It was not a good appointment; but if the new secretary did not justify his patron’s praises, he equally failed to justify his expectations of favouritism. The traditions of the Office require that the permanent staff shall treat all classes and sects of schools with equal hand; and though there were many willing to cast a stone at the Secretary, I cannot remember that he was ever accused of undue partiality to one type. There were times, whoever might be secretary, when the balance seemed to be depressed on one side or the other; but it was always explained by nods, and upheaval of the shoulder that pointed to the V.P.’s room, that THOSE FELLOWS were giving trouble. In the last few months a recently emancipated secretary, who employs his well-earned leisure in theological warfare, has informed us that he “puts Protestantism before politics.” I believe I am correct in saying that during his long period of service in Whitehall no one even suspected him of ecclesiastical prejudices. This habit of mind Mundella could not understand. In office, as in business, he did not seem to run straight; but when financial troubles caused his downfall, men pitied him, because they thought his errors, there also, were errors of judgment rather than of moral sense. Of other Vice-Presidents before the arrival of Sir John Gorst, I think Mr. Acland was the most demonstrative. He had been a clergyman in Priest’s Orders, but he “renounced them all,” and entered Parliament, and in 1892 was made Vice-President by Mr. Gladstone. It was said that the Premier was under the impression that his new Minister had never gone beyond Deacon’s Orders, and that, knowing that the abandonment of Priest’s Orders involved excommunication, he would with fuller knowledge have made another choice. Ecclesiastical law is one of the few subjects that I have never examined in, and I repeat the canonical proposition without any warranty. It may be a joke. When Mr. Gladstone is concerned, one must always remember the excellent rule laid down by a critic in the _Times_, when reviewing a book of Oxford anecdotes: “What one requires of a story (at Oxford) is not that it should be true, but that it should be suitable to the character of the man of whom it is told.” (I quote from memory.) Accepting the story with this reservation, I think it was open to the new Minister to retort that the change from Tory M.P. for Oxford to Radical M.P. for Mid Lothian more richly deserved the greater excommunication.