is conspicuous rather as the representative of the industrious
Nonconformist middle class, but the success of his career is no less
significant of the advance of democracy. The very Cabinet is now no longer
an aristocratic committee, and the highest offices of executive government
are held by men who are neither wealthy nor of distinguished family.

Two working-class leaders of an earlier generation--the Right Hon. T. Burt,
M.P., and Mr. H. Broadhurst--held office as Under-Secretaries in the
Liberal Government of 1892-5; but Mr. John Burns is the first trade
unionist to sit in the Cabinet. He, too, might have been an Under-Secretary
in the days of that short-lived Ministry, but decided, with characteristic
vigour, that if he was fit to be an Under-Secretary he was fit for the
Cabinet. At the close of 1905 the opportunity came, and the offer of Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman to preside over the Local Government Board was promptly
accepted. The workman first took his place in the Cabinet when Mr. John
Burns, at the age of forty-seven, went to the Local Government Board--to
the complete satisfaction of Mr. Burns. For the robust egoism of Mr. Burns
is largely a class pride. His invincible belief in himself is part of an
equally invincible belief in the working class. His ambitions thrive on the
conviction that whatever Mr. John Burns does, that the working class does
in the person of their representative. Always does he identify himself with
the mechanics and labourers with whom his earlier years were spent, and by
whose support he has risen to office. The more honours for Mr. John Burns,
the more does it seem to this stalwart optimist that the working class is
honoured. He arrays himself in court dress at the palaces of kings,
receives honorary degrees at Universities, and is kept before the public by
the newspaper paragraphist, without wincing or pretending to dislike it.
Why should the workman not be esteemed by kings and universities? Mr. Burns
asks. So great is his self-respect that the respect of others is taken as a
matter of course. Much of the criticism that has been directed against Mr.
John Burns misses the mark, because it does not recognise that the motive
power at work all the time in his career is the triumph of his class. It is
the triumph of a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, of a
London workman, that Mr. John Burns beholds with unconcealed pleasure in
his own success.

There are drawbacks, of cour