Note 67 — WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. ON DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS; DELIVERED AT WEST CALDER, NOVEMBER 27, 1879.

Note 67, p. 289.—Mr. Gladstone’s praise of Mr. Playfair’s qualifications was not extravagant. Playfair first became eminent as a chemist, having been a successful student under Liebig at Giessen, and subsequently Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution at Manchester and in the University of Edinburgh. In 1844 he was appointed chairman of a commission to examine into the sanitary condition of English towns, and in 1851 was sent by the government into the manufacturing districts to prepare a classification of the various objects of industry. At the World’s Exposition he was placed in charge of the department of jurors, and so well did he perform his work that at the next World’s Exposition, in 1862, he was entrusted with the selection of the jurors, some six hundred in number, to be drawn from the most eminent men of all countries. In 1874 he prepared the elaborate scheme for the reorganization of the English civil service, a work which he was well fitted to perform by reason of his labors in 1873–4 as Postmaster-General. During his visit to the United States he delivered an important address in Boston on the civil service in England as compared with that in the United States.