House of Commons is apt, other things being equal, to bring its
Leader inconveniently near in power to a Prime Minister who is
a Peer. He can play off the House of Commons against his chief,
and instances might be cited, though they are happily most rare,
when he has served him very ugly tricks."

The Parliamentary achievement of 1894 was Harcourt's masterly Budget,
with which, naturally, Lord Rosebery had little to do; the Chancellor
of the Exchequer loomed larger and larger, and the Premier vanished
more and more completely from the public view. After the triumph
of the Budget, everything went wrong with the Government, till,
being defeated on a snap division about gunpowder in June, 1895,
Lord Rosebery and his colleagues trotted meekly out of office.
They might have dissolved, but apparently were afraid to challenge
the judgment of the country on the performances of the last three
years.

Thus ingloriously ended a Premiership of which much had been expected.
It was impossible not to be reminded of Goderich's "transient and
embarrassed phantom"; and the best consolation which I could offer
to my dethroned chief was to remind him that he had been Prime
Minister for fifteen months, whereas Disraeli's first Premiership
had only lasted for ten.




VII

_AUTHUR JAMES BALFOUR_