§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (VISCOUNT MORLEY)My Lords, before beginning public business I am sure it will be the desire of the House that we should take regretful note of the 10 fact that since the House rose for the holidays two valued and important members of this House have disappeared from among us. Lord James and Lord Onslow differed in many qualities, and they differed in the range of their public; activities, but they have both left behind them kind, friendly, and warmly appreciative recollections and memories.
Lord Onslow was the bearer of a name which has been familiar in our Parliamentary history since the days of Queen Elizabeth. One of the bearers of that name was for thirty-three years, in five successive Parliaments, Speaker of the House of Commons, and when his time came to an end in 1761 the House of Commons passed a vote thanking him for his constant and unwearied attendance. The Lord Onslow that we all knew and so much liked was not so long in the chair of the Lord Chairman, but he was there quite long enough to show this House and all who are concerned in the business of the House his fidelity to the trust that had been committed to him. The noble Marquess opposite (Lord Lansdowne) said when Lord Onslow resigned—my own experience is too short for me to speak adequately on the matter—that your Lordships had never known a Chairman more attentive and more assiduous in the performance of his duties. Lord Onslow held various offices—some higher and some lower—with ability and diligence. For a time he discharged the duties of the Governor of an important Colony with credit, honour, and complete success. In the Chair, judging from my own comparatively limited experience, he carried weight because of his strong sense of fair play and his desire to give every opportunity that was lair and legitimate to opinions and points of view which he did not himself share, but which he felt had a right to utterance in the House. His own opinions were strong and decided—perhaps he did not always conceal them—but there was about Lord Onslow's polities a geniality which well became the post he filled and from which lie never departed. This may be noted, that nothing could exceed his willingness to help every member of the House. The noble Marquess said that it could not be doubted that, Lord Onslow in the last days of his life had aggravated the mischief from which he was suffering by his perseverance in the duties of the post which he occupied. I am sure 11 everybody will feel admiration for his character and his work. The regret is universal at his loss; so, too, is universal the recognition and appreciation both of his character and of what he did in the House. He had learned. I think, some of the special duties of the post of Lord Chairman when he was a member of the London County Council. In all the details of private business, which we on these red benches see and hear little of, his experience on that body gave him a great advantage, and he used that advantage to the full.
Then I come to Lord James. He had, we all know, a great career in what I make bold to call the most powerful of professions. In the course of that career he won a seat in the House of Commons, and he there achieved a speedy and a marked success. He had been trained, and highly trained, in the art of honourable advocacy, and he showed that proficiency in the art of advocacy—there are at this moment many examples to confirm the view—is not in the least incompatible with Parliamentary gifts. Let me recall—I am sure the noble and learned Earl opposite (Lord Halsbury) will recall—with what skill and good temper Lord James conducted through the House of Commons an extremely difficult and complex Bill—the memorable Bill against corrupt electoral practices. In this House it did not fall to him to pilot any great measure of that dimension, but whenever he addressed the House it always struck me that he addressed it in a tone of deliberation. Although it may seem strange to say it, it has always struck me that the tone of deliberation is not the commonest of things in deliberative Assemblies—not always in Parliament, not always in administrative and executive bodies, and perhaps not always even in Cabinets. Lord James had that tone of deliberation. One felt that he was trying to impress the House with the very arguments which had convinced him in the formation of his own judgment.
I pass to another point. In political life, with all its tremendous difficulties and tremendous temptations, it does not matter much more what opinions a man holds than with what steadfastness and straightforwardness he holds them. Lord James was a model of clear opinions firmly held. It is unfortunately too well known to many of us that in our generation—and here 12 I am speaking of my own, which is longer than that of many members of the House—there have been three great divisions of opinion and of action among Parliamentary leaders, and three great divisions in the political mind of the country. Friends have been severed, Party cohesion has been broken, and the political hearts of men have been shaken. On all these severe and testing occasions neither of the two great Parties in the State has been wanting in fine and conspicuous examples of personal disinterestedness and personal self-sacrifice. Of these manifold cases I know none more admirable than the case of Lord James. He had within his hand the highest prizes, whether of his professional or his political career, and all the natural impulses of a perfectly legitimate ambition in Lord James gave way to his sense—right or wrong—of public responsibility. He was one of those—and I knew him well—who thought none of these prizes, important as they are, more enviable than the prize of the attachment of his colleagues and the general esteem of his countrymen.
So much for Lord James's public traits. I think I should be wrong if I left out this private trait. He was always on the look out, keenly on the look out, to help younger men at the Bar, men with no high connection and with small prospects—he was always keen to hold out to them such a helping hand as a great and tried lawyer can hold out to an untried one with his life before him. But beyond this generous readiness of professional help his sympathies were very wide and ever generous; indeed, I might say from knowledge that he was not only generous but sometimes what might have been thought even lavish. He was very careful always not to let his left hand know all his right hand was doing in this field. Of him, who might have been Lord Chancellor, it is not too much to say that he lived in the spirit of a famous saying of the greatest of our Lord Chancellors, Lord Bacon—"The nobler a soul is, the more objects of compassion it hath." We are living, as we know to our cost, in an age and in an hour of deep commotion in respect to the institutions of our country; but, after all, w hen we look at the foundations of things, what matters more than anything else is that our leading men, whether they be Lords of Parliament or men in homelier stations, who work these institutions should be men of sterling character. I submit, 13 and I am sure the whole House will agree, that the two men whom we regretfully commemorate this evening were of a sound and sterling character such as has never been surpassed by any of those who have held high place within the walls of this House.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, I can add very little to what has been said by the noble Viscount of the two distinguished members of this House whose deaths we are lamenting this evening. They happened to be both political allies and colleagues of us who sit on this side of the House, and political opponents of the noble Viscount, but I am sure I express the feelings of those who sit around me when I say that we could not have desired a more fitting or appropriate tribute to be paid to the memory of Lord James of Hereford and of Lord Onslow than that to which we have just listened. The noble Viscount said, I think with great truth, that the two men were of very different types; their careers were different, their personal characteristics were different, and the spheres of their activities were different, but they were both of them men whom any Legislative Assembly might well have been proud to number amongst its members.
Lord James of Hereford fought his way to the foremost rank without any adventitious aids, he fought his way to a foremost place in his profession, and to a not less prominent place in our political life. The noble Viscount has spoken of his high position at the Bar, and I will add nothing to what he said on that point, except with regard to one fact to which he referred—that at a particular moment Lord James had within his grasp the greatest prize to which a lawyer can aspire, almost the greatest prize to which any subject of the Crown may aspire, and that he forwent that prize because at that particular moment while his interests pointed one way his convictions pointed in an opposite direction. That one fact appears to me to establish all that we desire to establish with regard to Lord James's high character and reputation. In the House of Commons he was always a conspicuous figure. He delivered speeches there which are still remembered by those who had the advantage of hearing them. In connection with his political career I cannot resist, as one who feels 14 a deep reverence for the memory of the late Duke of Devonshire, referring to the fact that throughout his long political career a man so strong, so full of sterling qualities, and so keen a judge of men as the late Duke of Devonshire should have always regarded Lord James as one of his most intimate friends and counsellors. In this House we always listened to him as to one speaking with an authority to which few members could pretend. His career was a long one, representing considerably more than half a century of public service of the most useful and meritorious description unbroken by any interval of idleness.
Lord Onslow became a member of this House by inheritance when he was quite a young man. He owed his opportunities to what is sometimes—not always felicitously—called the "accident of birth." No doubt he inherited with his high position a certain aptitude for the kind of public business which at different times he was called upon to perform. He served art apprenticeship in more than one public Department, and left behind him in each of them a great reputation for industry, ability, and knowledge of men. He was called to represent the Crown in one of our great Colonies, where I believe I am right in saying he is even to-day remembered with the greatest affection, and not only by men of his own race, but by that native community in whose welfare he so deeply interested himself. In the Department of Agriculture he found himself called to a post the duties of which were specially congenial to him. I doubt whether it would have been possible to find a Minister more likely from his antecedents and personal qualities to command the full confidence of the three classes interested in the land of the country, whether owners, occupiers, or tillers of the soil. He had a practical knowledge of agricultural affairs enabling him to deal with success with problems the business side of which is not always sufficiently borne in mind. This House paid to Lord Onslow the greatest compliment that it can pay to one of its members when it called upon him to assume the duties of Chairman. I do not think the noble Viscount said a word more than was proper and necessary when he spoke of the absolute fairness, good temper, and geniality which characterised his performance of the duties of Lord Chairman; 15 and what I venture to say of Lord Onslow in that respect also has reference to the manner in which he performed the much more exacting duties which fall upon the Lord Chairman in connection with the private business of this House which takes place outside the walls of the Chamber in which we are sitting to-day.
If time permitted, I should have been glad to say a word of the way in which Lord Onslow filled his position as a great country gentleman, and of his interest in all local and municipal questions, but I only mention one other point which I think ought not to be passed by without a word of notice this evening—I mean the pains which Lord Onslow took to bring members of this House together in private deliberation and consultation in regard to the business of the House. He was instrumental in creating opportunities for most useful discussion of that sort, which, owing to the peculiar conditions under which our work is done, come to us, I am afraid, somewhat too rarely. In one of the obituary notices which appeared on the day after his death it was said that Lord Onslow had been described by a Colonial authority as "a good straight English gentleman of the best type." We may be sure that Lord Onslow would have desired no better epitaph, nor would any of us, I suppose, desire any other words to be spoken of us when we are no longer there to hear them. It is as a good straight Englishman of the best type that we shall always remember Lord Onslow and always regret him.
§ THE EARL OF HALSBURYMy Lords, if I rise to say a word or two on the subject which has occupied your Lordships' attention this evening it is because I can claim with the late Lord James a friendship of more than fifty years, during which, both in political life and in the Courts of Law, we have been opponents more often than we have been together. I can say truthfully of Lord James of Hereford that, whether in political or forensic life, I have never met a more honourable and straightforward opponent. That I have been his opponent more often than with him is accident, of course. Although I have not been always of the same politics as he was, that fact never at any time interfered with our friendship; indeed, when Lord James's seat in Parliament was assailed by petition I had the honour of aiding and assisting 16 him to retain the seat which he so much adorned afterwards. I concur also with what was said by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House with reference to Lord James's conduct of the Corrupt Practices Act, a most wholesome and useful measure, which was brought to a successful issue by the skill with which he conducted it. Your Lordships know how well the public career of Lord James deserved the graceful encomiums which were passed upon it by the noble Viscount, but there was a side of his character with which none but his intimate friends became familiar. A more generous and kindhearted man never lived. No case in which the suffering and the poor were engaged failed to obtain his assistance when it was sought. No case of suffering or poverty of any sort or kind wanting assistance failed to obtain it from him when he was satisfied that the case was real. I think it is right that this should be said of Lord James's private character, as it was known by those among whom he lived and by whom he is most mourned.