Sir John Lubbock was returned for the University of London,
on Wednesday, without a contest, in place of Mr. Lowe, who has become Lord Sherbrooke ; and in returning thanks for his election, he made a wise and very thoughtful speech. He disowned with great spirit the charge that he was 4' half a Jingo." He was, no doubt, most anxious to maintain the power and influence of this country, but he desired to main- tain that power and influence by the confidence felt in our justice and integrity, not by the fear of force. The great pro- blem of the future was to weld our colonial empire well together, and we should fall into a very serious error, if we sacrificed the unity and integrity of our Empire to the shadow of European ascendancy. He could not defend all that Russia had done, but he ridiculed the fear felt of her advance in Central Asia. That was only a great source of weakness to her, and a constant drain on her overstrained resources. Our population in India was 200,000,000. The total population of Central Asia is only 10,000,000, and most of these are bitterly hostile to Russian rule. China, with its 400,000,000 of mysterious, patient, and thrifty inhabitants, not Russia, is the only real danger of our Indian Empire. All this is excellent and timely political sug- gestion. Sir John Lubbock has one admirable and not very common characteristic as a politician,—that he knows something. And as Goethe used to say, one always finds the advantage of knowing something, even when it seems least likely that any such advantage would be felt.
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