The by-elections of the week have been in accordance with
the omen furnished by the Doncaster election. At Hampstead,— vacated by the Colonial Secretary, Sir Henry Holland, who has been raised to the House of Lords as Lord Knntsford,—there was no contest, and Mr. E. Brodie Hoare, a Conservative Unionist, was returned on Tuesday for that division of Middle- sex. In 1885, the Conservative majority for Sir Henry Holland was 875, and in 1886 it was 1,762 ; and as the Liberal Unionists of Hampstead decided to support the Conservative Unionist rather than risk a triumph for Home-rule, there was not much hope that even the majority of 1886 would have been materially reduced. Even the most militant of the Home-rule organs deprecated a fight which must have ended, as they were well aware, in a crushing defeat.
