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 CHAPTER 10

Exercises

E10.1 Solving Equation 10.1 for the saturation current and substituting values,
we have
iD
Is 
exp(vD / nVT )  1
10 4

exp(0.600 / 0.026)  1
 9.502  10 15 A

Then for vD  0.650 V, we have

iD  I s exp(vD / nVT )  1  9.502  1015  exp(0.650 / 0.026)  1
 0.6841 mA

Similarly for vD  0.700 V, iD  4.681 mA.

E10.2 The approximate form of the Shockley Equation is iD  Is exp(vD / nVT ) .

Taking the ratio of currents for two different voltages, we have
iD 1 exp(vD 1 / nVT )
  exp (vD 1  vD 2 ) / nVT 
iD 2 exp(vD 2 / nVT )
Solving for the difference in the voltages, we have:
vD  nVT ln(iD 1 / iD 2 )
Thus to double the diode current we must increase the voltage by
vD  0.026ln(2)  18.02 mV and to increase the current by an order of
magnitude we need vD  0.026ln(10)  59.87 mV

E10.3 The load line equation is VSS  RiD  vD . The load-line plots are shown on
the next page. From the plots we find the following operating points:

(a) VDQ  1.1 V IDQ  9 mA

(b) VDQ  1.2 V IDQ  13.8 mA
(c) VDQ  0.91 V IDQ  4.5 mA

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 E10.4 Following the methods of Example 10.4 in the book, we determine that:
(a) For RL  1200 , RT  600 , and VT  12 V.
(b) For RL  400 , RT  300 , and VT  6 V.
The corresponding load lines are:

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 At the intersections of the load lines with the diode characteristic we
find (a) vL  vD  9.4 V ; (b) vL  vD  6.0 V .

E10.5 Writing a KVL equation for the loop consisting of the source, the
resistor, and the load, we obtain:

15  100(iL  iD )  vD

The corresponding load lines for the three specified values of iL are
shown:

At the intersections of the load lines with the diode characteristic, we

find (a) vo  vD  10 V; (b) vo  vD  10 V; (c) vo  vD  5 V. Notice that
the regulator is effective only for values of load current up to 50 mA.

E10.6 Assuming that D1 and D2 are both off results in this equivalent circuit:

Because the diodes are assumed off, no current flows in any part of the
circuit, and the voltages across the resistors are zero. Writing a KVL
equation around the left-hand loop we obtain vD 1  10 V, which is not
consistent with the assumption that D1 is off.
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 E10.7 Assuming that D1 and D2 are both on results in this equivalent circuit:

Writing a KVL equation around the outside loop, we find that the voltage
across the 4-kΩ resistor is 7 V and then we use Ohm’s law to find that
iD1 equals 1.75 mA. The voltage across the 6-kΩ resistance is 3 V so ix is
0.5 mA. Then we have iD 2  ix  iD 1  1.25 mA, which is not consistent
with the assumption that D2 is on.

E10.8 (a) If we assume that D1 is off, no current flows, the voltage across the
resistor is zero, and the voltage across the diode is 2 V, which is not
consistent with the assumption. If we assume that the diode is on, 2 V
appears across the resistor, and a current of 0.5 mA circulates clockwise
which is consistent with the assumption that the diode is on. Thus the
diode is on.

(b) If we assume that D2 is on, a current of 1.5 mA circulates

counterclockwise in the circuit, which is not consistent with the
assumption. On the other hand, if we assume that D2 is off we find that
vD 2  3 where as usual we have referenced vD 2 positive at the anode.
This is consistent with the assumption, so D2 is off.

(c) It turns out that the correct assumption is that D3 is off and D4 is
on. The equivalent circuit for this condition is:

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 For this circuit we find that iD 4  5 mA and vD 3  5 V. These results
are consistent with the assumptions.

E10.9 (a) With RL = 10 kΩ, it turns out that the diode is operating on line
segment C of Figure 10.19 in the book. Then the equivalent circuit is:

We can solve this circuit by using the node-voltage technique, treating vo

as the node voltage-variable. Notice that vo  vD . Writing a KCL
equation, we obtain
vo  10 vo  6 vo
  0
2000 12 10000
Solving, we find vD  vo  6.017 V. Furthermore, we find that
iD  1.39 mA. Since we have vD  6 V and iD  0, the diode is in fact
operating on line segment C.

(b) With RL = 1 kΩ, it turns out that the diode is operating on line
segment B of Figure 10.19 in the book, for which the diode equivalent is
an open circuit. Then the equivalent circuit is:

Using the voltage division principle, we determine that vD  3.333 V.

Because we have 6  vD  0, the result is consistent with the assumption
that the diode operates on segment B.

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 E10.10 The piecewise linear model consists of a voltage source and resistance in
series for each segment. Refer to Figure 10.18 in the book and notice
that the x-axis intercept of the line segment is the value of the voltage
source, and the reciprocal of the slope is the resistance. Now look at
Figure 10.22a and notice that the intercept for segment A is zero and
the reciprocal of the slope is (2 V)/(5 mA) = 400 Ω. Thus as shown in
Figure 10.22b, the equivalent circuit for segment A consists of a 400-Ω
resistance.

Similarly for segment B, the x-axis intercept is +1.5 V and the reciprocal
slope is (0.5 mA)/(5 V) = 10 kΩ.

For segment C, the intercept is -5.5 V and the reciprocal slope is 800 Ω.
Notice that the polarity of the voltage source is reversed in the
equivalent circuit because the intercept is negative.

E10.11 Refer to Figure 10.25 in the book.

(a) The peak current occurs when the sine wave source attains its peak
amplitude, then the voltage across the resistor is Vm VB  20  14  6 V
and the peak current is 0.6 A.

(b) Refer to Figure 10.25 in the book. The diode changes state at the
instants for which Vm sin(t ) VB . Thus we need the roots of
20 sin(t )  14. These turn out to be t1  0.7754 radians and
t2    0.7754 radians.
1.591 1.591T
The interval that the diode is on is t2  t1    0.2532T .
 2
Thus the diode is on for 25.32% of the period.

E10.12 As suggested in the Exercise statement, we design for a peak load

voltage of 15.2 V. Then allowing for a forward drop of 0.7 V we require
Vm  15.9 V. Then we use Equation 10.10 to determine the capacitance
required. C  (ILT ) /Vr  (0.1 /60) / 0.4  4167 F.

E10.13 For the circuit of Figure 10.28, we need to allow for two diode drops.
Thus the peak input voltage required is Vm  15 Vr /2  2  0.7  16.6 V.

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 Because this is a full-wave rectifier, the capacitance is given by Equation
10.12. C  (ILT ) /(2Vr )  (0.1 /60) / 0.8  2083 F.

E10.14 Refer to Figure 10.31 in the book.

(a) For this circuit all of the diodes are off if 1.8  vo  10 . With the
diodes off, no current flows and vo  vin . When vin exceeds 10 V, D1 turns
on and D2 is in reverse breakdown. Then vo  9.4  0.6  10 V. When vin
becomes less than -1.8 V diodes D3, D4, and D5 turn on and
vo  3  0.6  1.8 V. The transfer characteristic is shown in Figure
10.31c.

(b) ) For this circuit both diodes are off if 5  vo  5 . With the diodes
off, no current flows and vo  vin .

When vin exceeds 5 V, D6 turns on and D7 is in reverse breakdown. Then

v 5
a current given by i  in (i is referenced clockwise) flows in the
2000
circuit, and the output voltage is vo  5  1000i  0.5vin  2.5 V

When vin is less than -5 V, D7 turns on and D6 is in reverse breakdown.

v 5
Then a current given by i  in (still referenced clockwise) flows in
2000
the circuit, and the output voltage is vo  5  1000i  0.5vin  2.5 V

E10.15 Answers are shown in Figure 10.32c and d. Other correct answers exist.

E10.16 Refer to Figure 10.34a in the book.

(a) If vin (t )  0, we have only a dc source in the circuit. In steady state,

the capacitor acts as an open circuit. Then we see that D2 is forward
conducting and D1 is in reverse breakdown. Allowing 0.6 V for the
forward diode voltage the output voltage is -5 V.

(b) If the output voltage begins to fall below -5 V, the diodes conduct
large amounts of current and change the voltage vC across the capacitor.
Once the capacitor voltage is changed so that the output cannot fall
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 below -5 V, the capacitor voltage remains constant. Thus the output
voltage is vo  vin  vC  2sin(t )  3 V.

(c) If the 15-V source is replaced by a short circuit, the diodes do not
conduct, vC = 0, and vo = vin.

E10.17 One answer is shown in Figure 10.35. Other correct answers exist.

E10.18 One design is shown in Figure 10.36. Other correct answers are possible.

E10.19 Equation 10.22 gives the dynamic resistance of a semiconductor diode as

rd  nVT / IDQ .
IDQ (mA) rd (Ω)
0.1 26,000
1.0 2600
10 26

E10.20 For the Q-point analysis, refer to Figure 10.42 in the book. Allowing for
a forward diode drop of 0.6 V, the diode current is
V  0.6
IDQ  C
RC
The dynamic resistance of the diode is
nVT
rd 
IDQ
the resistance Rp is given by Equation 10.23 which is
1
Rp 
1 / RC  1 / RL  1 / rd
and the voltage gain of the circuit is given by Equation 10.24.
Rp
Av 
R  Rp
Evaluating we have
VC (V) 1.6 10.6
IDQ (mA) 0.5 5.0
rd (Ω) 52 5.2
Rp (Ω) 49.43 5.173
Av 0.3308 0.04919

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 Problems

P10.1 A one-way valve that allows fluid to flow in one direction but not in the
other is an analogy for a diode.

P10.2

P10.3

P10.4 The Shockley equation gives the diode current iD in terms of the applied
voltage vD :
 v  
iD  I s exp  D   1
  nVT  
where I s is the saturation current, and n is the emission coefficient
which takes values between 1 and 2. The voltage VT is the thermal
voltage given by
kT
VT 
q
where T is the temperature of the junction in kelvins, k  1.38  1023
joules/kelvin is Boltzmann's constant, and q  1.60  1019 coulombs is the
magnitude of the electrical charge of an electron.

P10.5 VT  kT / q  (1.38  10 23T ) /(1.60  10 19 )

Temperature C Absolute temperature VT (mV)
20 293 25.3
175 448 38.6
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 P10.6 For vD  0.6 V, we have
iD  0.5  10 3  I s [exp(v D / nVT )  1]
 Is exp vD nVT 
Thus, we determine that:
iD
Is   4.874  10 9 A
exp(v D / nVT )
Then, for vD  0.65 V, we have
iD  I s [exp(v D / nVT )  1]  1.308 mA

Similarly, for vD  0.700 V, we find iD  3.421 mA.

P10.7* The approximate form of the Shockley Equation is iD  Is exp(vD / nVT ) .

Taking the ratio of currents for two different voltages, we have
iD 1 exp(vD 1 / nVT )
  exp (vD 1  vD 2 ) / nVT 
iD 2 exp(vD 2 / nVT )
Solving for n we obtain:
vD1  vD 2 0.600  0.680
n   1.336
VT ln(iD 1 / iD 2 ) 0.026 ln(1 / 10)
Then, we have
iD 1
Is   3.150  10 11 A
exp(v D 1 / nVT )

P10.8*

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 P10.9

P10.10 At T  175 K , we have:

v D  0.65  0.002(150  25)
 0.40 V

P10.11 VT  kT / q  (1.38  10 23  373) /(1.60  10 19 )  32.17 mV

iD 1
Is   421 .9  0 9 A
[exp(v D 1 / nVT )  1]
iD 2  I s [exp(v D 2 / nVT )  1]  4.733 mA

P10.12 Using the approximate form of the Shockley Equation, we have

103  Is exp  0.600 nVT  (1)
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 102  Is exp  0.700 nVT  (2)
Dividing the respective sides of Equation (2) by those of Equation (1), we
have
I exp  0.700 nVT 
10  s  exp  0.100 nVT 
I s exp  0.600 nVT 
ln 10   0.100 nVT
n  0.100 VT ln 10   1.670

P10.13 For part (a), Equation 10.3 gives the diode voltage in terms of the current
as
vD  nVT ln iD / Is   1
For part (b) with a 100-Ω resistance in series, the terminal voltage is
v  v D  100iD
A MATLAB program to obtain the desired plots is:
log10_of_id = -5:0.01:-2;
id = 10.^log10_of_id;
vd = 2*0.026*log((id/20e-9) + 1);
v = vd + 100*id;
semilogy(v,id)
hold
semilogy(vd,id)
(Note in MATLAB log is the natural logarithm.) The resulting plots are
shown:

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 The plot for part (a) is a straight line. The series resistance is relatively
insignificant for currents less than 0.1 mA and is certainly significant for
currents greater than 1 mA.

P10.14*

With the switch open, we have:

iD 1  103  Is exp v nVT   1
 Is exp v nVT 
Thus, we determine that:
103 103
Is    9.5  1014 A
exp v VT  exp  0.6 0.026
With the switch closed, by symmetry, we have:
iD 1  iD 2  0.5 mA
0.5  103  Is exp v VT 
0.5  103
v  nVT ln  582 mV
Is
Repeating the calculations with n  2 , we obtain:
Is  9.75  109 A
v  564 mV

P10.15* (a) By symmetry, the current divides equally and we have

IA  IB  100 mA

(b) We have
iD  Is exp v nVT   1
 Is exp v nVT 
Solving for I s , we obtain
iD
Is 
exp v nVT 

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 For diode A, the temperature is TA  300 K , and we have
kTA 1.38  1023  300
VTA    25.88 mV
q 1.6  1019
0.100
I sA   1.792  1013 A
exp  0.700 0.02588

For diode B, we have T  305 K , and

IsB  2IsA  3.583  1013 A
VTB  26.31 mV

Applying Kirchhoff's current law, we have

0.2  IA  IB
0.2  1.792  1013  exp v 0.02588  3.583  1013  exp v 0.02631 

Solving for v by trial and err, we obtain v  697.1 mV , IA  87 mA , and

IB  113 mA .

P10.16* The load-line equation is

Vs  Rs ix  v x
Substituting values, this becomes
3  ix  v x
Next, we plot the nonlinear device characteristic equation
ix  exp(v x )  1 /10
and the load line on the same set of axes.
The MATLAB commands are:
clear
%plot load line
vx=0:0.01:3;
ix= 3-vx;
plot(vx,ix)
hold
%plot nonlinear device characteristic
ix=(exp(vx)-1)/10;
plot(vx,ix)
grid minor
ylabel('ix (A)')
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 xlabel('vx (V)')
Finally, the solution is at the intersection of the load line and the
characteristic as shown:

P10.17 The load-line equation is

Vs  Rs ix  v x
Substituting values this becomes
4  ix  v x
Next we plot the nonlinear device characteristic equation
i x  v x  2v x2
and the load line on the same set of axes. The MATLAB commands are:
clear
%plot load line
vx=0:0.01:4;
ix= 4-vx;
plot(vx,ix)
hold
%plot nonlinear device characteristic
ix=vx+2*(vx.^2);
plot(vx,ix)
grid minor
axis([0 4 0 5])
ylabel('ix (A)')
xlabel('vx (V)')
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and indeed in every place where Lord and Lady Aberdeen were able
to assert their unostentatious and most beneficent influence.

Lord Aberdeen succeeded to the title and its responsibilities at

too early an age to allow him any opportunity of proving his capacity
for Parliamentary life in the House of Commons. His elder brother
was drowned on a voyage from Boston to Melbourne, and the
subject of this article then became Earl of Aberdeen, with, as a
matter of course, a seat in the House of Lords. There is nothing like
a real Parliamentary career to be found in the House of Lords. A man
of great natural gifts can, of course, give evidence even there that
he is born for statesmanship and can command attention by his
eloquence. Lord Aberdeen made it certain even in the House of
Lords that he was endowed with these rare qualifications. But the
House of Lords has no influence over the country, unless, indeed,
when it exerts itself to stay for the time the progress of some great
and popular measure. Even this is only for the time, and if the
measure be really one of national benefit and deserving of public
support, it is sure to be carried in the end, and the Lords have to
give in and to put up with their defeat. But the hereditary chamber is
not even a commanding platform from which an eloquent speaker
can address and can influence the whole country, and the
temptations there to apathy and indolence must often be found to
be almost irresistible. On rare occasions, two or three times in a
session, perhaps, there comes off what is popularly called a full-
dress debate, and then the red benches of the House, on which the
peers have their seats, are sure to be crowded, and the galleries
where members of the House of Commons are entitled to sit and the
galleries allotted to strangers are also well occupied. The Lords have
even the inspiriting advantage, denied to the House of Commons, of
open galleries where ladies can sit in the full glare of day or of
gaslight, and can encourage an orator by their presence and their
attention. In the House of Commons, as everybody knows, the small
number of ladies for whom seats are provided are secreted behind a
thick grating, and thus become an almost invisible influence, if,
indeed, they can hope to be an influence at all. Yet even this
inspiration does not stir the peers to anything more than the rarest
attempts at a great debate. On ordinary occasions—and these
ordinary occasions constitute nearly the whole of a session—the
peers sit for only an hour or so every day, and then mutter and
mumble through some formal business, and the outer public does
not manifest the slightest interest in what they are doing or trying to
do. There are many men now in the House of Lords who proved
their eloquence again and again during some of the most important
and exciting debates in the representative chamber, and who now
hardly open their lips in the gilded chamber, as the House of Lords
has been grandiloquently titled. A rising member of the House of
Commons succeeds to the family title and estates, and as a matter
of course he is transferred to the House of Lords, and there, in most
cases, is an end to his public career. Or perhaps a rising member of
the House of Commons has in some way or other made himself
inconvenient to his leading colleagues who have now come into
power and are forming an administration, and as they do not know
how to get rid of him gracefully in any other way, they induce the
Sovereign to confer on him a peerage, and so he straightway goes
into the House of Lords. Perhaps, as he had been an active and
conspicuous debater in the House of Commons, he cannot bring
himself to settle down into silence when he finds himself among the
peers. So he delivers a speech every now and then on what are
conventionally regarded in the House of Lords as great occasions,
but his career is practically at an end all the same. I have in my
mind some striking instances of this curious transition from
Parliamentary prominence in the House of Commons to
Parliamentary nothingness in the House of Lords. I know of men
who were accounted powerful and brilliant debaters in the House of
Commons, where debates are sometimes great events, who, when,
from one cause or other, translated to the House of Lords, were
hardly ever heard of as debaters any more. Probably there seemed
no motive for taking the trouble to seek the opportunity of delivering
a speech in the hereditary assembly, where nothing particular could
come of the speech when delivered, and the new peer allows the
charms of public speaking to lose their hold over him, to pass with
the days and the dreams of his youth.

Lord Aberdeen would in all probability have made a deep mark

as a Parliamentary debater if the kindly fates had left to him the
possibility of a career in the House of Commons. He has a fine voice,
an attractive presence, and a fluent delivery; he has high intellectual
capacity, wide and varied culture, and much acquaintance with
foreign States and peoples. Probably the best services which Lord
Aberdeen could render to his country would be found in such offices
as Ireland and Canada gave him an opportunity of undertaking;
viceroyalty of some order, it would seem, must be the main business
of his career. But I must say that I should much like to see his great
intellectual qualities, his varied experience, and his noble
humanitarian sympathies provided with some opportunity of
exercising themselves in the work of domestic government. I may
explain that I do not call the administration of Ireland under the old
conditions a work of domestic government in the true sense. The
vice-regal system in Ireland is a barbaric anachronism, and the
abilities and high purposes of a man like Lord Aberdeen were wholly
thrown away upon such work. There is much still in the social
condition of England which could give ample occupation to the
administrative abilities and the philanthropic energies of Lord
Aberdeen. The work of decentralization in England is rapidly going
on. The development of local self-government is becoming one of
the most remarkable phenomena of our times. Parliament is
becoming more and more the fount and origin of national rule, but it
is wisely devoting its energies to the creation of a system which shall
leave the working out of that national rule more and more to
localities and municipalities. At one time, and that not very long ago,
it was believed even by many social reformers that, while self-
government might easily be developed in the cities and towns, it
would not be possible, during the present generation at least, to
infuse any such principle of vitality into the country districts.
 Of late years, however, it is becoming more and more apparent
that the principle of local government is developing itself rapidly and
effectively in the rural districts, and that the good old times when
the squire and the rector could manage by divided despotism the
whole business of a parish are destined soon to become a curious
historical memory. The system of national education, established for
the first time in England by Gladstone's Government in 1870, has
naturally had much to do with the quickening of intelligent activity all
over the British Islands. A new generation has grown up, in which
localities are no longer content to have all their business managed
for them by their local magnates, and the recent statutes passed by
Parliament for the extension everywhere of the local government
principle are a direct result of the legislation which has made
education compulsory in these countries. All over the agricultural
districts we now find county boards and parish councils conducting
by debates and divisions the common business of each district, just
as it is done in the great cities and towns. It seems to me that this
spread of the principle of local self-government opens a most
appropriate field for the intellect and the energies of such statesmen
as Lord Aberdeen. Only in recent times have great noblemen
condescended to trouble themselves much, so far at least as their
Parliamentary careers were concerned, with municipal or other local
affairs. A peer, if he happened to have any taste or gift for
Parliamentary and official work, was willing to become Foreign
Secretary, Viceroy of India, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or Governor
of a Colony. Not infrequently, too, he consented to devote his
energies to the office of Postmaster-General. But he was not likely to
see any scope for a Parliamentary career in the management of local
business. In his own particular district, no doubt, he was
accustomed to direct most of the business in his own way and might
be a local benefactor or a local mis-manager, according as his tastes
and judgment qualified him. But the general business of localities did
not create any Parliamentary department which seemed likely to
deserve his attention. The condition of things is very different now,
and Lord Aberdeen is one of the men to whom the country is mainly
indebted for that quickening and outspreading of the local self-
governing principle which is so remarkable and so hopeful a
phenomenon of our national existence at present. In every
movement which pretends to the development and the
strengthening of that principle Lord Aberdeen has always taken a
foremost part.

I am not myself an unqualified admirer of that part of the British

constitutional system which makes the House of Lords one of three
great ruling powers. I should very much doubt whether Lord
Aberdeen himself, if he were set to devise a constitutional system for
these countries, would make the House of Lords as at present
arranged a component part of our legislative system. But I am quite
willing to admit that, since we have a House of Lords and while we
have a House of Lords, a man like the Earl of Aberdeen does all that
can be done to turn the existing constitution to good account and
make it in some degree worthy of national toleration. While there
exists an aristocracy of birth, even the most uncompromising
advocate of democracy and the equal rights of men might freely
admit that a career like the political and social career of Lord
Aberdeen does much to plead in defense of the system. Lord
Aberdeen has always proved that he thoroughly understands the
responsibilities as well as the advantages of his high position. Not
one of the Labor Members, as they are called, of the House of
Commons—the chosen representatives of the working classes—could
have shown a deeper and more constant sympathy with every
measure and every movement which tends to improve the condition
and expand the opportunities of those who have to make a living by
actual toil. Lord Aberdeen has yet, I trust, a long and fruitful career
before him. The statesmanship of England will soon again have to
turn its attention to the social movements which concern the
interests of the lowly-born and the hard-working in these islands. If
a better time is coming for the statesmen of England, whether in
office or in opposition, who love peace and who yearn to take a part
in measures which lead to genuine national prosperity, we may
safely assume that in such a time Lord Aberdeen will renew his
active career, to the benefit of the people whom he has served so
faithfully and so well.

Photograph copyright by W. & D. Downey

JOHN BURNS
 JOHN BURNS

John Burns stands out a distinct and peculiar figure in the House
of Commons. He is the foremost representative of that working class
which is becoming so great a power in the organization of English
political and industrial life. "Be not like dumb driven cattle," says
Longfellow in his often-quoted lines—"Be a hero in the strife." The
British workingmen were until very lately little better than dumb
driven cattle; in our days and under such leadership as that of John
Burns they have proved themselves capable of bearing heroic part in
the struggle for great reforms. I can remember the time when the
House of Commons had not in it any member actually belonging to
the working classes. At that time the working classes had no means
of obtaining Parliamentary representation, for it may be said with
almost literal exactness that no workingman had a vote, or the
means of obtaining a vote, at a Parliamentary election. The
conditions of the franchise were too limited in the constituencies to
enable men who worked for small daily or weekly wages to become
voters at elections. In order to become a voter a man must occupy a
house rated at a certain yearly amount, and he must have occupied
it for a specified and considerable space of time, and there were
very few indeed of the working class who could hope to obtain such
legal qualifications. In more recent days the great reformers of these
islands have succeeded in establishing what may be fairly described
as manhood suffrage in these countries, and have also secured a
lodger franchise; have established the secret ballot as the process of
voting; and by these and other reforms have put the workingman on
a level with his fellow-citizens as a voter at Parliamentary elections.
My own recollection goes back to the time when the law in Great
Britain and Ireland insisted on what was called a "property
qualification" as an indispensable condition to a candidate's
obtaining a seat in the House of Commons. I have known scores of
instances in which clever and popular candidates got over this
difficulty by prevailing on some wealthy relative or friend to settle
legally on them an amount of landed property necessary to qualify
them for a seat in the House. It was perfectly well known to every
one that this settlement was purely a formal arrangement, and that
the new and nominal possessor of the property was no more its real
owner than the child who is allowed for a moment to hold his
father's watch in his hand becomes thereby the legal owner of the
valuable timepiece. In our days no property qualification of any kind
is needed either for a vote at a Parliamentary election or for a seat
in the House of Commons, and therefore the workingmen form an
important proportion of the voters at Parliamentary elections and are
enabled in certain constituencies to choose men of their own class to
represent them in the House of Commons.

I have thought it well to make the short explanation of the

changes which have taken place in the condition of the British
workingmen during recent years as a prelude to what I have to say
concerning that foremost of British workingmen, John Burns. It is
only fair to say that the workingmen of these countries have made
judicious and praiseworthy use of the new political powers confided
to them, and have almost invariably sent into Parliament as the
representatives of their class men of undoubted ability and of the
highest character, men who win the respect of all parties in the
House of Commons. Of these men John Burns is the most
conspicuous. He has never, indeed, held a place in an administration,
as two, I think, of his order have already done; but then John Burns
is a man of resolutely independent character, and it would not be
easy thus far to form even a Liberal Government which should be
quite up to the level of his views on many questions of domestic and
foreign policy.
 John Burns would hardly be taken personally as a typical
representative of the British workingman. He is short in stature, very
dark in complexion and in the color of his hair, and a stranger seeing
him for the first time might take him for an Italian or a Spaniard. His
physical strength is something enormous, and I have seen him
perform with the greatest apparent ease some feats of athletic vigor
which might have seemed to demand the proportions of a giant. His
whole frame is made up of bone and muscle, and although he is
broadly and stoutly built, he does not appear to have any
superfluous flesh. If I had to make my way through a furious
opposing crowd, I do not know of any leader whom I should be
more glad to follow than John Burns. But although Burns is
physically made for a fighting man, there is nothing pugnacious or
aggressive in his temperament. He is by nature kind, conciliatory,
and generous, tolerant of other men's opinions, and only anxious to
advance his own by fair argument and manly appeals to men's sense
of humanity and justice. I have seen him carry a great big elderly
man who had fainted at a public meeting and take him to a quiet
spot with all the ease and tenderness of a mother carrying her child.
But if I were an overbearing giant who was trying his strength upon
a weaker mortal, I should take good care not to make the
experiment while John Burns was anywhere within reach. He is an
adept at all sorts of athletic sports and games, skating, rowing, foot-
racing, boxing, cricket, and I know not what else. He is essentially a
man of the working class, and has, I believe, some Scottish blood in
his veins, but he is a Londoner by birth, and passed all his early life
in a London district. He was born to poverty, and received such
education as he had to begin with at a humble school in the
Battersea region on the south side of London.

Now, I should think that a boy born in humble life who had in
him any gift of imagination and any faculty for self-improvement
could hardly have begun life in a better place than Battersea. The
Battersea region lies south of the Thames, and is a strange
combination of modern squalidness and picturesque historical
associations and memorials. The homes of the working class poor
stand under the very shadow of that famous church in Old Battersea
where Bolingbroke, the high-born, one of the most eloquent orators
known to English Parliamentary life, and one of the most brilliant
writers who adorn English literature, lies buried, and where
strangers from all parts of the world go to gaze upon his tombstone.
Everywhere throughout the little town or village one comes upon
places associated with the memory of Bolingbroke and of other men
famous in history. Cross the bridge that spans the Thames and you
are in the Chelsea region, which is suffused with historical and
literary associations from far-off days to those recent times when
Thomas Carlyle had his home in one of its quiet streets. To a boy
with any turn for reading and any taste for history and literature, all
that quarter of London on both sides of the Thames must have been
filled with inspiration. John Burns had always a love of reading, and I
can easily fancy that the memories of the place must have been a
constant stimulant and inspiration to his honorable ambition for self-
culture. His school days finished when he was hardly ten years old,
and then he was set to earn a living, first in a candle factory and
afterwards in the works of an engineer. Thus he toiled away until he
had reached manhood's age, and all the time he was steadily
devoting his spare hours or moments to the task of self-education.
He read every book that came within his reach, and studied with
especial interest the works of men who set themselves to the
consideration of great social problems.

Burns naturally became very soon impressed with the conviction

that all could not be quite right under a political and social system
which made the workingman a mere piece of living mechanism and
gave him no share whatever in the constitutional government of the
country. At that time there was no system of national education in
England, and the child of poor parents had to get his teaching
through some charitable institution, or to go without any teaching
whatever. So far as the education of the poorest classes was
concerned, England was at that time far below Scotland, below
Germany and Holland, and below the United States.
 As regards the political system, a man of the class to which John
Burns was born had little chance indeed of obtaining the right to
vote at a Parliamentary election, which was given only to men who
had certain qualifications of income and of residence not often to be
found among the working classes. The English system of national
education is little more than thirty years old, and the extension of
the voting power which makes it now practically a manhood suffrage
is likewise of very modern date. It was natural that an intelligent and
thoughtful boy like John Burns should, under such conditions,
become filled with socialistic doctrines and should find himself
growing into a mood of impatience and hostility towards the rule of
aristocrats, landlords, and capitalists, by which the country was then
dominated. Soon after he had reached his twenty-first year he
obtained employment as a foreman engineer on the Niger in Africa,
and there he had his first experience of a climate and a life totally
unlike to anything that could be found in the Battersea regions. I
have often heard it said that during his employment in English
steamers on the Niger he was known among his British companions
as "Coffee-pot Burns," in jocular recognition of his devotion to total
abstinence principles. He spent about a year in his African
occupation, and during that time he had managed to save up a
considerable amount of his pay, a saving which we may be sure was
in great measure due to his practice of total abstinence from any
drinks stronger than that which was properly contained in the
coffee-pot. When he left Africa, he invested his savings in a manner
which I cannot but regard as peculiarly characteristic of him, and
which must have given to such a man a profitable return for his
investment—he spent his savings, in fact, on a tour of several
months throughout Europe. Thus he acquired an invaluable addition
to his stock of practical observation and a fresh impulse to his
studies of life and of books. He settled down in England as a working
engineer, and he soon began to take a deep interest and an active
share in every movement which had for its object the welfare of the
classes who live by daily labor.
 Obviously, there are many improvements in the condition of such
men which could only be brought about by legislation, and John
Burns therefore became a political agitator. His voice was heard from
the platforms of great popular meetings held in and around London
and in many other parts of the country, and he was one of the
leaders of the great agitation which secured for the public the right
of holding open-air meetings in Trafalgar Square. John Burns was
meant by nature to be a popular orator. He has a physical frame
which can stand any amount of exertion, and his voice, at once
powerful and musical, can make itself heard to the farthest limit of
the largest outdoor meeting in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square. But he
is in no sense whatever a mere declaimer. He argues every question
out in a practical and reasonable way, and although he has some
views on political and industrial subjects which many of his
opponents would condemn as socialistic, there is nothing in him of
the revolutionist or the anarchist. His object is to bring about by free
and lawful public debate those reforms in the political and industrial
systems which he regards as essential to the well-being of the whole
community. The Conservative party in this country used to have for a
long time one particular phrase which was understood to embody
the heaviest accusation that could be brought against a public man.
To say that this or that public speaker was endeavoring to "set class
against class" was understood to mean his utter condemnation in
the minds of all well-behaved citizens. We do not hear so much of
this accusation in later days, partly because some of the very
measures demanded by those setters of class against class have
been adopted by Conservative Governments and carried into law by
Conservative votes. But there was a period in the life of John Burns
when he must have found himself denounced almost every day in
speech or newspaper article as one whose main endeavor was to set
class against class. John Burns does not seem to have troubled
himself much about the accusation. Perhaps he reasoned within
himself that if the endeavor to obtain for workingmen the right of
voting at elections and the right to form themselves into trades-
unions for the purpose of bettering their lives were the endeavor to
set class against class, then there is nothing for it but to go on
setting class against class until the beneficent result be obtained. So
John Burns went on setting class against class, with the result that
he became recognized all over the country as one of the most
eloquent, capable, and judicious leaders whom the workingmen
could show, and his unselfishness and integrity were never
disparaged even by his most extreme political opponents.

A remarkable evidence was soon to be given of the solid

reputation which he had won for himself in public life. A complete
change was made by Parliamentary legislation in the whole system
of London's municipal government. The vast metropolis which we
call London was up to that time under the control for municipal
affairs of the various parish boards and local vestries, each of them
constructed on some representative system peculiarly its own, and
none of them, it may be justly said, under any direct control from
the great mass of the community. The greater part of the West End
of London was under the management of a body known as the
Metropolitan Board of Works; the City of London was dominated by
its own historic Corporation; each other district of the metropolis had
its governing vestry or some such institution. Apart from all other
objections to such a system, one of its obvious defects was that no
common principle was recognized in the municipal arrangements of
the metropolis; there were no common rules for their regulation of
traffic, for the levying of rates, for the management of public
institutions, and a Londoner who changed his residence from one
part of the town to another, or even from one side of a street to
another, might find himself suddenly brought under the control of a
system of municipal regulations with which he was totally unfamiliar.
Appeals were constantly made by enlightened Londoners for some
uniform system of London government, but for a long time nothing
was done in the way of reform. At last, however, it happened—
luckily, in one sense, for the community—that the Metropolitan
Board of Works, which ruled the West End districts, became the
cause of much public scandal because of its mistakes and
mismanagement, not to use any harsher terms, in the dealing with
public contracts. The excitement caused by these discoveries made it
impossible for the old system to be maintained any longer, and the
result was the passing of an Act of Parliament which created an
entirely new governing body for the metropolis. This new governing
body was styled the London County Council, and it was to have
control of the whole metropolis, with the exception of that
comparatively small extent of municipal territory which we know as
the City of London. The members of the new County Council were to
be chosen, for the most part, as are the members of the House of
Commons, by direct popular suffrage. Some of the foremost men in
England became members of the new County Council. One of these
was Lord Rosebery, another was Sir Thomas Farrer (who has since
become Lord Farrer), a third was Frederic Harrison, one of the most
eminent writers and thinkers of his time, and another was John
Burns, the working engineer. I mention this fact only to show how
thoroughly John Burns must have established his reputation as a
man well qualified to take a leading place in the municipal
government of London. Since that time he has been elected again
and again to the same position.

When the great dispute broke out in London between the dock-
laborers and the ship-owners, John Burns took an active and untiring
part in the endeavor to obtain fair terms for the workers, and by his
moderation and judgment, as well as by his inexhaustible energy, he
did inestimable service in the bringing about of a satisfactory
settlement. The late Cardinal Manning took a conspicuous part in the
effort to obtain good terms for the workingmen, and he was
recognized on both sides of the dispute as a most acceptable
mediator, and I remember that he expressed himself more than once
in the highest terms as to the services rendered by John Burns
during the whole of the crisis. Burns made one or two unsuccessful
attempts to obtain a seat in the House of Commons—or perhaps, to
put it more correctly, I should say that he consented, in obedience to
the pressure of his friends and followers, to become a candidate for
a seat. In 1892 he was elected to Parliament as the representative of
that Battersea district where his life began, and he has held the seat
ever since. In the House of Commons he has been a decided
success. It is only right to say that the workingmen representatives,
who now form a distinct and influential section in the House, have
fully vindicated their right to hold places there, and have, with hardly
any exception, done honor to the choice of their constituents. John
Burns is among the foremost, if not the very foremost, of the
working class representatives. He has won the good opinions of all
parties and classes in the House of Commons. He has won especial
merit which counts for much in the House—he never makes a
speech unless when he has something to say which has a direct
bearing on the debate in progress and which it is important that the
House should hear. He is never a mere declaimer, and he never
speaks for the sake of making a speech and having it reported in the
newspapers. The House always knows that when John Burns rises
he has some solid argument to offer, and that he will sit down as
soon as he has said his say.

The first time I had the honor of becoming personally

acquainted with John Burns was in the House of Commons, shortly
after his first election, and I was introduced to him by my friend
Michael Davitt. I could not help feeling at the time that it was a
remarkable event in one's life to be introduced to John Burns by
Michael Davitt. Both these men were then honored members of the
House of Commons, and both had for many years been regarded by
most of what are called the ruling classes as disturbers of the
established order of things and enemies of the British Constitution.
Davitt had spent years in prison as a rebel, and Burns had been at
least once imprisoned, though but for a short time, as a disturber of
public order. Every one came to admit in the end that each man was
thoroughly devoted to a cause which he believed rightful, and that
the true and lasting prosperity of a State must depend largely on
men who are thus willing to make any sacrifice for the maintenance
of equal political rights in the community. I have had, since that
time, many opportunities of meeting with Burns in public and private
and exchanging ideas with him on all manner of subjects, and I can
only say that the better I have known him the higher has been my
opinion of his intelligence, his sincerity, and his capacity to do the
State some service.

John Burns has made himself very useful in the committee work
of the House of Commons. The House hands over the manipulation
and arrangement of many of its measures on what I may call
technical subjects—measures concerning trade and industry,
shipping and railways, and other such affairs of business—to be
discussed in detail and put into working shape by small committees
chosen from among the members; and these measures, when they
have passed through this process of examination, are brought up for
full and final settlement in the House itself. It will be easily
understood that there are many subjects of this order, on which the
practical experience and the varied observation of a man like Burns
must count for much in the shaping of legislation. Burns has genial,
unpretending manners, and although he was born with a fighting
spirit, he is not one of those who make it their effort to cram their
opinions down the throats of their opponents. Although his views are
extreme on most of the questions in which he takes a deep interest,
he is always willing to admit that there may be something to be said
on the other side of the controversy; he is ever ready to give a full
consideration to all the arguments of his fellow-members, and if any
one in the committee can show him that he is mistaken on this or
that point, he will yield to the force of argument, and has no
hesitation about acknowledging a change in his views. Fervent as he
is in his devotion to any of the great principles which have become a
faith with him, there is nothing of the fanatic about him, and I do
not think his enemies would ever have to fear persecution at his
hands. There is no roughness in his manners, although he has
certainly not been brought up to the ways of what is generally
known as good society; and his smile is winning and sweet. He has
probably a certain consciousness of mental strength, as he has of
physical strength, which relieves him from any inclination towards
self-assertion. I should find it as difficult to believe that John Burns
countenanced a deed of oppression as I should find it to believe that
he sought by obsequiousness the favor of the great.
 John Burns was, it is almost needless to say, an opponent from
the very beginning of the policy which led to the war against the
South African Republics. When the general election came on, about
midway in the course of the war, the war passion had come upon
the country like an epidemic, and some of the most distinguished
English representatives lost their seats in the House of Commons
because they refused to sanction the Jingo policy. Many men who
were rising rapidly into Parliamentary distinction were defeated at
the elections by Imperialist candidates. Nor were the men thus shut
out from Parliament for the time all members of the Liberal party. In
some instances, although few indeed, there were men belonging to
the Conservative, the Ministerial, side, who could not see the justice
of the war policy and would not conceal their opinions, and who
therefore had to forfeit their seats when some thoroughgoing Tory
Imperialists presented themselves as rivals for the favor of the local
voters. So great was the influence of the war passion that even
among the constituencies where the workingmen were strong there
were examples of an Imperialist victory over the true principles of
liberty and democracy. But the Battersea constituents of John Burns
remained faithful to their political creed and to him, and he was sent
back in triumph to the House of Commons to carry on the fight for
every good cause there. He took part in many debates during the
continuance of the campaign, and he never made a speech on the
subject of the war which was not listened to with interest even by
those most opposed to his opinions. He has the gift of debate as
well as the gift of declamation, and he knows his part in
Parliamentary life far too well to substitute declamation for debate.
The typical demagogue, as he is pictured by those who do not
sympathize with democracy, would on such occasions have merely
relieved his mind by repeated denunciations of that war in particular
and of wars in general, and would soon have lost any hold on the
attention of the House, which is, to do it justice, highly practical in
its methods of discussion. John Burns spoke in each debate on the
war when he had something to say which could practically and
precisely bear on the subject then under immediate consideration—a
question connected with the administration of the campaign, with
the manner in which the War Office or the Colonial Office was
conducting some particular part of its administrative task, with the
immediate effects of this or that movement, and in this way he
compelled attention and he challenged reply. I remember, for
instance, that when the spokesmen of the Government were laying
great stress on the severity and injustice of the Boer State's dealings
with the native populations of South Africa, John Burns gave from
his own experience and observation instances of the manner in
which African populations had been dealt with by British authorities,
and demanded whether such actions would not have justified the
intervention of some European State if the conduct of the Boer
Government, supposing it to be accurately described, was a
justification for England's invasion of the Boer territory. Whenever he
took part in the debate, he met his opponents on their own ground,
and he challenged their policy in practical detail, instead of wasting
his time in mere declamatory appeals to principles of liberty and
justice which would have fallen flat upon the minds of those who
held it as their creed that Imperial England was free to dictate her
terms to all peoples of inferior strength and less highly developed
civilization.

John Burns has fairly won for himself an honorable place in the
history of our time. If he had done nothing else, he would have
accomplished much by demonstrating in his own person the right of
the workingman to have a seat in Parliament. One finds it hard now
to understand how the English House of Commons could ever have
been regarded as the representative ruling body of England, when it
held no members who were authorized by position and by
experience to speak for the working populations of the country. I
mean no disparagement to the other representatives of the working
classes when I say that I regard John Burns as the most
distinguished and the most influential among them. Others of the
same order have rendered valuable service, not merely to their own
class, but to the State in general since they came to hold seats in
the House of Commons; some have even held administrative office
in a Liberal Government, and have shown themselves well qualified
for the duties. Not any of them, so far as I can recollect, has ever
shown himself the mere declaimer and demagogue whom so many
Conservative observers and critics used to tell us we must expect to
meet if the workingmen were enabled to send their spokesmen into
the House of Commons. I do not know whether John Burns has any
ambition to hold a seat in some future Liberal Ministry, but I venture
to think that if such should be his fortune, he will prove himself more
useful than ever to the best interests of his country. He has never
sought to obtain the favor and the support of his own order by
flattering their weaknesses, by encouraging them in their errors, or
by allowing them to believe that the right must always be on their
side and the wrong on the side of their opponents. I fully believe
that he has good and great work yet to do.
Photograph copyright by W. & D. Downey

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

 SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is now, as everybody knows, out of

office. Il reviendra, no doubt, and in a happier sense, we may trust,
than fate allowed to the once famous personage concerning whom
the words I have quoted were said and sung throughout France. Il
reviendra was the burden of the chant composed to the honor of the
late General Boulanger and echoed through all the French music-
halls at the time when Boulanger got into trouble with the existing
government. But Sir Michael Hicks-Beach is a man of very different
order from Boulanger, with whom he has, so far as I know, nothing
whatever in common except the fact that they were both born in the
same year, 1837.

The admirers of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach may take it for granted

that he will some time or other return to a high position in an
English administration. Whether that administration is to be Liberal
or Conservative we must wait for events to show. One can imagine
the formation of a Conservative Government which might rise to the
level of Hicks-Beach; or one might imagine the formation of a Liberal
Government in which Hicks-Beach could see his way to take office;
but I think it would be hard to realize the idea of such a man being
left out of office or kept out of office for many years. He was,
according to my judgment, the most efficient and capable member
of the Conservative Government now in office, the Government from
which he felt himself compelled to withdraw, or in which, at all
events, he was not pressed to continue. He was not a brilliant figure
in that Government. He had not the push and the energy and the
impressive debating powers of Mr. Chamberlain, and he had not the
culture, the grace, and the literary style of Mr. Arthur Balfour. He
made no pretensions whatever to the gift of oratory, although he
had some at least of the qualities which are needed for oratorical
success. His style of speaking is remarkably clear and impressive. No
question, however complex and difficult, seems hard to understand
when explained by Hicks-Beach. He compels attention rather than
attracts it. There are no alluring qualities in his eloquence, there are
no graces of manner or exquisite forms of expression; there is a
cold, almost harsh clearness enforcing itself in every speech. The
speaker seems to be telling his hearers that, whether they agree
with him or not, whether they like him or not, they must listen to
what he has to say. There is a certain quality of antagonism in his
manner from first to last, and he conveys the idea of one who feels
a grim satisfaction in the work of hammering his opinions into the
heads of men who would rather be thinking of something else if the
choice were left to them. "Black Michael" is the nickname familiarly
applied to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach in private conversation by the
members of the House of Commons, and the nickname has found its
way into the columns of "Punch" and other periodicals. The term
"Black Michael" does not, we may assume, refer merely to the
complexion of Hicks-Beach, to the color of his hair; but means to
suggest a grim dark-someness about his whole expression of
countenance and bearing. Certainly any one who watches Sir
Michael Hicks-Beach as he sits during a debate in the House of
Commons, waiting for his turn to reply to the attacks on some
measure of which he is a supporter, will easily understand the
significance of the appellation. Hicks-Beach follows every sentence
of the speaker then addressing the House with a stern and ironical
gaze of intensity which seems already to foredoom the unlucky
orator to a merciless castigation. I must say that if I were a member
of the House of Commons devoted to the championship of some not
quite orthodox financial theory, I should not like to know that my
exposition of the doctrine was to be publicly analyzed by Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach.
 Yet Hicks-Beach is not by any means an ungenial man, according
to my observation. Some of his colleagues say that he has a bad
temper, or at least a quick temper; and I must say that I can easily
understand how a man of vigorous intelligence and expansive views
might occasionally be brought into a mood of unphilosophic
acrimony by the goings-on of the present Conservative
administration. During my many years of service in the House of
Commons I had opportunities of coming into personal intercourse
with Hicks-Beach, and I have always found him easy of approach
and genial in his manners. At different times while he was holding
office I had to make representations to him privately with regard to
some difficulty arising between an administrative department and
certain localities which felt themselves oppressed, or at least put at a
disadvantage, by the working of new regulations. I always found Sir
Michael Hicks-Beach ready to give a full and fair consideration to
every complaint and to exercise his authority for the removal of any
genuine grievance. But I can easily understand that observers who
have not had personal dealings with Hicks-Beach and have only
observed him as he sits silent, dark, and grim during some debate in
the House of Commons, may well have formed some very decided
impressions as to his habitual moods and tempers. A member of the
House once asked me whether I was aware of the fact that a certain
line in one of Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome" was supposed to
contain a prophetic description of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. I gave up
the puzzle, and then my friend told me that the description was
contained in the lines describing the Roman trumpet-call which tell
that

"The kite knows well the long stern swell."

I hope my American readers will not have quite forgotten the
meaning of the term "swell," now somewhat falling into disuse, but
at one time very commonly employed in England to describe a
member of what would now be called "smart society."
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has held many offices. He has been
Under-Secretary for the Home Department, and Secretary to the
Poor Law Board; he has been twice Chief Secretary for Ireland, or, to
speak more strictly, Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland; and he has been twice Chancellor of the Exchequer. I need
hardly say that he was not able to accomplish much during the
periods of his Irish administration. I have said in preceding articles
that it is not possible for the Chief Secretary of a Conservative
Government to accomplish anything worth attempting in the work of
Irish administration. What Ireland demands is the right to manage
her own national affairs in her own domestic Parliament, and there is
nothing worth doing to be done by any government which will not
take serious account of her one predominant claim. No patronage of
local charities, local flower shows, and local racecourses, no amount
of Dublin Castle hospitalities, no vice-regal visits to public schools
and municipal institutions, can bring about any real improvement in
the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. I have no doubt that
Hicks-Beach did all in his power to see that the business of his
department was efficiently and honestly conducted in Dublin Castle,
but under the conditions imposed upon him by Conservative
principles it was impossible for him to accomplish any success in the
administration of Irish affairs. It has often come into my mind that a
certain sense of his limitations in this way was sometimes apparent
in the bearing and manner of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, when he had
to take any prominent part in the business of Dublin Castle. He has
an active mind and a ready faculty of initiative, and there was no
place for such a man in the sort of administrative work which mainly
consists in the endeavor to keep things going as they have been
going, and striving after an impossible compromise between
despotic principles and a free constitutional system.

Hicks-Beach, of course, was more in his place when at the head

of the financial department of the administration. He is admitted to
have been one of the most skillful and enlightened among modern
Chancellors of the Exchequer. His financial statements were always
thoroughly clear, symmetrical, and interesting from first to last. He
never got into any entanglement with his figures, and his array of
facts was always marshaled with something like dramatic skill. I do
not profess to be very strong upon financial questions, but I could
always understand and follow with the deepest interest any financial
exposition made by Hicks-Beach. He seemed to me to be distinctly
above the level of his party and his official colleagues on all such
questions, and it has often occurred to me that such a man was
rather thrown away upon a Conservative Government. Whatever else
might be said against them, it could not be said that his speeches at
any time sank to the level of the commonplace. There was
something combative in his nature, and his style of speaking, with its
clear, strong, and sometimes almost harsh tones, appeared as if it
were designed in advance to confront and put down all opposition.
The House of Commons had for a long time got into the way of
regarding Hicks-Beach as a man in advance of his colleagues on all
subjects of financial administration. Every Tory in office, or likely to
be in office, now professes himself a free-trader, in the English sense
of the phrase, but Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was evidently a genuine
free-trader, and never could have been anything else since he first
turned his attention seriously and steadily to financial questions. I
should describe him as one of the foremost debaters in the House of
Commons among the men who made no pretensions to the higher
order of eloquence; and probably an additional attraction was given
to his speeches by that aggressive and combative tone which I have
just noticed. I have sometimes fancied that his combativeness of
manner and his dictatorial style were less intended for the
discomfiture of his recognized political opponents than for that of his
own colleagues in office. Long before there was any rumor of
incompatibility between Hicks-Beach and the members of the
present Government, I have often found myself wondering how the
man who expressed such enlightened ideas on so many financial
and political questions could possibly get on with a somewhat
reactionary Conservative administration. Of course I have no means
of knowing anything beyond that which is known to the general
public concerning the causes which led to Hicks-Beach's withdrawal
or exclusion from his place in the present Government. Even those
London journals which profess to know everything about the inner
councils of the Cabinet did not, and do not, tell us anything more on
this particular subject than the news, impossible to be concealed,
that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had ceased to be a member of the
Conservative administration. We were all left to make any
conjectures we pleased as to the cause of this remarkable change,
and I feel, therefore, no particular diffidence in expounding my own
theory. During the long debates on Hicks-Beach's latest Budget
proposals, which I had to follow only through the medium of the
newspaper reports, I became possessed with the idea that Hicks-
Beach was performing reluctantly an uncongenial and almost
intolerable task.

Let me recall to the minds of my readers some of the conditions

amid which Hicks-Beach found himself compelled of late to carry on
his work. It should be said, in the first instance, that he never
showed himself, and, as I believe, never could have been, a genuine
Tory of the old school. He never exhibited himself as an
uncompromising partisan on any of the great subjects which arouse
political antagonism. He must have had very little sympathy indeed
with the dogmas and the watchwords and the war-cries of old-
fashioned militant Toryism. He never identified himself with the
cause of the Orangemen in Ireland or the principles of the Jingoes in
England. He seldom addressed the House of Commons on any
subjects but those which belonged to his own department, and
these were for the most part questions of finance. When, however,
he had occasionally to take part in debates on subjects connected
with England's foreign policy, he generally spoke with an
enlightenment, a moderation, and a conciliatory tone which would
have done credit to any statesman and seemed little in keeping with
the policy and the temper of modern Toryism. But Hicks-Beach had
fallen upon evil days for a man of his foresight, his intellect, and his
temperament generally who had found a place in a Conservative
Cabinet. The policy which led to the outbreak of the war in South
Africa aroused a passion in the English public mind which found its
utmost fury among the partisans of Toryism. Tory and Jingo became
for the time synonymous terms. The man who did not allow his
heart and soul to be filled with the war spirit must have seemed to
most of his friends unworthy to be called a Conservative. Even
among certain sections of the Liberals it required much courage for
any man to condemn or even to criticise with severity the policy
which had led to the war. Any one who ventured on such a course,
whether he were Liberal or Conservative, was straightway branded
with the opprobrious epithet of pro-Boer, and that title was supposed
to carry his complete condemnation. England had come back
suddenly to the same kind of passionate temper which prevailed
during the earlier part of the Crimean War. "He who is not with us is
against us," cried the professing patriots at both times—he who does
not glorify the war is a traitor to his own country and a pro-Boer, or
a pro-Russian, as the case might be. This was the temper with which
Hicks-Beach found that he had to deal during the later years of his
financial administration.

It would be out of place to enter into any speculation as to what

Hicks-Beach's own views may have been with regard to the whole
policy of the war. It is now well known that Queen Victoria was
entirely opposed to that policy, although she did not feel that her
position as a constitutional sovereign gave her authority to overrule
it by a decision of her own. There is very good reason to believe that
peace was brought about at last by the resolute exercise of King
Edward's influence. It is at least not unlikely that a man of Hicks-
Beach's intellect and temperament may have been opposed at first
to the policy which brought on the war, but may have, nevertheless,
believed that his most patriotic course would be to remain in the
Government and do the best he could for the public benefit. He soon
found himself compelled to perform as disagreeable a task as an
enlightened financial statesman could have to undertake—the task
of extracting from the already overburdened taxpayers the means of
carrying on a war of conquest with which he had little sympathy. It
was perfectly evident that the needed revenue could not be
extracted from the country without some violation of those financial
principles to which Hicks-Beach had long been attached. There was
no time for much meditation—the money had to be found somehow
—and a great part of it could only be found by the imposition of a
duty on foreign imports. We now know from public statements made
by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach himself that while the war was going on
he became impressed with the conviction that the whole
administration of the military department was grossly mismanaged,
and that the money of the nation was thrown away when the War
Office came to spend it. The conviction thus forced upon him could
not have tended to make the task of providing means for such
further expenditure any the more agreeable to him. We may assume
that he saw no other course before him than to make the best of a
bad job and try to find in the least objectionable way the amount of
money necessary to carry on the business of the State. It was
evident to him that the principles of free trade must be put aside for
the present, and he found himself driven to the odious necessity of
imposing a duty on the importation of foreign corn, a duty which in
fact amounted to a tax on bread. Hicks-Beach well knew that no tax
could be more odious to the poorer classes of the British Islands; but
we may presume that in his emergency he could see no other way
of raising the money, and he accepted the situation with a dogged
resolve which made no pretense at any concealment of his personal
dislike for the task. His manner of delivering the speech in which he
set forth his scheme of finance was that of a man who has to
discharge an odious duty, or what he finds himself by the force of
circumstances compelled to regard as a duty, but will utter no word
which might seem to make out that he has any excuse other than
that of hateful necessity. The substance of Hicks-Beach's
explanations on this part of his budget might be summed up in such
words as these: "We have got to pay for this war, and we have no
time to spare in finding the money; we must cast aside for the time
the principles of free trade; but do not let us further degrade
ourselves by hypocritical attempts to make out that what we are
doing is in accordance with the free-trade doctrine." I remember well
that on reading Hicks-Beach's budget speech I became deeply
impressed with the conviction that his task was becoming so
intolerable to him that we might expect before long to see a change
in the composition of the Government. But it appeared to me that,
as the debate went on and the days went on, the position of Hicks-
Beach was becoming more and more difficult. Some of the members
of the Cabinet became to all appearance suddenly possessed with an
inspiration that the time had arrived for a bold movement of reaction
against the long-accepted doctrines of free trade. The Chancellor of
the Exchequer had already receded so far from the established
policy as to propose the imposition of a tax on the imported
materials for making bread; and why, therefore, should we not take
advantage—thus at least I construed their ideas—of this tempting
opportunity to introduce a system of preferential duties and an
imitation Zollverein for England and some of her colonies, and to
break away from the creed and dogmas of men like Gladstone,
Cobden, and Bright? These proposals must have opened to the eyes
of Hicks-Beach a vista of financial heresies into which he could not
possibly enter. He probably thought that he had gone far enough in
the way of compromise when he consented to meet immediate
emergencies by the imposition of a bread-tax. Is it possible that he
may have felt some compunctious visiting because of his having
yielded so far to the necessities of the moment? However that may
be, I take it for granted, and took it for granted at the time, that
Hicks-Beach found the incompatibility between his own views as to
the raising of revenue and the views beginning to be developed by
some of his colleagues becoming more and more difficult to
reconcile.

Let me venture on an illustration, although it be not by any

means photographic in its accuracy, of the difficulty with which the
Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself confronted. Let us
suppose Hicks-Beach to be the leader of a pledged society of total
abstainers. At a moment of sudden crisis he feels called upon to
relax so far the rigidity of the society's governing principle as to
allow one of its members who is threatened with utter physical
prostration a few drops of alcoholic stimulant. He finds his course
cordially approved by some of his most influential colleagues, and at
first he is proud of their support. But it presently turns out that they
regard his reluctant concession as the opening up of a new practice
in their regulations, and they press upon him all manner of
propositions for the toleration and even the encouragement of what
my friend Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the great English champion of total
abstinence, would term "moderate drunkenness." Fancy what the
feelings of Sir Wilfrid Lawson would be if by some temporary and
apparently needful concession he found himself regarded by those
around him as an advocate of moderate drunkenness! Such, I
cannot help thinking, must have been, in its different way, the
condition to which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach felt himself brought
down, when he discovered that his introduction of an import duty on
foreign grain was believed by his principal colleagues to be but the
opening of a reactionary movement against the whole policy of free
trade.

The Government of Lord Salisbury seemed to be in the highest

good spirits at the prospects before them. Mr. Chamberlain in
especial seemed to believe that the time had come for him to
develop an entirely new system of his own for the adjustment of
import and export duties. For many weeks the English newspapers
were filled with discussions on Mr. Chamberlain's great project for
the new British Imperial Zollverein, of which England was to be the
head. Numbers of Mr. Chamberlain's Conservative admirers were
filled with a fresh enthusiasm for the man who thus proposed to
reverse altogether the decisions of all modern political economy laid
down by Liberal statesmen and Radical writers. Stout old Tory
gentlemen representing county constituencies began to be full of
hope that the good old times were coming back.

That was the crisis—so far at least as the official career of Sir
Michael Hicks-Beach was concerned for the time. What may have
happened in the private councils of the Government we of the outer
world were not and are not permitted to know. All that we actually
do know is that Lord Salisbury resigned his place as Prime Minister,
that Arthur Balfour was called to succeed him in office, and that a
new administration was formed in which the name of Hicks-Beach
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