Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, GCB, OM, GBE, PC (6 November 1870 – 5 February 1963) was a British Liberal politician who was the party leader from 1931 to 1935. He was the first nominally-practising Jew to serve as a Cabinet minister and to become the leader of a major British political party. Samuel had promoted Zionism within the British Cabinet, beginning with his 1915 memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine. In 1920 he was appointed as the first High Commissioner for Palestine. Samuel was the last member of the Liberal Party to hold one of the four Great Offices of State (as Home Secretary from 1931–32 in the National Government of Ramsay MacDonald). One of the adherents of "New Liberalism", Samuel helped to draft and present social reform legislation while he was serving as a Liberal cabinet member. Samuel led the party in both the 1931 general election and the 1935 general election, during which period the party's number of seats in Parliament fell from 59 to 21. Herbert Samuel was born at Claremont No. 11 Belvidere Road, Toxteth, Liverpool, Lancashire, in 1870. The building now houses part of the Belvedere Academy. Around 1775, his great-grandfather, Menachem Samuel, had emigrated from Kempen in Posen (now Kepno), not far from the city of Posen (now Poznan), to Britain and his grandfather, Louis Samuel (1794-1859), was born in London. He was the son of Clara (Yates) and Edwin Louis Samuel (1825–1877). His uncle was born Montagu Samuel,^[9] but became better known as Samuel Montagu, founder of the eponymous bank. He was also known by a Hebrew name, Eliezer ben Pinchas Shmuel. His eldest brother, Sir Stuart Samuel, was also a successful Liberal politician; his only sister, Mabel (1862–1938) married the influential art-critic Marion Spielmann, from the Spielmann dynasty of bankers and art-connoisseurs. He was educated at University College School in Hampstead, London and Balliol College, Oxford, but at home he had a Jewish upbringing. However, in 1892, while at Oxford he renounced all religious belief, writing to his mother to inform her. Samuel worked through the influence of Charles Darwin and the book On Compromise by senior Liberal politician John Morley He remained a member of the Jewish community, however, to please his wife, and observed the Sabbath and Jewish food laws at home "for hygienic reasons".