Mr. Asquith entered Parliament in 1886, and before many months had passed his reputation was secure. Mr. Gladstone, ever watchful for youthful talent, promoted him at a bound to be Home Secretary, when the Cabinet of 1892 came into precarious existence. No member of this government justified his selection more admirably. But the period of office was brief. Three years later, the Liberal party found itself once again in the wilderness, where it continued to wander, rent by dissensions both as to persons and principles, for rather more than a decade. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman returned to office in the autumn of 1905, Mr. Asquith became {198} Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was speedily accepted as the minister next in succession to his chief. He was then just turned fifty, so that, despite the delays which had occurred, it could not be said that fortune had behaved altogether unkindly. Two and a half years later, in April 1908, he succeeded to the premiership without a rival, and without a dissentient voice. The ambition, however, which brought him so successfully to the highest post appeared to have exhausted a great part of its force in attainment, and to have left its possessor without sufficient energy for exercising those functions which the post itself required. The career of Mr. Asquith in the highest office reminds one a little of the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise. In the race which we all run with slow-footed fate, he had a signal advantage in the speed of his intellect, in his capacity for overtaking arrears of work which would have appalled any other minister, and for finding, on the spur of the moment, means for extricating his administration from the most threatening positions. But of late, like the Hare, he had come to believe himself invincible, and had yielded more and more to a drowsy inclination. He had seemed to fall asleep for long periods, apparently in serene confidence that, before the Tortoise could pass the winning-post, somebody or something--in all probability the Unionist party with the clamour of a premature jubilation--would awaken him in time to save the race.