March 26.
Wits the death of the eighth Duke of Devonshire we have virtually come to an end of that remarkable group of statesmen, worthy of the name, who ruled England with so much mastery during the latter half of Queen Victoria's reign. No doubt there is truth in Disraeli's famous epigram that a statesman is only a dead politician. No doubt, in comparing past with present we are much in the position of schoolboys who, growing up to Sixth Form dignity, lament that there are no more such giants in the land as when they themselves were fags. Yet as we look back upon the prominent political figures of twenty years ago, we cannot be altogether mistaken in our feeling that they stand in a class apart from their successors in office. For with the rise into power of a new party whose energies, if not actually self-seeking, are admittedly confined to the interests of a single section of the community, a change is felt in the attitude of those who belong to the older generation of parliamentarians. In proportion as the birth of a Labour party has accentuated class distinctions, it is inevitable that the men on the other side of the political world should come insensibly to be identified with ideas of class. The best hope we may have of the fatare is that it shall obliterate such feelings, which are probably only incidental to the change which is now taking place in society as the people awakes to the sense of its power. But the vague misgiving that in the present generation the instincts of the statesman too frequently give place to those of the homme @afaires can never attach to men of the stamp of Lord Salisbury, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield, Sir William Harcourt or the late Duke of Devonshire. CleaMy as they might be identified with a particular party in the State, it was; felt that they were controlled by something above party considerations; and while they might be helped in their detachment by the wealth and rank which they enjoyed independently of political success, the adventitious fortune of their birth was of small account beside the force of natural character.
In the case of the Duke of Devonshire this feeling was especially appropriate. It might be said of him that the influence which he exerted upon English politics was due to what he was, far more than to what he did. In this respect he was a curious repetition of his father. So far as the stress of political warfare was concerned, Lord Hartington (he did not succeed to the title until the year 1891) was a more prominent figure than the seventh Bake who never held any public office, But imagitation does not associate the late Duke of Devonshire particular: ly with any of the offices he ot+ cupied from time to time; as, for example, it associates Sir William Harcourt with the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the invention of death duties. Moreover, it is noticeable that with the exception of the years which he spent at the War Office,—years which were made lurid by the expeditions of General Gordon and Lord Wolseley to Khartoum, and by the death of the former which led to the fall of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry in 1885,—the Duke of Devonshire never held any of the greatest and most glittering positions in the Cabinet. He was never Prime Minister, although after the Conservative defeat in 1880 he was naturally sent for by the Queen as Leader of the Opposition during the previous five years of Mr. Gladstone temporary withdrawal from that position; and although Lord Salisbury offered, after the Home Rule split, to serve under him if he would accept the Premiership. He was never Forei Secretary, never First Lord of the Admiralty, never Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is trae that he was at one time Secretary of India, and the first President of the Board of Education (for which he was, indeed, ill-equipped in the necessary technical training); but both these offices have since become more important than they were recognized to be at the time he held them. It almost seems as if the Duke of Devonshire had voluntarily determined on self-effacement. But at least in his double refusal of the Premiership we find akey to the man's character. In 1880 the situation was clear enough. Mr. Gladstone, so lately
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.