DEATH OF LORD SALISBURY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 189, 24 August 1903, Page 3

DEATH OF LORD SALISBURY.

HI3 LAST'ItfOMBNTS. FKS FKESS ASSOCIATION. LoBBON.-.August 22. Lord Salisbury sinking. The family has assembled. Latbb. The Sacrament was administered t< Lord Salisbury en Thursday evening. Oxygen' was given on Friday, anc induced a ,y r ry slight Tally. The patienl took? half a gLss of. milk. The bulla'reissued at 8 o'clock las evening showed' His Lordship's condi tioq waß-jUnchacgcd. •light imprivi rnsnt, but the lafos' me?aige Btates that the end is ven near. Received 23. 4.32 p.m. LosDOlf, AugUßt 22, Lord Salisbury is dead. [The Bight Honourable Robert Arthur Giscoigoe Cecil, eldest surviving son of the second Marquis of Salis bury, by hie first wife the daughter and heiress of Bamber Gascoigne, was born at Hatfiald in 1830 and succeeded to the title in 1868. Although a Cecil and the descendant of a long line of nobles, the blood of Lord Mayors also ran through his veirs—of two and wen three Lord Mayors. One of his maternal ancestors was Sir Crisp Gaseoigne, the first chief magistrate to occupy the present Mansion House of London on its completion in 1753. ram wanrrn ahd bicluot. Eleven gentlemen have taken a hand at ruling the destinies of the British Empire since her late Majesty bpgan to reign, and, among the most brilliant of this number of Prime Ministers is the ene who made the least striking figure in the publio eye. Some of the other nite advertised the least little bit, because they could not help it. The truth is, it must be difficult to occupy the centre of the stage without feeling that people are koking at yon. The ancodo'es which gather round great man at length b'gin to haunt the great men themselves. They hear themselves talk, as the French fay; they almost read th ir own biographies, until at last they feel driven to provide material for more little) teles. Melbourne supplied material in this way. Palmerston did the same, everlastingly chewing his bit of straw between bis teeth; Disraeli did it, what with bis impossible waistcoats when he was young, his impassive face in his old age. Bat the late Marquis of Salisbury was not fond of manufacturing material for the raconteurs. So the public kcows little about his life beyond a skeleton outline of dates—a record of high administrative offices. They know even less about his personality. THI TUTWUS HJSKCHAM. When as Lord Robert Cecil he shared the front Opposition bench below the gangway with the irreconcilable Mr Boebuck, in those far-off days soon I alter the latter had overthrown a Ministry for mismanaging the Crimean War, the noble lord kept less of a bridle on his tongue than he did later, and Mr Punch called him a vinegar merchant. But you cannot build up a record of a in.n's life and charaeter merely by means of his publio utterances. The Marquis of Salisbury has spoken a good many words since then, words both vinegary and vitriolic; but be still remained somewhat of a my stery to his fellow countrymen—the shyest, the most see'ude'', the least known of tbe Queen's Piime Ministers. The public sometimes saw him in bis modest little blue brougham, which went along so rapidly 'twixt King's Grots and the Foreign Office as to give only the most hurried glimpse of bis ~ lordship in bis recumbent state, and elingirg to elbow straps of the carriage with outstretched arms. Or, now and then, but very much more rarely, the Premier might be noticed on foot between the Junior Carlton Club and his house in Arlington-street, massive and huddled in figure, his grey head sunk forward on his breast and almost framed between his shoulders; bis face beset wi'h that look of inextinguishable wearinees which comes over the faces of all who are so unhappy as to be rulers of men. TOUMHO THI COLOURS. Eton, Christchurch, Oaford, Fellow of All Soul's, then M.F. for Stamford at the age of 23—what rcom can this. busy years bave left for the kind of romance or mystery with which the publio like to endow all whom the public delight to honour ? As a matter of fact, toe late MarquU did not enjoy very good health in his later teens, so he loft Oxford before his usual course was ended and em barked on a species of grand tout, which is more common now-ad-ne than it was then. He visited New Zealand, where he is unde>s'ood to own property to this day. Thence he crossed over to Australia, where for s little while be tried his fortune at tbe new Australian enterprise of goldmin ing. The hut on the White Hills Bendigo, occupied by him in 1852, wa' visited by one of his political Miwer? only'a short- while 'g , who found tha' Lord Salisbury's stay on tbe goldfield> was still remember-d. Tbe fact was brought to th> latePiemie -V noticf>,<<r» elicited tbe >em-*rk th»t he, o\ sMll reoolUcted Bebdig", although he coulri not identify the particular pkee a> which he resided. EJ6UBOHDINATIOK AND STRUGGLES. The Premier's real period of romance —of fe'rugglinp, in fee'.—must have begun after 1857, the year of his marriage with the eldes 1 ; daughter of Baron Alderson, a famous judgo in old days, whose memory lingers on in stories that go the round of many a circuit mess. Lord Salisbury was a younger son. The old marquis is supposed to bave bad more ambitious matrimonii 1 intentions for this brilliant descendant, who had aiready made a name by taking •ides against bis leader, Disraeli, twice within the first fifteen months of hit Parliamentary life. But the young married couple were neither of them ol the kind to live on great relations, oi starve under the shelter of great names They faced life bravely on their owt account, the husband augmenting t very flender allowance by his pen. " I have known cf old the anxieties tbe labours, and the rewards of journal ism," he told a Matsion House audi ence once. He was a fn-quant cod tributor to the Quarterly Review ant other periodicals', including the Satur day Review—the Saturday Reviler as it used to be called. But Lord Salie bury had far too acid a pen ever t< appeal to a large crowd of readers. And all tbe while the coming Premiei went imperturbahly on his course e splendid insubordination in the Housi of Commons. Disraeli was his leader He di&red from Disraeli whenever i seemed good to him; and at the time o bit mtrruga composed a sort of thin pa/ty of irrffoncilables, and, with hi

party in ( >fuc>, c'u'g to tin front Op-pesi-iou b-r.cn bo!ow the g-m»way in association with "T.-ar 'an," Radical Roebuck, and Lord J\hn Fnsseli. The denth of his elder LroTher in 1865 made a.li the difference in Lord Robert Cecil's position and prospects ; but it detracted not one jot from his independence of character, The next year he became Secretary of Sta*e for India in Lord Derby's third administration. He resigned twelvo months later, when his colleagues indicated their determination to introduce a new Reform Bill, because he could not rejgard as sufficient the safeguards by I which the extension was to be accomplished. "We must have Robert Cecil i hack," was the epi'aph prouounocd by Bccjmin D.sraeli on this political suicide. EEWIRDBD. Robert Cecil did go bick. Not, however, before he had spent his political leisure to good account in quite another fijld. In 1868 he accepted the chairmarship of the Great Eastern Riilway, which at that time resembled D.ckens's gentlemen frcm Shropshire, in so far as both were hoDilts.-ly in Chancery. Within two yeirs the new chairman had recovered the undertaking out of the grip of the lawyers and turned it into a dividend-earning concern. His Lordship's acquaintance with one at least cf the amalgamated " curses " of Kent began thirty years ago, when he and Lord Cairns acted as arbitrators in the matter of the finances of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company, and he lived to see that Company abandon its suicidal policy of competition and become amalgamated with its rival the South E is tern, It was after the Russo-Turkish war that the Marquis of Salisbury, as be bad then become, got his real chance in the office of Foreign Minister amid all the shoals and quicksands of the near Eastern question. The seed sown at the Berlin Conference has not yet come to harvest. But Lord Salisbury's reputation as a Foreign Minister is known to the whole world, and baa not been lessened by the recent AngloGerman agreement. BETIBEMENT. In July, 1902, the hte Marquis rehired from the Premie-ship and Lord Privy Beal, being succeeded by bis nephew, Mr Balfour, men of diverse political views joining in paying trit u'e i to his long and valuable services, his ' eloquence, and the authority on which he epoke at Home and abroid, and he received from the King the Grand Cross of tbe Victorian Order. In his later years Lord Salisbury fought relaxation fiom the ores of office in scientific rather than in literary \ study, speeding much of his tim* in his laboratory. i Among tbe disticgu'shed gueits he ' received at Hatfield was the late Qieen ] Victoria during her Jubilee ye»r; tbe ] German Emperor, Prince of Naples, and many others.] Tbe late Marquis is succeeded in the title by h's son, Viscount Oranborne, »ho has already greatly distinguished himself in poli ies, and is at present Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. '