NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ON Thursday the Unionist Government rendered up the Seals of Office, and Mr. Gladstone's Government received them. The situation was rather neatly represented yesterday week by the cabman of a hansom, who, as he receivedhis fare, re- marked with an interrogative air to the present writer, "They tell me, sir, that the Queen has sent for Mr. Justin McCarthy, and that Mr. Gladstone is to be promoted to be his private secretary." That was the humour of the situation to the Lon- don populace, and it expresses fairly enough the utter depend- ence of the present Government on the grace and favour of the anti-Parnellite party. Mr. Gladstone can do nothing without satisfying them, and not much even if he succeeds in meeting all their wishes, for it is certain that he will alienate a good many of his own supporters in the process. For the rest, he has chosen his Government with a good deal of judg- ment. He himself is First Lord of the Treasury and Privy Seal. Lord Herschel is again to be his Lord Chancellor, and a better Lord Chancellor he could not possibly find. Mr. John Morley, of course, becomes Secretary for Ireland. Sir William Harcourt has (very unwisely) accepted the Chan- cellorship of the Exchequer, where he did not shine and cannot shine, though he fancies that budgets sur- round him with a certain air of seriousness and reality otherwise foreign to his habits of mind. The millions with which he has to deal give him, we imagine, a false sense of security against the disintegrating effects of the " Parnellite juice "in which he is steeped and stewed. Lord Kimberley is to be Indian Secret=try and President of the Connell; Lord Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Rosebery, who was at first very reluctant to accept office, Foreign Secretary ; and Lord Ripon, Colonial Secretary, the least promising of the Ministerial Peers, of whom only five are to be in the Cabinet.
