i58 



The Review of Reviews, 



February to, 1906. 



which they assisted to destroy in the two Re- 

 publics. 



After Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the most 

 outstanding member of the Cabinet is Mr. John Bums. 

 It seems but the other day that I was in the witness- 

 box at the Old Bailey giving evidence in favour of 

 John Burns and his mates, who were standing in the 

 dock, threatened with incarceration as criminal con- 

 victs for their share in the Trafalgar Square riot. 

 John Burns got off that time, but a year or two 

 later he was less fortunate, and he shared with Mr. 

 Cunningham-Graham the honour of serving a term 

 in gaol for his devotion to the right of public meet- 

 ing in the historic Square. John Burns is the only 

 gaol-bird in the Ministry. His progress from Pen- 

 tonville prison to the Presidency of the Local 

 Government Board has been no primrose path. The 

 storv of John Burns's life is one of the prose epics 

 of our time. He is not yet fifty — forty-seven by the 

 almanac, but only twenty-five in the fervour of his 

 enthusiasm and the energy of his vitality — but he 

 has done more for his class than any other work- 

 man of our time, and more for London than the 

 whole bench of Bishops and all the ground land- 

 lords put together. He has been ever a fighter, 

 never afraid of responsibility, .ever to the front when 

 the blows were hardest, and not less diligent and 

 industrious in those humbler ministries of service 

 which make no figure in the newspapers, but with- 

 out which efficient local administration would be 

 impossible. He has lived the strenuous life under 

 circumstances of stress and strain of which the world 

 knows little. He has lived the simple life of an 

 anchorite, while mingling freely in the joys and 

 recreations of his fellows. John Burns has become 

 a national asset of the first value. He is one of the 

 few men who are conspicuous to all mankind. There 

 is no civilised land where John Burns of Battersea 

 is not known and respected. He has never truckled 

 to men of his own class nor toadied to the wealthy. 

 He has lived his own true life with his wife by his 

 side in the heart of Battersea, a worker among the 

 workers, but in intellect and insight a statesman. 



The day that he became the Right Hon. John 

 Burns his appointment was hailed with more enthu- 

 siasm than that evoked by the appointment of all 

 the rest of his colleagues. No fewer than four 

 thousand telegrams rained in upon him from all 

 parts of the world, and never an uncivil word in any 

 of them. From high and low, from peers and 

 paupers, from men and women of all classes, even 

 from the children in the schools, and from men like 

 Ibsen and Bjornson abroad, they came, one unend- 

 ing stream of congratulation, of gratitude, and of 

 encouragement. We are all proud of him. He is 

 the first working man who has won his way to 

 Cabinet rank. And there is not a man of the whole 

 nineteen Cabinet Ministers who does not feel that 

 the Ministry is stronger, more popular, and more 



efficient because the Battersea engineer is sitting 

 cheek by jowl with marquises and belted knights in 

 the inner councils of the King. What strange re- 

 venges the whirligig of time brings round ! It is 

 not five years since John Burns, cricket-bat in hand, 

 stood guard from ten o'clock at night till two in 

 the morning at the door of his own house ready to 

 defend his wife and her unborn child against the 

 howling mob of infuriated Jingoes who had smashed 

 his windows and were threatening to loot his house. 

 in the good patriotic fashion so much admired in 

 those davs. And now the abominable pro-Boer, 

 whom the Jingo mob, night after night, serenaded 

 with hideous bowlings as of wild beasts broken 

 loose, is President of the Local Government Board, 

 the friend and trusted colleague of the Prime Minis- 

 ter, and one of the conspicuous personal forces in 

 the new Cabinet. 



It was John Burns who first convinced the nation 

 that simple working men may have in them capaci- 

 ties of administration and the instinct of states- 

 manship, equal, if not superior, to those of any 

 member of the cultured and leisured class which has 

 hitherto monopolised office. Not only did he con- 

 vince the nation, but his career has been a great 

 object lesson, teaching hope and confidence and 

 courage to the working classes themselves. 



After C.-B. and J. B. the most conspicuous figure 

 in the new Cabinet is Mr. Asquith, who, it is under- 

 stood, will act as deputy leader in the House of 

 Commons to the Prime Minister. Mr. Asquith is an 

 able debater who sadly lacks unction. He is a 

 forensic gladiator who never makes a heart beat 

 quicker by his words, and who never by any pos- 

 sibility brought a lump into his hearers' throats. He 

 is a handy fighting man in the melee of parliamen- 

 tary debate, and at the Home Office he was a pains- 

 taking and successful administrator. But passion is 

 not in him, nor enthusiasm, nor does he possess the 

 stuff of which martyrs are made. No one could 

 imagine Mr. Asquith standing like C.-B. four-square 

 to all the winds that blow in defence of an un- 

 popular cause. It would be unjust to say that Mr. 

 Asquith always shouts with the biggest crowd, but 

 it is not his instinct to advertise his agreement with 

 an unpopular minority. In the Free Trade contro- 

 versy he acquitted himself creditably ; the subject 

 suited his lucid, passionless intellect. He is as 

 much older than his years as John Burns is younger. 

 What he will do at the Exchequer no one knows, 

 least of all himself. He will, however, have no 

 sinecure. The whole question of the incidence of 

 rating will come up when the doles have to be dealt 

 with. Nor is that by any means the only thorny 

 topic which will test hi|s capacitv for the solution of 

 questions of high finance. 



Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary for Foreign 

 Affairs, is a much better Liberal than might be in- 

 ferred from the company he keeps. He is a good 



