The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-04 00:00:00

LOiVDON, FRIDAY, DEC. 4, 1868.

it is not only that the outgoing Prime Minister has
done the right thing in resigning immediately upon
the completion of the General Elections, and as soon
as possible before the meeting of the new Parliament
—he has done the right thing also in, at once, un-
hesitatingly, advising her MAJESTY to send for Mr.
GLADSTONE as his successor in the Premiership. Even
the most captious of his opponents are constrained to
recognise in these last acts marking the close of his
tenure of office as Head of her MAJESTY'S Government,
a readiness on the part of Mr. DISRAELI to accept
at once frankly the decision of the country, and a
determination on his own part to give fair play to
the Leader of the in-coming Government. Already
Mr. GLADSTONE has set his hand energetically to the
work of constructing the new Cabinet-Lhis first
Cabinet. Called upon now, for the first time, by
his SOVEREIGN to undertake the supreme responsibi-
lity of forming an Administration, he is happily
emancipated, in a great measure, at the very out-
set, from the trammels of family interest and
party ties which have hitherto so seriously hampered
whosoever has been required until now to build up
the fabric of a Liberal Government. With a new
Premier like Mr. GLADSTONE summoned to the front,
it is to be hoped that we have at last got rid at ono
clean sweep of all those old-world Whig Administra-
tors, who by weighing her down to the gunwales have
heretofore nearly waterlogged the Vessel of the State.
To enumerate them might seem invidious and would
certainly be quite unnecessary. We all know them,
those life-in-death old Dodos of Whiggerypur et simple,
R hose names have until now cropped up by a sort of i
fatal necessity, from whom there seemed to be no
escape, whenever a Liberal Government had to be
constructed, now by Lord RUSSELL, now by Lord
PALIIEP,STON. Pray heaven we are at length quite
rid of them—the new Premier bringing in with him,
as we shall hope, new colleagues fitted by their caps-
city and by their antecedents to work with him as
energetically as the age certainly now requires. A
select few, but only, we will most earnestly
trust, a very select few of the old familiar mines, of
the names of those statesmen of the Liberal party
who are not effete, who are not obsolete, who are not
anachronisms, will, as a matter of course, and it
may be added as a proceeding in itself in every
way most advisable, be included in the list
of our administrators under Mr. GLADSTONE'S
Premiership. Statesmen there will be, however,
that the country will not be disposed to laugh
at when they come to be announced : as would
be inevitable with those others—the old Fogies of
Whigdom —who must, henceforth, be relegated to the
back benches with inexorable determination. Con-
spicuous among the select few still to be wisely in-
cluded in the list as among the recognized leaden of
the Liberal Party, will, for certain, we may presume, I
be numbered such men as Earl GRANVILLE,
as the Earl of CLARENDos, as the Duke of ARGYLL,
and as Mr CARDWELL. And together with these, there
arc men of mark in both Houses, but more particu- I
larly in the Ilouse of Commons, from among whom
Mr. GLADSTONE will have no difficulty in selecting
administrators worthy by their grasp of genius of
co-operating with him, and with such colleagues as
those of known repute whom we have just now
enumerated, in the onerous yet covetted responsibility
of carrying on the work of the QUEEN'S Govern-
ment. Whether, among others, the two most gifted
of them all can be induced to work amicably toge-
ther, it remains yet to be seen. The possibility of this
being accomplished is still problematical and to its
accomplishment Mr. GLADSTONE will assuredly,
within the next few days, have to direct the whole
of his powers of inducement—to the end that
statesmen as antipathetical as Mr. BRIGHT and
Mr. LOWE may, if possible, be brought together
within the range of the same Cabinet. For Mr.
LOWE, as everyone feels, there is a new administra-
tive department Which has yet to be called into exis-
tence, and for the inauguration of which, by himself,
as its first administrator, he is as peculiarly well quali-
fied as he is recognizably well qualified to represent
that new constituency of the University of London, by
which he was only the other day elected, so to speak,
nemine contradicente and by acclamation. For Mr.
BRIGHT, on the other hand, there aro several posts of
distinction that he might fairly select from, so far as
his capacity for filling them is in itself concerned—
if only it should prove practicable by Mr. GLAD-
\ STONE to include among his Ministerial colleagues
his chief adviser of late years outside the
Cabinet, the member for Birmingham. 7 hat
especially is problematical. That more than
any ether nomination to the new Ministry that
could be named, will be looked for with the greatest
eagerness and curiosity by the people out of doors.
Apart from Mr. BRIGHT and Mr. LowE, there are
other claimants to consideration, however, whose
names are upon men's lips now repeatedly as
probable members of the New Cabinet—more
I than by anything else we might say by a sort
of popular presentiment. Mr. WILLIAM EDWARD
I FORSTER is one of these, member for Bradford, aged
fifty, an alpaca manufacturer, and a well-known
anti-slavery advocate, wbo was first elected a member
of the House of Commons only seven years ago, when
he stood, and stood successfully, for his present consti-
tuency. Another of these possible, or, shall we say,
probable, Ministers under Mr. GLADSTONE'S Pre-
miership is Mr. lluctit CULLING EARDLEY CHILDERS,
aged forty-one, at once a Cambridge man and an
Australian Administrator (as, by the way, Mr. LOWE
was before him), and who, in the last Liberal Admi-
nistration, was for a few months, between 1861 and
1865, Civil Lord of the Admiralty. To Mr. Cum-
DERS, by popular rumour, is allotted the Chancellor-
ship of the Exchequer : to Mr. W. E. FORSTER the
Secretaryship of State for the Colonies. However
much ground there may be, or not, for rumours of
this character, certain it is that Mr. GLADsToNE's only
embarrassment will be, as the French have it, an
embarrassment of riches, both as regards the number
of claimants for his consideration as colleagues and of
supporters in the House of Commons, whose various
opinions will have to be consulted by him not less
in his mode of constructing, than in the policy
which have to animate, his new Administration.

THE State having elected its representative body
the Church is about to follow that example. Parlia-
ment has been constituted, and it now remains for
Convocation to be so. Laymen know little of the
second event, and it therefore causes small interest
throughout the country, and is little commented