Mr. Henry Matthews, the ex-Home Secretary, and Mr. Chamberlain were
present on Wednesday at a banquet given by the Midland Conservative Club to celebrate the Unionist victories in the Midlands. Mr. Matthews, in proposing the health of the Queen, and mentioning her kindness in excusing him from the personal visit to Osborne for the surrender of the Seale of Office in order that he might not break his en- gagement with the Midland Conservative Club, remarked that it was, perhaps, painful to the Queen, after so many years of a useful and prosperous reign, "to be confronted with some of the most difficult constitutional problems that any Sovereign ever had to face." For this remark he has been severely censured by the Pall Mall Gazelle, as if it implied that the Queen is presumably hostile to Irish Home-rule. Perhaps it would be better not to mention the Sovereign at all in any connection that might suggest -political inferences concerning her personal bias to political busybodies ; but it is perfectly obvious that the Queen at her age might deeply regret having to confront such a problem as the complete revision of the union between Great Britain and Ireland, whethei she were on the whole disposed personally to approve that revision or to dislike it. The Queen is ten years younger than Mr. Gladstone. But at seventy-three she is probably most reluctant to enter, in conjunction with a Minister of eighty-three, on an anxious and very responsible duty. We have no doubt that Mr. Gladstone himself might quite honestly say the same, though his reluctance to be confronted with a difficult and dangerous problem at an age when difficult and dangerous problems are specially unwelcome, would not imply any aversion to the scheme by which, as everybody knows, he thinks that it could best be solved.
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