The scientific men do not inspire us with confidence in
their sagacity as politicians, even when they are on our side. The other day we had in the papers a letter of considerable force from Professor Huxley against the Irish measures of the Government, but one which not only expressed a great deal too much of supreme scorn and contempt for those who differed from him, but which ended in a curiously ill-advised expres- sion of respect for Mr. Parnell, to whom, if to any one, the evils of the present situation are due. And now we have Professor Tyndall writing in a still rasher and more furious spirit to the chairman of Thursday's meeting at St. James's Hall in favour of the Constitutional Union :-- "It is not, I confess, Mr. Gladstone's proposals, reckless and ruinous as they are, that I hold to be the gravest symptoms of oar time. It is rather the fact that any single man, how- ever skilled and eminent in Parliamentary diagnosis, should be able so to drug and debauch a powerful and practical nation that, despite the unexampled failures and iniquities of the last six years, despite even this latest treasonable surprise, he should still stand a chance of being tolerated as our Prime Minister." That, if it be not silly, is absolutely venomous, and venomous attacks on a man so great as Mr. Gladstone, appear to us the very worst means which men could take for defeating him in a political enterprise so serious as the present.
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