by the drafting of a temporary constitution which should give
representative institutions to the Transvaal until such time as
it should be safe to concede responsible government. This con-
stitution was never put in force, as Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-
man's Ministry determined that they would risk the grant of
responsible government at once. He incurred much ill-informed
odium by sanctioning the scheme of importing Chinese coolies
into Johannesburg, in order to remedy the shortness of native labour and to restart the mines, and thereby the whole economic machinery of S. Africa.
After the change of government the last years of his life were spent in taking his due share in the vigorous opposition which the Unionists offered to the Liberal Education bills the budget of 1909, the Parliament bill, the Home Rule bill, and the Welsh Disestablishment bill. Of this last bill he was one of the protagonists. A man of deep religious feeling and an earnest churchman, he strongly resented a measure which was calculated, to his mind, greatly to injure the cause of religion in Wales. He was also, though he deplored the conduct of the militants, a decided supporter of woman suffrage; and he took an active interest in, and lent a helping hand to, many social movements, the Working Men's College, Toynbee Hall, the Hampstead Garden Suburb, Children's Country Holidays, the Shakespeare National Memorial, as well as to a number of miscellaneous church societies. His death came very unexpectedly, after an injury in a local cricket match. An enormous attendance at the funeral service at St. Margaret's testified to the warm place he held in the hearts of people of all classes. Mr. Asquith, then Prime Minister, spoke of him in the House of Commons as having come nearest, of all men of his generation, to that ideal of manhood to which every English father would wish to see his son aspire.
See Edith Lyttelton, Alfred Lyttelton (London, 1917).
(G. E. B.)
