THE NEW CABINET. T HE new Cabinet, it is nearly certain,
though all the names are not yet announced, will be a very strong one,—perhaps even a trifle too strong. The men who seceded in 1886 were, with the exception of Mr. Gladstone, the very flower of the Liberal party; and when they have coalesced with the pick of the Conservatives, the result is necessarily a Governing Committee of almost unprece- dented strength. With Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Henry James, Mr. Goschen, and Lord Lansdowne, all consulting together, the nation will want for nothing that it can hope to gain, either from experience or character, or intellectual force, in its guiding men. If anything, there are rather too many capabilities. It may strike many readers as a paradox if we say that a Cabinet can be too strong, because each Department must benefit by having a strong man at its head ; but we are thinking of the whole body as the Committee to which we intrust i the Empire, and are not so sure that the doubt is para- doxical. Strong men are always separate men, and are apt to dispute, or if they avoid that, to compromise with each other out of pure respect and regard till the strength of their policy is in inverse proportion to the strength of the men who have agreed to it. Will is as important to a Government as brains, and to get a coherent and unyield- ing will out of nine or ten thoroughly competent men is not an easy task, would not, but for tradition, and the weight of the forces which bind them together, be a pos- sible one. Prince Bismarck or Mr. Gladstone, plus so many " items," makes up a strong governing body, and one too with a well-developed tendency to unanimity. Under our system, moreover, as worked of late years, there has always been an interior Cabinet, invisible to the public, unknown even to Parliament, but perhaps, for that very reason, a most effective, yet flexible, instrument of government ; and we scarcely see, if every Minister is a man who might be Premier, how such a Committee is to be formed. The Committee should contain only three, and who is to be left out ? It was one secret of Mr.
Gladstone's power, as well as of his weakness, that he liked inferior colleagues, and when occasion required, could shed them as indifferently as a tree sheds its leaves ; but in this Cabinet all the leaves are branches, and shed- ding any one of them would cause a reverberation through the forest. Still, it is ungrateful to grumble at Providence for making one too strong—we once heard a man do it, though, on the ground that when he pushed through a crowd he hurt his fellow-creatures too much—and the danger, if it be one, is unavoidable. The Cabinet is a result of the coalition of two parties honestly made and on just terms, and as the Liberal Unionists, like the Peelites of 1853, are almost all officers, it is only natural that in the joint Committee there should be something of an overplus of genuine leaders. Certainly, for sheer ability to govern, there has been no such Cabinet in our time. Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Devonshire, Mr.
Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, there are five men to any one of whom the country would frankly intrust its destinies, while Lord Lansdowne, though little known to the people, is one of those Anglo-Irishmen who can rule by a sort of instinct, and has successfully governed a mighty Empire without Parliamentary help.
The six are a little too nearly equal, but the country should prosper under such a Committee, and they will certainly attract to them every kind of Conservative voter, from the Scotch Tory, who is almost as reactionary as a Continental noble, to the Liberal Unionist of the Mid- lands, who would be a Radical if he could bring him- self to endure Irish domination and Socialist proclivities.
We cannot see that any variety of Unionist opinion has been left out, for Lord Salisbury represents in a way the ecclesiastical side of the party, and we rejoice to think that in forming it, representation by regions was not so much as thought of. This is not a Federal Republic yet, and the idea that a geographical section of it needs special representation, that Scotland or Ireland or Wales, for instance, cannot be represented by a. Londoner, is opposed to the central idea of Unionism. Scotland and Ireland and London are all present in the Cabinet, but they are not there for that reason, and we no more expect Mr. Balfour to plead Scotch interests than we expect him to wear a kilt.
We wonder whether, in forming a Cabinet, it really matters who fills what office. The public thinks it does, but we have a fancy that Premiers, when they draw up their lists, shift their candidates from office to office without much consideration of their special fitness. Even the Exchequer, which would seem to require an expert, was filled by Lord Randolph Churchill, who knew any- thing better than finance, and we have just seen Mr. Fowler, of all living beings, make an admirable Great Mogul. The unbroken evidence of all Cabinets since 1688, is that competent statesmen can fill any office well, for one reason, because they do not irritate the experienced experts below them, as an expert in the work would be nearly sure, to do ; and a system which lasts two hundred years is pretty sure to have some root of vitality embedded in it. We have, therefore, little to say about the roundness or squareness of men in square or round holes. We should have pre- ferred, we confess, to see Mr. Chamberlain at the War Office, believing that his energy and will and determina- tion to have a penny worth for a penny are exactly the qualities required in that department, particularly during a process of reorganisation. Somebody is wanted there who can dismiss as a manufacturer dismisses his hands, and who will insist that stock must be taken exactly, even though the shareholders are appalled by the figure assigned for depreciation. War is a business first of all, and a man of business who is also a statesman would seem the most fitting head of the War Office. Mr. Chamberlain, however, as Member for Bir- mingham, would have been exposed to many attacks about his assignment of contracts, he likes the Colonies, and we doubt not he will govern them well, our only fear, indeed, being that he may wish them to progress a little too well and too fast. Forestry is an admirable pursuit, but teak and oak need no pruning, and it is a curious fact that the great trees grow in the primeval forest much thicker than a scientific planter considers at all wise. Mr. Chamberlain's one difficulty will be to efface himself, and let the "ruined" Colonies pull through for themselves as, except in the West Indies, they almost invariably do, blundering somehow, as Great Britain has done, out of deep water into shallow, and then upon dry land. If there is a difficulty, however, anywhere, Mr. Chamberlain will meet it with decision ; he is quite as strong as Mr. Rhodes, and we hope he will be able to agree with Lord Salisbury to take over the rest of our African possessions now left to the Foreign Office, which has little experience of that kind of work. Mr. Goschen, of course, has been Lord High Admiral before, and in spite of Mr. Gilbert's verses, attracted the full confidence of the department ; but we do not quite understand why he was not assigned the Exchequer, and have rather a dread of Sir Michael Hicks - Beach in that office. Sir Michael, however, knows the work well; he could, if he tried, we think, suggest a thorough reform in rating, and if his sympathies are rather with agriculturists than townsfolk, why the agriculturists ought to have some sympathy at last. They are the only class who really suffer permanently, and their patience, under continuous hail, entitles them to a consideration which it also prevents their receiving. The Home Office is not yet filled, but rumonr points to Mr. Matthews, who formerly filled the place with the highest credit. It is good of him, or of any one of his claims, to offer himself as a target for the shots always aimed at the unlucky Home Secretary. His is not a pleasant post. If he puts down a riot he is a massacring murderer, if he hangs a poisoner he is worse than a murderer ; and if he lets out a prisoner, he does it from some base political motive. The laws of slander are suspended for the torture of the Home Secretary, and he requires not only a thick skin but armour impervious to poisoned arrows. We dare say Mr. Matthews will not mind much ; but, neverthe- less, it is good of him not to seek for equal distinction and more comfort in a quieter post. Lastly, if Sir H. James is not to be Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury is probably as good a Chancellor as could be obtained, though his goodness is not precisely that of his predecessor, Lord Herschell, who was " the glue of the Liberal Cabinet." We will never, however, admit that an old Chancellor has a claim " because he saves a pension." Ten pensions would not pay the losses to be caused by ten minutes' bad advice on a legal point, and the Cabinet is the cheapest working Sovereign of any great State in Europe. It does not cost £70,000 a year ; and to spoil it in any one de- partment, for the sake of a salary or a pension, is the very worst kind of democratic mismanagement. Lord Haisbury is an excellent Chancellor ; but if there had been a better one in sight, his pension ought never to have entered the thoughts of the advisers of the Crown. The announced and reported Cabinet as a whole, and in detail, will do ; and the success of its formation is no slight testimony to the strong indraught with which the executive work of governing still attracts the best ability in the Kingdom.
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