Every friend and admirer of Sir William Harcourt must have been glad when it was made known that the late leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons had declined to accept the King's offer of a peerage and was determined to remain in that representative chamber where he had made his political name and won his place of command. Sir William Harcourt would have been thrown away in the House of Lords. He could not have done anything to arouse that apathetic chamber to living importance in the affairs of state, and the House of Commons would have lost its most impressive figure. Sir William Harcourt's political fame was made in the House of Commons, and he is even yet its most distinguished member. I say "even yet" because Harcourt is growing old, and has passed that age of threescore years and ten authoritatively set down as the allotted space of man's life. But he shows no appearance of old age, seems full of energy and vital power, and is as well able to command the listening House of Commons by argumentative speech and impressive declamation as he was twenty years ago. Harcourt's bearing is one of superabundant physical resources, and he has a voice of resonant tone which imposes no tax on the listening powers of the stranger in the farthest gallery. He is a very tall man, would be one of the tallest men in any political assembly, and his presence is stately and commanding. After Gladstone's death he became the leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, and he resigned that position only because he could not cordially accept the policy and plans of action undertaken by his leader in the House of Lords, Lord Rosebery. I do not propose to enter at any length into the differences of opinion which separated these two men, but it was generally understood that Lord Rosebery did not see his way to carry out Gladstone's policy for the maintenance of Greece and the Christian populations generally against the blood-stained domination of the Ottoman power in the southeast of Europe. The result of these differences was that Lord Rosebery applied himself to form a Liberal party of his own, which should be what is called Imperialist in its policy, and that Harcourt became merely a member of the Liberal Opposition in the House of Commons. To have won the place of Liberal leader in the representative chamber might well have satisfied the ambition of any man, and to withdraw from that place rather than contribute to any further disagreement in the party did not in any sense detract from Harcourt's influence and fame.

Sir William Harcourt won his earliest distinctions in law and literature rather than in politics. He comes of a family which has a history of its own and had members who won reputation during many generations. He was educated at Cambridge University and obtained high honors there. He was called to the bar in 1854, and became Queen's Counsel in 1866. In the meantime he had accomplished some important literary work. He was a writer for the "Saturday Review," then at the zenith of its reputation, and under the title of "Historicus" he contributed a series of letters on important public subjects to the "Times" newspaper which attracted universal attention, were afterwards collected and published in a volume, and found readers in every part of the world where men take interest in the public life of England. He was a leading advocate in some legal causes which excited the profound attention of the whole country, and was already regarded as a man of mark, who might be safely assumed to have a successful career before him. It was generally taken for granted at the time that such a man was certain to seek and find a place in the House of Commons, which of course offers an opening for rising legal advocates as well as for rising politicians. I can remember quite distinctly that to all of us who were watching the careers of promising men it appeared quite certain that Harcourt was not likely to content himself with professional distinction, and that when he entered the House of Commons he would devote himself for the most part to the business of political life. He made one unsuccessful attempt to obtain a seat in the House of Commons as representative of a Scottish constituency, and was more fortunate in his second endeavor, when he was elected to Parliament by the city of Oxford as a Liberal in 1868. Then for a while I personally lost sight of him, for towards the close of that year I began a lengthened visit to the United States, and only learned through the newspapers that he was already winning marked distinction as a Parliamentary debater. When I returned to England in 1871, I found that Harcourt was already regarded as certain to hold high office in a Liberal administration. His first step in that direction was to obtain the office of Solicitor-General in Gladstone's Government.

A story was told of Harcourt at the time—this was in 1873—which I believe to be authentic and is worth repeating. Up to this time he was merely Mr. William Vernon Harcourt, but the usage in Parliamentary life is that the leading law officers of the Crown, the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, shall receive the honor of knighthood. It was therefore a matter of course that Mr. Harcourt should become Sir William Harcourt, and bear the title by which he is still known everywhere. The story goes, however, that Harcourt was not much delighted with the offer of a distinction which is commonly conferred upon the mayors of English cities and towns and other such personages of municipal position. Harcourt, as I have said, came of a distinguished English family which had contributed Lord Chancellors and other such exalted dignitaries to the business of the State. He probably had also in his mind the fact that rising men in his own profession who happened to be sons of peers were specially exempted by constitutional usage from the necessity of putting up with knighthood when accepting one of the two legal offices under the Crown. The manner in which this very fact proclaimed the comparative insignificance of the title may have still further influenced Harcourt's objections. Anyhow, he did endeavor to impress upon Gladstone his claim to be exempted from the proffered dignity. Gladstone, however, assured him that it was the recognized constitutional practice to confer a knighthood upon a new Solicitor-General, and that there was no reason why Harcourt should seek dispensation from the honor. "Then," demanded Harcourt—so at least the story is told—"why don't you confer knighthoods on all the members of your Cabinet, and see how some of them would receive the proposition?" I cannot vouch for this story as historical truth, but I can vouch for the fact that it was told everywhere at the time, and received, so far as I know, no contradiction.

Harcourt made his way almost at once to the front rank of Parliamentary debaters. His style was somewhat rhetorical and declamatory, but it was distinctly argumentative, and his speeches contained few passages of mere declamation. He was a hard hitter, one of the hardest in the House, but he hit straight from the shoulder and never gave an unfair blow. He was often very happy in his sarcastic touches, and there was a certain robust and self-satisfied good humor even in his severest attacks on his Parliamentary opponents. The general impression of observers at first was that Harcourt would go in merely for the reputation of a powerful debater in the House of Commons, and would not show any ambition for the steady and severe work of Ministerial office. The public had yet to learn that the highest reputation of the man was to be made by his success as the head of a great Ministerial department. Many observers also formed the opinion that Harcourt had no clear political views of his own, and was merely a sort of free lance ready to accept employment under the most convenient leader. He had entered the House of Commons as a Liberal, and even before he accepted office had always ranked himself as a regular supporter of the Liberal party, but he often made speeches in opposition to the views of extreme Liberals or Radicals—speeches such as might well have been made by some eloquent member of the Tory party. Many of the more advanced Liberals had for some time no confidence whatever in Harcourt's Liberalism, and were often engaged in sharp controversy with him. My own impression is that, up to a certain period in his career, Harcourt had not formed, or troubled himself to form, any very settled opinions on the rising political questions of the day. Upon all the old subjects of political debate, on the controversies which divided political parties in a former generation, his views were, no doubt, quite settled, but then there were many new subjects coming up for discussion, bringing with them new occasions for political division, and it is quite probable that on some of these at least the new Solicitor-General had not quite made up his mind. He had been a close student at Cambridge, and had been elected professor of international law by that University; he had practiced law as an advocate, and had begun to make a reputation for himself as a writer. It is quite probable that he had not yet given any special attention to some of the new questions which the growing development of social and political conditions was calling up for Parliamentary consideration.

Harcourt appears to have accepted as a matter of course, when he entered the House of Commons, the recognized principles inherited by the Liberal party. But there was then, as at most other periods of England's constitutional history, a new and advancing Liberal party beginning to make its influence felt, and not satisfied to abide by the mere traditions and established canons of the older Liberalism. Only a very few even of the advanced Liberals were yet prepared to support and encourage the Irish demand for Home Rule, and on such domestic questions, for instance, as the regulation of the liquor traffic, the Liberal party in general had not made up its mind to any policy other than a policy of mere inaction. I mention these two subjects in particular because they have an especial value in throwing light upon the change which took place more lately in Harcourt's political attitude. Probably at the time when he first entered the House of Commons he had not concerned himself much with the Home Rule question, and had allowed himself to take it for granted, as so many even among Liberal politicians and newspapers would have told him, that the Irish Home Rulers were aiming at the break-up of the Empire. In the same way it is quite possible that he may have given little or no attention to the demand for some new regulation of the liquor traffic, and dismissed the whole subject as a crotchet of Sir Wilfrid Lawson. When, however, he began to study the political life of the House of Commons as an active and a rising member, and when he found that his inclinations and his instincts were leading him into politics and away from law, we can easily understand that he set himself to study with candid judgment the new questions which were beginning to divide the Liberal party. I have often heard Sir William Harcourt accused of inconsistency and even of time-serving, because of his sudden conversion to the principle of some political movement which was at last coming to be accepted by the great Liberal leaders. I do not see any reason whatever to believe that Harcourt can fairly be reproached with inconsistency, or justly accused of any ignoble motive for his adoption of the newer and more advanced opinions. The explanation seems to me quite clear. The university student, the practicing advocate, the professor of international law, adopted a new career and devoted himself to an active part in the work of the House of Commons. Then it was that he studied for the first time with earnestness and impartiality some great developing questions which had previously been mere names and shadows to him, and thus he came to form the conclusions which guided his subsequent career. If Harcourt had been thinking chiefly of his own political advancement, he might have done better for himself by following the example of Disraeli, and taking a place among the Tories, where intellect and eloquence were more rare than on the other side of the House, and where promotion was therefore more easily to be won.

Harcourt had probably not given much attention to great financial questions until he came under the influence of Gladstone. Up to that time he had, perhaps, not assumed that such subjects were likely to come within the scope of his practical work; but when he had to study them, he began to discover that he had within him the capacity for a thorough comprehension of their real meaning and development, and as the result of the study he became, when the opportunity offered itself, one of the most successful and enlightened financial Ministers of his time. In the same way he may never have given any serious thought to the question of Irish Home Rule, and may have fallen quietly into the way of regarding it, in accordance with the common opinion of most Englishmen just then, as something naturally associated with a rebellious desire for the breaking up of the Empire. When, however, he was led to study it as a question of reasonable import, he grew to be a convinced and a hopeful advocate of the cause. For a long time after he had taken office under Gladstone he found himself brought into an incessant opposition and even antagonism to the small group of Irish members, who then represented the Irish national demand, and compelled to fight against the obstruction which these Irish members were raising night after night, as their only means of enforcing public attention to a serious consideration of Ireland's national complaints and claims. He became converted to the cause of Home Rule, just as Gladstone did, by having the question forced upon his consideration, and thus being compelled to ask himself whether there was not some real sense of justice inspiring the Irish agitation.

I shall always remember a conversation I once had with Gladstone on this subject of Irish Home Rule. It was in one of the inner lobbies of the House of Commons, and Mr. Gladstone began it by asking me how I could regard Home Rule as a national demand, seeing that only a very small number of the Irish representatives in the House were actively in favor of such a measure. Gladstone called my attention to the fact that out of the whole body of Irish representatives elected by the constituencies on the same basis of voting, less than a dozen members declared themselves uncompromising advocates of Home Rule. I drew Gladstone's attention to the fact that the suffrage in Ireland was so high and so restricted that the whole bulk of the Irish population were disqualified by law from giving a vote at any election. Gladstone appealed to me to say whether he had not long been in favor of an expanded suffrage for the whole Kingdom, and I told him that I cordially recognized his sincere purpose, and that whenever we got a really fair and popular suffrage he would then find ample proof that the great bulk of the Irish people were united in their demands for Home Rule. Not long after, it came about that Gladstone and his Government saw their way to a measure of reform which gave the whole Kingdom an expanded and popular suffrage, and at the next general election the great majority of Irish members opposed to or lukewarm about Home Rule disappeared altogether from Parliament, and their places were taken by avowed and uncompromising Home Rulers elected mainly because they were earnest advocates of Home Rule. Out of the hundred and three members who constitute the Irish representation, we had then nearly ninety who were proclaimed and consistent Home Rulers. This result did much of itself to make Gladstone a convert to Home Rule, and it had naturally the same effect on Harcourt, who was far too intelligent a man not to accept the lesson taught by the Irish constituencies, and to admit that the demand for Home Rule was a genuine national demand, and as such entitled to the serious consideration of real statesmen. The conversion of Harcourt I have always, therefore, regarded as sincere and statesmanlike, and of the same order as the conversion of Gladstone himself. The first business of statesmanship is to recognize established facts and to act upon their evidence. Once the demand had been proved to be national, neither Gladstone nor Harcourt was the man to deny it a full consideration; and the same full consideration made the one man and the other an advocate of Home Rule.

In the days before the great constitutional change which I have described, the change which resulted in the adoption of a popular suffrage, in the days when our small band of Irish Nationalists was still doing battle inch by inch against the Government, we had many fierce struggles with Harcourt, then a leading member of the Liberal administration. We had to admit that we found in him a powerful antagonist. He was ready in reply, resolute in maintaining his position, and he gave us, to say the least of it, as good as we brought. He was ever alert, he could answer attack by attack, he could carry the battle into the enemy's ranks, and the ablest of our debaters had his best work to do when compelled to stand up in Parliamentary contest against Harcourt. But I observed that in our private dealings with Harcourt, on questions which came within the range of his administrative functions, we always found him considerate, kind, and even generous. There were frequent occasions when a Minister of the Crown had to be applied to by an Irish member for justice in the dealings of his official department, where individual questions of right and wrong having nothing to do with the general subject of Home Rule came up for consideration. I am now speaking of questions which were not to be settled by mere debate in the House of Commons, but which belonged to the ordinary and practical dealings of the department with this or that individual case. I can remember many instances in which I had to make some such appeal to Sir William Harcourt, and I ever found him most ready and willing to consider fairly the nature of any individual grievance, and to prevent the administration of the law from being perversely turned into an engine of oppression. I know that many of my colleagues as well as myself felt thankful to Harcourt for his prompt interference where a real grievance had been brought under his notice, and for his resolve to see that justice must be done to the obscure sufferer from official tyranny. When the Liberal Government and the Irish National party came to work together for Home Rule, we, the Irish National members, had nothing on our memory which could prevent us from regarding Harcourt as a genuine Liberal and a sincere friend who had never shown any inclination to abuse his power when he was strong and we were at our weakest. My recollection of the days when we were fighting against Harcourt is tinged with no bitterness. He was always a formidable fighter, but he fought fairly when he still had to fight against us.

It is not surprising that Harcourt should have been for some time regarded as a powerful debater and nothing more. He was one of the foremost debaters in the House of Commons, even at a time when that House had more commanding debaters in it than it can claim to have just at present. He cannot be ranked among the great orators of the House. He is wanting in imagination, and without the gift of imagination there cannot be eloquence of the highest order. Even in the mere making of phrases he has seldom shown originality, and it has often been remarked of him, as it was remarked by Disraeli of Sir Robert Peel, that he never ventures on any quotation which has not already well established its popularity. Sir William Harcourt's best qualities as a speaker consist in his clearness of exposition, his unfailing fluency, his masterly array of forcible argument, and the fact that he never allows his eloquence to soar over the heads of his audience. I should be inclined to say of him that, although he is unquestionably a great Parliamentary debater, yet his intellectual capacity, his faculty for balancing evidence, acquiring and comparing facts, appreciating tendencies, and coming to just conclusions, are greater even than his powers of speech. I may say that one who listened to Sir William Harcourt during the earlier stages of his Parliamentary career might very naturally have been led to quite a different conclusion, and might have set him down as a clever maker of speeches and not a statesman. But such an observer, supposing him to be endowed with a fair amount of intelligence, would have gradually changed his opinion as he followed Harcourt's political career. Every time that Harcourt has been in office he has more and more given proof that there is in him the true quality of statesmanship. He served as Home Secretary under Gladstone, and was afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, first in one of Gladstone's Administrations and afterwards in the Government of Lord Rosebery. There can be no question that he proved himself to be one of the greatest financial Ministers England has had in recent times. His famous Death Duties budget, introduced while Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister, created one of the most vehement controversies known to the political life of the present generation. Yet the great principle which Harcourt embodied in his dealing with the question of death duties must now be regarded even by his political opponents as resting on a basis of absolute morality and justice. The principle merely was that the amount of taxation which any individual pays to the State in consideration of his having obtained property by bequest shall be greater in proportion according as the acquired property is great in amount. In other words, Harcourt's policy maintained that a man who comes in for a large property as a bequest shall pay a larger proportion of taxation to the State than a man who comes in for a small property, and that the same principle ought to prevail through our other systems of direct taxation. The whole controversy simply turns on the question whether the rich man ought or ought not to pay a larger proportion of his income to defray the national expenses than the poor man—whether the citizen who has only income enough to enable him to maintain his family decently ought to be called upon to pay towards the maintenance of the State on just the same scale as that ordained for the man who can live in lavish luxury. The boldness and originality of Sir William Harcourt's venture in his budget of 1893, the energy and argumentative power with which he carried it to success, have undoubtedly secured for him a place in the front rank of England's financial Ministers. The later years of Harcourt's career offer a strange commentary on the estimate generally formed of him when he began to be conspicuous in Parliament. At the former period he was commonly regarded as a clever but somewhat superficial man, as one whose qualities were rather flashy than sound, as a ready maker of telling speeches designed to produce an immediate effect and destined to be utterly forgotten the day after to-morrow. Harcourt's later years of public work have proved him to be a serious Parliamentary leader, a man of strong and deep convictions, a man who thinks before he speaks and speaks because he thinks.

Indeed, the seriousness of Harcourt's convictions on some subjects of national importance has brought him more than once into disfavor with his constituents. He holds very strong and advanced views on the subject of local option—that is to say, on the right of localities to say whether they will or will not allow the sale of intoxicating drinks within their confines, and to state what conditions are to be imposed on the traffic if it is permitted at all. Sir William Harcourt went further on this subject than some even among his colleagues who were in favor of the general principle as a principle, but did not see the necessity for pressing it to immediate action. One of those colleagues said to me that in his opinion Harcourt might very well have allowed the question to stand over for eight or ten years, and perhaps by the end of that time the habits of the population would have improved so far as to render the passing of any strong restrictive law unnecessary. I am quite certain that Harcourt's earnest resolve to deal boldly with this subject if he should be allowed the opportunity had much to do with the condition of feeling in the Liberal party which led to his resignation of its leadership. We may look forward with confidence to the formation of a new Liberal Government in which Harcourt will have a commanding position, and when that time comes we may take it for granted that, in spite of whatever opposition on either side of the House of Commons, he will once more attempt to deal with the question of local option.

Most of my American readers know that Sir William Harcourt's second wife was the daughter of Lothrop Motley, the famous historian who was for a time Minister to Great Britain, and who died at Harcourt's country residence in 1877. The eldest son, Louis Vernon Harcourt, who was born in 1863, has also married an American lady. Louis Harcourt, whom I have known since his boyish days, is endowed with much of his father's talents, and I have always thought that if he had devoted himself entirely to political life he might make for himself such a career as his father has already accomplished. During contested elections I have been more than once associated with Louis Harcourt in "stumping" some parts of the country on behalf of the Liberal Government then engaged in the cause of Home Rule, and I have the clearest memories of his remarkable organizing capacity, his ready eloquence, and his skill in replying to questions and arguments and in convincing skeptical voters. I take it for granted that every one who has known Louis, or, as he is commonly called, "Lulu" Harcourt, must have delightful recollections of his bright companionship. We have all heard that Sir William Harcourt studiously consulted his son when the offer of a peerage was made to him by King Edward, and that "Lulu" was resolute in supporting his father's desire to refuse the honor, even although his acceptance of it would have made "Lulu" the heir to a peerage. Sir William Harcourt, we may well hope, has yet good work to do in the House of Commons. There is nothing about him which suggests the idea of advanced years or of decaying powers, whether mental or physical. The curious attack of weakness which lately came over so many members of the Liberal party never touched his robust intellect and resolute character. No man could render more valuable services than he may be expected to do in turning to account for genuine Liberalism the reaction already beginning to set in against the reign of the Tories and the Jingoes. I cherish the belief that the best of Sir William Harcourt's work is yet to be done by him.