Baron Lionel de Rothschild is still Member for London; and
if his reelection has been endowed with the graces of a victory, he has to thank his enemies rather than his friends, for his foes have served him most effectively by setting up an opposition can- didate to be beaten. Without that extraneous aid, the hollowness of the whole affair would have been more apparent. While the opposition tested the _Baron's open-handed courage, it placed before him an easy foe. Lord John Manners had no special qualification for City election : he is a young. nobleman ; his sympathies are with country, not town—with agriculture, not
trade ; he was advanced as a Protectionist, the City having taken a lead in the Free-trade movement—as a Conservative. of religious exclusions,. the City. hawing elected Baron de Rotes child and petitioned forethe Jew Bill. Lora John Manners ap- peared in no capacity except ass a fbil to the City magnate, the
client and champion orreligiouseipmlity. some vhoughPof a Jew as an alien, the denizen of the imaginary "Young England" was yet more alien to the highly realist capital of Old England. The "aristocratic" intrusion from the West-end roused the esprit de corps in the East, and the civic pride was moved. The elec- tion was more like a stir than it would have been.
Yet after all, the stir was supererogatory. If there is a contest between the Peers and the City—which is not very obvious, nor very alarming—it might have been far more impressively con- ducted on the civic side by a more passive demeanour. While Baron de Rothschild sat in the House of Commons, as Member for the City duly qualified and elected, yet excluded from active service, not by. the Three Estates, but solely by a doubtful ma- jority in the House of Lords, the claims and arguments for re- moving that bar against the Member for the City were embodied in the most telling form : the election has added no force to the argument; if it has added any weight to the claim of the City, that weight is borrowed from the defeat which the Protectionists of religious exclusion spontaneously invited.
