ON TAKING OFFICE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 82, 5 April 1924, Page 16

ON TAKING OFFICE

POLITICAL HAPPENINGS OF THE .. v PAST.

If. Ministers generally .manage to maintain an "equal mind" when turned out of office, there is a variety of evidence on the feelings of Ministers when taking office, writes a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." There is Dizzy's "top of the greasy pole," for inetance, to which, a ' commentator might have added that it was an uncommonly well-greased pole which "the adventurer" had had to climb. When Gladstone received the summons in 1868 he was felling' a tree; he handed the telegram to his companion with the two words, "Very significant," and went, on :with his work, interrupting it.again presently to Bay with great earnestness, "My mission is to pacify Ireland." Later on ho regarded office with a certain distaste as carrying him farther from his cherished hope of., an interval between active public life and the grave. When Hareourt first received office as .Solicitor-General it was in no very accomimodating spirit, attributing his acceptance to "moral laziiiess," and getting into a towering passion over' Gladstone's refusal to do anything to assist him to escape' the humiliation of a knighthood. But Harcourt's woes,, though more loudly expressed, were nothing, to, the dilemma iri which Lord Salisbury found himself when asked to take office in 1874. His first impression, of that period .of office, which was to make, certain his reversion of the-leadership was described by him as "a very dreary look-out. The prospect. of having to serve with this man again is like a nightmare." The wives of Ministers have been more ambitious., sometimes than their lords; but this has not always been the case,- for just before Lord Grey came in on Reform, wo read, that i"Lady Grey is all against' Lor,d 'G. becoming a politician again, and says she sees people getting round him whom she hates and never can forgive for their' past conduct 'to him.".