Gerald William Balfour, 'a Chief Secretary'

Spy (Leslie Ward) presents Gerald William Balfour—younger brother of Arthur James Balfour and then Chief Secretary for Ireland—leaning against a dispatch box at what reads as the Commons despatch table, one hand resting on open papers, the other raised mid-argument. The caption, a Chief Secretary, is pointed: Balfour pursued a conciliatory 'killing Home Rule with kindness' policy toward Ireland, controversial among Unionists who expected a harder line. Ward's caricature elongates his slight, donnish frame, exaggerates the high forehead and trimmed moustache, and gives him the slightly abstracted air of an academic making a parliamentary case rather than a political bruiser—a gentle editorial comment on his reputation as a cerebral, if ineffectual, administrator of a restive province.