A Conservative has been returned for Southwark. At the close
of the poll the figures stood thus :—Colonel Beresford (Con- servative), 4,680; Mr. Odger (Radical), 4,382 ; Sir Sydney Waterlow (Liberal), 2,966,—majority for Colonel Beresford, 304. We have commented elsewhere on Mr. Odger's speech at the hustings, which we regret. We regret still more his speech when the poll was declared. Some allowance is no doubt to be made for a man who felt that there was a very vulgar caste-feeling against him in the borough, and that so many of Sir Sydney Waterlow's supporters preferred supporting even a Tory to a Liberal who was also a working-man. But then why play into the enemy's hands, by talking such violent nonsense about the "miserable Whip of Downing Street," "Whig roughs," "the hypocritical Whigs," "a wilderness of political jackals," and so forth. That sort of thing does not show nerve and courage, but only violence and temper. We regret Mr. Odger's failure, and still hope that his large poll may be the augury of a very early success. But he must learn equanimity and self-control, as the first conditions of real political influence. Sir Sydney 1Vaterlow was ill advised, and not perhaps very generous, to stand at all.
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