Business done.—On motion of Prime Minister new Standing Order dealing with blocking motions carried nemine contradicente.
House of Lords, Thursday,—The death of the Duke of Argyll leaves the House of Lords poorer by withdrawal of a quiet, gracious presence. I talked with him here a few days before the Easter recess. To-night the MacCailean Mhor, on his way to his last resting-place in the Highlands, sleeps amid the stately silence of Westminster Abbey, unawakened by the noiseless footsteps of the ghosts of great men dead. Thus in Plantagenet times the coffined body of the wife of Edward I., brought from Lincoln to Westminster, halted by the way, Charing Cross being the last of the nine resting-places of her bier.
A happy marriage which brought him into close kinship with the Sovereign forbade the Duke's taking active part in political life. It gave him fuller opportunity for dallying with his dearly-loved foster-mother, Literature. Endowed with the highest honours birth could give or the Sovereign bestow, he bore them with a modesty that made others momentarily forget their existence. Circumstances precluding his living at Inveraray Castle and keeping up its feudal state, it was characteristic of him that he cheerily homed himself in a cottage some two miles down the loch-side, originally built for a factor. Little by little he enlarged the residence till Dalchenna House became a roomy mansion. Here, in company of a few choice companions, it was his delight to stay during the autumn months. He kept to his study in the morning, engaged in literary work or dealing with his vast correspondence. After luncheon he led his guests forth, usually on foot, to tread the Highland ways he knew since boyhood, when as Marquis of Lorne he presented the picture of manly beauty in Highland dress that to-day adorns the hall of Inveraray Castle.
In later years he built for himself a châlet set amid the pine-trees of the ancient French forest of Hardelot, within sight and sound and scent of the sea. Like Dalchenna this began in a small way. Enamoured with the peace and rest that brooded over the place, he went on year by year enlarging and embellishing it.
According to long-laid plans he was to have spent the Easter recess in his French retreat. Almost at the last moment duty called him elsewhere, and, as was his wont, he uncomplainingly obeyed. But he insisted that two old friends, whom he had bidden to keep Easter tryst with him, should not alter their plans. So the châlet, with its dainty appointments and its domestic establishment after the Duke's own heart—a French peasant and his wife, who acted as butler and cook—was placed at their disposal, he bestowing infinite pains upon arrangements for their comfort whilst under his roof.
"It was hardly a tactful way of trying to convert him to the movement to place a bomb under his throne at St. Paul's."—The Bishop of London in the Debate on Lord Selborne's Bill for Female Enfranchisement.
This little episode, the most recent in a busy life, is a typical instance of his unselfishness and untiring thought for others.
A scholar of wide reading, a man of shrewd judgment, and, as his government of Canada disclosed, a statesman of high degree, he might have filled a part in public affairs at least as lofty as that commanded by his distinguished father. Debarred from such career he was content to live up to the highest standard of Christian conduct. If a line of commentary might be added to the inscription on the coffin which to-morrow journeys northward to lie beside those of the ten Dukes of Argyll at rest in the burial-place of the Campbells at Kilmun, here it is written in one of the oldest of Books: "He went about doing good."
Business done.—Commons resume debate on Budget.