KING VICTOR EMANUEL'S FUNERAL.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2864, 20 April 1878, Page 4

KING VICTOR EMANUEL'S FUNERAL.

A singular instance of the way in which English Governments, no matter to what party they belong, contrive to lose opportunities for conciliating the public opinion of foreign nations, is afforded by the arrangements which have been made for the. representation of England at the funeral of Victor EmanueU Popular feeling in Italy attaches, not unnaturally, importance to all official recognition of the status of the new kingdom; and the Courts of Vienna and Berlin have recog nised this fact by sending the Archduke Eenier, on the one hand, and tho Crown Prince of Germany on the other to represent their respective sovereigns at the funeral of the first king of the peninsula. The friendship of Italy is hardly less important to England than it is to Germany or Austria, and it would have been only fitting that one of the Princes of our Blood Koyal should have been deputed to represent Her Majesty on this solemn occasion. Instead of this, our Government have selected for the purpose the Earl of Roden, an obscure Irish nobleman, who sits in the House of Lords as Baron Clanbrassil, and who is as little known to the public at large by one title as the other. Lord Roden, we learn from "Bod's Companion," is a Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen ; but why he should have been selected to discharge a duty which a royal duke should naturally have been appointed to perform is a point concerning which we, in common with the rest of the world, can offer no explanation whatever. Certainly it cannot be said that we are short of royal dukes, or that one or two could not be spared from their pressing occupations to render a service to the State.—The Week.