Mr. Joseph Leicester, an ex-Member of Parliament, who sent Mr.
Radcliffe Cooke (M.P. for West Newington) a rather hasty and foolish estimate of Lord Hartington's powers as a speaker,—which he was evidently not competent to criticise,— has certainly reason to complain of that gentleman for having printed his letter without permission and without notice. It is especially unfair to a working man,—even though he be, as Mr. Leicester certainly is, a very bumptious working man,— to decoy him into a political letter, and then publish the letter without permission. Mr. Radcliffe Cooke says that it was a letter on a political subject not marked private. But our correspondents, even if we write on -political subjects and do not mark our letters private, have no right to publish them without leave. The political life of this country is becoming, we hope, more :scrupulous than it once was; but even now it is not very -scrupulous, and we cannot set a worse example to the working .classes whom we wish to train into sober and forbearing politicians, than to make unfair use of their confidence, by -treating them with less honourable respect and forbearance than we should show to politicians of higher rank. If Lord Hartington had expressed to Mr. Radcliffe Cooke any opinion about Mr. Joseph Leicester, we may be sure that Mr. Cooke -would not have published his letter without first obtaining Lord Hartington's consent.
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