During the last years of his administration I saw a good deal of Lord Inverforth.  He was anxious to get back to his own work.  He asked again and again to be relieved of his duties—­the machinery he had set up being in excellent running order.  But the Prime Minister begged him to stay, and he has stayed, against his will and against his own interests, and all the time he has been subjected to a stream of malignant criticism.

Let the reader ask himself whether the case of Lord Inverforth is likely to encourage the best brains in the country to come to the political service of the nation.  Is there not a danger that we may fall into the American position, and have our great men in commerce and our second-rate men in politics?

I regard Lord Inverforth as one of the few very great men in commerce who have the qualities of genuine statesmanship.  I am not at liberty to give my chief grounds for this belief, but before long the world may know from Lord Inverforth’s commercial activities on the Continent that more than any other man in these islands he has seen the way and taken the step to reconstruct the shattered civilization of Europe.

On many occasions I have discussed with him the future of mankind.  I have found him the least anxious and always the most self-possessed observer of events.  Quiet, patient, practical, and imaginative, inspired too by humane motives, he cherishes the unshakable faith that Great Britain is destined to lead civilization into the future as far as human eye can see.  He places his faith in British character.  Rivalry on the part of powerful nations, even when it is directed against our key industries, does not disturb him in the least.  While others are crying, “How shall we save ourselves?” he is pushing the fortunes of the British race in every quarter of the world.  And where British trade goes, on the whole there goes too the highest civilizing power in the world—­British character.  It is significant of his faith that he has ever worked to get the British mercantile marine manned by men of the British race, and to this end has led the way in improving the conditions of the British seaman’s life.

“All the fallacies and wild theories of revolutionary minds,” he once said to me, “break ultimately on the rock of industrial fact.  The more freely nations trade together the more clearly will it be seen that humanity must work out its salvation within the limits of economic law.  And the way to a smooth working out of that salvation is by recognizing the claims of the moral law.  We are men before we are merchants.  There is no reason why mistrust should exist between management and labour.  The economic law by no means excludes, but rather demands, humaneness.  I believe that a system of profit sharing can be devised which will bring management and labour into a sensible partnership.  Selfishness on the part of capital is as bad as selfishness on the part of labour.  Both must be unselfish, both must think of the general community, and both must work hard.  The two chief enemies of mankind are moral slackness and physical slackness.”