NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE week has been mainly occupied with the county ele ctions, which have ended as yet on the whole favourably for Govern- ment. The Liberals had on Friday won twenty-two seats in counties and boroughs together from the Tories, giving them a majority in a division even greater than the fifty we ventured to predict. The spread of Liberal feeling in the counties, though far from universal, as witness our crushing defeat in Berkshire, is still very remarkable, and seems to be mainly due to two causes. One is the great increase of immigrant voters, merchants, manufacturers, and townsmen of all kinds, who now prefer living in the fresh air, and are beginning, we must add, in consequence to neglect the cities, and who are Liberals almost to a man. The other is the rapid increase of high farming, a business which requires both more capital and more intelligence than the old system of working the land. The new farmers, though by no means always Liberals, have a tendency to Liberalism, particularly in ecclesiastical mat-
ters, and are exceedingly inclined to form independent judgments--a practice highly obnoxious to genuine agricultural Toryism, which accepts as its first dogma the necessity of faith in things invisible, viz., Lord Derby's judgment and Mr. Disraeli's patriotism. Let rents only rise a little higher, and we shall have Conservatives clamouring for a ten-pound franchise in counties, in the hope that the new voters may not be quite so enlightened as the old.
