Even the success chronicled in the preceding chapter did not exhaust the
store of good luck destined for my first appearance as a political
leader-writer. Fate again showed its determination to force me upon
_The Spectator_. When I arrived at the office on the Tuesday
morning following the publication of the number of the paper in which my
first two leaders appeared, I found that the second leader had done even
better than the first. Its title seemed appallingly dull, and, I
remember, called forth a protest from Mr. Hutton when I suggested
writing it. It was entitled "The Privy Council and the Colonies." I had
always been an ardent Imperialist, and I had taken to Constitutional Law
like a duck to the water, and felt strongly, like so many young men
before me, the intellectual attraction of legal problems and still more
the majesty and picturesqueness of our great Tribunals. Especially had I
been fascinated by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and its
world-wide jurisdiction. I had even helped to draw some pleadings in a
Judicial Committee case when in Chambers. Accordingly, though with some
difficulty, I persuaded Mr. Hutton to let me have my say and show what a
potent bond of Empire was to be found therein. I also wanted to
emphasise how further ties of Imperial unity might be developed on
similar lines--a fact, I may say, which was not discovered by the
practical politicians till about the year 1912, or twenty-seven years
later.

Now it happened that Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, though beaten at the
elections, had not yet gone out of office. It also happened that Lord
Granville, then Colonial Secretary, was to receive the Agents-General of
the self-governing Colonies, as they were then called, on the Saturday;
and finally, that Lord Granville had a fit of the gout. The result of
the last fact was that he had to put off preparing his speech till the
last possible moment. When he had been wheeled in a chair into the