We notice with some regret and more astonishment the shrieking
of some of our contemporaries as to Lord Iddesleigh's " murder." No charge could be brought more entirely out of keeping with the thorough reasonableness and sobriety of tone which always characterised the deceased statesman. Do our contemporaries really mean that because a leading statesman happens to have a weakness of the heart, the whole of English political life should be so arranged as not to administer to him any accidental shock P If so, we ought to send every Minister who is about to enter a Cabinet to an expert in heart-disease to stethoscope him, before he is asked to join the Government, and to withdraw the offer if evidence of weakness in that organ is detected. Lord Salisbury probably valued Lord Iddesleigh's services at least as highly as any man in the Conservative camp. But at such a crisis as this, it was most desirable that the Prime Minister should himself take command of the Foreiga Office; and so far as we know, it was a pure misfortune, and no one's fault, that Lord Iddesleigh happened to hear of the Prime Minister's plans from the newspapers, and not from himself. We deeply dislike and disapprove the growing irritability and excitability of the Euglish Press. It indicates liability to an hysterical epidemic such as sometimes runs through a girls' school, not the equanimity and calm of masculine English strength.
