NEWS OF THE WEEK.
MR. GLADSTONE'S enemies seem very confident just now, but we suspect they are inventing some of the reasons for their own exhilaration. Their theory is that the Premier will be forced to dissolve in a month or two, and then a general election will seat them in power; but that theory requires Cabinet aid, which it may not receive. Suppose Mr. Gladstone, who is a Scotchman, and a man given to fighting when provoked, goes on quietly till February with his improved Cabinet, succeeds in framing with Mr. Bright a modus vivendi with the Dissenters, makes two or three Evangelical appointments, and meets Parliament in Feb- ruary with a great programme and a magical Budget, which he can debate out before the country, relying on a majority which cannot by Easter be reduced below sixty, and then dissolves, how will the Tories stand ? Just as they stood in 1867, face to face with a new Parliament and a crushing majority called out by the new programme. That is a line of action on the cards, and it will upset a good many very patient calculations. It would be odd, but intelligible, if in the mean- while the Government gained a hundred votes on division by the complete secession of Ulster, where, as we have explained else- where, a new spirit is growing up, and where the Orange farmers on all but a single subject are just Scotchmen, with the same ideas and the same interests.
