No other member of the House of Commons—I think this
can be said without exception—would be universally mourned as -Mr. Maxton. To call him that, incidentally, is a mere concession to convention ; no one ever spoke of him as anything but Jimmy Maxton. The present Parliament saw little of him—his illness passed into its acute stage too soon for that—but he was there long enough for his picturesque, cadaverous figure, with the deep eyes and the flowing hair, at the corner of the front bench below the gangway on the Opposition side to be permanently imprinted .on every M.P.'s memory. Never did revolutionary look more the character, and never was revolutionary more lovable. Never, moreover, was revolutionary a better House of Commons man, and never was House of Commons man a more notable speaker. With the possible exception of Mr. Churchill—and their styles were so different as to be hardly comparable—he was the outstanding orator in the last House. If ever any biography deserved to be written, and written well, it is Jimmy Maxton's. David Kirkwood, I think, could do it. * * * *
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