July 9.
The publication of the will of of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, has drawn more attention to that remarkable man. than all the acts of his distinguished Ife. That a man who has held the highest office in the realm of Great Britain and has received the highest distinction that his sovereign could confer should have died poor is not a disgrace but a distinction. His the disposal of his pitifully small fortune had in it lat, of the high Roman manner. With a trifle over £9,000 to leave he distributes, half of it to those less affluent than himself. It might almost be said of him as was sair of King Charles the First. Nothing became him so well fas the manner of his leaving it. As Mr. LIH. Asquith he shad a distinguished career at Oxford and could write K.C. after his_name when he forsook the profession of law for politics. Had he heeded the old saw abbier stick to thy last" he would probably have died a rich man, Instead, he passes from our sight with such honours thick upon him as have fallen to the Jot of few men. His own university of Oxford conferred upon him its D.C.L. He was, in turn, Rector of the univ sites of Glasgow and Aberd and his native town, Mori gave him the freedom of its citizenship. A knight of the most noble order of the Garter, 'a distinction crowned delight to receive, and a freeman of an insignificant borough; in these extremes we see how the character of the great statesman appealed to the common judgment of mankind.
Lord Oxford and Asquith neither paraded nor concealed his poverty. The poet sang man's son has an advantage, in being born to struggle with adverse fortune, to which the Duke's son is a stranger.
But Mr. Asquith was not poor in the sense in which we speak. of destitution, He was only relatively poor—poor as a Prime Minister. He was not poor ai Francis Thompson was poor when he was found by the Meynells, starving the embankment in London. But for the kindly hands stretched out to succour him, that favourite of the muses would have sunk, with other' flotsam and jetsam, in the black stream that swallows up so much valuable humanity and his genius would have been lost to the world. Poverty in itself is very far from being a blessing and there is a modicum of truth in the bitter gibe that morality itself is only possible to those who have reached a certain standard of comfort. There is a benumbing frost in sordid and hopeless want that kills the kindlier impulses of the soul and reduces man to a level not far removed from the primitive instincts of the animal. This was known to Confucius who once pointed to 'a fertile plain and remarked to his followers on its teeming population. "What would you do were you ruler there"? asked a disciple. the reply. inquired the disciple. them" said the so wise enough to know that it was hopeless: to attempt to instruct the masses until they were relieved from the pressure of the struggle for existence and had leisure to learn. It is not the least of Lord Oxford's claims to remembrance that he intro: fort into the lives of many deserving poor. The first duty of the earliest ruler was to care for the sustenance of his tribe and that is still the most important function of government, The standard of a people's civil zation is not to be measured by the culture of its highest but by the condition of the lowest strata of its population. A magnificent palace towering over a conglomeration of hovels is -a monument to the disgrace of its builder.
"Ig there for honest poverty that hangs his head and all that?
The coward slave, we pass him by and dare be poor for all tha He was neither uplifted by the plethora of his honours nor depressed by the accident of the lack of wealth, Maybe glanced sometimes at a certain Paper which publishes weekly a list of notable wills under the title of "Other people It is significant that, as this publication shows, those who die rich have rarely any other title to fame, A brewer's name amongst the millionaires is not infrequent but the Prime Minister or Commander-in-chief of the forces of Great Britain dies poor. This is a characteristic of our country of which we may be reasonably proud. A great teacher once said that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of, heaven, It is almost as difficult fora rich man to attain any position of eminence—apart from his wealth—in this world as it appears to be in the next. Who, that has gained a place amongst the immortals, ever suffered
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.