A curious correspondence is published in Tuesday's Times- concerning the
Walsall Election petition. A suggestion appears to have been made to the unseated Member that if he could only arrange to let the Gladstonian candidate have a "walk-over," he would not be asked for costs in connection with the petition. This proposal was indignantly rejected by Mr. James, who declared that he. was asked to "sell the con- stituency." On the other side, it was represented as a pecu- liarly magnanimous proposal ; the magnanimity apparently
consisting in the wish to consult the unseated Member's pecuniary convenience at the cost of the political convictions of the Unionists. On Wednesday, however, a letter was pub- lished in the Times by Mr. William Woodings, Assistant- Secretary to the Liberal Central Association, stating that inquiries made in Walsall had resulted in eliciting that no proposal of the kind suggested in Mr. L. W. Lewis's letter to Mr. James, had been made " with the knowledge, or under the authority, of any section of the Liberal Party." So much the better for the Liberal Party. But certainly some Members of it, who supposed themselves likely to carry the Liberal Party with them, did entertain the thought of buying the consti- tuency, and were compelled to give it up by Mr. Frank James's sturdy indignation.
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