NEWS:. 0. - Y: THE: . WEEK.
THE stream of the election:s trickles languidlY. The first impetu- ous gush has spent its force, and-the last drops are rolling down the channel. By the close of the month all will be over ; even Ultima Thule and the wilds of far Connemara will have sent in their " finaielose of the poll.". • • • • •
The Middlesex election -alone has been carried on with a spirit that recalls the eldetion-humours of the days of Fox and Sheridan, Burdett and John Cam Ilobhouse. It was from first to last a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Osborne and the Marquis of Blandford. The Liberal candidate took the lead, and kept it ; but his rival was all along close at his tail. The temper of the oppo- sing parties, whose forces were so nearly matched, was keen, al- most fieice ; and-it was the defiant tone in which 3fr. Osborne met the attempts to howl him down at the hustings, his unconipro- mising boldness, his readiness in turning passing incidents to the discomfiture of his adversaries, his frequent felicity in improvised illustrations, that looked -like a reawakening of the spirit that used to animate the hustings at Covent Garden. The angry clamour of his opponents, and the ready laugh of his friends, were as ani- mated as himself; but the other two candidates were mire foils to Osborne. Lord Robert Grosvenor had little to say for himself, except to repeat with amusing complaeenoy that he was the .fa= vourite candidate—that iris seat was safe ; and the Marquis of Illandford betrayed a solemn incapacity to understand a joke, that entitles him to take rank with the Secretary for Home Affairs. Mr. Osborne has displayed an aptitude for hustings warfare that seemed almost extinct in this generation : and the talent is one not to be despised ; but it is to be hoped that he will cultivate along with it those higher capabilities of which he has sometimes given indications, and which the better-regulated though more prosaic and commonplace mind of this age requires in legislators. _
Mr. Cobden was left unassailed in the West Riding, and on the
hustings he claimed some credit to himself for this ; rehearsing the promptitude and vigour with which he took the field as soon as he saw Lord Derby installed in office. Mr. Cobden did not, however, threaten Ministers with a very arduous Parliamentary campaign. Mr. Denison's friends were decorously resigned to circumstances : Mr. Cobden's appeal to them, when, looking to their side of the hustings, he exclaimed, " We are all Free-traders now," was re- ceived with a silence 'indicative of tender sadness and pensive memories.
Few of the other candidates, whose fate has been decided daring the week, have distinguished themselves. Twb leading Derbyites are exceptions. Mr. Newdegate, while professing, at the declaration of the poll for North Warwickshire, his unwavering faith in Pro- tection, added, that he is not on that account going to desert Lord Derby though the Premier should shrink from the task of restoring it. • Mr. Newdegate was not again going to be the man to break up the Conservative party : he had aided in doing that once, and was not willing to renew the experiment." Mr. Newde- gate was once simple enough to act upon principle regardless of consequences, but he will not repeat the blunder. The egregious Secretary at War, the Coriolanus of North Essex, having irritated the crowd assembled at the nomination by his expressions of con- tempt for them, avoided their anger at the declaration of the poll by a discreet absence. Mr. Disraeli too, greatly to the disappoint- ment of his admirers in Buckinghamshire, has not reappeared in the county since the day of nomination : but he, of course, has been detained, against his will, by the severe labours of trying to devise a policy for the Government. In the Borough elections the Peelites had the worst of it ; the county elections appear to be more disastrous to the Whigs. Mr.
Cornewall Lewis, who made a very- neat statistical s tilct-tTie nomination in Herefordshire, has been defeated ; and Sir a., - Grey, who made a rather heavy speech at the nomination in North Northumberland, has been driven into private life by the "pi- mount influence of Northumberland's Duke. The Tunes recalls the unsparing use of Adniiralty electioneering influence in the Dockyard towns, and presumes that the First Lord has. not been slow to use a corresponding influence which he derives in his own county from his large estates and commanding posi- tion. Growing indignant on the excessive abuse of such -in- fluences, the sarcastic journalist proposes that the nuisance be abated by simplifying it, and that, abolishing the Dockyards, the public money now wasted on those nests of patronage and bad ships, be expended on the purchase of votes in the cheapest mar- ket, for Government account !
The elections in Ireland have altered considerably the personalitiV of the Irish representation, but not in a manner likely to change its character very much. Sir Frederick Shaw bespoke a favourable au:- diem of the Dublin County electors, by assuring them that he is no longer " so much of a bigot either in politics or religion aetlrit• might be disposed to think him." The Marquis of Londonderry, ----- consistent to the last, though he set out on a foreign expedition as soon as his attempt on the independence of Downshire was- de- feated, has sent orders to his steward to defray the expenses incur- red by such of his tenants as vote for Lord Edwin Hill in coming to the poll, but saying not a word of his rebellious nephew. Ali:. parently, the Irish Brigade of the new Parliament will be, if any- thing, more unmanageable than its predecessor.
