As a
dialectician
intellect has supplied him with that which a natural aptitude or conscious training has given to others. His is probably the acutest mind that has been dedicated to politics during the past century. As a parliamentary dialectician he has never had a superior; and his facility is such that in any field where his rare elevation of thought finds natural scope, he runs the risk of becoming eloquent in spite of himself. I recall his first speeches as Irish Secretary twenty-six years ago. They were both ineffective and hesitating. Even now he sometimes finds difficulty in getting under way, and his indifference to precision or detail is apt to be a source of embarrassment. But if any issue arises which requires to be resolved into broad principles, and to be handled by the thinker rather than the politician, the statesman rather than the party man, the House of Commons may look to him with confidence to express its highest ideals. No parliamentary speaker has ever had greater charm of manner or courtesy of address, and the way in which, in 1906-7, he won back the confidence of a new House of Commons, overpoweringly hostile to his political opinions, and distrustful of his dialectical methods, was a triumph without a parallel.
His methods.Mr. Balfour is probably more independent of preparation than any man who has ever led the House of Commons, When he spoke of placing his views on the Fiscal Question on half a sheet of note paper, he described that which is his normal practice. The notes for all the speeches that he has made in a political career of forty years would, in all likelihood, not equal the MS. of a single Budget speech of Mr. Gladstone. But from these few pencilled words he will evolve either the subtlest metaphysical analysis or the loftiest and broadest generalisations. He is too indifferent to the arts of oratory to have enjoyed a platform success at all comparable to his Parliamentary position. But even at mass meetings his logic, his play of humour, his immense resourcefulness, and his felicitous diction, have often won a conspicuous triumph.
I could not pay a higher tribute to Mr. Balfour's versa-
