Lord Salisbury made a very amusing speech on Monday, in
answer to Lord Stratheden and Campbell, who, in his own peculiarly heavy manner, had been trying to make out to the House of Lords that if Lord Salisbury had not been loaded with his duties at the Foreign Office, he could have thrown more life into his Premiership, and have prevented all sorts of misfortunes,—the mutinous behaviour of the Guards, for instance,—as well as brought about all sorts of good results by visiting the great Ministers of other Courts in their own abodes. Lord Salisbury replied that the shortcomings found fault with were the necessary shortcomings of his own nature, and would not have been at all less serious if he had not been Foreign Minister as well as Prime Minister. "It is very difficult for him to prove that these blunders were not the result of my own innate incapacity. I assure the noble Lord that if the two offices had been separated, I should have acted as I have done. That is the result of my own introspec- tion, and I must bid him abandon that kind of effort to cloak my shortcomings." As to the demand for a pre- cedent, Lord Salisbury thought you did not need a precedent to justify an arrangement which had become convenient, and which had not been made before, because in former times it was inconvenient. He was no stickler for precedents in mere matters of form. Of course it had not usually been convenient for Ministers who had to lead the Lower House to undertake the Foreign Office also. He himself should never have thought of combining two such offices; but sitting as he did in the House of Lords, the draft on his strength was comparatively small. So far, Lord Salisbury has certainly managed better alone than the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister have usually managed between them.
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