Mr. Disraeli's appointments to the vacant Civil-Service Com- missionerships are
not of a kind to increase the confidence of the public in that Commission. Lord Hampton (better known as Sir John Pakington) is made Chief Commissioner, and Mr. Walrond (hitherto the Secretary to the Commission), an accom- plished scholar, but believed to be rather a partisan of the old classical-scholarship tests, has been appointed third Commis- sioner. Lord Hampton has always been a very liberal Con- servative in relation to primary education, but he is seventy-six ; he will hardly be at home, we should think, in either science or modern literature, and therefore he cannot but be more or less in the hands of Mr. Walrond, who has so long managed, as secretary, the affairs of the Commission. We mean no disrespect to Lord Hampton, when we say, that he will not be able to supply in any way the hard-headed sagacity and strong Liberal bias of the late Sir Edward Ryan.
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