BRITAIN'S PRIME MINISTER

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 30, 4 August 1923, Page 14

BRITAIN'S PRIME MINISTER

DIFFICULTIES OF CABINET-

FORMING,

,It seems possible that Mr. Baldwin is being more fortunate than some Prime Ministers in the anxious work of reconstructing a Ministry under a new head— and a head whose rise has been unusually rapid as things go in politics, declares a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." It may be doubted whether any man ever found the task of forming a Government (and especially, a first wverament) conducive to a very lofty opinion of human nature. Perhaps the impression left on the mind-of a Minister undertaking this task for the first tone is best summed up in GathorneHardy s note on the feeling with which Lord Salisbury closed his first essay in Cabinet-making: "Salisbury—weary of the self-seekers, the beggars, the imprac-ticables-would gladly have thrown up Kf "aS^u a? d-gon6 ahnost int° Private We. That is excellently descriptive, because the "self-seekers, the beggars and the impracticables" <fc aum up very well the people" who, except in a few JW CaBM- ke *£ c life of a Cabinetformzng Minister a burden, and it is possible that the "impracticables" are the most trying of all, because they are generally honest men not lightly to be ignored. Such a man was the third Earl Grey, who wrecked Lord John RusZ s,first attempt to form a Cabinet in 1845 by refusing to join with Palmerston at the Foreign Office. Probably Bright might be included among the impracticables, and one of the chief difficulties in the formation of loadstones first Government was that of pereuadmg Bright to join at all. Later ence of the self-seekers and the beggars Bmy s first essay is notable for the fury with which Chelmsford received the news *J I fh° W * eXcl? sj?n from th* Woolsack, and the story of Campbell-Bannermann's many difficulties is pretty well known to the world now.

Not since tEe days of Lord Salisbury rt v\r £ ef? ™le<? by a Premier b°ra^ like Mr. Baldwin, m rural England Mr Bonar Law was born in New Brunswick. Mr. .Lloyd Ueorge in Manchester, Mr Asqmth m Morley, Campbell-Bannerman in Glasgow, and Earl Balfour af Wliittingehame. Lord Rosebery was that rare bird a London-born Premier'; so was Disraeli, though he overlooked the fact when showing Lord Ronald Gower over iiughenden in August, 1880. They stopped before a row of prints that hun'c in the library, and his host (as Lord Ron° aid relates) said to him: "Look at those five engravings; they are . interesting. -Lnere have only been thirty Prime Ministers of England, and of these thirty, five were Buckinghamshire men. That man in powdered hair is Grenville, who lost us the colonies. That is the first Lord Shelburne; that the Duke,of Portland'; there is-Lord Grenville; and there" —pointing to the print .of Grant's portrait of himself—"is your humble servant./'