NEWS OF THE WEEK.
MR. GLADSTONE spoke at Chester on Tuesday in favour of the second Liberal candidate, the Hon. Beilby Lawley, who, in conjunction with Mr. Dodson, is to contest Chester at the general election. Mr. Gladstone said that h eying sat in eleven Par- liaments, and having been elected seventeen or eighteen times, he had yet never known the issues before the country so grave as those which the nation would have to consider at the next general election. He spoke with impartiality, because, while on most of these occasions he had " a future before him," and more or less interest in the personal contingencies of politics, he trusted that it would not be so again. In his own mind, indeed, he looked forward to the election in Midlothian as probably terminating his own active exertions for the public service,—which did not mean, apparently, that Mr. Gladstone expected to be beaten ; but only that he expected to have done enough if he carried the county fok the Liberals, He charged the Government with having augmented the powerof the Russian Empire, while estranging the vood-will of the Russian popula- tion ; with having embroiled the Crown and the people in an unjust war of great danger to the Indian Empire; with having abridged, by their use of the war-making and treaty- making powers, the rights of Parliament, and having pre- sented these prerogatives to the nation under an uncon- stitutional aspect which tends to make them insecure. He
had been unjustly accused, he said, of being a partisan of Russia. That he was not. He would gladly have gained
for England a share in the glory and credit which the policy of the Government had reserved exclusively for Russia ; for ho would have enabled England to play a principal part in pro- moting liberty and justice in the East.
