These are the two classes—the old but the tried, the able but the untrained young—from which the Prime Minister draws the members of his Administration. As I have indicated, he has not an absolutely free choice. He may not sit down in his study and, surveying the most prominent members of his Party in both Houses, select for office those who have proved themselves possessed of the qualities of character, ability, experience, and training. His task it is to satisfy, as far as possible, claims as conflicting as they are strong, and, at the same time, give to his Administration that weight and authority which is necessary to win and hold, in some measure, the confidence of the country. It is said that Gladstone, who formed no fewer than four Administrations—an almost unprecedented record in constitutional history—used to draw up on separate slips of paper a list of the various offices, placing opposite each the names of three or four more or less eligible men as alternatives, and then, by a process of sifting, evolve the definite list. But this method, which no doubt most Prime Ministers adopt more or less, is not at all the simple matter it looks. It has to be followed out with exceeding care and circumspection. For every post in the Ministry there are at least three or four influential aspirants, old or young, each of whom thinks the office on which his mind is set is his by every title of personal fitness and devotion to the Party. To adjust these rival claims is, as I have said, no easy thing for the Prime Minister. Some of the office-seekers, those especially who know there are strong rivals in the field, insist upon personal interviews, in order to set forth their pretensions fully and unanswerably, and the serious loss the Party, if not the nation, would suffer were it not to have the advantage of their services. Every post brings shoals of letters from Members of Parliament, and leading Party men in the country, strongly urging the appointment of this person or that to a post in the Ministry, or his inclusion in the Cabinet.