All the details of the new County Suffrage¹ Bill were settled at Matching during the recess² between Mr. Monk³, Phineas Finn, and a very experienced gentleman from the Treasury⁴, one Mr. Prime, who was supposed to know more about such things than any man living, and was consequently called Constitution Charlie. He was an elderly man, over sixty years of age, who remembered the first Reform Bill, and had been engaged in the doctoring of constituencies ever since. The Bill, if passed, would be mainly his Bill, and yet the world would never hear his name as connected with it. Let us hope that he was comfortable at Matching, and that he found his consolation⁵ in the smiles of the Duchess. During this time the old Duke was away, and even the Prime Minister was absent for some days. He would fain have busied himself about the Bill himself, but was hardly allowed by his colleagues to have any hand in framing it. The great points of the measure had of course been arranged in the Cabinet,—where, however, Mr. Monk's views had been adopted almost without a change. It may not perhaps be too much to assume that one or two members of the Cabinet did not quite understand the full scope of every suggested clause. The effects which clauses will produce, the dangers which may be expected from this or that change, the manner in which this or that proposition will come out in the washing, do not strike even Cabinet Ministers at a glance. A little study in a man's own cabinet, after the reading perhaps of a few leading articles, and perhaps a short conversation with an astute⁶ friend or two, will enable a statesman to be strong at a given time for, or even, if necessary, against a measure, who has listened in silence, and has perhaps given his personal assent⁷, to the original suggestion. I doubt whether Lord Drummond, when he sat silent in the Cabinet, had realised those fears which weighed upon him so strongly afterwards, or had then foreseen that the

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