PROBABLE CHANGE IN THE PERMANENT STAFF AT THE COLONIAL OFFICE.
A PARTICULAR duty awaits the next Colonial Minister, and we presume that Earl Grey will be quite equal to it. When Lord John Russell was last in power, as Secretary for the Colonies, he was understood to contemplate a change in the personnel of the office. It is said that he talked of requesting Mr. James Stephen, the permanent Under Secretary, to accept some other post, in which his great abilities might be more usefully employed, because they would be removed from a field of contest. On consideration however, the idea was abandoned, and Mr. Stephen is still Under Secretary. Lord John Russell enters power, as Prime Minister, with a vigorous coadjutor in Lord Grey ; and the same question again presents itself, under somewhat altered circumstances. We have no intention here to revive any of the old hostilities towards Mr. Stephen: since the day when he was the champion of one party, the target of another, asperities have softened, events have ma- tured, and the ends which were to be attained have been in part accomplished. His unquestionable powers for official business are remembered more distinctly in the calm. But the times, we say, have altered. Prejudices have sunk before the march of dents; many concessions to Colonial interests, which were de- clare(' impossible, have become, even in his reluctant hands, antlers of official routine. Now the change has not reached Mr. Stephen himself. He is a man of laborious and secluded habits, and his powers have been in great part devoted to a species of self-elaboration. But he attained the prime of life some years ,back, and there is no more stuff of the intellect to elaborate now than there was ten summers ago : James Stephen in 1846 is the same individual with James Stephen in 1836. He is ill-assorted, therefore, with the present course of affairs, and with the duties that it requires from him. While he remains in the Colonial -Office, he is the impersonation of the old struggles of which he was the champion : he cannot fashion his hand to the new prac- tices, but takes to them unkindly : wherefore is he an unfitting tool ; and old reconections make him an object of suspicion where none should be. The reasons that suggested his resignation formerly still obtain In all their force ; those which militated against it have decayed; and new ones requiring a change of hands have sprung up in the interval. There is therefore a strong expectation that Lord John Russell's original intention will be put in force.
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