NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE work of Cabinet-making has proceeded all the week, but Lord Salisbury is evidently hampered by the restric- tions described elsewhere, and it is not complete even yet. Mr. Wyndham, however, has been appointed Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Gerald Balfour becomes President of the Beard of Trade, while Mr. Walter Long is transferred from the Department of Agriculture to the Local Government Board. Who is to be Postmaster-General is not yet settled, though Mr. Hanbury is generally named for the office, while his own will be filled in its turn by Mr. Austen Chamber. lain. Lord Cranborne is appointed Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Stanley Financial Secretary of the War Office, and Mr. Arnold-Forster Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty. Great heart-burnings have, of course, been caused by these selections, Tories objecting that too many of those selected are Liberal Unionists, while a section of the public, which insists on regarding every office under the Crown as a " berth," complains that the Premier appoints too many of his own relatives. What on earth does it signify whose relatives they are if they do good work for the com- munity P If we were to complain, it would be because Lord Salisbury has selected only one man of original mind—Mr. Arnold-Forster—and that he finds such difficulty in stepping out of the circle of well-born men amidst whom he has lived. Surely there must be some men of capability among the "gutter-bloods," and as they are a million to one it is not politic to ignore them so completely.
