MR. BAINES'S RESIGNATION.
Mn. BAINES has revoked the resignation of his office as President of the Poor-law Board, and has done well in revoking it. He had over-estimated the "slight," and the importance of Lord Palmer- ston's obiter dictum on certain claims, reasonable in themselves, and appealing to the natural sympathy between Irish Pauper and Irish Peer. But it would have been better if the difference had never been made public. There is sense as well as malice in Mr. Disraeli's suggestion, that Ministers should wash at home, and that if they must wash, they should employ, a junior bishop as laun- dress. How much better if these needless disputes were not pro- yoked at all.
Respecting the motives which brought all the chief members of the present Government together there can be no doubt. Each one made sufficient sacrifice of ease or of "claims," to show that he was actuated by a sincere desire for the public service beyond his own interests. The object was to rescue the administration from the discredit into which it had fallen, by rallying to it men of the highest ability and standing : and that object has been completely attained. To be nailed into that Cabinet, was a summons that was in itself a compliment and a recognition, and to be importuned was to receive the compliment in its most intense form. Respecting the appreciation of each member' therefore there can be no doubt; and it must be a general desire to retain hi the cooperation all who have contributed to such high results.
It follows, however, that if the claims of each must meet with the deepest consideration, each must regard the assemblage of col- leagues before him as one of the most remarkable and estimable that can well be confronted ; and even the highest pretensions of any single statesman may bow to pretensions thus multiplied and accumulated. Every man in such an assemblage, who rightly ap- preciates his own position in being there, will be very careful not to put a slight upon the general feeling by aiming at establishing any separate position,. still less by any levity of conduct, even on minor points. We_are.not indulging any abstract reflections; we regret that there have been occasions only too practical for saying so much. It is not the first time that the Ministry has been disturbed by a resignation; and although there is the difference, that on the last previous occasion the seceder was of more official importance, and that the motives to retirement originated, as they ended, solely with himself, the real author of the difficulty was in both cases the same ; and in both cases the impulsive creation of the difficulty sprung from the same cause. One individual of the Ca- binet Seemed le have retained a mental reservation in promising cordiality of union; and, even on points to which he was not per- sonally pledged, he seems to have cultivated an unexpectedly keen regard to his own personal predilections and separate interests. As an extenuating circumstance, it has been observed that time tends to shut up the most expansive man more to himself, and that length of service may excuse a little too much egotism : but we doubt whether the statesman in question would consent to adopt any excuse, still leas an excuse based upon venerable years. Whether pleaded or not, lengthened service might well warrant no small share of indulgence for the personal idiosyncrasies, if a repetition of such ruptures in a common understanding might not leave consequences graver than any individual chagrin. But it would be deplorable if imitations of the course taken by Mr. Baines were rendered necessary ; and it might become a grave question in political arithmetic, whether anything is gained by retaining the alliance of one whose presence risks the loss of several others, less or more valuable than himself to the union of leading states- men in office.
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