NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE event of the week—which has been otherwise a dull one, every one waiting for the Ministerial declarations, which will be made on the reassembling of Parliament on Monday —has been the publication of a letter from Mr. Gladstone, which is taken to mean that he will lead the party at all events over the elections. In this letter, which is addressed to Mr. John Cowan, Chairman of the Midlothian Liberal Association, Mr. Gladstone, "although a vote of the Representative Chamber has put an end to the late Cabinet," records his deep and grateful sense of the fidelity of the Liberal majority of 1880 to its trust. It has had to encounter unexampled difficulties, and " I can no more forget than I can repay its confidence and kind- ness." He had never expected to seek re-election in Midlothian; but "I am not at this moment released from my duties to the party which has trusted me, and the first of these duties is to use my strongest and most sedulous efforts to prevent anything that can mar the unity and efficiency of the great instrument which, under Providence, has chiefly and almost wholly made our history for the last half-century." Those words must mean that Mr. Gladstone, foreseeing divisions in his party, agrees once more to take up the onerous burden of its leadership, and will fight through the electoral campaign. That decision almost assures the Liberals victory at the polls, for it will give them a rallying cry under which all differences will be forgotten. The cry which all men will utter will be simply " Gladstone !" or, as it is more euphoniously put, " The old man and the old cause !"
