MEN I HAVE PAINTED
divines in Holland on Predestination and Free Will, I said, "That decision will require an Act of Parliament to undo."
For the first time, and for a time, I found myself in disagreement with Lord Halsbury, whose career, both judicial and political, I had followed with close attention and interest; and yet I could not restrain a feeling of admiration for a man who was so loyal in his maintenance of a legal principle as to sacrifice justice and right to a point of law involving itself both justice and right. No doubt the "Wee Frees" were in the right as regards the existing legal conditions. Two years afterwards Parliament destroyed the effect of the decision by special enactment.
But this is not the only time that Lord Halsbury supported a minority. If in the first instance he was a consistent supporter on legal grounds of the "Wee Frees," he was in the end a consistent and logical champion of the "Die Hards" and their cause. The two cases were analogous in the gravity and importance of their underlying principles. The "Wee Frees" and the "Die Hards" held tenaciously to tradition; their opponents, in a vast majority, threw tradition and prestige and principles to the winds. The "Wee Frees" rested their claim on the ground that right makes might; the "Die Hards" fought, not for themselves, but for a majority that sought to divest itself from tradition and voluntarily to renounce privilege and power. Twenty-two stalwart peers, with Lord Halsbury as their champion and leader, resisted by every argument that loyal conservatism and constitutional authority could suggest the suicidal proposal to "reform" the House of Lords.
Lord Halsbury had said to me that success at the Bar, and in the political arena, depended very much upon physical strength, upon the power to endure strain and
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