Mr. Miall has intimated his intention not again-to stand for
Bradford, in a letter to Sir Titus Salt, in which, as every one will regret to hear, he pleads infirm health as his reason for declining again to engage in the excitement of a contested. elec- tion in a large constituency. He has since declared that he may perhaps accept the offer of renewed Parliamentary work for some leas laborious seat, and the people of Bradford have, on their parts, expressed their wish to retain him without giving him the fatigue of a personal contest. Mr Miall has been the represen- tative of a cause with which we have little sympathy, but we should indeed be unworthy opponents of his, if we did not cordi- ally testify to the high ground he has taken upon it, the effort he has made to raise his pleas for disestablishment far above the region of mere jealousy, or even social rivalry, in short, the steady preference he has shown for arguing his case on the ground of the mischief done to the Church he proposes to "libe- rate," by its present connection with the State, rather than on that of the disadvantages to which the establishment of one reli- gious creed subjects those which are " free " from like contamina- tion. To every politician who thus rests his advocacy on a plea which he regards as one of ethical right, and eschews the plea of social grievance, Parliament certainly owes new moral influence with the people, and public opinion some of its noblest elements. Parliamentary politics would suffer a serious loss in Mr. Minn, and we sincerely trust that that loss-is not yet at hand.
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