It was said that Gladstone only promoted men by seniority and
never before knowing with precision what they were like, but in my
husband's case it was not so.
Lord James of Hereford, then Sir Henry James, was Attorney
General, overburdened with a large private practice at the Bar;
and, when the great Bradlaugh case came on, in 1883, it was
suggested to him that a young man living on the same staircase
might devil the Affirmation Bill for him. This was the beginning
of Asquith's career: When Gladstone saw the brief for his speech,
he noted the fine handwriting and asked who had written it. Sir
Henry James, the kindest and most generous of men, was delighted
at Gladstone's observation and brought the young man to him. From
that moment both the Attorney General and the Prime Minister
marked him out for distinction; he rose without any intermediary
step of an under-secretaryship from a back-bencher to a Cabinet
Minister; and when we married in 1894 he was Home Secretary. In
1890 I cut and kept out of some newspapers this prophecy, little
thinking that I would marry one of the "New English Party."
A NEW ENGLISH PARTY
Amid all the worry and turmoil and ambition of Irish politics,
there is steadily growing up a little English party, of which more
will be heard in the days that are to come. This is a band of
philosophico-social Radicals--not the OLD type of laissez-faire
politician, but quite otherwise. In other words, what I may call
practical Socialism has caught on afresh with a knot of clever,
youngish members of Parliament who sit below the gangway on the
Radical side.
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