Mr. Gladstone is to be elected a member of Brooks's
by a some- what unusual process, invented apparently expressly for that end, which the Echoes of the Clubs, —a new gossiping periodical cor- responding to its name,—describes in its first number. Brooks's, we need not tell our readers, is an old exclusive Whig Club, where Mr. Gladstone is scarcely as yet more popular,—such is the stub- born nature of old Whigs,—than at the Carlton, of which he has never ceased to be a member. The device of those Whigs who wished to put away from their club the reproach that it did not contain the leader of the Liberals, and the single man of genius in their party, was this :—Knowing that Mr. Gladstone would have been rejected in an ordinary ballot, they proposed that the Com- mittee of the Club should have power at their discretion to nomi- mate members of their party of either House of Parliament, not exceeding five in number in any one year, as members of the club. And this resolution was carried by 63 to 55 on Wednesday. Another resolution, which was even a more transparent disguise of the special purpose in view, to the effect that any member of the Cabinet of Lords Palmerston and Russell might be put on as an honorary member directly his name was entered on the list of candidates, did not therefore come on for discussion. We suppose -that Mr. Gladstone will become very quickly a member of Brooks's under the new regulation.
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