CABINET-MAKING.

nselection of Cabinet Ministers made by President rant brings into strong relief a unique peculiarity of the British Constitution. Alone in the world we limit our own selection for the Executive Government avowedly to less than a thousand, and really to less than two hundred men. In countries governed by "despots," that is, among more than one-half the human race, the Sovereign is unrestrained in his choice of agents, may, and frequently does, stoop down amongst the lowest of the people, to discover the man competent to administer or to save the State. A custom, we believe, binds the Emperor of China to choose most of his agents among the literati; but the Czar, the Shah, the Sultan, the only perfect despots known to Europe, may choose without reference to any qualification whatever, save competence and creed. Birth acts, if at all, as a slight disqualification ; and as to occupation, there is nothing whatever to prevent a trooper or a servant from becoming Premier. The Sovereign chooses, and except in the rarest instances there is nothing whatever, even of social etiquette, to limit his choice. As the Sovereign himself is in such countries the real ruler, and responsible to his people with his life, this freedom of choice is natural and far from inconvenient. It has been, in fact, very often the safeguard of dynasties, which but for this unlimited right of choice would have perished of the mental decay which affects sooner or later all families whose position is secure. Oddly enough, however, a provision guaranteeing this freedom has been inserted in all paper Constitutions ; and in France, Italy, North Germany, and Prussia the Sovereign is equally free, can, and sometimes does, raise men to the highest offices without claim other than his own belief that they are competent. Parliament has a veto on such appointments, but no right of election, and the veto cannot be exercised except in very rare instances until the nominee has visibly failed. The King of Prussia made a very little-known diplomatist his Premier ; the Emperor of Austria appointed one who was not even a subject Chancellor of his Empire ; the Emperor of the French raised a tenth-rate advocate into a Vice-King ; and the King of Italy made a Chamberlain of his court, Minister of Finance,—all four appointments, we should add, turning out well. In two at least of these countries,—Austria and Italy,—the Chambers really rule, yet they have no more to do with the choice of the Executive than with the choice of the Sovereign's hairdressers or aides-de-camp, Ministers sitting and speaking in both Houses, by virtue of their offices alone. The Sovereign is to choose, the Parliament only to depose,— that is the theory, or, at all events, the practice of Continental constitutionalists. From widely different motives a power of choice still more liberal has been accorded to the American President. He was intended to be, to a great extent, independent of the Legislature ; his Ministers are merely his chief clerks, and consequently he selects whom he will Without reference to anything, even nativity, except his own judgment of their competence, and the law that a Secretary must not be actively engaged in business. Once appointed, no Minister can be removed without the President's consent. Opinion is in favour of this independence as regards the Cabinet, and the Senate, though invested with a power of veto on all appointments, which it often exerts to reject diplomatists, rarely interfere with a nomination to Cabinet office. The Ministers are the President's agents, and he, not the people, or the party which elected him, is responsible for his choice. President Grant, who disbelieves in politicians, and intends to be his own Premier, has used his privilege to the utmost, has, indeed, made his choice as freely as any Czar, attending to nothing except his own view as to competence for the work. Of the seven members of his first-named Cabinet, three, it is true, have sat in Congress, but only one, Mr. Washburne, can be credited with any political reputation, and he was selected because he was the President's intimate friend ; while the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Adolph Bone; the Attorney-General, Mr. G. E. Roar; and the Financial Secretary, Mr. Stewart, were men absolutely without political position of any kind ; and the

last-named is a mighty shopkeeper, who, if he retains his shop, is disqualified by law from holding the appointment. Not one of them all has ever been a Minister, not one can be considered a party leader, not one would, under any circumstances, have been selected by Congress for the post he has been appointed to fill. Yet every one, except Mr. Stewart, has been accepted by the Senate,—Mr. Washburne's subsequent resignation being quite voluntary,—and the people a; large seem rather amused than horrified at the discomfiture of the politicians.

Is the world right, or is Great Britain right? At first sight the world would seem to have it all its own way, for there can be no doubt that any extension of the right of choice must increase the number of the capacities among whom choice may be made. The ruler is much more likely to find the man he wants among six millions of men than among eight hundred, and administrative ability may exist without the ability to please a populace. English statesmen are often fettered by the practice which forbids them to seat the most competent in the Cabinet without reference to any county or borough, and in two departments, at least, the inconsistency between the professional and the Parliamentary careers is a serious injury to the country. We cannot secure such a succession of debating soldiers and eloquent sailors as would enable us to confine the Ministries of War and of Marine to skilled professionals, and hence a division of authority always dangerous and sometimes fatal to departmental efficiency. So greatoccasionally is this evil, that many doubt whether constitutional etiquette might not be altered as regards these two appointments ; and but that a General like Wellington, or an Admiral like Nelson, can always be made a Peer, the restriction could scarcely have been maintained. There is another question, however, to be examined besides the advantage of free choice, before decision can be given against Great Britain, and that is the capacity of the chooser. Which is more likely to choose wisely, the Chamber or the Sovereign ?—for that, and not the right of choice, is the real question at issue. In either case the ruler selects, directly or indirectly ; and the dispute is really whether for the purposes of such selection a chamber or a person is the most fitting ruler. The evidence of history is divided, for, after all, an aristocratic mob chose all the great Athenian leaders, the Senate selected the men who built the Roman power, Conclaves have elected the greatest Popes, and the free Parliament of Italy made Cavour a temporary despot. In rare cases, and for certain purposes, it may be admitted that' the individual chooses best ; but through a long course of years, and under many varieties of circumstance, the Assembly is, we suspect, upon the whole, the more trustworthy authority, provided always that it limits its choice to an area conterminous with its knowledge. Kings and Presidents, even when men of genius, make shocking mistakes, and are perpetually tempted to mistake people who simply repeat their patron's ideas for the most efficient men. Outside the army, Frederic the Great never had a decent servant, and inside it promoted no man of commanding genius. Napoleon had a Minister or two of some capacity, Fouch6 perhaps being the ablest ; but he had none to compare with Carnet, whom the Convention selected, or Talleyrand, who rose to eminence by debate. The present Napoleon seems at last, by a sort of process of exhaustion, to have lighted on a great organizer in General Niel, an able Premier in M. Rouher, and a successful Edilo in Baron Haussmann ; but he has been, for the most part, indifferently served throughout his reign, and has rather lost than gained by consulting others' opinion. A King, no doubt, chose Bismarck, but Bismarck's predecessor was in all but birth a most ordinary person ; and a Parliament chose Cavour. President Grant in trusting to himself may have "struck oil," but, except in the case of Mr. Washburne, he cannot be said to have had any grounds for confidence. Mr. Stewart might be a good selection, but the capacity for fortune-making is no proof of governing power, and it was a distinct blunder to choose a man disqualified by law. The limit of individual knowledge, even when the individual is first-rate, is a great drawback to a,

single ruler when selecting untried men for promotion ; and when he is not first-rate, he seldom discovers those who are.

Louis XIII. did, and William I. of Prussia, and both were average men, but the tendency of ordinary Kings is towards Mr. Percevals. A Chamber, on the other hand, offers the nation all

the chances a dynasty can, for it may be ruled by a man of genius who guides its judgment, while it has as a permanent faculty, the power of telling who is and who is not a man of ability. About specialties it may fail, and we are inclined to think it does fail, a Chamber's choice of Generals, Admirals, Engineers, or Architects being usually either blind or bad ; but the main qualification for government is ability to govern, and that a House of Commons can find out, can test in fact by the most searching of all tests, "Can he govern us?" There is no dynasty, hereditary or elected, of equal duration which can quite compare with the roll of English Premiers since 1688,— more especially if we remember their double duty to satisfy as well as govern the nation,—and the reason alike of success and failure is patent to any observer. In choosing an architect, Parliament is compelled to look beyond the men it knows, and as beyond that area it cannot know the inside of a candidate as an individual can, it fails ; but in choosing a Premier it keeps within the area within which it collectively knows more than any individual can, and it succeeds. The practical inconvenience of the restriction to its own members is balanced by the practical convenience of knowing its men, and the practical inconvenience might be reduced to an inappreciable quantity. Let but the monopoly of the rich be abolished, as Mr. Fawcett's Bill would have abolished it, and any man competent to help in governing England would be sure of a Parliamentary seat as if his Sovereign could seat him. The single demand is that he should prove his claim, and except in the rarest instances, instances in which accident, or opportunity, or Providence has revealed latent qualities to rulers without revealing them to the people, that is a wise demand.

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMERCE IN THE LORDS.

THE Lower House of Convocation is of opinion that the Disestablishment of the Irish Church will " un-Christianize " the Government of Ireland. We should like, however, to have a little discussion with some of those reverend gentlemen as to what it would need to un-Christianize the Government of England. Of course, if they have sunk so completely into the conventional view of things as to hold that the Government of England remains Christian, in spite of all that its leading statesmen may believe and do, so long as it legally " establishes " any form of the Christian faith, and ceases to be Christian, in spite of all that its leading statesmen may believe and do, directly it breaks that legal tie between the secular Government and the Church, there is an end of the controversy,—and an end which seems to us to prove that the reverend gentlemen who talk of Christianizingand un-Christianizing governments, know nothing at all of what Christian service means. But if we are to judge by our Lord's own selfdenying spirit of life and action as to what Christianizes and what nil-Christianizes a government, we should certainly have said that Mr. Gladstone is now doing more to Christianize the English Government than has been attempted by our, on the whole, manly, and, intentionally at least, just, but decidedly rather pagan Administrations for some generations back. Look only at the spirit of the House of Lords in relation to Christianity as evinced by the very interesting and instructive conversation about our Missionaries in China, between the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Clarendon on the one side, and Earl Grey and the Bishops ef St. David's and Peterborough on the other side, last Tuesday evening. The Duke of Somerset's tone was thoroughly scornful to the Missionaries as to troublesome enthusiasts who stir up the political waters with their meddling, and who need at least as much curbing as the Roman authorities thought it desirable to apply to St. Paul and the other Christian missionaries of the first age. The Bishop of Peterborough reminded the noble duke that if all missionaries bad been prevented in like manner from becoming " troublesome " in their day, neither he himself nor the noble duke would now be Christians. But perhaps the Duke of Somerset would, if he were quite frank, admit that there is a question as to the sense in which he is a Christian, as there is certainly such a question as to most of us. Clearly, in one thing, he is not a Christian. He has no belief at all in an aggressive faith that would hazard everything, life itself, for a chance of announcing a revelation. He has no sympathy with the spirit in which the Gospel was first spread. On the contrary, both he and Lord Clarendon, while they regard missionaries as in their place so long as they act as the camp-followers of "commerce," and humbly follow "in its wake,"—to use Lord Clarendon's own recommendation to the Missionary Society,—condemn these same missionaries strongly for regarding their message as a more important one than that of "piece-goods." Each Foreign

Secretary in turn regards it as part of his legitimate policy to enforce the treaty rights of English commerce in China. Only the other day Sir Rutherford Alcock was most peremptory in demanding reparation for some English traders who had been asserting their "treaty rights" in the interior. But Foreign Secretary after Foreign Secretary devotes his mind to the problem of curbing missionaries as earnestly as he does to the problem of defending traders in China. Now what are we to say to that as a symptom of the Christianity of the class of statesmen who preside at our Foreign Office ? Can we honestly say that, as a rule, they do think the Christian faith half as important as even the unscrupulous and demoralizing portion of our commerce ? Is it possible to misinterpret the tone of the Duke of Somerset's inquiry as to these " troublesome " people, and Lord Clarendon's reply that he has earnestly recommended them to keep "in the wake "of trade ?

Is it not that Christianity is a very nice sentiment, to be indulged in due season, when all the more important objects of life, like trade, for instance, have been provided for ; but that till then, why, statesmen should try to keep down its troublesome zeal, and in order to do so, may well avail themselves of any taunts such as come in their way, — for instance, that borrowed so eagerly by the Duke of Somerset from some Chinese mandarin, that, at least till France and England have settled their differences as to the relative claims of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, it will be certainly safer to defer the duty of spreading either faith ?

We admit that Earl Grey's remarks on the subject were in a very different tone, and, indeed, as wise and earnest as either Dr. Thirlwall or Dr. Magee could have desired. He put it very strongly that as the whole power of Christianity consists in its doctrine of self-sacrifice, and of pure disinterestedness, missionaries who hazard their own life and incur the risk of terrible sufferings for the purpose of spreading their faith,

cannot properly ask to be supported by force,—which means retaliation or the threat of it,—lest they give up the whole ground on which they stand. Commerce, which

takes its stand on enlightened selfishness, is not going out of its way in demanding its rights wherever it has any, though statesmen may fairly warn the missionaries of Commerce where they can and where they cannot support them, and leave them to take the consequences of their own rashness if they outstep the prescribed limits. But missionaries cannot pro perly do even as much as this. They injure their own cause by inviting retaliation or retribution on their own behalf. Neither in the treaty ports, nor out of them, can mission aries, if they are true to their own highest ideal, invite their own country to do violenee to the Chinese on their behalf. They go in the name of a higher principle, and to the higher principle they should be loyal. If they claim their rights as British subjects to reprisals or penalties inflicted on those to whom they were to have brought spiritual light and the teaching of the Cross, they repudiate their own mission and ignore the teaching of the Cross. Hence, we are disposed to think that the Govern ment would really be right in declining to threaten war or inflict war on China for the sake of any missionary who has exceeded the bounds where his life is safe. He should, of course, be fairly warned what those bounds are, and that the

Government do not hold it even a right precedent, much less a wise one, to carry Christianity into China vi et armis. It

cannot but throw an utterly false light over the true meaning of Christianity. And for the sake of the cause itself, therefore, it is wholly right that those who elect to dare torture and death rather than not spread their faith, should be allowed to endure torture and death rather than be rescued by gunboats and Armstrong guns. The torture and death, if nobly

borne, may after all spread the faith which the sufferers want to spread. But the torture and death inflicted by Christian guns on behalf of Christian missionaries will certainly never make a single true convert as long as the world lasts.

So much is, we think, due to the principle contended for by the statesmen. But what is not due to it, and what seems to us to prove that the Christianity of our Government is not a

question of disestablislunent,' but a question of the spirit of our actions,—is the tone which they take of infinite condescen

sion, not without a flavour of contempt, for true Christian missionaries, as if they were not the pioneers of civilization, but its most subordinate and insignificant followers. There is a real and sound reason why the State should deal on a different basis with the legal rights of traders and the legal rights of missionaries,—namely, that to enforce the latter by armies and fleets cuts the ground from under

the missionary altogether, and that this ought to be evident to him, if it is not, when he first incurs the risk from which he suffers. But if we admit this to the full, why should any Englishman who really wishes to be, as well as to be thought, a Christian, hesitate to admit the infinitely higher claim of a true Christian missionary on our respect and veneration than of any mere trader ? If we assert the rights of the latter more keenly than of the former, that is not, or ought not to be, because we think them higher and more legitimate rights, but because we think them infinitely lower and less truly spiritual rights. The latter can maintain themselves by the supernatural power with which God inspires the heart of man. The former needs human law to back them up. This should, we think, be the tone of any truly Christian legislature in discussing such matters. It is not the prevailing tone of the House of Lords. But then, is the House of Lords, or indeed any other assembly of practical Englishmen, in spite of the English Establishment, on the whole a Christian assembly ?