Mr. W. Saunders.
What will doubtless happen will be that next Session will be set apart for clearing the decks for action preparatory to a General Election; that in the Session of 1895 the Home Rule Bill will again be brought in, pressed through the Commons, thrown out again by the Lords, and, somewhere between Easter and Whitsuntide, battle will be given on a field in which will be staked much more than the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. Old electioneering hands know that for an appeal to the popular vote there is no cry more effective than that shouted round the walls of the House of Lords after its inmates have twice, within a brief period of time, set at naught the decrees of the House of Commons.
THE NEXT MINISTRY. Whilst there is this unusual measure of certainty as to the career of the present Parliament, an influential section of the Opposition are not less definite in their arrangements of what shall follow after the next General Election. They have convinced themselves that in the result the Liberals will be placed in a minority variously estimated at from fifty to seventy. There will then devolve upon the Unionist party the duty of carrying on the Queen's Government. How is it to be done? How are the conflicting claims of the two wings of the party to be adjusted?
It is all cut and dried, all parcelled out in larger and smaller allotments. The only thing not settled is, Who is to be Prime Minister? That is a matter left for final determination when the hour has struck and the man is called for. But as an alternative scheme is devised, no hesitancy or embarrassment need be apprehended. Either Lord Salisbury or the Duke of Devonshire will succeed Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury having precedence, not without expectation that he will yield it to the Duke of Devonshire, as he proffered it to Lord Hartington in 1886. Should Lord Salisbury elect to lead the House of Lords, Mr. Chamberlain will become Leader of the House of Commons. Should the Duke of Devonshire be Premier, Mr. Arthur Balfour will be Leader in the House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain undertaking the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord Salisbury will return to the Foreign Office.
"Tempora mutantus, nos et—"
MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S FUTURE. I do not know how far this patent adjustable scheme has been accepted at Arlington Street and on the Front Opposition Bench. It was rough-hewn in Liberal Unionist councils, those of the inner circle not making any secret of the matter. It bears on the face of it the mark of a well-considered, equable arrangement, and forms the groundwork of a strong Ministry.
It is noteworthy at the present time as marking an important stage in Mr. Chamberlain's political development. In 1886, when Lord Salisbury's Government was formed, the Member for Birmingham might have had any office he liked to name as the price of his defection from the Liberal party. But he declined to take the Conservative shilling, protesting that he was not less Liberal than he had been at any earlier stage. It was the Liberal party that had gone astray, he and the few that remained with him being the only true Liberals. He would stand in
