Last Saturday, at the annual meeting of the Mid-Lothian Liberal
Association, Sir john Cowan in the chair, a letter was read from Mr. Gladstone, definitely declining to present him- self for re-election after the Dissolution of the present Parlia- ment. Mr. Gladstone does not attempt to return to the subject with which he dealt so impressively in the letter sent to Sir John Cowan after his resignation of Office, namely, his own lifelong desire "to learn" as much as possible by his political experience, but simply expresses his hope that not only Mid- Lothian, but the whole people of Scotland may be as con- spicuous in the future as in the past, "for their bold and active but circumspect and considerate application of the principles of Liberal policy to the conduct of public affairs." Sir T. D. Gibson Carmichael was adopted as the Liberal candidate for Mid-Lothian after Mr. Gladstone's retirement, and thus quietly ended perhaps the most stormy and belligerent quarter of Mr. Gladstone's great public career. It has been his singular fate to consume more than half his public life in the transition from strong Conservatism to cautious but earnest Liberalism; another quarter in the tran- sition from cautious Liberalism to decided Radicalism ; and the final quarter in that career of rapidly accelerated velocity jL that agitation against the Union of these realms which landed him at its close in a vehement denunciation of the hereditary House of Legislature, and the demand that it should be either bridled or abolished.
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