The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

p l eTt en: with Es.— the
Twenty-
three windows
es seemsexceptionofthe thatha 1
oftl the
of easinglelu presentadd i
office.n,sPalace
beenfinishedbdiynthe, hand of the Giant, and his less
completing
only inherits the task of com-
pletingthmse twenty-fourth. But, just as the scale
on which
e wasundertook
aarchitect
nheivteerct
httho-
roughlyah de g s
the P
comprehendedal
pa
tillac
re
part
waswmh iacbdhudi
til
Aladdinnht
left for
a Aeloeinisltry shown by the delay which has
o. , so is the difficulty of fully con-
structingnever shall know
impossible
occurred in
npeowsniotito,
noifnli
fcourse,opkonorolwy—enpdeorwhaedp
one of its least important
offices. We do" supplying
exactly—in what that difficulty
character and
consists. It
.. to imagine a man of fair
know—perhaps
the gifts of nature as to be unable to discharge the
duties of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Official business to perform there is none. If the
holder is one of those whom itt
his thought desirable
to introduce into the Cabinet,
intro-
duced ; if not, he can with equal feaccilaintybbee
excluded.
There There are numerous and incontrovertible precedents
both ways. This charming office is a charming
slipper that can fit any foot, a garment that will
adapt itself to any shoulders. It has been held
men of different positions, .
characters, and acquire-
ments. It was not thought below the acceptance of
Lord Holland, it was held by Mr. Nisbet Hamilton,
Mr. Strutt, and Lord Granville, and, to cometolater
times, by Mr. Cardwell and Lord Clarendon, who
have each in turn exchanged it for the position of a
Secretary of State. As the office has no duties, no-
body can be said to be particularly qualified for it ;
and, on the other hand, nobody need be so extrava-
gantly modest as to consider himself disqualified.
Such being the nature of the post, it must needs be a
little surprising, to those who are not behind the
scenes, that it has remained vacant even during the
fortnight whichhassucceeded the death of Lord Pal-
merston. Perhaps it was not wise to call so much atten-
tion to the office at all as has necessarily been
evoked by the omission to fill it up. It is one of
those institutions that may well pass in a crowd, as
it has often done before, but will scarely support a
very rigorous or critical examination. It does, in-
deed, seem singular that it should have survived the
abolition of so many offices, the salary of which
made them naturally an object of regard to the
Minister of the day, while the absence of all duty
to be rendered to the public in return for that salary
made them just in the same proportion obnoxious
to the advocates of economy. and retrenchment.
The office was defended on the ground that those
who held the more important offices under the Go-
vernment were so fully occupied in the discharge of
the duties annexed to those offices as to be unable
to defend in debate the general policy of the
Government ; and it was urged that there was an
obvious advantage in creating a post free from
arduous and responsible official duties, to be held by
a man who would thus be able to give his whole time
to assisting the Prime Minister in the management
of debates in the House of Commons. This idea
was, in fact, an anticipation of the notion which the
logical genius of our neighbours across the Channel
has since produced—the distinction between acting
and speaking DiiiiiaWrg—a distinction as old ati the