The Speaker is to retire at the beginning, or, as
the Times says very soon after the beginning of the coming Session, and if we may judge at all by the line of the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Glad- stone will propose the Right Hon. H. B. W. Brand, M.P. for Cambridgeshire, formerly Lord Palmerston's and then Lord Russell's ' Whip' in the House of Commons, as his successor. We have explained in another column the objection which will, we think, be felt to the appointment,—if it should be proposed,— of an ex-Whip to the Chair of the House of Commons, more especially as a precedent. Mr. Brand himself is a general favourite, and is, in dignity of position and knowledge of the forms of the House, probably equal to any other member of the House of Commons. But if an ex-Whip should be accepted its Speaker now, it will be a disagreeable and invidious task to object to any future appointment of the same kind that the member proposed had shown more party spirit, and was individually held to be less sober and impartial than Mr. Brand. The tradition of selecting a man of antecedents which had never identified him closely with the leaders on either side, should be kept up, whereas it would be broken by the selection of Mr. Brand. Nothing is more important, especially for the future of the House of Commons, than that every approach to a breach of its decorum or relaxation of its dignity should be carefully barred. The other names mentioned have been Mr. Cardwell's, Mr. Bruce's, and Mr. Bouverie's,—to all of which there is the -name or a similar objection besides that in regard to Mr. Cardwell the Ministry will scarcely with "to swop horses while crossing a stream,"—and Mr. Whitbread's, the reputation of which is rather esoteric than exoteric in relation to the House, a point certainly far from an objection to it, but which renders it impossible for us to speak of it with any confidence.
