We deeply regret the defeat of Mr. Harold Cox at
Preston. In him Parliament loses, we sincerely hope only for a time, a man of wise mind and high character, and possessed of a type of eloquence exactly suited to a delibera- tive assembly. Mr. Cox, as Burke said of one of his own contemporaries, always hit the House exactly " between wind and water." But even if Mr. Cox's exclusion could perhaps be explained by rigid political partisans on the grounds of party discipline, that plea must be violently strained to justify the sacrifice of Lord Robert Cecil, who was beaten at Blackburn after being hounded out of East Marylebone by a despicable intrigue which has brought well-merited confusion on its promoters. On the Ministerial side the defeat of so personally popular a Member as Colonel Seely provokes no exultation among his political opponents, and the same remark applies to Mr. Buckmaster, a distinguished barrister, with none of the faults of the advocate, and a most chivalrous and fair-minded controversialist.
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