It is a dangerous and a delicate task to write the biography of a living man, and the danger and delicacy are doubled when the biographer possesses neither taste nor humour. While criticism is impossible, adulation soon sinks to impertinence, and the least sympathetic reader of Mr Leach's 'The Duke of Devonshire' (Methuen & Co.), to name a flagrant instance, cannot withhold a sincere pity from the victim. From beginning to end the author is uneasily ransacking his limited vocabulary for superlatives, and, when now and again the supply seems exhausted, he descends into bathos or takes refuge in vain repetitions. For wellnigh four hundred pages he remains steadfast, with hat in hand and bended knee; and the attitude, which doubtless affords him some satisfaction, must needs be sadly wearisome to his readers. But he has collected a mass of interesting facts, and his book gives us an excuse for considering a career which, we believe, would be impossible elsewhere than in England.

The motto of the Cavendishes is "Cavendo tutus," and the present Duke of Devonshire has never ceased to respect it. He has always been cautious, and

he has always played for safety. His career has been uniformly unadventurous, and a trip to America, when the war was in progress, is the one episode which seduced him from the familiar path of fashion and politics. To statesmanship he was trained from his early youth, and he entered the House of Commons in 1857 with all the authority which is conferred by a great name and high connections. In nine years he was in the Cabinet, and henceforth he held a foremost place in the councils of his party and his country. At the outset he appeared to have little talent for affairs. He was never eloquent; he was not always articulate; and his complete lack of enthusiasm looked like indifference. Yet these deficiencies lost him nothing of the public esteem. In our northern clime enthusiasm is too often accounted a sign of ill-breeding. To be over keen in the pursuit of the noblest object may appear incompatible with the serenity of a gentleman. The virtue which is sure of an instant triumph is imperturbability; and Lord Cavendish, as he he was then known, had never yet felt what it was to be ruffled. Once upon a time he rose to

the icy heights of heroism: he yawned in his maiden speech. This feat was enough in itself to make a reputation, and it still remains the Duke of Devonshire's masterpiece. No wonder that Disraeli, with amiable irony, predicted that its author would come to greatness; no wonder the Liberals were proud of their new recruit, who with so sincere an originality could defy the practices of the House. But Lord Cavendish himself, with an admirable modesty, showed little pride in his own achievement. Though his yawn was already historic, he was not content. He was so bitterly dismayed by his inability to speak that he gravely contemplated a retirement from politics, and had not John Bright intervened, he might have devoted his placid energies to the breeding of racehorses. But the eminent freetrader reminded him that Hume could not speak when he first entered the House, and that Lord Althorp, without being an orator, yet carried the greatest weight in the country. And the Marquis of Hartington wisely listened to this wise counsel, and remained in Parliament, not merely to lead his party, but twice to decline the highest office which England can confer upon a statesman.

On the great questions of Empire which have agitated England during the last forty years the Duke of Devonshire has always looked askance. In 1880 he was in favour of leaving South Africa untrammelled to the Boers; and

though in the Egyptian crisis he was suspected of leanings towards Jingoism, he acquiesced in the sacrifice of Gordon, following on the Nile, as in the Transvaal, the disastrous policy of Mr Gladstone. The truth is, he had the misfortune, shared by all his colleagues, of serving a leader who was as unscrupulous as he was autocratic. Like Mr Childers and Lord Rosebery, he disapproved, yet dared not protest. Through the darkest years of our history he submitted to Mr Gladstone's recklessness. Dominated by a histrionic personality, he surrendered his judgment and his will; and though his direct responsibility may have been small, he can no more easily be absolved from a grave dereliction of duty than can the other patient satellites of Mr Gladstone. To turn that statesman from his course was obviously impossible, especially as he exacted from his colleagues a blind unquestioning obedience; but a protest might always have been expressed by resignation, and it is perhaps the most conspicuous feat in Mr Gladstone's baneful career that he held together, in a time of national disgrace, a band of followers who shuddered at his policy while they bowed submissive to his will.

But by 1880 the Marquis of Hartington was bound to Mr Gladstone by many ties. Not merely did he feel a natural loyalty to the Chief who had advanced him, he could not but profess that devotion which springs from a consciousness of benefits conferred. If Mr

Gladstone was there to do mischief, he had been put there by the Marquis of Hartington, who not only led the Commons while his leader sulked in his tent, but made way for that leader, when he might justly have claimed the spoils of victory for himself. Submission, then, seemed natural to him, and submissive he would have continued had not Mr Gladstone in 1886 defied his party, and determined to confer Home Rule upon Ireland. Then for the first time did the Marquis of Hartington pursue his own policy, and display to his astonished leader a spirit of independence. Nor did he speak of Ireland without the authority bred of experience. He had himself been Chief Secretary, and could look upon the "wrongs of Irishmen without sentimentality or romance. And when once his mind was made up, he opposed his leader with a dogged perseverance for which Great Britain will always owe him a debt of gratitude. He took his share in forming the new Liberal Unionist party, and did not relax his efforts until Home Rule was doomed for

ever.

A year ago the Duke of Devonshire seceded a second time from the party with which he had been associated, without either the decision or the openness which he displayed in 1886. No sooner had Mr Gladstone hinted at Home Rule than the Marquis of Hartington demanded an instant explanation; and, when that explanation was unsatis

factory, he showed not a momentary hesitation. Not merely did he refuse the office which was inappositely offered him, but he became active in opposition, and used whatever influence he possessed against the statesman who had been his leader. So conspicuous was his candour, indeed, that not even Mr Gladstone could resent the severance which he deplored. But when in 1903 he parted from Mr Balfour he was bewildered into disingenuousness. To begin with, he acknowledged himself dissatisfied with the system of insular free trade which the devout Cobdenites refuse to discuss. From his place in the House of Lords he made an energetic appeal for a free and open discussion. He could not see, he declared, why any convinced free-trader should "object to an inquiry, after the lapse of fifty years, into the reasons which have prevented the realisation of the hopes entertained by the founders of that policy." But he went farther than this, when, lifting a sacrilegious hand against the holy doctrine, he asserted that the supporters of our present fiscal system had no right to call themselves free - traders, since they are merely free importers. He sorrowfully pointed out that "save in our own Colonies no progress whatever had been made in any part of the world in the direction of real free trade, and that foreign countries, instead of lowering or relaxing the barriers they had set up against our imports, have raised and strengthened

them." So he supported Mr Balfour when Mr Ritchie and the rest resigned; he gave the Prime Minister his advice when statesmen were chosen to fill the vacant places; and no word of dissension was uttered by him until Mr Balfour made his speech at Sheffield,-a speech in which nothing was added to the opinions which the Prime Minister had already and publicly expressed. Then, for reasons which are not yet clear, the Duke of Devonshire resigned, and since that day he has been an uncompromising supporter, not of real free trade, but of the policy forced upon the country fifty years ago by the agitation of Cobden and Bright. It was not thus that he bore himself when Mr Gladstone took up the cause of Home Rule. He did not then accept office and decline it; he did not then demand inquiry and reject it. mind was made up, his purpose firm. But upon this other question of fiscal reform he has stumbled in bewilderment, until the view which he holds to-day is completely opposed to that which he supported not much more than a year ago. On June 15, 1903, he declared that those who professed the principles of real free trade were "the very last who ought to refuse to enter into the fullest and most searching inquiry and discussion as to the effect, not only of those principles, but of the effectual results which have been achieved under our present system." To-day he is opposed to any inquiry what

His

soever. For inquiry implies the possibility of reform, and the Duke would not accept reform even were it proved imperative. So he lulls himself to sleep with the blessed words free trade, as Mr Gladstone once found solace in murmuring Home Rule. The prosperity of the country in his eyes is no longer a matter of experience, it is a matter of faith. He desires to hear no facts; he is indifferent to argument; he has suspended for a while the sturdy common-sense which has long been held his dominant quality. He is certain that the system which, as he believes, was profitable in 1846, must and will be profitable unto the end of time. It is a curious attitude of mind, and it proves that a political cry carries more weight with the average man than the keenest argument and the soundest reason. Indeed, under the influence of the old fetish free trade the Duke of Devonshire has become once more a dogged partisan. In his latest pronouncement he condemned Mr Chamberlain's proposals, first, because they are miserable in their inadequacy, and, secondly, because no man can give us security that "if we adopt these proposals and take the first step in the direction of protection, we can stop there." But he cannot have it both ways. If Mr Chamberlain's policy is "miserable" because it does not go far enough, why should he fear that the first step should be followed by a second? When once the benefits of protection are de