MR. BALFOUR’S RETIREMENT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 81, 17 November 1911, Page 7

MR. BALFOUR’S RETIREMENT.

HIS SUCCESSOR’S CAREER. “IRON IN THE HARD DIRECTNESS OF THE MAN.” The very absence of those brilliant qualities which have raised contemporary British statesmen to international' renown lias made the solid and serious Mr Bonar Law illustrious, according to a.recent character sketch in the London “Daily Mail.” An'entire absence of ornament in speech, but the conspicuous presence of common sense, “a terse and forceful exposition of practical matters,” are noted as MiLaw’s distinguishing characteristics in debate. Ho is rather the man who, having convinced himself that a certain course is necessary, will work without any personal ostentation, but with a certain grim ruthlessness until iiis object is attained. “That is how Mr Bonar Law reveals himself. He stands at the table of the House of Commons, a tall, spare figure, with a suggestion of Scottish gauntness about him? He is generally in a long frock coat or a cutaway. He stands very erect, one hand by his side, the finger of the other hand resting lightly on the box in front of him. He has no gestures, and he consults no notes.” The speeches for which Mr Bonar Law is so celebrated in and out of Dm Commons are described as “amazingly factful.” His efforts are the more impressive because be never makes use of a note. Once in a long while lie will 'thrust bis right baud into the left breast pocket of his coat and draw ont a small sheet of paper containing some reference or some quotation. But he restores it to bis bosom or lays it on the table in front of him with a quickness suggesting his eagerness not to spoil an argument by depriving it of file extempore quality. He is not a great orator in the sense that he can move by any appeal to the emotions, but for that 'very reason he is the more trenchant debater. His grasp of practical facts, his lucid exposition of them, and a certain firmness are his outstanding characteristics. As one admirer puts it: “He first lifted himself in the world as an ironmaster, and even now, .as ho stands besides the table of the House of -Commons, there is iron.jn the, hard directness of the man, and in that air of quiet, resolution which marks him from head to foot.” Mr Law was born at Now Brunswick, in Canada, -53 years ago,.,and he is the sou of a Presbyterian minister. He went to the High! School at Glasgow, and while a merai youth was put to business. He forged ahead at a race that made him as powerful in the steel trade of Great Britain' as any president of the Carnegie Board in the United States. Not until he was 42, and famed as the chairman of the Glasgow Iron Trade Association, did Bonar Law find a seat in the House of Commons. Once there, he made up for lost' time, and was Parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade during the hist three years—Mr Balfour’s stormy period of power. MiLaw proved himself a peculiar, master of the dry, cold and irresistible facts which, stated without passion, demolish the most brilliant propositions. His assertions relate invariably to trade returns, to tariffs, to reciprocity, to preference.