DR. KENEALY'S ELECTION.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
think there is one element you have entirely left out of consideration in your able article on Dr. Kenealy's election for
Stoke. Did you never hear from a shifting crowd, as a street-fight was going on, the cry, "Give it 'im, little un ! go it, monkey I" and the like, from bystanders, who evidently neither knew nor cared for the merits of the quarrel, but enthusiastically went for the "little un"? Now, there is engrained in rude English character a sort of blind and irrational chivalry, based on admiration of pluck, of enthusiasm for the "little un" fightingan apparently hope- less and desperate battle. Say what you will, Dr. Kenealy has shown pluck, though always with it impudence. I believe with you that an element of mania has introduced itself, and colours all his thoughts. But he defied the Judges, and persisted in saying his say, when I think they should have either banded him over to the officers of the Court on the instant, or have refrained from such repeated denunciations of his conduct afterwards as somehow almost reduced them to a sort of fighters with him, or raised him to something like a "foe- man worthy of their steel." The Lord Chief Justice, at the outset of his exhaustive and luminous address, spoke of the matter quite decisively, and used the words, "Now, let us pass from this un- pleasant matter," as though it had been dismissed by him once for all; then, before he concluded, he resumed it, and followed it out even in a fuller manner than before, and he was followed by each of his colleagues on the Bench. This was, perhaps, unfortunate, for it somehow introduced a shade of an element of personal irritation ; and when Dr. Kenealy was stripped of his Q.C., and disbarred in that very loose style that has been called "hugger- mugger," so that the way to earn an honest livelihood seemed closed to him absolutely and for ever, it surely might well seem to ignorant working-men that here, at all events, was a "little un," fighting at tremendous odds, when he fulminated for them in the Englishman as he has done.
Do you believe that Dr. Kenealy would have been elected for Stoke if he had not gone there as a martyr, a "little un," stripped of profession, yet fighting all the powers that be ? His mode of presenting himself in the House of Commons, ready to show cause why, legally, he could stand there alone and be sworn, was all of a piece with it. He must figure as the "little un," to keep his hold on the sympathies of the class whose votes carried him into Parliament, and the bulk of whom, I verily believe, have no more deliberate thought of, through his return, aiding to annihilate political parties and so much else, than of setting London on fire if he fails. Accustomed in no way to the trouble of drawing fine distinctions, they simply saw before them a man stripped of his position and the result of years of labour, and they were moved by his story and voted for him on impulse, just as they would have taken the part of any "little un." Politically, this sort of thing is very irrational and pitiable, but when " parties " need the careful education we have heard of, newly-enfranchised potters and miners must be patiently dealt with for a little while; but I humbly think that there is small need to draw such ominous con- clusions as yet from the workings of household suffrage and the ballot. The House of Commons showed its extreme, but only customary, good sense, by setting aside a form of etiquette of two hundred years' standing, rather than add an iota more of semblant martyrhood to the Membei for Stoke. If a little more of that policy had been adopted beforehand, Dr. Kenealy, in all probability, would never have stood there, attempting to argue
with the Speaker.—I am, Sir, &c., P. J.
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