With Mr. Gladstone giving up the leadership of Opposition, we
have not so many tried and able statesmen, that we can afford to have those who do remain to us unfairly depreciated, and we must protest against the gross attack made the other day, not for the first time, on Mr. Childers by a soi-disant Liberal contemporary, which has, as far as we can see, hungered and thirsted for the fall of the. Liberal Government, and exulted in its actual defeat beyond even the exul- tation of the Conservative Press. "Mr. Childers," said that journal, the other day, "proved an utter failure in administration,—worse than a failure. Himself confused by the hopeless confusion into which he had thrown the department he was supposed for years to be reforming so vigorously, he had to fly from it, returning composed when the tangle had been placed in other hands." A less creditable attack we have seldom seen. Every one knows that Mr. Childers, so far from flying from his work, remained at it till his life was seriously endangered, and that only in- capacitating illness took him away at last. As far as regards the question of statesmanship, of course every politician is entitled to form his own opinion. But Mr., Childers' severest official critics have not, we believe, denied that the system. of Naval retirement which he introduced was a very great and striking success, and for our own parts, we believe that his only faidt was that while wisely centralising responsibility, he was not coreful in his choice of permanent officials. There are very few of the late Administration, and none, we believe, of the true chiefs, who do not still regard Mr. Childers as a man of the first administrative capacity, who planned and instituted, though he did not completely achieve, a great and moat beneficial reform at the Admiralty.
