It is generally admitted that Mr. Gladstone will, for the
present at least, retire from the leadership of the Liberal party. He has long been in need of rest, and the opportunity is new before him. Of course he will speak on the Budget, and very likely take the occasion to deliver a great historical speech in defence of his administration, but for the present he will certainly not mingle in the ordinary business of the House of Commons. The loss to his party will be irreparable, and will be-felt the more severely on account of Mr. Cardwell's intended elevation to the Upper House, so that not only Mr. Gladstone's place, but that of the natural successor to Mr. Gladstone, will become vacant. We have commented at some length in another column on the disaster to the Liberals which this sudden retreat of Achilles to his tent, and snatching away of Patroclus to the Elysian fields of the Lords, involves. But for the present the leadership is in coin- miesion, and the commission will not, we suppose, be very care- fully organised. A Nor therm contempoiary suggests that Sir William Harcourt must be the eventual leader. But though Sir William Harcourt,—who has never, by the way, even answered an official question in the House of Commons, and is generally supposed to have picked up somewhat hastily in the lobby many of the convictions he expressed most confidently in the House—is a very clever man, he is best known just at present as the admirer and panegyrist of Mr. Disraeli, whom it would cut him to the -heart to criticise sharply. We shall miss our "lost leader,"—if he be lost, —for many a long, year, and have plenty of time to repent at leisure the quarrels which have resulted in his retirement.
