On Tuesday, when the House was about to go into
Com- mittee on the Civil Service Estimates, Mr. Balfour rose and On Tuesday, when the House was about to go into Com- mittee on the Civil Service Estimates, Mr. Balfour rose and
said,—" I beg to move that Mr. James William Lowther take the chair." No one made any remark on the motion, and accordingly Mr. James William Lowther took the chair amid cheers; and,so ended the nonsense talked in the papers about the nepotism of a Government which gives the chairmanship of Committeekto a. most able and competent man, in spite of the formidable and frightful fact that he had married a niece of the Prime Minister's. The horror of this bogey of nepotism, instead of assuming its proper place in the journalism of the day, as a fair reason for entertaining a certain amount of suspicion concerning an appointment of the merits of which the public have no knowledge, when it might be accounted for by family feeling, is becoming a pure nuisance when it is made the excuse for objecting to an appointment which every one knows to be excellent, and against which not a word would have been said had there not been some sort of family relationship between the politician who is promoted and the statesman who promotes him. Anti. nepotismmay do as much harm as ever nepotism did, if it is to be made the excuse for sowing unfounded suspicions in the public mind, when we have every reason to feel just confidence that an excellent appointment has been made. Fortunately, however, the House of Commons is not yet subservient to the influence of irrational journalism.
