[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIE,—Unlike your correspondent " Conservative " in last week's issue, I cannot claim to be "one who has had great experience of political affairs in every shape and form." I do, however, know something of Dundee, and I can assure him he is quite wrong in attributing the disappointing result of the recent by-election there to any deficiency on the part of the Unionist candidate. Like the East of Scotland generally, Dundee is almost hopelessly Radical. Elections are contested rather from a sense of duty and in order to keep the flag flying than from any expectation of victory. Suitable candi- dates are consequently hard to get, and we have hitherto almost always had to fall back on Edinburgh lawyers to champion us, able men most of them and ready speakers, but sadly handicapped by being pitchforked into a constituency of which they knew nothing, and on which they had no claim. At the late election we were much more fortunate. Our candidate, it is true, was no heaven-born orator, still less a Cabinet Minister; but as a local man with an hereditary interest in politics, who for over twenty years had been the active and efficient chairman of the local Liberal Unionist Party, besides taking a leading share in the business, educational, and philanthropic work of the city, be appeared certain to do well at the poll. That he did not do better was, we are satisfied, in no way the candidate's fault, but was due, apart from the invincible Radicalism of Dundee, to the disconcerting fact, observable elsewhere as well, that Socialist votes are drawn, not only from the Radicals, but also to a substantial extent from the Unionist Party too.—I am, Sir, &c.,
DUNDEE UNIONIST.
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