Lord Hatherley is to resign the Chancellorship in the middle
-of the present month, and is to be succeeded, as all the world expected, by Sir Roundell Palmer. We have given our estimate of the new Lord Chancellor elsewhere. In Lord Hatherley the 'Government has lost a man of singular weight and worth, whose mere dignity of character and conspicuous integrity of purpose have often more than outweighed the mischief of a serious intellec- tual blunder. In relation to the great Irish Church question, not even Sir Roundell Palmer himself, had he happened to agree with Mr. Gladstone, could have exercised so much moral influence as Lord Hatherley ; for Sir Roundel' Palmer can be astute, and over-subtlety has always been regarded as Mr. Glad- stone's failing ; but Lord Hatherley is always simple, always intelligible, and never given to over-refined distinctions. It was the candour, simplicity, and sincerity of all his convictions, which, when expressed, as they always were, through the medium of a singularly sound, though sometimes one-sided intellect, conveyed to the public a peculiar effect of moral trustworthiness, and of moral trustworthiness of the English kind, not too complex to he understood. His successor may prove a larger-minded Chan- cellor. He can scarcely be a more trustworthy exponent of the Royal (or Parliamentary) conscience.
