unlucky personage. The constituencies 
 will begin to ask what each candidate proposes 
 to do for the domestic prosperity of our popu- 
 lations at home, and to demand an explicit 
 answer. Under such conditions, whatever be 
 the reconstitution of parties, I am strongly of 
 opinion that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will be- 
 fore long begin a new administrative career. 
 
 227
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND
 
 Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry 
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 John Edward Redmond is one of the lead- 
 ing men in the House of Commons just now. 
 He is one of the very few really eloquent speak- 
 ers of whom the House can boast at the present 
 time. His eloquence is, indeed, of a kind but 
 rarely heard in either House of Parliament 
 during recent years. The ordinary style of 
 debate in the House of Commons is becoming 
 more and more of the merely conversational 
 order, and even when the speaker is very much 
 in earnest, even when he is carried away by 
 the fervor of debate, his emotion is apt to ex- 
 press itself rather in an elevation of the voice 
 than in an exaltation of the style. Among 
 members of the House who may be still re- 
 garded as having a career before them I do not 
 think there are more than three or four who 
 are capable of making a really eloquent speech 
 — a speech which is worth hearing for its style 
 and its language as well as for its information 
 and its argument. John Redmond is one of 
 
 231
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 these gifted few ; Lloyd-George is another. I 
 have heard some critics depreciate John Red- 
 mond's eloquence on the ground that it is 
 rather old-fashioned. If it be old-fashioned to 
 express one's meaning in polished and well- 
 balanced sentences, in brilliant phrasing, and 
 with melodious utterance, then I have to admit 
 that John Redmond is not, in his style of elo- 
 quence, quite up to the present fashion, and I 
 can only say that it is so much the worse for 
 the present fashion. It is quite certain that 
 Redmond is accepted by the House of Commons 
 in general as one of its most eloquent speakers 
 and one of its ablest party leaders. 
 
 Redmond has already been some twenty 
 years in the House of Commons. He was a 
 very young man when first chosen to represent 
 an Irish constituency in the House. I have 
 noticed that our biographical dictionaries of 
 contemporary life do not agree as to the date 
 of Redmond's birth. Some of the books set 
 him down as born in 185 1, while others give 
 the year of his birth as 1856. I think I have 
 good reason for knowing that the latter date is 
 the correct one. Perhaps it ought to bring a 
 sense of gratification to a public man w^hen a 
 dispute arises as to the date of his birth. It 
 
 232
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 may give him a complacent reminder of the 
 fact that certain cities disputed as to Homer's 
 birthplace. 
 
 John Redmond comes of a good family, and 
 his father was for a long time a member of the 
 House of Commons. I can remember the elder 
 Redmond very well, and he was a man of the 
 most courteous bearing and polished manners, 
 a man of education and capacity, who, when- 
 ever he spoke in debate, spoke well and to the 
 point, and was highly esteemed by all parties 
 in the House. John Redmond was educated 
 at Trinity College, Dublin, studied for the law 
 and was called to the bar, but did not practice 
 in the profession. He was elected to the House 
 of Commons in 1881, and became a member 
 of that National party which had been formed 
 not long before under the guidance of Charles 
 Stewart Parnell. From the time when he first 
 took part in a Parliamentary debate it was evi- 
 dent that John Redmond had inherited his 
 father's graceful manner of speaking, and it was 
 soon discovered that he possessed a faculty of 
 genuine eloquence which had not been dis- 
 played by the elder Redmond. John Redmond 
 had and still has a voice of remarkable strength, 
 volume, and variety of intonation, and he was 
 
 233
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 soon afforded ample opportunity of testing his 
 capacity for public speech. It was a great part 
 of Parnell's policy that there should be a power- 
 ful Home Rule organization extending itself 
 over all parts of Great Britain, founding insti- 
 tutions in all the principal cities and towns, and 
 addressing audiences indoors and out on the 
 subject of Ireland's demand for domestic self- 
 government. John Redmond soon became one 
 of the most effective oro^anizers of this new 
 movement and one of the most powerful plead- 
 ers of the cause on public platforms. The first 
 time I ever heard him make a speech in public 
 was at a great open-air meeting held in Hyde 
 Park. He had to address a vast crowd, and I 
 felt naturally anxious to know what his suc- 
 cess might be under such trying conditions 
 for a young speaker. He had then but a slen- 
 der frame, and his somewhat delicately molded 
 features did not suggest the idea of great lung- 
 power. After his first sentence I felt no 
 further doubt as to his physical capacity. He 
 had a magnificent voice, clear, resonant, and 
 thrilling, which made itself heard all over the 
 crowd without the slightest apparent effort on 
 the part of the speaker. I could not help being 
 struck at the time by the seeming contrast 
 
 234
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 between the boyish, delicate figure and the easy 
 strength of the resonant voice. 
 
 During his earHer sessions in the House of 
 Commons Redmond did not speak very often, 
 but when he did speak he made it clear that he 
 had at his command a gift of genuine elo- 
 quence. He held ofhce as one of the whips of 
 the Irish National party — that is to say, as 
 one of the chosen officials whose duty it is to 
 look after the arrangements of the party, to see 
 that its members are always in their places at 
 the right time, to settle as to the speakers who 
 are to take part in each debate, and to enter 
 into any necessary communications with the 
 whips of the other parties in the House. Red- 
 mond was a man admirably suited for such 
 work. He had had an excellent education; 
 he had the polished manners of good society; 
 he belonged to what I may call the country 
 gentleman order, and could ride to hounds 
 with a horsemanship which must have won the 
 respect of the Tory squires from the hunting 
 counties ; and he had an excellent capacity and 
 memory for all matters of arrangement and 
 detail. He attended to his duties as one of the 
 party whips with unfailing regularity, and could 
 exercise with equal skill and effect the influ- 
 
 235
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 ence of persuasiveness and that of official com- 
 mand. 
 
 In the early days of the Parnell party there 
 was not, to be sure, any great demand on the 
 marshaling power of the whips over the rank 
 and file of the little army. For a considerable 
 time the whole Parnellite party did not consist 
 of more than ten or a dozen members. These 
 members, however, were compelled to do con- 
 stant duty, and to maintain the great game of 
 Parliamentary obstruction revived by Parnell at 
 all hours of the day and the night. It was quite 
 a common thing for a member of the party to 
 deliver a dozen or fifteen speeches in the course 
 of a single sitting, and John Redmond had all his 
 work to do in endeavoring to keep exhausted col- 
 leagues up to their business and to see that they 
 did not leave the precincts of the House until 
 Mr. Speaker should have formally announced 
 that the day's sitting was over. Redmond's ser- 
 vices were of inestimable value during such a 
 period of trial. As the days went on, the Irish 
 constituencies became more and more aroused 
 to the necessity of increasing as far as possible 
 the number of thoroughgoing Parnellites in the 
 House by getting rid, at every election, of the 
 Irish members — Irish Whigs as they were 
 
 236
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 called — who did not go in thoroughly, heart 
 and soul, for the policy of Parnell. Under such 
 conditions the influence and the eloquence of 
 John Redmond were of the most substantial 
 service to his party in the work of stirring up 
 the national sentiment among the Irish popula- 
 tions in the cities and towns of England and 
 Scotland. Before many years had passed, John 
 Redmond was one of the whips of an Irish 
 National party in the House of Commons 
 which numbered nearly ninety members. The 
 increase of official duties thus put upon him 
 and his brother whips did not seem to trouble 
 him in the slightest degree. He was always on 
 duty in the House, unless when he had to be on 
 duty at some public meeting outside its pre- 
 cincts ; he was ever in good spirits ; could 
 always give his chief the fullest and most exact 
 information as to the conditions of each debate, 
 and the best methods of getting full use of the 
 numbers and the debating strength of the Irish 
 party at any given moment. 
 
 During the greater part of this time he had 
 not had much opportunity of cultivating his 
 faculty as a debater, for the whip of a party is 
 understood to be occupied rather in putting 
 other men up to speak than in displaying elo- 
 
 217
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 quence of his own, and it was for several years 
 not quite understood by the party that John 
 Redmond was qualified to be and was destined 
 to be one of its most commanding spokesmen. I 
 ought to say that among other duties discharged 
 by John Redmond was the trying and respon- 
 sible task of traveling on more than one occa- 
 sion over the United States and Canada and 
 Australia to preach the Home Rule gospel to 
 the Irish populations in those countries and to 
 all others who would listen, and thus to obtain 
 the utmost possible support for the great move- 
 ment at home. For many sessions, however, 
 John Redmond was regarded by his colleagues 
 in the House as a speaker best heard to advan- 
 tage on some great public platform outside the 
 Parliamentary precincts, and very few of them 
 indeed had yet formed the idea that he was also 
 qualified to become one of the foremost orators 
 in the representative chamber itself. 
 
 I may mention here that Mr. Redmond's in- 
 timate knowledge of the rules and practices of 
 the House and his thorough acquaintance with 
 its business ways were, in great measure, due to 
 his having held for a time a place in one of the 
 offices belonging to the House of Commons. 
 He was appointed, before he became a member 
 
 238
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 of the House, a clerk in the Vote Office, a de- 
 partment which has to do with the preparation 
 of Parliamentary documents, the distribution of 
 Parliamentary papers, and other such technical 
 work. The clerkships in these offices are in 
 the gift of the Speaker, are an avenue towards 
 the highest promotions in the official staff of 
 the House, and are usually given to young men 
 who, in addition to high education and a pro- 
 mise of capacity, can bring some Parliamentary 
 or family influence to bear on their behalf. 
 John Redmond had some experience in this 
 Vote Office, and it made him a thorough mas- 
 ter of Parliamentary business. I had enjoyed 
 his personal acquaintance for some time before 
 he came into the House as a member, and I 
 had been in the House myself some two years 
 before his election. I remember often seeing 
 him and exchanging a word with him as he 
 stood within the House itself, but just below 
 the line which marks the place where the bar 
 of the House is erected when there is occasion, 
 for any public purpose, to admit a stranger thus 
 far and no farther, in order that he may plead 
 some cause before the House or present some 
 petition. Officials employed in any of the of- 
 fices belonging to the House are allowed the 
 
 239
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 proud privilege of advancing up the floor of the 
 chamber as far as the chair occupied by the Ser- 
 geant-at-Arms, the point at which the bar would 
 be drawn across if occasion should require. 
 Thus I had the opportunity of conversing with 
 John Redmond on the floor of the House itself, 
 before he had yet obtained the right of passing 
 beyond the sacred line of the bar. 
 
 I am quite certain that Parnell himself did 
 not, until the great crisis came in the Irish Na- 
 tional party, fully appreciate the political capa- 
 city of John Redmond. Parnell always regarded 
 him as both useful and ornamental — useful in 
 managing the business of the party, and orna- 
 mental as a brilliant speaker on a public plat- 
 form. But he did not appear to know, and had 
 indeed no means of knowing, that Redmond 
 had in himself the qualifications of a party leader 
 and the debating power which could make him 
 an influence in the House of Commons. The 
 speeches which Redmond made, or rather was 
 " put up " by his leader to make, in the House, 
 had often for their object merely to fill up time 
 and keep a debate going until the moment ar- 
 rived when Parnell thought a division ought to 
 be taken. But when the great crisis came in the 
 affairs of the party, then Redmond was soon 
 
 240
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 able to prove himself made of stronger metal 
 than even his leader had supposed. The crisis 
 was, of course, when the Parnell divorce case 
 came on, and Gladstone and the Liberal leaders 
 generally became filled with the conviction that 
 it would be impossible to carry a measure of 
 Home Rule if Parnell were to retain the leader- 
 ship of the Irish National party. I need not 
 go over this old and painful story again ; it is 
 enough to say that the great majority of Par- 
 nell's own followers found themselves com- 
 pelled to believe that it would be better for 
 Ireland if Parnell were to resign the leadership 
 and retire into private life for a certain time. 
 This Parnell refused to do, and, in opposition 
 to the earnest wishes of the majority of his fol- 
 lowers, he published a sort of manifesto in 
 denunciation of Gladstone. Then came the 
 famous meetings of the Irish party in Commit- 
 tee-Room No. 1 5 — one of the committee-rooms 
 belonging to the House of Commons — and, 
 after long days of angry and sometimes even 
 fierce debate, the great majority of the party 
 declared that they could no longer follow the 
 leadership of Parnell. The minority made up 
 their minds to hold with Parnell for good or 
 evil. 
 
 241
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 I am willing and always was willing to ren- 
 der full justice to the motives which inspired 
 the action of the minority. They did not feel 
 themselves called upon to justify every act of 
 Parnell's private life, but they took the position 
 that his private life had nothing to do with his 
 political career, and that they could not aban- 
 don the leader who had done such service to 
 Ireland merely because his name had become 
 associated with a public scandal. On the other 
 hand, the majority of the party, of whom I was 
 one, held that their first duty was to their coun- 
 try, and that if the continued leadership of Par- 
 nell rendered it impossible for Gladstone to 
 carry his Home Rule measure, they had to 
 think only of their country and its national 
 cause. During all these debates in Committee- 
 Room No. 15, John Redmond took the leading 
 part on the side of the minority. He became 
 the foremost champion of Parnell's leadership. 
 This position seemed to come to him as if in the 
 nature of things. I well remember the ability 
 and eloquence which he displayed in these de- 
 bates, and the telling manner in which he put 
 his arguments and his appeals. The course he 
 took was all the more to his credit because 
 Parnell had never singled him out as an object 
 
 242
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 of especial favor, and, indeed, in the opinion of 
 many among us, had not done full justice to his 
 services in the House of Commons. Then 
 came the formal division of the party. The 
 majority met together and reconstituted the 
 party with a new Chairman, while the minority 
 associated themselves with Parnell as their 
 leader for the purpose of going over to Ireland 
 and endeavoring to organize the country in his 
 support. When the end of the fierce open 
 controversy was brought about at last by Par- 
 nell's sudden death, John Redmond was made 
 the leader of the minority, and from that time 
 forth he began to give more and more distinct 
 evidences of his capacity for a Parliamentary 
 leader's position. He and his group of followers 
 kept themselves in the House of Commons en- 
 tirely apart from their former colleagues. John 
 Redmond had often to take a part in the de- 
 bates of the House, and every one could see 
 that the serious responsibility imposed on him 
 was developing in him qualities of leadership, 
 and even of statesmanship, which very few in- 
 deed had previously believed to be among his 
 gifts. 
 
 Meanwhile the state of things created in Ire- 
 land by the split and the setting up of two 
 
 243
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 opposing parties was becoming intolerable. 
 Every man of patriotic feeling on either side 
 of the controversy was coming to see more 
 keenly every day that the maintenance of such 
 a division must be fatal to the cause, for at 
 least another generation. Some efforts were 
 made by the leading men on both sides to bring 
 about a process of reconciliation. John Dillon 
 on the one side, and John Redmond on the 
 other, lent every help they could to these patri- 
 otic efforts. John Dillon had by this time be- 
 come leader of the more numerous party, having 
 been chosen to that position when the leader 
 elected after the severance from Parnell had 
 been compelled by ill health to resign the 
 place. Every reasonable man among the Irish 
 Nationalists, inside and outside Parliament, was 
 coming more and more to see that there was no 
 longer any occasion whatever for further sever- 
 ance, and that the country demanded a return 
 to the old principle of union in the National 
 ranks. John Dillon became impressed with 
 the conviction that it might tend to smooth 
 matters and to open a better chance for recon- 
 ciliation if he, as one of the most conspicuous 
 anti-Parnellites, were to resign his position, and 
 to invite the whole party to come together 
 
 244
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 again and elect a leader. Dillon was strongly 
 of opinion that, as all matter of controversy had 
 been buried in the early grave of Parnell, it 
 would be better for the cause of future union 
 that the new leader should be chosen from 
 among the small number of men who had 
 always adhered to Parnell's side. Dillon pre- 
 vailed upon most of his friends to adopt his 
 views on this subject. It was the custom of 
 the Irish National party — indeed, of both the 
 parties — to elect their leader at the opening 
 of each session, and John Dillon had been re- 
 elected more than once to the position of com- 
 mand in his own party. Accordingly, at the 
 close of a session Dillon announced his inten- 
 tion to resign the place of leader, and he added 
 to the announcement that he would not then 
 accept re-election, even if it should be offered 
 to him by a vote of his party. This patriotic 
 course of action was most happy in its results. 
 The Irish National members met together once 
 again as a united party, and the leadership was 
 conferred on John Redmond as an evidence 
 alike of the confidence which was felt in his 
 capacity and his sincerity, and a proof of the 
 desire entertained by the majority for a thor- 
 ough and cordial reunion of the whole party. 
 
 245
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 John Redmond was therefore the first leader 
 of the whole party since the events of Com- 
 mittee-Room No. 15. John Dillon and his 
 immediate predecessor had been only leaders 
 of a majority, and now John Redmond was 
 chosen as the leader of the whole party repre- 
 senting the Irish National cause in the House 
 of Commons. He settled down at once to his 
 new position with a temper and spirit admir- 
 ably suited to the work he had to undertake. 
 He seemed to have put away from his mind 
 all memory of disunion in the party, and he 
 became once more the friend as well as the 
 leader of every member enrolled in its ranks. 
 Many of those who formed the majority had 
 in the first instance only yielded to the per- 
 suasion of John Dillon and others in the elec- 
 tion of Redmond as leader merely because they 
 believed that by such a course the interests of 
 the cause could best be served just then. But 
 I know that some of these men accepted with 
 personal reluctance what seemed to be the 
 necessity of the hour, and looked forward with 
 anything but gratification to the prospect of 
 having to serve under the new chief. John 
 Redmond, while defending the cause of the 
 still living Parnell, had shown in the service 
 
 246
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 of his chief an energy and a passion which few 
 of us could have expected of him, and was 
 often utterly unsparing in his denunciation of 
 the men who maintained the other side of the 
 controversy. It was not unnatural that many of 
 his former opponents should feel some doubt 
 as to the possibility of working harmoniously 
 under the leadership of a man who had been 
 but lately so bitter an opponent. I had, at the 
 time of the new leadership, been compelled by 
 ill health to give up all active part in public 
 life, but I talked with many members of the 
 majority in the Irish party who told me frankly 
 that they feared it would not be possible to 
 get on under the leadership of John Redmond. 
 Before long, however, these same men spon- 
 taneously assured me that they had changed 
 their opinions on that subject, and were glad 
 to find that they could work with Redmond 
 in perfect harmony, and that his manner and 
 bearing showed no sign whatever of any bitter 
 memories belonging to the days of internal 
 dispute. Redmond devoted himself absolutely 
 to the House of Commons and the business of 
 leadership, unless indeed when some pressing 
 national interests compelled him to leave his 
 place in St. Stephen's in order to see to the 
 
 247
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 organization of the National cause in Ireland 
 or in the United States. At the time when 
 I am writing this article he has but lately re- 
 turned from a visit of that kind to some of the 
 great cities of the American Republic. 
 
 Fortunately for his country as well as for 
 himself, John Redmond is a man of private 
 means, is not compelled to earn a living, and 
 can devote the whole of his time to the ser- 
 vice of the National cause. He is always to 
 be found at his post while the House of Com- 
 mons is sitting, and I believe that his morning 
 ride in Hyde Park with his wife every day is 
 one of the few recreations in which he allows 
 himself to indulge. I had not long ago a visit 
 from a well-known member of the Irish Par- 
 liamentary party who holds one of its official 
 positions and was at the time of the internal 
 dispute an uncompromising opponent of Par- 
 nell's continued rule. This friend of mine I 
 know was decidedly opposed at first to the 
 election of John Redmond as leader, for the 
 reason that he did not believe such an arrange- 
 ment could possibly work with smoothness and 
 satisfaction to the party. But when I saw 
 him lately, he assured me that he had entirely 
 changed his opinions and that he did not be- 
 
 248
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 lieve any party could possibly have a better 
 leader than John Redmond had already proved 
 himself to be. He had nothing but praise for 
 Redmond's bearing and ways, for the manner 
 in which he appeared to have banished from 
 his mind all memory of past disunion, and for 
 the unremitting attention with which he de- 
 voted himself to the work of the party inside 
 and outside the House of Commons. 
 
 Since then I have heard and read nothing but 
 good accounts of the manner in which Red- 
 mond has reorganized the party. It has under 
 his guidance become once again a powerful 
 force in political life. The House of Com- 
 mons, as a whole, has thoroughly recognized 
 Redmond's position, influence, and capacity. 
 The Prime Minister has given many proofs of 
 the importance which he attaches to Redmond's 
 decisions and movements. The new leader of 
 the Irish party has won a much higher rank as a 
 Parliamentary debater than he ever had attained 
 to in the days before he had become invested 
 with a really grave responsibility. The news- 
 paper critics on all sides of political life are 
 agreed in describing him as one of the foremost 
 living debaters. Indeed, there are but three or 
 four men in the House of Commons who could 
 
 249
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 possibly be compared with him for eloquence 
 and skill in debate, and there is a quality of 
 grace and artistic form in his style of eloquence 
 which often recalls the memories of brighter 
 days, when the art of oratory was still culti- 
 vated in Parliament. The success with which 
 he has conducted the movements of his party 
 has compelled Ministerialists and Opposition 
 alike to take serious account of Redmond and 
 his followers when the chances of any great 
 political measure are under consideration. Only 
 quite lately, during the passage of the Educa- 
 tion measure, he adopted a policy which at first 
 greatly puzzled his opponents, and at the last 
 moment succeeded in impressing the Govern- 
 ment and the Ministerial party generally with 
 the conviction that Redmond understands when 
 and how to strike a decisive blow. 
 
 Of course we hear sometimes, and of late 
 rather often, about differences in the Irish party 
 itself, and about a threatened secession from 
 John Redmond's leadership. The Tory papers 
 in England, and even some of the journals 
 which are professedly Liberal, made eager use 
 of this supposed dissension, and endeavored to 
 persuade themselves and their readers that Red- 
 mond has not a full hold over his followers and 
 
 250
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 over the Irish people. I may tell my American 
 readers that they will do well not to attach the 
 slightest importance to these stories about a 
 threatened secession from the lately reunited 
 Irish National party. In the first place, I 
 never heard of any political party which did 
 not inclose in its ranks some men who could 
 not always be reckoned on as amenable to 
 the discipline which is found necessary in 
 every political organization. There is a con- 
 siderable number of Liberal members who can- 
 not be counted on to follow at all times the 
 guidance of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. 
 There are many Ministerialists, and some of 
 them very clever men, who have lately been 
 proving that at times they would just as soon 
 vote against Arthur Balfour as with him. But 
 in regard to the Irish party and the members 
 who do not always fall in with the wish of its 
 leader, the actual facts are peculiar. The only 
 members of the party who have lately been 
 showing a tendency to mutiny are, with one 
 exception, men of no account whatever in Ire- 
 land's political life. I do not wish to name any 
 names, but I can state with deliberation that 
 almost every one of the mutinous members just 
 now is a man who has not the slightest chance 
 
 251
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 of ever again being sent to represent an Irish 
 constituency in the House of Commons. These 
 men have long since forfeited the confidence of 
 their constituents and their fellow-countrymen. 
 They are perfectly aware of this fact; they 
 know quite well that the next general election 
 will see them put out of Parliamentary life ; 
 and, in despair of re-election, they probably think 
 that they might as well make the most of the 
 opportunity for rendering themselves conspicu- 
 ous or for indulging in eccentricities which now 
 can do them no further harm. It may be taken 
 for granted that at the next general election 
 the National constituencies of Ireland will send 
 to the House of Commons no men who are not 
 prepared to work in complete union with the 
 National party, and to recognize the authority 
 of the leader who has the confidence of his 
 people. I do not care to waste many words on 
 this subject, but I think it right to assure my 
 American readers that they need not attach 
 any serious importance to the doings of five or 
 six men, most of whom are either mere " cranks " 
 or are driven to desperation by disappointed 
 personal ambition. 
 
 John Redmond has the confidence of his 
 countrymen in England and Scotland, as well 
 
 252
 
 JOHN E. REDMOND 
 
 as in Ireland, and we have seen that within the 
 last few months he has obtained full assurance 
 that he enjoys the confidence of his country- 
 men in the United States, in Canada, and in 
 Australasia. I feel all the more ready to bear 
 my testimony to his merits and his success 
 because of the fact that I was, during a crisis 
 which lasted for some years, in direct opposi- 
 tion to the policy which he felt himself consci- 
 entiously bound to adopt. The change of events 
 has released him from any obligation to adhere 
 to such a policy, and I do him the justice to 
 believe that he accepted with the sincerest and 
 most disinterested good will the first genuine 
 opportunity offered for a complete reunion of 
 Irish Nationalists. John Redmond is still young 
 enough to have a career before him, and I feel 
 the fullest confidence in his future. 
 
 253
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
 
 Photograph copyright hy Elliott & Fry 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 Every friend and admirer of Sir William 
 Harcourt must have been glad when it was 
 made known that the late leader of the Liberal 
 party in the House of Commons had declined 
 to accept the King's offer of a peerage and was 
 determined to remain in that representative 
 chamber where he had made his political name 
 and won his place of command. Sir William 
 Harcourt would have been thrown away in the 
 House of Lords. He could not have done 
 anything to arouse that apathetic chamber to 
 living importance in the affairs of state, and 
 the House of Commons would have lost its 
 most impressive figure. Sir William Harcourt's 
 political fame was made in the House of Com- 
 mons, and he is even yet its most distinguished 
 member. I say " even yet " because Harcourt 
 is growing old, and has passed that age of three- 
 score years and ten authoritatively set down as 
 the allotted space of man's life. But he shows 
 no appearance of old age, seems full of energy 
 
 257
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 and vital power, and is as well able to command 
 the listening House of Commons by argumenta- 
 tive speech and impressive declamation as he 
 was twenty years ago. Harcourt's bearing is 
 one of superabundant physical resources, and 
 he has a voice of resonant tone which imposes 
 no tax on the listening powers of the stranger 
 in the farthest gallery. He is a very tall man, 
 would be one of the tallest men in any political 
 assembly, and his presence is stately and com- 
 manding. After Gladstone's death he became 
 the leader of the Liberal party in the House of 
 Commons, and he resigned that position only 
 because he could not cordially accept the policy 
 and plans of action undertaken by his leader 
 in the House of Lords, Lord Rosebery. I do 
 not propose to enter at any length into the 
 differences of opinion which separated these 
 two men, but it was generally understood that 
 Lord Rosebery did not see his way to carry 
 out Gladstone's policy for the maintenance of 
 Greece and the Christian populations generally 
 against the blood-stained domination of the 
 Ottoman power in the southeast of Europe. 
 The result of these differences was that Lord 
 Rosebery applied himself to form a Liberal 
 party of his own, which should be what is called 
 
 258
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 Imperialist in its policy, and that Harcourt 
 became merely a member of the Liberal Oppo- 
 sition in the House of Commons. To have 
 won the place of Liberal leader in the repre- 
 sentative chamber might well have satisfied the 
 ambition of any man, and to withdraw from 
 that place rather than contribute to any further 
 disagreement in the party did not in any sense 
 detract from Harcourt 's influence and fame. 
 
 Sir William Harcourt won his earliest dis- 
 tinctions in law and literature rather than in 
 politics. He comes of a family which has a 
 history of its own and had members who won 
 reputation during many generations. He was 
 educated at Cambridge University and obtained 
 high honors there. He was called to the bar 
 in 1854, and became Queen's Counsel in 1866. 
 In the meantime he had accomplished some 
 important literary work. He was a writer for 
 the " Saturday Review," then at the zenith of 
 its reputation, and under the title of " Histori- 
 cus " he contributed a series of letters on im- 
 portant public subjects to the " Times " news- 
 paper which attracted universal attention, were 
 afterwards collected and published in a volume, 
 and found readers in every part of the world 
 where men take interest in the public life of 
 
 259
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 England. He was a leading advocate in some 
 legal causes which excited the profound atten- 
 tion of the whole country, and was already 
 regarded as a man of mark, who might be safely 
 assumed to have a successful career before him. 
 It was generally taken for granted at the time 
 that such a man was certain to seek and find a 
 place in the House of Commons, which of 
 course offers an opening for rising legal advo- 
 cates as well as for rising politicians. I can 
 remember quite distinctly that to all of us who 
 were watching the careers of promising men it 
 appeared quite certain that Harcourt was not 
 likely to content himself with professional dis- 
 tinction, and that when he entered the House 
 of Commons he would devote himself for the 
 most part to the business of political life. He 
 made one unsuccessful attempt to obtain a seat 
 in the House of Commons as representative of 
 a Scottish constituency, and was more fortu- 
 nate in his second endeavor, when he was 
 elected to Parliament by the city of Oxford as 
 a Liberal in iS68. Then for a while I person- 
 ally lost sight of him, for towards the close of 
 that year I began a lengthened visit to the 
 United States, and only learned through the 
 newspapers that he was already winning marked 
 
 260
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 distinction as a Parliamentary debater. When 
 I returned to England in 1871, I found that 
 Harcourt was already regarded as certain to 
 hold high office in a Liberal administration. 
 His first step in that direction was to obtain 
 the office of Solicitor-General in Gladstone's 
 Government. 
 
 A story was told of Harcourt at the time — 
 this was in 1873 — which I believe to be au- 
 thentic and is worth repeating. Up to this 
 time he was merely Mr. William Vernon Har- 
 court, but the usage in Parliamentary life is 
 that the leading law officers of the Crown, the 
 Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, 
 shall receive the honor of knighthood. It was 
 therefore a matter of course that Mr. Harcourt 
 should become Sir William Harcourt, and bear 
 the title by which he is still known everywhere. 
 The story goes, however, that Harcourt was 
 not much delighted with the offer of a distinc- 
 tion which is commonly conferred upon the 
 mayors of English cities and towns and other 
 such personages of municipal position. Har- 
 court, as I have said, came of a distinguished 
 English family which had contributed Lord 
 Chancellors and other such exalted dignitaries 
 to the business of the State. He probably had 
 
 261
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 also in his mind the fact that rising men in his 
 own profession who happened to be sons of 
 peers were specially exempted by constitutional 
 usage from the necessity of putting up with 
 knighthood when accepting one of the two 
 legal offices under the Crown. The manner 
 in which this very fact proclaimed the com- 
 parative insignificance of the title may have 
 still further influenced Harcourt's objections. 
 Anyhow, he did endeavor to impress upon 
 Gladstone his claim to be exempted from the 
 proffered dignity. Gladstone, however, assured 
 him that it was the recognized constitutional 
 practice to confer a knighthood upon a new 
 Solicitor-General, and that there was no reason 
 why Harcourt should seek dispensation from 
 the honor. " Then," demanded Harcourt — so 
 at least the story is told — " why don't you 
 confer knighthoods on all the members of your 
 Cabinet, and see how some of them would 
 receive the proposition ? " I cannot vouch for 
 this story as historical truth, but I can vouch 
 for the fact that it was told everywhere at 
 the time, and received, so far as I know, no 
 contradiction. 
 
 Harcourt made his way almost at once to the 
 front rank of Parliamentary debaters. His 
 
 262
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 style was somewhat rhetorical and declamatory, 
 but it was distinctly argumentative, and his 
 speeches contained few passages of mere de- 
 clamation. He was a hard hitter, one of the 
 hardest in the House, but he hit straight from 
 the shoulder and never gave an unfair blow. 
 He was often very happy in his sarcastic touches, 
 and there was a certain robust and self-satisfied 
 good-humor even in his severest attacks on his 
 Parliamentary opponents. The general im- 
 pression of observers at first was that Harcourt 
 would go in merely for the reputation of a 
 powerful debater in the House of Commons, 
 and would not show any ambition for the steady 
 and severe work of Ministerial office. The pub- 
 lic had yet to learn that the highest reputation 
 of the man was to be made by his success as 
 the head of a great Ministerial department. 
 Many observers also formed the opinion that 
 Harcourt had no clear political views of his 
 own, and was merely a sort of free lance ready 
 to accept employment under the most conven- 
 ient leader. He had entered the House of 
 Commons as a Liberal, and even before he 
 accepted oflEice had always ranked himself as a 
 regular supporter of the Liberal party, but he 
 often made speeches in opposition to the views 
 
 263
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS ' 
 
 of extreme Liberals or Radicals — speeches 
 such as might well have been made by some 
 eloquent member of the Tory party. Many of 
 the more advanced Liberals had for some time 
 no confidence whatever in Harcourt's Liberal- 
 ism, and were often engaged in sharp contro- 
 versy with him. My own impression is that, 
 up to a certain period in his career, Harcourt 
 had not formed, or troubled himself to form, 
 any very settled opinions on the rising political 
 questions of the day. Upon all the old sub- 
 jects of political debate, on the controversies 
 which divided political parties in a former gen- 
 eration, his views were, no doubt, quite settled, 
 but then there were many new subjects coming 
 up for discussion, bringing with them new 
 occasions for political division, and it is quite 
 probable that on some of these at least the 
 new Solicitor-General had not quite made up 
 his mind. He had been a close student at 
 Cambridge, and had been elected professor of 
 international law by that University ; he had 
 practiced law as an advocate, and had begun to 
 make a reputation for himself as a writer. It 
 is quite probable that he had not yet given any 
 special attention to some of the new questions 
 which the growing development of social and 
 
 264
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 political conditions was calling up for Parlia- 
 mentary consideration. 
 
 Harcourt appears to have accepted as a mat- 
 ter of course, when he entered the House of 
 Commons, the recognized principles inherited 
 by the Liberal party. But there was then, as 
 at most other periods of England's constitu- 
 tional history, a new and advancing Liberal 
 party beginning to make its influence felt, and 
 not satisfied to abide by the mere traditions 
 and established canons of the older Liberalism. 
 Only a very few even of the advanced Liberals 
 were yet prepared to support and encourage the 
 Irish demand for Home Rule, and on such do- 
 mestic questions, for instance, as the regulation 
 of the liquor traffic, the Liberal party in general 
 had not made up its mind to any policy other 
 than a policy of mere inaction. I mention these 
 two subjects in particular because they have an 
 especial value in throwing light upon the change 
 which took place more lately in Harcourt 's polit- 
 ical attitude. Probably at the time when he first 
 entered the House of Commons he had not 
 concerned himself much with the Home Rule 
 question, and had allowed himself to take it for 
 granted, as so many even among Liberal poli- 
 ticians and newspapers would have told him, 
 
 265
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 that the Irish Home Rulers were aiming at the 
 break-up of the Empire. In the same way it 
 is quite possible that he may have given little 
 or no attention to the demand for some new 
 regulation of the liquor trafific, and dismissed 
 the whole subject as a crotchet of Sir Wilfrid 
 Lawson. When, however, he began to study 
 the political life of the House of Commons as 
 an active and a rising member, and when he 
 found that his inclinations and his instincts 
 were leading him into politics and away from 
 law, we can easily understand that he set him- 
 self to study with candid judgment the new 
 questions which were beginning to divide the 
 Liberal party. I have often heard Sir William 
 Harcourt accused of inconsistency and even of 
 time-serving, because of his sudden conversion 
 to the principle of some political movement 
 which was at last coming to be accepted by the 
 great Liberal leaders. I do not see any reason 
 whatever to believe that Harcourt can fairly be 
 reproached with inconsistency, or justly accused 
 of any ignoble motive for his adoption of the 
 newer and more advanced opinions. The ex- 
 planation seems to me quite clear. The uni- 
 versity student, the practicing advocate, the 
 professor of international law, adopted a new 
 
 266
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 career and devoted himself to an active part in 
 the work of the House of Commons. Then it 
 was that he studied for the first time with ear- 
 nestness and impartiahty some great develop- 
 ing questions which had previously been mere 
 names and shadows to him, and thus he came 
 to form the conclusions which guided his sub- 
 sequent career. If Harcourt had been think- 
 ing chiefly of his own political advancement, 
 he might have done better for himself by 
 following the example of Disraeli, and taking 
 a place among the Tories, where intellect and 
 eloquence were more rare than on the other 
 side of the House, and where promotion was 
 therefore more easily to be won. 
 
 Harcourt had probably not given much atten- 
 tion to great financial questions until he came 
 under the influence of Gladstone. Up to that 
 time he had, perhaps, not assumed that such 
 subjects were likely to come within the scope 
 of his practical work ; but when he had to study 
 them, he began to discover that he had within 
 him the capacity for a thorough comprehen- 
 sion of their real meaning and development, 
 and as the result of the study he became, when 
 the opportunity offered itself, one of the most 
 successful and enlightened financial Ministers 
 
 267
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 of his time. In the same way he may never 
 have given any serious thought to the question 
 of Irish Home Rule, and may have fallen quietly 
 into the way of regarding it, in accordance with 
 the common opinion of most Englishmen just 
 then, as something naturally associated with a 
 rebellious desire for the breaking up of the 
 Empire. When, however, he was led to study 
 it as a question of reasonable import, he grew 
 to be a convinced and a hopeful advocate of 
 the cause. For a long time after he had 
 taken ofHce under Gladstone he found himself 
 brought into an incessant opposition and even 
 antagonism to the small group of Irish mem- 
 bers, who then represented the Irish national 
 demand, and compelled to fight against the 
 obstruction which these Irish members were 
 raising night after night, as their only means 
 of enforcing public attention to a serious con- 
 sideration of Ireland's national complaints and 
 claims. He became converted to the cause of 
 Home Rule, just as Gladstone did, by having 
 the question forced upon his consideration, and 
 thus being compelled to ask himself whether 
 there was not some real sense of justice inspir- 
 ing the Irish agitation. 
 
 I shall always remember a conversation I 
 
 268
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 once had with Gladstone on this subject of 
 Irish Home Rule. It was in one of the inner 
 lobbies of the House of Commons, and Mr. 
 Gladstone began it by asking me how I could 
 regard Home Rule as a national demand, see- 
 ing that only a very small number of the Irish 
 representatives in the House were actively in 
 favor of such a measure. Gladstone called my 
 attention to the fact that out of the whole body 
 of Irish representatives elected by the con- 
 stituencies on the same basis of voting, less 
 than a dozen members declared themselves 
 uncompromising advocates of Home Rule. I 
 drew Gladstone's attention to the fact that 
 the suffrage in Ireland was so high and so 
 restricted that the whole bulk of the Irish 
 population were disqualified by law from giving 
 a vote at any election. Gladstone appealed to 
 me to say whether he had not long been in favor 
 of an expanded suffrage for the whole King- 
 dom, and I told him that I cordially recognized 
 his sincere purpose, and that whenever we got 
 a really fair and popular suffrage he would 
 then find ample proof that the great bulk of 
 the Irish people were united in their demands 
 for Home Rule. Not long after, it came about 
 that Gladstone and his Government saw their 
 
 269
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 way to a measure of reform which gave the 
 whole Kingdom an expanded and popular suf- 
 frage, and at the next general election the great 
 majority of Irish members opposed to or luke- 
 warm about Home Rule disappeared altogether 
 from Parliament, and their places were taken 
 by avowed and uncompromising Home Rulers 
 elected mainly because they were earnest advo- 
 cates of Home Rule. Out of the hundred and 
 three members who constitute the Irish repre- 
 sentation, we had then nearly ninety who were 
 proclaimed and consistent Home Rulers. This 
 result did much of itself to make Gladstone a 
 convert to Home Rule, and it had naturally 
 the same effect on Harcourt, who was far 
 too intelligent a man not to accept the lesson 
 taught by the Irish constituencies, and to admit 
 that the demand for Home Rule was a genuine 
 national demand, and as such entitled to the 
 serious consideration of real statesmen. The 
 conversion of Harcourt I have always, there- 
 fore, regarded as sincere and statesmanlike, 
 and of the same order as the conversion of 
 Gladstone himself. The first business of states- 
 manship is to recognize established facts and 
 to act upon their evidence. Once the demand 
 
 had been proved to be national, neither Glad- 
 
 270
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 stone nor Harcourt was the man to deny it 
 a full consideration ; and the same full consid- 
 eration made the one man and the other an 
 advocate of Home Rule. 
 
 In the days before the great constitutional 
 change which I have described, the change 
 which resulted in the adoption of a popular suf- 
 frage, in the days when our small band of Irish 
 Nationalists was still doing battle inch by inch 
 against the Government, we had many fierce 
 struggles with Harcourt, then a leading mem- 
 ber of the Liberal administration. We had to 
 admit that we found in him a powerful antag- 
 onist. He was ready in reply, resolute in main- 
 taining his position, and he gave us, to say the 
 least of it, as good as we brought. He was 
 ever alert, he could answer attack by attack, 
 he could carry the battle into the enemy's ranks, 
 and the ablest of our debaters had his best 
 work to do when compelled to stand up in 
 Parliamentary contest against Harcourt. But 
 I observed that in our private dealings with 
 Harcourt, on questions which came within the 
 range of his administrative functions, we always 
 found him considerate, kind, and even gener- 
 ous. There were frequent occasions when a 
 Minister of the Crown had to be applied to by 
 
 271
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 an Irish member for justice in the dealings of 
 his official department, where individual ques- 
 tions of right and wrong having nothing to do 
 with the general subject of Home Rule came 
 up for consideration. I am now speaking of 
 questions which were not to be settled by mere 
 debate in the House of Commons, but which 
 belonged to the ordinary and practical dealings 
 of the department with this or that individual 
 case. I can remember many instances in which 
 I had to make some such appeal to Sir William 
 Harcourt, and I ever found him most ready and 
 willing to consider fairly the nature of any in- 
 dividual grievance, and to prevent the adminis- 
 tration of the law from being perversely turned 
 into an engine of oppression. I know that 
 many of my colleagues as well as myself felt 
 thankful to Harcourt for his prompt interfer- 
 ence where a real grievance had been brought 
 under his notice, and for his resolve to see that 
 justice must be done to the obscure sufferer 
 from official tyranny. When the Liberal Gov- 
 ernment and the Irish National party came 
 to work together for Home Rule, we, the Irish 
 National members, had nothing on our memory 
 which could prevent us from regarding Har- 
 court as a genuine Liberal and a sincere friend 
 
 272
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 who had never shown any inclination to abuse 
 his power when he was strong and we were at 
 our weakest. My recollection of the days when 
 we were fighting against Harcourt is tinged 
 with no bitterness. He was always a formidable 
 fighter, but he fought fairly when he still had 
 to fight against us. 
 
 It is not surprising that Harcourt should 
 have been for some time regarded as a power- 
 ful debater and nothing more. He was one of 
 the foremost debaters in the House of Com- 
 mons, even at a time when that House had 
 more commanding debaters in it than it can 
 claim to have just at present. He cannot be 
 ranked among the great orators of the House. 
 He is wanting in imagination, and without the 
 gift of imagination there cannot be eloquence 
 of the highest order. Even in the mere mak- 
 ing of phrases he has seldom shown originality, 
 and it has often been remarked of him, as it was 
 remarked by Disraeli of Sir Robert Peel, that 
 he never ventures on any quotation which has 
 not already well established its popularity. Sir 
 William Harcourt's best qualities as a speaker 
 consist in his clearness of exposition, his unfail- 
 ing fluency, his masterly array of forcible argu- 
 ment, and the fact that he never allows his 
 
 273
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 eloquence to soar over the heads of his audi- 
 ence. I should be inclined to say of him that, 
 although he is unquestionably a great Parlia- 
 mentary debater, yet his intellectual capacity, 
 his faculty for balancing evidence, acquiring 
 and comparing facts, appreciating tendencies, 
 and coming to just conclusions, are greater 
 even than his powers of speech. I may say 
 that one who listened to Sir William Harcourt 
 during the earlier stages of his Parliamentary 
 career might very naturally have been led to 
 quite a different conclusion, and might have set 
 him down as a clever maker of speeches and 
 not a statesman. But such an observer, sup- 
 posing him to be endowed with a fair amount 
 of intelligence, would have gradually changed 
 his opinion as he followed Harcourt's political 
 career. Every time that Harcourt has been in 
 office he has more and more given proof that 
 there is in him the true quality of statesman- 
 ship. He served as Home Secretary under 
 Gladstone, and was afterwards Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, first in one of Gladstone's Ad- 
 ministrations and afterwards in the Government 
 of Lord Rosebery. There can be no ques- 
 tion that he proved himself to be one of the 
 greatest financial Ministers England has had 
 
 274
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 in recent times. His famous Death Duties 
 budget, introduced while Lord Rosebery was 
 Prime Minister, created one of the most vehe- 
 ment controversies known to the political life 
 of the present generation. Yet the great prin- 
 ciple which Harcourt embodied in his dealing 
 with the question of death duties must now be 
 regarded even by his political opponents as 
 resting on a basis of absolute morality and 
 justice. The principle merely was that the 
 amount of taxation which any individual pays 
 to the State in consideration of his having 
 obtained property by bequest shall be greater 
 in proportion according as the acquired pro- 
 perty is great in amount. In other words, 
 Harcourt's policy maintained that a man who 
 comes in for a large property as a bequest shall 
 pay a larger proportion of taxation to the State 
 than a man who comes in for a small property, 
 and that the same principle ought to prevail 
 through our other systems of direct taxation. 
 The whole controversy simply turns on the 
 question whether the rich man ought or ought 
 not to pay a larger proportion of his income to 
 defray the national expenses than the poor man 
 — whether the citizen who has only income 
 enough to enable him to maintain his family 
 
 275
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 decently ought to be called upon to pay towards 
 the maintenance of the State on just the same 
 scale as that ordained for the man who can live 
 in lavish luxury. The boldness and originality 
 of Sir William Harcourt's venture in his bud- 
 get of 1893, the energy and argumentative 
 power with which he carried it to success, have 
 undoubtedly secured for him a place in the 
 front rank of England's financial Ministers. 
 The later years of Harcourt's career offer a 
 strange commentary on the estimate generally 
 formed of him when he began to be conspicu- 
 ous in Parliament. At the former period he 
 was commonly regarded as a clever but some- 
 what superficial man, as one whose qualities 
 were rather flashy than sound, as a ready maker 
 of telling speeches designed to produce an 
 immediate effect and destined to be utterly 
 forgotten the day after to-morrow. Harcourt's 
 later years of public work have proved him to 
 be a serious Parliamentary leader, a man of 
 strong and deep convictions, a man who thinks 
 before he speaks and speaks because he thinks. 
 Indeed, the seriousness of Harcourt's convic- 
 tions on some subjects of national importance 
 has brought him more than once into disfavor 
 with his constituents. He holds very strong 
 
 276
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 and advanced views on the subject of local 
 option — that is to say, on the right of localities 
 to say whether they will or will not allow the 
 sale of intoxicating drinks within their con- 
 fines, and to state what conditions are to be 
 imposed on the traffic if it is permitted at all. 
 Sir William Harcourt went further on this 
 subject than some even among his colleagues 
 who were in favor of the general principle as 
 a principle, but did not see the necessity for 
 pressing it to immediate action. One of those 
 colleagues said to me that in his opinion Har- 
 court might very well have allowed the question 
 to stand over for eight or ten years, and per- 
 haps by the end of that time the habits of the 
 population would have improved so far as to 
 render the passing of any strong restrictive 
 law unnecessary. I am quite certain that Har- 
 court's earnest resolve to deal boldly with this 
 subject if he should be allowed the opportunity 
 had much to do with the condition of feeling 
 in the Liberal party which led to his resigna- 
 tion of its leadership. We may look forward 
 with confidence to the formation of a new Lib- 
 eral Government in which Harcourt will have 
 a commanding position, and when that time 
 comes we may take it for granted that, in spite 
 
 277
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 of whatever opposition on either side of the 
 House of Commons, he will once more attempt 
 to deal with the question of local option. 
 
 Most of my American readers know that Sir 
 William Harcourt's second wife was the daugh- 
 ter of Lothrop Motley, the famous historian 
 who was for a time Minister to Great Britain, 
 and who died at Harcourt's country residence 
 in 1877. The eldest son, Louis Vernon Har- 
 court, who was born in 1863, has also married 
 an American lady. Louis Harcourt, whom I 
 have known since his boyish days, is endowed 
 with much of his father's talents, and I have 
 always thought that if he had devoted himself 
 entirely to political life he might make for him- 
 self such a career as his father has already ac- 
 complished. During contested elections I have 
 been more than once associated with Louis 
 Harcourt in " stumping " some parts of the 
 country on behalf of the Liberal Government 
 then engaged in the cause of Home Rule, and 
 I have the clearest memories of his remarkable 
 organizing capacity, his ready eloquence, and 
 his skill in replying to questions and arguments 
 and in convincing skeptical voters. I take it 
 for granted that every one who has known 
 Louis, or, as he is commonly called, " Lulu " 
 
 278
 
 SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT 
 
 Harcourt, must have delightful recollections of 
 his bright companionship. We have all heard 
 that Sir William Harcourt studiously consulted 
 his son when the offer of a peerage was made 
 to him by King Edward, and that " Lulu " was 
 resolute in supporting his father's desire to re- 
 fuse the honor, even although his acceptance 
 of it would have made " Lulu " the heir to a 
 peerage. Sir William Harcourt, we may well 
 hope, has yet good work to do in the House of 
 Commons. There is nothing about him which 
 suggests the idea of advanced years or of decay- 
 ing powers, whether mental or physical. The 
 curious attack of weakness which lately came 
 over so many members of the Liberal party 
 never touched his robust intellect and resolute 
 character. No man could render more valu- 
 able services than he may be expected to do 
 in turning to account for genuine Liberalism 
 the reaction already beginning to set in against 
 the reign of the Tories and the Jingoes. I 
 cherish the belief that the best of Sir William 
 Harcourt's work is yet to be done by him. 
 
 279
 
 JAMES BRYCE
 
 Photo^'rni>h cupyriL'ht by Lrmdim Stereoscopic Co. 
 
 JAMES BRYCE
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 James Bryce is universally recognized as one 
 of the intellectual forces in the British House of 
 Commons. When he rises to make a speech, 
 every one listens with the deepest interest, feel- 
 ing sure that some ideas and some instruction 
 are sure to come which no political party in the 
 House can well afford to lose. Some men in 
 the House of Commons have been orators and 
 nothing else ; some have been orators and in- 
 structors as well ; some have been Parliamen- 
 tary debaters more or less capable ; and a good 
 many have been bores. In every generation 
 there have been a few who are especially re- 
 garded as illuminating forces. The House does 
 not think of measuring their influence by any 
 estimate of their greater or less capacity for 
 mere eloquence of expression. It values them 
 because of the lessons which they teach. To 
 this small order of members James Bryce un- 
 doubtedly belongs. Now, I do not mean to 
 convey the idea that such men as these are not 
 
 283
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 usually endowed with the gift of eloquence, or 
 that they cannot deliver speeches which would 
 entitle them to a high rank among Parliamen- 
 tary debaters, no matter what the import of the 
 speeches might be. My object is to describe 
 a certain class of men whose Parliamentary 
 speeches are valued by members in general 
 without any special regard for their form, but 
 only with regard to their substance, for the 
 thoughts they utter and not for the manner 
 of the utterance. James Bryce would be con- 
 sidered an effective and even a commanding 
 speaker in any public assembly, but neverthe- 
 less, when the House of Commons and the pub- 
 lic think of his speeches, these are thought of 
 mainly for the truths they tell and the lessons 
 they convey, and not for any quality of mere 
 eloquence which adorns them. In a certain 
 sense James Bryce might be described as be- 
 longing to that Parliamentary order in the 
 front of which John Morley stands just now ; 
 but of course John Morley has thus far had 
 more administrative experience than James 
 Bryce, and has taken a more distinct place as 
 a Parliamentary and popular leader. Of both 
 men, however, I should be inclined to say that 
 their public speeches lose something of the 
 
 284
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 praise fairly due to them as mere displays of 
 eloquence, because of the importance we all 
 attach to their intellectual and educational in- 
 fluence. 
 
 I may say also that James Bryce is not first 
 and above all other things a public man and a 
 politician. He does not seem to have thought 
 of a Parliamentary career until after he had 
 won for himself a high and commanding posi- 
 tion as a writer of history. Bryce is by birth 
 an Irishman and belongs to that northern pro- 
 vince of Ireland which is peopled to a large 
 extent by Scottish immigrants. We are all 
 rather too apt to think of this Ulster province as 
 essentially un-Irish, or even anti-Irish in tone 
 and feeling, although some of the most extreme 
 among Irish Nationalists, men like John Mitch- 
 ell for instance, were born and brought up in 
 Ulster, and in more recent days some conspicu- 
 ous Home Rulers have sat in the House of 
 Commons as representatives of Ulster constitu- 
 encies. James Bryce has always been an Irish 
 Nationalist since he came into public life, and 
 has shown himself, whether in or out of political 
 office, a steady and consistent supporter of the 
 demand for Irish Home Rule. Indeed, I should 
 be well inclined to believe that a desire to ren- 
 
 285
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 der some personal service in promoting the just 
 claims of Ireland for a better system of govern- 
 ment must have had much influence over Bryce's 
 decision to accept a seat in the House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 Bryce began his education in the University 
 of Glasgow, from which he passed on to Ox- 
 ford, where he won many honors and has left 
 the memory of a most successful career, not 
 merely as student, but also as professor. He 
 studied for a while at Heidelberg, where he 
 cultivated to the full his previously acquired 
 knowledge of German ; and I have heard in 
 later years on good authority that while Bryce 
 was a member of Mr. Gladstone's Government 
 he became a great favorite with Oueen Victoria 
 because of his capacity for fluent speech in the 
 language which the late Queen loved especially 
 to hear. Before he turned his attention to ac- 
 tive political life Bryce studied for the bar, 
 became a member of the profession, and actu- 
 ally practiced in the Law Courts for some 
 years. Thus far, however, he had hardly given 
 indication of the gifts which were destined to 
 secure for him a high and enduring place in 
 English literature. Thus far his life may be 
 regarded as that of a student and a scholar ; he 
 
 286
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 had yet to give to the world the fruits of his 
 scholarship. James Bryce is probably above 
 all things a scholar. He is, I may venture to 
 say, the most scholarly man in the House of 
 Commons. I doubt whether there is in England 
 so widely read a man in all departments of liter- 
 ature, art, and science as Bryce, now that Lord 
 Acton has been removed from us by death. 
 Long before his entrance into Parliamentary 
 life Bryce had obtained the highest distinction 
 as a writer of history. It is not too much to 
 say that his great historical work, " The Holy 
 Roman Empire," is destined to be an English 
 classic and a book for all countries and all 
 times. The author could hardly add to the 
 reputation he won by this masterpiece of his- 
 torical study, insight, and labor, but it is only 
 mere justice to say that every work of impor- 
 tance which he afterwards gave to the world 
 has maintained his position in literature. His 
 turn of mind has been always that which 
 distinguishes the practical student — the stu- 
 dent of realities, not the visionary or the 
 dreamer, the man who, according to Goethe's 
 phrase, is occupied more by the physical than 
 by the metaphysical. In 1877 he published a 
 narrative of his travels in Transcaucasia, with 
 
 287
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 an account of his ascent of Mount Ararat. I 
 believe no other traveler has ever accomplished 
 such a practical study of Mount Ararat as that 
 which was made by Mr. Bryce, and during a 
 part of his explorings he was absolutely alone, 
 as he could not prevail upon the guides belong- 
 ing to that region to overcome their supersti- 
 tious dread of an intrusion on certain parts of 
 the mountain. He was always fond of travel, 
 and was able to bring some fresh ideas out of 
 places long familiar to tourists, and he gave to 
 the world in English periodicals the results of 
 his experiences as a traveler. His descriptions 
 of Icelandic scenery and of some rarely visited 
 regions of Hungary and of Poland have a genu- 
 ine literary as well as a genuine geographical 
 value. 
 
 His most important work, after his great 
 history of the Holy Roman Empire, is un- 
 doubtedly his book on " The American Com- 
 monwealth," published in 1888. This work 
 has been read as generally and studied as 
 closely on the one side of the Atlantic as on 
 the other. I have heard it spoken of with as 
 thorough appreciation in New York, Boston, 
 and Washington as in London, Manchester, 
 and Liverpool. Many years have passed since 
 
 288
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 an eminent English public man, not now 
 living, expressed to me an earnest wish that 
 some European writer would take up the 
 story of the great American Commonwealth 
 just where De Tocqueville left it in his " De 
 la Democratic en Amerique." I joined cor- 
 dially in his ideas and his wishes, and we dis- 
 cussed the qualifications of certain Englishmen 
 for the task if any of them could see his way 
 to undertake it, but neither of us seemed to 
 be quite satisfied that we had named the right 
 man for the work. At the time it did not 
 occur to either of us that the historian of 
 " The Holy Roman Empire " would be likely 
 to turn his attention to the story of the Ameri- 
 can Commonwealth. Indeed, the two studies 
 seemed to me so entirely different and uncon- 
 genial that if the name of James Bryce had 
 been suggested to me at the time I should 
 probably have put it aside without much hesi- 
 tation. One could hardly have looked for so 
 much versatility even in Mr. Bryce as to favor 
 the expectation that he could accomplish, with 
 something like equal success, two historical 
 works dealing with such totally different sub- 
 jects and requiring such different methods of 
 analysis and contemplation. 
 
 289
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 More lately still Mr. Bryce brought out his 
 " Impressions of South Africa." This book 
 was published in 1897, and the time of its 
 publication was most appropriate. It appeared 
 when the prospects of a war with the Transvaal 
 Republic were opening gloomily for the lovers 
 of peace and fair dealing in England. If Mr. 
 Bryce's impressions of South Africa could 
 only have been appreciated, and allowed to 
 have their just influence with the leaders of 
 the Conservative party at that critical time, 
 England might have been saved from a long 
 and futile war, and from much serious discredit 
 in the general opinion of the civilized world. 
 But if Bryce had spoken with the tongue of 
 an angel, he could not at such a time have 
 prevailed against the rising passion of Jingo- 
 ism and the overmastering influence of mining 
 speculators. It is only right to say that the 
 book was in no sense a mere distended politi- 
 cal pamphlet. It was not meant as a counter- 
 blast to Jingoism, or as a glorification of the 
 Boer Republic. It was a fair and temperate 
 statement of the author's observations in South 
 Africa, and of the general conclusions to which 
 his experience and his study had brought him. 
 Bryce pointed out with perfect frankness the 
 
 290
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 defects and dangers he saw in the Boer system 
 of government, and even the most ferocious 
 Jingo could hardly have felt justified in de- 
 scribing the author by that most terrible epi- 
 thet, a " pro- Boer." The warning which Bryce 
 gave, and gave in vain, to the English Gov- 
 ernment and the English majority, was a 
 warning against the credulous acceptation of 
 one-sided testimony, against the fond belief 
 that the proclamation of Imperialism carried 
 with it the right to intervene in the affairs of 
 every foreign State, and against the theory 
 that troops and gold mines warrant any enter- 
 prise. 
 
 The Parliamentary career of James Bryce 
 began in 1880, when he was elected as Lib- 
 eral representative for a London constituency. 
 He did great work in the cause of national 
 education, and took an important part in two 
 State Commissions appointed to conduct in- 
 quiries into the working of the public schools. 
 At a later period he was chosen to represent 
 a Scottish constituency, and when Mr. Glad- 
 stone came into power as the head of a Gov- 
 ernment Bryce received the important office 
 of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. At 
 that time his chief, the Secretary for Foreign 
 
 291
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Affairs, was a member of the House of Lords, 
 and therefore the whole work of representing 
 the department in the House of Commons, 
 where alone any important debates on foreign 
 questions are conducted, fell on Mr. Bryce, 
 who had the entire conduct of such discus- 
 sions on behalf of the administration. The 
 department was one which gave an effective 
 opportunity for the display of Bryce's inti- 
 mate knowledge of foreign countries, and he 
 acquitted himself with all the success which 
 might have been expected from one of his 
 intellect, his experience, and his enlightened 
 views. Later still he became Chancellor of 
 the Duchy of Lancaster, and for the first time 
 had a seat in the Cabinet. The Chancellor- 
 ship of the Duchy of Lancaster is one of a 
 small order of English administrative oilfices 
 which have comparatively unimportant duties 
 attached to their special administration, and 
 leave the man in possession ample time to 
 lend his assistance, both in the Cabinet and 
 in the House of Commons, to all the great 
 public questions which occupy the attention of 
 the Government. In 1894 he became President 
 of the Board of Trade, one of the most impor- 
 tant positions in any administration. Bryce's 
 
 292
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 official career came to a close for the present 
 when the Liberal party lost their majority in 
 the representative chamber, and the Conserva- 
 tives got into power and secured the adminis- 
 trative position they are holding at the present 
 day. Nothing can be more certain than that 
 the first really Liberal administration which 
 is again formed will assign to Mr. Bryce one 
 of the highest places in its Cabinet and in 
 its work. Since he has come to sit on the 
 benches of Opposition he has taken part in 
 many great debates, and is always listened to 
 with the most profound attention. He is one 
 of the few leaders of the Liberal party who 
 were manful and outspoken in their opposition 
 to the policy which originated and carried on 
 the late South African war. He has taken a 
 conspicuous part in every debate upon sub- 
 jects of foreign policy, of national education, 
 and of political advancement. He has never 
 acted as a mere partisan, and his intervention 
 in debate is all the more influential as it is 
 well understood that he advocates a policy 
 because he believes it to be right and not be- 
 cause of any effect it may have in bringing 
 himself and his Liberal colleagues back again 
 into power. 
 
 293
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 I have often noticed the effect produced in 
 the libraries and committee-rooms, in the rooms 
 assigned to those who dine and to those who 
 smoke, when the news is passed round that Mr. 
 Bryce is on his feet. A member who is read- 
 ing up some subject in the hbrary, or writing 
 his letters in one of the lobbies, or enjoying 
 himself in a dining-hall or a smoking-room, is 
 not likely to hurry away from his occupation or 
 his enjoyment in order to rush into the debating 
 chamber merely because he is told that some 
 leading member of the Government or the Op- 
 position has just begun to address the House. 
 The man who is addressing an audience in the 
 debating chamber may hold an important office 
 in the Government or may have an important 
 place on the Front Bench of Opposition, but then 
 he may be a personage who feels bound to take 
 part in a debate merely because of the position 
 he holds, and every one knows in advance what 
 views he is certain to advocate and what line 
 of argument he is likely to adopt, and our read- 
 ing or dining or smoking friend may not think 
 that there is any pressing necessity for his pre- 
 sence as a listener in the House. But there are 
 some leading men on both sides of Mr. Speaker 
 who are always sure to have something to say 
 
 294
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 which everybody wants to hear, and Mr. Bryce 
 is unquestionably one of that happily endowed 
 order. When the word goes round that Bryce is 
 up, everybody knows that something will be said 
 on which he cannot exactly calculate before- 
 hand, something to which it is important that 
 he should listen, and there is forthwith a rush 
 of members into the debating chamber. There 
 can hardly be a higher tribute to a man's im- 
 portance as a debater than the fact that his 
 rising to address the House creates such an 
 effect, and I have seen it created again and 
 again whenever the news went round that 
 " Bryce is on his legs." I have many a time 
 heard Conservative members murmur, in tones 
 not altogether expressing absolute satisfaction 
 at the disturbing information, " Bryce is up — 
 I must go in and hear what he has to say." 
 The tribute is all the higher in this case be- 
 cause Bryce is not one of the showy and fas- 
 cinating debaters whom everybody wants to 
 listen to for the mere eloquence and fascination 
 of their oratorical displays. Everybody knows 
 that when he speaks it is because he has some- 
 thing to say which ought to be spoken and 
 therefore ought to be heard. It is known that 
 Bryce will not make a speech merely because 
 
 295
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 he thinks the time has come when some leader 
 of Opposition ought to take part in the debate, 
 if only to show that the Opposition is attend- 
 ing to its business. 
 
 This command over the House Bryce has 
 ahvays held since he became one of its mem- 
 bers, and no man can hold a more desirable 
 and a more honorable position. It is all the 
 more to his credit because he does not aim at 
 mere originality and never makes it a part of 
 his ambition to say something astonishing and 
 thus to excite and delight the mere curiosity of 
 his audience. There have been and still are 
 many members of the House who have made a 
 reputation of this kind and are therefore always 
 sure to command a full attendance merely be- 
 cause everybody expects that when they rise to 
 their feet they are sure to make the House " sit 
 up," if I may use this somewhat colloquial, not 
 to say vulgar, phrase. Take such a man, for 
 instance, as the late John Arthur Roebuck, a 
 man of great intellect, master of a peculiar 
 style of eloquence, who made himself only too 
 often a splendid specimen of what might be 
 called in American phraseology " a crank." All 
 that could be said with certainty beforehand of 
 Roebuck was that whenever he rose to speak 
 
 296
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 he would say something calculated to startle or 
 to puzzle the House. There are men of the 
 same order, if not perhaps of quite the same 
 debating qualifications, in the House at pre- 
 sent — men who always draw a rush of mem- 
 bers when they rise to speak because nobody 
 can tell in advance what side they are likely to 
 advocate or what sort of bewildering paradox 
 they may set up and make interesting if not 
 convincing by the force of their peculiar style 
 of eloquence. Bryce is emphatically not a man 
 of this order. He is no lover of paradox ; he 
 has no desire to create a sensation ; he merely 
 wants to impress the House with what he be- 
 lieves to be the truth, and his great quality is that 
 of a beacon and not of a flashlight. His argu- 
 ments appeal to the intellect and the reasoning 
 power; he speaks of what he knows; he has 
 large resources of thought, experience, and ob- 
 servation to draw upon, and the listeners feel 
 convinced beforehand that he will tell them 
 something they did not know already, or will 
 put his case in some new and striking light. 
 
 The House of Commons well knows that it 
 would lose one of its most valuable instructors 
 if Bryce were no longer to occupy a place on 
 its benches or were to condemn himself to 
 
 297
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 habitual inactivity and silence. When the Con- 
 servative Government under Lord Salisbury 
 came into power, and more especially after the 
 late general election which brought them back 
 with added strength, many of the Liberal lead- 
 ers seemed to have grown weary of the political 
 struggle. Something worse than mere apathy 
 appeared to have set in, something more than 
 mere despondency and disheartenment. Men 
 on whom the Liberals of England had long 
 been wont to rely suddenly showed an apparent 
 loss of faith in all the proclaimed principles of 
 the party, and either relapsed into utter silence 
 or spoke in language which suggested an in- 
 clination to cross over to the enemy's camp. 
 The two principal impulses to this mood of 
 mind were the South African war and the Irish 
 Home Rule question. The majority in the 
 constituencies had become inflamed with the 
 spirit of Jingoism, and could think of nothing 
 but the war and the Imperial glory of annexing 
 new territory. Feeble-hearted and weak-kneed 
 Liberals began to think that the party could 
 never hope for a return to power unless it too 
 could blow the Imperial trumpet. Other Lib- 
 erals made it manifest that they were becoming 
 alarmed by the unpopularity of the Home Rule 
 
 298
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 question, and were repenting the enthusiasm 
 which had carried them too far along the path 
 marked out by the genius and the patriotic 
 resolve of Gladstone. A species of dry-rot ap- 
 peared to have broken out in Liberalism. Be- 
 fore long a new section of Liberalism was 
 formed, the principle of which appeared to be 
 that its members should call themselves Impe- 
 rial Liberals, and at the same time should sup- 
 port the Tories on the only important questions 
 then under discussion — the policy of the South 
 African campaign and the Irish National claim 
 for Home Rule. Some of the men who had 
 held high office when Gladstone was in power, 
 who had made themselves conspicuous by the 
 ardor and the eloquence with which they sup- 
 ported his policy of peace abroad and justice to 
 Ireland, now openly avowed their renunciation 
 of his great principles. There were others 
 among the foremost Liberals in the House of 
 Commons who, if they did not thus openly take 
 the renegade part, kept themselves quietly out 
 of the active political field and allowed the 
 movement of reaction to go on without a word 
 of protest. Three at least among the Liberal 
 leaders took a very different course. Three of 
 them, at least, not merely nailed their colors to 
 
 299
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the mast, but stood resolutely in fighting atti- 
 tude beneath the colors and proved themselves 
 determined to maintain the struggle. These 
 three men were Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
 man, John Morley, and James Bryce. There 
 were others, too, it must be said, who stood up 
 manfully with these three in defense of that 
 losing cause of Liberalism which they could 
 never be brought to regard as a lost cause. 
 But the dauntless three whom I have just men- 
 tioned were the most prominent and the most 
 influential who went forth against that great 
 array of Toryism and Jingoism. Bryce was in 
 his place as regularly as ever during the whole 
 of that depressing time, and he never failed to 
 raise his voice when the occasion demanded his 
 intervention on behalf of the true principles 
 and practices of Liberalism. During that long, 
 dreary, and disheartening season when despond- 
 ent men were often disposed to ask whether 
 there was any longer a Liberal party, Bryce 
 made some of the ablest speeches he has ever 
 delivered in arraignment of the Jingo policy, 
 of the War OfHce maladministration, and the 
 rule of renewed coercion in Ireland. The Lib- 
 eral cause in England owes a debt that never 
 can be forgotten to the three men whom I have 
 
 300
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 named, for their unflinching resolve and activ- 
 ity in the House of Commons ; and of the three 
 none did better service than that which was 
 rendered by James Bryce. 
 
 Bryce has, in face and form,' the characteristics 
 of a stalwart fighter. His forehead is high and 
 broad, with strongly marked eyebrows, straightly 
 drawn over deep and penetrating eyes. The 
 features are all finely modeled, the nose is 
 straight and statuesque, the hair is becoming 
 somewhat thinner and more gray than it was 
 when I first knew Mr. Bryce, but the mustache 
 and beard, although they too show some fading 
 in color, are still thick and strong as in that 
 past day. The face does not look Irish ; its 
 expression is perhaps somewhat too sedate and 
 resolute; but on the other hand, it does not 
 seem quite Scotch, for there is at moments a 
 suggestion of dreaminess about it which we do 
 not usually associate with the shrewd North 
 Briton. Bryce is a man of the most genial 
 temperament, thoroughly companionable, and 
 capable of enjoying every influence that helps 
 to brighten existence. Always a student of 
 books and of men, he is never a recluse, and I 
 do not know of any one who seems to get more 
 out of life than does this philosophic historian. 
 
 301
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Bryce's London home is noted for its hospital- 
 ity, and his dinner parties and evening parties 
 give much dehght to his large circle of friends. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bryce are not lion-hunters, and 
 do not rate their friends according to the degree 
 of celebrity each may have obtained. But they 
 have no need to engage in a hunt after lions, 
 for the celebrities seek them out as a matter of 
 course, and I know of no London house where 
 one is more certain to meet distinguished men 
 and women from all parts of the civilized world. 
 Bryce's travels have made him acquainted with 
 interesting and eminent persons everywhere, 
 and an admission to his circle is naturally sought 
 by strangers who visit London. Representa- 
 tives of literature, science, and art, of scholarly 
 research, of political movement, and of traveled 
 experience are sure to be met with in the home 
 of the Bryces. I had the good fortune to meet 
 there, for the first time, many distinguished 
 men and women whose acquaintance it was a 
 high and memorable privilege to make. Among 
 Bryce's especial recreations is mountain-climb- 
 ing, and he was at one time President of the 
 Alpine Club. He can converse upon all sub- 
 jects, can give to every topic some illustration 
 from his own ideas and his own experiences, 
 
 302
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 and the intelligent listener always finds that he 
 carries away something new and worthy of re- 
 membrance from any talk with him. Although 
 his strong opinions and his earnest desire to 
 maintain what he believes to be the right side of 
 every great controversy have naturally brought 
 him into frequent antagonism with the repre- 
 sentatives of many an important case, I do not 
 know of any public man who has made fewer 
 enemies or who is more generally spoken of 
 with respect and admiration. A man must 
 have very high conceit indeed of his own know- 
 ledge and his own judgment who does not feel 
 that he has a great deal to learn from conversa- 
 tion with a master of so many subjects. Yet 
 Bryce never oppresses a listener, as some intel- 
 lectual leaders are apt to do, with a sense of 
 the listener's inferiority, and the least gifted 
 among us is encouraged to express himself 
 with frankness and freedom while discoursing 
 with Bryce on any question which happens to 
 come up. I think that among his many remark- 
 able qualities is that sincere belief which was 
 characteristic of Mr. Gladstone, and for which 
 Gladstone did not always get due credit — the 
 belief that every man, however moderate his 
 intellectual qualifications, has something to tell 
 
 303
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 which the wisest would be the better for know- 
 ing. We must all of us have met scholars and 
 thinkers and political leaders whose inborn 
 sense of their own capacity had an overbearing 
 and even oppressive effect on the ordinary- 
 mortal, and made him shy of expressing him- 
 self fully lest he should only be displaying his 
 ineptitude or his ignorance in such a presence. 
 But there is nothing of this to be observed in 
 the genial ways of James Bryce, and the listener 
 finds himself unconsciously brought for the 
 time to the level of the master and emboldened 
 to give free utterance to his own ideas and 
 opinions. 
 
 Bryce has been made a member of most of 
 the great intellectual and educational institu- 
 tions of the world, has held degrees and honors 
 of various kinds from the universities of Europe 
 and the United States, and could hardly travel 
 anywhere abroad or at home without finding 
 himself in recognized association with some 
 school of learning in every place where he 
 makes a stay. The freemasonry of intellect 
 and education all over the world gives him 
 rank among its members, and receives him 
 with a welcome recognition wherever he goes. 
 I presume that in the political sphere of action 
 
 304
 
 JAMES BRYCE 
 
 he is henceforward likely to find his congenial 
 career, but he must always have the knowledge 
 that, if for any reason he should give up his 
 political occupation, he can at any moment 
 return to some pursuit in which he has already 
 won an established fame. There are not many 
 political leaders of our time about whom the 
 same could fairly be said. For myself I may 
 frankly say that I hope James Bryce will hence- 
 forward devote himself especially to that politi- 
 cal career in which he has accomplished such 
 great things. English public life cannot well 
 afford to lose his services just now or for some 
 time to come. A man who can bring to politi- 
 cal work such resources of thought and of 
 experience, who can look beneath the surface 
 and above the mere phrases and catchwords of 
 political parties, who can see that Liberalism 
 in its true sense must mean progress, and who 
 can at the same time see clearly for himself 
 what progress really means, and in what direc- 
 tion and by what methods it is to be made — 
 such a man could ill be spared by the Liberal- 
 ism of our generation. The historical work he 
 has already done is, in its way, complete and 
 imperishable. But the Liberal party has yet 
 to recover its place and to regain the leadership 
 
 305
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 of England's political life. Every effort the 
 Conservatives in office have lately been making 
 to hold their full mastery over the country has 
 shown more and more clearly that they have 
 not kept up with the movements of thought 
 and are not able to understand the true require- 
 ments of the time. On the other hand, the 
 limp and shattered condition of the existing 
 Liberal party only shows the absolute neces- 
 sity for the recognized leadership of men who 
 understand the difference between the work of 
 guiding the country and the ignoble function 
 of competing for power by imitation and by 
 compromise. In the new effort now so sorely 
 needed to create once more a true Liberal 
 party, the country requires, above all things 
 else, the constant service of such men as James 
 Bryce. 
 
 306
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNER- 
 MAN
 
 Photograph copyn^nt by LouUou sti-ieoBcopic Co. 
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBEI.L-BANNERMAN
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNER- 
 MAN 
 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has but 
 lately come to hold that position in the House 
 of Commons and in the political world which 
 those who knew him well always believed him 
 destined to attain. He is now not merely the 
 nominal leader of the Liberal Opposition in 
 the House of Commons, but he is universally 
 regarded as one of the very small number of 
 men who could possibly be chosen for the 
 place. Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John 
 Morley are the only Liberal members of the 
 House who could compare with Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman for influence with the 
 Liberal party, the House of Commons, and the 
 general public. Yet the time is not far distant 
 when he was commonly regarded in the House 
 as a somewhat heavy, not to say stolid, man, 
 one of whom nothing better could be said than 
 that he would probably be capable of quiet, 
 steady work in some subordinate department. 
 
 309
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 I remember well that when Campbell-Banner- 
 man was appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland in 1884, a witty Irish 
 member explained the appointment by the sug- 
 gestion that Gladstone had made use of Camp- 
 bell-Bannerman on the principle illustrated by 
 the employment of a sand-bag as part of the 
 defenses of a military fort. Campbell-Banner- 
 man has, in fact, none of the temperament which 
 makes a man anxious to display himself in 
 debate, and whenever, during his earlier years 
 of Parliamentary life, he delivered a speech in 
 the House of Commons, his desire seemed to 
 be to get through the task as quickly as possible 
 and be done with it. He appears to be a man 
 of a naturally reserved habit, with indeed some- 
 thing of shyness about him, and a decided 
 capacity for silence wherever there is no press- 
 ing occasion for speech, whether in public or in 
 private. 
 
 Many whom I knew were at one time inclined 
 to regard Campbell-Bannerman as a typical 
 specimen of his Scottish compatriots, who are 
 facetiously said to joke with difficulty. As a 
 matter of fact, Campbell-Bannerman has a keen 
 and delightful sense of humor, and can illus- 
 trate the weakness of an opponent's case, better 
 
 310
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 than some recognized wits could do, by a few 
 happy touches of sarcasm. He is in every sense 
 of the word a strong man, and, Hke some other 
 strong men, only seems to know his own 
 strength and to be capable of putting it into 
 action when hard fortune has brought him into 
 political difficulties through which it appears 
 well-nigh impossible that he can make his way. 
 Schiller's hero declares that it must be nisht 
 before his star can shine, and although Camp- 
 bell-Bannerman is not quite so poetic and pic- 
 turesque a figure as Wallenstein, yet I think 
 he might fairly comfort himself by some such 
 encouraging reflection. He had gone through 
 a long and hard-working career in the House 
 of Commons before the world came to know 
 anything of his strength, his judgment, and his 
 courage. He got his education at the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow and afterwards at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, and he obtained a seat in 
 the House of Commons for a Scottish constitu- 
 ency as a Liberal when he was still but a young 
 man. He has held various offices in Liberal 
 administrations. He was Secretary to the Ad- 
 miralty in 1882, and was Chief Secretary to the 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland for a short time a 
 little later. There is not much to be said about 
 
 311
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 his Irish administration. He governed the 
 country about as well as any English Minister 
 could have done under such conditions, for this 
 was before Gladstone and the Liberal party had 
 been converted to the principle of Home Rule 
 for Ireland ; and, at all events, he made himself 
 agreeable to those Irishmen with whom he 
 came into contact by his unaffected manners 
 and his quiet good humor. When Gladstone 
 took office in 1886, Campbell- Bannerman be- 
 came Secretary for War, and he held the same 
 important position in Gladstone's Ministry of 
 1892. 
 
 The story of that administration tells of a 
 most important epoch in the career of Glad- 
 stone and the fortunes of the Liberal party. 
 In 1893 Gladstone brought in his second Home 
 Rule measure for Ireland. His first measure 
 of Home Rule was introduced in 1886, and 
 was defeated in the House of Commons by 
 means of a coalition between the Liberal seces- 
 sionists and the Conservative Opposition. The 
 Liberal secessionists in the House of Com- 
 mons, as most of my readers will remember, 
 were led by Joseph Chamberlain. Then there 
 came an interval of Conservative government, 
 and when Gladstone returned to power in 1892 
 
 312
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 he introduced before long his second measure 
 of Home Rule. The second measure was in 
 many ways a distinct improvement on the first, 
 and in the meantime some of the Liberal seces- 
 sionists, including Sir George Trevelyan, whose 
 opposition was directed only against certain 
 parts of the first measure, had returned to their 
 allegiance and were ready to give Gladstone all 
 the support in their power for his second at- 
 tempt. The Home Rule measure was carried 
 through the House of Commons by what we 
 call a substantial although not a great majority, 
 and then it had to go to the House of Lords. 
 Everybody knew in advance what its fate must 
 be in the hereditary chamber. Every great 
 measure of genuine political reform is certain 
 to be rejected in the first instance by the House 
 of Lords. This is the old story, and is repeated 
 again and again with monotonous iteration. 
 The House of Lords always gives way in the 
 end, when the pressure of public opinion from 
 without makes it perilous for the hereditary 
 legislators to maintain their opposition. There- 
 fore the Liberals in general were not much 
 disconcerted by the defeat of the Home Rule 
 measure in the House of Lords. Home Rule 
 for Ireland had been sanctioned by the decisive 
 
 313
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 vote of the House of Commons, and the general 
 impression was that it would only have to be 
 brought in again and perhaps again, according 
 to the usual process with all reform measures, 
 until the opposition of the Lords had been 
 completely borne down. But before the intro- 
 duction of the second Home Rule measure, 
 some events had taken place which made a 
 great change in the condition of Irish political 
 affairs and put fresh difficulties in the way of 
 Gladstone's new administration. 
 
 The Parnell divorce case came on, and led 
 to a serious division in the ranks of the Irish 
 National party and in Irish public opinion. 
 The great majority of Parnell's followers refused 
 to regard him as their leader any longer, and 
 those who determined to support him and to 
 follow him through thick and thin were but a 
 very small minority. Gladstone was firmly 
 convinced, as were the majority of the Irish 
 Nationalist members, that Parnell ought to 
 retire, for a time at least, from the leadership of 
 his party, if not indeed from public life, and 
 keep aloof from active politics until the scandal 
 of the divorce court should have been atoned 
 for by him and should have passed to some 
 extent from public memory. Gladstone was 
 
 314
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 convinced that if Parnell remained the leader 
 of the Irish party it would be almost impossible 
 to arouse in the British constituencies any en- 
 thusiasm in the cause of Home Rule strong 
 enough to bring back the Liberals to power 
 and to carry a Home Rule measure. This was 
 a reasonable and practical view of the question, 
 but Parnell and his followers resented it as a 
 positive insult, and Parnell issued a manifesto 
 denouncing Gladstone, the immediate result of 
 which was that break-up of the Home Rule 
 party I have already mentioned. Not very 
 long after came Parnell's early death. It may 
 well be supposed that such events as these 
 must have made a deep and discouraging im- 
 pression on Gladstone's hopes for the success 
 of the second Home Rule measure. The Irish 
 National party had been broken up for the time, 
 and some even of Gladstone's colleagues in 
 office had allowed themselves to be mastered 
 by the old familiar idea that as Irishmen could 
 not be brought to agree for long on any plan 
 of action, it was futile for English Liberals to 
 put themselves to any inconvenience for the 
 sake of an Irish National cause. Such men 
 might have found it difficult to point out any 
 great measure of political reform in England 
 
 315
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 concerning which the English people had al- 
 ways been in absolute agreement and about 
 which there was no conflict of angry emotion 
 in any section of English representatives. But 
 the fact remained all the same that the dispute 
 in the Irish party had brought a chill to the 
 zeal of many influential English Liberals for 
 the Home Rule cause, and we have had in 
 much more recent days abundant evidence that 
 the chilling influence is with them still. 
 
 Among Gladstone's official colleagues there 
 were some who held that the time had come 
 when an appeal ought to be made to the coun- 
 try by means of a dissolution and a general 
 election aeainst the domination of the House 
 of Lords. This appears to have been the 
 opinion of Gladstone himself. Others of his 
 colleagues, however, held back from such an 
 issue, and contended that the moment did not 
 seem favorable for an appeal to the country 
 on the distinct question of Irish Home Rule. 
 The general impression on the public mind 
 was that the decision of the Cabinet was cer- 
 tain to be in favor of an appeal to the country 
 on the one issue or the other, and much sur- 
 prise was felt when it began to be more and 
 more evident that the Government intended to 
 
 316
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 go on with the ordinary business of the State, 
 as if nothing had happened. The outer world 
 has as yet had no means of knowing what the 
 reasons or the influences were which induced 
 Gladstone and his colleagues to come to this 
 determination. The whole truth will probably 
 never be known until John Morley's " Life of 
 Gladstone " shall make its appearance. We 
 may safely assume in the meantime that Glad- 
 stone had the best of reasons for taking the 
 course which he adopted, and that he would 
 have made an appeal to the country against 
 the decision of the House of Lords if he had 
 believed the conditions were favorable for such 
 a challenge just then. Probably Gladstone 
 knew only too well that even among his own 
 colleagues there were some who were turning 
 cold upon the question of Home Rule, who 
 had never accepted his views on that subject 
 with whole-hearted willingness, and could not 
 have been relied upon as steadfast adherents in 
 the struggle. I think I shall be fully justified 
 by any revelations which history or biography 
 has yet to make, when I say that Campbell- 
 Bannerman was among those who would have 
 faithfully followed the great leader to the very 
 last in whatever struggle he had made up his 
 
 317
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 mind to engage. There were, of course, many 
 others of Gladstone's colleagues — men like 
 Sir William Harcourt and John Morley and 
 James Bryce — on whom their leader could 
 have safely reckoned for the same unswerving 
 fidelity and courage. But, whatever were the 
 reasons, there was no appeal made to the coun- 
 try, and the administration went on with its 
 ordinary work in a dull, mechanical fashion. 
 The effect upon the Liberal party was most 
 depressing. Men could not understand why 
 nothing decisive had been done, and at the 
 same time were haunted by a foreboding that 
 some great change was impending over the 
 Liberal party. 
 
 The foreboding soon came to be justified. 
 On the ist of March, 1894, Gladstone delivered 
 his last speech in the House of Commons. 
 The speech dealt with the action of the House 
 of Lords on a subject of comparatively slight 
 importance. The Lords had rejected a mea- 
 sure dealing with the constitution of parish 
 councils, which had been passed by the House 
 of Commons. Gladstone spoke with severity 
 in condemnation of the course taken by the 
 House of Lords. Towards the close of his 
 speech he said : '* My duty terminates with 
 
 318
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 calling the attention of this House to a fact 
 which it is really impossible to set aside, that 
 we are considering a part — an essential and 
 inseparable part — of a question enormously 
 large, a question which has become profoundly 
 a truth, a question that will demand a settle- 
 ment, and must at an early date receive that 
 settlement, from the highest authority." No 
 one who was present in the House when this 
 declaration was made is ever likely to lose the 
 memory of the scene, although not all or even 
 most of those then present quite reahzed the full 
 significance of Gladstone's words. There were 
 many in the House who did not at once under- 
 stand that in the words I have quoted the 
 greatest Parliamentary leader of modern times 
 was speaking his farewell to public life. I 
 remember well that a few moments after Glad- 
 stone had finished his speech I met John 
 Morley in one of the lobbies, and I asked him 
 if this was really to be taken as the close of 
 Gladstone's career, and he told me, with as 
 much composure as he could command, that 
 in that speech we had heard the last of Glad- 
 stone's Parliamentary utterances. That was 
 indeed a memorable day in the history of Eng- 
 
 319
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 land, and a day at least equally memorable in 
 the history of Ireland. 
 
 I have had to dwell for a while on these 
 historical facts, facts of course known already 
 to all my readers, as a prelude to the most 
 important passages in the Parliamentary career 
 of Campbell-Bannerman. When Gladstone re- 
 signed ofhce and withdrew from public life, the 
 question of reconstituting the Liberal adminis- 
 tration had to be taken into account. There 
 could be no doubt whatever that the Liberal 
 administration had been much weakened and 
 even discredited by the manner in which it had 
 put up with the domineering action of the 
 House of Lords. The effect on public opinion 
 was all the greater and the more disheartening 
 because it was generally understood that the 
 absence of any such action must have been 
 due to the fact that some of Gladstone's leading 
 colleagues were not prepared to sustain him 
 in the policy he was anxious to carry out. 
 There was therefore a state of something like 
 apathy in the minds of advanced Radicals with 
 regard to any arrangements which seemed likely 
 to be made for the reconstruction of the Min- 
 istry. The new administration was formed 
 under the leadership of Lord Rosebery, as 
 
 320
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 Prime Minister, in the House of Lords, and 
 that of Sir William Harcourt, as Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, in the House of Commons. 
 There can be little doubt that the composition 
 of the new Ministry was regarded as unsatis- 
 factory by the more advanced Liberals in and 
 outside Parliament. The Liberal party is never 
 of late years quite content with an administra- 
 tion which has its Prime Minister in the House 
 of Lords. The real work must always be done 
 in the House of Commons, and it is obviously 
 most inconvenient that the leader of the Gov- 
 ernment should be one whose position will not 
 allow him to have a seat in the representative 
 chamber. The condition of things is some* 
 thing like that of an army whose Commander- 
 in-Chief can never make his appearance in the 
 encampment or take part in any of the great 
 battles. Even at that time Lord Rosebery, 
 although a most brilliant debater and a capable 
 administrator, was beginning to be regarded 
 as one whose Liberalism was somewhat los- 
 ing color and whose whole heart was by no 
 means in the advanced policy of Gladstone. 
 There was nothing better to be done, however, 
 
 ft the time than to make the most of the 
 Itered conditions, and the new Ministry went 
 
 321
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 to work as well as it could. Campbell-Banner- 
 man, as Secretary for War, had an opportunity 
 of proving his genuine capacity for the duties 
 of his important office. He introduced a new 
 and complete scheme of army reform, which, 
 among other and even more important changes, 
 proposed to bring about the retirement of the 
 Duke of Cambridge from the post of Com- 
 mander-in-Chief. The Duke of Cambridge was 
 even then a man far advanced in years, who 
 had never in his life shown any real capacity 
 for the work of commanding an army, and 
 whose chief recommendation for so great a 
 position must have been found in the fact 
 that he was a member of the royal family. 
 The new measure was making its way steadily 
 enough through the House of Commons, and 
 every one was beginning to see that in Camp- 
 bell-Bannerman the country had found an ad- 
 ministrator of a very high order. Suddenly, 
 however, the progress of the measure was inter- 
 rupted by what seemed to be at first only a 
 trivial accident, of which the public in general 
 were inclined to take but little account. The 
 army reform scheme had arrived at what is 
 known as the committee stage of its progress. 
 I do not desire to occupy the attention of 
 
 322
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 my readers more than is actually necessary 
 with the mere technical details of Parliamen- 
 tary procedure, and I shall only explain that 
 when a Bill reaches the committee stage its 
 general principle must have been already ac- 
 cepted by the majority in the House, and the 
 House then forms itself into Committee for 
 the purpose of discussing the mere details of 
 the proposed arrangements. During one of 
 the sittings a Conservative member proposed a 
 motion declaring that the Government, or at 
 least the War Office, had not made proper 
 provision for the supply of the material of 
 cordite to the army. This was so purely a 
 technical question, concerning which only sol- 
 diers and scientific men could be supposed to 
 have had any means of forming an opinion, 
 that the House troubled itself very little about 
 the whole discussion. But when the House 
 came to take a division on the proposal, the 
 Government was defeated by a majority of 
 seven. This defeat produced at first only a 
 very slight effect on the House in general. 
 During the committee stage of a measure it is 
 quite a matter of ordinary occurrence that a 
 Ministry should be defeated on some question 
 of mere arrangement and detail, and very few in 
 
 323
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 the House of Commons suspected on that occa- 
 sion that such a vote was likely to bring with it 
 an important Parliamentary crisis. Campbell- 
 Bannerman, however, took a very different view 
 of the event. He appears to have made up his 
 mind that the decision of the House was a 
 distinct vote of censure on his administration, 
 and that he could not continue to hold office 
 after so marked a declaration of disapproval. 
 Now, it may be taken for granted that Camp- 
 bell-Ban nerman was not merely actuated by 
 any personal feeling, by any sense of mere 
 grievance to himself, when he made up his 
 mind to this resolve. He saw clearly that the 
 Government had lost the confidence and the 
 support of the country, and that the sooner 
 the whole futile attempt at administration under 
 such conditions came to an end the better it 
 would be for the business of the State. He 
 knew perfectly well that the Liberal adminis- 
 tration was falling to pieces, that its leading 
 members were no longer inspired alike by one 
 great policy, that some of its leaders had ceased 
 to be Liberals in the traditional meaning of 
 the word, and that sooner or later the catas- 
 trophe must come. Those of Campbell-Ban- 
 nerman's colleagues who were as genuine and 
 
 324
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 stanch Liberals as he soon came into agree- 
 ment with him as to the course that ought to 
 be pursued, and it was known before long in 
 the House of Commons that the Liberal Min- 
 isters had resigned their offices and that the 
 long-postponed appeal to the country was to be 
 made at last. Thus for the first time it became 
 known to the public that Campbell-Bannerman 
 was already a power in political life. 
 
 Parliament was dissolved and the appeal to 
 the country was made at the general election 
 which necessarily followed. Few Liberals had 
 the slightest doubt as to the result of the ap- 
 peal. Some of the very measures introduced 
 by the fallen Government which had the strong 
 approval of many advanced Liberals had put 
 certain powerful interests and classes against 
 those who represented this policy. Sir Wil- 
 liam Harcourt's " death duties " had aroused the 
 indignation of rich men here, there, and every- 
 where. The measures which the same states- 
 man had endeavored to carry for putting the 
 liquor trade under the control of " local option " 
 had turned the publicans into an organized op- 
 position against Liberal administrators. The 
 result of the general election was the defeat of 
 the Liberal party, and the formation of a Con- 
 
 325
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 servative Government with Lord Salisbury at 
 its head holding office as Prime Minister and 
 Foreign Secretary at once, and with Arthur 
 Balfour as First Lord of the Treasury and 
 leader of the House of Commons. The Lib- 
 erals were weakened in every sense, not merely 
 by the fact that they had come back to Parlia- 
 ment no longer as a Government but only as 
 an Opposition. They were rendered by their 
 internal divisions too weak for effective work 
 as an Opposition. Lord Rosebery continued 
 for the time to act as leader of the Liberal 
 party, while Sir William Harcourt of course 
 became leader of the Opposition in the House 
 of Commons. It soon was quite clear that the 
 Liberal party could not work together so far 
 as its leaders were concerned. It was evident 
 that men like Harcourt and John Morley and 
 Campbell- Bannerman could not act in any 
 cordial union with Lord Rosebery and those 
 Liberals who accepted Lord Rosebery 's policy. 
 The result of all this was that Lord Rosebery 
 resigned the leadership of the party and has 
 ever since seemed inclined to start a Liberal 
 party of his own, and that Sir William Harcourt 
 did not believe he was likely to receive such a 
 united support in the House of Commons as 
 
 326
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 would enable him to maintain the leadership of 
 the party with any satisfaction to himself or the 
 country. Harcourt therefore ceased to hold 
 that position ; and now came for the first time 
 the opportunity for Campbell-Bannerman. He 
 was chosen leader of the Liberal party in the 
 House of Commons, and he had before him, 
 under all the conditions, a task which might 
 well have seemed hopeless. Lord Rosebery has, 
 from that time to this, delivered speeches all 
 over the country which could only be interpreted 
 as the expression of his desire to call into being 
 a new Liberal party professing a political creed 
 differing in its main characteristics from that 
 which had been proclaimed and carried on by 
 Gladstone. Rosebery renounced Home Rule 
 for Ireland, and refused to act on Gladstone's 
 principles with regard to the protection of Chris- 
 tians in the East against the alternating tyranny 
 and neglect of the Ottoman Government. 
 
 Never within my recollection had any leader 
 of a Liberal party in the House of Commons 
 come into a position of such difficulty and dis- 
 heartenment as that which Campbell-Banner- 
 man had now to maintain. It has often been 
 the lot of the Liberal party to come into the 
 House of Commons with diminished numbers, 
 
 327
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 and have to carry on as best it could be done 
 the battle against a Conservative Government 
 of overwhelming numerical strength. But the 
 peculiar trouble which beset Campbell-Banner- 
 man was that he could not count upon the alle- 
 giance of all his nominal followers. He knew 
 that so long as he showed himself determined 
 to maintain the policy of Gladstone he could 
 reckon without fear on the support of such 
 men as Harcourt and John Morley and Bryce. 
 But there were able men among those who occu- 
 pied the front bench of Opposition on whom he 
 could not always count, men who were publicly 
 displaying themselves as the political associates 
 or followers of Lord Rosebery. Campbell-Ban- 
 nerman went boldly and steadfastly on, never 
 faltering in the least. He upheld the time- 
 honored creed of genuine Liberalism, " never 
 doubted clouds would break," and by his words 
 and his bearing inspired with fresh courage 
 many a true Liberal whose faith was not falter- 
 ing, but whose hopes were sinking low. He 
 proved himself quite equal to the incessant 
 work put upon him by his new position as 
 leader of the Liberal party in the House of 
 Commons. He developed a capacity for debate 
 which only those who knew him well had ever 
 
 328
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 before believed him to possess. During all the 
 wild excitement of Jingoism which followed the 
 movements 6i the war against the two South 
 African Republics, he never yielded to the temp- 
 tation which overcame so many other Liberals, 
 the temptation to evade a passing unpopularity 
 by suppressing for the time his opinions on the 
 policy of the war. He must have been sorely 
 tried again and again by the sayings and doings 
 of some who still professed to be members of the 
 Liberal party in Parliament. A new Liberal 
 League was actually formed under the inspira- 
 tion of Lord Rosebery, and its object appar- 
 ently was to create a new school of Liberalism 
 which should have nothing to do with the tra- 
 ditions of the party and with the doctrines of 
 men like Gladstone. 
 
 Now, if all this had been done in open and 
 avowed antagonism to the existing Liberal 
 party, Campbell-Bannerman might have had 
 a comparatively easy task to undertake. He 
 could have braced himself to do sturdy battle 
 against the promoters of internal disunion ; 
 could have set the whole question plainly and 
 squarely before the Liberal public opinion of 
 the country, and demanded a decisive judg- 
 ment. But the promoters of the new Liberal 
 
 329
 
 BRITISH POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 League did nothing of the kind. They dis- 
 claimed any intention to create disunion in the 
 party. They declared that they were the very 
 best of Liberals, and that nothing could exceed 
 their loyalty to the elected leaders of the Lib- 
 eral party, and protested that in whatever they 
 did they were only trying to help and not to 
 hinder the work of these leaders. When one of 
 the seceders, or supposed seceders, delivered a 
 speech at some public meeting in which he ap- 
 peared to repudiate the main principles of the 
 Liberal creed, and an open split in the party 
 seemed to be imminent, some other member of 
 the Liberal League hastened to explain that the 
 meaning of his noble friend or his right honor- 
 able colleague had been totally misunderstood. 
 He insisted that the only motive of the previ- 
 ous orator was to promote the cordial union of 
 the Liberal party, and, to paraphrase the words 
 of the medical student in " Pickwick " after his 
 quarrel with a fellow-student, that he rather 
 preferred Campbell- Bannerman to his own 
 brother. 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman took all these perform- 
 ances with serene good humor. As I have 
 already said, those who know him are well 
 aware that he has a keen, quiet sense of humor, 
 
 330
 
 HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 and I feel sure that he must often have been 
 much amused by the odd vagaries of those who 
 would neither fall into the ranks nor admit that 
 they wanted to keep out of the ranks. He has 
 gone steadily on as he began since it became 
 his duty to lead the Liberal Opposition in the 
 House of Commons. He has done the work 
 of leader honorably, patiently, consistently, and 
 fearlessly, and he is recognized as leader by all 
 true Liberals, English, Scotch, and Welsh. He 
 has never fallen away in the slightest degree 
 from the principles of Gladstone where Home 
 Rule and the other just claims of the Irish peo- 
 ple are concerned. He has kept the Liberal 
 flag flying, and the whole Liberalism of the 
 country is already beginning to rally round 
 him and to recognize his leadership. Increas- 
 ing responsibility has only developed in him 
 new capacity to maintain the responsible place. 
 We may well believe that he is destined to 
 do great service yet to the Liberal cause, and 
 to win an honorable place in British history. 
 When he first became leader of the Liberal 
 party in the House of Commons, he might 
 almost have seemed to be the leader of a lost 
 cause, but he has fought the fight bravely and 
 will see the victory before long. 
 
 331
 
 EUctrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &* Co. 
 Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
 6258
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES,^ 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 
 
 I ft 
 
 Form 1.41— 2(i)/(-S.': 
 
 J[J|^J^{PSrCTTy ^^ nj r 7is»*^^>.x. 
 
 r.rwa 
 
 4
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 390 596 5 
 
 DA 
 
 562 
 
 Ml8b
 
 m'mm'mmmmms^m