As we have said, the accident is a misfortune for
the Govern- ment, which is rapidly acquiring a reputation for ill-luck, though not such a misfortune as it would have been for a Liberal Ad- ministration. Liberal journals do not accuse Tory Ministers of wilfully sinking ironclads. Had the previous Administration been in power, the Pall Mall Gazette would have hinted in a dozen articles that Mr. Gladstone was responsible, and that this was what must be expected from a middle-class Premier and plebeian heads of Departments ; while the Standard would have proved to a demonstration that but for Mr. Childers's culpable economies and habit of disregarding Mr. Reed, the
Vanguard' would never have gone down. The Duke of Somerset would have told the House of Lords that it was all the "fate" of the Government, whose soldiers would not fight or their ships swim, and all the little Tory Members would have described the event as one which could not be directly traced to the machinations of the Cabinet, but like the cheapness of corn, the absence of war, and all other misfortunes, was due to them in some way or another. As things stand, the Premier will be exempt from criticism by the journals, and Mr. Ward Hunt, at worst, only patronisingly pitied by the Duke.
