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BRITISH POLITICAL LEADERS

       *       *       *       *       *

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

IN THE

"Story of the Nations" Series.

  Each volume large crown 8vo, cloth, fully Illustrated, 5s.

    MODERN ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORM BILL.

    MODERN ENGLAND UNDER QUEEN VICTORIA.

  _IN PREPARATION._

    PORTRAITS OF THE SIXTIES.

  Demy 8vo, cloth, Illustrated, 16s.


LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.

       *       *       *       *       *


[Illustration: Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR]


BRITISH POLITICAL LEADERS

by

JUSTIN McCARTHY

With Portraits







[Illustration]

London
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
1903

[All rights reserved.]




CONTENTS


    1. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR                  1

    2. LORD SALISBURY                       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


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 inspiration of the late Lord
Randolph Churchill. The Fourth party was a new political enterprise. The
House of Commons up to that time contained three regular and recognized
political parties--the supporters of the Government, 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 Government, the
Opposition, and the Irish Nationalists. At the time when I entered
Parliament the Conservatives were in power, and Conservative statesmen
occupied the Treasury Bench. The members of Lord Randolph's party were
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 conservative enough;
to support the Liberal Opposition 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
believed, which happened much more frequently, that to support the
Irishmen would be an annoyance 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 withdrawn
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 Government, and is believed to have given and felt
little satisfaction in his official career. He is a man of great ability
and acquirements, but these have been somewhat thrown away in the
business 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 parliamentary whips never knew when they could be
regarded as supporters or opponents. They were all effective debaters,
all ready with sarcasm 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 together 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 Balfour as the sleek and subtle
Aramis. When I entered Parliament I was brought much into companionship
with the members of this interesting 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 opposition to every
Government so long as Ireland is deprived of her own national
legislature. Soon after I entered the House a Liberal Government 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 Nationalists in their endeavors to resist
and obstruct Government measures, and we therefore came into habitual
intercourse, and even comradeship, 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 constantly allied. He was tall,
slender, pale, graceful, 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 associated him rather with a college library or a professor's
chair than with the rough and boisterous 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
assembly. 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 superficial 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 pitch. His choice of language was always happy and
telling, and he often expressed himself 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 ingenuity 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 seriously, 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 ordinary 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