In a democratic Government efficiency requires that the rules of official apprenticeship should be severe and, as in the Services, the thinning out process should become increasingly drastic after a certain rank is reached.
The public has been very imperfectly informed as to the constitutional. power—and its practice—of a Prime Minister to require the resign nation of a colleague whom he considers no longer profitable. The authorities, in fact, sharply disagree. Sir Wiliam Harcourt once wrote that "a man must be pachydermatous indeed who is incapable of accepting the first hint that his room is wanted, whether he is ona visit or in the Cabinet," That is far too flattering. Such exquisite sensibility of soul is not, indeed, unknown in high politics, but it is surely the exception rather than the rule. What would Harcourt's pwn retort have been to Lord Rosebery if the latter had dropped a hint tat he desired, or blurted an intimation that he required, a change of Chancellor Quicken the rate of promotion by a mote rapid elimination of those who have been tried and failed. Nine-carat statesmen will not do, "Rolled gol" politicians are just brass. If politics are becoming more professional—and they are—the standards for promotion must be raised. Am-bilious men enter politics with their eyes open, as they enter the Law. We shall not get better Cabinet Ministers by providing sustentation funds for the failures.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.