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to which he had to make appointments. He was director or chairman of various companies in which he had investments, including two railway lines, a steel company, a waterworks and a naval construction company. Though he distrusted his knowledge of business, “once he got a grip of a subject,” according to one of his staff, “then no one was better able to confute a false argument or to see what the real point was.” His mind worked slowly, and if he did not understand a matter at once, he would insist on its being thrashed out all over again until it was clear to him. He performed all his functions while continuing to maintain that he was happiest with his racing stud at Newmarket. Once at Aix-les-Bains he met W. H. Smith, then Conservative Leader of the House of Commons, and promptly sat down to talk politics for half an hour, saying, “it was pleasant in a place like this to have some work to do.” It is possible he would have been more bored out of office than in.

To the Conservative Government of 1895 he brought, besides long experience and the prestige of his name and rank, an immense fund of public confidence banked over the four decades of his career. His disinterestedness was beyond question. So obviously was he above private ambition, wrote the editor of the Spectator, “that no one ever attributed to him unworthy motives or insinuated that he was playing for his own hand. If anyone had ventured to do so, the country would simply have regarded the accuser as mad.” When the Duke took a position, people felt they had been given a lead. He never became Prime Minister or won the Derby but “no one,” said The Times, “had a greater authority in moulding the political convictions of his countrymen.” He remained vaguely puzzled by the extent of his own influence. “I don’t see why I should tell the people what I should do if I had the vote,” he protested. “They will do what they think right and I shall do what I think right. They don’t want me to interfere.” And when the Prince, who, no less than his subjects, relied on the Duke’s judgment of men and issues, consulted him as arbiter of delicate social matters, he complained, “I don’t know why it is but whenever a man is caught cheating at cards the case is referred to me.” He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience. When a Presence was required for a solemn or ceremonial occasion, the solid, rather melancholy dignity of the Duke fulfilled the need. He was, Lord Rosebery said, “one of the great reserve forces of this country.”

Among Lord Salisbury’s ministers who took their seats in 1895 on the Government Front Bench in the House of Commons were two baronets, the ninth and sixth of their lines, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Matthew White Ridley, Home Secretary. The former, tall, thin and austere, was an arch Conservative, a champion of the Church of England and of the landowning class, known as “Black Michael.” Tart and sharp-tongued, he once, after reading over a Liberal member’s remarks on his budget, said to his secretary succinctly, “Go and tell him he is a pig.” Beside them sat the two squires, Mr. Henry Chaplin and Mr. Walter Long, representatives of the landed gentry, the old untitled aristocracy who “scorned a peerage but made it a point of honor to stand for their county at the first general election after they came of age.” Mr. Long, President of the Board of Agriculture and youngest member of the Government at forty-one, “never said anything in his life that anybody remembered.” He “gently dozes,” as an observer saw him, “his arms folded, his head sunk back upon a cushion, his ruddy October face giving a touch of color to the scene,” while the older Mr. Chaplin “vigorously, wakefully, alertly guards the Empire against the knavish tricks of the Opposition.”

Mr. Chaplin at fifty-four, with his magnificent stature, big handsome head, long nose, prominent chin, sideburns and monocle, was a marked personality, one of the most popular men of his generation, “easily recognizable, familiar