The list of the reconstructed Cabinet was published on Tuesday.
It was delayed, Mr. Balfour says, by the negotiations with Lord Milner, which failed, and it bears evident marks of a kind of despair. Mr. Austen Chamber- lain, as was expected, has been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to the surprise of the public, Mr. Alfred Lyttelton has been made Secretary for the Colonies. Mr. H. O. Arnold-Forster becomes Secretary for War, and Mr. Brodrick is transferred to the Secretaryship for India. Mr. A. Graham Murray is selected as Secretary for Scotland, and Lord Stanley as Postmaster- General. We have commented upon these appointments elsewhere, but may remark here that they have been generally received, even by Conservatives, as a confession that the Prime Minister has lost the best of his followers and is com- pelled to fall back upon second-rate men. The Times, for instance, is actually compelled to praise Mr. Lyttelton as a cricketer ! He is an excellent man in his way, but it never occurred to any one to think of him as Colonial Secretary, and, indeed, the majority of the public were unaware of his existence. It is now a pithless Cabinet; but the idea is that it will struggle on till Parliament meets in February, and in that time something may turn up. Carlyle called such political arrangements government by blind man's buff ; but the house of England has better fortune than the house of France.
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