her
after all you have done, and in the position you occupy before the
country, you can remain in the House of Commons as an isolated
person, and hold yourself aloof from the great movements of
political forces which sway to and fro there?' He said, 'I think
events will answer that question better than any reasoning
beforehand.' I replied, 'That is just what I should rely upon, and
should therefore urge how impossible it is for you to lay down with
certainty a foregone conclusion such as that which you have
announced to-day, and which events are not to influence, merely
that you will remain in parliament and yet separate yourself from
the parliamentary system by which our government is carried on.'
Then he said, (If it is necessary I will) 'go out of
parliament'--the first part of the sentence was indistinctly
muttered, but the purport such as I have described. To which I
merely replied that I hoped not, and that the country would have
something to say upon that too....

No man can doubt that he is the strong man of this parliament--of
this political generation. Then it is asked, Is he honest? But this
is a question which I think cannot justly be raised nor treated as
admissible in the smallest degree by those who have known and
worked with him.... He spoke of the immense multiplication of
details in public business and the enormous task imposed upon
available time and strength by the work of attendance in the House
of Commons. He agreed that it was extremely adverse to the growth
of greatness among our public men; and he said the mass of public
business increased so fast that he could not tell what it was to
end in, and did not venture to speculate even for a few years upon
the mode of administering public affairs. He thought the
consequence was already manifest in its being not well done.

It sometimes occurred to him whether it would after all be a good
arrangement to have the prime minister in the House of Lords, which
would get rid of the very encroaching duty of attendance on and
correspondence with the Queen. I asked if in that case it would not
be quite necessary that the leader in the Commons should frequently
take upon himself to make decisions which ought properly to be
made by the head of the government? He said, Certainly, and th