Mr. Disraeli must be already sketching out his Cabinet, by
far the most serious of his early difficulties. With the Peers he has no trouble, for we cannot think that with a real majority, and a separate office which he can exactly fill, even Lord Salisbury will hold out to the last. The India Office wants a master who can cope with this new horror, and he, while strong enough to do it, is strong enough also to bear the obloquy the impending failure will entail. Lord Cairns will, of course, be Lord Chancellor ; Lord Derby Foreign Secretary ; and if his health will permit it, Lord Carnaryon Secretary for the Colonies. The Cabinet is sure to have a duke or two, and the Privy Seal and the Postmaster-Generalship may content them, though we do not know the Duke who will be quite happy in ruling Mr. Scudamore. In any case, Mr. Disraeli can have no trouble in a House where he has a clear majority, even when revolutions have to be endorsed, and will really be troubled only in the Commons. There he has less strength, though Mr. Gathorne Hardy is ready for the Home Department, Sir Sey- mour Fitzgerald or Mr. Plunket for Ireland, Mr. Ward Hunt for Trade, and possibly Mr. Sclater-Booth for the Exchequer. Mr. W. H. Smith ought, as we have said elsewhere, to control Educa- tion, but the two most important offices, the Navy and the War Office, still remain unfilled. Th e Navy seldom passes out of the Corn- moos, and there is so much finance work to be done just now in the War Office that the department can hardly be given to a Peer. Almost any arrangement that seems probable will leave too much of the burden of debate on Mr. Disraeli's own shoulders ; but he has an opportunity of calling alp new men into the smaller offices, and is just the man to use it. If he has a virtue, it is, as he said at Newport-Pagnell, a sympathy with intellect.
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