THE PASSING OF A GREAT ENGLISHMAN.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 81, 3 October 1904, Page 4

THE PASSING OF A GREAT ENGLISHMAN.

Sir William Harcourt had not in recent years been the power that ha was' during many previous Parliaments, and the announcement a few months ago of his determination not to seek re-elec-tion had destroyed any hope of his attempting active service after the dissolution; but the news of his death, which reaches us to-day, will nevertheless be received with genuine regret by everybody who takes any interest in British politics. His passing means the breaking of another link with the past, and removes one who was in closer tough with an earlier school of British statesmanship thaq all but a very few of his contemporaries. A great statesman he can hardly be called, though his Budget of 1894 and the masterly manner in which he piloted it through the House were performances unsurpassed in their kind by any Chancellor of the Exchequer since Mr. Gladstone was in his prime. Two radical changes in the incidence of the death duties were introduced by this Budget; in the first place, real and personal property were treated alike, and secondly, a system of graduation was adopted, so that the rate of the duty increased with the value of the estate. This is exactly the kind of legislation which naturally commends itself to a young and democratic country like this colony, but legislating along such lines in a country where the land sys- I tern is still cast mainly upon feudal lines, { and where one branch of the Parliament is a House of Landlords, is obviously a very different matter. Sir William Harcourt surprised even his friends by tho tact and resource with which, notwithstanding divisions in the Cabinet and the meagre majority of , his party in the House of Commons, he steered this startling democratic piece of legislation through the perils of Committee. The great qualities which he displayed beta with regard to this measure and to the general conduct of the business of the House during his brief term, of leadership moke it a matter for regret that he had not more often the responsibilities of office to sober tho exuberance of bis pugnacious vitality It was indeed partly due to this pugnacity that his last term pi office was so brief, for a lar^e section

of the Liberal party resented very strongly that the Premiership had gone to Lord Rosebery, and it was no secret that Sir William Harcourt himself was among tha number. The Administration fell after a short and troubled career in 1895, and a Government which began in Unionism and has passed by a deplorable transition from khaki to Chinamen during the last twelve months has held sway ever since. During this last long spell of Opposition Sir William Harcourt has been busier with" his pen than with his tongue, and a series of contributions to The Times on the South African policy of the Government, the progress of Ritualism in the Church of England, and Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal proposals had the great merit of being always readable, even to those whom they did not convince. His vigour, his humour, his sarcasm, his weight of historical learning lightly carried, his aptness in quotation, and his happy knack of phrase-making made him one of the most formidable of controversialists, and since Disraeli, at whose feet he had not sat in vain, there has perhaps been no British statesman who has lad an easier command of the resources of both written and spoken controversy. The tradition of classical quotation still lingers in attenuated form in the House of Commons, but it will be appreciably nearer its death now that Harcourt has gone to join Gladstone and Lowe. A pedant the House has always regarded as a butt or a bore, but Harcourt was no pedant, and he knew his Bible and his Shakespeare as well as his Horace. His broad and rollicking humour made hinv indeed one of the most popular of speakers, and but for the impression which he often gave of being a gladiator and an advocate rather than a reformer with a single eye to his ideal, his mark on contemporary politics would have been deeper still. But he has rendered his country valuable and sometimes brilliant service nevertheless, and its universal feeling today will be that a great fighter has passed away who has fully earned his rest.