The reception of Mr. Gladstone at Birkenhead on Thursday, when
he had to cut the first sod of a new railway joining Birkenhead with Wales,—the Wirral Rail- way,—was a significant sign of the times. Birkenhead is a strongly Conservative borough ; and Liverpool itself, though it has done itself great credit by putting Mr. S. Smith at the head of the poll, is only a very recent con- vert to the Liberal creed. This being so, the ovation received by Mr. Gladstone on Thursday was surely significant. This is how the Liverpool Morning Post describes the scene when Mr. Gladstone began to cut the sod :—" The eagerness of the distant crowd behind a frail circle of barriers was too great to enable them to restrain their curiosity, and suddenly, with a shout, the mass of people surged through the ' outworks ' and rushed into the centre of the ring. Mr. Gladstone was immediately surrounded by a mass of people, cheering, and shouting, and struggling violently to get near him. His only bodyguard con- sisted of two or three officials and a couple of diminutive police- men, who were completely engulphed, so to speak, in the human vortex, and the right hon. gentleman, hatless, and laughing pleasantly at the contretemps, struggled his way with much exertion and difficulty back to the platform. He was quite uninjured by this friendly mobbing, and on regaining the eleva- tion of the platform repeatedly bowed his thanks to the cheer- ing audience. The silver spade, which he carried out of the me/4e, had become somewhat injured in the struggle, and was completely bent. The reporters, who were seated at the table close to the platform, were completely overbalanced by the mob, some of the most violent being among the best-dressed visitors, and they were compelled to take notes of the Premier's speech standing up as best they could in the crowd." That is hardly the manner in which Birkenhead would have received him, if even the middle class there had regarded him as invading the constitutional privileges of a sacred aristocracy.
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