HIS LAST SESSION

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and it was wholly his own doing that he had assumed the responsibility of moving the reduction himself.

'I have alluded to his intense, exuberant delight in the Parliament of 1906. He did not attempt to take part in the extraordinary scrimmage at midnight before the new House met for the first time. Half a dozen friends, including myself, had promised to secure his old corner- -on the new sideopposite to the seats we two had occupied off and on for ten or twelve years. But in the rush they were seized by some new arrivals, who only yielded them up when they were told that Lawson and I had had them before. The generosity and kindness of the new House has been in this respect, under the circumstances of the great majority, quite remarkable.

'Sir Wilfrid proposed the re-election of the Speaker (Mr. J. W. Lowther) in a most felicitous speech. He was constant, incessant, eager, in close attendance and rapt attention to each new debate. From the first I begged him not to come back to the House after dinner, but no young Member in his first session could have given more loyal and devoted discharge of his duties.

'I recall especially, on the night when decrease of armaments was pressed for, how intensely he delighted in the speech of Sir Edward Grey, which practically pledged even his wing of the party to reduction. Night after night the noblest and truest ideals of Liberalism were affirmed either by unchallenged Resolutions of the House, or by overwhelming majorities. Sir Wilfrid was cool, collected, but supremely happy. When C.-B. assured the great deputation that a real Temperance Bill would be the first measure of the coming Session, and when the great Temperance motion (I forget its terms) got its day, and its day recorded the splendid majority in favour of bold and decisive policies of suppressing the Drinkevil, he was overjoyed. He would say to me, "Ah! there's no good thing which this Parliament cannot and will not do."

T

It was a time of bright sunshine, of hope, of intense moral consolation, and of confident expansion.' 1

Lawson abounded, as all the world knows, in playfulness and fun, and the following incident, recorded in this connexion, by Sir Francis Channing, aptly illustrates the lighter side of his character.

'Did I ever tell you of his little by-play with the seatman in the Park the Sunday before he died? He was sitting with my daughter and myself just under the Achilles statue. The seat-man came along, and Lawson proffered him, as his ticket, a tiny red leaflet ("What Liberals had done," I think, or "What Tories had left undone ") shaped like the usual seatticket, and then told him with sublime gravity that he had better keep it. As he turned to go away, after a little playful talk, the man touched his hat, and answered Lawson by saying, "Thank you, General." How gaily Lawson laughed! A few minutes later, we all walked down Grosvenor Place, and he went into the Wellington Club, and parted from us with a cheery wave of his hand. That afternoon he had been telling us one story after another-some of them I had never heard before. He was extremely gay and sunshiny; but he caught cold, I think, the day after.'

Mr. Birrell's ill-starred Education Bill was then in Committee. It formed, according to Sir Francis Channing, the one exception to the satisfaction with which Lawson regarded the legislative programme of the new Government.

'Taking the strongest view in opposition to giving power and money to sectarianism, he strongly dissented from Mr. Birrell's concessions on Clause 4. I vainly tried to dissuade

In view of what so soon happened, it is worth noting that on Monday, May 7, Lawson wrote in his journal: Absent from the House by doctor's orders, owing to shortness of breath.' On Tuesday and Wednesday he was still absent, but on Thursday, May 10, he wrote: 'I got down in the afternoon.' That evening he voted for the Second Reading of the Education Bill, and added in his journal: 'Birrell was strong in common sense and human feeling, in his hour's winding-up.'

him from stopping at the House to vote. It was doubtless the prolonged discussion on this Clause, and the exhausting pressure of the divisions at a late hour, which dangerously overtaxed his strength. I remember how he persisted that Wednesday night, June 27, 1906, in voting in nearly all the divisions. Already in the preceding winter he had one serious, though short, failure of strength. On the Thursday afternoon, he was in his usual place following the questions and now and again saying some bright, pleasant thing, but he seemed weak and ill, and had a slight cold. I begged him, as he drove me back in his brougham, not to come back that night after dinner, and he at last consented. At my door he gave a gentle wave of his hand through the window, and a bright, though tired, smile, and he was gone. On Friday evening I heard from his daughter, that he was in his room, but not thought seriously ill, though he had bronchitis. On Sunday morning, when I sent round to 18 Ovington Square to ask about him, the message that all was over but a few hours before came as an almost unbelievable shock.'

The last two entries in Lawson's Parliamentary journal run as follows:- Wednesday, June 27. Another day on the Education Bill. Much the usual sort of proceedings, Balfour and his retinue being very busy in finding every kind of difficulty in connexion with the plan for taking the opinion of the parents by ballot. There were four divisions before the guillotine fell at 10.30. One I missed, being at home at dinner. One by Villiers-ayes, 344; noes, 87. Another by E. Cecil-ayes, 312; noes, 142. Another by Sir T. Esmonde-ayes, 158; noes, 295. On the eve of guillotine there was a division on an amendment of Lord R. Cecilayes, 367; noes, 197. Then the guillotine fell, and we divided on an amendment of Birrell's to Clause 4-ayes, 360; noes, 200. Then, on a ditto -ayes, 318; noes, 161. Another, that one of Birrell's amendments be made-ayes, 392; noes, 156. Another, ditto-ayes, 444; noes, 118. Then on Clause 4 itself-ayes, 415; noes, 138. There was yet another amendment of Birrell's on Clause 5-ayes, 352; noes, 182. Then we got to bed at 12.20.

'My line in all this voting was to support the Government in their attempt to minimize the evils of Clause 4; but to vote against the clause when it came up, it being still very objectionable.

Thursday, June 28.-The afternoon was occupied by Irish Estimates, the Irishmen telling their old story at great length.'