Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Statesmen -- Great Britain -- Biography
susceptibilities of the many races who have been brought under the rule
of the Imperial system in the Indian dominions of the sovereign. The
member of Parliament thus scornfully alluded to was no more a black man
than Lord Salisbury himself. He was one of the Parsee races chiefly
found in the Bombay regions, almost European in the color of their skin,
and he looked more like a German scholar than a native of any sunburnt
land. No one defended Lord Salisbury's rash utterance, but many people
excused it on the ground that it was only Lord Salisbury's way; that he
never meant any harm, but could not resist the temptation of saying an
amusing and sarcastic thing when it came into his mind. The truth is
that Lord Salisbury's odd humor is a peculiarity without which he could
not be the complete Lord Salisbury, and an unlucky expression was easily
forgiven because of the many brilliant flashes of genuine and not unfair
sarcasm with which he was accustomed to illumine a dull debate. When he
succeeded to his father's title, and had, therefore, to leave the House
of Commons and take his place in the House of Lords, every one felt that
the representative chamber had lost one of its most attractive figures,
and that the hereditary chamber was not exactly the place in which such
a man could find his happiest hunting-ground. Yet even in the somber and
unimpressive House of Lords, Lord Salisbury was able, whenever the humor
took him, to brighten the debates by his apt illustrations and his witty
humor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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