The Lord-Advocate has lost his election for the Wigtown Burghs
by a majority of 23 (656 voting for the Conservative, Mr. Mark Stewart, against 633 for the Lord-Advocate). The Lord-Advocate's majority last month was not very large, he having polled only 650 to his opponent's 638, and the scale has been turned by the unreasonable dislike of the Scotch Puritans to the appointment of a Roman Catholic Viceroy of India, and a Roman Catholic Lord Chamberlain. In the Wigtown Burghs, however, the local Puritanism, fed on very glowing traditions of persecution, is unusually strong, and perhaps, considering what human nature is, we should rather rejoice that so many voters remained faithful to their political principles under the severe test to which those principles were subjected, than that a few,—though they were enough to turn the scale,—proved unfaithful to them.
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