Lord Rosebery, in his amusing speech at the new Town
Hall of St. Mary, Battersea, while appreciating very emphatically, —perhaps- even a little artificially,—the new municipal life which is strong in London, managed to say a word in depreca- tion of that "municipalisation of the individual," as he called it, which makes every private detail of public men's lives the subject of microscopic examination by the journals of the day. He seemed to himself, he said, to be made acquainted with every act of Mr. Gladstone's private life from morning till night, and he did not think that altogether a good thing. Of course he meant that it was a very bad thing, but pre- ferred not to put it too emphatically. We wish the new municipalities could put it down; but apparently the only marked effect of the new municipalities is to extend the area within which this incessant public curiosity is exercised, from statesmen and politicians to the heroes of County Councils and Parish Councils. The result will be that kind of disgust for public and political life which has so gravely injured the public life of the United States.
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