The Pall Mall, in its systematic efforts to expose the
sacer- dotal and ecclesiastical agencies which have been used to defeat its own zealous propagation of the true foreign policy, has con- structed a very amusing table, which shows that in 23 Cathedral towns, which in 1874 returned 20 Conservatives and 24 Liberals, there are now returned only 9 Conservatives and 35 Liberals. We suppose th&Pall Mall means to hint, what in former times it has often said, that the ecclesiastical movement which en- courages approximation towards the Greek Church accounts, in part at least, for this change. If that is what it means, a, more ludicrous explanation was never invented. Of all clergy- men in Cathedral towns, we venture to say 80 per cent. have voted for the Tories, if they have voted at all. The truth is, of course, that Dissent is more energetic in close proximity to a Cathedral Chapter, and that Dissent is the popular agency which has carried the day in Cathedral towns, as indeed, to a great extent, in all boroughs, for the Liberals. The Pall Mall is, perhaps, at last finding out that its fixed idea that the foreign policy of Mr. Gladstone and the Opposition was suggested by Canon Liddon, from ecclesiastical motives, was one of the wildest blunders ever due to the spirit of bitter auti-ecclesiastical suspicion.
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