THE SET AGAINST MR. GOSCHEN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] SIR,—You ask in your issue of November 7th, what is the root of the antagonism to Mr. Goschen ? Is not this an adequate answer ? The Birmingham Radical is eminently practical, and he naturally desires that the Liberal Premier who follows Mr. Gladstone shall be a Birmingham Radical, seated amidst a tractable Cabinet. Now, it has long been said that one of four men must succeed Mr. Gladstone as Liberal Premier, —Lord Hartington, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Chamberlain, or Sir Charles Dilke. Of those four, one has not improved his position lately ; one is heir to an octogenarian duke, and a Liberal Premier should sit in the House of Commons. The Birmingham Radical knows that a Cabinet may gradually prove squeezable, and may have reason to believe that had Mr. Goschen sat in the last Liberal Cabinet, its squeezability would have been less. Mr. Goschen has powers and antecedents that qualify him for the highest office under the Queen, and his experience is more varied than that o any living statesman, except Mr. Gladstone.
Mr. Goschen had been Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, President of the Local Government Board, and First Lord of the Admiralty, before he was forty, and owed every step in his career simply to his proved capacity. That he declined the Viceroyalty of India in 1880, is an open secret; and that he filled with marked success an unpaid and very difficult post at Constantinople, is matter of history. Mr. Goschen was, during that period, found to have that influence with Prince Bismarck that one strong mind has with another ; and, probably, no living man is fitter to be at once Premier and Foreign Minister of England.
A man of Mr. Goschen's calibre and moral courage is not easily driven ; and if he were less strong and independent all round, his refusal to accept the whole of the Apocryphal pro- gramme would be more venial in the sight of the Caucus.—
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