Current Literature
ELECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS By Sir Alfred E. Pease
THE title, if no more, of Burke's " Appeal from the New Whigs to the Old Whigs " is recalled by Sir Alfred Pease's volume of political reminiscences called Elections and Recollections (Murray, 12s.). He is unquestionably an old Whig and laments the changes that have come about since Gladstone's day, when he himself sat for York (1886-92) and Cleveland (1897-1908) and fought for Home Rule. The great Whig families of the North were still powerful in the author's youth, and none more so than his own. His grand- father, Joseph Pease, was the first Quaker M.P., and hisgreat- uncle, father, uncle and other relations were all more or less active in the House of Commons. The author himself became so ardent a Home Ruler that he visited Ireland to witness evictions and wrote a book about them. But social reform in England, as interpreted by John Morley and Mr. Lloyd George, was distasteful to him, its he freely admits. It cannot be said that his detailed recollections of the Home Rule debates in Parliament are of surpassing interest, but the book recalls the temper of that long and dreary controversy. The illustrations include some amusing caricatures by Sir' Frank Lockwood, who was the author's colleague in the representation of the City of York.
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