Next to the post of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, that of Home Secretary is by far the most difficult successfully to fill. Proof of this will appear upon review of the measure of success obtained by incumbents of the office since the time of Mr. Walpole. The reason for the pre-eminence and predicament is not far to seek. The Colonial Secretary has distant communities to deal with, and so has the Secretary of State for India. The Minister for War and the First Lord of the Admiralty each has his labour and responsibility confined within clearly marked limits. So it is with the Postmaster-General, the First Commissioner of Works, and, in less degree, with the President of the Board of Trade and the President of the Local Government Board. The Home Secretary has all England for his domain, with occasional erratic excursions into Scotland. There is hardly any point of the daily life of an Englishman which is not linked with the Home Office, and does not open some conduit of complaint. Before he had been twelve months in office Mr. Asquith was hung in effigy in Trafalgar Square. That, it is true, was a momentary exuberance on the part of the Anarchists. The incident leaves unchallenged the assertion that there has been no serious or well-sustained protest against Mr. Asquith's administration at the Home Office since he succeeded Mr. Matthews. Comparisons are undesirable. But the mere mention of the name of Mr. Asquith's predecessor reminds us that the case was not always thus. In his Parliamentary career Mr. Asquith's success has been equally un-chequered. It was a common saying among people indisposed to hamper novices by unwieldy weight of encouragement, that when Mr. Asquith was placed in a position where he would have to bear the brunt of debate, he would certainly break down. This cheerful prognostication was based upon the assertion that the speeches that had established his fame in the House of Commons were carefully prepared, written out, and, if not learned off by rote, the speaker was sustained in their delivery by the assistance of copious notes. This assertion was so confidently made, and appeared to be so far supported by a certain precision of epigram in the young member's Parliamentary style, that the theory obtained wide acceptance.