Two very well-earned political distinctions have been conferred this week
by the Government. Sir '1 homas Acland, M.P. for North Devon, has been made a Privy Councillor; and Mr. Ferrer, the Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade, has received a baronetcy. There is not in the whole Liberal Party a more wise, staunch, and thorough Liberal than the former,—a model for county Members, a landed proprietor who cares for his tenants as he cares for himself, a great squire who can under- stand Mr. Gladstone as only a squire who is as much an Oxford man as a squire ever can understand him. Mr. Ferrer, or Sir T. II. Farrer, as he will now be, has managed a very complex department with consummate ability, and everything he has written has been marked with the same grasp and lucidity as his administration of the Department under his charge. He is, indeed, one of the best representatives in all the Government Departments, of that ability, energy, fidelity, and exact knowledge, to which the Empire really owes more than half the confidence and credit accorded to us in all portions of the globe.
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