The appointment of Mr. Henry .T. L. Graham to be
Clerk of the Parliaments (23,000 a year), in the place of the late Sir W. Rose, certainly does look like a very great abuse of patronage. This office is one of the richest gifts at the disposal of the Government, and should be reserved for men of great experience who have spent a laborious life in the public service. Sir Thomas Erskine May and Sir Henry Thring have both been named as men who should at least have had the offer of this great post before it had been given away to a mere personal friend of the chiefs in power. It would be difficult, as the Daily News says, to exaggerate the claims of either of these great public servants on our gratitude, or their special qualifications for the office in question. Mr. Graham has been, we doubt not, a most excellent Master in Lunacy ; but it will hardly be maintained, even by the most virulent of the enemies of Democracy, that that is a suffi- cient qualification for the Clerk of the Parliaments. His real qualification was, we imagine, that he is Lord Cranbrook's son- in-law; just as Mr. Alderson's best qualification for the Charity Commissionership was his relationship of brother-in-law to Lord Salisbury. Such appointments are not creditable to the disinterestedness or to the public spirit of the Government.
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