We hope that the attempt which has been deliberately made
in some parts of the country to tun the County Councils into political bear-gardens, is likely to fall, and fail completely. Of course, the proper business of these Councils is to consult for the local interests of the ratepayers in relation to all county affairs, and it seems to us to be every voter's duty to choose the best man he can find for that purpose, whether he be nominally Gladstonian or Unionist, Home-ruler or Conserva.-
tive. But a great effort has been made by some of the most unscrupulous of political partisans to prevent this, and to pervert local business to party purposes. For example, at Swindon, a month ago, a gentleman of the name of Fuller deliberately advocated the introduction of politics into county elections, "as the only way in which the rural population could be educated to realise the importance of the elections," which is precisely like saying that the only way in which the people can be taught to raise and administer the poor-rates wisely, is to excite their passions on matters which have no relation to the poor. Indeed, this was artistically attempted at the same meeting, in a speech of Mr. Rider Cook's, which suggested that the difference between Mr. Gladstone and other Chancellors of the Exchequer is that Mr. Gladstone "had not chosen to play with Jew financiers as other Chancellors of the Exchequer had done, and speculate as to produce, .8r.c.," "other- wise he might have been a millionaire." We should like to hear the scorn which Mr. Gladstone himself would express of so unworthy an attempt as this to injure a younger statesman in his honour. But so far as we can judge, efforts of this kind to pervert the issues of local government, by miring them up with partisan passions, have for the present entirely failed. We hope that the elections in January may show that the best men have been chosen, whether they be Home-rulers or Unionists, Whigs or Radicals or Conservatives, and that the men elected intend absolutely to ignore polities, and to devote their whole mind to the anxious administrative duties with which they have been entrusted.
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