RECOVERED VIGOUR 243 



the chair at their dinner ; and two days after 

 that again he was in the chair at a Proportional 

 Representation meeting. These are not to be 

 reckoned as anything approaching an exhaustive 

 account of the pubhc functions which he pre- 

 sided over or attended, but merely as typical 

 of his activity in this direction at a time when 

 he deemed that he was shaking himself com- 

 paratively free of his burdens. Proportional 

 Representation engaged much of his atten- 

 tion during June, when he was sitting on Lord 

 Courtney's House of Lords' Committee on the 

 question. 



In July he carried the Limited Partnership 

 Bill through the House of Lords, and it sub- 

 sequently passed the House of Commons. It 

 was introduced at the request of the Chamber of 

 Commerce, and legalised here the Commandite 

 system which had been found to work well on 

 the Continent and in the United States. 



They moved down to Kingsgate in the summer, 

 and while there he had the shock of hearing 

 of the sudden death, from heart failure, of his 

 youngest brother Edgar. Earlier in the year he 

 had lost one of his older friends in Sir Michael 

 Foster, but the death of Edgar, quite a young 

 man, was tragic in its surprise. Only in this 

 very year the younger brother had written a 

 note of thanks for Lord Avebury's congratulations 

 on his appointment as Deputy-Governor of the 

 Bank of England. He had said how he looked 

 forward to the work as a change from the brewing 

 business, in which he had been engaged for 

 thirty years. 



