4 FEBRUARY 1882, Page 2

Mr. Mundella had a great reception in Sheffield on Wednes-

day, and his popularity with his immense constituency was so great that even the few Irish malcontents did not succeed in interrupting him, though one of them did succeid in getting himself ejected from the hall. In commenting on Sir Stafford Northcote's apologetic mode of dealing with the Fair-traders, Mr. Mundella said that Sir S. Northcote's principle appeared to be,—" Hold your convictions loosely, and be very modest about them." Indeed, he himself had been induced to exclaim after Sir S. Northcote's speech at Sheffield, "Frailty, thy name is Northcote." Sir S. Northcote was like the gallant Volunteer in the American Civil War who spoke so bravely about the struggle, that they gave him the standard of the regiment to carry ; but when the bullets began to whistle round him, he let the standard fall, and decamped, not because he was wounded, but because, as he said, he had been awfully demoralised. On the reform of procedure, Mr. Mundella was very outspoken. No one, he said, wanted to interfere with the liberty of minorities, so far as it was consistent with doing proper17 the work of the country ; but so necessary was it to curtail debate sufficiently to render it possible that the work of the country should be done, that he was quite willing to put the Parliamentary yoke for which he asked on his own neck, and go into Opposition, if only the House of Commons could recover the power of action it had lost. Mr. Mundella always sees the true point of a question of this sort, and puts it so that the people can see it too. He is one of the best of our officials, partly because there is no officialimn in him.