THE MINISTERS AND THEIR OFFICES.
WHETHER a sceptic as to the agency of political design in Ministerial appointments would be able to establish a posteriori, as Paley did concerning the relation of the wheels of a watch to its purpose, that there had been a political designer in the selection of the men for the offices of the pre- sent Administration, or that that selection had been the result of accident, would depend, we think, not only on his examination of the individual adaptation of the parts, but also on his insight into the combined purpose of the whole. As regards the last,—the fitness of the Ministry, as a whole, for its special work of disestablishing the Irish Church, we do not think any one would doubt the force of the argument from design, or that the designer understood his work. The appointments which seem to us the most unfortunate for other reasons are most of them intelligible for this. For example, take the selection for the Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs, probably the most common-place, and also, we think, the worst,—if we regard its special duties,—in the whole list. It is quite possible that the Queen, who takes more personal interest in the Foreign Office than in any other department of State, may personally have preferred a Foreign Secretary to whom she has been so long accustomed, and who had acted in this department during the lifetime of the late Prince Consort. If so, it would certainly be desirable for the greater purpose of the Government to satisfy the Queen. It might also, no doubt, have been desirable to secure the hearty co-operation of a former Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who is, as all admit, an able debater, in the work before the Ministry, and this might only have been possible by restoring to Lord Clarendon that office for his administration of which Mr. Disraeli attacked him so pointedly in 186G. To have passed him over and effered him some other office might have seemed a partial concurrence in that criticism. As it is, a minister probably personally agreeable to the Crown has been secured, and two ex-Lords-Lieutenant of Ireland (Lord Clarendon and Lord Kimberley) have been enlisted as representatives of the Government in the House of Lords. Again, the omission of men of much greater political weight from the list of the Cabinet than many who are included in it,—the omission of Mr. Forster especially, whose judgment and power are worth, in our opinion, that of some three or four who have been included,—may be defended on the ground that while the Radicals at large, whom Mr. Forster represents, are firm for the proposed change, the middle-class waverers will be apt to be alarmed by too Radical a Cabinet, and to be won over by a large per-centage of titled ministers. Once more, the very odd appointment of Mr. Cardwell to the War Office, and of Mr. Lowe to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, when acute observers think that their duties should have been interchanged, is undoubtedly adapted to keep down other causes of disturbance while the great work is going forward. Mr. Lowe at the War Office would have stirred up muddy waters in a way certain to have brought plenty of imbroglios on the Administration. Mr. Cardwell will be placid and harm- less. Mr. Lowe at the Exchequer is tolerably out of harm's way. It is the safest place probably for an unpopular man,— especially with a Prime Minister over him who will be likely to receive most of the deputations on financial questions. Islanded in the deep solitude of circumambient figures, Mr. Lowe will be aloof from much danger. With a conciliatory Foreign Minister for the Continent, a conciliatory War Minister to deal with the Commander-in-Chief and the Army; a conciliatory (and very able) Home Minister, Mr. Austin Bruce, to deal with the country gentlemen ; a conciliatory (and- very able) Colonial Minister, Lord Granville, to deal with our rather touchy colonies, and with a good, large infusion of high titles into the Administration generally, to command the respect of the wavering middle class, we must admit that the Admi- nistration is one which presents the " curve of least resistance " to the high-running waves of popular opinion on the one great issue. Add to this that, as we have noted elsewhere, Mr. Gladstone has done much to balance the religious disinclination to disendowment of the Lord Chan- cellor whom he wished for, by appointing Sir W. Page Wood, —an authority at least as great with the religious Churchmen, —to that high post, and that he has stimulated materially the Irish enthusiasm in his favour by promoting a Roman Catholic, and a Roman Catholic so worthy of the dignity as Mr. Justice O'Hagan, to the Irish Lord Chancellorship,—and we think we shall have made out that Mr. Gladstone has designed, and very ably designed, his Administration, as a whole, for its greatest special work.
But when you look into some of the more important indi- vidual appointments, it becomes impossible to say that the adaptation of the special officers to their particular admi- nistrative work is at all well designed ; nay, many will think that in some cases the adaptation is no adaptation at all, or even an adaptation for doing the special work badly. Take the case of Lord Claren- don. He is to succeed a Minister whose one groat and con- spicuous merit it has been to put clearly before him what it was worth while to attempt, what it was not worth while to attempt, and what it was wholly mischievous to attempt, and who made the English Foreign Office a thoroughly business-like department of State. If we could have picked out anywhere a statesman whose administration at the Foreign Office has been conspicuously wanting in all these qualities, it is Lord Clarendon. He has always been a vague, smooth Foreign Minister. It was under him that England "drifted" into war in 1853, and no one who knows his despatches can deny that they were despatches admirably adapted for drifting, that they laid down no clear purpose beforehand, that they adhered to no distinct principles, that they were formed by the external pressure of events, shaped by the occasion, instead of anticipating dangers and contri- buting to shape events. Again, look at the conduct of Lord Clarendon at the Congress of Paris with regard to the Belgian Press, which Mr. Disraeli attacked so bitterly two years ago. No doubt it was a gross exag- geration to call Lord Clarendon's conduct " a conspiracy to put down the free press of Europe." Lord Clarendon was never guilty of any diplomatic act so audacious or well defined. He was always one of your sliding Foreign Ministers ; and that would not have been a sliding policy. What he did do was to make a faint and formal protest against England's taking part in any policy which looked like coercion to the press of a foreign State, to listen quietly to Count Buol's and Baron Manteuffol's tirades, and then agree to the following utterly vague and dangerous resolution :—" That all the Plenipotentiaries, and even those who consider themselves bound to reserve the freedom of the press, have not hesitated loudly to condemn the excesses in which the Belgian newspapers indulge with impunity, by recognizing the necessity of remedy- ing the real inconveniences which result from the uncontrolled licence which is so greatly abused in Belgium." There is no definition of what is regarded as " excesses," no limitation on the meaning of " the abuse of uncontrolled licence," nothing but a resolution which might mean anything in its mis- chievous and premeditated vagueness. Lord Clarendon said in the House of Lords two years ago that he had intended to condemn the Belgian Press only in those cases in which it had instigated to " political assassinations and revolutions." But if so, why did he not make it clear or precise how far he went, and decline to sign language which went much farther? What we find so dangerous in his character as a Foreign Minister is his want of lucidity and clear definition of purpose, his complacent disposition, his tendency to slide rather than walk, — in a word, his intelligent weakness. After Lord Stanley, these qualities are, moreover, precisely those which will be most distinctly observable and observed. Then look at Mr. Bright's post. He chose it himself, and chose it, we fear, for the very reason which shows how little it will suit him,—its comparatively slight work. But the Presidency of the Board of Trade is becoming, and ought to become, one of very great labour. That is the office which ought to organize the Irish Railways ; to supervise Railway accounts generally, so as to prevent the issue of debentures beyond the legal amount, and to discriminate the solvent from the insolvent companies ; and it should have a variety of other new tasks of the highest importance. It is an office precisely suited to Mr. Goachen's constructive, active, and lucid intellect. Mr. Bright has a strong prejudice against Government intervention. and will probably try to reduce it to a minimum. And we never heard that he had great power as a man of business at all. In the Irish Secretaryship he would have had a great sphere for his large practical sagacity,—especially in relation to his own land scheme for Ireland ;—and his mere appointment to that office would have been the most effective of all pledges of a thoroughly popular policy. Administratively, Mr. Bright is a loss of power at the Board of Trade, and Mr. Goschen a loss of power at the Poor Law Board, where you want not so much an acute and constructive intellect, as an absolutely inflexible purpose stimulated by an intense humanity. The humanity, doubtless, Mr. Goschen has ; the inflexibility of purpose he has at least to prove. At the Department of Trade he would have had his office with him ; at the Poor Law Board he will have it dead against him. That makes all the difference to a constructive and active intelligence like Mr. Goschen's. Then, as regards the departmental work, an odder appointment than Mr. Cardwell to the War Office, we do not remember to have seen. Mr. Cardwell has shown no special interest in War Office debates. He is certainly not great in the question of shields, batteries, or guns. He is not the man to assert the power of the War Office against the Horse Guards. He has no one special recommendation for the place, except that he will probably keep things quiet while a greater struggle is going on. At the Exchequer he would have been in his element. At the Colonies he would have been familiar with his work. At the War Office he seems to be both out of his element and a stranger to his work.
No doubt there are some appointments in which the men seem specially fitted to their work—Mr. Childers to the Admiralty, the Duke of Argyll to the India Office, Mr. Forster for Minister of Education (if he had only had a Cabinet seat), and Mr. Stansfeld, whom we should also have wished to see in the Cabinet, for the Treasury. But these are not the leading appointments, and we cannot help thinking that, while the Administration, as a whole, is admirably designed for the work of Disestablishing the Irish Church, the special allotment of offices is a good deal liable to the criticism that it puts the square men in the round holes, and vice vend.
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