NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE present Easter recess has been singularly free from the wonted political agitation out-of-doors. Either all parties are sick of it, or ..hey are husbanding their strength for a general election. Perhaps the Great Exhibition runs too much in their heads to leave room for other thoughts. With the exception of the Bright and Gibson meeting at Manchester, the Liberals have been entirely quiescent Protectionists and Chartists have had all the say. The latter, in- deed, have contented themselves with quietly slipping out a " pro- gramme "; the former have been a little more noisily demon- atgive.
_There is a 'bitter irony in the fate which compels the Protec- fief:Lists at every step so to place themselves that people are irre- sistibly moved to institute comparisons or contrasts between their leaders and Sir Robert Peel. Lord Stanley's dinner in Merchant Tailors' Hall recalled Sir Robert Peel's m the same place ; the Edinburgh muster of the present week recalls the reception of Sir Robert Peel when he was installed Rector of Glasgow University. At Glasgow, the united Conservatism of Scotland and Ulster rallied round Sir Robert Peel; at Edinburgh, the Protectionist chiefs could only bring together diminished numbers and diminished talent. At Glasgow, the most distinguished Conservatives of Scot- land renewed their vows of allegiance to the man they had vilified when he carried" Catholic Emancipation ; at Edinburgh, they stood aloof from men with whom they never had any quarrel. The Glas- gow g.abliering was a General Assembly of the Conservative Church; the Edinburgh one, a Synod of Seceders. There was but a scanty display of Scotch Members of Parliament,' and few representatives of the Sooteh Church and Bar, at Edinburgh on Tuesday last; and the mercantile community appears to have absented itself entirely. In fine, it was a convocation of dumb agriculturists to listen to some English notorieties ; Mr. Sheriff Alison and Mr. Professor A.ytoun being the only native performers of any mark. It was a Protectionist demonstration in but not of Scotland. The Protectionist victory at Boston is almost equally unim- portant. It gives that party the whole instead of half of the repre- sentation of a borough never remarkable for its attachment to principles of any kind. The election was chiefly remarkable for an ingenious piece of malice on the part of the populace : after the poll was closed, the mob ruthlessly kept the advocate of re- strictive duties on importation, with his friends, blockaded in the Town-hall till midnight, looking across the narrow street to the inn where their sumptuous dinner stood untouched, like Tantalus in the fable.
