TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CABINET CHANGES.
THE Ministerial changes have undoubtedly weakened the Go- vernment to a considerable degree, if only by the general uneasiness which they have caused. If that uneasiness seems excessive in proportion to the known facts, the very slightness of the known facts provokes the question, Why make the changes with so little apparent reason ? In the absence of obvious necessity, some hidden necessity is suspected. If the pressure did not come from without, there must be some restless cause of unsettlement within the Cabinet—some notion of weakness, if not the fact—some self-sus- picion, suggestive of suspicion for others. Hence a disposition to view each one of the new appointments with distrust.
This is carried se far, that the substitution of Lord Granville for Mr. Strutt as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster occasions strictures on the indignity offered to Mr. Strutt, and the dispa- ragement inflicted on Lord Granville by removing him to a lower post than the Presidency of the Council. There is, however, little present ground for censure : if there is any mistake, it belongs to the past. It is not so difficult to find a reason for Mr. Strutt's retirement as for his original appointment; and no exploits, official or political, have enabled any one to discover a reason after the fact. That most respectable gentleman had been made the scape- goat for certain "W. B." Derbyisms on the Whig side; the party had become implicated with manceuvres of the Parliamentary agent profession, and Mr. Strutt was a sacrifice to appease that indiscriminate monster public opinion. This was felt to be un- fair; and when the opportunity came, justice took pleasure in compensating Mr. Strutt with the style and dignity of a Cabinet Councillor. Now, probably, it is as good to him to have been a Minister as to be one ; and if he retires to the dinner-table of po- litical life retaining his " right " as well as his "honour," justice and the country are satisfied. In the case of Earl Granville, who descends from the pinnacle of the Council into the valley of Lancaster, the mistake also is of the past: he was appointed to the first grade before his time; since a very creditable career as Commissioner of the Exposition of 1851 was scarcely sufficient ground for making him her Ma- jesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. For a young man, appointment to such a post as that of lord President 'was almost honourable retirement ; but Lord John Russell had shown by his own example, that offices in the Ministry may be accepted without reference to vulgar ideas of promotion, and that a Premier may take a Secretaryship without any loss but an en- _haneement of his dignity. Nothing has become Lord Granville better than his acceptance of that which is vulgarly accounted an inferior post. The other appointments are more important, and the objections of greater gravity. It is not to be concealed that in assuming the newly-created Secretaryship for War, the Duke of Newcastle has to encounter a considerable amount of prejudice. It is not to be concealed that the appointment of Lord Palmerston would have been more popular. People have made up their minds that Pal- merston would be awfully bellicose, and would turn his "long ex- perience as Secretary at War" to account for purposes of military reform. The best ascertained facts, however, tell the other way. For years Lord Palmerston was Secretary at War without at- tempting those reforms about which Lord Howick thought, talked, and wrote, and which subsequent War Ministers, especially Mr. Sidney Herbert and the Duke of Newcastle, have set going. We are not aware that as Home Secretary Lord Palmerston has evinced that practical activity which is presumed for him : we have as yet no results, but only promises of boards and drainage- pipes ; and it is somewhat late for the flashy Viscount to begin in substantial business a new career of that activity which he has evinced, chiefly on paper, in balancing great interests so as to counterpoise all action. The prejudice, however, is in his favour, and against the Duke; who has consequently all the opportunity that his energies could desire for conquering prejudice, and making a reputation, by honest work. The objection to Sir George Grey as Colonial Secretary is not so easily disposed of. We attach comparatively little weight to the objection that his health is too delicate for hard work : Sir George is of a temperament which looks as if be could encounter work on the eve of death. We do not lay much stress on the idea that he is one of "the Greys," and that his admission to the Cabinet means a compromise with the more retrograde Whigs : he is perhaps less identified with the Greys than the Russells. But the name of Grey is odious in the Colonies, where, in name at least, Lord Glenelg's Assistant-Secretary is associated with his cousin Earl Grey, the renegade to the reform professions of Lord Howick. What Sir George probably did in obedience to official discipline seems, by the conduct of Lord Grey, to be a tendency of the blood; as if bureaucratism were a congenital disease of the Greys. Un- like the Duke his predecessor, Sir George has to unmake a repu- tation; and the vast extent of the Colonial empire may render it difficult for him to fill it with good deeds within the period of his official tenure.
Lord John Russell has to bear the odium of making all these changes necessary, by some undefined anxiety to get into a definite office. He has been taunted with the want of one; but he did very well without—at least for a time. The occupation of an office is deemed more constitutional, and avowedly Lord John's circum- stances are not such as to make an official allowance to cover his official expenses a matter of indifference. But these reasons ought to have prevailed at first, and to have made him begin where he ends. It was a mistake not to substitute himself for Earl Granville before the Ministry was settled; and there are some mistakes which, once made, it is better not to correct until a genuine opportunity: arise. It is exaggeration to say that the evacuation of his seat in the Commons for a week occasioned any obstruction to the business of the session; but it is no exaggeration to say that all this commotion in the Cabinet to provide Lord John with a seat naturally suggests a suspicion that some of the members of that Cabinet sit uneasily—that there is "a screw loose": and the mere awakening of such a suspicion tends to render the Government less influential and efficient, at a time when influence and efficiency are preeminently needed.
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