For the time being Mr. Duke is not to have
a nominal superior in the Lord-Lieutenant. Mr. Asquith admitted that the Lord- Lieutenancy has become an anomaly, merely " enabling gracious, well-mannered persons to discharge social and charitable functions." Ho will not abolish the post, but he will not nominate any one to fill the vacancy—partly, no doubt, because he cannot find any suitable Peer to take it after Lord Wimborne's painful revelations of the Lord-Lieutenant's impotence. Mr. Duke will thus have to face alone the vigorous opposition threatened by Mr. Redmond. The Nationalists, it appears, object to a Unionist Chief Secretary on principle. But Mr. Redmond was indignant at the suggestion that he had been Mr. Birrell's chief counsellor. Mr. Birrell, he said, never consulted him and never took his advice when it was offered. Though Mr. Asquith reports " a considerable recru- descence of the Sinn Fein movement in its most aggressive form," Mr. Duke is to expect nothing more than factious criticism from the Nationalist leader.
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