The only reform movement, indeed, that excited any popular enthusiasm at the beginning of 1871, was that which Mr. Trevelyan had started after he resigned his Civil Lordship of the Admiralty, because Mr. Forster’s Education Bill increased the grant to denominational schools. It was significant, too, that this movement was one for making the army more efficient by abolishing the system that permitted officers to buy their commissions and their promotion. It had been said that nothing could be done to render the army formidable, so long as the Commander-in-Chief was its absolute ruler. The result was that the Duke of Cambridge was made subordinate to the Secretary of State. Next it was said that nothing could be done to improve the army so long as it was pawned to its officers, who had acquired by purchase something like a vested right in maintaining the existing military system. Abolition of Purchase, therefore, in 1871, seemed to be the only point of contact between the nation and the Cabinet, who were supposed to favour Mr. Trevelyan’s agitation. The demand for increasing the army, when sanctioned by a Parliamentary vote, Mr. Cardwell evaded. When merely sanctioned by public opinion he either ignored it, or, as in the case of issuing breech-loading rifles to the Volunteers, yielded to it after resisting it for about eight months. The changes in the Cabinet due to Mr. Bright’s resignation further lessened confidence in the Government. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, in spite of his half-hearted Fenian amnesty, was on the whole a popular and active Irish Secretary. He, however, was appointed to succeed Mr. Bright at the Board of Trade, where he had to guide a department charged with interests of which he was utterly ignorant. Lord Hartington, on the other hand, whose transference to the War Office would have been gratifying to the country, was sent to the Irish Office, to the consternation of those Liberals who had been dissatisfied with the reactionary tone of his speeches on Irish affairs. The general desire for new War and Foreign Ministers was ignored.[1]