The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-06 00:00:00

LONDON, IBURSDAY, NOV. 5, 18G8.

The incidents of the General Election are begin-
ning to number up before it actually commences.
At Blackburn the first life bas been lost, a man
having been unhappily killed there in a conflict with
the police. At Tamworth the canvassers for Sir
HENRY BULWER have been disgracefully bludgeoned
by the supporters of Mr. JOHN PEEL, the latter
being 'apparently infuriated at the notion of any
such audacious interference with a close borough
hitherto delivered up to hereditary representation.
At Sheffield Mr. ROEBUCK is malignantly opposed by
the Trades' Unionists, and strenuously supported—
almost to a man—by the Publicans. At Preston
Lord EDWARD HOWARD has but just declared him-
self a convert to the Ballot, like so many
other of the reforming candidates now appeal-
ing to the Liberal constituencies. At Green-
wich—an extra-suburban borough, which had been
very judiciously prepared, almost from the first,
as a sort of padded mattress upon which to break
the dreaded fall of Mr. GLADSTONE in the midst of
his extraordinary and unprecedented performance,
a kind of double back summersault hitherto unat-
tempted, or even undreamt of, upon the political
trapeze of South West Lancashire—another Con-
servative candidate appears, side by side with Sir
HENRY PARKER, in the person of Earl STAI,THOPE'S
son and heir, Viscount MarroN—with the wicked de-
sign, says the Star, of ousting, not only Mr.
DAVID SALMONS, but with him the Leader of
the Opposition ! At Westminster, that in one
sense most unphilosophical and illogical of all
men now living, the great Philosopher and Logician,
Mr. JOHN STUART MILL, runs imminent risk of
losing his seat. And this solely by means of his
own wanton, wilful, and most preposterous esca-
pades. Such escapades, for example (to call them
by a mild name) as his pragmatical interposition be-
tween Mr. BouvErtin and the electors of Kirrnar-
nock with a view to the especially glorification of Mr
CHADWICK of the Sewers. Such as his malignant
persecution during so many months of ex-Governor
EYRE, whose principal guilt was the saving the life
and honour of every white woman in Jamaica at the
time of the negro insurrection, by his prompt and vi-
gorous stamping out of which he alone preserved that
splendid colony to the Crown of England. Or such
another escapade, again, of Mr. MILL'S as his back-
ing up Mr. BRADLAUGH'S candidature down at
Northt.mpton, with a complimentary letter and a
ten-pound note, in flagrant defiance of the noto-
rious fact that Mr. BRADLAUGH'S free-thinking views
have been even more openly avowed than those
of Professor BEESLY, who only the other day pre-
faced one of his arguments with—" Assuming the
existence of a Supernatural Being I" At Lambeth
there is noticeable the simultaneous disappearance of
the two outgoing representatives—each (though for
very different reasons) being regarded as a failure
by that great metropolitan constituency ! Mr.
ousToN being bowled out by an astounding
revelation of Belgian rebating to the tune of a
plum, quite as much as by his participation in the
Tea-room Plot, or by his entrance into the
Cave of Adullam ! Mr. HUGHES being, in his
turn, cold-shouldered out by the Lambeth con-
stituency, partly because of his total incapa-
city to realise the expectations formed of him
as a Parliamentary speaker (his total incapacity even
to catch the ear of the House, or once even, after
the precedent of Single Speech HAMILTON, to cause
his voice to be respected), partly because of his im-
practicable independence as a thoroughly Liberal
representative, and not, as so many of the Lambeth
electors would fain have had him, far rather by pre-
ference, viz., a delegate of the small shopkeepers. The
former (Mr. DOULTON) could speak upon occasion to
the entire satisfaction of the taste if not of the opi-
nions of the House—he having a very gentlemanly
delivery, a good deal of dash, and a delightful
amount of self-possession. his colleague (Mr.
HUGHES), however, could not speak to our remem-
brance even upon one solitary occasion, without
strongly impressing his hearers with a sense that the
author of " Tom Brown's Schooldays" had lost all
vigour at once of thought and of expression, and
had long since settled down to a dead level of
intellectual feebleness. Yet for all that--Mr.
Htesams is (as we hope), Mr. DOULTON iS not (as we
cannot regret),likely to find elsewhere than at Lambeth
a more believing and a more confiding constituency.
A tolerable speaker can be spared in Mr. DOULTON,
but the country can hardly afford to lose the services,
once it has been able to appreciate them, of a
thoroughly liberal-minded and thoroughly indepen-
dent representative such as Mr. THOMAS HUGHES—a
consistent and enlightened reformer, who —if
only be will refrain in future from attempting
to make speeches that must otherwise cause him
to settle down permanently into the position
of a recognised bore, we shall gladly see
(yesterday M.P. for Lambeth) to-morrow M.P.
Frome. Another disappearance from the House be-
sides Mr. DOULTON'S, not a man in it will be disposed,
for one instant, to regret, meaning that of Mr. RALPH
EARLE—sometime Mr. DisruELes confidential
Private Secretary, but of late his flagrantly malig-
nant, but contemptuously disregarded assailant.
Nothing more utterly revolted the good feeling of the
House, and this let it be said, quite equally both
sides of it, than the spectacle presented to view upon
each occasion upon whieh Mr. RALPH EARLE violated
all its sense of decorum, and outraged all its love for
the common and decent proprieties of civilized life,
by attacks upon his Chief, as feeble and futile in
themselves, as they were evidences of a personal and
deadly hatred. The recurrence of " scenes" like those,
the House cannot but be heartily rejoiced to be well
rid of. At Nottingham we cannot but hope that Mr.
BERNAL OSBORNE may contrive to hold his own in
defiance of all opposition, for, in one sense, we
" could better spare a better man" among our
Liberal politicians—the one wag of the house
being, in a manner, indispensible. Not after
the manner of Mr. JOHN LIARDY, any more than of