quarter of a century later the record of his ability in that post was still fresh. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Melbourne, and had to face the deficits which a series of bad seasons and the faulty financial system then in force inflicted on the Whigs. He subsequently took the permanent office of Comptroller of the Exchequer with a peerage, and twenty years later he moved and carried in the House of Lords the rejection of the Bill for the repeal of the paper duty, one of the few instances in which the Upper House has declined to accept a financial measure sent up to them from the Commons. One of Lord Monteagle's sons, the father of the present Lord Monteagle, was Deputy Chairman of the Board of Customs, another was Secretary to the Lord Chancellor and subsequently Registrar in the Court of Bankruptcy, and one of his daughters married Sir Henry Taylor (Philip Van Artevelde), who added a poet's fame to high reputation in the Colonial Office. Spring Rice's father was in the Foreign Office, a man of considerable ability, who, but for his early death, would have risen to the chief posts in that department.

·

Stephen Spring Rice himself was born in 1856. He was educated at Eton as a colleger. He was one of the select for the Newcastle scholarship in 1873 and again in 1874, and he was second for the Tomline mathematical prize in 1872 and again in 1873, thus achieving distinction both in classics and mathematics. Mr. Luxmoore, a master of Eton, describes him as very good company, adding that his shrewd and inquisitive manner of putting questions, and the incisive netteté with which he put them, were a little formidable.' A cotemporary of his remembers moving a debate in 'Pop.' on the third French Empire, and speaks of his feeling of dismay at the accuracy with which Spring Rice marshalled facts against the Empire, and the minuteness of his knowledge, which nothing seemed to escape. The boy is father of the man, and we who in later days discussed official questions with him at the Treasury recognise at once the picture.

In 1874 he was elected Foundation Scholar at Trinity, Cambridge. He graduated there in 1878 as thirteenth classic and eighteenth wrangler, and won his fellowship at Trinity in the following year. Mr. Bernard Holland knew him well at college, where he lived among the ablest undergraduates of the day. He tells how, in 1877, Spring Rice was elected a member of the old and famous debating society of Apostles.' There he met the two Balfours, Francis and Gerald, the former one of the most VOL. XIII. NO. 78, N.S. 48

distinguished of a distinguished family, lost, alas! to the world in nis youth and the prime of his power by an accident in the Alps; the latter the present President of the Board of Trade. Among the Apostles of the time were Alfred Lyttelton, the two Butchers, James Parker Smith, Walter Leaf, Bishop Welldon, James Ward, J. K. Stephen, Theodore Beck, H. C. Goodhart, A. W. Verrall, F. W. Maitland, and Bernard Holland. A goodly society, many of whom, alas! like Spring Rice himself have passed away. Those of us who knew Cambridge at earlier dates will admit that Trinity at the close of the seventies had, to say the least, not degenerated.

In 1878 Spring Rice adopted the Civil Service as his career, and coming out first in an open competitive examination obtained a clerkship in the Treasury. We welcomed him heartily. He brought with him an excellent record, and we knew the high reputation which he had won among his cotemporaries. Some of us were perhaps surprised that he should prefer the moderate competence and comparative ease of the Civil Service to the larger prospects of an open profession, but he probably never had the physical strength necessary for success at the Bar. There can be no doubt that his choice was a gain to the public service. One of the prizes for junior officers in the Treasury is the post of Private Secretary to the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. The Financial Secretary is, under the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the political head of the Treasury. He is responsible in Parliament for the ordinary administration of the Treasury. He prepares, in concert with the chiefs of the Civil Departments, the Civil Service estimates, and he moves them in the House of Commons. Moreover, the assent of the Treasury is required for all proposals increasing or tending to increase the public expenditure, and the Financial Secretary is the minister who, subject to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is charged with the duty of examining and deciding such proposals, a duty ordinarily known as the financial control of the Treasury over public expenditure. The man who holds the post of private secretary to the Financial Secretary has therefore singular opportunity for learning the principles and the regulations which govern public administration.

This post was offered to Spring Rice within two years of his entry into the Treasury, and he made full use of his opportunity. He was successively secretary to Lord F. Cavendish, Mr. Courtney, Sir John Hibbert, Sir Henry Holland (now Lord Knutsford), Sir Matthew White Ridley (now Lord Ridley), and Mr. Jackson (now

Lord Allerton), and subsequently he was secretary to Sir William Vernon Harcourt when Chancellor of the Exchequer. I know personally the high estimation in which his chiefs held his knowledge and capacity. One instance may perhaps be given. Mr. Courtney put on record the following minute :

Upon quitting the office of Financial Secretary I desire to express in the highest degree my sense of the assistance I have derived from Mr. Spring Rice acting as my private secretary. By his uncommon zeal sometimes making me apprehensive whether it was not pressing perilously on his strength, by the acute and ever-ready intelligence and by the unfailing good temper and equability of his conduct of business he has rendered it possible, if not easy, to bear a burden of labour that might otherwise be excessive. Knowing his work perfectly and assiduous in preventing an accumulation of it, he has given me such help that it must have been my fault if the duties of my office were not discharged smoothly and without pressure.

Spring Rice was promoted to be a first-class clerk in May 1888, and, as such, he was no longer eligible for private secretaryships. In the same year he was charged with the duty of working up and preparing the Civil Service estimates for the Financial Secretary, an important duty for which he was specially qualified. In April 1894 he was made a principal clerk, and took charge of one of the five divisions under which the varied duties of the Treasury are classified. Thus at the age of 38, an early age as promotion in the Civil Service is measured, he had reached the first rank in the leading department of the State, and had the opportunity of showing how qualified he was for responsible duties.

Amply did he justify the choice. He received in recognition of his service the Companionship of the Bath, and in 1899 he was made Auditor of the Civil List, the third post in the permanent staff of the Treasury. He held that post at the death of Queen Victoria, and was consulted on the financial arrangements of the new reign. In a letter, written after his death by command of his Majesty to Mrs. Spring Rice, Sir Dighton Probyn says that the King is fully mindful of, and is not likely to forget, the great service rendered by Mr. Spring Rice in connection with the settlement of the new Civil List.

This note on the work of Spring Rice in the Treasury would be incomplete without some mention of his work on Government committees and commissions. The public constantly urge the Government to undertake new services or extend the sphere of existing services, and necessity arises from time to time for the reform of departments or for changes in the organisation of the

service itself. These requirements are usually made the subject of preliminary inquiry by committees of Government. Members of Parliament, lawyers, men of science, and civil servants meet in these committees, and lay down the lines for legislative or administrative action. The demand for such inquiries has increased with the increase of population, with the greater interest taken by Parliament and the public in social and scientific questions, and with the growing wish for Government interference or Government supervision in matters which were formerly left to local or individual action. For this work the wide knowledge and suggestive intelligence of Spring Rice were greatly in request, and in the details of it he was thoroughly at home. Thus, in 1886, at the special request of the Secretary for Ireland, he was made secretary to the Royal Commission on Public Works in Ireland, and in subsequent years he served on inquiries, among others, into Patents, the Geological Survey, College Estates, School Teachers' Pensions, Factory Inspectors, the Dublin College of Science, the London University, the Imperial Institute, and on local records. These inquiries were outside and additional to his ordinary work, but they were a subject of lively interest to him, and they tended to satisfy that love of information which was a leading feature in his character.

But his physical strength, alas! was not equal to his intellectual energy. A few months ago his health began to give way. His friends hoped that rest and relief from work would restore him, but it was not to be, and he passed away in September last at the early age of forty-six.

During sixteen years Spring Rice and I served together in the Treasury. Our friendship and my respect, not only for his ability but for the loyalty and transparent simplicity of his character, grew with the years. His wide knowledge made him good company, while his eagerness added an interest of its own to his conversation. He had a sense of fun rather than of humour. Happily for us all we carry into the business of after-life a tinge, a flavour, of the schoolboy, and in the intimacy of a public office, or of a circuit, good-humoured chaff has full sway. Spring Rice thoroughly enjoyed it, for in his kindly nature there was no room for malice or resentment, but his leading characteristic was earnestness. Whatever he did, he did it with his whole heart. It occupied him to the exclusion of all besides, and to such an extent that one was tempted sometimes to interpose a light and irrelevant remark in order to enjoy the surprise which such frivolity in

business caused him. He was an excellent counsellor, and one sought from him a criticism, given always with the utmost frankness, because even if one differed from it, one knew that it was honest criticism, founded on knowledge and good sense. I have often felt before his searching questions something of the dismay which the mover of the debate on the third Empire in the Eton Pop.' describes. My official relation with him ceased when I left the Treasury in 1894, and I will leave the rest of the story to Sir Francis Mowatt. Sir Francis says:

From the date of Spring Rice's appointment as principal clerk, he showed that in addition to intelligence, energy and industry, which had made him an extremely helpful and efficient subordinate, he possessed qualities which bade fair to bring him to the front as a successful head of a department. The simplicity and modesty of his character and his extreme anxiety to understand and do justice to the views of all with whom he was brought in contact, enabled him to avoid friction and to maintain good relations with departments which could not be expected always to share the Treasury views. Conclusive proof of this was afforded by the universal sorrow for his loss expressed throughout the service.

Another quality of success as an administrator developed itself as he advanced in life-the power of seeing steadily and seeing whole' the subject under discussion. An attractive theory immediately engaged his attention, but its very attractiveness always put him on his guard until he thought that he had got to the bottom of the matter.

It was mainly on these two qualities, backed as they were by unusual ability, courage, industry, and devotion to the public service, that our confidence in his future rested. He was a sound adviser in all matters of finance and accounts. He, and so far as I am aware, he alone had thoroughly mastered the intricacies and inconsistencies of the Education Codes, and finally he was so thoroughly conversant with the whole history of land legislation in Ireland, that the Treasury relied on him almost entirely in all negotiations with the Irish Office, not only as regards the details, but also to a large extent the principles of any new land purchase proposals.

But under all the qualities and gifts I have mentioned lay the honesty, loyalty and forgetfulness of self which won for him the respect, friendship, and affection of all his colleagues.

The letters received after his death attest the sorrow to which Sir Francis alludes.

I have already quoted the letter from the King. The Prime Minister said:

The loss is indeed not merely private, as all who, like myself, had some opportunity of watching Mr. Spring Rice's work are well aware. His untiring industry, his vast stores of available information, his zeal and his great ability made of him a public servant of rare value.

Sir W. V. Harcourt wrote:

In the Civil Service he occupied a first place, and was regarded by all as a man to whom the Treasury looked up as one of the chief resources of its