No member of this Government has so surprised and taken unawares the outsider as the Duke of Norfolk, in the office of Postwmaster-General and' otherwise. He had come to be regarded as simply the latter-day representative steeped in and over-laden with wealth of a great, old English patrician house, and separated from the world of English political and social life by an exceptional and pecu-larly unqualified devotion to the Roman Church. England, not in the very inner official circle of Conservative statesmanship, was puzzled beyond measure at the Announcement, on the formation of Lord Salisbury's Administration, that the head ofthe House of Howard' was to be the Master of the Post Office and a Cabinet Minister! And this is the man who has made the Post Office hum with reform It is hardly possible to call to mind any Postmaster-General since the establishment of the Penny Post who h much for progress in St. Martin's-le-Grand as the Duke of Norfolk.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.