The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The rmes says Mr. Gladstone has failed to secure any
new strength for his Administration in the House of Lords.
1 The late Lord Cranworth is succeeded as Lord Chancellor
by Sir William Page Wood ; and feeble as Lord Cran-
worth's debating power was, the new holder of the Great
Seal will be even less efficient in debate. The failure to
obtain further support is doubly unfortunate, because it
cannot be denied that the Opposition has gained in the inter.
val. Lord Salisbury has taken his place in the House of Lords
since 1866 ; Lord Cairns, unfettered by the responsibilities
of office, will wage war on the Ministry with all the vigour
of Protestant Ulster. On the other hand, Lord Russell
has pleaded increasing age as a reason for declining office,
or even a seat in the Cabinet without office, and though
he will be a zealous friend of the Ministry, he will not be
able to speak with the authority of one who has a voice
in shaping its policy. The prominent members of the
Government in the Upper House will be Lord Granville,
who will be Secretary for the Colonies, and who will lead
the House ; the Duke of Argyll, who has accepted the
post of Secretary for India'; and Lord Cho tndon,
has returned, as we announced, to the Foreign Office.
It would be impossible to select three more efficient
debaters, though each has a different style ; bat it cannot
be expected. that, singly or collectively, they should
be masters of the legal technicalities which must
abound in the Disestablishment and Disendowment Bill.
In the Commons the Ministry will possess undoubted
strength. They have, in the first place, a majority of
115, or thereabouts, at their back, and with Mr. Glad-
stone, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Lowe on the Treasury Bench
they possess three debaters of unequalled power. The
appointment of Mr. Lowe as Chancellor of the Exchequer
will doubtless provoke criticism, and although no one will
doubt his ability to adorn the post, there remains a sound
opinion that his energy of character might have been
more profitably employed elsewhere. Lord Derby
invited Mr. Cardwell to become Finance Minister
nearly seventeen years since ; Lord Palmerston
made him the same offer in 1855 ; and had he
been now placed at the Exchequer, and Mr. Lowe
at the War Department, Mr. Cardwell would have had
a more congenial office, and there would have been better
hopes of efficient army reform. The acceptance by Mr.
Bright of the office of President of the Board of Trade is
understood to be a reluctant sacrifice to patriotism. Mr.
Bright absolutely declined the laborious dutiei of Secre-
tary of State, but he could find no sufficient reason for
refusing altogether to serve his country in Council, and he
was thus prevailed upon to undertake the less exacting
/labours of the Board of Trade. Another accomplished
speaker declined to take the office offered him, but, as we

must frankly acknowledge, we think the effect is likely to
be more injurious to his own reputation than to the
Government. Mr. Coleridge would not consent to
serve under Sir Robert Collier ; and when we
remember that Sir Roundell Palmer was for two
years Solicitor - General under Sir William Ather-
ton, we can only wonder and be silent. The
Times concludes that, with one signal exception, Mr.
Gladstone has brought into his Ministry all the ability and
'power that lay at his command.
The appointment of Mr. Bright to the Board of Trade
gives the Herald something to be thankful for. He might
have displaced the Duke of Argyll, and governed India.
What is to become of those other hopes of the party, Mr.
Forster, Mr. Stansfeld, and Mr. Ayrton, we have yet to
learn. But we confess that we shall consider Mr.
Forster's services ill-requited, and his obvious quali-
fications neglected, if his claims to high office
in Mr. Gladstone's Ministry are postponed to those
of any member in the If ouse of Commons whom
we have named. Sir W. Page Wood, it is said, is to be
Lord Chancellor—a learned judge and a good partisan,
but not likely to be of much use to his party as a debater;
and Sir Robert Collier is to succeed to the office of
Attorney-General—an appointment which he is in every
way well qualified to fill. Of Sir Roundell Palmer, who,
we presume, is to take Sir W. Page Wood's place, we
need only say that the bench will gain as much as the
House of Commons will lose by the transfer, and that no
man's name will stand higher than that of the man who,
with the highest prize of his profession within his grasp,
sacrificed everything to earnest conviction and honourable
scruple.

The Daily Ne 1.03 considers Sir W. Page Wood a mom,
gain to the Cabinet. Many years ago, while he was a
member of the House of Commons, he urged the disesta-
blishment of the Irish Church, to which he will now be
instrumental in giving effect. The moral value of his
adhesion to the Government is great, and more than com-
pensates any deficiency in those arts of debate in which
his immediate predecessor shines brilliantly. In Lord
Clarendon's return to the Foreign Office the services are
secured of a statesman who has the confidence of both
parties, whom Mr. Disraeli brackets equal with Lord
Stanley, even in the hottest fervour of his eulogies
upon the younger statesman ; one to whom all the ways
cf diplomacy and courts of Europe are known, and who
possesses an authority abroad superior to that of any
English politician since the death of Lord Palmerston.

Lord Granville has not unnaturally preferred the
labours of the Colonial Office to the dignified ease of the

Presidency of the Council. The qualities of judgment,
tact, and moderation which he has shewn in the

leadership of the House of Lords admirably fit
him for dealing with communities sensitive alike
in their attachment to England and in their
jealous self-reliance. The Duke of Argyll finds at length
an office worthy of his great abilities, industry, and con-
scientiousness in the India Office. The administration of
India is a question which he has especially studied ; and
deeper investigations have led him to renounce the policy
of annexation by which his imagination and judgment
seemed at one time to be taken captive. Mr. Cardwell's
administrative ability and economic training will have
abundant scope in the War Office. The list of Ministers
does not contain a better appointment than that which
places Mr. Childers at the Admiralty. Mr. Lowe's repu-
tation as a financier has still to be made. His ambition
cannot but be satisfied, and his brilliant'abilities will be
tried to the utmost in the office of Chancellor of the
Exchequer.

The Standard says Mr. Gladstone has formed an
Administration in a remarkably, we might, perhaps, say
unprecedentedly, short time. Forty-eight hours sufficed
him for the accomplishment of a task which has occupied
Premiers supposed to have been far more favourably cir-
cumstanced ten days or a fortnight. He received her
Majesty's commands on Thursday, and went down to
Windsor, where—touching attention !—tho band of the
Slough Rifles was waiting to welcome him, on Saturday
with the list of the Cabinet in his pocket. .Never
was a Cabinet run together in such a hurry, and never
was so odd a production exhibited to the British public.
That it includes some able men, that it represents nearly
every section of the Liberal party, we allow ; but its
elements are singularly incongruous, and the different
offices, with two or three exceptions, seem to have been
distributed, not from any consideration of the fitness of
the man for the Ministry, but by a lottery. A better
illustration of the time-honoured British custom of putting
the round men in the square holes and the square men in
the round holes has never been furnished. The omissions
in this list of the new Cabinet will strike everybody. Neither
Mr. Forster, Mr. Stansfeld, nor Mr. Brand, whose presence
the Liberal organs declared was indispensable, have a
place in it. Mr. Milner Gibson, the Marquis of Harting
ton, the Duke of Somerset, Lords Halifax and Stanley of
Alderley, are also unprovided for. Mr. Ayrton, Mr.
Cowper, and Mr. Rugessen and Lord Dufferin will
will probably be content with subordinate places ; but the
gentlemen we named before can hardly accept any office
which does not•give a seat in the Cabinet, and not even
the acceptance of office by Mr. Bright will satisfy the
Radicals for the exclusion, however necessary, of their
representative " young men," Messrs. Forster and
Stansfeld.

The Telegraph, observing that Mr. Bright's post is his
own choice, says that not for the first time has he shewn as
utterly unselfish desire to postpone all personal considera-
tions, and to help his leader in any fashion or in any way—
either by standing out, a friendly looker-on, or by taking
a post which, while comparatively humble, will give him
his full share of Cabinet responsibility. All things con-
sidered, the Chancellorship of the Exchequer is, perhaps,
the best position into which Mr. Lowe could have been put.
Not to put it too finely, he has " a temper of his
own." In a department where he would have exercised
direct rule over permanent officials, and been able practi-
cally to carry out his own extremely concrete ideas on
s
ersploleste:i
cgidtahesl qualities—thoseahani n,
nd
wt hi ttoohs e
cfmonue
snl
tt faults annoutfol
tt" hisoal°ll
always
thatsoyinss
withthatd o n,
accustomed to obey. But the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, wielding an immediate power in a
small office, has a wide criticising control over all
the departments of the State ; and we are quite sure that
Mr. Lowe will be a fearless financial critic. All the other
appointments have some indisputable and cogent recom-
mendation. At the same time, Mr. Gladstone cannot
fail to observe that the Cabinet already contains an ample
measure of the " aristocratic " element; and the country
will not be satisfied unless the Ministry be further rein-
forced by the addition of more than one distinguished
commoner. If that be done, we shall have, in the best
sense of the word, a strong Cabinet.
The Post, admitting that the Cabinet is an amalgams.
non of all the Liberal elements, inquires whether, sup-
posing Mr. Gladstone gets a whole team into harness, he
can drive it. Will Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe pull top).
ther? It may he replied that on the question of the Irish
Church they will; but is Mr. Gladstone making a Minis-
try simply to bring that question to the inevitable conclu-
sion? Mr. Lowe and Mr. Bright will hardly agree
about education ; and as to foreign affairs, Lora
Clarendon, trained in the school of Palmerston,
will certainly nut entertain the notions which
Mr. Br:ght has eloquently expounded on a hun-
dred platforms. Mr. Gladstone's arrangements may
be susceptible of another interpretation ; but political
influence depends on political integrity, anti if Mr. Bright
or Mr. Lowe were capable of suppressing their convic-
tions, or compromising their opinions, they could bring to
his Ministry no supp.nt worth having.

In the opinion of the Star, it is upon the preparation
which Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet evinces for the work of
retrenchment that he is most heartily to be con-
gratulated. Mr. Gladstone himself, as First Lord;
Mr. Lowe— an absolutely implacable economist__ as
Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Childers—who has
vowed himself to naval economy—as First Lord of the
Admiralty; and Mr. Cardwell—a thoroughly Peelite
administrator—at the War Office, will form a quadrilateral
which__the oPendiDg clmeo 111 YAW.