lerable are apt to raise questions,
more easily stated than solved, as to the right of any State to impose
burdens in perpetuity for the benefit of one generation.' He urged that
every local body which contracted a debt should be under a statutory
obligation to provide for its repayment in fifty or sixty years at
latest.

The growth of municipal indebtedness; the excessive tendency to
increase the functions of the State; the disaffection of Ireland and
the contingency of an isolated and disloyal body of some eighty Irish
representatives offering their services to any party which would
consent to carry out their designs, appeared to Lord Derby the chief
dangers of English domestic politics. The last danger was very
speedily realised, and the sudden conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home
Rule produced one more change in the attitude of Lord Derby. On this
question he had never flinched or wavered, and he at once took his
place in the front rank of the Liberal Unionists, whom for some time
he led in the House of Lords. I do not know that the Unionist case has
ever been more powerfully put forward than in his speeches on the
subject, and the eminently judicial character of his mind, and his
entire freedom from all mere party bias, gave a special weight to his
advocacy. With this exception he took little part in party politics
during the last years of his life, but he devoted himself largely to
social questions, and among other things served with great assiduity
and ability on the Labour Commission. His last speech was delivered at
Manchester on the unveiling of the statue of Mr. Bright in October
1891. His last public work was that of presiding over the Labour
Commission in May 1892. In the preceding year an attack of influenza,
followed by a relapse, had shattered a health which had hitherto been
robust. Other complications ensued, and he passed away at Knowsley on
April 21, 1893, in his sixty-seventh year.

The foregoing sketch will, I hope, have given a sufficient idea of his
public character. Few men have made a greater sacrifice of ambition to
a conscientious conviction than he did, when, rather than support a
measure which might lead to war, he abandoned the Conservative
Ministry in 1878. He was then the fully recognised successor of Lord
Beaconsfield, and if he had adopted a different course he would in a
short time have been, beyond all doubt, Prime Minister of England. On
the whole, however, the severance from old f