After all, perhaps, it is a matter of no very great concern. Are there not capable permanent officials in the various Departments of the State, whose duty it is to see that administration is efficient and economical? The simple task of the Minister, as he sits behind the scenes in a room at Whitehall, is as a rule to see that things are done in harmony with the political policy of his Party. What seems to be absolutely necessary to the prosperity of an Administration is that in the Houses of Parliament—open as they are to the gaze and hearing of the country—it should have at its service a number of able debaters. The measures of the Government have to be submitted to the judgment of a deliberative Assembly, and a newspaper-reading public; and accordingly a successful Minister is he whose ready gift of clear and forcible exposition of Party principles and policies enables him to expound and defend these measures. Gladstone, when forming his first Government in 1868, invited John Bright to join it, giving him his choice of any office, except the War Office or the Admiralty, which, as he was a Quaker and a man of peace, would hardly suit him. Bright selected the position of President of the Board of Trade. As I have said, he never gave evidence of any special business capacity, but he was the greatest orator of his day; he had uttered in the House of Commons and on the public platform the most beautiful and also the most scornful passages that ever fell from the lips of man; he possessed debating gifts which enabled him to place a political question in a light that made it shine beyond its deserts, and that being so he was deemed fit for a place of importance and emolument in the new Government. What is the good of a Minister rising to the Table of the House of Commons with an unanswerable case if he be unable to state it—if he be choked with arguments for which he can find no utterance? 2