10 FEBRUARY 1883, Page 2

Sir Robert Peel, as a politician, seems to have lost

his head altogether. At Warrington, on Thursday week, in a speech which was not reported in London, he not only burst into a furious tirade against the Liberals, charging them, among other absurdities, with making "peace with dishonour" in E'gypt, but accused Dr. A. Clarke of inventing an illness for Mr. Glad- stone, to prevent his being cross-questionedin Midlothian about the "Treaty with the Vatican." "Seriously," he said, "they had a Prime Minister who had deserted the helm of the vessel of State at the very moment when Parliament was going to meet, when Cabinet Councils ought to be held, and when he ought to be superintending the machinery for the coming Session. They knew that the Prime Minister had relinquished the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had relinquished it at a time when the finances of this country, owing to extrava- gance and mismanagement, were in a very unsettled state." Some strange change must have passed over Englishmen, when they will bear that kind of malignity, even from the most acatter-brained of politicians, who believes, as he said, that if Mr. Gladstone resigned, the Liberal party would fall in pieces.