of the House of Commons. Gladstone, expounding our Parliamentary
system to the American nation, once said: "The overweight of the
House of Commons is apt, other things being equal, to bring its
Leader inconveniently near in power to a Prime Minister who is
a Peer. He can play off the House of Commons against his chief,
and instances might be cited, though they are happily most rare,
when he has served him very ugly tricks."

The Parliamentary achievement of 1894 was Harcourt's masterly Budget,
with which, naturally, Lord Rosebery had little to do; the Chancellor
of the Exchequer loomed larger and larger, and the Premier vanished
more and more completely from the public view. After the triumph
of the Budget, everything went wrong with the Government, till,
being defeated on a snap division about gunpowder in June, 1895,
Lord Rosebery and his colleagues trotted meekly out of office.
They might have dissolved, but apparently were afraid to challenge
the judgment of the country on the performances of the last three
years.

Thus ingloriously ended a Premiership of which much had been expected.
It was impossible not to be reminded of Goderich's "transient and
embarrassed phantom"; and the best consolation which I could offer
to my dethroned chief was to remind him that he had been Prime
Minister for fifteen months, whereas Disraeli's first Premiership
had only lasted for ten.

VII

_AUTHUR JAMES BALFOUR_

When Lord Rosebery brought his brief Administration to an end, Lord
Salisbury became Prime Minister for the last time. His physical
energy was no longer what it once had been, and the heaviest of
all bereavements, which befell him in 1899, made the burden of
office increasingly irksome. He retired in 1902, and was succeeded
by his nephew, Mr. A. J. Balfour, The Administration formed in
1895 had borne some resemblance to a family party, and had thereby
invited ridicule--even, in some quarters, created disaffection.
But when Lord Salisbury was nearing the close of his career, the
interests of family and of party were found to coincide, and everybody
felt that Mr. Balfour must succeed him. Indeed, the transfer of
power from uncle to nephew was so quietly effected that the new
Prime Minister had kissed hands before the general public quite
realized that the old one had disappeared.

Mr. Balfour had long been a conspicuous and impressive figure in
public life. With a large estate and a sufficient fortune, with
the