It is not my business to attack or defend.  I only record the fact that Mr. Balfour’s work in Ireland established his position as the most important member of the Conservative party.  In 1891 he resigned the Chief Secretaryship, and became Leader of the House; was an eminently successful Leader of Opposition between 1892 and 1895; and, as I said before, was the obvious and unquestioned heir to the Premiership which Lord Salisbury laid down in 1902.

As Prime Minister Mr. Balfour had no opportunity for exercising his peculiar gift of practical administration, and only too much opportunity for dialectical ingenuity.  His faults as a debater had always been that he loved to “score,” even though the score might be obtained by a sacrifice of candour, and that he seemed often to argue merely for arguing’s sake.  It was said of the great Lord Holland that he always put his opponent’s case better than the opponent put it for himself.  No one ever said this of Mr. Balfour; and his tendency to sophistication led Mr. Humphrey Paul to predict that his name “would always be had in honour wherever hairs were split.”  His manner and address (except when he was debating) were always courteous and conciliatory; those who were brought into close contact with him liked him, and those who worked under him loved him.  Socially, he was by no means as expansive as the leader of a party should be.  He was surrounded by an adoring clique, and reminded one of the dignitaries satirized by Sydney Smith:  “They live in high places with high people, or with little people who depend upon them.  They walk delicately, like Agag.  They hear only one sort of conversation, and avoid bold, reckless men, as a lady veils herself from rough breezes.”

But, unfortunately, a Prime Minister, though he may “avoid” reckless men, cannot always escape them, and may sometimes be forced to count them among his colleagues.  Lord Rosebery’s Administration was sterilized partly by his own unfamiliarity with Liberal sentiment, and partly by the frowardness of his colleagues.  Mr. Balfour knew all about Conservative sentiment, so far as it is concerned with order, property, and religion; but he did not realize the economic heresy which always lurks in the secret heart of Toryism; and it was his misfortune to have as his most important colleague a “bold, reckless man” who realized that heresy, and was resolved to work it for his own ends.  From the day when Mr. Chamberlain launched his scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour’s authority steadily declined.  Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—­these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain.  People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened him to Issachar crouching down between two burdens, or to that moralist who said that he always sought “the narrow path which lies between right and wrong.”  His colleagues