Asquith (6 page)

There was intended to be a dark hint for the future in Haldane’s recollection of this remark, but at the time at which it was made, if there was any corruption of Asquith taking place it was Haldane himself, as much as anyone, who was doing it. It was he rather than Asquith who had a gourmet’s taste and was already becoming a large buyer of fine clarets and champagnes. It was he too who had the greater knowledge of Europe and of the political and even the social
world at home.

Asquith began to catch up only after the improvement of his legal prospects in 1883. This occurred as a result of the appointment, after an interval, of R. S. Wright to Bowen’s old job as Junior Counsel to the Treasury. Wright, although he did not know him well, immediately asked Asquith to become his “ devil.” The offer was enthusiastically accepted, and Asquith moved from the ungrateful chambers in Fig Tree Court to join Wright at 1, Paper Buildings, where he remained until his final retirement from the bar in 1905.

Wright was like Bowen in being a Balliol man, a classicist, a favourite of Jowett’s—who died in his house—and in proceeding subsequently straight from the junior bar to the bench. But he was unlike him in being a plodding, eccentric introvert rather than a cap-tain-of-the-school figure with splendid all-round gifts. He was not
much in court, and his normal routine was to sit all day in his chambers with a tall hat on his head and a briar pipe in his mouth, working almost continuously from six in the morning until nine at night, except for breakfast and dinner visits to the Reform Club.

There is no evidence that Asquith ever achieved any real friendship with Wright, but the connection was nevertheless immensely valuable to him. It gave Asquith a political as well as a legal
entree
. Wright worked closely to the Attorney-General, Sir Henry James, to whom he owed his own appointment,
¹
and this agreeable, urbane and pleasure-loving Whig, who was Gladstone’s favourite law officer, soon recognised Asquith’s quality and established with him an ease of relationship which was possible for neither of them with the intermediate Wright.

One of Asquith’s first tasks for the Attorney was almost perfectly suited to his abilities and his interests. By 1883 the Bradlaugh case had dragged on for three years, destroying the effectiveness of the Parliament and draining away a sizeable proportion both of the energy and the authority of the Prime Minister. Gladstone had decided to try to end the matter by passing an Affirmation Bill, and he asked James for a memorandum on the legal and constitutional significance of the parliamentary oath. By a protracted process of devolution Asquith was asked to prepare this. The result, after much effort on his part, was a highly authoritative survey, written in his own peculiar combination of lucid and architectonic English. James was delighted to be able to produce (with suitable acknowledgment) such an impressive product of someone else’s labour,
²
and the Prime Minister who admired lucidity in others and an architectonic style in every one, was fully satisfied. Thereafter Asquith had the confidence of James and the notice of Gladstone—whose memory was soon afterwards fortified by hearing him speak at a dinner of the Eighty Club.

For a year or two these new connections brought Asquith more in the way of political opportunities and legal promise than of real rewards. In 1884 he wrote and had published by the Liberal Central Association a short guide for election agents to the Corrupt Practices Act which placed the first limit on the expenses of candidates and which James had just piloted through the House of Commons. By 1885, however, he was beginning to secure some briefs of his own. These came mainly from solicitors who used regularly to instruct Wright, and had got to know Asquith in this way; but as these solicitors included firms who acted for several of the big railway companies— which at that time were both prosperous and litigious—they offered a connection of great potential value. Then, when the general election of December, 1885, produced its usual crop of disputed returns, Asquith found that his corrupt practices manual was yielding more than royalties and that he was retained in almost all cases as junior counsel for the Liberal candidate. By the spring of 1886, at the age of 33, and with ten years’ standing as a barrister, he was at last able to earn a moderate income and occupy most of his time by professional work.

1
_{James no doubt thought that there would be advantages in securing an assistant whose qualities were so nearly the opposite of his own. Wright continued to work with James after he had ceased to be Attorney-General, and in 1886, fortified by Sir Charles Russell, the foremost advocate of the day, who had succeeded as Attorney and was later to be Lord Chief Justice of England, they proceeded jointly to give Sir Charles Dilke some of the worst professional advice that any man can ever have received.}

2
_{He kept the manuscript and—a characteristic gesture—gave it as a wedding present to Asquith’s second wife}
.

Asquith gave himself no opportunity to consolidate this long-awaited and modest legal success. In July, 1886, within a few months of the briefs and fees beginning to arrive, he became a Member of Parliament.

The connection between politics and the law was then much more intimate than it is today. Almost every leader of the bar sought and achieved a period in the House of Commons as an essential step in his career. This applied not only to men like Sir William Harcourt, Sir Henry James or Sir Hardinge Gifford (later Lord Halsbury), who had strong views on matters of policy and who attached as much or greater importance to political as to legal advancement. It applied also to those whose interest was primarily legal, to men like Sir Charles Russell (the prototype of a fashionable advocate), Sir Richard Webster and Sir Horace Davey. This was partly because the road to legal preferment then lay much more directly through politics. There were vast fees to be earned by the law officers; the Lord Chancellorship was a highly coveted position; the office of Lord Chief Justice was known as “the Attorney-General’s pillow” (both Russell and Webster laid their heads upon it); and a high proportion of appeal and
puisne
judges were men who had sat for a short time in the House of Commons and had been appointed during one of their party’s periods of office.

Parliament was therefore regarded as a natural place for an established barrister to go. But it was also regarded as a presumptuous and dangerous one for a junior with an insecure position—particularly if he had no private fortune. It fitted in with and was likely to improve the practice of a sought-after Queen’s Counsel. It could more easily damage that of a little known member of the outer bar, whose one strength ought to be that of complete availability. In fact, Asquith’s

experience ran contrary to the accepted rule and he probably improved his earning power by going into the House of Commons. But it was difficult for him to foresee this, and by his action in 1886 he ran a big risk of losing what he had built up in the previous three years.

He did so at the insistent prompting of Haldane, who, without a family and a little more secure at the bar, had already taken the same step a few months earlier. He had been elected for the East Lothian or Haddington division at the general election of December, 1885. This election was the first to be fought under the extended franchise in the counties, which had been introduced in 1884, and the new distribution of seats, which became law in the spring of the following year. It was delayed for some months to allow the latter measure to come into operation. The second Gladstone Government had been defeated on the Budget in June and had made way for a minority administration under Lord Salisbury. This Conservative Government held office during six months of complicated manoeuvre and realignment on the Irish question, the net result of which was that Parnell delivered much of the Nationalist vote in the large English towns to the Conservatives, and Gladstone became committed to Home Rule.

Partly as a consequence of this short-lived Irish flirtation with Lord Salisbury, the Liberal majority was much smaller than had been expected. And it was by no means clear how much of it would accept Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule. What was certain was that there was a majority in the new House of Commons for other aspects of the Liberal programme. When Jesse Collings moved his “ three acres and a cow ” amendment to the address at the end of January, the Conservative Government was heavily defeated, and Gladstone became Prime Minister for the third time. The Whig opponents of Home Rule, represented by Hartington, Goschen and Henry James, refused to serve. The Radical Unionists (to give them a title they had not then assumed) doubtfully accepted office, although Gladstone committed the major mistake of not giving their leader, Joseph Chamberlain, an office from which he would have been reluctant to resign. In March, when the details of the Home Rule Bill were before the Cabinet, both he and G. O. Trevelyan left the Government. The prospects of the bill were further weakened at the end of May when John Bright declared his opposition. On June 8th, 1886, the second reading was defeated by 343 to 313. 93 members who had been elected as Liberals voted against the Government, and Gladstone
advised an immediate dissolution of the six-month-old Parliament.

These were the circumstances in which Asquith fought his first election. One of the dissident 93 was Boyd Kinnear, the member for East Fife. He was a local laird, a writer of some note, and a radical; he had followed Chamberlain rather than Hartington into the division lobby against the Prime Minister. But this fact did not propitiate the local Liberal Association, who were firmly Gladstonian. They passed a vote of no confidence in Boyd Kinnear and called for a new candidate. They needed one in a hurry, and Haldane, established as member for the neighbouring county and with family connections extending over most of the eastern half of the Scottish Lowlands, was able to put forward Asquith’s name. The East Fife Association met on June 26th and decided by a large majority to offer him the nomination. The invitation was received and accepted on the following day, a Saturday. Polling was then only ten days away, and the strictest Sabbatarianism was necessary upon two of them. There has not often been more of a shot-gun marriage between a member and his constituency.