Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/450

 his speech with welcome humour and apt quotation.

To the parliament of 1880-5 Lawson was again returned for Carlisle in the second place. He argued for religious freedom when, an avowed atheist, was excluded from the house [q. v. Suppl. I]. He voted against Forster's Irish coercion bill in 1881, and with the Irish nationalists. He persistently resisted the liberal government's policy in Egypt in 1882-3. To his proposed reform of the liquor traffic a majority of the new house was favourable, and in June 1880 he for the first time carried by twenty-six votes his resolution in favour of local option. In the following year he carried it by forty- two, and in 1883, when Gladstone voted with him, by eighty-seven.

At the general election of November 1885, which followed the extension of the suffrage to the agricultural labourers, Lawson was defeated in the Cockermouth division of Cumberland by ten votes. Five hundred Irish constituents voted against him. There was a paradox in his defeat by the labourers and the Irish, in both of whose interests he had consistently worked hard during the last parliament. He watched from the Riviera the subsequent struggle in parliament over Gladstone's home rule bill, with which he was in complete sympathy. In June 1886 he stood as home rule candidate for the Cockermouth division, and won by 1004 votes. In the new parliament he zealously supported the Irish cause, and resisted Mr. Balfour's policy of coercion in all its phases. In 1888 he successfully opposed the clauses in the local government bill which would have provided compensation for publicans whose licences were not renewed.

Lawson was re-elected for the Cockermouth division in 1892 and 1895, but took a less conspicuous part in the parliament, although he was steadfast to all the causes which he had earlier espoused. A reduction in his majority at Cockermouth in 1896 he attributed to the unpopularity of the local veto bill, on which Sir William Harcourt (though not the prime minister. Lord Rosebery) had appealed to the country. To the South African war, which broke out in October 1899, he was absolutely opposed, and as a pro-Boer he was defeated at Cockermouth by 209 votes. He found comfort in polling upwards of 4000 votes. During the autumn and winter of 1901 he engaged anew, after a holiday on the Riviera, in political agitation outside parliament. In April 1903 he was returned at a bye-election for the Camborne division of Cornwall, on the understanding that, at the expiration of the parliament, he should be at liberty to contest his old constituency. He now rarely missed a day's attendance at the house, or failed to take part in a division. The fiscal controversy which opened in 1903 gave him the opportunity of avowing his passionate attachment to the cause of free trade. At the general election of January 1906 he was again returned for the Cockermouth division. After the election the liberal prime minister. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, offered him a privy councillorship; and it is characteristic of Lawson that no one heard of the offer till it had been declined. Lawson was elated by the liberal triumph of 1906, but his health showed signs of failure. He had long given up hunting, and latterly did not ride; but he went on shooting to the end. On 29 June 1906 he voted in the house for the last time in a division on clause iv. of Mr. Birrell's education bill. He died at his London house, 18 Ovington Square, S.W., on 1 July 1906, and was buried in the churchyard of Aspatria, in which parish Brayton is situated. On 12 November 1860 Lawson married Mary, daughter of Joseph Pocklington-Senhouse of Netherhall, Cumberland, by whom he had four sons and four daughters. There is an oil painting (by C. L. Burns) at Brayton. A statue of Lawson by Mr. David M'Gill is on the Victoria Embankment, and a drinking-fountain, with a medallion portrait by Roselieb, at Aspatria. A cartoon portrait appeared in 'Vanity Fair 'in 1880.

Lawson, despite his strong and unchanging convictions, was absolutely just to friend and foe alike, and his justice was tempered by a tenderness which had its root in a singularly humane disposition. He always claimed for others the same freedom of opinion and expression which he claimed for himself. His power of speech was well adapted to great popular audiences. His humour was spontaneous and unforced; his jokes, like those of Sydney Smith, were rich and various, and always served the purposes of his serious argument. He had a vein of sarcasm which, though never personal, was extremely keen, wrote light verse with quickness and ease, and often combined in it humour and sarcasm with great pungency. His main political aim was as simple and sincere as his character. He saw in the