THE THIRD SALISBURY CABINET. COLLOWING the precedent which I set in 1892, I devote the Character Sketch this month not to an individual, but to that composite personality known as the Cabinet, for the great event of last month was the birth of a new Cabinet a premature birth, but one which nevertheless sufficed to give to the world a new Ministry, complete in all its parts. The Rosebery Cabinet is disbanded, making way for the third Salisbury Cabinet, or rather for the Salisbury Chamberlain Cabinet. For this Cabinet is not like any of those which have governed the country for the last fifty years. It is a composite Cabinet, a dual Cabinet, a Cabinet of the Siamese twins. It is not a Tory Cabinet, or a Conservative Cabinet, or a Liberal Unionist Cabinet. It is a Cabinet which is as yet without name. And what is even stranger, without a nick-name. The Liberal Unionists who have joined it would shrink from being regarded as Conservatives; the Conservatives, who supply its chief and the majority of its rank and file, would naturally protest against its being regarded as merely Unionist Cabinet, and therefore it is communities that have but recently emerged from what may be regarded as the Afghan principle of general election, where the supreme ruler is evolved from anarchy and chaos by the primitive but effec THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY. (From a drawing by the Marchioness of Granby.) a little difficult to know how to describe it. Nevertheless, name or no name, it has to be reckoned with. Into its hands have been made over the reins of power. The governmental machinery of the Empire, which but yesterday was set in motion or at rest by the will of Lord Rosebery and his colleagues, is to-day equally obedient to the new group which has found itself suddenly established at Downing Street-as the result of a snap division on an unreal issue. Whatever its genesis, whatever its title, it is now the ruler and governor of the British Empire. Nothing is more marvellous to tive process of killing off his competitors, than to note the extreme facility with which power changes hands in this country. Our constitutional machinery is very antiquated in parts. The front wheels seem often as if designed for no other purpose than to revolve in an opposite direction to the back wheels. There are brakes here and brakes there, and the machine to a casual observer seems often as if it were constructed in order that it should stick in the mud rather than carry on the government of a great empire. But in one respect we have almost obtained perfection, and that is in the arrangements which have been made for a change of Government. On Friday, June 21st, the House of Commons, by a chance majority of seven, passed a vote of censure upon one member of the Administration. The question vote in was trivial. It merely reduced the salary of that Minister from £5,000 to £4,900, but, like Mercutio's wound, although it was not "deep as a well nor wide as a church door," still it sufficed to wreck the Administration. Within twenty-four hours Lord Rosebery had placed his resignation in the hands of Her Majesty, and in less than one week from that time an entirely new set of administrators were sworn in with new aims, different policy, and different following. The ins had become outs, and the outs had become ins, with less hubbub or commotion than if they had been rival elevens in a cricket-field. Nothing could be MR. A. J. BALFOUR. (From a drawing by the Marchioness of Granby.) more tranquil. That is to say, in less than eight days the whole of the administrative and executive power over the most widely extended empire in the world was transferred from one party to the other without a single ripple on the smooth surface of national life. There was talk of a crisis in the newspapers, but there was no crisis anywhere else. The solid and stable machinery of the Government, which is controlled by the permanent experts of the Civil Service, went on functioning without the personnel of its parliamentary chiefs. CABINETS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. Some day I shall try my hand at writing a Character Sketch of the invisible Cabinet -the Cabinet that never goes out of office, the Cabinet of the permanent under-secretaries and heads of departments who have no need to appeal to constituencies for renewal of confidence, and whose devotion to the actual work of governing is not affected by the accidents of snap divisions or the passions of the parliamentary lobby. But to-day, as there is a new Cabinet in office and a visible Cabinet, we may leave the invisible alone for a time and devote a few pages to the consideration of the new entity that last month made its appearance in our midst. Such consideration will be useful, not merely at home but abroad, for we have all to reckon with this new personality. Upon its wisdom or its folly hangs the prosperity or adversity of millions of men. The state of its collective mind may be the dominant factor in crises of peace and war, and for numberless tribes and nationalities in all the continents. It matters more what the Cabinet thinks than what is thought by any other human entity in this universe. I. THE JUNTO OF FOUR. The first question which every one asks about a Cabinet is whether it knows its own mind or whether it does not. Cabinets being composed of from a dozen to nineteen Ministers, have sometimes the misfortune to have as many minds as member. On other occasions the Cabinet has only one mind, which is that of the dominant personality who called it into being, and who presides over its deliberations. This Cabinet comes into neither of these categories. It is not a single-souled Cabinet, for it is a double-headed one, and as is natural to a double-headed entity, it is in danger of being a double-minded creature unstable in all its ways. In the formation of this Cabinet Lord Salisbury began by constituting an inner circle of those who may be regarded as the greater gods of the Downing Street Olympus. Then after having constructed this kernel of the Cabinet, he filled up the spaces between it and the circumference with such a collection or assortment of administrators as commended itself to the judgment of the inner circle. The group which lies at the heart of the Cabinet as the yolk lies at the centre of the egg is a composite junto consisting of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour on the one hand, and the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Chamberlain on the other. THE LIBERAL UNIONISTS. The Liberal Unionists at the last general election held forty-six seats, Conservatives two hundred and sixty-nine, and it is not likely that the number of Liberal Unionist seats will increase at the coming election. It would indeed be comparatively difficult to maintain that number were it not for the compact entered into by the Liberal Unionists and their allies, which gives perpetuity to the status quo. In the new Parliament, therefore, there are likely to be six Con THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE. (Photograph by Russell.) servatives, and possibly many more, for every Liberal Unionist who is returned. But in the constitution of the real governing Cabinet within the Cabinet the proportion is not one to six, but two to two. In the Cabinet itself, which consists of nineteen members, there are five Liberal Unionists, so that the Liberal Unionists are much over-represented in proportion to their numbers. In constituting Cabinets, statesmen have proceeded on another basis than that of the rule of three. At the ballot-box we count heads, in Cabinets we weigh them. Hence, it is not surprising that Lord Salisbury should have accorded to the Duke of Devonshire and his allies a position in the Cabinet to which their strength in the country by no means entitles them. Although natural, this step is far from being without difficulties. The position of the Liberal Unionists in the Coalition Cabinet is somewhat like that of the English garrison in Ireland. It holds its position, not by right of numbers, but by other considerations, which the fear of offending the delicate susceptibilities of their Conservative allies forbids us to particularise. But-just as the English garrison in Ireland, which can only return twentythree out of one hundred and three Irish members, exercises a right of eminent domain that is not affected by any number of ballot papers in the south and west filled in by Home Rulers-so the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Chamberlain will be disposed to claim at least an equal voice in all the decisions of the Government with those of their Conservative colleagues. It will be well, indeed, if Mr. Chamberlain can be induced to be contented with this. During the last Conservative Administration Mr. Chamberlain and the Duke of Devonshire exercised from time to time, outside of the Cabinet, an authority which they certainly will not wish to see diminished by their acceptance of direct responsibility. THE UNION NEGATIVE RATHER THAN POSITIVE. There will spring from this of necessity a certain duality of mind in the Cabinet which can hardly be a source of strength, which may be an element of weakness, and which possibly may result before long in its disruption. Of only one thing can we be sure, and that is, that as long as the Cabinet persists in the negative policy of simply putting a veto on Home Rule it will have no difficulty in keeping together. But the more Home Rule recedes into the background the more difficult will it be for Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour to walk hand in hand. The union of the Unionists has, indeed, no other basis than this:-as all Irishmen are said to be "agin the Government, whatever that Government may be," so all Unionists are "agin" Home Rule, whatever may be the meaning of that phrase. But, as the imminence of what they regard as the Home Rule danger united them, so, when Home Rule recedes, and in proportion as Home Rule recedes, into the dim distance, the centrifugal tendency, which exists in all composite bodies moving at great velocity through space, will assert itself, and we may have a Cabinet that does not know its own mind, because it cannot come to a decision as to which of its two minds is the right one. It may be objected to this that the new Cabinet is a body, which, whatever else it may do or refrain from doing, will not move with too great velocity in any direction whatever. The instinct of selfpreservation will reinforce the inertia common to all created things, and Ministers will recognise as the law of their being that they should do either nothing at all or as little as possible lest they go to pieces in the operation THE CHIEF OF THE JUNTO. This would be undoubtedly Lord Salisbury's instinct. He is never anxious to legislate, and cordially sympathises with Lord Melbourne's mental condition, which found expression in the familiar question, "Why can't you let it alone?" Lord Salisbury is a strong man, well able to hold his own in the Cabinet which he has made, For although it is a Coalition Cabinet, it is none the less a Salisbury Cabinet, the third of the same name, and Lord Salisbury, although indisposed to make a parade of his power, has never hesitated to use it on occasion. He has behind him the rank-and-file of his own party, and the confidence of the country at large to an extent which no other statesman of any party can pretend to enjoy. The Right Hon. Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoigne Cecil, Marquis of Salisbury, now Prime Minister of England for the third time, is in his sixty-fifth year, and may therefore be regarded as in the ideal prime of manhood, if age be reckoned from the statesman point of view. Even apart from his position as Prime Minister to the Crown, he is far the most commanding personality in English politics since the retirement of Mr. Gladstone. He was elected by the House of Commons as member for Stamford when his predecessor, Lord Rosebery, was six years old, and so he enjoyed the advantage-which Lord Rosebery lacked-of a long apprenticeship in the House of Commons. From 1853 to 1868, first as Lord Robert Cecil, and then as Viscount Cranborne, he represented Stamford in the Conservative interest. If Lord Rosebery had had but half that apprenticeship, many things would have gone better than they have. HIS RECORD. It is now nearly thirty years since Lord Salisbury first became Cabinet Minister, when he was appointed Secretary of State for India in Lord Derby's third Administration. His tenure at the Foreign Office, a post to which he is now returning, dates from 1879, when he succeeded Lord Derby, and sullied a reputation until then almost blameless by a participation in the crime of attempting to resuscitate the Ottoman Empire. In this he sinned against light, under the promptings of ambition, say his adversaries; under the hypnotic influence of Lord Beaconsfield, was the excuse of his friends. Be that as it may, in that fatal period occurred the blunder of the partition of Bulgaria, the crime of the re-enslavement of Macedonia, and the fiasco of the Anglo-Turkish Convention. Under the same sinister influence it was that he was responsible for the Afghan invasion--a crime which cannot be forgotten, and of which probably Lord Salisbury retains as vivid a memory as any one of those who assail him. From the death of Lord Beaconsfield he has been recognised as the only possible Conservative Premier, although within the last few months some have been calculating sufficiently on his patriotism to suggest that he should confine himself to the Foreign Office, and leave to Mr. Balfour the task of forming the Cabinet. These suggestions were never seriously made, and the same may possibly be said for the offer which, years ago, was made to Lord Hartington to become the Prime Minister of a Unionist Administration, in which Lord Salisbury would serve at the Foreign Office. It was therefore in the nature of things that, when Lord Rosebery resigned, Her Majesty should at once send for the Marquis of Salisbury and entrust him for the third time with the duty of forming an Administration. THE POLITICAL CHAMPION. Lord Salisbury, although his career is stained with the record of deeds done when he was under the glamour of Lord Beaconsfield, has, since he was himself again, regained much of the confidence of the country which he then forfeited, and even among the ranks of the late Ministry there are not a few who regard his advent to power with feelings of complacent satisfaction. He is not the "W. G." of politics; there is no "W. G." in the political arena since W. E. G. retired from Parliament, but after W. E. G. he comes nearest to being the political champion of the day. Lord Salisbury is deficient in the faculty of commanding great enthusiasm. There is too strong a dash of cynicism in his character, too great readiness to cut and thrust with ruthless blade at the most cherished convictions of his countrymen when they do not coincide with his own views as to what is wise and just. There is also about him a certain aloofness as of a hermit, which, while standing him in good stead in some things, weakens him in others. He shrinks, for instance, from meeting political opponents. He lives to himself, apart, a student, a thinker, and a patriot. Excepting during the lamentable period when he was under the domination of Lord Beaconsfield, he has never shown himself devoid of caution and commonsense; indeed, it may rather be admitted that in his foreign policy he has shown a disposition to undue caution rather than to any excess of daring. He has submitted to be squeezed by Germany rather than risk the loss of a good understanding with Berlin. If, as some seem to think, we are entering upon a critical period in which the atmosphere is charged with saltpetre, it is a source of satisfaction to reflect that our destinies are in the hands of a tried and experienced statesman, who keeps his blazing indiscretions for home consumption, who watches over the interests of Britain abroad with ceaseless vigilance, and holds the helm of State with a steady hand. THE WHIG UNIONISTS. The Duke of Devonshire, although no Tory, is conservative to his finger tips. A shrewd, cautious, somewhat lazy man, to whom fortune has given everything that most men covet, he is the last man in the world to indulge in any "wild cat" policies of sensational adventure. In him Lord Salisbury can safely trust, to render him effective aid and service against the wild men of the party. Neither need Lord Salisbury fear that he will be left in the lurch by the other two Liberals that he has admitted to his councils. Mr. Goschen has long been the tame elephant of the Tory Party. They know him of old and trust him not without cause as one of themselves. Sir Henry James also, even before he obtained the peerage, which is so often the extinguisher of the last remnant of youthful enthusiasm, had shown himself completely divorced from the more adventurous of the left of his old party. Therefore it comes to this, that the only man in the Cabinet who is not a more or less adulterated version of Lord Salisbury is Mr. Chamberlain, and the question which practically confronts the Administration is, how long will the Administration get on with Mr. Chamberlain, or how long will Mr. Chamberlain get on with the Administration? MR. CHAMBERLAIN. The situation is not unlike that of 1886. Nine years ago Lord Salisbury founded a Cabinet not materially different from the present, excepting for the fact that neither the Lord President of the Council, the First Lord of the Admiralty, nor the Chancellor of the Duchy had ૧ strong resemblance between the two men. Both regarded the world from the circle of the crown of their own hats. No other two men divided the universe so distinctly into two sections, the I and the not-I-the ego and the non-ego, and probably no two men agreed more absolutely in believing that the importance of the ego transcended infinitely the rest of the universe. Both found themselves in a position of comparative solitude. No doubt Lord Randolph had his followers as Mr. Chamberlain has sympathisers, but practically they stood alone, each in his own Cabinet. MR. CHAMBERLAIN. (Photograph by Elliott and Fry.) A LIBERAL LORD RANDOLPH. But Mr. Chamberlain, like Lord Randolph Churchill, regards himself as the statesman who has to save the Cabinet, even against its will, from perishing in the morass of reaction. It is not too much to say that Mr. Chamberlain, like Lord Randolph Churchill, regards himself as the vital soul of the Administration. The other members who are with him in the Cabinet are more or less inert matter, which is without form and void until it has been breathed upon by the creative genius of the member for Birmingham. Lord Randolph made no secret among his friends, and even among those who were not his friends, but to whom he used to speak with dangerous freedom, of his contempt for the timid and idealess mass of his colleagues. when young and ambitious statesmen endeavour to save their colleagues, in spite of themselves, from yielding to the temptation of lethargy and timorous Conservatism, they are extremely likely to come into violent collision with those said colleagues, who are apt, with shameful ingratitude, to refuse to recognise the services which their deliverer would render them. We all know how this terminated in the case of Lord Randolph. After some months, during which he was in more or less strained relations with his chief, he brought things to a head by an act of official suicide. His place was taken by Mr. Goschen, and everything went on without any one being apparently a penny the worse, excepting, of course, Lord Randolph himself, whose sun suddenly sank in mid-heaven out of the sight of all men. Mr. Chamberlain, of course, has the advantage of Lord Randolph's fate before him as a beacon or warning. MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S ROLE. He will not fall in the same way, but he is bent upon doing the same kind of things, and his only method is to employ the same kind of influence; i.e., he will constantly pose as the representative of the Progressive party in the Unionist alliance. He will speak for the people with a big P. He is the champion, self-elected but not less self-confident, of that social democracy without which the Conservative cause would be hopelessly stranded by the receding tide of time. Therefore, by power of persuasion within the Cabinet, by the adroit manipulation of the press outside the Cabinet, by the careful and assiduous application of pressure upon the small minority which regards him as its leader, Mr. Chamberlain will endeavour to force the pace of the new Administration, and will seek to shape the legislation and direct the policy of his colleagues to an extent which they are more likely to resent than to tolerate. At the same time, Mr. Chamberlain is not so young as Lord Randolph Churchill was. He is now approaching his sixtieth year, and he has had what Lord Randolph sorely lacked-long experience in responsible administration. His municipal training will stand him in good stead, nor must we forget that, during the Gladstone Administration from 1880 to 1885, although Mr. Chamberlain was continually standing in the breach and threatening resignation, he never actually resigned. He managed to pull through in the midst of great difficulties, and that also when the velocity of the Cabinet was much greater than that of any Cabinet over which Lord Salisbury presided. Then, again, we must remember that Mr. Chamberlain has a personal liking for Mr. Balfour, with whom he will have most to do. Mr. Balfour also likes Mr. Chamberlain, and gets on well with him, as indeed Mr. Balfour does with almost every one; but how far this personal liking on both sides will stand the strain of actual colleagueship in a new Administration remains to be seen. FOR WAR WITH FRANCE? Leaving out of count the chances of disruption that are contained in the mere presence of Mr. Chamberlain in the Cabinet, no one can deny that it is to Mr. Chamberlain the Cabinet owes the chief element of colour and life which it possesses. Without Mr. Chamberlain, the third Salisbury Cabinet would be a good, excellent, capable, humdrum body of administrators, guaranteed sound in wind, limb, and eyesight, but quite certain never to bolt or to kick over the traces. Mr. Chamberlain has been widely reported to have declared, probably in jest rather than in earnest, that before the new Government was out it would contrive to involve this country in war with France. Whether he ever said this, or whether he did not, is a question upon which I shrink from expressing an opinion. All that I can say is that no statement is more frequently repeated at Liberal headquarters than that Mr. Chamberlain's presence at the Colonial Office means war with France. Without for a moment imputing to the new Colonial Secretary the criminality of deliberately contemplating the precipitation of so great a catastrophe as that of an Anglo-French war, it is at least certain that his presence at the Colonial Office will not tend to make Lord Salisbury's task easier in arranging the little accommodations by which in the past he contrived to fob off the hostility of Berlin or pacify the French. Lord Salisbury, although keeping up a certain appearance of determination in dealing with other Powers, has always proved himself to be open to a little transaction. This may be good statesmanship, but it is not very good business. excepting for the smart Germans who, knowing Lord Salisbury's weakness, presumed upon it to the uttermost. Mr. Chamberlain is not likely to have much liking for a spirited foreign policy which keeps up appearances at home by sacrificing the interests of the Empire abroad, nor is it difficult to see how very easily the presence of a spirited advocate of British extension in the English Cabinet might bring about a collision on more points than one. We have a perennial difficulty with the French Republic on the coast of Newfoundland. We have constantly irritating disputes with France about questions of customs in the West Coast Settlements. In the Pacific, the New Hebrides, and the proximity of the French Convict Settlement at New Caledonia, offer ample openings for trouble, if the Colonial Office decided to deal with the foreigner as Mr. Chamberlain is in the habit of dealing with his political opponents. Mr. Chamberlain may be strong, but he certainly is not suave, and it is a thousand pities that he had not the opportunity at the War Office of learning the actual condition of our army before he was placed in an office which enables him at every turn to bring about a situation from which only armies could extricate us. THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE. After Mr. Chamberlain, the most notable LiberalUnionist is the Duke of Devonshire, better known as Lord Hartington. The Duke takes office with unconcealed reluctance. He is now sixty-two years of age. He inherited a princely position which more than satisfies all his somewhat tepid inclination for the transaction of affairs. He is happily married, and he would probably have been much better pleased if he could have remained outside as a deus ex machina, with liberty to intervene on such rare occasions as he deemed it unavoidable. But the Duke of Devonshire has a high sense of public duty, and he has put his shoulder to the wheel, notwithstanding his constitutional indisposition to work. His position as Lord President of the Council will not give him much administrative labour, even when to the ordinary function of President is added the abnormal, new, and as yet imperfectly-conceived, responsibilities involved in his position as Chairman of the Council for National Defence. Lord Hartington proposed this some time ago, and the Duke of Devonshire, therefore, no doubt, feels it is his duty to carry it out. But if the Council of National Defence is to be anything more than an inter-departmental committee for the purpose of keeping the War Office in touch with the Admiralty, it will probably entail a very serious re-arrangement of the constitutional machinery. Mr. Chamberlain, for instance, had been appointed to the Duke of Devonshire's post, there is little doubt but that he would have sooner or later succeeded in either reducing Mr. Goschen at the Admiralty, and Lord Lansdowne at the War Office, to a condition of complete subservience, or he would have driven them into open revolt. The Duke, with that lazy-tongs manner of his, and with his constitutional indisposition to do anything that must not absolutely be done, is safe to minimise rather than to maximise the duties of the chairmanship. This will probably be more or less of a sinecure, but the Duke and his two colleagues at the War Office and Admiralty will constitute a group within the Cabinet which will necessarily have more power and influence than any one of its three members. Apart from his special duties as Lord President of the Council and Chairman of the National Council of Defence, the Duke's presence in the Cabinet is undoubtedly a If |