The first English county election under the Ballot will be,
as we expected, for Mid-Cheshire. Colonel -Cornwall Legh has re- signed, and the group of families who control Mid-Cheshire have chosen Lieutenant-Colonel Egerton Leigh to succeed him, and have obtained some three thousand signatures to an address re- questing him to stand. He has accepted, declaring himself a Liberal-Conservative who is a friend of Church and State, who has "long distrusted the present Administration," but who is willing to remove abuses. He trusts Mid-Cheshire will not allow herself to be " dragged by Radical leaders through unknown and revolutionary paths," and is, we should say, a rather bitter Tory. He does not say a word on the land tenure, which is his rival Mr. Latham's cry, and as the constituency is well divided, the contest ought to be a sharp one. The Liberals may not win, as tenants can sign requisitions which landlords read, but defeat by a majority, say of fifteen or twenty, in a county like Mid- Cheshire would be equal to victory.
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