A great deal of irritation is said to exist in
Conservative circles at both the Irish and the English Solicitor-Generalship having been given to Liberal Unionists, Mr. Kenny and Mr. Finlay. The English Solicitor-Generalship was offered to Sir E. Clarke, who refused it because the restrictions on private practice, which have lately been imposed at the wish of the House of Commons itself, had rendered it impossible for him to accept it without a great loss of income. And when he had refused it, Mr. Finlay was the next in standing at the Bar to whom it could have been offered. It seems a mis- fortune if there really is so much jealousy between the two branches of the Unionist party,—which we greatly doubt,— as to produce a wish that the public service should suffer rather than that a Liberal Unionist should be chosen in place of a Conservative lawyer. Whether Mr. Kenny, the Irish Solicitor-General who has been selected, is as dis- tinguished in Dublin as Mr. Finlay is in London, we have not the knowledge requisite to judge. But in point of fact, since we are always being told that the Liberal Unionists are rather more perversely Conservative than the Conservatives themselves, we feel a little surprise that the Conservatives should indulge the jealousy which the Radical papers impute to them. Perhaps the wish is father to the thought. The only consolation which the Radical journalists appear to feel in their political discomfiture, is in discerning growing jealousies between the different sections of their opponents ; and no doubt they discern a good many which are purely imaginary.
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