to slobber over murderers and outrage-mongers.  On the other hand, the iron system of coercion, which Mr. Balfour administered so unflinchingly, had not been invented; and the Chief Secretary had to rely chiefly on his own resources of firmness, shrewdness, and good-humour.  With these Campbell-Bannerman was abundantly endowed, and his demeanour in the House of Commons was singularly well adapted to the situation.  When the Irish members insulted him, he turned a deaf ear.  When they pelted him with controversial questions, he replied with brevity.  When they lashed themselves into rhetorical fury, he smiled and “sat tight” till the storm was over.  He was not a good speaker, and he had no special skill in debate; but he invariably mastered the facts of his case.  He neither overstated nor understated, and he was blessed with a shrewd and sarcastic humour which befitted his comfortable aspect, and spoke in his twinkling eyes even when he restrained his tongue.

The Liberal Government came to an end in June, 1885.  The “Home Rule split” was now nigh at hand, and not even Campbell-Bannerman’s closest friends could have predicted the side which he would take.  On the one hand, there was his congenital dislike of rant and gush, of mock-heroics and mock-pathetics; there was his strong sense for firm government, and there was his recent experience of Irish disaffection.  These things might have tended to make him a Unionist, and he had none of those personal idolatries which carried men over because Mr. Gladstone, or Lord Spencer, or Mr. Morley had made the transition.  On the other hand, there was his profound conviction—­which is indeed the very root of Whiggery—­that each nation has the right to choose its own rulers, and that no government is legitimate unless it rests on the consent of the governed.

This conviction prevailed over all doubts and difficulties, and before long it became known that Campbell-Bannerman had, in his own phrase, “found salvation.”  There were those who were scandalized when they heard the language of Revivalism thus applied, but it exactly hit the truth as regards a great many of the converts to Home Rule.  In a very few cases—­e.g., in Gladstone’s own—­there had peen a gradual approximation to the idea of Irish autonomy, and the crisis of December, 1885, gave the opportunity of avowing convictions which had long been forming.  But in the great majority of cases the conversion was instantaneous.  Men, perplexed by the chronic darkness of the Irish situation, suddenly saw, or thought they saw, a light from heaven, and were converted as suddenly as St. Paul himself.  I remember asking the late Lord Ripon the reason which had governed his decision.  He answered:  “I always have been for the most advanced thing in the Liberal programme, and Home Rule is the most advanced thing just now, so I’m for it.”  I should not wonder if a similar sentiment had some influence in the decision, arrived at by Campbell-Bannerman, who, when Gladstone formed his Home Rule Cabinet in 1886, entered it as Secretary of State for War.  He went out with his chief in the following August, and in the incessant clamour for and against Home Rule which occupied the next six years he took a very moderate part.