though there were no Peers to be had who possessed the slightest qualification for any ministerial position. The Peers must have a certain number of places, because they are Peers. The House of Commons swarms with the sons and nephews of Peers. The household appointments, the ministerial offices, the good places in the army and the church are theirs when they choose--and they generally do choose--to have them. The son of a Peer, if in the House of Commons, may be raised at one step from his place in the back benches to a seat in the Cabinet, simply because of his rank. When Earl Russell, two or three years ago, raised Mr. Goschen, one of the representatives of the city of London and a partner in a great London banking-house, to a place in the Cabinet, the whole country wondered: a very few, who were not frightened out of their propriety, admired; some thought the world must be coming to an end. But when the Marquis of Hartington was suddenly picked out of West End dissipation and made War Secretary, nobody expressed the least wonder, for he was the heir of the House of Devonshire. Indeed, it was perfectly notorious that the young Marquis was presented to office, in the first instance, because it was hoped by his friends that official duties might wean him from the follies and frivolities of a more than ordinarily heedless youth. Sir Robert Peel the present, the _magni nominis umbra_, is not, of course, in the strict sense, an aristocrat; but he is mixed up with aristocrats, and is the son of a Peer-maker, and may be regarded as claiming and having the privileges of the class. Sir Robert Peel was presented with the First Secretaryship as something to play with, because his aristocratic friends, the ladies especially, thought he would be more likely to sow his wild oats if he were beguiled by the semblance of official business. A commoner must, in fact, be supposed to have some qualification for office before he is invited to fill a ministerial place. No qualification is believed necessary for the near relative or connection of a Peer. Even in the most favorable examples of Peers who are regular occupants of office, no special fitness is assumed or pretended. No one supposes or says that Lord Clarendon, or Lord Granville, or Lord Malmesbury has any particular qualification which entitles him, above all other men, to this or that ministerial place. Yet it must be a man of bold imagination indeed, who could now conceive the possibility of a British Cabinet without one of these noblemen having a place in it.