Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, whose seat was contested at Eye, was
returned on Wednesday by a majority of 137. In a most in- temperate speech, in which he denounced Mr. Gladstone as a man who had been a curse to Egypt, a curse to South Africa, and a curse to India, and who would be a curse to England, he declared that Eye had doubled the majority ; but his figures are as ill-founded as his facts. His voters have declined from 540 to 473; and though the Liberals have declined still more, that is due to the reluctance to throw out Members just because they have accepted office. Mr. Webster, the new Attorney-General, has been elected for Lhunceston, always a safe Tory seat, by 417 votes over 371 votes recorded for Mr. W. Pethick, a local Liberal candidate. Mr. Webster has not sat in Parliament before, and will, we hope, prove an acquisition to his party. He is a most able lawyer, speaks clearly, and showed in the contest for Launceston a certain strong reasonableness of jadgment which, in a party led by Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, should be most useful. Sir Richard Webster, as he will be from next week, is only forty-two, was a Queen's Counsel at thirty-five, and has had among lawyers an unusually rapid rise. He is pre-eminently the new man among the Tories.
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